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Describe the author’s experience when he first entered the gray horse’s house. How did he sense the gray horse's authority? What did the author experience in the other rooms of the gray horses house?
The author came to a long kind of building, made of timber stuck in the ground and wattled across; the roof was low and covered with straw. The author entered the first room. It was a large room, with a smooth clay floor and a rack and manger extending the whole length on one side. There were three nags and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting down upon their hams, and the rest employed in domestic business. The gray came in just after, and thereby prevented any ill treatment which the others might have given to the author. He neighed to them several times in a style of authority, and received answers. Thus the author realized that the gray horse was the master of the house.
Beyond the first room there were three others, reaching the length of the house, to which one passed through three doors, opposite to one another, in the manner of a vista. The author and the gray horse went through the second room towards the third; here the gray walked in first, beckoning him to attend. The author waited in the second room, and got ready his presents for the master and mistress of the house. The horse neighed three or four times, and he waited to hear some answers in a human voice, but he observed no other returns than in the same dialect, only one or two a little shriller than his. The gray horse came to the door and made him a sign to follow him into the third room, where the author saw a very comely mare, together with a colt and foal, sitting on their haunches upon mats of straw, not unartfully made and perfectly neat and clean.
House Belonged to an Extraordinary Man
The author began to think that the house must belong to some person of great note among them, because there appeared so much ceremony before he could gain admittance. But that a man of quality should be served all by horses was beyond his comprehension. He feared that his brain was disturbed by his sufferings and misfortunes. He got up and looked about in the room where he was left alone; it was furnished like the first, only after a more elegant manner. He rubbed his eyes often, but the same objects still occurred. He pinched his arms, to awake himself hoping he might be in a dream. He then absolutely concluded that all these appearances could be nothing else but necromancy and magic.