"I was sent out when I was eighteen; spared, as the old judge said, on
account of my youth: that's eleven years ago."

"Spared, eh? It was something serious, then?"

"Trifling enough: only for having a rope in my hand."

"They wouldn't lag a man for that," said I.

"Ay, but," he replied, "there was a horse at the end of the rope. I was
brought up in a training stable, and somehow there's something in the
smell of a stable is sure to send a man wrong if he don't take care. I
got betting and drinking, too, as young chaps will, and lost my place,
and got from bad to worse till I shook a nag, and got bowled out and
lagged. That's about my history, sir; will you give me a job, now?" and
he looked up, laughing.

"Ay, why not?" said I. "Because you tried hard to go to the devil when
you were young and foolish, it don't follow that you should pursue that
line of conduct all your life. You've been in a training stable, eh? If
you can break horses, I may find you something to do."

"I'll break horses against any man in this country--though that's not
saying much, for I ain't seen not what I call a breaker since I've been
here; as for riding, I'd ridden seven great winners before I was
eighteen; and that's what ne'er a man alive can say. Ah, those were the
rosy times! Ah for old Newmarket!"

"Are you a Cambridgeshire man, then?"

"Me? Oh, no; I'm a Devonshire man. I come near from where Major Buckley
lived some years. Did you notice a pale, pretty-looking woman, was with
him--Mrs. Hawker?"

I grew all attention. "Yes," I said, "I noticed her."

"I knew her husband well," he said, "and an awful rascal he was: he was
lagged for coining, though he might have been for half-a-dozen things
besides."

"Indeed!" said I; "and is he in the colony?"

"No; he's over the water, I expect."

"In Van Diemen's Land, you mean?"

"Just so," he said; "he had better not show Bill Lee much of his face,
or there'll be mischief."

"Lee owes him a grudge, then?"

"Not exactly that," said my communicative friend, "but I don't think
that Hawker will show much where Lee is."

"I am very glad to hear it," I thought to myself. "I hope Mary may not
have some trouble with her husband still."

"What is the name of the place Major Buckley comes from?" I inquired.

"Drumston."

"And you belong there too?" I knew very well however, that he did not,
or I must have known him.

"No," he answered; "Okehampton is my native place. But you talk a