"The best in mother England," said the very old man, taking a knobbed stick from his mouth, and looking me in the face, at first carelessly, but presently with something like interest; "he is old like myself, but can still trot his twenty miles an hour. You won't live long, my swain; tall and overgrown ones like thee never do: yet, if you should chance to reach my years, you may boast to thy great-grand-boys, thou hast seen Marshland Shales." Amain I did for the horse what I would neither do for earl or baron, doffed my hat; yes! I doffed my hat to the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother England; and I too drew a deep ah! and repeated the words of the old fellows around. "Such a horse as this we shall never see again: a pity that he is so old." Now, during all this time I had a kind of consciousness that I had been the object of some person's observation; that eyes were fastened upon me from somewhere in the crowd. Sometimes I thought myself watched from before, sometimes from behind; and occasionally methought that if I just turned my head to the right or left, I should meet a peering and inquiring glance; and indeed, once or twice I did turn, expecting to see somebody whom I knew, yet always without success; though it appeared to me that I was but a moment too late, and that some one had just slipped away from the direction to which I turned, like the figure in a magic lantern. Once I was quite sure that there were a pair of eyes glaring over my right shoulder; my attention, however, was so fully occupied with the objects which I have attempted to describe, that I thought very little of this coming and going, this flitting and dodging of I knew not whom or what. It was after all a matter of sheer indifference to me who was looking at me. I could only wish whomsoever it might be to be more profitably employed, so I continued enjoying what I saw; and now there was a change in the scene: the wondrous old horse departed with his aged guardian; other objects of interest are at hand. Two or three men on horseback are hurrying through the crowd; they are widely different in their appearance from the other people of the fair--not so much in dress, for they are clad something after the fashion of rustic jockeys, but in their look: no light-brown hair have they, no ruddy cheeks, no blue quiet glances belong to them; their features are dark, the locks long, black, and shining, and their eyes are wild; they are admirable horsemen, but they do not sit the saddle in the manner of common jockeys, they seem to float or hover upon it like gulls upon the waves; two of them are mere striplings, but the third is a very tall man with a countenance heroically beautiful, but wild, wild, wild. As they rush along, the crowd give way on all sides, and now a kind of ring or circus is formed, within which the strange men exhibit their horsemanship, rushing past each other, in and out, after the manner of a reel, the