‘“There’s something wrong with Ned,” says I, “or he’d have been among us by this time. There’s one lamp alight, fetch it along.” So we looked about and round, and after a bit we found him lying on his face with his whip in his hand, stone dead. Poor Ned!’
‘A sad and terrible accident,’ said Ernest. ‘What did you all do?’
‘We straightened the horses after a bit—there was two dead and one with a broken leg of them; and I rode horseback to the next stage and sent a team back for ’em. They got in next day. But I shall always think poor Ned had a kind of feeling beforehand.’
‘It was not his fault, poor fellow.’
‘Fault, sir? he was the carefullest chap I ever see. It all lay between that idle rascal of a blacksmith and the wooden-headed road contractor that put them guard-logs down.’
‘It is safer on horseback, as we are,’ remarked Mr. Neuchamp, ‘unless we travelled as I did coming up. I rather prefer a horse, though, I must say.’
‘Well, it seems more natural like,’ said Jack reflectively, giving Ben Bolt a playful touch with the spurs, which caused that tameless steed to jump on one side in a fashion that might have been dangerous to a less resolute horseman. ‘Nothing like a good horse under a man; then he’s ready for anything or anybody.’
Once more the great meadows and broad river, majestically winding, which needs but the ruined castle on its scarped sandstone cliff to render it in some aspects equal in picturesque beauty to the ‘castled Rhine.’ Once more the semi-tropical warmth; the soft, luscious, enervating breeze of the southern seas; the half-effaced traces of ancient labour; the patient, plodding industry and general evidence of village life.
Ernest pressed on until they reached Walton’s inn, where he took it into his head to stop for the night before they reached Sydney. Drawing rein at the door, he left Osmund in charge of Mr. Windsor, and marched into the clean taproom with a considerably altered air and general expression from those of his first visit.
The old woman was absent, but Carry, hearing some one in the room, came hastily in and stared for a moment in astonishment.