The Doctor had left Nobs one day standing near the door of a farm-house with his bridle thrown over a gate-post; one of the farmer's children, a little boy just old enough to run into danger, amused himself by pulling the horse's tail with one hand and striking him with a little switch across the legs with the other. The Mother caught sight of this and ran in alarm to snatch the urchin away; but before she could do this, Nobs lifted up one foot, placed it against the boy's stomach, and gently pushed him down. The ground was wet, so that the mark of his hoof showed where he had placed it, and it was evident that what he had done was done carefully not to injure the child, for a blow upon that part must have been fatal. This was what the Doctor called kindness of disposition in a horse. Let others argue if they please _que le cheval avoit quelque raison, et qu'il ratiocinoit entre toutes les autres bestes, à cause du temperament de son cerveau_;[6] here, as he justly said, was sufficient proof of consideration, and good nature. [Footnote 6: BOUCHET.] He was not like the heroic horse which Amadis won in the Isle Perilous, when in his old age he was driven thither by a tempest, though the adventure has been pretermitted in his great history. After the death of that old, old very old and most famous of all Knights, this horse was enchanted by the Magician Alchiso. Many generations passed away before he was overcome and disenchanted by Rinaldo; and he then became so famous by his well-known name Bajardo, that for the sole purpose of winning this horse and the sword Durlindana which was as famous among swords as Bajardo among horses, Gradasso came from India to invade France with an army of an hundred and fifty thousand knights. If Nobs had been like him, think what a confusion and consternation his appearance would have produced at Doncaster races! _Ecco appare il cavallo, e i calci tira, E fa saltando in ciel ben mille rote; Delle narici il foco accolto spira, Muove l'orecchie, e l'empie membra scuote; A sassi, a sterpi, a piante ei non rimira, Ma fracassando il tutto, urta e percote; Col nitrito i nemici a fiera guerra Sfida, e cò piè fa rimbombar la tierra._[7] [Footnote 7: TASSO.] Among the Romans he might have been in danger of being selected for a victim to Mars, on the Ides of December. The Massagetæ would have sacrificed him to the Sun, to whom horses seem to have been offered wherever he was worshipped. He might have escaped in those countries where white horses were preferred on such occasions;—a preference for which a commentator upon Horace accounts by the unlucky conjecture that it was because they were swifter than any others.