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CHAPTER XXXII.
AMAZONA—THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS.
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever!
Do noble things, not dream them all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One grand, sweet song."—C. Kingsley.
"Yet no cold votress of the cloister she.
Warm her devotion, warm her charity ;
The face the index of a feeling mind.
And her whole conduct rational and kind."—Crabbe.
On the morning of her flight, Gwyneth sallied forth with merely a small bag, which waxed heavier as she proceeded. Looking down upon the Vale, as she topped the hill, she thought with aching heart of all that had happened since the cavalcade of fugitives had joyfully descended that way. She avoided now the dusty track that meandered about the wide, fenced road. She shrank behind a gum-tree as a cloud of dust hurled itself, with ominous rattling accompaniment, along the road, and by degrees there emerged from the thick canopy two horses, a tray-wagonette, a silk-coated selector, and wife with faded finery that had done duty in Bourke Street. The man was smoking, the woman suckling a child. From the pillar of dust they emerged for one moment, into the cloud they disappeared, and Gwyneth pursued her way.
Now, past the old township of Hampstead, left out in the cold by the railway, the distant roar of
