Leeds, his legs wildly clasping the neck of
the bony steed, and a considerable amount
of bare flesh visible between the tops of his
socks and the end of his trousers, which
are wrinkled up round his knee. Closely
following him is Sarah Sykes, whom Bradford
is proud to claim for its own, disdaining
the use of a riding-skirt, and apparently
unconscious that crinoline is scarcely
a fitting garment for an equestrian. Two
shillings an hour is all they pay, and they
certainly get the worth of their money.
Not that the full hour's ride is always
earned by the horse. These noble animals,
which come from all sorts of places (I fancy
that some of them have, at some time,
sheltered at Whitewall, and been turned out
thence as used-up or incorrigible), have a
knack of ridding themselves of their riders
after a very short service, and exhibit their
well-known sagacity by immediately making
straight for their sheds, and offering
themselves in readiness for future unfortunates.

The management of these sheds is under
the control of the municipal authorities,
and ten pounds a year is the usual sum
demanded, for which a stand for two
carriages and horses, or six or seven riding
horses, is provided.

DAISY'S TRIALS.
IN SEVEN CHAPTERS. CHAPTER VII.

MEANWHILE Daisy travelled all day. By
road, by rail, by road. Lastly, she found
herself, or thought herself, obliged to walk,
a long walk of weary up-hill miles. By
the time she had accomplished half this
walk her limbs were hardly able to
support her, her brain hardly able to be her
guide. Her strength so failed and flagged
that she feared to fall by the way.

By-and-bye she turned out of the rough
deep lane into an open field, to sit and rest
under a hedge, where she was hidden from
any chance passer-by, where yet the wind
might blow upon her. It was a hot eerie
sort of wind that was blowing that night.
There had been a long drought,
everything had a crisp dryness; the silence of
the time and of the solitary place was
full of strange little sounds, each one of
which startled poor timid Daisy, and set
her heart beating in her ears. The dry
leaves rustled on the trees, the bushes
rustled as any bird or other small creature
moved in them, the tall dry grasses rustled,
and the ripe wheat on the other side the
hedge. And all the innocent little sounds
seemed to Daisy fateful and terrible, and
she felt so ill, so deadly faint and ill.

No food had passed Daisy's lips that
day. Mrs. Moss's care had provided her
with some, but she had forgotten and left
behind the little bag into which it had been
put; as she had, also, forgotten and left
behind her small portmanteau, losing sight
of it at a station where she had changed
lines. This evening there was no darkness,
and there would be no darkness this night,
for the moon was near the full, and the
wind-swept sky was cloudless. Daisy felt
as if she would have been glad of darkness;
the moonlight made her head giddy.
As she sat there, trying to rest, and to
steady herself, everything swam before her.
Yet she dared not close her eyes and so try
to rest her brain, for the fear they might
not again re-open.

To faint there! To die there! The
thought was dreadful. She imagined
herself being found, when the morning sun fell
upon her, by some labourer going to his
work: imagined rough tongues and rough
hands busy with her, and thought of the
horror of it all to Kenneth Stewart when he
should come to know, as there was no hope
but he would come to know. This thought
nerved her to attempt to get on again.
How much she would have given for one
glass of wine, and one small crust of bread,
for a draught of milk, even! but though
she knew there was a farm-house in easy
reach, where all these things were attainable,
she shrank from being seen wandering
alone so late. Just as she had risen to
go back into the lane Daisy became aware
of an advancing footstep: she cowered
down till it should have gone by. If it
should stop at the gate, if it should enter
the field, she believed she should die of
fright. But the step went harmless on;
was, probably, she thought, that of some
late labourer returning from his distant
work. She waited till she could hear it
no longer, till it must have got far ahead,
then went back to the lane and struggled
up it: after an hour of pain and difficulty
coming in sight of the roof of Moor-Edge
farm.

There was from this point a shorter way
of reaching the house than by keeping
between the high hedges, a footway across
the great steep field beneath it, now tented
with corn-stooks. Daisy took this way. A
little while and she could see all the
windows of this side of the house: they were
all closely shrouded. Walking on with
her eyes fixed on the house, her feeble feet
presently stumbled over something; a