These, one by one, were forced through the gate into the
adjoining corral, from which they watched with uneasy wonder and many
excited and ineffectual attempts to follow, when their more fortunate
companions were driven again to the big pasture. Then Phil opened
another gate, and the little band dashed wildly through, to find
themselves in the small meadow pasture where they would pass the last
night before the one great battle of their lives--a battle that would be
for them a dividing point between those years of ease and freedom which
had been theirs from birth and the years of hard and useful service that
were to come.
Phil sat on his horse at the gate watching with critical eye as the
unbroken animals raced away. "Some good ones in the bunch this year,
Uncle Will," he commented to his employer, who, standing on the watering
trough in the other corral, was looking over the fence.
"There's bound to be some good ones in every bunch," returned Mr.
Baldwin. "And some no account ones, too," he added, as his foreman
dismounted beside him.
Then, while the young man slipped the bridle from his horse and stood
waiting for the animal to drink, the older man regarded him silently, as
though in his own mind the Dean's observation bore somewhat upon Phil
himself.
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