He leaned a moment on the fence watching with glittering eyes and then he passed into a dream.

At the end of the dream he took Alcatraz out of the pasture and into the stable.

That had been to Alcatraz, like the first calamity falling on Job, the beginning of sorrow and for three years and more he had endured not in patience but with an abiding hatred.

For a great hatred is a great strength, and the hatred for Cordova made the chestnut big of heart to wait.

He had learned to season his days with the patience of the lynx waiting for the porcupine to uncurl or the patience of the cat amazingly still for hours by the rat-hole.