But when we saw that beautiful, delicate-looking creature, stepping down the boards between the two rows of shearers, most of them stripped to their jerseys and working like steam-engines, looking curiously and pitifully at the tired men and the patient sheep, with her great, soft, dark eyes and fair white face like a lily, we began to think we’d heard of angels from heaven, but never seen one before.

Just as she came opposite Jim, who was trying to shear sheep and sheep with the “ringer” of the shed, who was next on our right, the wether he was holding kicked, and knocking the shears out of his hand, sent them point down against his wrist. One of the points went right in, and though it didn’t cut the sinews, as luck would have it, the point stuck out at the other side; out spurted the blood, and Jim was just going to let out when he looked up and saw Miss Falkland looking at him, with her beautiful eyes so full of pity and surprise that he could have had his hand chopped off, so he told me afterwards, rather than vex her for a moment. So he shut up his mouth and ground his teeth together, for it was no joke in the way of pain, and the blood began to run like a blind creek after a thunderstorm.

“Oh! poor fellow. What a dreadful cut! Look, papal” she cried out. “Hadn’t something better be bound round it? How it bleeds. Does it pain much?”

“Not a bit, miss!” said Jim, standing up like a schoolboy going to say his lesson. “That is, it doesn’t matter if it don’t stop my shearing.”

“Tar!” sings out my next-door neighbour. “Here, boy; tar wanted for No. 36. That’ll put it all right, Jim; it’s only a scratch.”

“You mind your shearing, my man,” said Mr. Falkland quietly. “I don’t know whether Mr. M’Intyre will quite approve of that last sheep of yours. This is rather a serious wound. The best thing is to bind it up at once.”

Before anyone could say another word Miss Falkland had whipped out her soft fine cambric handkerchief and torn it in two.

“Hold up your hand,” she said. “Now, papa, lend me yours.” With the last she cleared the wound of the flowing blood, and then neatly and skilfully bound up the wrist firmly with the strips of cambric. This she further protected by her father’s handkerchief, which she helped herself to and finally stopped the blood with.

Jim kept looking at her small white hands all the time she was doing it. Neither of us had ever seen such before—the dainty skin, the pale nails, the glittering rings.

“There,” she said,“I don’t think you ought to shear any more o-day; it might bring on inflammation. I’ll send to know how it gets on to-morrow.”

“No, miss; my grateful thanks, miss,” said Jim, opening his eyes and looking as if he’d like to drop down on his knees and pray to her. “I shall never forget your goodness, Miss Falkland, if I live till I’m a hundred.” Then Jim bent his head a bit—I don’t suppose he ever made a bow in his life before—and then drew himself up as straight as a soldier, and Miss Falkland made a kind of bow and smile to us all and passed out.