Mr. Sawyer, however, knew the merits and the failings of his own two or three nags but too well. He was pretty often on their backs, and, when off them, constantly in and out of the stable. Isaac would no more have dared to give one of them a gallop, or a dose of physic, than to have inflicted the same discipline on his master. Nevertheless he grumbled always and continuously. As I have said before, it was the one relaxation he permitted himself. Perhaps he never had a better opportunity than on the morning after the new horse came home, when Mr. Sawyer, according to custom, but with a trifle more eagerness than usual, visited his favourites in their comfortable quarters. According to custom, too, he felt their legs all round; expressed his satisfaction that the grey’s had got “quite fine again,” and passed over a certain thick-set underbred bay horse without a remark. Indeed, it would have been difficult to say anything complimentary of this animal; and his remaining so long in Mr. Sawyer’s stable was less the consequence of his merits than that strangers seemed to have the same opinion of him as was entertained by his own master. It _is_ somewhat galling, when we cannot get rid of a bad one, to reflect that it should be so difficult to find a bigger fool than ourselves. The bay, who rejoiced in the classical appellation of _Marathon_, was a slow horse, a sulky horse, and by no means a safe fencer—about as unpleasant a hunter as a man would wish to get upon, but rather a favourite with Isaac notwithstanding, as he was sound, and a voracious feeder. These three, the roan, the grey (who had no name), and the bay, with a little three-cornered jumping hack called Jack-a-Dandy, now constituted Mr. Sawyer’s stud; and, as he contemplated them all hard at work with their eleven o’clock feed, he felt that spark of ambition glowing in his bosom which has lured so many great men to their destruction. “He _looks_ a clipper! don’t he, Isaac?” observed the master, nodding towards the roan’s long shapely quarters and square tail. “The rarest shaped one we’ve had in _this_ stable for many a day,” he added, seeing his servant’s features screwed into the well-known twist that denoted disapprobation. “Looks!” grunted Isaac, who never called his master “sir.” “Looks! Ah! he’d be a nice thing enough to knock a light trap about, or do you a day now and then when the country gets dry. He’ll never be fit for our ploughs—you see if he will! They’ll pull him to pieces in a fortnight—you see if they won’t!”