In addition to the safeguards which a miner's garb, daily labour, and rude association provided against recognition, Lance had practised of set purpose the slang phrases and ungrammatical idioms common among men of his adopted occupation. This kind of verbal deterioration is more easy to acquire by careless habit than to relinquish when an upper stratum of society is again reached, as relatives of young men returning from 'back block' sojourns or 'northern territory' explorations have discovered to their regret. Taking his privations into consideration, it must not be considered very wonderful that the 'Ballarat Harry' of Omeo was a different-appearing personage from the Lance Trevanion of No. 6, Growlers', much more the haughty, rebellious heir of Wychwood.
The expected morning broke – a transcendent day of early spring, known even to this mountain land, mist-shrouded and storm-swept though it be in its winter garb. The sky was cloudless, the air breezeless, as the sun uplifted his golden shield over the forest-clothed shoulders of the Bogong and the Buffalo.
As the pearl-gray tints of the dawn-light insensibly dissolved, – losing themselves, even as had the darker hues of the earlier morning, in a bath of delicatest pink, enriched ere the eye could trace the translucence with hues prodigal of crimson and burnished gold, – the austere marble-white snow-peaks appeared to stand forth in yet more awful and supernal splendour. Contrasted with colouring of indescribable brilliancy, they appeared a company of phantasmal apparitions in the silence of that wondrous dawn pageant.
Lance Trevanion was but a man as other men. How many times had he looked upon these and kindred wonder-signs of Nature with incurious eyes, holding them to be but ordinary phenomena with which, in the grip and peril of Circumstance, he had nought to do. But now, his nervous system being more tense, and his mental tone exalted in view of an imminent deliverance, a stir took place among faculties long disused. In curious unexplained fashion the beatific vision connected itself with his cousin Estelle, whom he had ceased to regard as a terrestrial entity. Severed from her, not less by seas and oceans than by inexorable fate, her image, bright and celestial as it had formerly appeared, was now fading rapidly; becoming fainter and yet more ethereal with each succeeding recollection.
But on this, the last morn which he hoped to spend in this wilderness, her image seemed to present itself with strangely persistent clearness before him. How she would have joyed, – she that was so passionately fond of landscape scenery, who discovered fresh beauties in every humble hillock and lowly streamlet, – could but she have stood here with him; together could they have beheld this entrancing vision. With quickened tide, the back-borne stream of memory brought to his recollection the many times they had stood hand in hand and gazed at sunset, stream, or woodland, glorified by Nature's alchemy. He could almost fancy that he heard her voice, soft and low, rich, yet so clear and distinct, as she dwelt upon each feature of the landscape with instructed enthusiasm. He recalled her dainty ways – her unvarying softness and sweetness, her unfailing tact and temper, which had so often turned the tide of the Squire's wrath, the discreet counsel that had so often been displayed in times of perplexity.
And now, what torture to think of her! of all the sweetness and beauty, divine as it now appeared to him, lost for ever, as much alien to him, henceforth and for evermore, as though she had been born on another planet!
The sudden change from the currents of his thoughts led the lonely, half-despairing man to an almost complete temporary detachment from his surroundings. He forgot much of the misery, the despair, the evil hap of this past year – that year which had been so much more eventful than the whole of his previous life. A new hope appeared to arise within his outworn, wearied heart. Might he not, if he regained the old land – might he not yet recover his position? Great heavens! was it then possible that such an elysium should be in store for him? He knew Estelle's steadfast fearless nature; he knew the sweet and loving pardon that would shine in her eyes when they met, if ever permitted by a merciful God. Was there a God? and could He be thus merciful even to a forlorn, degraded outcast like himself?
As he stood leaning, with folded arms and meditative air, against the doorpost of his humble dwelling, the clatter of hoofs along the track which led near the hillock upon which the hut stood gave a fresh current to his thoughts, and recalled him to a sense of the present. 'One day more,' he said, half aloud. 'Shall I ever see these hills and valleys again? I owe them much. They have proved good harbour for the stricken deer.'
'Who the deuce is this?' His thought shaped itself into speech as a wild-looking rider forced his horse, a half-broken colt, as near to the hut door as he could get him. The colt snorted and trembled, after the manner of his kind, but refused to budge a foot nearer. The horseman, – a long-haired, long-legged native lad, – exercising his spurs vigorously, besides devoting the colt and all his relatives to the infernal deities, was fain to hold out a scrap of paper in his hand and await Lance's approach.
'It was you as sold Number One South, on the Tinpot Reef, to Yorkey Dickson, wasn't it?' inquired the ingenuous youth, staring at Lance.
'Yes; what then?'
'Well, there's been a bloomin' row between him and his mates and Mick Doolan's crowd. They're measuring him off, and makes out as you'd took up too much ground. He wants you to come. He give me this for ye; blank ye, I'll knock the blank head off ye, if ye don't stand quiet.'
This last communication, though in strict continuation with his previous address, was apparently intended for the colt's progressive education, that vivacious animal having taken fright at Lance's approach, and swerved backward with rear and plunge directly Lance reached out his hand for the missive. He, however, retained hold of the paper, which, after some difficulty, he deciphered —
Mr. Harry Johnson.
Dear Sir, – I paid you honest for Number One South, which I stand a good show of loosin' if you don't come out and prove your pegs. The Tips are trying the bluff game, and if you don't stand by me I'll be regular jumped and run off the field. Come afore dinner.
Yours trewly,Yorkey Dickson.
'My word! I'll have him steady enough by the time we get back to Tin Pot. Been backed first time the day afore yesterday, and of course he's touchy,' he explained, as the colt, after a wild rear, in which he nearly fell backwards, stood with his forefeet rooted to the ground and snorted, trumpet-like. 'Shall I say you're a-comin'?'
'I suppose so – yes,' slowly answered Trevanion, half absently. 'Curse the claim and all belonging to it! I never wanted to see it again. But I won't have the fellow done out of it. Tell him I've half a mind not to come, as I'm going to Melbourne to-morrow. It's lucky for him I got word to-day.'
'All right! I'll tell him you'll be there by dinner-time. So 'long!' and with the words on his lips he turned his horse's head, and with spur and shout forced him into a hand-gallop along the main track to the township, up the principal street, and opposite the hotel door before the half-tamed excited animal had time to halt or resist.
'It's an infernal nuisance,' said Trevanion, half aloud. 'But I don't want to leave things tangled up. Yorkey paid me good money, and I shouldn't like the poor devil to be wronged by those scoundrels. I'll walk, too; it will do me good, and keep me from thinking.'
The day promised to be glorious. Slowly the mountain mist had rolled back, and gradually disclosed the tones and magically blended colour effects which the awakened morn revealed. A dull grayish green tinted the undulating prairies, stretching to the darkly dense forest which clothed the foot-hills of the Australian Alps. The sombre mountains gradually ripened in colour as the sun-rays pierced them in concentric lines, so that a graduated scale, shading from darkest green to brilliant emerald, developed hourly. Deathlike, still eternal-seeming, majestic, their snow-crowns rested on Bogong and Buffalo, with far-seen Kosciusko and Feathertop in the azure distance.
The solar heat became distinctly noticeable – indeed, bordering on oppressive. But Lance, excited in spite of himself, stepped joyously forward as he felt the miles slipping behind him, as though on some long-remembered schoolboy truant expedition. How different was the free elastic stride with which he covered the ground now from the aimless, dejected shuffle of himself and his fellow galley-slaves of the President! His spirits rose with each mile of the way traversed. Surely everything was turning in his favour. He would be pardoned yet, his fair fame re-established. His innocence would not be so hard to prove, after all. Tessie and Kate could now give different evidence.
'Yes! England, Estelle, Wychwood! Fate would repent her of this dire injustice. He would yet again place foot on the shore of his native land, the home of his ancestors, as surely as he would presently ascend the ridge on the other side of this Mountain Ash Gully, into which he was now descending; as surely as he would behold the plain far-stretching towards the horizon, the diggers' tents in the secluded valley.'
Thus thinking, and moving forward with eager, quickened step, he reached the bottom of the ravine, which – a notable exception to the general distribution of timber – was covered with a scrub or thicket of the mountain ash saplings for some distance back. From the course of the little stream, eastward, appeared a narrow flat, riddled with shafts long worked and abandoned, but still furnishing, in this depth and closeness, a record of former richness.
'What would Kate say if she saw me here to-day?' he thought to himself. And then her warning rang in his ears. 'As you value your life,' he seemed to hear. 'When I get back,' he said, 'I will swear to take excellent care of myself.'
'If such a thing as prudence can be knocked into a Trevanion, surely what I have undergone should produce it. But what a lunatic! what a benighted idiot I was to leave England at all! Why couldn't I have borne the old man's petulance, like scores of other fellows that I have known? All would have come right in the end, with Estelle's help. What a girl she was! And what a fool I have been! Looking back, it seems incredible that I – that any man– could have been so mad, so blindly besotted! I wonder how the old Squire is now? He and Estelle must have a lonely time enough of it in the gloomy old manor-house. Well, I swear – as God hears me now – that when I return – if I ever do – I will humble myself before the old man, and, yes, try for the rest of my life to make amends to him and to her for the sorrow and anxiety which I have cost them.'
As this last thought passed through his mind, shaping itself unconsciously into articulate speech, he stopped, with his right foot raised upon a block of stone, and listened intently, with head half turned towards the thickest portion of the scrub, which here approached the narrow track worn in old days by the cattle-herds of the surrounding pastures.
At that moment a shot was heard, and Lance Trevanion fell forward on his face, temporarily disabled, if not mortally wounded. Following the report, two men emerged from the covert, one of whom carried a gun. They were Caleb Coke and Lawrence Trevenna.
'That dropped him,' said the former, with a fiendish chuckle. 'Not far from the "curl," I'd say, if it was a bullock. Many a one the old single barrel has finished. I thought she'd carry straight that distance.'
Here the wounded man moved his arm and groaned.
'Ha! my fine gentleman!' said Trevenna, 'I swore I'd have ye under my feet yet. Where are ye now?' And here the hellish villain spurned the unresisting form of his prostrate foe. 'What do ye say about "time" now? This is the last round of all.'
'That's no good,' growled Coke, 'and d – d cowardly, into the bargain. You couldn't stand up to him when he was right, so ye may leave him alone now. He's only stunned; the ball's grazed his forehead. Lend us that tomahawk o' yourn. I'll finish him.'
Two crashing blows, one of which clove the skull even to the brain, and this man – this 'masterpiece of nature,' so lately in full possession of the strength and beauty of youth – lay a disfigured corpse.
'Now lend a hand and let's get him off the road a bit,' said Coke, as coolly as if he was directing the assistants of a slaughter-yard. 'Scrape some sand over that blood; there ain't much, but it might show. We've got to strip him first, and then it won't take long to drop him where he won't be seen again in a hurry.'
Dragged through the scrub some twenty yards or more, the dead man lay with dreadful widely open eyes as they had placed him. A heartrending spectacle surely, had but the men who now busied themselves in stripping the corpse possessed the feelings of ordinary humanity. But a lifetime of crime, for the most part undetected, had dulled the heart and brain of the older ruffian, to the exclusion of all but the baser instincts – a veritable demon disguised in form of man. Fiends of the pit could scarce have exceeded him in remorseless cruelty.
In Trevenna's case the love of gain, the hope of booty, together with complicated feelings of jealousy and revenge, rendered him callous to all natural feeling. Swiftly was the dead man divested of his clothing; his watch, a few bank notes, which he had perhaps placed in his purse in readiness for the morrow, were secured, and after counting and inspection, taken possession of by Trevenna.
This done, the old man pointed to a mound a few yards distant around which the saplings clustered thickly, showing that some time had elapsed since the shaft which it marked had been commenced.
'That's the deepest shaft on the flat; they was a-sinking for the blue "lead" and bottomed on rock. You take hold of him.'
A combined effort placed the dead man on the edge of a shaft, down which the old man peered with ghoulish glee, as if to gauge the depth. 'Hold on,' he said, as he dropped a stone. The men waited for some seconds, which seemed long, until a dull thud came up from the lower level, telling by its delay that the shaft was little under a hundred feet.
In another moment the unresisting form was drawn to the edge of the yawning black-mouthed pit, which, so wondrous straight and narrow, had been driven deeply into the bowels of the earth. A push, a heave, and the once noble and beautiful form of him who was Lance Trevanion disappeared from the face of the earth, hidden from the light of the sun, from the ken of mortal man, for ever and for ever!
As the strange dull sound, so unlike any other, which follows the fall of a human body down a deep shaft came up from below, Trevenna shuddered in spite of his hardihood.
The old man laughed aloud. 'You're only half baked yet, Larry, with all your blowing. When you've seen as many coves rubbed out as I have, you'll have better narves. We've got a ticklish game to play yet, mind ye, so don't go a-shivering and shaking like a school-girl. Take off yer duds now and collar his, and let's see how yer look.'
Trevenna, with a rude oath, repelled the accusation of softness, and doffing his own garments, which he made into a bundle and threw down the shaft, proceeded to dress himself in the dead man's clothes. This transformation effected, the curious similarity between the two men became so apparent to the only spectator that Coke yelled with apparent amazement and danced around him with fiendish delight.
'By – !' he cried, 'if that ain't the rummiest fake ever I see. Your own mother wouldn't know the difference. Hanged if I could tell, and I knowed the pair on ye purty well. Pitch a log or two down the hole; it won't be long afore it falls in. It's bad standing ground, and then he won't need no tombstone. We'd as well collar our horses now and get to the cove's hut after dark. Then you start fair to-morrow morning as 'Ballarat Harry,' alias Lance Trevanion, Esquire, and I'm d – d if there's a digger on Omeo as'll know the difference. What are ye lookin' in the grass for?'
'When we had the – the mill – I swear he had a watch-chain. It must have dropped hereabouts.'
'Well, I'm blowed!' chuckled the older ruffian, 'if that ain't a good 'un. Takin' a man's life, his money, his duds, and his watch, and then growlin' because the chain's a-missin'. You'll find it in his hut, I'll go bail.'
CHAPTER XXII
Lance Trevanion, dwelling and working by himself, had accustomed the miners around Omeo to his irregular, independent mode of life. Sometimes he was absent for days together, returning at midnight or dawn, as the case might be. When it was reported that he had been seen to enter his hut just after dark in company with another man, no one looked upon the circumstance as calling for comment. He had been at the claim which he had sold to Yorkey Dickson early in the day, and being detained there, discussing the intricacies of a mining dispute, had reached his home after sunset.
On the next morning – the one fixed for the departure of the escort for Melbourne – he was heard inquiring from the Barker storekeeper if his gold had been properly labelled and directed. 'He was not sure about going himself,' he said, 'but thought it likely he might at the last minute.' The storekeeper looked at him with a certain air of surprise. 'What are you staring at?' he asked abruptly, at the same time fixing his eyes intently on the man.
'Oh, nothing, Harry,' Barker replied apologetically, 'only I thought there was something queer about you this morning. If you'd been a drinking man I'd have thought you'd had a booze on the quiet. And your face ain't got rid of them marks yet. Seemed they was about gone, last time I seen yer.'
'They'll not last much longer,' he said grimly, 'and the man that gave them to me got the worst of it. He won't be so ready for a row in future.'
'Is that so?' inquired the trader confidentially. 'We all thought it must have been his fault, you bein' such a quiet card in a general way. Serve him right, I say.'
'So I say too,' replied his auditor. 'By the way, just send your boy over to the post-office to see if there are any letters for me. I'll have a smoke while he runs over.'
In a few minutes the letters came. One from the banker in Melbourne acknowledging his last draft and informing 'Mr. Henry Johnson' that they would receive and hold to his order the parcel of gold of which they had advices. The other, addressed to 'Mr. Henry Johnson, Long Creek, Omeo,' was in a female hand. Mr. Johnson placed it in his pocket unread, saying carelessly that it would do to read when he got home.
'He's a rum chap, that Ballarat Harry, as ever I see in Omeo,' said the storekeeper. 'Sometimes so jolly in a quiet way, and then he's as stiff and stand off as can be. But I'm dashed if ever I seen him as queer as he was to-day; why, I hardly knowed him when he came in first!'
When 'Harry Johnson' reached his hut, he sat down, and shutting the door, which he carefully secured with a bolt, took out the letter and read as follows – a sardonic smile upon his features the while —
Toorak, 10th September 185-.
My own darling Lance – Could you ever expect to receive a letter from me written in this country? In your wildest dreams, did it ever occur to you that I should come out to Australia in search of you? I told you at our last parting at dear old Wychwood that I would come, if you did not return within the time specified. I don't know that the time has quite elapsed, but when the poor old Squire died (how changed and softened he was, Lance, in his latter days you can hardly think) I could not stay in England. You never wrote. We did not know what had become of you: whether you were dead or alive. I promised him, Lance, on his deathbed, that I would seek you out. And you know we Chaloners and Trevanions hold to our word.
I know now all that you have done and suffered, my poor darling —all! I can partly understand why you did not write. Still you should have done so; you know you should. I am not going to reproach you or to write a long letter. But fancy me having been up at Ballarat and stayed at Mrs. Delf's inn at 'Growlers',' and know Jack Polwarth and his wife and dear little Tottie – who hasn't forgotten you – and Mr. Hastings and Mr. Stirling! I was actually there when your letter came from Omeo!
Why didn't I write? You see now how hard it is to bear when friends are silent. But I refrained, sorely against the grain, for your sake. It might unsettle you, I thought, even tempt you to come to Melbourne, where the risk would be terrible. So I waited till I could get a really good opportunity and escort for Omeo. You will see me – I am almost beside myself with joy at the thought – almost as quickly as this letter reaches you, Mr. Vernon, my kind host, says. He bought me a delightful horse – so safe and pleasant. I shall quite enjoy the ride up. A storekeeper, his wife and daughter, also an assistant, are my companions, so you see I am well protected. Have you got the ring and the token? I have mine safe. Ever and till we meet, your own
Estelle.
'Well, I'm blowed,' was the reader's inelegant but characteristic exclamation as he folded up the letter, – oh! rare and precious outpouring of a fond woman's love and tenderness, – 'if this game isn't right into my hand! I've got his gold. I've got his cash. His girl's running fair into my arms, and, if the luck holds, I'll have his house and land in the old country. Lance Trevanion, if I haven't got square with you, the devil's in it, or Caleb Coke, which comes to the same thing! I've got to take care he don't turn dog on me, though. It was he put me on to plant for Trevanion in Mountain Ash Gully. We're both in it, though he fired the shot and knocked him on the head afterwards. We've gone whacks so far in the nuggets and cash in the hut; who'd 'a thought he'd such a pile stowed away there? But if I can get to Melbourne, take the girl on the hop, marry her, and clear out to England or 'Frisco the day after, as I expect he intended to have done, old Caleb may whistle for his share. By Jove! what a lucky job it was that Coke and I had a good overhaul of the hut on the quiet. It's put me up to all I wanted to know to act Lance Trevanion to the life. I've done it before, but now I'm up in my part to the letter. I've got the very clothes he was last seen in, the marks on my face he gave me, damn him, much about the same as I gave him; with putting on a bit of a drawl that he always had, the devil himself wouldn't know us apart. I wonder if he will when my turn comes below?'
Then the villain laughed aloud, a ghastly sound in the lonely hut and still night The unnatural sound died away, – guilt rarely laughs long, – when, lighting his pipe and stirring the embers of the fire in the chimney, he recommenced his meditative plotting.
'Now then, the devil of it is, that I'll have deuced little time to work things in, if this girl Estella, or whatever she calls herself, comes up to-morrow or next day. However, perhaps the shorter the time the better the chance; she'll be bustled, and won't have time to think. All I've got to do is to play Lance Trevanion to the life for a day or two, get her off to Melbourne, and follow up after. The sooner I'm off the better, for fear Kate gets wind of it and blows the whole bloomin' plant to blazes. There's nothing she'd like better, blast her! I think I can do the swell business middling near the mark. I've been studying some of those squatter toffs that come to Monaro for store catch. If a bit of slang leaks out, or a slip in grammar, why, of course, it's from associating with rough cards at the diggings, not to mention the chain-gang business; she'll believe, like all these flats of new chums, that Australian life's enough to take the shine out of any man's mind and manners, grammar, and good looks. Then the wedding! Ha! ha! if that won't be the best joke out. Fancy Larry Trevenna spliced to a real lady – a dashed handsome girl I believe she is – anyhow her likeness says so. Next day off to England or America, – the last if I can fix it – and no more Australia for yours truly.
'The best of it is, even if I am nabbed, I can easily prove that I'm not him. Then there's the bigamy racket, though I daresay if I let Kate off, she'd be glad enough to take her own way and clear out. It's a ticklish business, of course; but I stand to win or lose a heavy stake, and I'll play it out, by God! I don't see how she can doubt I'm the real man. I've read his letters and things till I nearly know all the places and people by heart. I've got the ring and the locket she talks about, and a lot of family trinkets and nicknacks, and there's no mistake we are as like – that is, were – as two peas. Why the deuce we should be, the devil only knows. Well, I'll have another smoke and turn in. There's a deal to think about to-morrow.'
Next day being Sunday, which even at the wildest Australian digging differs somewhat from other days, Mr. Harry Johnson dressed himself more carefully than usual, and after breakfast went 'down town' – that is, he proceeded to Barker's store, in order to gather up news generally and discover whether Miss Chaloner was on the road up, so that he might be fully prepared for the momentous meeting.
As it happened, he found out precisely what he wanted. A young fellow had arrived that morning and had passed a party one stage back on the road answering to their description. The young man was not a miner, but a cattle-dealer, making a forced march to Monaro in order to buy store cattle. The price was rising daily, so he was riding post-haste for fear of losing the market. He had overtaken the storekeeper's party, in which were three women – one a fine-looking girl – to this he could swear – and riding a clever, well-bred hackney: such a horse was never bought in Melbourne under a hundred pounds. He believed they would be in Omeo to-morrow evening before sundown, and were going to stay at the Reefers' Arms.
On Monday, therefore, Lawrence Trevenna devoted the whole of his energies to the fullest preparation for the leading part which he had to play. He neglected no precaution. He made fresh search among the papers of Lance Trevanion. He read and re-read the letters contained in the brass-bound portmanteau which had been sent to Omeo by Charles Stirling. He reckoned up over and over again the various points on which it was necessary for him to be accurately informed in order to satisfy any lurking doubt of Miss Chaloner.
He had noted more than one reference to the chain with a coin attached, and an almost historical heirloom which he had given her at parting. The ring which Lance always wore, and which he had taken from the dead man's finger, was also alluded to. The half threat which Estelle had made to come to Australia, if Lance did not return, or write, was spoken of. Of course, as a passenger in the Red Jacket, he knew the day on which that vessel sailed, when she arrived in Melbourne, and those occurrences of the voyage which Lance had described in his home letters. The doubt in his mind was naturally whether this high-born damsel would throw herself into his arms with the unreserve of plighted love, and be ready to marry and depart with him from Australia at the earliest possible period; or whether she might have her doubts as to his being the right man, and so work confusion or even danger. Much was on the cards. All depended on the deal. But he held a strong hand, he told himself. Trumps, too, in profusion. And, with the hardihood of a born and practised gambler, he stood prepared to back his luck to the last.
The following day passed slowly; but as the evening wore on he lounged over to the hotel at which the travellers were to arrive, and made it carelessly but generally known that he expected a young lady who was coming up with Caldwell and his wife and sister. He was thereupon congratulated in a jocular manner, when finally, as the early spring day was fading fast into the short twilight, the tramp of horses' feet was heard along the well-worn track which came up from the coast town, and the little cavalcade, composed of two men and three women, halted before the hotel verandah.
The inn loungers gathered around the strangers, proffering aid, much stimulated by the prospect of news. The ladies had been assisted from their steeds, and the landlord was leading the way to the principal sitting-room, in which a cheerful fire was blazing, when a tall man came through the party, and, pausing before the young lady who followed at the rear of the party, said, in a voice tremulous with emotion, 'Estelle, my darling, we meet at last!'
The girl gazed earnestly in his face for a moment, his eyes meanwhile fixed on hers with an intense and even increasingly fervid glance; then, as he wound his arm around her waist and drew her towards him, she murmured with undoubting faith – 'Lance, ah! my dearest Harry, I hardly knew you at first. It must be your beard, I think. And how did you happen to be here to meet me?' she continued, disengaging herself from his embrace, as a sense of shyness and confusion commenced to assert itself as she looked around.
'And why did you not write and tell me you were in Australia before?' he said, half menacingly; 'it was hardly fair to me, I think.'
'It is a long story; we shall have plenty of time to talk it over. I did it for the best, though I daresay you will blame me. But I must go and rest a little; we are all terribly tired. You will be here this evening, though I warn you we shall go to bed early.'
She did not appear at the ordinary evening meal, sending out word that she was fatigued, and had a quite too overpowering headache. The storekeeper's wife and daughter were loud in praise of the uncomplaining manner in which Miss Chaloner had undergone the hardships of the journey. 'It's not as if she was used to it, poor dear,' said the matron, 'like me and Bessie here, as has had to rough it all our lives, pretty near. Yet there she was, taking everything as it come, and never a growl out of her. My word! she can ride though.'