offer for him. I was right. I had just seated
myself at breakfast, when the stranger sent his
card, with a request to speak to me. He was a
foreigner, but spoke very correct English, and
his object was to learn if I would sell my horse.
It is needless to say that I refused at once. The
animal suited me, and I was one of those people
who find it excessively difficult to be mounted
to their satisfaction. I needed temper, training,
action, gentleness, beauty, high courage, and
perfect steadiness, and a number of such-like
seeming incongruities. He looked a little
impatient at all this; he seemed to say, 'I know
all this kind of nonsense; I have heard ship
loads of such gammon before. Be frank and
say, what's the figure; how much do you want
for him?' He looked this, I say; but he never
uttered a word, and at last I asked him,

"'Are you a dealer?'

"'Well,' said he, with an arch smile,
'something in that line.'

"'I thought so,' said I. 'The pony is a rare
good one.'

"He nodded assent.

"'He can jump a bar of his own height?'

"Another nod.

"'And he's as fresh on his legs——'

"'As if he were not twenty-six years old,'
he broke in.

"'Twenty-six fiddle-sticks! Look at his
mouth; he has an eight-year old mouth.'

"'I know it,' said he, dryly; 'and so he had
fourteen years ago. Will you take fifty
sovereigns for him?' he added, drawing out a handful
of gold from his pocket.

"'No,' said I, firmly; 'nor sixty, nor
seventy, nor eighty!'

"'I am sorry to have intruded upon you,' said
he, rising, 'and I beg you to excuse me. The
simple fact is, that I am one who gains his
living by horses, and it is only possible for me
to exist by the generosity of those who deal
with me.'

"This appeal was a home-thrust, and I said,
'What can you afford to give?'

"'All I have here,' said he, producing a
handful of gold, and spreading it on the table.

"We set to counting, and there were sixty-
seven sovereigns in the mass. I swept off the
money into the palm of my hand, and said, 'The
beast is yours.'

"He drew a long breath, as if to relieve his
heart of a load of care, and said, 'Men of my
stamp, and who lead such lives as I do, are
rarely superstitious.'

"'Very true,' said I, with a nod of encouragement
for him to go on.

"'Well,' said he, resuming, 'I never thought
for a moment that any possibility could have
made me so. If ever there was a man that
laughed at lucky and unlucky days, despised
omens, sneered at warnings, and scorned at
predictions, I was he; and yet I have lived to
be the most credulous and the most superstitious
of men. It is now fourteen years and
twenty-seven days—I remember the time to an
hour—since I sold that pony to the Prince
Ernest von Saxenhausen, and since that day I
never had luck. So long as I owned him all
went well with me. I ought to tell you that I
am the chief of a company of equestrians, and
one corps, known as Klam's Kunst-Reiters, was
the most celebrated on the Continent. In three
years I made three hundred thousand guilders,
and if the devil had not induced me to sell
"Schatzchen"—that was his name—I should be
this day as rich as Heman Rothschild! From
the hour he walked out of the circus our
calamities began. I lost my wife by fever at
Wiesbaden, the most perfect high-school horse-
woman in Europe; my son, of twenty years of
age, fell and dislocated his neck; the year after,
at Vienna, my daughter Gretchen was blinded
riding through a fiery hoop at Homburg; and
four years later, all the company died of yellow
fever at the Havannah, leaving me utterly
beggared and ruined. Now these, you would say,
though great misfortunes, are all in the
course of common events. But what will you
say when, on the eve of each of them,
"Schatzchen" appeared to me in a dream,
performing some well-known feat or other, and
bringing down, as he ever did, thunders of
applause; and never did he so appear without a
disaster coming after. I struggled hard before
I suffered this notion to influence me. It was
years before I even mentioned it to any one;
and I used for a while to make a jest of it in
the circus, saying, "Take care of yourselves
tonight, for I saw 'Schatzchen.'" Of course they
were not the stuff to be deterred by such
warnings, but they became so at last. That they
did, and were so terrified, so thoroughly
terrified, that the day after one of my visions not a
single member of the troupe would venture on
a hazardous feat of any kind; and if we
performed at all, it was only some common-place
exercises, with few risks and no daring exploits
whatever. Worn out with evil fortune, crushed
and almost broken-hearted, I struggled on for
years, secretly determining, if ever I should
chance upon him, to buy back Schatzchen with
my last penny in the world. Indeed, there were
moments in which such was the intense excitement
of my mind, I could have committed a
dreadful crime to regain possession of him.
We were on the eve of embarking for
Ostend the other night, when I saw you riding
on the Downs, and I came ashore at once to
track you out, for I knew him, though fully
half a mile away. None of my comrades could
guess what detained me, nor understand why I
asked each of them in turn to lend me whatever
money he could spare. It was in this way I
made up the little purse you see. It was thus
provided that I dared to present myself to-day
before you.'

"As he gave me this narrative his manner grew
more eager and excited, and I could not help
feeling that his mind, from the long-continued
pressure of one thought, had received a
serious shock. It was exactly one of those
cases which physicians describe as leaving the
intellect unimpaired while some one faculty is