ome one touched her, and tried
to raise her.

She sat up, shook the hair from her eyes, and looked at the man who
stood beside her. At first she thought it was a phantom of her own
brain, but then looking wildly at the calm, solemn features, and the
kindly grey eyes which were gazing at her so inquiringly, she
pronounced his name--"Frank Maberly."

"God save you, madam," he said. "What is the matter?"

"Misery, wrath, madness, despair!" she cried wildly, raising her hand.
"The retribution of a lifetime fallen on my luckless head in one
unhappy moment."

Frank Maberly looked at her in real pity, but a thought went through
his head. "What a magnificent actress this woman would make." It merely
past through his brain and was gone, and then he felt ashamed of
himself for entertaining it a moment; and yet it was not altogether an
unnatural one for him who knew her character so well. She was lying on
the ground in an attitude which would have driven Siddons to despair;
one white arm, down which her sleeve had fallen, pressed against her
forehead, while the other clutched the ground; and her splendid black
hair fallen down across her shoulders. Yet how could he say how much of
all this wild despair was real, and how much hysterical?

"But what is the matter, Mary Hawker," he asked. "Tell me, or how can I
help you?"

"Matter?" she said. "Listen. The bushrangers are come down from the
mountains, spreading ruin, murder, and destruction far and wide. My
husband is captain of the gang: and my son, my only son, whom I have
loved better than my God, is gone with the rest to hunt them down--to
seek, unknowing, his own father's life. There is mischief beyond your
mending, priest!"

Beyond his mending, indeed. He saw it. "Rise up," he said, "and act.
Tell me all the circumstances. Is it too late?"

She told him how it had come to pass, and then he showed her that all
her terrors were but anticipations, and might be false. He got her pony
for her, and, as night was falling, rode away with her along the
mountain road that led to Captain Brentwood's.

The sun was down, and ere they had gone far, the moon was bright
overhead. Frank, having fully persuaded himself that all her terrors
were the effect of an overwrought imagination, grew cheerful, and tried
to laugh her out of them. She, too, with the exercise of riding through
the night-air, and the company of a handsome, agreeable, well-bred man,
began to have a lurking idea that