LEBEDYAN
tail, shook his head, and looked sideways at me.
'A clever beast,' I thought.
'Give him his head, give him his head,' said Sitniker, and he stared at me.
'What may you think of him?' he inquired at last.
'The horse's not bad—the hind legs aren't quite sound.'
'His legs are first-rate!' Sitnikov rejoined, with an air of conviction; 'and his hind-quarters . . . just look, sir . . . broad as an oven—you could sleep up there.'
'His pasterns are long.'
'Long! mercy on us! Start him, Petya, start him, but at a trot, a trot . . . don't let him gallop.'
Again Petya ran round the yard with Ermine. None of us spoke for a little.
'There, lead him back,' said Sitnikov, 'and show us Falcon.'
Falcon, a gaunt beast of Dutch extraction with sloping hind-quarters, as black as a beetle, turned out to be little better than Ermine. He was one of those beasts of whom fanciers will tell you that 'they go chopping and mincing and dancing about,' meaning thereby that they prance and throw out their fore-legs to right and to left without making much headway. Middle-aged merchants have a great fancy for such horses; their action recalls the swaggering gait of a smart
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