He saw a horse, fifteen or twenty feet from him, but without rider, bridle or saddle.

It was a black horse of gigantic build like a Percheron, with feet as large as a half-bushel measure, and a huge rough mane.
The horse saw John and gazed at him out of great, mild, limpid eyes.

The young American thought he beheld fright there and the desire for companionship.

The animal, probably belonging to some farmer who had fled before the armies, had wandered into the battle area, seeking the human friends to whom he was so used, and nothing living was more harmless than he.

He reminded John in some ways of those stalwart and honest peasants who were so ruthlessly made into cannon food by the gigantic and infinitely more dangerous Tammany that rules the seventy million Germans.
The horse walked nearer and the look in his eyes became so full of terror and the need of man's support that for the time he stood as a human being in John's imagination.
"Poor old horse!" he called, "I'm sorry for you, but your case is no worse than mine.