Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood (epub read online books TXT) 📕

went out to the place where the old hermit had lived and died. We walked over his old garden, and talked about the box we’d dug up, and all the rest of it. Starlight came with us, and he persuaded Aileen to ride Rainbow that day, and, my word, they made a splendid pair.

She’d dressed herself up that afternoon just a little bit more than common, poor thing, and put a bit of pink ribbon on and trimmed up her hat, and looked as if she began to see a little more interest in things. It didn’t take much to make her look nice, particularly on horseback. Her habit fitted her out and out, and she had the sort of figure that, when a girl can ride well, and you see her swaying, graceful and easy-like, to every motion of a spirited horse, makes you think her handsomer than any woman can look on the ground. We rode pretty fast always, and it brought a bit of colour to her face. The old horse got pulling and prancing a bit, though he was that fine-tempered he’d carry a child almost, and Jim and I thought we hadn’t seen her look like herself before this for years past.

It was a beautiful warm evening, though summer was over, and we were getting into the cold nights and sharp mornings again, just before the regular winter weather. There was going to be a change, and there were a few clouds coming up from the northwest; but for all that it had been quite like a spring day. The turf on all the flats in the Hollow was splendid and sound. The grass had never been cut up with too heavy stocking (which ruins half the country, I believe), and there was a good thick undergrowth underneath. We had two or three little creeks to cross, and they were pretty full, except at the crossing places, and rippled over the stones and sparkled in the sun like the brooks we’d heard tell of in the old country. Everything was so quiet, and bright and happy-looking, that we could hardly fancy we were the men we were; and that all this wild work had been going on outside of the valley that looked so peaceful and innocent.

There was Starlight riding alongside of Aileen on his second-best horse, and he was no commoner either (though he didn’t come up to Rainbow, nor no other horse I ever saw), talking away in his pleasant, easygoing way. You’d think he hadn’t got a thing to trouble him in the world. She, for a wonder, was smiling, and seemed to be enjoying herself for once in a way, with the old horse arching his neck, and spinning along under her as light as a greyhound, and as smooth as oil. It was something like a pleasant ride. I never forgot that evening, and I never shall.

We rode up to the ruined hut of the solitary man who had lived there so long, and watched the sun go down so often behind the rock towers from his seat under the big peach tree.

“What a wonderful thing to think of!” Aileen says, as she slipped down off her sidesaddle.

We dismounted, too, and hung up our horses.

“Only to think that he was living here before we were born, or father came to Rocky Flat. Oh! if we could have come here when we were little how we should have enjoyed it! It would have seemed fairyland to us.”

“It always astonishes me,” said Starlight, “how any human being can consent to live, year after year, the same life in the same place. I should go mad half-a-dozen times over. Change and adventure are the very breath of my nostrils.”

“He had the memory of his dead wife to keep him,” said Aileen. “Her spirit soothed the restless heart that would have wandered far into the wilds again.”

“It may be so,” said Starlight dreamily. “I have known no such influences. An outlaw I, by forest laws, almost since the days of my boyhood, I shall be so till the day of my death,” he added.

“If I were a man I should go everywhere,” said Aileen, her eyes sparkling and her face regular lighted up. “I have never been anywhere or seen anything, hardly so much as a church, a soldier, a shopwindow, or the sea, begging his pardon for putting him last. But oh! what a splendid thing to be rich; no, not that altogether, but to be able to go wherever you liked, and have enough not to be troubled about money.”

“To be free, and have a mind at ease; it doesn’t seem so much,” said Starlight, talking almost to himself; “and yet how we fools and madmen shut ourselves out of it forever, forever, sometimes by a single act of folly, hardly crime. That comes after.”

“The sun is going down behind the great rock tower,” Aileen says, as if she hadn’t heard him. Perhaps she didn’t. When people have a lot on their minds they’re half their time thinking their own thoughts. “How all the lovely colours are fading away. Life seems so much like that⁠—a little brightness, then gray twilight, night and darkness so soon after.”

“Now and then there’s a star; you must admit that, Miss Marston,” says he, cheerful and pleasant again; he was never down for long at a time. “And there’s that much-abused luminary, the moon; you’ll see her before we get home. We’re her sworn votaries and worshippers, you know.”

We had to ride a bit to get home with any kind of light, for we didn’t want father to be growling or kicking up a row with Warrigal that we left to look after him. But a few miles didn’t matter much on such a road, and with horses in such buckle as ours.

The stars came out after a while, and the sky was that clear, without a cloud in it, that it was a better light to