30 8 The Leather Plater. 



foaled with them. No ; if he should ever spring a curb it wont 

 be in that hock, you may lay your life." 



Our conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Annie 

 with our lunch. 



Directly she had set this out, she proceeded to make the invalid 

 comfortable by adjusting his pillo\\'s, and by other little attentions, 

 which she performed with all the dexterity and care of a profes- 

 sional nurse, and when she affectionately patted him on the head 

 after she had finished, saying "Poor Frank!" as she did so, I 

 regarded it as une affaire Jinie between the two, and for the moment 

 felt quite jealous of the poor sick rough-rider. 



But had I known all, I should have been much more inclined to 

 pity than to envy that young man ; for the pain of body which he 

 was then suffering was nothing compared to the agony of his mind, 

 devoured as it just then was with the heartburning passion for a 

 girl whom his instinct told him was as heartless a coquette as ever 

 lived, and whom he yet could not help loving. It appeared that 

 he was in some distant manner connected with old Radford, and, 

 like Annie, was an orphan ; but, nnlike her, a penniless one. The 

 old man had given him a home at the Lodge, and in return he 

 looked after the horses, broke in the colts, and made himself generally 

 useful about those hundred and one odd jobs which are always 

 to be done in every stable, although perhaps not absolutely necessary, 

 and which never seem to fall into the regular routine of any man's 

 business in the yard. We used to call such fellows in my day " odd 

 men." Frank had been well brought up -, his father had been a 

 respectable Yorkshire farmer j he had received a tolerable educa- 

 tion, but the taste for horses which was inherent in him led him to 

 choose the life which he was now leading He had been at the 

 Lodge two years before Annie returned home from school ; and up 

 to that time there was not a more careless or lighter-hearted young 

 fellow in the county. He was an exceedingly fresh, clean-looking, 

 handsome young fellow ; a capital rider, with an excellent nerve and 

 pluck J and during the season could always manage to earn fifteen 

 shillings to a pound per day by riding young horses to the hounds. 



