"STAR" TALES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7568, 28 November 1902, Page 4

"STAR" TALES.

THE EDUCATION OF JONES. l ,

(By MAYNE LINDSAY.) Author of "The Tamlarlo Waterhole," " The- Bridging of Peela-Pani," etc., etc.

CHAPTER I,

Jones, the groom, sat on an upturned bucket in the Mirnong stable. He was shirt-sleeved, tanned, blue-eyed, and big; he wore shabby moleskins tucked into his leggings, and a wide-awake on the back of his head. A beam of sunshine danced dnstilv past the loose^boxes ; it was warm and friendly, and Jones's eyes twinkled through it at the Australian homestead across the roa:l. He had the appearance of a man contented with his lot.

The stable was un-English ; it was a. great zinc-roofed shed, with a cemented floor, boxes — empty — on either side, and one end open to the winds of heaven. On the groom s left hand, from where he sat in the opening, he- could see the yard, into which lie rounded up a score of horses when one was wanted, and his own mare dozing beside it, hitched to the fence". The horse-paddock stretched' away behind it, and lost- itself after a little in the flat, wire-fenced, fertile landscape, with the blue gum plantations daubed in its monotony. A white gate stood opposite the stable ; it shut in a glimpse of a short drive through, trees and a garden, and a big grey house, amply vcrandahed, roomy and peaceful, staring at the sunlight bahind its passion Tines. /

The gate swung open, and clicked to again. A girl with a serious air and a book in her hand crossed the road, ,amd Jones the groom stood up and touched his cap. His attitude 'was that of an English servant, -deferential and grave, but his eyes Btill twinkled' into the sunbeam. There was a hot, midday hush upon everything ; and the girl's voice, when it sounded clear and musical, matched her looks, and ber Dresden China air. She was slender and. very pretty ; young, too, and dressed in ruffling, spotless daintiness ; it svas not to be mar-" veiled at that Jones's face lit up at the sight of her.

"Did you finish 'Sartor Resartus?"' she said, halting before him.

"I did, miss." He walked across to a manger, took out of it a newspaper, unfolded it carefully, and held it out, his hands underneath, so that she might take the book that lay, within. " I liked it very much, miss. But there are some things

. . . . Ishould.b© very glad if you. will be good enough to read one or two pages aloud to me. I've marked* them with straws — there". . . It makes the words seem so much dearer. . . And this gentleman—this Mr Carlyle — is a little funny in his expressions sometimes, isn't he?" " He has a style peculiarly his own," the girl said seriously. She sat herself on the -bucket, and turned to the pages he had indicated. " But he is not obscure. You complained of Browning. . . Oh ! I see. it is the phras-eology that lias puzzled you!" She read selected extracts from " Romance " ; the interlude of Teufelsdrockh j an-d Blumine ; and Jones listened to the ca- ) dence of her. voice with deep attention. At the end he ventured a comment. • j "'Just so. 'Love is a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite ' ; I see," he said "... Do you believe all that, about its melting the barriers of ceremony, miss, may I make so bold to ask?" "Of course, of course," the girl said. She passed on rather hurriedly to another passage. This time it was "Old Clothe " ; and something of the impressive solemnity with which she delivered the philosopher's ironies made Jones's mouth twitch once or twice. But she was quit© unconscious of the fact; she read with the soberly intelligent appreciation of conscientious youth, and Jones thanked her very humbly when she had finished. " It's a comforting sort of idea — clothes and that not mattering, nor what a man was born to — to working men like me," he said. "I've had great benefit from the book ; it makes me feel I could be a goodish bit better. Thank you very heartily for the loan, miss," he repeated. She 'shut the little red volume, and looked up at- him with a suspicion of displeasure. "Why don't you call me 'Miss Allin,' like the other men on. the station?" she eaid. "'Miss' is so — servile. Australians don't talk like that. And they don't harp upon their inferior positions ; this is a free country, and one man is as good as another. Everybody does not agree to that — a great many squatters, like . ourselves, put on airs of superiority — but I •will not, because L. believe in the triumph of democracy. Only you — you masses must educate yourselves, and so attain to the same level as the men who would like to be your masters." " Oh !" said the representative of the masses, blankly. He appeared to, roll the crude morsel against his mental palate be--fore he swallowed it. "Well— l'll try, miss. But in. England, you see, it is dif- i ferent." . J " Why?" said Miss Allin, with defiance. ' " I've never been to England ; but if you are A sample of the English working man I see no reason. If you are a representative of the people of that dreadful vil- , lage you have told me about " "I was bom and bred there* if that's beine a representative," Jones said. "It didn't seem dreadful to me, or to the village folk generally." His eyes became distant. "There were class distinctions, certainly; but the Squire was a just man, and that which a man earned, that he had.^ . . . Yes, the Squire was just, if he was hard' sometimes. But he was harder to his own kin than to the poorer sort about his door." •' " Patronage !" the girl said contemptu- ' ©us-ly. "You may call ifc so, Miss Allin," said the Englishman, "He was the landlord, and the farm-owner, and the chief employer. An autocrat ; but he kept his kingdom wholesome, and he purged it of disorder and' discontent just as thoroughly as he would have purged it of democracy. But he would not stand mutiny. If a cottager could not keep his family decent because he liked t-he pot-house; if there was brawling, and someone's children Tan wild instead of going to school : if there was a bully abroad, or a shrew — the Squire knew how to settle the business. They tad to go, or mend their ways. But to the aged, the sick, the solitary, he was more than a friend."

ous-lv.

"You toldi me once that you rebelled," Miss Allin said. "You don't expect me to believe you were turned out of your birthplace for brawling, or drinking, or being a bully? If th*it were so, you must have altered very strangely, Jones?"

The groom's face glowed. Her tone was that of a partisan ; perhaps he had not found many beautiful young women to champion him. But he shook his head rather sadly as he began to polish a bit. •" I was a bad egg, miss. A lazy, shiftless, careless scamp. Think what it must have been to him to have such a — to see such a blackguard idling about the place he had spent his life in working for!"

He threw his energy into the polishing, and Miss Allin rose to go.

'.'Your Squire may have been a good man according to his lights ; but a system that lets a community depend on the whim of an individual ' is wrong," she said. "There are some pamphlets a woman thinker lent me that you shall read. Meanwhile, what would you like to hav£ next?" " Hesperides," the groom i said absently. "Herrick!" the girl exclaimed in astonishment. , • Jones polished furiously. " I — I t read some of his little things once," he said. "This is a grand' 'country, but it is strange to an Englishman. I should like to read about the daffodils, and the country junketings, the queens of curds and crearai and the 'fairies — all the things he writes of with such an English flavour, you know." "It's 'a very creditable taste," the mentor said. "Though it seems straoige 1 in a But it is not improving your "mind for the serious battle of life, Jones." "No miss. That's so, miss," said the submissive pupil. " Pass Pa.rson Hesrricki then. I should be very grateful if you would send the pamphlets across you spoke of, and — and — I'll have another dose of 'The Intellectual Development of Europe,' please, miss — the second volume."

CHAPTER 11.

A boundary-rider stalked into the men's quarters, and wrung out his shirt before the fire. It was tea-time, and the long, ceilingless barrack was dim in the half -light, and' fragrant with the odour of baking "brawny."' The cook was flitting to and! ire- before the logs like a servant of the pit; bethind him, Jimmy the boy clattered pannikins on to a trestle table. There were bunks against the walls ; shallow shelves whereon, only tired and healthy men. could rest. Several were occupied ; and on one sat Jones the groom, dangling bis legs and; watching the play of the firelight. , The newcomer brought a smell of wet horse and mackintosh. He was dripping ; and the glimpse given when the door opened and closed upon him showed a grey sky, fading to night, that, poured a deluge of wind-swept rain on to the sodden paddocks. The cook looked up. "My word !" he said. "It's a damp evening. How's the creek?" " Running a banker," said the boundaryrider, scuffling into another shirt. He rummaged in his bunk and exchanged wet boots for dry socks. "I've been out in tihe Emu paddock' all the afternoon, shifting stock into Honeysuckle. The* stream, is up to the bridge already, and if it rises in the night Emu will bo clean flooded out. The old man's pretty sick. He's afraid tihe bridge will go." . ' i-n « " Darned old: man-trap t Hope it will, growled a »bullock-driver. "I never take my team across it without; expecting to swim ashore." " Oomes of being a light-weight, bullocky," said Jimmy, with a glance at the teamster's huge proportion's. He was answered by a flying panndkin, dodged it dexterously, and let it skim, so, within an ace of Jones's head, is 3ie sat apart in hie abstraction. The groom sprang to his feet. " Here ! What the — who the — where's the man wiho tried to brain me?" he said, 'angrily. " Sawyer, what the dickens d'you mean by' these fool-tricks ?" "Keep your wool on, mate," the buHockdriver said apologetically. "'Twas only meant for the boy. You'd have seen that, if you hadn't been kinder lost, staring at the fire, and deaf and dumb to everyone about you." " Jones is that crowded up with his books and his po'try, he can't think of common sorter fellers like you and me, bullocky," said the cook. " He's getting himself educated ; and it's a rocky job for 'm to tackle." "Wish some pretty young thing would come along and educate me," sail the audacious Jimmy, rushing in at the loophole made by t*he cook's remark. . Jones reached out a hand. Jimmy fled ; but he stumbled over the boundary-rider's boots, and his pursuer pounced on him. "There's education for you, sonny!" He proceeded to administer it. He opened ' the door when his arm ceased flailing, and Jimmy shot into the. outer warkness with wailing and gnashing of teeth. " Whe-ee-ew !" whistled Jones, at sight of the tempest. He stood looking at it, forgetful of the cause of his exertions, and the rain drove past his face in stinging

lashes. "How long has this been going oni" The bullock-driver guffawed. " He doesn't know it's been raining since midday !" hie said. "By gum, boys, what d'you tiling of that? I give it best." There was a chorused murmur, and the cook opened his mouth for further comment. But, if he made it, the subject of his criticism was not among the listeners ; for Jones had slammed the door behind him, and was boring towards the stable through the downpour. His mare whinnied from a loose box. He opened it, girthed her, tied a lantern to his saddle, and splashed; out, head' bent, towards the creek. He crossed the bridge with a glance at the tumbling yellow spate below it, and swung into a long, louping canter across the paddocks. Darkness had fallen everywhere, except in the grey corner of the western sky from whence straggled the last watery gleam of daylight. Jones steered by the direction of the wind, the feel of the track below the hoofs, the scattered honeysuckle trees that he alternately gained and flung behind him. He struck gate after gate, passed through them, and Mirnong homestead dwindled behind the miles.

Miss AJlin had volunteered that morning to show a- visitor one of the sights of the district. The plan had been made and discussed by the stable opening, behind which Jones, for reasons of his own, did his wc-rk with noise and without appearance. He was appealed to' once or twice when the route was discussed, and he gave his answer from the inner invisibility amid a swish of curry-combing ; a proceeding that made the visitor mould an open mind upon Australian servants, andj mould it unfavourably. * If Miss Allin were conscious of the incivility, she did not show it. Jones'? education had been interrupted, a fortnight Before, by the arrival of the guest whose entertainment 'her father had deputed to her and who, being male and young, seemed not unnaturally intent upon monopolising all the attention she was able to "give him. There was no time for Carlylian discussions in the noon sunshine, or for ingenuous lectures upon the "Divine discontent " ; and Jones dropped himself voluntarily into a deeper bbscurity by keeping- out of the way on the occasions when the girl and the man together might hitve come upon him.

He rode now to catch them on their return from the Seven Tree Gully, and guide them home safely. They would need his guidance, for the sudden rainfall would have swollen the ford they must cross, and cross, since the night had closed rapidly, in darkness. He cantered steadily on, down the sheep-tracks of a neighbour's run, and the wind and rain combined to sting and chill him. But it was not of the weather that he was thinking.

He was chewing the cud' of reflections that had troubled him. for weeks; and the taste of them was bitter. Their gist was tKe old, vexed question of whether the end, under extenuating circumstances, might justify the means. And for the life of him Jones could arrive at no conclusion that satisfied.

He had done it, to start with, for the girl's own sake; The sdght of Lucille Allin, setting 6ut in all innocence, to carry a gospel of culture to the station hands, was one that had filled him at first with amazement, and then, with a. hot desire to stop the absurdity. She was so young, and so enthusiastic, that warning would have been wasted; and it was not for him to tell her that she was as a babe in understanding of the doctrines she enunciated. She was still young enough to be absolutely positive of the entirety of her convictions, and still sufficiently guileless to substitute catch words for comprehension. She would have gone down, armed with her poor little phrases, to the society of Sawyer, and the cook, and the boundary -rider — and Jones would have had to sit and listen to their after comments. They were average men, better in their rough moral code and their straight-hewn views of life than many of those who sat at her father's table; but they were men. And she was^— oh, she was a beautiful innocent ; a woman with the eyes of a child. It was not to be tolerated. So Jones the groom simulated a thirst for knowledge, and was ministered' to in homoeopathic doses by the amateur physician. ,He took the banter of the huts to himself, and fought with it imperturbably, satisfied that the station did! not know, fortunately, of half the occasions upon which Miss Allin sought him, out and wrestled with' him. She was indiscreet, but at least all the indiscretions were gathered into his own possession ; she was kept from tete-a-tetes with the men who could hot have understood her simplicities, and who would, without any real disrespect to her, have hugely enjoyed the joke that she must have furnished to them. Jones had intervened successfully, but it had been to his own undoing. It was a- caddish trick to play upon, her ; he was a cad to be aniused by the child's gullibility. . . . The success of the manoeuvre was mortifying ; if she had shown any doubt of his good faith Jones might have convinced himself of justification. But she swallowed his silly, theatrical pretences with a whole-hearted credulity ; no stage-trick, it appeared, was too patent for her. . ... He was an unutterable cad — a coarse ; sneering, underbred bounder — and he kicked himself mentally at every epithet. Which was bad enough. But there was worse to follow — for Jones the groom. It had only needed the advent of the visitor to rouse in him a rage of jealousy, and to show him, clearly, beyond all thrusting aside of supersession, the fact that he had learned one subject at their lessons, and learned it all too thoroughly. There waß no longer any disguising the truth from himself. He loved her. CHAPTER 111.

Eight hoofs sucked in and; out of the greasy track from the Seven Tree Gully, and the noise of their oncoming was as a dismal squelohing. The rain poured more steadily than before, and made the night pitch black, horribly cold and dispiriting. There was no sound of voices when the riders came up with Jones ; the uncertainty of their fortunes had nipped conversation, and they were plodding forward silently, wrapped, as he guessed, each in apprehensions that were worth concealing from the other. Jones's challenge, therefore, brought with it a relief, and lightened the mental fog as cheerily as his lantern twinkled upon the physical darkness that encompassed them. Miss 'Allin, indeed, laughed outright at the joy of her rescue. "We should have had to camp all night in the plantation at Gum Tree Corner— we should, indeed," she said. "I\m a bushman's daughter, but I could no more have found the way beyond the end of this lane than I could have flown — and Mr Dangerfield doesn't know it. Oh, Jones, it is good of you ! I feel safe now you have come. Three minutes ago T was betrinninsr to wonder whether I oueht to confess to Mr Dangerfield the quandary I had led him; into. *But you must be drowned,

Jones. And what, are you doing? Not dismounting, surely. We hare ten miles yet to go." Jones took the bridle of her -horse, and slipped the reins of his own aver his arm. He let Dangerfield cross behind them to her near side, and he tramped forward a-foot, with his eyes in the circle of lantern-light. " You're not going to run any more risks, miss, if I can help it," he said. " This is not the place to allow a lady to find her own course. How are you going to- see where Baibette plants hear fore-feet'/ I'm walking, miss, thank you, this journey." The tone of his remark was not calculated to soothe the other man, already rain-soak-ed and jaded. He said angrily : " If Miss Allin and I dhoose, you m«m. Your mistress will do as she pleases; and Til trouble you not to dictate to hex." " I am quite content with Jones's plan, though I am sorry he should be put to so much trouble on my account. It is very kind of him to come out after us," said Lucille's voice, with, a ring of dignity in, it, and Dangerfield was crushed for the minute. Jones smiled at the mud, and his heart thumped. " Thank you, miss," he said. " Don't bother your head about me ; I'd sooner walk than ride." They toiled on. Dangerfield recovered from his rebuke after a quarter-mile silenoe, and began a conversation that would exclude Jones from Miss Allin's attention. He rode very close to her ; he had, it seemed, an intuitive knowledge of how- best to punish the groom's impertinence, and he leaned towards the girl at ani angle of confident familiarity. " You asked m© to tell you the reason for my coming out here," he said. "I understood you were good enough to be interested in my doings. Am I right in supposing that?" "Why, yes, of course; I should like to tear all about the mission that you say has been entrusted to you-," Miss Allin said. "It must be an urgent one to make you leave the England you describe in such glowing terms for — AustradLa." i • The young man, laughed rather doubtfully. . " England's the place to live in, no mistake about that," he said. " But Australia has its good points too ; only a fellow doesn't realise them juwfc at first. And the best things in Australia would bear trainsplanting; they would shine better in an English setting— l know one' " il But that is not telling me about your mission," Lucille said sweetly ; and again Jones grinned to the puddles. There was another silent space ; Dangerfield must have- swallowed some mixed emotions in it. But he resumed the conversation very soon, and he leaned' more closely to Miss Allin than before., and became more intrusively confidential. "It has something to do with it, though. The work I was sent on was to decide my own future ; ' and that future can be very largely influenced by Australian factors," he said. But he did not venture beyond the ambiguity, and Miss Allin ignored it. "I was sent out by my uncle Mallow of Cresham, to trace his son, my cousin. You see, Uncle Mallow is an old man, and a wealthy one, and it has occurred to him lately that the fate of hi® estate when he dies ought to be definitely settled." " And have you settled it?" she inquired. " I have. You see, Miss Allin— to begin at the beginning — I am next of kin to my uncle, failing the son I have just ..told you about. He was a regular young rip— a thunderin' bad lot all round, and at last the old man got sick of him, and: turned him out, neck and crop, with a fifty-pound note to take him to 'the colonies. Then he made me his heir.

But when his health, began to break up, he had some hankerings, quite natural, of course, poor old chap, after his boy ; and he despatched me to find out what had become of Herries — that's my cousin — and, if he were alive, to try and bring him back for the paternal blessing. My uncle- had been a flinty individual all his life through, and he parted with Herries under very strained conditions ; but age and sickness had melted him, and he wanted his son to know it. , " I undertook the errand gladly. I don't want to wear another man's shoes if he deserves 'em, and I should have been quite content to step aside in Herries's favour if the Fates 'had willed 1 it so. > The responsibilities of wealth are very big, Miss Allin, as yon and I have agreed before, in rural England. Besides, I could have forgotten myself gladly in the pleasure of seeing the old man's last days cheered by the fulfilment of (his heart's desire." "Ah! I like you for that! That is a splendid thing, to set the thought of your own prosperity aside!" the girl cried enthusiastically. "Goon — go on." "Qh, that's nothing," Mr Dangerfield said 'modestly- " Any fellow with proper feelin's would do tlie same ; I'm a man of fine feelin's, Miss Allin, though pVaps I haven't the knack of putting them into pretty language. Women don't understand me as a rule." "I understand ; I sympathise with you in that," Lucille said, and her impetuosity brought the countenance of his ardent instructor before Jones's mental vision in all its ingenious? charm. So, with the glow of a visionaiy upon her face, she had expounded to liim the "Everlasting Yea " ; read him, !her voice trembling, the musings of Paracelsus. She was a stringed instrument upon which great sentiments rippled into fight melody; the pity of it was that the hand 1 of a trickste^ could work the transpositions as easily as the masters of thought.' And yet not altogether a pity ; for therein lay' an ignorance of evil, too seldom met with in a naue'htv world.

"Thanfcs!" DangerfieM said in. significant accent. " Your appreciation is. more than enough reward for anything I lhavo done You——" "But your cousin!" Miss Allin interrupted, desperately dashing ' tack to cafe ground, and dragging "hea- suitor after her. "Oh yes, to be sure, my cousin," Dangerfield said, his voice wrenched 1 , into its normal tones. "I was forgetting that I had not told you the sequel. Well, Miss Allin, I found 1 my cousin ; and I assure you it was one of the bitterest moments of my life. For I found! him in a low, riverside quarter of Melbourne; a physical and mental wreck, and; Ml of the vilest animosity to the poor old man across the sea who was yearning for reconciliation." "How dreadful; how terrible for you !" Lucille said, feelingly. "Wasn't he grateful for your coming?" ' " Grateful ! Ho abused me like a pickpocket. He had made a, bit of money, it appeared, and 'had drifted down into a low life, from which he had no intention of returning. He told me to go home and tell his father that he was done" with him ; and for the rest, that I, and Uncle Mallmr. and t/he Cresham House, might all go to the deuce together.

" You can imagine what it will be like for me to deliver such a message. I have tried to bre;ik it gently by letter, but I have kept the worst for my return — I sail next month, you know — 'because I believe the shock of full knowledge may kill the dear old gentleman outright. He is clinging to life now because he is possessed with the Jonging for Herries's. love and companionship ; I fear, I very much fear, that when he realises " They were at the ford. The story was interrupted by the noise of the creek ; the bank dipped unexpectedly below the horses' hoofs, and Jones had swung them to a sudden halt. He peered! through the darkness, studying the scene before Mm intently, and DaJig&rfield l broke off witih a click of consternation. | Lucille sat dumb ; the. outlook was unpromising. The rays of the lantern and the western lightning in the sky suggested, rather than sibowed, a tumbling, turgid stream where they had crossed that morning fetlock deep through placid waters. The sheoaks aibove the bank were tossing their branches and creaking in the gale ; -white cre-sts glinted as the spate foamed over the shallows ; a bulging tilling, that was a dead sheep, whirled into the lantern's ken, and whirled away again. A shepherd's deserted hut was vaguely indicated on Dangerfield's right, and a loosenedi shingle on its roof was beating tattoos mi the wind.

" Good Lord ! How are w-e to cross that?" Danger-field said. Jones, to whom he addressed himself, did not amswer at 'the time. He was busy with, his own- calculations. He left the two riders for a few minutes, the three horses huddling; together for comfort in the batter rain, and he went down to the- lip of the creek, and flashed the lantern upon it. An uprooted tree lumbered by, into the light and out again. Jones whistled, and waded) in. submerging ankle, knee and thigh., till he had felt his way to the middle stream. Miss Allin bent over her horse's withers, and called to him.

"Jones! You mustn't do that! You will be swept away. The water is much, too high for a man to stand up in it alone. Call him, Mr Dangerfield ! He Is doing a. dread:fully reokl««s thing, for he must know what flood means in a creek like ours. Madness!" •

The groom could 'hardly have heard either flier voice or her companion's above the tumult of the elements; but he battled again to them, fighting his way by halffacing upstream and conquering the current that swirled about his legs. He s>a.t down on the stone which marked the ford when, ■he was free again, and he fetched his breath in some deliberation.

"Am ym hurt?" Lucille said ancriousLy. "How could you do such a wild thaiig? You might have been drowned." Jones came up and stood between her and Dangerfield, a hand upon each bridle. He was still a little breathless, wind tihe lantern, dangled at his wrist. " I had to see if it were fordable," he said coolly. "It is— if I lead the horses, and we go slow. You can't rid© over without a guide ; you may be caught by the flood if you stay on the banks all night, and I suppose I'm the only one of us who knows the crossing by its feel to the foot. I am going to get you home, Miss AjUim." " Not at a risk to yourself. I forbid it !" 'the girl said: " You don't .think I would let you stay here?" Jones said. " Danger to me ! Nob a bit of it, Miss Allin,; you will be snug at home in an hour, laughing at tihis. But, before we cross, I have a word to say to Mr Dangexfield." He lifted his hand, and! let ttie laoitern hang before his upturned face, which was. close to Dangerfield's saddle bow. Every feature showed! vividly, and the otiher man, meeting the challenge of his eyes, paled, and shrank back with, an oath. ' • "What about the reprobate of the Melbourne riverside, Cousin Charles Dangerfield?" said Janes, the groom. "What about the scamp whose depravity was to makei him deliberately forego 'his patrimony? Wlhat of the sou whose hardened heart was to kill the father who forgave him?" He stopped, and DamgerfieM's brea.tin.mg was audible even in the stir of the storm. " The yarn was a good one," Mallow said. "It might be- amusing, but that, if it has a foundation of fact-, you have come within, an aoe of severing my father and me for ever. Is it true that he has seat me 'has forgiveness?" Dangerfield made no reply. He was too. stricken to speak. "I halve counted myself an outcast for five years," Mallow went on. "I have kept away, deliberately, from an equality with people of my own standing, because I forfeited my position when, I went against my father's will, and I had no wish to return if it could not be as a son. I was a, young fool, but God knows, if I have been headstrong and- disobedient, I have paid for my folly. And now, you say, my father forgives me? lam his son afi Still no answer. Lucille, trembling, laid a hand on her guest's arm. "Have you nothing to ,«ay? she said, and she seemed to the two men to hold the scales of justice between them. "The man is an impostor," Dangerfield muttered thickly at the last. " Very well," Mallow said 7 stepping forward with Miss Allin's mare. "I cable home to-morrow and settle my question. I have waited a long" time, I can wait for another day to learn my fate. And if you have nothing more than that to say, Cousin Charles, you can sit upon this bank till morning and consider ., how my reappearance affects you. If the flood rises, you must take your chance at sink-or-swim. For I'm— l'll te hanged) if I take you across, while you call me a franid. That I can disprove without difficulty fog referring you to one or two friends" ofmine in this colony; and meanwhile you had better stay here till we come out to pick up the pieces in daylight. He moved into the stream, and the water rushed over his boots. A fiercer blast than before swept through the she- ! oaks, uprooted the trunk of one of them, ! and sent it crashing into the roof of the shepherd's hut. ' The lesser wreckage, boughs and branches, scattered itself along the bank; a twig struck DangerSeld's hat from his head, and tore a gash from his forehead to his cheek. The racing stream surged at the bank. His horse gave a squeal of terror, and' Mallow looked 1 back. "You'd better get under cover, such as it is "he said. "Or will you cross with me and be shot of the danger? Come! Am I Herries Mallow, or am I not?" *■ "You brute!" Dangerfield said. He was unnerved by the shock of the encounter, and dizzy with the pain of his wound, and his voice had the despair of terror in it. " You can't leave me here ! Miss Allin, tell him I must cross." "Is he your cousin r said Lucille; amd her tone, too, was relentless. iDaßgerfield broke down utterly. "He is!" he sobbed. "He is! — curse him for it!" Mallow reached back and caught the man's bridle. He advanced into the creek without another word, and Lucille busied herself, for the firs* twenty feet of the \ passage, in steadying her frightened mare, and 'handling the loose horse that pushed besid© her. But in midstream a hand slipped for an instant to the guide's shoulder, touched it gently, and fled again. "Oh, how glad — how glad— how glad lam for you !" a soft voice said out of the darknesa " Ay — to be forgiven, and to see him again !" Mallow answered her. " And you -vvjll you fc-rgiv% me too, if my masquerade has caused offence to you?"' And the answer that he received satisfied hun, and left him the advantage of which ho availed himself in the after days. But the education of Jones the groom remained' ■ incomplete.