"'I always knew,' Jonathan Goslee said, 'that the critter had tricks
and ways different from common horses, I've catched him at 'em
sometimes. One day I found him with his bran-tub bottom upwards, amusin'
himself tryin' to stand with all four legs on it at once. And he'll
clear marm's clothes-line at a leap as easy as you'd jump over a pair of
bars. But I never happened to catch him practisin' his
dancin'-lesson--must have done it, though, on the sly, or he couldn't
have footed it so lively that day over to Centerville. Well, sometimes I
think--and then ag'in I don't know. If that there sailor feller stole
the horse he sold in such a hurry to parson, why didn't the owner make a
hue and cry about it, and follow him up? 'Twould have been easy enough
to track the beast to Hilltown. And then ag'in, if 'twas all fair and
square, and he took the horse for a debt, why didn't he sell him to a
show company for a fancy price, instead of shippin' him off to the Indys
in one of them rotten old tubs, that as like as not would go under
before she'd made half the voyage. But there, we never shall get to the
bottom facts in the case, any more than we shall ever know how much
money parson paid down for that horse,'
"And they never did.
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