A certain Sergeant Parker, of the Northwest Mounted Police, went on patrol with a saddle horse. They got lost in a blizzard, and in the succeeding calm the man became snowblind. On the seventh day, the horse saw an outfit of freighters passing in the distance. He ran to their sleighs. He whinneyed to the horses, who understood his talk, and he beckoned to the men, who were not so clever. Then the men noticed that his belly was terribly swollen by long pressure of the girth. They followed him. At a distance of one and a half miles they came to a tract of prairie with the snow grubbed up where the horse had been scratching for grass. In the midst was a heap of snow like the mound of a grave, on which lay Sergeant Parker in seeming death. His long delirium, beginning with visions of angels and closing with a dream of meat-pies, had ended in coma just at the verge of death; while the horse stayed on guard until it was possible to get him rescued. So much was told me afterwards by the man. The other day in France a British soldier was killed, whose horse remained with the body for two days, out in the zone between the {83} opposing armies, exposed to a hurricane of fire beyond example, refusing to be rescued, moved by a love stronger than death. [Sidenote: The horse immortal] The young of the clergy will tell us all about the lower animal who does not subscribe to the tenets of the church, and so must perish everlastingly despite the Father's care. Yet if they read the Prophets and the Revelations they will find chariots of fire, and see in visions the deathless chargers ridden by Archangels. Are all the Hosts of Heaven infantry? We have the full authority of the Holy Bible for an idea that horses may be immortal. But then the young of science have assured us that the clergy talk a deal of nonsense, and that the Holy Scriptures are so much folk lore. Our modern teachers, unused to sleeping outdoors, have never seen the great heavens thrown open every night. They believe in nothing they have not seen, and those I meet have not seen very much. To them the lower animal is hardly a personal friend, but rather an automaton steered by instincts, built on much the same principles as a dirigible torpedo. The "instincts" have to account for deeds which in a man would be attributed to love or valour. I often meet young people who gently wave {84} aside my life experience while they crush me with some religious or scientific tenet to which they attach importance. Sometimes this bias has caused total blindness, more often they lack sympathy; but any horse can teach fellows who have eyes to see with, and hearts to understand. Then they will realise in him a personality like that of a human child. I do believe that there are men and horses in whom the spirit burns with so mighty and secure a strength that it cannot be quenched by death; and that there are others in whom the flame burns low or has been blown out.