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they wanted fine weather for the shearing in the immediate future.

Ann had wandered on for over an hour when she came to a patch of native bush, through which swirled a creek over moss-covered stones. Tree-ferns raised their lacy crowns above the water, and great forest trees—tawa, matai and kahikatea—laced below with hanging vines and undergrowth—pink flowering convolvulus, and white starred clematis—towered overhead. Never had Ann seen such a wealth of varied ferns; and echoing in the damp stillness was the note of the tui, like the song of the thrush and the nightingale in one feathered throat. Ann was loath to leave the cloistered peace of this sequestered spot; but at last, realizing that unless she hurried she would get back too late for the children’s evening meal, she set off to try and find a short cut home. By keeping along the valley and climbing through various tight wire fences—“Lucky I’m no fatter!” thought Ann—she reached a smaller paddock which apparently was empty.

No! As she crossed it she realized that one horse had the entire field to himself. What a splendid looking animal! Soon she must learn to ride! How wonderful to control a creature like that—so beautifully proportioned, so… Suddenly this high-flown rhapsody was rudely interrupted. For—good Heavens! He was charging her! Rushing at her! Screaming at her! No horse she had seen before in all her life had ever behaved like this. In her terrified rush for safety all she could think of was—“He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage.” Wasn’t that something from the Bible having reference to the horse? Until this moment she had looked upon this