MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

horse who had wandered into the alley and ventured to look through the open door.This horse, about twice the age of either Penrod or Sam, had lived to find himself in aunique position. He was nude, possessing neither harness nor halter; all he had was aname, Whitey, and he would have answered to it by a slight change of expression if anyone had thus properly addressed him. So forlorn was Whitey's case, he was actually anindependent horse; he had not even an owner. For two days and a half he had been hisown master.Previous to that period he had been the property of one Abalene Morris, a person ofcolor, who would have explained himself as engaged in the hauling business. On thecontrary, the hauling business was an insignificant side line with Mr. Morris, for he hadlong ago given himself, as utterly as fortune permitted, to that talent which, early inyouth, he had recognized as the greatest of all those surging in his bosom. In his wakingthoughts and in his dreams, in health and in sickness, Abalene Morris was the dashingand emotional practitioner of an art[22-1] probably more than Roman in antiquity.Abalene was a crap-shooter. The hauling business was a disguise.A concentration of events had brought it about that, at one and the same time, Abalene,after a dazzling run of the dice, found the hauling business an actual danger to thepreservation of his liberty. He won seventeen dollars and sixty cents, and within the hourfound himself in trouble with an officer of the Humane Society on account of an