"Look out!" he exclaimed, as Gay approached a veteran of twenty-one years old, who was only retired for old age, after racing till he was nine, getting a record at 2.15, and then being driven constantly hard on the road till two years ago. "He won't let anyone but me go near him," explained his owner, "he bites everyone else. Each of these horses has worn out five or six of the English carriage horses that did not have nearly so hard a life"--and he explained that the American horse can do the work of two hackneys, his legs being as hard as iron. Amongst the old pensioners, (as their master had never sold a horse that had done him good service) he showed Joe W., a horse seventeen hands two inches high, who was nineteen years old. He had driven him on the road twelve years, had raced, and only now retired him because he was getting old, though his legs were still perfectly sound and he had never been lame, except once from an overreach in a race. He had not been coddled, but whenever he was driven on the road, was pelted along at twenty miles an hour, however hard that road might be. Only the pick of the horses were stabled there--about sixty were at a place too far off for Gay to visit, and she got bewildered when she found that the stable sheltered scores of horses collected from all points of the compass--English hackneys, American, Russian, and Austrian trotters, polo ponies, hunters, exhibition leaping horses, and harness ponies, but Rensslaer did not go in much for steeplechasing, and for what was done, the boy who had ridden just now, was responsible. Gay sighed. What a little heaven to Chris, and what would not he and that other boy do--a pair of dare-devils--if pitted against each other! She dreaded, while she longed for him to know such bliss, and herein lay her inconsistency--that she herself loved horses, was happiest near them, yet would put a limit to Chris's far greater passion, as if it were to be measured by rule of thumb! It was in this spirit that she asked Rensslaer to get him down later, but on no account to let him and the other boy meet, and Rensslaer laughed, and promised. He had already decided on making Chris a certain offer, and had great hopes that he might accept it.