“'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 Saxen-hausen, 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 horsewoman 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