‘What time have you to spare between this and the day of the wedding?’ inquired Ernest.
‘You can never be there in time—it is impossible!’ cried Ernest in a tone of voice which showed his sympathy with his faithful servant. ‘I pity you sincerely, John!’
‘Pity be hanged, sir. You’ll excuse my way of talking. I’m a little off my head, I know; what I mean to say is, I ain’t one of those chaps that can grub upon pity, and the likes of it. But I _can_ do it, if the old horse holds out, and luckily Joe’s been riding him regular since the feed came, and he’s fit to race a mile, or travel a hundred, any day.’
‘Why, it is a hundred and eighty miles to the mail-coach station, and unless you get there by to-morrow night, you can’t get down for another week.’
‘I _shall_ get there,’ replied Jack slowly and with settled determination. ‘Ben can do a hundred miles a day, for two days at a pinch, and I have a good bit of the second night thrown in. The mail don’t start until midnight. If we’re not there, I’ll turn shepherd again, and sell Ben to a thrashing machine; we won’t have any call to be thought horse or man again. I shall get to Mindai some time to-night—that’s eighty miles—and save the old horse all I can; then start about three in the morning, and polish off the hundred miles, if he’s the horse I take him to be. He’ll have easy times after, if he does it, for I’ll never sell him. Good-bye, sir.’
‘Good-bye, John; I wish you good fortune, as I really believe my young friend Carry’s happiness is at stake. Here are some notes to take with you—money is always handy in elopements, I am informed.’
‘You have my real thanks, sir,’ said Jack, pocketing the symbols of power; ‘I’ve been a good servant to you, sir, though I say it. I shan’t be any the worse if I’ve a good wife to keep me straight—that is if I get her.’
Here Mr. Windsor gave a short groan, followed by an equally brief imprecation, as he pictured the shining-faced giant, in a wondrous suit of colonial tweed, leading Carry away captive to his Flemish farm, evermore to languish, or grow unromantically plump, in a wilderness of maize-field varied by mountains of pumpkins.
Ernest watched him as he mounted Ben Bolt, whose ears lay back, whose white-cornered eyes stared, whose uneasy tail waved in the old feline fashion, sufficient to scare any stranger about to mount. He saw him take the long trail across the plain at a bounding canter, which was not changed until horse and rider travelled out of the small Rainbar world of vision, and were lost amid the mysteries of the far sky-line. Much he marvelled at this Australian edition of ‘Young Lochinvar,’ only convinced that if that enterprising gallant had been riding Ben Bolt, when