the slightest return of it until he saw a new driver, and considered
it safe to try his oft-successful "dodge" once more.

Very different was "Star," poor, wilful, beauty, whose name and fate
will long be remembered among the green hills, where her short life
was passed. Born and bred on the station, she was the pride and joy
of her owner's heart. Slender without being weedy, compact without
clumsiness, her small head well set on her graceful neck, and her
fine legs, with their sinews like steel, she attracted the envy of
all the neighbouring squatters. "What will you take for that little
grey filly when she is broken?" was a constant question. "She's not
for sale," her owner used to answer. "I'll break her myself, and
make her as gentle as a dog, and she'll do for my wife when I get
one." But this proved a castle in the air, so far as Star was
concerned. The wife was not so mythical. In due time _she_ appeared
in that sheltered valley, and, standing at the head of a mound
marked by a stake whereon a star was rudely carved, heard the story
of the poor creature's fate. From the first week of her life, Star
(so-called from a black, five-pointed mark on her forehead), showed
signs of possessing a strange wild nature. Unlike her sire or dam,
she evidently had a violent temper,--and not to put too fine a point
on it,--was as vicious a grey mare as ever flung up her heels in a
New Zealand valley.

When her second birthday was passed, Star's education commenced.
The process called "gentling," was a complete misnomer for the
series of buck jumps, of bites and kicks, with which the young lady
received the slightest attempt to touch her. She had a horrible
habit also of shrieking, really almost like a human being in a
frantic rage; she would rush at you with a wild scream of fury, and