“There’s nothing like adventure,” says Starlight, at last. “As someone says, who would have thought we should have come out so well? Fortune favours the brave, in a general way, there’s no doubt. By George! what a comfort it was to feel one’s self a gentleman again and to associate with one’s equals. Ha! Ha! how savage Sir Ferdinand is by this time, and the Commissioner! As for the Dawsons, they’ll make a joke of it. Fancy me dining at the camp! It’s about the best practical joke I ever carried out, and I’ve been in a good many.”

“The luckiest turn we’ve ever had,” says I. “I never expected to see Gracey and Aileen there, much less to go to a ball with them and no one to say no. It beats the world.”

“It makes it all the rougher going back, that’s the worst of it,” says he. “Good God! what fools, idiots, raving lunatics we’ve all been! Why, but for our own infernal folly, should we be forced to shun our fellow-men, and hide from the light like beasts of prey? What are we better? Better?—nay, a hundred times worse. Some day I shall shoot myself, I know I shall. What a muff Sir Ferdinand must be, he’s missed me twice already.”

Here he rode on, and never opened his mouth again till we began to rise the slope at the foot of Nulla Mountain. When the dark fit was on him it was no use talking to him. He’d either not seem to hear you, or else he’d say something which made you sorry for opening your mouth at all. It gave us all we could do to keep along with him. He never seemed to look where he was going, and rode as if he had a spare neck at any rate. When we got near the pass to the mountain, I called out to him he’d better pull up and get off. Do you think he’d stop or make a sign he heard me? Not a bit of it. He just started the old horse down when he came to the path in the cliffs as if it was the easiest road in the world. He kept staring straight before him while the horse put down his feet, as if it was regular good fun treading up rugged sharp rocks and rolling stones, and turf wasn’t worth going over. It seemed to me as if he wanted to kill himself for some reason or other. It would have been easy enough with some horses, but you could have ridden Rainbow down the roof of a house and jumped him into the front balcony, I firmly believe. You couldn’t throw him down; if he’d dropped into a well he’d have gone in straight and landed on his legs.