During July the herd wandered over moor and “plain” or in the woods, keeping to their unmarked, though to them fairly well-defined, territory of several square miles. Outside those limits were other herds, with their leaders ready to take offence at the presence of strange males.

The little skewbald foal kept away from the other youngsters, for they were too big and strong for him to play with; but by good fortune a brown mare with a colt of the same colour, and about the same age as Skewbald, joined the party. What with milk and nibblings of heather and the lush grass of the bottoms, the little foals grew apace and became playmates.

In the late afternoons before the long evening feed, the pair would gambol with all the abandon of youth, while their mothers stood head to tail, jerking manes, waving tails, shaking fore-legs, and ever and anon changing the weight from one hind-leg to another. The colts would race across the meadow where the herd was pasturing, then stop dead, and stand nose to nose, watching for the other’s next move; one would rear up suddenly, startling his playfellow, and race away in glee. Then followed a biting of manes and nibbling of shoulders like any old couple. At times they grew rougher in their play. They ran shoulder to shoulder, trying to bite, or, rearing up on hind-legs like veterans, indulged in an orgy of make-believe biting and kicking.

But, for the greater part of the day, life went quietly with the little foal. His mane, half white and chestnut with a streak of black, was growing fast. His barrel was filling out, and his legs growing straight and strong. His slender muzzle poked about everywhere, and his tail flapped continually.

In the hot July days, the colt and his mother wandered over the hills, and by the little streams meandering along the bottoms except where the gurgling water was checked, and collected to form a bog. Sometimes the stream was bordered with birch and alder, growing in a soggy bed, littered with dead wood, and choked with undergrowth. Tracks ran in and out among the trees, worn by the hoofs of generations of ponies. Here, the deeper water flowed more slowly. One afternoon, as Skewbald paused at the edge to nibble at a bed of watercress, his mother snorted at two curious objects moving on the surface of the water, two bristling cat-like heads with small ears and a swirling of water behind. They were otters, steering themselves with their thick tails.

Once he nearly stepped on a snipe, her head so far immersed in a muddy pool that she was not aware of an intruder until the hoof was almost upon her, and then what a fluttering and zig-zagging and crying of “scape-scape!” Another time, but this was next year, in spring, as he dawdled around the edge of the wood among the dead bracken, he nosed against a brown stem. It moved, and suddenly became part of the barred head and widely opened eyes of a sitting woodcock, her buff, grey and white back matching the dead leaves and bracken, and her long beak indistinguishable from the stalks of the fern.

At one point the stream opened out into a wide shallow with a pebbly bottom where the little trout played. Tracks led into the stream and out on the other side, for this was a forest ford.

How pleasant the colts found the water, enjoying the splashing of their hoofs as they walked in the stream, the while their elders stood fetlock-deep! How refreshing to take a deep drink, head and neck inclined at just the right angle so that the nostrils were clear of the water, followed by a snort of content!

After whiling away the hotter hours thus, the ponies would take the tracks towards the hill. As they got higher, the white stones showed in the thin crust of soil, and the heather grew more sparsely. One August afternoon, while rounding a gorsebush which shaded a patch of bare blackish soil, strewn with dead sticks and gravel, the colt almost touched with his nose what looked like a piece of dead wood covered with grey lichen and spots of orange fungus, when, on the moment, the thing came to life. The lichen and fungus became grey-tipped and barred feathers, the stalk-like projection opened in half, disclosing a great, rose-pink, frog-like mouth—a mouth so enormous and menacing, that Skewbald shrunk back. Then the mother nightjar appeared from nowhere, and croaking and spluttering she fluttered right before the foal’s nose, so that his attention was distracted from her young one. If he had looked again he would have found the gaping mouth and widely spread wings gone, and the young chick again reduced to the semblance of an unattractive lump.

Sometimes the ponies would take the open moor with its coarse grass, scanty tufts of heather, and sweet-scented bog myrtle. Much of it was swamp, and the mare watched her offspring to see that he did not venture into one of the deep bogs known only to the forest men, and to the ponies and deer. If he were rash, she called him on to safety, while if he were obstinate, she butted him with her forehead on to drier ground.

In places the moor was curiously patterned, like a chessboard, a tuft of heather next a patch of bare soil. This was owing to the peat-cutting, a right possessed by the commoners, who, however, are required “to cut one and leave two,” so that the soil should not be deprived altogether of vegetable growth.

In early September the colt may have seen the forest gentian, a single blossom of a beautiful violet-blue on an erect stalk, while the seed-pods of the bog asphodel close by, of a vivid orange-yellow, formed a perfect colour complementary. But do ponies see colours? They apparently see well by night, which would seem to show that a large part of their retina consists of structures adapted for nocturnal vision, just as the outer part of the human retina only is used at dusk, the inner being practically blind at this time, and therefore green foliage and grass turn grey, and red flowers appear black, red and green being seen only with that part of the retina concerned with diurnal vision.

About this time, too, as he crossed a sandy forest path, he may have seen the brilliantly green caterpillar of the emperor moth, its sides spotted with pink, full fed, and wandering about seeking a site for its cocoon. Was he able to detect the same creature on its natural resting-place, the heather, practically invisible to human eyes, when motionless; its green merged into the leafage, and the pink spots simulating heather buds?

Certainly the heather the year of Skewbald’s birth was of a brilliance such that the oldest forest man declared he had never seen equalled. Especially was this the case on the most barren gravelly spots, where instead of the usual magenta, clumps of the brightest crimson blazed in the sun.

In the warm September days life passed pleasantly. Through the cold, clear nights, while Vega blazed above, he paced on with his mother, ever nibbling, for, like his kind, he did not spend the long nights in sleep, but towards dawn lay down for an hour or so. His coat, fast thickening, kept him warm, even when just after sunrise a white frost covered every blade of grass, heather tuft, and fern frond. As the sun rose higher, the frost turned to a heavy dew in which the colt wandered, the wet bog myrtle washing him to the shoulder, while the rays, shining through the mist, enveloped him with a golden aura.

Later in the day he plodded up the hill on to the “plain,” and while his mother dozed in the shade of a clump of holly, he would roll in a patch of brilliantly white or golden sand. Once as he bent his knees to lie down, a grey-brown thing like a dead furze branch suddenly galvanized into life with a hiss. As the viper moved, the colt, with a snort of astonishment, jumped all four feet in the air at once, and the mother rushed towards him. She saw the reptile gliding along the path, and turned sharply away, calling the colt to her.

So Skewbald learned to avoid a snake, and incidentally that he could jump. He practised this on occasion, leaping over fallen stumps, across streamlets and shallow pits, not knowing how useful an accomplishment it might prove to him in after-life.