But my Jenny had some other qualities which I should never have discovered had they not been made known to me by others. Elsewhere in this volume I have spoken at length of my visit to a celebrated watering-place, and of the numerous gamblers and other strange characters that I met there. It was in the midst of a very wild region. When I had arrived within a few hours' ride of the springs, I stopped to dine at a house of private entertainment. A large four-horse stage, loaded with passengers bound for the springs, soon drove up and stopped at the same house, which was the regular place of dining for the passengers. After dinner I rode on to the springs, keeping along the most of the way in company with the stage. My Jenny attracted very marked attention from the driver and passengers. The driver especially was profuse in his expressions of admiration. As I rode up to the hotel, the listless, lounging visitors, who were so deep in the Brush that they had very little to attract or interest them, regarded her gait and movements with general attention and delight. When I dismounted, a black boy was soon in my saddle, and my Jenny moved off to the stable with her usual fleetness and grace. I entered the hotel and registered my name, without any prefix or suffix to indicate my employment or profession. The weather was very hot, the roads very dusty, and after the fashion of the country I was at once furnished with water to wash. As I stood wiping myself, the stage-driver rushed into the room and up to me in great excitement and said: "Mr. Pierson, will you allow your horse to run? The money is up and we'll have a race if you'll only allow her to run"--at the same time holding up and shaking in my face a mass of bills that were drawn through his fingers, after the fashion of gamblers in those parts. I was startled to hear my name pronounced in a strange place, and by a stranger, but in a moment bethought me that he had learned it by looking on the hotel-register. I was more startled by the strangeness of the proposition. As the servant stood with my saddle-bags on his arm, waiting to show me to my room, I answered perhaps a little too abruptly, "No, sir," and followed him to my room, to prepare for supper. When the supper-bell rang, and I stepped out of my room upon the piazza, a portly man of gentlemanly bearing, who had evidently taken his position there to wait for me, approached me pleasantly and said: "I hope, sir, you will reconsider your decision and allow your mare to run. As soon as you rode up I offered to bet two hundred and fifty dollars that she would outrun anything here, and the money is up. Allow me to say that I am an old Virginian, and a judge of horses, and if you will let her run I am sure to win." By this time I had entirely recovered my self-possession, and, bowing politely, I looked directly into his eyes and said: