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Updated: May 1, 2025
She prepared the parcel that she purposed to send to Curtis, and went in search of Beelzebub. He was sweeping the kitchen. "I shall want you to go to Wallarroo again to-day," she said. "You had better start soon, as I should like Mr. Curtis to get this in good time." Beelzebub stopped sweeping, and cringed before her. "Boss gone?" he questioned cautiously.
At last, after what seemed like the passage of many hours, they sighted from afar the lights of Wallarroo. Sybil drew rein, and waited for Beelzebub. "Which way?" she said. He pointed to a group of trees upon a knoll some distance from the road, and thither she turned her horse's head. Beelzebub rode up beside her. They left the knoll on one side, and, skirting it, came to a dip in the hill-side.
But when the latter appeared in answer to the summons, to her surprise Mercer began to speak upon a totally different subject. "I have just seen Stevens from Wallarroo. They are all in a mortal funk there. He was on his way over here to ask you to go and look at a man who is very bad with something that looks like smallpox.
Her arm pained her less, and she no longer carried it in a sling. She had breakfasted in bed, Mercer himself waiting upon her. She was amazed to hear him speak with kindness to Beelzebub, and even ask the boy if he thought he could manage the ride to Wallarroo. Beelzebub, abjectly eager to return to favour, professed himself ready to start at once. And so presently Sybil found herself alone.
Now, as then, Curtis was ready for them in the open doorway, and Beelzebub advanced grinning to take the horses. But there the resemblance ceased. The woman who entered with her husband leaning on her shoulder was no nervous, shrinking stranger, but a wife entering her home with gladness, bearing her burden with rejoicing. The woman from Wallarroo looked at her with a doubtful sort of sympathy.
Beelzebub, galloping after her, thought her demented already. Through the long, long pastures she travelled, never drawing rein, looking neither to right nor left. The animal she rode knew the way to Wallarroo, and followed it undeviatingly. The sun was beginning to slant, and the shadows to lengthen. Mile after mile of rolling grassland they left behind them, and still they pressed forward.
Here we are!" was Mercer's greeting. "Later than I intended, but it's a far cry from Wallarroo, and we had to take it easy." "The best way," the other said. He went forward and quietly helped Sybil to dismount. He did not speak to her as he did so, and she wondered a little at the reserve of his manner.
So far as outward circumstances went, she was in good hands. Curtis watched over her with a care that never flagged, and the innkeeper's wife from Wallarroo, large and slow and patient, was her constant attendant. But neither of them could touch or in any way soothe the perpetual pain that throbbed night and day in the girl's heart, giving her no rest.
He turned his face away from her in choking tears. And Sybil knew that the victory was hers. Those tears were more to her than words. She knew that he would live if he could for her sake. It was more than six weeks later that Brett Mercer and his wife turned in at the Home Farm, as they had turned in on that memorable night that he had brought his bride from Wallarroo.
There was a good deal of panic at Wallarroo, and he had removed the man to a cattle-shed at some distance from the township where they were isolated. There were one or two things he needed which he desired Mercer to send on the following day to a place he described, whence he himself would fetch them. "Beelzebub can go," said Mercer. "If he is well enough!" said Sybil. He frowned.
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