ness a couple of times and sulked for two days, he
went well enough beside Anderson's old grey mare.

And that season, when everyone else's wheat was red with rust--when
Anderson and Maloney cut theirs for hay--when Johnson put a firestick
in his--ours was good to see. It ripened; and the rain kept off, and
we reaped 200 bags. Salvation!

Chapter XIX.

Nell and Ned.

That harvest of two hundred bags of wheat was the turning-point in the
history of our selection. Things somehow seemed to go better; and
Dad's faith was gradually justified--to some extent. We accumulated
out-buildings and added two new rooms to the hut, and Dad was able to
lend old Anderson five pounds in return for a promise to pay seven
pounds ten shillings in six months' time. We increased the stock, too,
by degrees; and--crowning joy!--we got a horse or two you could ride to
the township.

With Nell and Ned we reckoned we had two saddle-horses--those were
their names, Nell and Ned, a mare and a colt. Fine hacks they were,
too! Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet. Dad reckoned Ned was
the better of the two. He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a
gentle disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw
wither, and a sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"--a habit
that discounted his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't
at home, the women could n't saddle him to run the cows in. Whenever
he saw the saddle or heard the girth-buckles rattle he would start to
flinch. Put the cloth on his back--folded or otherwise--and, no matter
how smart you might be, it would be off before you could cover it with
the saddle, and he would n't have flicked it with his tail, or pulled
it off with his teeth, or done anything to it. He just flinched--made
the skin on his back--where there was any--QUIVER. Throw on the saddle
without a cloth, and he would "give" in the middle like a broken
rail--bend till his belly almost touched the ground, and remain bent
till mounted; then he'd crawl off and gradually straighten up as he
became used to you. Were you tender-hearted enough to feel compunction
in sitting down hard on a six-year-old sore, or if you had an aversion
to kicking the suffering brute with both heels and belting his hide
with a yard or two of fencing-wire to get him to show signs of
animation, you would dismount and walk--perhaps, weep. WE always rode
him right out, though.

As a two-year-old Ned