The saddle and bridle had been removed before they left the cottage; and Fergus tethered the horse, by a foot rope, to a sapling growing on the edge of the clearing.

Then he patted it on the neck, and left it beginning to crop the short grass.
"It won't get much," the peasant said, "for my animal keeps it pretty short.

It is his best feeding place, now; and I generally turn it out here, at night, when the day's work is done." "What is its work, principally ?" "There is only one sort, now," the man said.

"I cut faggots in the forest, and take a cart load into Erfurt, twice a week.

I hope, by the spring, that all these troubles will be over, and then I cultivate two or three acres of ground; but so long as these French, and the Confederacy troops, who are as bad, are about, it is no use to think of growing anything.
"Now, sir, is there anything that I can do for you ?" he went on, after they returned to the cottage, and had both lit their pipes and seated themselves by the fire.
"I can see that you are not what you look.