1. It is always supposed, unless an express agreement be made to the contrary, when horses are put out to keep, that the keeper is at the risque of them (unavoidable accidents only excepted, wherein no care of the keeper can be supposed sufficient to preserve them, such as their being slain by lightning or the like.) _This you yourself tacitly allow when you offer to restore me the value of my horse._ Were it otherwise, people having no security against a keeper's neglect or mismanagement would never put horses out to keep. 2. Keepers considering the risque they run, always demand such a price for keeping horses, that if they were to follow the business twenty years, they may have a living profit, though they now and then pay for a horse they have lost; and if they were to be at no risque they might afford to keep horses for less than they usually have. So that what a man pays for his horse's keeping, more than the keeper could afford to take if he ran no risque, is in the nature of a premium for the insurance of his horse. _If I then pay you for the few days you kept my horse, you should restore me his full value._ 3. You acknowledge that my horse eat of your hay and oats but a few days. It is unjust then to charge me for all the hay and oats that he only might have eat in the remainder of the six months, and which you have now still good in your stable. If, as the proverb says, it is unreasonable to expect a horse should void oats who never eat any, it is certainly as unreasonable to expect payment for those oats. 4. If men in such cases as this are to be paid for keeping horses when they were not kept, then they have a great opportunity of wronging the owners of horses. For by privately selling my horse for his value (ten pounds) soon after you had him in possession, and returning me at the expiration of the time only seven pounds, demanding three pounds as a deduction agreed for his keeping, you get that 3_l._ clear into your pocket, besides the use of my money six months for nothing.