He felt for his pouch, filled his pipe and lit it, and in doing so his
eyes fell upon the little wallet from which she had taken her tweezers.
He picked it up and quickly shouted to her; but the dogs were barking
with furious delight, she was cracking her whip, and she had ridden too
far for her to hear him through the noise. It would have been sheer
folly to have run after her; so, with a shrug of his shoulders,
Stafford put the little wallet in his pocket, waded the stream and,
after a moment or two of consideration, made for the inn by the nearest
way, to wit, across the hill.

The girl rode along the strip of level moorland beside the river until
she came to a narrow and not particularly well--kept road which led
through the opening of the hills towards which she had motioned her
whip. Once or twice a smile crossed her face, and once she laughed as
she thought of the comical picture which the young man had made as he
struggled to dry land with the wet lamb in his arms; and the smile and
her laugh made her face seem strangely girlish, because it was usually
so calm, so gravely self-reliant. Some girls would have been quick to
detect the romantic side of the incident, and would have dwelt with a
certain sense of satisfaction upon the fact that the young man was tall
and handsome and distinguished looking. But this girl had scarcely
noticed it; at any rate, it had not affected her in any way. She had
too much to do; there was too much upon her well-formed and graceful
shoulders to permit her to indulge in romance: Diana herself was not
more free from sentiment than this young girl who rode her horse just
like a Mexican, who was vet enough to perform a surgical operation on a
lamb, and who knew how many bushels of wheat should run to an acre, and
the best dressing for permanent pastures. It did occur to her that she
might, at any rate after he had rescued the lamb, have given him