For the first time in his long life the ambitious horse admitted a feeling of discouragement into his heart; he was ill-fed, never rubbed down, and life seemed utterly hopeless.[14] That was the year men called “Eighteen-hundred-and-starved-to-death,” and throughout the entire summer there was not one warm, sunshiny day. Growing wet with their intolerably toilsome exertions over the slippery, tumbling roads, with the wind howling and the trees bending low about them, the horses would become chilled to the bone, with often nothing but hemlock boughs to eat. They panted and strained as they climbed, and the lumbering stage, with its heavy load of freight, had to be hauled over the tops of the almost perpendicular hills and mountains, at the crack of a long, keen whip in the hands of a merciless driver; every moment they were in danger of crashing over an embankment. It took steady nerve to do this, and poor, proud Morgan, who had never before felt a whip, chafed under the treatment and the remarks of people who had known him in his prime. He almost fretted himself to death, he was heartsick, and a leaden weariness of battling came over him; he was in a pitiable plight. That year crops were all killed, famine threatened, and once more Vermont drank the cup of desolation to its dregs. Good church people, with their children starving, cursed their God. On one occasion the stage passed the farm of a man driven to desperation by the conditions--no crops--no food. He did not hear the stage coming--the horses’ feet fell noiselessly on the soundless road, knee-deep--the heavy wheels half hidden--in mud. There he stood, his Bible in his hand, and in a loud voice he poured forth a torrent of threats “to burn the Book if his crops were killed by the threatening frost.” Mother Nature had made her plans, and did not change them for such impious railings. When the stage passed, a few days later, neighbors’ tongues buzzed with Diah Brewster’s blasphemy, for he had kept his word! No one could suggest a punishment to fit the crime, although there were stocks and branding for lesser misdemeanors, such as drunkenness and lying. Unfortunately, the stage had to go on before the driver found out what decision the Selectmen arrived at as to proper and appropriate penalty. Soon after this Joseph Rogers chanced to be in Chelsea when the stage coach drew up. Hearing his familiar voice, Morgan--wretchedly miserable and homesick--gave a friendly and anxious whinney. Rogers would never have recognized him otherwise, but as he looked into the horse’s kind, gentle face he knew it was his old friend. He started in surprise at the forlorn appearance of the once beautiful horse, now friendless and forgotten.