CHAPTER XI.
COUSIN RICHARD'S VISIT.
The Doctor was roused from his reverie by the clatter of approaching
hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fellow galloping rapidly towards
him.
A common New-England rider with his toes turned out, his elbows jerking and
the daylight showing under him at every step, bestriding a cantering beast
of the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be thin, and
thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of those noble
objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of the cities are
the unshod country-boys, who ride "bare-backed," with only a halter round
the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs, and slanting
over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the hardest trot
as if they loved it. This was a different sight on which the Doctor was
looking. The streaming mane and tail of the unshorn, savage-looking, black
horse, the dashing grace with which the young fellow in the shadowy
_sombrero_, and armed with the huge spurs, sat in his high-peaked saddle,
could belong only to the mustang of the Pampas and his master. This bold
rider was a young man whose sudden apparition in the quiet inland town had
reminded some of the good people of a bright, curly-haired boy they had
known some eight or ten years before as little Dick Venner.
This boy had passed several of his early years at the Dudley mansion, the
playmate of Elsie, being her cousin, two or three years older than herself,
the son of Captain Richard Venner, a South American trader, who, as he
changed his residence often, was glad to leave the boy in his brother's
charge.
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