Old Robin was a man of note on that circuit. It was the canon of that crowd to boast one's self better than everyone else in everything, but Robin was allowed to be second only to the speaker and the superior of everyone else with a unanimity which had its precedent only after Salamis. Robin had been head of Colonel Theodoric Johnston's stable before the war, the time on which his mind dwelt with tender memory; and this, with the consideration with which he was treated by stable-owners and racing-gentlemen who shone like luminaries on the far edge of the stable-boys' horizon, and the old man's undoubted knowledge of a horse, made him an authority in that world. The Bullfield stable had produced some of the greatest horses of the country--horses to which the most ignorant stable-biped knew the great winners of the present traced back their descent or were close akin--and if Colonel Johnston's stable lost anything of prestige, it was not in Robin's telling of it. He was at it now as he stood at the big white gate, gazing up the road, over which hung a haze of dust. Deucalion, Old Nina, Planet, Fanny Washington, and the whole gleaming array of fliers went by in Robin's illumined speech, mixed up with Revenue, Boston, Timoleon, Sir Archy and a dozen others in a blaze of equine splendor. “Aw, what 're you giffin us!” jeered a dusky young mulatto, clad in a ragged striped sweater, recently discharged as a stable-boy. “What wus the time then? Why 'n't you read the book?” This was a dig at Robin, for he was “no great hand at reading,” and the crowd knew it and laughed. The old man turned on the speaker. “Races now ain't no mo' than quarter-dashes. Let 'em try 'em in fo'-mile heats if they want to see what 's in a hoss. Dat 's the test o' wind an' bottom. _Our_ hosses used to run fo'-mile heats from New York to New Orleans, an' come in with their heads up high enough to look over dis gate.” “Why 'n't you read the books?” persisted the other, facing him. “I can't read not much better than you ken _ride_,” retorted Robin. This was a crusher in that company, where riding stood high above any literary attainment; for the other had been a failure as a jockey. He tried to rally. “I 'll bet you a hundred dollars I can----” Robin gazed at him witheringly. “You ain' got a hunderd dollars; you ain't got a hunderd cents! You would n't 'a' been wuth a hunderd dollars in slave-times, an' I know you ain' wuth it now.”