ound. The grass had never been cut up with too heavy
stocking (which ruins half the country, I believe), and there was a
good thick undergrowth underneath. We had two or three little creeks
to cross, and they were pretty full, except at the crossing places, and
rippled over the stones and sparkled in the sun like the brooks we'd
heard tell of in the old country. Everything was so quiet, and bright
and happy-looking, that we could hardly fancy we were the men we were;
and that all this wild work had been going on outside of the valley that
looked so peaceful and innocent.

There was Starlight riding alongside of Aileen on his second-best horse,
and he was no commoner either (though he didn't come up to Rainbow, nor
no other horse I ever saw), talking away in his pleasant, easy-going
way. You'd think he hadn't got a thing to trouble him in the world. She,
for a wonder, was smiling, and seemed to be enjoying herself for once in
a way, with the old horse arching his neck, and spinning along under her
as light as a greyhound, and as smooth as oil. It was something like a
pleasant ride. I never forgot that evening, and I never shall.

We rode up to the ruined hut of the solitary man who had lived there so
long, and watched the sun go down so often behind the rock towers from
his seat under the big peach tree.

'What a wonderful thing to think of!' Aileen says, as she slipped down
off her side-saddle.

We dismounted, too, and hung up our horses.

'Only to think that he was living here before we were born, or father
came to Rocky Flat. Oh! if we could have come here when we were little
how we should have enjoyed it! It would have seemed fairyland to us.'

'It always astonishes me,' said Starlight, 'how any human being can
consent to live, year after year, the same life in the same place. I
should go mad half-a-dozen times over. Change and adventure are the very
breath of my nostrils.'

'He had the memory of his dead wife to keep him,' said Aileen. 'Her
spirit soothed the restless heart that would have wandered far into the
wilds again.'

'It may be so,' said Starlight dreamily. 'I have known no such
influences. An outlaw I, by forest laws, almost since the days of my
boyhood, I shall be so till the day of my death,' he added.

'If I were a man I should go everywhere,' said Aileen, her eyes
sparkling and her face regular lighted up. 'I have never been anywhere
or seen anything, hardly so much as a church, a soldier, a