HE CRIPPLED HORSE.

Nature and circumstances had produced widely differing characters in the
two brothers. Walter, forward enough by natural temperament, and ready
to assert himself on all occasions, was brought more forward still and
encouraged in self-esteem and self-indulgence, by the injudicious
fondness of both his parents. Handsome in person, with a merry smile
and a ripple of joyousness rarely absent from his bright face, he was
the favourite of all guests at his father's house, and a sharer in their
field-sports and pastimes. That his father and mother loved him better
than they loved Amos it was impossible for him not to see; and, as he
grew to mature boyhood, a feeling of envy, when he heard both parents
regret that himself was not their heir, drew his heart further and
further from his elder brother, and led him to exhibit what he
considered his superiority to him as ostentatiously as possible, that
all men might see what a mistake Nature had made in the order of time in
which she had introduced the two sons into the family. Not that Walter
really hated his brother; he would have been shocked to admit to himself
the faintest shadow of such a feeling, for he was naturally generous and
of warm affections; but he clearly looked upon his elder brother as
decidedly in his way and in the wrong place, and often made a butt of
him, considering it quite fair to play off his sarcasms and jokes on one
who had stolen a march upon him by coming into the world before him as
heir of the family estate. And now that their mother--who had made no
secret of her preference of Walter to her elder son--was removed from
them, the cords of Mr Huntingdon's affections were wound tighter than
ever round his younger son, in whom he could scarce see a fault, however
glaringly visible it might be to others; while poor Amos's shortcomings
received the severest censure, and his weaknesses were visited on him as
sins. No wonder, then, that, spite of the difference in their ages and
order of birth, Walter Huntingdon looked upon himself as a colossal
figure in the household, and on his poor brother as a cipher.

On the other hand, Amos, if he had been of a similar temperament to his
brother, would have been inevitably more or less cowed and driven into
himself by the circumstances which surrounded him, and the treatment
which he undeservedly received at the hands of his parents and younger
brother. Being, however, naturally of a shy and