er in the light of day
without starting at every bush that stirred--at every footstep, horse or
man, that fell on her ear!

There wasn't a breath of air that night. Not a leaf stirred--not a bough
moved of all the trees in the forest that we rode through. A 'possum
might chatter or a night-owl cry out, but there wasn't any other sound,
except the ripple of the creek over the stones, that got louder and
clearer as we got nearer Rocky Flat. There was nothing like a cloud in
the sky even. It wasn't an over light night, but the stars shone out
like so many fireballs, and it was that silent any one could almost have
fancied they heard the people talking in the house we left, though it
was miles away.

'I sometimes wonder,' Aileen says, at last, raising up her head, 'if I
had been a man whether I should have done the same things you and Jim
have, or whether I should have lived honestly and worked steadily like
George over there. I think I should have done so, I really do; that
nothing would have tempted me to take what was not my own--or to--to--do
other things. I don't think it is in my nature somehow.'

'I don't say as you would, Ailie,' I put in; 'but there's many things
to be thought of when you come to reckon what a boy sees, and how he's
brought up in the bush. It's different with girls--though I've known
some of them that were no great shakes either, and middling handy among
the clearskins too.'

'It's hard to say,' she went on, more as if she was talking to herself
than to me; 'I feel that. Bad example--love of pleasure--strong
temptation--evil company--all these are heavy weights to drag down men's
souls to hell. Who knows whether I should have been better than the
thousands, the millions, that have fallen, that have taken the broad
road that leads to destruction. Oh! how dreadful it seems to think that
when once a man has sinned in some ways in this world there's no turning
back--no hope--no mercy--only long bitter years of prison life--worse
than death; or, if anything can be worse, a felon's death; a doom dark
and terrible, dishonouring to those that die and to those that live.
Oh that my prayers may avail--not my prayers only, but my life's
service--my life's service.'

Next morning I was about at daybreak and had my horse fed and saddled
up with the bridle on his neck, ready all but slipping the bit into his
mouth, in case of a quick start. I went and helped Aileen to milk her
cows, nine or ten of them the