Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/170

 girl's life trouble with the other animal, which was several kinds of Hog, and the struggle was long and great and cruel.

Uncle Bob was killed riding home from the races (horse threw back its head and smashed his face) and a nephew was thrown while riding for a doctor for a dead man, and died next day; and Andy broke his favourite mare's heart riding to Mudgee for both of them, and nearly broke his own over it.

His brother's death sent old Mathews on the drink again, and this time, by way of variety, he fell down a diggers' hole on the Old Pipe Clay in the dark, on his way home. It was Andy who found him, of course— or, rather, Andy's dog. The old man was howling for them to open the door, and Andy heard him when the dog led him to the shaft. When they got him out and home, and when the doctor searched him, he found that his arm was broken close up to the joint, and his right ankle either badly sprained or fractured—two little matters that the old man began to notice, and mention, himself, when the gin worked off.

Then Mary—but we don't want to talk about that. No gentleman born and bred could have been more delicately and tactfully sympathetic and helpful than Andy was in that trouble.

Then, while the old man's arm and ankle and poor Mary's reputation slowly mended, came Jim, the dark blue-eyed and dark curly-haired and popular. Poor Jim had something wrong with the shape of his head, which was constantly sending him into trouble connected with cards, or dice, or two pennies—or about a