The next morning, Malcolm took Kelpie into the park, and gave her a good breathing. He had thought to jump the rails, and let her have her head, but he found there were too many park-keepers and police about: he saw he could do little for her that way. He was turning home with her again when one of her evil fits came upon her, this time taking its first form in a sudden stiffening of every muscle: she stood stock still with flaming eyes. I suspect we human beings know but little of the fierceness with which the vortices of passion rage in the more purely animal natures. This beginning he knew well would end in a wild paroxysm of rearing and plunging. He had more than once tried the exorcism of patience, sitting sedate upon her back until she chose to move; but on these occasions the tempest that followed had been of the very worst description; so that he had concluded it better to bring on the crisis, thereby sure at least to save time; and after he had adopted this mode with her, attacks of the sort, if no less violent, had certainly become fewer. The moment therefore that symptoms of an approaching fit showed themselves, he used his spiked heels with vigour. Upon this occasion he had a stiff tussle with her, but as usual gained the victory, and was riding slowly along the Row, Kelpie tossing up now her head now her heels in indignant protest against obedience in general and enforced obedience in particular, when a lady on horseback, who had come galloping from the opposite direction, with her groom behind her, pulled up, and lifted her hand with imperative grace: she had seen something of what had been going on. Malcolm reined in. But Kelpie, after her nature, was now as unwilling to stop as she had been before to proceed, and the fight began again, with some difference of movement and aspect, but the spurs once more playing a free part. “Man! man!” cried the lady, in most musical reproof, “do you know what you are about?” “It would be a bad job for her and me too if I did not, my lady,” said Malcolm, whom her appearance and manner impressed with a conviction of rank, and as he spoke he smiled in the midst of the struggle: he seldom got angry with Kelpie. But the smile instead of taking from the apparent roughness of his speech, only made his conduct appear in the lady’s eyes more cruel. “How is it possible you can treat the poor animal so unkindly --and in cold blood too?” she said, and an indescribable tone of pleading ran through the rebuke. “Why, her poor sides are actually----” A shudder, and look of personal distress completed the sentence. “You don’t know what she is, my lady, or you would not think it necessary to intercede for her.” “But if she is naughty, is that any reason why you should be cruel?” “No, my lady; but it is the best reason why I should try to make her good.” “You will never make her good that way.” “Improvement gives ground for hope,” said Malcolm.