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Who is there that ever went into a stable of a morning, and his critter whinnered to him and played his ears back and forward, and turned his head affectionately to him, and lifted his fore-feet short and moved his tail, and tried all he could to express his delight, and say, 'Morning to you, master, or when he went up to the manger and patted his neck, and the lovin' critter rubbed his head agin him in return, that didn't think within himself, well, after all, the hoss is a noble critter?

We reined our horses in tightly, to prevent a perilous stumbling of fore-feet, and by zigzagging from side to side managed to reach the foot of the hill without a single fall. Here, we again gave them the bit; and we were presently thundering across the bridge in a way that brought the keeper out cursing and yelling for his toll.

They surged about him now; striking, thrusting, forcing, with blows of their sabers or their lances and blows of their beasts' fore-feet, a passage one to another, until they were reunited once more as one troop, while their shrill shouts, like an oath of vengeance, echoed after him in the defiance that has pealed victorious over so many fields from the soldiery of France.

It would have been better for the ibex had he kept to his fore-feet altogether; as in that attitude he might have held his ground a little longer perhaps until he had either beaten off his winged assailants, or wearied them out by a prolonged defence. But to fight on "all fours" did not chance to be his fashion.

Dinmont directed his steed towards a pass where the water appeared to flow with more freedom over a harder bottom; but Dumple backed from the proposed crossing-place, put his head down as if to reconnoitre the swamp more nearly, stretching forward his fore-feet, and stood as fast as if he had been cut out of stone.

Then suddenly he rose; stood upright; and, by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising his horse's fore-feet from the ground, he slewed him round on the pivot of his hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was not improved; except as a first step had been taken towards the possibility of a second.

Here in the narrowest place, where one wrong step meant death, the great Wolf turned and faced them. With fore-feet braced, with head low and tail a little raised, his dusky mane a-bristling, his glittering tusks laid bare, but uttering no sound that we could hear, he faced the crew.

It is the Vlack Vaark of the Dutch colonists; and this species differs from Elian's wart-hog in having the cheek protuberances much larger, its head more singularly shaped, and, if possible, in being uglier! The wart-hog dwells among low bushes and forests. It creeps on its bent fore-feet in quest of food sliding along on its knees, and propelling itself forward by its hind legs.

At a sign from the Indians I lifted my rifle and fired. The ball passed through the jaguar's neck. Though wounded, the fierce animal stood snarling savagely, with its fore-feet on the trunk of the tree, as if prepared to make a spring into the canoe. While I was reloading, the Indians raised their blow-pipes and sent two of their slender arrows quivering into its body.

But this time, as ill-luck would have it, the off-side leader was a young, vicious, thorough-bred colt, who had been handed over to him to be cured of a propensity for striking people with his fore-feet. As the horses worked their way into the river, the colt, with the courage of his breeding, pulled manfully, and breasted the current fearlessly.