The unshanked snaffle bit is good for bending and getting a horse used to the feel of a bit.

'I will,' he muttered, with another most unclerklike oath, and he took Katty by the hand, and shook it slowly in his own cold, damp grasp as he asked, with the same intense and forbidding look, 'Is Mr. Lowe in the house still?'

a ball of wool; a ball of twine

He is assessing directions, but he is not lost, not floundering.