Chapter XI

Love Rejected

Pat had just been clipped. And never was
there a horse nearer perfection! Shorn of all
hair, his splendid physique, now in fullest maturity,
stood out clean-cut and fascinating.

In weight he might have tipped the scales at
ten hundred pounds. In color his skin, which now
showed clearly, was a shade darker than that of
the elephant, but it showed the richness of velvet.
His body through the trunk was round and symmetrical;
his haunches were wide without projection
of the hip-bones; and his limbs, the stifle
and lower thigh, were long and strong and fully
developed. Added to these, he was high in the
withers, the line of back and neck curving perfectly;
his shoulders were deep and oblique; and
his long, thick fore arm, knotty with bulging sinews,
told of powerful muscles. And finally, his
knees across the pan were wide, the cannon-bone
below thin and short, the pasterns long and sloping,
and the hoofs round and dark and neatly set
on. While over all -- over the small, bony head,
beautiful neck and shoulders -- over the entire
body, clear down to the hoofs -- ran a network of

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v?