"'Well,' said the minister, 'I always like to get the worth of my money, and I've got three dollars invested in this animal to-day.'"
"Oh me, and how they swear at us!" chimed in a small bay mare from another stall.
"Who, the clergyman?" cried Julie, now for the first time speaking up.
"No, I did not quite mean them, though I carried a bishop, or some sort of a big gun, once to the train and we were late. I am inclined to think he swore to himself, though all he said out loud was: 'I could have made that team cover the ground,' but I meant people in general."
Then somebody from another stall spoke out in a tone quivering with sadness.
"My friends, if you are not blind don't complain of your lot."
"Amen," came softly, but distinctly, from another corner and we all kept silent.
"It seems strange enough to be counted old and only fit to be banged around without this dreadful sightlessness."
She paused again, and I ventured to ask the cause of her misfortune.
"It is inherited. My mother was blind and not of much use but to raise colts, they said. Whether they knew that blind mothers are liable to transmit their misfortune or not I do not know; but the fact remains. I could see all right until I was four years old; when one day, getting pretty warm, a mist seemed to come before my eyes. It remained growing steadily more dense, until at night I was entirely guided by my mate, and when loosened from him could not even find the familiar watering trough.
"'What ails Kate?' somebody asked, while some one else added, 'She acts blind.'
"Presently my master examined my eyes and gave it as his opinion that I was stone blind, and I was and have been ever since.
"No words can describe what I suffer. No one has a thought of pity for a blind horse; it is just rush them along! I am so much afraid; everything startles and terrifies me; I am always stepping on stones or bruising myself on stumps and things that I cannot see. I stretch my neck out long to listen, and I am jerked and called an old blind fool!
"It hurts my feelings, too; it is so dreadful to be afflicted and then be taunted with it and scolded about it. Nearly all my brothers and sisters went blind in the same way."
We Wallace horses longed for a barn of our own, where we could have our little family visits once more, and where we should not see and hear so many harrowing things.