rd a horse coming along best
pace. When we looked who should it be but Miss Falkland, the owner's
only daughter.

She was an only child, and the very apple of her father's eye, you may
be sure. The shearers mostly knew her by sight, because she had taken
a fancy to come down with her father a couple of times to see the shed
when we were all in full work.

A shed's not exactly the best place for a young lady to come into.
Shearers are rough in their language now and then. But every man
liked and respected Mr. Falkland, so we all put ourselves on our best
behaviour, and the two or three flash fellows who had no sense or
decent feeling were warned that if they broke out at all they would get
something to remember it by.

But when we saw that beautiful, delicate-looking creature stepping down
the boards between the two rows of shearers, most of them stripped to
their jerseys and working like steam-engines, looking curiously and
pitifully at the tired men and the patient sheep, with her great, soft,
dark eyes and fair white face like a lily, we began to think we'd heard
of angels from heaven, but never seen one before.

Just as she came opposite Jim, who was trying to shear sheep and sheep
with the 'ringer' of the shed, who was next on our right, the wether he
was holding kicked, and knocking the shears out of his hand, sent them
point down against his wrist. One of the points went right in, and
though it didn't cut the sinews, as luck would have it, the point stuck
out at the other side; out spurted the blood, and Jim was just going to
let out when he looked up and saw Miss Falkland looking at him, with her
beautiful eyes so full of pity and surprise that he could have had his
hand chopped off, so he told me afterwards, rather than vex her for a
moment. So he shut up his mouth and ground his teeth together, for it
was no joke in the way of pain, and the blood began to run like a blind
creek after a thunderstorm.

'Oh! poor fellow. What a dreadful cut! Look, papa!' she cried out.
'Hadn't something better be bound round it? How it bleeds! Does it pain
much?'

'Not a bit, miss!' said Jim, standing up like a schoolboy going to say
his lesson. 'That is, it doesn't matter if it don't stop my shearing.'

'Tar!' sings out my next-door neighbour. 'Here, boy; tar wanted for No.
36. That'll put it all right, Jim; it's only a scratch.'

'You mind your shearing, my man,' said Mr. Falkland quietly. 'I don't
know whether Mr. M'I