“Pay us, sir?” said the feeble voice from the cot, “pay us, sir? For feeding True? Why, bless you, he is one of my own family. I should as soon think of taking pay for food I might give my good wife, there. ’Twas only misfortune that led me to part with our pet. But you mean well, sir, and I bear you no ill-will.” It was thus that True was loved by those who understood his nature. When at last he was led to the stable he whinneyed twice for Caesar, with leaping heart. “Was the one from the South who purchased my mother,” he asked, “a peerless lily of a maid, with crow-black hair and stars for eyes? Had she palms like the petals of a wild-rose and did she smell like clover blossoms after a sudden shower?” But Caesar had not noticed, he said, as he sat on the edge of the doorsill, and began his inevitable face-washing. “Had not noticed! Then indeed, it was not she,” thought True, impatient with the cat. Even a _cat_ would have noticed Mistress Lloyd. He spent a lonely night and was relieved to set out early in the morning for Randolph, Vermont, where Justin Morgan lived; the old home was not what it had been and any change was better than the atmosphere that hung over all at the Whitman farm. Besides, Justin Morgan was kind to him and they were good friends enough, and no doubt Randolph was as good a village as Springfield. He grew philosophic as they started off. They galloped over fields and through vague roads, or walked under vast overhanging and dense forests, and in time they came in sight of the bold, heavily-timbered Green Mountains--“The Footstools of Allah,” his mother had called them. They gave the young horse a feeling of strength and confidence; he felt his muscles expand at sight of their bold outlines and he had no fear of their difficulties. From the top of one he gazed at the view, entranced, rearing his fine bony head and breathing deeply of the pure life-giving air. According to his mother’s prophecy it would be in the shadow of these mountains that he, scion of a hundred famous horses, would found the new race, and at first sight of their high broken sky-line, he made a resolve to live such an exemplary life that it would be a standard for that race to come. Master Morgan was town-clerk, school-teacher, and singing master, and went daily from place to place with books in his saddle bags; it was this life True had come to share. There was a comfortable stable but no stable-mates, and had they not been constantly on the go, True might have been lonely; he came to look for their trips with much content and cantered along right willingly from one place to another. For a time he was hitched outside the schoolhouse door, but when Master Morgan found he would come at his whistle, he let the little horse graze at will--the bridle fastened securely to the saddle--and to make the acquaintance of other horses during school hours. He knew well True would not abuse this privilege and wander too far.