mile. She had the old
racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company I'd have
to pull her hard else she'd race the other horse or burst. She ran low
fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like
wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then--like a railway
carriage--when she settled down to it.

The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the
bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the
strongest man, who isn't used to it, hold a baby in one position for
five minutes--and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my
arms that night--it must have gone before I was in a fit state of mind
to feel it. And at home I'd often growled about being asked to hold the
baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby
at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. There's no timber in
the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight--or just about
daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged,
twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the 'white-box' trees; a
dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here
and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that
made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked
corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by
moonlight--every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:
you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of
a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would
start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening
on these things, according to the season. Now and again a great grey
kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would
start with a 'thump-thump', and away up the siding.

The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night--all going my way--and being
left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat
back and the mare 'propped'--she'd been a stock-horse, and was used
to 'cutting-out'. I felt Jim's hands and forehead; he was in a burning
fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept
saying out loud--and Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards):
'He's limp yet!--Jim's limp yet!' (the words seemed jerked out of me by
sheer fright)--'He's limp yet!' till the mare's feet took it up. Then,
just when I thought s