As far as he could reach in every direction things were demolished.
The owner seemed much frightened when he came out, and at once put a boy on Ross to go for a veterinary. The latter, after an examination, asked if any blow had been given on the head. Shamefacedly the master acknowledged the truth.
"Well," replied the other, "if you got any satisfaction out of it at the time it is all you ever will get. This horse is ruined. There is inflammation of the brain. He may get better, but I think he will have one or two more spells of delirium and then die. It is something similar to mad staggers."
They bled the horse [I am so glad that the barbarous notion of blood-letting is a thing of the past] and put some cloths wet in cold water on his head. He seemed to get better and was put to work again, but a week or so later, while plowing corn in the hot sun, another attack came on, and rearing, he fell backward, narrowly missing crushing his master. When better again, he was taken some distance from home and sold.
Some two years passed and Ross himself had changed hands, when one day as he was standing tied to a post before a country grocery, a weary, shabby-looking horse near him asked if he did not know him.
"It's Billy's voice," said Ross, "but this never can be Billy."
"But it is," said the other, mournfully, "or what is left of him; I'm pretty well used up."
Then he told how he had passed from hand to hand and something of his bodily sufferings. He had been experimented on by every quack in the country, but each augmented his torture.
"One man," he said, "helped me. He was kind and gentle; never yelled at me (oh, how I wish they knew how noise hurts my head!) and always gave me water every hour through the day, and left it where I could reach it at night. Sometimes cold water throws off a fit. He used to work me early and late in the day, but through the hot part kept me in the shade. He also used cold pads on my head and gave me pills of belladonna, one or two a day, when my head was hot and my eyes red. He sometimes gave aconite, too; and when I had been in the sun, gelseminum was the remedy. I think I might have recovered had he lived, but when I had been there four months he died, and soon I was sold and abused worse than ever. Strange, how we dumb brutes can linger and suffer!"