Ned did not notice him, however. Only now and then by an effort he tore his attention from the subject that so absorbed him, and upbraided himself for wasting his opportunity for the beneficial influences of a change of air, of scene, of thought that might of itself serve to solve the problems which racked him. He lifted his head and addressed himself to an earnest attempt to divert his mind. It was rare, since his life was spent in vibration between the business portions of the city and the tenement district, that he saw the equipages of people of wealth and fashion, which now flashed by in quick succession. He noticed that they were filled with the silken shimmer of dainty attire and bright pink-and-white faces, which seemed to bloom in the delicate shadow of the quivering lace or fringe of parasols; these parasols, being white or violet or of roseate hue, were themselves of flower-like suggestion, resembling some species of convolvuli. An automobile astonished his gaze rather more than it surprised the sophisticated horses, but it was to these animals he awarded the palm as a means of locomotion. In them he felt a sort of proprietary interest. He noted the value of their fine form; he appraised their glossy coats; he narrowed his eyes to discriminate details of their harness, often so slight as to seem barely to restrain their activities, and hiding no point of beauty or grace. His infancy had been spent in a horse-raising country, but his interest was really apart from memory, and only stimulated by having heard his father's enthusiastic talk of notable favorites which he had seen or shod, for the Scotch emigrant had first settled as a wheelwright and blacksmith in New Arcady, Kentucky, and there he had remained until the last few years of his life. The sleek, whirling spokes, as they caught the light and glittered, soon dazzled Ned's tired eyes; the gay voices that floated down to him seemed all out of tune with the melancholy conditions of his struggling, troubled existence. Only once did he look up with keen and spontaneous attention; a tandem, a thing much in vogue in this place, of fine blood bays went by like the wind,--so fast indeed that he hardly recognized the manager and his elderly skeleton-like friend. Ned rose from his seat to stare after them in doubt and eagerness, all unmindful that a man on a bench in the shade of a tree opposite had noted his excitement, and the identity of the parties who had elicited it, and was steadily gazing at him.