Peaceful thoughts filled the hearts of most of them, but B.J. dreamed chiefly of the furious conflicts that awaited him on the lake, which had been the scene of many an adventure in his mettlesome ice-boat.

He was a lover of nature, too, and his flashing eyes glanced observantly from side to side as they swept alongsometimes through glades of forest trees, sometimes through belts of more open ground and shrubbery; anon by the margin of a stream or along the shores of a little lake, and often over short stretches of flowering prairie-landwhile the firm, elastic turf sent up a muffled sound from the tramp of their mettlesome chargers.

His horse was a mettlesome colt that had not been worked during the harvest, and he plunged down the dim, winding trail as if, indeed, to verify Jerry's fears.

Their horses' flanks were damp from some pleasant gallop, but their present gait was the soft, mettlesome movement of animals who will even submit to walk if their masters insist.

For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand.

The word means a "mettlesome sorrel.