o and three hundred pounds worth of wool still remained in
the shed,--packed and labelled indeed, but neither insured nor protected
from the risk of fire in any way. F---- was very loath to leave them
there; but, yielding to my entreaties, he called Pepper, the head
shepherd, and solemnly gave the wool-shed and its contents over into
his charge, with many and many a caution about fire. Pepper was as
trustworthy and steady a shepherd as any in the colony, and promised to
"keep his weather-eye open," as he phrased it, in nautical slang picked
up from some run-away sailor.

All the way home F---- said from time to time, anxiously, "I wish the
shed was empty;" but I cheered him up, and told him he was over-tired
and unreasonably nervous, and so forth, but with a great longing myself
for Monday morning to come, and for the dray to take its load and
start. I need not dwell on how delicious it was to return home, where
everything seemed so comfortable and nice, and the bed felt especially
soft and welcome to tired limbs. Early were our hours, you may be sure,
and we slept the sleep of the hard-worked until between two and three
o'clock the next morning. Then we were roused up by some one knocking
loudly against our wide-open latticed window.

I was the first to hear the noise, and cried, "Who's there? what is it?"
all in a breath.

"The wool-shed on fire," murmured F----, in a tone of agonized
conviction.

"It's you that's wanted, please mum, this moment, over at the home
station!" I heard Pepper say, in impatient tones.

"It's the wool-shed," repeated F----, more than half asleep, and with
only room for that one idea in his dreamy mind.

"Nonsense!" I cried, jumping out of bed. "I should not be wanted if the
wool-shed were on fire. Don't you hear Pepper say he wants me?"

"All right, then," said F----, actually turning over and proposing to go
to sleep again. But there was no more sleep for either of us that night.
Whilst I hastily put on my riding-habit, Pepper told me, through the
window; an incoherent tale of some one being at the point of death, and
wanting me to cure him, and the master to bring over pen and ink, to
make a will, and dying speeches and cold shivers, all mixed up together
in a tangle of words. F---- took some minutes to understand that it was
Fenwick, a gigantic Yorkshireman, who had been seized with what Pepper
would call the "choleraics," and who, in spite of having swallowed all
the mustard and