came to a sad end, for she got mired down in the low pasture, and had to
be hauled out with ropes, poor critter, and died of the wet and the
cold.

"Well, as I was saying, I never was put to hard work. I was born and
raised on the place, and I do suppose--though I say it, who
shouldn't--that I was an uncommon fine--looking colt, dark chestnut in
color, and not a white hair on me except this spot in my forehead that
gave me my name. When I was three months old, master made a present of
me to his oldest boy on his sixteenth birthday, and every half-hour
Master Fred could spare from his work, he used to spend in dressing down
and feeding me and teaching me cunning tricks. I could take an apple or
a lump of sugar from his pocket, walk down the slope behind the barn on
two legs, with my forefeet on his shoulders, and shake hands, old master
used to say, 'just like a Christian.'

"Master Fred set great store by me, as well he might. He's traveled
hundreds of miles on my back over the prairies, and we've been out
together many a dark night when he'd drop the lines on my neck and say,
"Well, Star, go ahead if you know the way, for not one inch can I see
before my nose." That was after he learned by experience that I knew
better than he did where to go, and when to stop going. For he lost his
temper and called me hard names one night, when I stopped short in the
middle of the road and wouldn't budge an inch for voice or whip, with
the wind blowing a gale, and the rain coming down in bucketsful. But
when a flash of lightning showed the bridge before us clean washed away,
and only a few feet between us and the steep bank of the river, Master
Fred changed his tune. Afraid! not I; but I'm willing to own I _was_ a
little scared the day we got into the water down by Cook's Cove, for
you see I was hitched to the buggy and the lines got tangled about my
legs, and there were chunks of ice and lots of driftwood floating about,
and the current sucking me down; but master had got to shore and stood
on the bank calling, "This way, Star, this way!" and when I heard his
voice I--well, I don't know how I managed to do it, but I turned square
round and swam upstream with the buggy behind me, and got safe and sound
to land. I've heard Master Fred say my back was covered with
river-grass, and I trembled all over with the fright and the hard pull.

"But, dear me, all that happened long ago when master was courting old
Tim Bunce's daughter Marth