1 Ethan, with a touch of his whip, roused the sorrel to a languid trot.
2 He threw the bearskin over the sorrel, who stood passively by the roadside, hanging a meditative head.
3 At the gate, instead of making for Starkfield, he turned the sorrel to the right, up the Bettsbridge road.
4 "Now then, go 'long," he said, with a shake of the reins that sent the sorrel placidly jogging down the hill.'
5 Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road, and thought: "He's wondering why he doesn't get his supper."
6 He had driven his load half-way to the village when Jotham Powell overtook him, urging the reluctant sorrel toward the Flats.
7 At the moment, however, his one desire was to avoid the long drive with her behind the ancient sorrel who never went out of a walk.
8 It was not till he led out the sorrel and backed him between the shafts of the sleigh that he once more became conscious of what he was doing.
9 He opened the barn-door and craned his head into the obscurity, half-fearing to discover Denis Eady's roan colt in the stall beside the sorrel.
10 Oh, Matt, I thought we'd fetched it," he moaned; and far off, up the hill, he heard the sorrel whinny, and thought: "I ought to be getting him his feed.
11 The sorrel, turning the same big ringed eye on him, nuzzled the palm of his hand in the same way; and one by one all the days between rose up and stood before him.
12 Just as they started he heard the sorrel's whinny again, and the familiar wistful call, and all the confused images it brought with it, went with him down the first reach of the road.
13 Once or twice, hearing sleigh-bells, Ethan turned his head, fancying that Zeena and Jotham might overtake him; but the old sorrel was not in sight, and he set his face against the rain and urged on his ponderous pair.
14 He thought that by starting out again with the lumber as soon as he had finished his dinner he might get back to the farm with the glue before Jotham and the old sorrel had had time to fetch Zenobia from the Flats; but he knew the chance was a slight one.