ill and he did not see me, but his horse
shied violently. I thought he would imagine I was a ghost, so called out:

"It is I."

"Well, I'll be hanged! What are ye doin' at this time ev night. Ain't yuz
afraid of ghosts?"

"Oh dear no. I had a bad headache and couldn't sleep, so came out to try
if a walk would cure it," I explained.

We were a quarter of a mile or so from the house, so Peter slackened his
speed that I might keep pace with him. His knowledge of 'etiquette did
not extend as far as dismounting. There is a great difference between
rudeness and ignorance. Peter was not rude; he was merely ignorant. For
the same reason he let his mother feed the pigs, clean his boots, and
chop wood, while he sat down and smoked and spat. It was not that he was
unmanly, as that this was the only manliness he had known.

I was alone in the schoolroom next afternoon when Mr M'Swat sidled in,
and after stuttering and hawing a little, delivered himself of:

"I want to tell ye that I don't hold with a gu-r-r-r-l going out of nights
for to meet young men: if ye want to do any coortin' yuz can do it
inside, if it's a decent young man. I have no objections to yer hangin'
yer cap up to our Peter, only that ye have no prawperty--in yerself I like
ye well enough, but we have other views for Peter. He's almost as good as
made it sure with Susie Duffy, an' as ole Duffy will have a bit ev
prawperty I want him to git her, an' wouldn't like ye to spoil the fun."

Peter was "tall and freckled and sandy, face of a country lout", and,
like Middleton's rouse-about, "hadn't any opinions, hadn't any ideas",
but possessed sufficient instinct and common bushcraft with which, by
hard slogging, to amass money. He was developing a moustache, and had a
"gu-r-r-r-l"; he wore tight trousers and long spurs; he walked with a
sidling swagger that was a cross between shyness and flashness, and took
as much pride in his necktie as any man; he had a kind heart, honest
principles, and would not hurt a fly; he worked away from morning till
night, and contentedly did his duty like a bullock in the sphere in which
God had placed him; he never had a bath while I knew him, and was a man
according to his lights. He knew there was such a thing as the outside
world, as I know there is such a thing as algebra; but it troubled him no
more than algebra troubles me.

This was my estimation of Peter M'Swat, junior. I respected him right
enough in his place, as I trus