with her.

He put his foot in the stirrup, but ere he mounted it occurred to him
to ask one of the farm servants whether the old Jew was gone.

"I sin him in the barn just now," was the reply.

Meadows took his foot out of the stirrup. Never leave an enemy behind
you, was one of his rules. "And why does the old heathen stay?"
Meadows asked himself; he clinched his teeth and vowed he would not
leave the village till George Fielding was on his way to Australia.

He sent his mare to the "Black Horse," and strolled up the village;
then he showed the boy a shilling and said, "You be sure and run to
the public-house and let me know when George Fielding is going to
start--I should like to see the last of him."

This was true!



CHAPTER III.

AND now passed over "The Grove" the heaviest hours it had ever known;
hours as weary as they were bitter to George Fielding. "The Grove" was
nothing to him now--in mind he was already separated from it; his
clothes were ready, he had nothing more to do, and he wished he could
fling himself this moment into the ship and hide his head, and sleep
and forget his grief, until he reached the land whose fat and endless
pastures were to make him rich and send him home a fitter match for