Over two hundred slaves were owned by the master, and the stables were reckoned the finest in the State, for the stock included many animals of well-known and enviable records. There was a private race-track at one end of the plantation, and when at the spring and fall meets the neighbors from his own and adjoining counties met at Mars’ Robert Tayloe’s, there were times to be remembered, and good old times they were! The gentlemen brought their own horses and dogs, and in the morning after breakfast it was no unusual sight to see fifty or more blooded animals brought out by the stable boys and walked up and down for the inspection and discussion of the gentlemen who had come down to see their favorites; and it was owing to one of these occasions that Bobbie made his nose immortal. Though his eighth birthday had not yet been reached, he knew every detail of stable matters to what his mother thought an alarming degree, and the ambition of his life was to get astride a race horse. Never had he been allowed that privilege, though he had ridden bareback everything else on the place; and when he heard his father discussing, the night before the big race, the relative merits of his special pride—Dare Devil—as compared with Major Dalrymple’s Lady Virginia, he could stand it no longer, and he crept out to look for Peter Black. Had Bobbie known what an _alter ego_ was, he would have said that Peter Black was it; for one was the substance, the other the shadow; and when Bobbie was wanted Peter Black was generally called. By right of birth he really belonged to Sallie Tom, Bobbie’s mammy; but for all other intents and purposes he was owned body and soul by little Mars’ Bobbie, to whom Mars’ Robert had given him on the morning of the great day when the little master “done come.” The big master had made him creep softly in the missus’ beautiful room, and had shown him the new wonder, and told him that he was to belong to him hereafter, and that he must always be very careful, and never let any harm come to him; and Peter Black had promised solemnly, and walked out of the room as one would come out of a holy place, and no king on his coronation day was ever half so proud as he. Sallie Tom, his mother, was present at this installation into office, and she tried hard to conceal the pride she felt at the selection of the little marsa’s body servant. She said no word at the time, but when she got down to her cabin she put Peter Black on a chair and had a conversation with him. Peter was her one and only offspring, and though she loved him very much in her own peculiar way, it was something very different from the absolute idolatry she had for her master and mistress, and now for the little stranger that for ten long years she had hoped and prayed would come to fill the sore need of a child up in the big house.