Aileen pulled up as we did, and jumped off our horses.

“So this is the Hollow,” she said, half talking to herself, “that I’ve heard and thought so much about. What a lovely, lovely place! Surely it ought to have a different effect on the people that lived there.”

“Better come off, Ailie, and lead your horse down here,” says Jim, “unless you want to ride down, like Starlight did, the first time we saw him.”

“Starlight! is he here?” she said, in a surprised sort of way. “I never thought of that.”

“Of course he is; where else should he be? Why don’t you lead on, Dick?”

“Won’t you get off? It’s not altogether safe,” I said, “though Lieutenant’s all right on his old pins.”

“Safe!” she said, with a bitter sort of laugh. “What does it matter if a Marston girl does break her neck, or her heart either?”

She never said another word, but sat upright with a set face on her, as the old horse picked his way down after ours, and except when he put his foot on a rolling stone, never made a slip or a stumble all the way down, though it was like going down the side of a house.

When we got to the valley we put on a spurt to the cave, and found Warrigal sitting on the log in front of us. He’d got home first, of course, and there was Aileen’s bundle, a biggish one, too, alongside of him. We could hear father raving and screaming out inside dreadful. Starlight wasn’t nigh at hand anywhere. He had walked off when Warrigal came home, and left him to watch the old man.

“He been like that all the time, Warrigal?”

“No! Captain say big one sleep. Him give him medicine like; then wake up and go on likit that. I believe him bad along a cobra.”

Aileen had jumped off her horse and gone in to the old man the moment we came up and she heard his voice.

All that long night we could hear him talking to himself, groaning, cursing, shouting, arguing. It was wonderful how a man who talked so little as father could have so many thoughts in his mind. But then they all are boxed up together in every man’s heart. At a time like this they come racing and tumbling out like a flock of sheep out of a yard when the hurdle’s down. What a dashed queer thing human nature is when you come to think of it. That a man should be able to keep his tongue quiet, and shut the door on all the sounds and images and wishes that goes racing about inside of his mind like wild horses in a paddock!