another aged fact that, in life as well as racing, all the worst
accidents happen at little ditches and cut-down fences. In the
same way, you sometimes see a woman who would have made a Joan of
Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces
over all the mean worry of housekeeping. But that is another
story.

Her belief only made the Colonel's Wife more wretched, because it
insisted so strongly on the villainy of men. Remembering what she
had done, it was pleasant to watch her unhappiness, and the penny-
farthing attempts she made to hide it from the Station. But the
Station knew and laughed heartlessly; for they had heard the story
of the watch, with much dramatic gesture, from Mrs. Larkyn's lips.

Once or twice Platte said to Mrs. Larkyn, seeing that the Colonel
had not cleared himself:--"This thing has gone far enough. I move
we tell the Colonel's Wife how it happened." Mrs. Larkyn shut her
lips and shook her head, and vowed that the Colonel's Wife must
bear her punishment as best she could. Now Mrs. Larkyn was a
frivolous woman, in whom none would have suspected deep hate. So
Platte took no action, and came to believe gradually, from the
Colonel's silence, that the Colonel must have "run off the line"
somewhere that night, and, therefore, preferred to stand sentence
on the lesser count of rambling into other people's compounds out
of calling hours. Platte forgot about the watch business after a
while, and moved down-country with his regiment. Mrs. Larkyn went
home when her husband's tour of Indian service expired. She never
forgot.

But Platte was quite right when he said that the joke had gone too