At Love's Cost

Stafford advanced to put her in the saddle; but, with a little shake of

the head and a "Don't trouble," she sprang into her place and rode off.

Stafford looked after her, as he had done before; then he said, "Well,

I'm d-----d!"

He felt for his pouch, filled his pipe and lit it, and in doing so his

eyes fell upon the little wallet from which she had taken her tweezers.

He picked it up and quickly shouted to her; but the dogs were barking

with furious delight, she was cracking her whip, and she had ridden too

far for her to hear him through the noise. It would have been sheer

folly to have run after her; so, with a shrug of his shoulders,

Stafford put the little wallet in his pocket, waded the stream and,

after a moment or two of consideration, made for the inn by the nearest

way, to wit, across the hill.

The girl rode along the strip of level moorland beside the river until

she came to a narrow and not particularly well--kept road which led

through the opening of the hills towards which she had motioned her

whip. Once or twice a smile crossed her face, and once she laughed as

she thought of the comical picture which the young man had made as he

struggled to dry land with the wet lamb in his arms; and the smile and

her laugh made her face seem strangely girlish, because it was usually

so calm, so gravely self-reliant. Some girls would have been quick to

detect the romantic side of the incident, and would have dwelt with a

certain sense of satisfaction upon the fact that the young man was tall

and handsome and distinguished looking. But this girl had scarcely

noticed it; at any rate, it had not affected her in any way. She had

too much to do; there was too much upon her well-formed and graceful

shoulders to permit her to indulge in romance: Diana herself was not

more free from sentiment than this young girl who rode her horse just

like a Mexican, who was vet enough to perform a surgical operation on a

lamb, and who knew how many bushels of wheat should run to an acre, and

the best dressing for permanent pastures. It did occur to her that she

might, at any rate after he had rescued the lamb, have given him

permission to go on fishing; but she was not very sorry for having

failed to do so, for after all, he had been poaching, and, as she had

said, poaching was in her eyes a crime.