Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

PELICAN POOL

PELICAN
POOL

A NOVEL
BY

SYDNEY DE LOGHE

Author of
"The Straits Impregnable"

SYDNEY
ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD.
1917

Printed by
W. C. Penfold & Co. Ltd., 183 Pitt Street, Sydney
for
Angus & Robertson Ltd.

TO
M. L.
WHO, AT SUCH A PLACE AS SURPRISE, HAS
BORNE THE HEAT AND BURDEN OF THE DAY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I Where to Find Surprise Valley Camp

Where the equator girdles the earth, the Indian Ocean and the amorous waters of the Pacific have their marriage bed. Afire with the passions of the tropics, excited by breezes from a thousand islands of palm, of spice, of coral, of pearl, jewelled for the ceremony with quick-lived phosphorous lights, the oceans move to each other, and mingle hot kisses under high red suns and fierce white moons. They have begotten many children; and one of these—the Sea of Carpentaria—leans deep into the northern coast of Australia, and wears itself against a thousand miles of barren shore.

As a young girl, dreaming her dreams, spends affection careless of the cost, so these romantic waters woo the stern northern land with warm and tireless embrace. And, as a man, busy on his own affairs, cares nothing for such soft entreaty, so the north land gives no sign; but remarks in silence the passage of the years.

Yet who shall say that passion has no place there—because a giant broods, dreaming a giant's dreams? Who shall say—because long waiting may have brought crabbed age—that the north land has not its sorrows? Morose countenance it keeps, yet freely can it spend. Its pulse beats no feeble strokes. Fierce suns travel across it, the heavens are torn for its rains, its floods laugh at restraint, the drought is slave of its ill-humours.

Its face is rough with frequent ranges where scanty vegetation climbs, where barren rock-faces catch the sunlight, and clefts run in, and shadowy cave-mouths open out. Here the wallaby finds harbourage, the bat hangs himself in the shadows, the python unrolls his coils, and the savage stays a space for shelter.

Its face is smooth with dreary plain. Stunted trees find living there, and hold out narrow leaves to cheat the suns. The spinifex battles with the thrifty soil, and porcupine grass weaves its spikes for the unwary. Score of miles by score of miles the country rolls away, brown or red where shows the bare earth, grey or yellow or smoky blue where the sun weds the dried grassland, shining white where the quartz pushes out of the ground. Through half the hours the sun stares from the centre of the sky, the leaves hang unmoved, the grasses are unstirred: silence only lives. The savage is dreaming of the feast to come, the kangaroo has taken himself to the roots of a tree in the dried water-course. The sun passes to the journey's end: life again draws breath. The kangaroo seeks the tenderer grasses; the dingo rises in his lair to stretch, and loll his tongue; the parrot screams from the tree-top; tiny finches, in splendid coats, swing among the bushes; a brown kite takes high station in the sky. Yet the waste seems empty, and the white ants only may boast of conquest where their red cones rise everywhere about the plain.

A belt of greener timber stands out bravely from the faded vegetation to mark the river on its passage to the sea. To the parching waterholes the pelican comes at dawn to fish and to pout his breast: snowy spoonbills and divers splash in the lonely shallows. The alligator comes up to sun himself; the turtle bubbles from the hot mud; and the quick striped fishes play at hide and seek among the languid weeds. The kingfisher busies himself along the bank, and with evening the ducks push their triangles about the sky.

The conquest of this northern land will bring the fall of one of savagery's last fortresses. Already the outposts of South and East press in. The ramparts are crumbling, and soon the gates must tumble to a victor who never yet has been denied. The white man has turned here his covetous gaze. Vainly the burning winds and angry rains shall beat at the ashes of his first fires and shall scatter his first solitary bones. The silences shall not fright him, nor the lean places turn his purpose. Though he fall, yet will he come on again, for this foe is fashioned of stern stuff. In ones, in twos, already he toils over the face of the wilderness, seeking the kindlier ways for his herds: in ones, in twos, he passes about the hills and watercourses, wresting from their bosoms the objects of his avarice. Alike he invades the sternest and gentlest retreats, raising his shelters to mock at sun and storm. His long fences are breaking the distances, his beasts of burden trample the virgin waterholes, his iron houses defile the hermit vales. Not easily does he work his will. Lean and brown he becomes, and his women grow haggard before their time. But children patter upon the bitter places, and them the wilderness has less power to hurt.

The Sea of Carpentaria woos the north land. The north land gives no sign.

. . . . . . .

The mining camp of Surprise Valley lies in the folds of those ranges which break the long plains of the Gulf country. Ten years ago it grew along the bottom of a cup of the hills, and since that season neither has waxed nor waned, being nothing troubled by the wilderness which marches to the door-ways of its tents and humble iron houses.

The traveller, by circumstance brought thither from the East, with ill grace leaves his steamer at the coast, boards the casual train, and presently finds himself jerking forward on the second stage of the journey. He bumps westward for five hundred miles. He moves through plains which—right and left—push into the horizon. The ocean has not seemed to him more immense. A curtain of heat is about their edges, a haze dwells about them. The clamour of his coming scatters sheep at their grazing, alarms the kangaroo at matins, sends the wild turkey into the taller grasses. For a night, for a day, for half another night, he is held in thrall. He alone appears eager for the journey end. He smokes, he reads, he eats: a dozen ways he sets himself to hurry time. The cool of the evening takes him to the outside platform of the car to reflect and watch the darkening of the skies—to remark the first white stars. At such hour maybe he takes his lot in better part.

Sunrise renews the stale prospect, and the heated air of noon finds him with sticky collar and drowsy brain. He dozes, wakes, dozes again. Ever and anon the brakes grind, and the train jerks to a standstill. From the window he looks upon a siding, where a platform of blistered planks and an iron shed are emblems of railway authority. A dozen stockmen and loafers of the township crowd the patch of shade, to smoke and spit and await the train's advance. First to the eye comes the hotel, beside it lies the store; and haphazard stand the wooden houses, with iron roofs glaring back into the sun's fierce face. Never a church lifts up its cross as of old the tabernacle made signal in the wilderness. A dusty way leads into the plain, and along this presently the stockmen will turn their horses.

The second evening brings the journey-end. From his platform the traveller sees a township's lights grow upon the plain—lights closer and redder than the stars that meet them. The iron rails have ended. Thankfully he gets down to stretch his limbs in the cool, wide night.

But a hundred miles still frown him from the goal. With morning he clambers into a seat of the mail coach—a battered carriage. His luggage has been strapped behind. He sits solitary beside the driver, who accepts him with easy familiarity. The reins run slack to the horses' heads, and the five lean beasts draw him forward at even pace. The dust climbs up and hangs upon the air. All day he rolls over empty plain.

The second afternoon brings the ranges marching from the horizon, and by evening the coach rises and dips upon a see-saw roadway. As the sun leans down to the horizon, the driver draws taut his reins before Surprise Valley Hotel. Surprise Valley ends the coach journey—ends the direct mail service—ends the bush parson's endeavors—ends the travelling school-master's rounds—ends civilization—ends everything. When humour so inclines them—which is seldom—the people of Surprise Valley may walk from their doorways into the great unknown of the West.

Fortune has given to Surprise the greenest fold of the western ranges. Easy hills stand up about the camp, tracing a zig-zag rim against the sky. The camp lies in the hollow, as in the bottom of a cup. It clambers about the lower slopes, following the whim of the latest comer. The hotel boasts a roof and walls of iron, that much boasts the store, that much the manager's house. The staff barracks and the mine offices equally are favoured. Wooden piles lift the buildings high from the ground. Elsewhere stand weather-worn tents; and sometimes a bough shed, thatched with gum-leaves, serves its architect as parlour.

Towering over all rise the poppet-heads and bins of the mine. Goats take a siesta beneath the scrubby trees, explore the rubbish heaps, and clamber about the dump; fowls of more breeds than Joseph's coat knew colours, employ themselves in the dusty places, or keep the shade of the broken rocks. Here and there an optimist nurses a garden, and finds reward in a few drooping vegetables. Goats and fowls peer through the netting with evil in their hearts. This is Surprise Valley to the stranger eye.

Three score burnt men and a handful of shabby women here find living. They dig for the green copper hidden jealously in the bosom of the hills. From distant parts they have drifted, they stay awhile; again they drift; but the camp endures, and the wilderness is powerless to harm it. Forward and backward from the railroad, a hundred miles away, the weekly coach crawls on its journey, keeping open the track to civilization, and bringing such news and comforts as that world has leisure to send. The mail bags disgorge stale papers; the driver delivers stale news. Round and round turns the wheel of affairs. A whistle begins the day for this community: a whistle ends it. Deep in the earth the men labor with hammer and drill. Overhead the women bend at their pots and pans, and peg the weekly washings under cloudless skies. The children, untaught, unchecked, patter among the stones and tussocks, and send abroad their cries. Summer follows winter. The suns climb up; in season the rains roar down; the frost comes in its turn. But the men of Surprise Valley dig always in the bowels of the hills, and the women busy themselves about their doors.

CHAPTER II How They Pass the Evening at Surprise.

The last week of October was ending. At Surprise seven red-hot days had crowded after one another; six breathless nights had brought men and women gasping to their doors. The seventh evening had seen, an hour since, the moon come up, white, round and full, behind the Conical Hill; and with the moon arrived a flagging breeze—not cold, not even cool, but with life left to turn the narrow gum-leaves, to move the tent walls and the hessian blinds on the verandahs of the iron houses. The moon had climbed the hilltop an hour since, and now was some distance in the sky. Falling with a broad white light over the ranges, and no doubt upon the plain beyond, it found a way to the valley holding the stifled camp. It picked out the iron roofs, and discovered the trees, to make of their leaves bunches of silver fingers: it counted the tents straggling down the distance, and on the journey wove many patterns of light and shade. The stones in the bed of the dry creek shone with polished faces. The white ball in the sky numbered the panels of the yard, where the buggy horses—two greys, two bays—stood reflecting on their fate; and it numbered the crinkles in the stable roof.

The breeze had moved several times down the valley, and as often as it passed the people of Surprise turned gratefully in their seats. Mr. Robson, shift-boss, found heart to swear appreciation and light a pipe; Mrs. Boulder, brisk and brawny, reached from her chair to slap the youngest child; and Mr. Horrington, general agent—unappreciated cousin of Sir James Horrington, Bart., of Such-and-such Hall, England—pledged again his lost relatives in whisky and a dash of water. The members of the staff, telling smoking-room stories from their long chairs outside the mess-room, re-settled for something newer and choicer.

Two sounds were repeated, and helped to make the stillness live. They were the stamp of horses near the creek, and the cornet of Mr. Wells, storeman. The cornet player was feeling the way, with poor luck but an honest persistence, through the pitfalls and crooked ways of "The Death of Nelson." He had reached the thirteenth verse. The thirteenth verse was the unlucky verse: unlucky for him, because he broke down, unlucky for his listeners, because he repeated it. The notes fell slowly, uncertainly, mournfully upon the night. As the fourteenth verse began, Mr. Neville, manager of Surprise, swore with feeling.

The old man of Surprise sat in the recess of his verandah, on a full-length wicker chair, both legs at easiest angle, heavy walking stick at hand, a glass at his elbow, a pipe in his clutch. The hessian blinds, nailed to the woodwork, threw the place into gloom, unless crevices let in a beam of the moon. Old Neville sat back in the half-dark, a man of small and tough make, covered from collar to ankles in white duck, with brown, wrinkled face, bristling grey moustache, shaggy white eyebrows, and an aggressive manner. He was seventy; but he was to be reckoned with still. Behind him, two canvas waterbags hung midway from the roof, and the single small table, with the whisky bottle and the box of matches on it, he had taken for himself. He put out bony fingers for the matches.

"Damn that wretched fellow! I'll hunt him off the place to-morrow."

A girl and two men were his company. The girl sat between the men, and the three people leaned back in canvas chairs. The nearest man, who was dressed in riding clothes, was young—no more than thirty-five. He was tall, and of a wiry make, and his skin was tanned. His face was clean shaven, with a trace of temper in it, while he had the manner of one well able to take care of himself. He gave his attention to a pipe. He was known through all that country as James Power of Kaloona Station.

The girl was dressed in white. She was not thirty years old, but the climate had not spared her. She was not tall, she was rather slight, and her face challenged no second glance; but he who looked closely might find thought behind her eyes, and humour in her mouth. The carriage of her head showed courage. Here was a girl with thoughts to think and with dreams to dream. A girl with a stout heart, who would be ready to drink deeply from the cups of joy and sorrow: a mate worth winning. Maud Neville was her name, and Neville of Surprise was her father. Just now, with both hands, she marked the fall of the cornet notes which continued their troubled passage.

The other man smoked a cigar in heavy content. He was growing middle-aged and stout. He breathed with deep breaths, but the sultry night excused him. A dark moustache covered his mouth. His face was filling with flesh; and his eyes were cold though rather wise. Just now he was well pleased with the world. He was John King, accountant of Surprise.

The girl spoke. Her voice was full of lights and shades.

"Don't always be growling at Wells, father. He maddened me once; but I have accepted him long ago. He will learn something else soon. The cornet is new. He got it two or three coaches ago. Mr. King, do you remember the concertina last summer? The heat unstuck it or something. That's why he sent for the cornet. One day I asked him why he was so persistent, and he put his hands on his chest very grandly like this and said—'Miss Neville, it is in here. It must come out.'"

The old man screwed up his face. "He can tell the flies that to-morrow when he takes the track."

King took the cigar from his mouth very deliberately.

"Maybe we listen to more than a poor storeman—a lover, a poet rather. Who can say? A lover whose beloved has wandered afar: a poet born tongueless, whose breast must break with fullness. Then what do our ears matter, while he finds relief?"

Power laughed. "You're an amusing idiot, King." But the old man snorted.

"I've something else to even up with besides that trumpet. Every man jack on the place is doing what he likes with the water tanks these last two months. They're three part done. There'll be a drought here 'fore the rains come, sure as I sit here, there will. I believe half the women wash their brats in it. They've got the devil's impidence. I watched Wells to-day carry half-a-dozen kerosene tins for Mrs. Simpson and Mrs. Boulder. I'd have seen he knew about it, if I'd been nearer. I'll fix the lot of 'em up yet. I'll settle them quick."

"You'll have to ration them," Power said.

"Ration them! I'll ration them till their tongues hang out. They can go to the pub for a drink."

A chair creaked in the dark, grunts followed the creak, and Neville got to his feet. He steadied himself with his stick, and started towards the door into the house. On the threshold he paused and looked round.

"Ye know Gregory, the gouger from Mount Milton way? He was in at the store this afternoon. Says he's struck a first class copper show on the river. He was blowing hard about it there, and had specimens with him. He was after gettin' a lot of tucker on account; but I settled that. I may be wrong, huh, huh! but I reckon he wasn't long from the pub."

"Where's his show?" King asked.

"On Pelican Pool. He'll get drowned when the rains come."

"He can have only just struck it. Nobody was on the hole a fortnight back," Power answered.

"Is the show any good?" asked King.

"Bah! Of course not."

"How do you know?" Maud cried.

"Of course it'll be no good."

"You don't know anything about it."

King put his cigar in his mouth, and it grew red in the dark. He took it away again. "Isn't Gregory the fellow with the pretty daughter?"

The old man began to chuckle. "Huh, huh! I've heard more talk of Gregory's daughter these last two weeks than of his copper show. If the show is as good as the gal, his fortune is made. She's a fetching little hussy." He wagged his head.

"You've seen her?" questioned Power.

"Three days back. I was down in the buggy looking at the pipe line. I told Maud about her. She's something in King's way. I hear he never misses anything."

King shrugged his shoulders. "My name gone, you may send me along the pipe line as soon as you like."

"Ye'll have to look sharp. Half the fellers on the lease know about her." The old man chuckled himself into the house.

"I want to see her," Maud cried. "Her fame has gone all over these parts. They say she turned everyone's head Mount Milton way. Why are you so behindhand, Mr. King?"

"She has only been once to the store, and ill-luck kept me wrestling with accounts. Afterwards I heard she had passed through like some Royal Presence, moving so greatly every man under fifty that he gave up work for the afternoon."

"And," said Power, "my Mrs. Elliott's story is that Mick O'Neill, our head man, has lost his head over her."

King bowed reverently in the dark. "She must be wonderful—a poem of golden words, a melody of diamond notes. She must be fit to rank with those dead women generations of men have sung about. The Helen of Homer: Deirdre, princess of Ulster, whom four kings fought over, and for love of whom three brothers slew themselves: Poppæa, mistress of Nero, for whose bath five hundred asses let down their milk: a Ninon de l'Enclos, who rode abroad on early autumn mornings, while the poor brutal peasants covered themselves, believing an angel passed by. When I go down the pipe line, I shall take my fly-veil with me that my sight may not be destroyed."

"You may meet me there, with or without a veil," said Power.

"Don't count yet on going, Mr.-my-friend-Power," Maud Neville said. "I must look myself first."

"And now," said King, leaning heavily forward in his chair which creaked out loud, "I think it becomes me to salute such loveliness." He stretched a hand for the whisky and poured out a noble peg.

A bellow came from inside. "Power!"

"Hullo!"

"I want ye!"

Power got up. "I'll see what is wanted. But first our pledge."

The steps of Power died away, and King and Maud Neville were left alone. Nelson had died at last, and now the cornet asked, "Alice, where art thou?" One or two crickets beneath the house accompanied it. Presently King must have moved his chair, because there was a sudden creak.

"I am going to write a treatise on love to aid the beginner."

"How many volumes?"

King shook his head. "You mock me. You think because my heart is widely proportioned, and because there are several little dead affairs stacked neatly on upper shelves, that each of those visitors cost nothing to admit, and that now one cannot be told from another. You are mistaken." Again he shook his head. "Each of those visitors left its footprints on the threshold, and memory can still find them in the dustiest, most forgotten corners. No, hide your smiles."

"Go on, you stupid, I love listening to you."

"Love comes always in the same way, whether it be the great affair that tramples ruthless and leaves us crushed on the road, or whether it arrives with hammer and chisel, playfully to knock off a corner of the heart. For love flows forward in a ripple of waters over which pass sweetest breezes. So slowly it moves, so gently it rises, that one is lost ere the danger be discovered. In the first sprays that dash the drowner's mouth lie its best, its purest."

"And after?"

"Alas! the tide brings refreshment with it, and lovers wake hungry, and what had seemed two shafts from heaven become a woman's eyes. And so the descent to earth is trod again in steps of kisses." He held out his arm. "Look at the moon slung there, a great silver platter! How many thousands of us have cried out for it? Yet it is only a barren mountain region, scarred and ugly. But we never learn this, because we do not draw near. Love is a mirage. Love is the dancing of the marsh lights. Therefore pursue, but do not draw near. For once you touch the shining thing its glamour shall depart, and as the millstone of satiation it shall hang about your neck."

"But I understand you never practise your preaching."

"I am too eager in pursuit. I blunder on the shining thing, and then—" He shrugged his shoulders with infinite regret.

Maud Neville joined her hands behind her head. She frowned the least little bit. She spoke in a hurry.

"No, that's not love. That's anything you like; but it isn't love. Love is quite a different thing. Listen to me. Love is the eye that takes no sleep, the foot that knows no stony road, the heart that bleeds and feels no wound, the brain that always understands."

"I see," King said.

A second time they had nothing to say. As they sat thus, the breeze journeyed again down the valley. It stirred the hessian blinds against the fly-proof netting. It came through the open doorway at the verandah end, and moved the water-bags behind Neville's empty chair. The two opened their arms to it. It must have brought charity to the heart of Mr. Wells, for he packed up his cornet for the night: and it may have touched King's tongue with eloquence. Soon it had gone by. But King got up and walked to the doorway to throw away his dead cigar. He stood there some while looking over the country, and the moonbeams revealed him a stout man, past first youth. Maud Neville fell to examining him. Now the cornet no more made plaint, complete silence waited on the night. Something moved her to break the spell.

"How still it is," she said. "How empty!"

The man at the doorway did not turn round; but he looked out into the open as though proving her words. "Still?" he said. His tongue strings were loosened. "Empty?" He pointed his hand. "Up there, this way, that way, hear the roar of worlds rolling through the crowded ways of space. Hear the bellowings of the furnaces, the shrieks of passage, the crash of collision! Worlds are growing fiery there, worlds are growing cold. Worlds are dying there. Worlds are finding new birth. The Angel of Life and his assistant the Angel of Death take no rest.

"Lift up your veil, O Night, for we would look in.

"Yes, joy is here, and sorrow is here; hunger is here and repletion is here; sin is here and righteousness here: hope and despair, love and hate, anger and forgiveness—all are here.

"The young lion roars in his triumph, and the old toothless lion has missed his kill. The nightingale sings from the cypress; and the mouse is squeaking where the owl swooped down. In a hundred jungles the beast of prey fills himself; and in haunts of men the ravenous are abroad also. The lover cries that the couch is waiting, and in the shadow lurks the assassin. Where men are dying, mothers stand weeping; and mothers are writhing where men are being born. The student, pale with learning, trims his lamp and asks for the night to continue; and the tempest-torn mariner is praying for the dawn. The youngster smiles at his rosy dreams; and round his father breaks the shock of battle. The rich man toys with his heaped meats: and to a fireless garret has crept the pauper. The statesman toils in his chamber; and the well-dined burgher turns in his sleep. Age pulls the coverlet over a bony breast; and in the halls of vice youth spends its strength. In solitude the shepherd guards his flock; and in retreat no less lonely the miser counts his gold. And hairs are greying, and eyes are dimming, and babes are crowing. And voices are laughing, and voices are scolding, and voices are sobbing. How empty the night is? How still the night is? No! How crowded! How deafening!"

King came to a full stop. His hand fell to his side. He did not turn round, and presently he lit another cigar with irritating calm. All the while, the girl had not stirred in her chair. At last King moved from the doorway, and at the same time Neville sounded his stick in the house. He appeared on the verandah with Power behind. The old man was chuckling to himself and holding out some keys.

"Huh, huh! I may be wrong; but I think I'll settle that little crowd. See these? For the tanks. See 'em? I'll be along and fix them up right away. To-morrow you can watch them line up with their tongues out. Old Horrington can live on whisky for a while. It's done him before to-day. Mrs. Johnson can wash in last week's water. It'll make good soup for the baby. He, he! Huh, huh, huh!"

"What are you going to do, Father?"

"Lock the tanks, of course. What d'ye think I mean to do? Drink 'em dry?"

"You can't do that."

"Can't? I may be wrong, but I reckon I can." He wagged his head; and next gripped his stick and began to stamp down the verandah, but half way brought up short with a second nod. "Moon or no moon," he said, "I shall do better with a lantern where I'm going." He went indoors again.

At the same time King pulled out a watch. "I'll get back."

Maud from her chair called out to him. "Already, Mr. King? It's not late. Are you tired of us?"

"The night is getting cool, and I haven't slept for a week."

Power looked at the moon. "What's it? Ten?"

"Twenty to. We may get a change out of this."

"I don't think so," Power said.

"At least we'll hope next week is better," Maud cried. "Let's wish for a storm."

"And after it the flying ants?"

"Oh bother them!" Maud said. "Where's the romance of the wilderness?"

King answered her. "Romance is somewhere just out of sight. Some day I shall sit in a cooler country, having forgotten the taste of heat and flies, and I shall start sighing for the old romantic days at Surprise. And now for a nightcap before bed."

"Mr. King, you are breaking rules."

"But this is Surprise and we are in the last week of October. Much can be forgiven when you live at Surprise during the last week of October."

"The rule is three, and that makes number five."

"Alas!"

"Well, never again."

King put down his empty glass. "Good night.

"Good night."

He went through the doorway into the open and down the steps. His footfalls crunched on the bed of the dry creek. The return of Neville overwhelmed them. The old man held a lighted lantern, and fumbled impatiently at the wick. "Where's King?" he demanded, lifting shaggy eyebrows over the top.

"Gone home a moment ago," Maud said.

"Er! I knew as much. He knows what he's about. I meant him to come with me."

"He's good company," Power said, settling again in the old seat.

"I love him," Maud said. "One moment he makes me laugh and the next he makes me think. I don't know yet whether he is a wise man or a mountebank."

"Where does he come from?" Power asked. "You said he was a solicitor, didn't you?"

The old man snapped down the glass of the hurricane lamp.

"I heard tell he was a solicitor somewhere and got kicked out. As soon as he touches money he can't go straight. He would sell his mother up. Huh, huh! He's a gentleman to walk shy of while you've a few pounds to spare. Go to him for a goat, and he'll sell you one of mine. He has done business over half the fowls on the lease, though he never owned a feather. He, he! I can't help respecting his abilities. He's got a finger in most copper shows within fifty miles. The silly coves get him to draw up their agreements, and he takes care that his name comes in somewhere or other." Neville chuckled himself to the end of his tale, then said, "You had better be away, Power. I'm going to bed when I get back." He went through the door.

"Take care!" Maud called out.

"Er?"

"Take care."

A growl was her thanks. In course of time the old man had scrambled down the steps and across the creek.

"So much for our friend, John King," said Power.

At Surprise Valley the rule is early to bed. First chop the wood and milk the goats. Then soothe or slap the baby to sleep. After tea, a seat in the doorway and a smoke. After a smoke, an exchange of maledictions on the weather. The lamps in the tents begin to go out by nine o'clock. The frustrated moths and flying ants betake themselves elsewhere, and the mosquito sings a solo requiem in the dark. On cool nights and nights of breezes, the people of Surprise put out lights at even an earlier hour, for sleep is likely to prove kinder mistress. To-night already three parts of Surprise were sleeping. To be true, Mr. Wells was thinking of a last pipe; and Mr. Horrington, whisky bottle at elbow, was cogitating a nightcap. Also, a light burned yet in the latest rigged tent. Mr. Pericles Smith—travelling schoolmaster, arrived here on his rounds—after chopping the firewood, hunting the goats away, putting the kettle off the boil, and performing sundry other exercises, was snatching a few moments with the help of a candle at his monumental work on the aboriginal languages of Australia. Nowhere else lights pierced the walls. The moon fell over high land and low land, upon house and tent, and steeped in romance the dreary prospects of the day. The Man in the Moon looked down on a fairy city.

. . . . . . .

I have brought you now to the beginning of my chronicle: I have laid the stage and you are left with the chief players. The story is written in a thumbed volume of the Book of Life, and it is time to lift down the tome from its shelf. Look for no tremendous tale, for at Surprise the day wags through its journey as elsewhere—sorrow tastes as bitter here, pleasure drinks as sweetly, and the human heart beats time to old, old tunes. Look for no great story then, for I have it not to tell—you are to find two lovers, you are to have the history of their loves, and learn how one was rude apprentice to the trade, and what apprenticeship had to teach him.

. . . . . . .

The man and woman on the verandah had tumbled into their own thoughts. But presently Power rose in his seat, and moved it beside Maud Neville. He sat down again—he leaned forward and raised one of her hands. Fingers closed on his own. "Kiss me, Maud," he said, in no more than a whisper.

He bent close over the girl. His face approached hers until he and she saw each other clearly in the dark. They kissed with much passion. As Maud released him, she touched his forehead with her lips.

"I thought we should never be left alone. I was getting disgusted and going home. I came with a lot to tell you. I was full of ideas, but you were bent on avoiding me."

"Poor fellow! As bad as that? You should have come earlier. I couldn't get up and leave the others, you silly. Mr. King doesn't come very often. What have you to say so important?"

"Maybe I'm not telling it now."

He was laughed at for his pains. "You want coaxing? Is that what's the matter?"

"This is it then. I can't wait longer. We have been engaged long enough. I want you to marry me—soon I mean, this month or next. Everything is ready over there. We'll choose a date to-night."

"And you are ready for Father?"

"He can't refuse again. We've waited so long."

"Perhaps."

"Then desperation will give me courage. Now for the promise."

"I said nothing about a promise. You must think I am awfully fond of you."

Power leaned forward again. Their faces came close together. Her eyes were wide open and looked straight into his. Fondness appeared in them, deep as the sea. Power began again to speak.

"It has become so lonely over there. I think about you all day long. The house has grown miserable. It has turned to a graveyard. If you appeared there, things would become what they were. You must marry me soon. I have been too patient."

He stooped and, in place of speech, he began to kiss her hair, her face, her hands. Presently she put an arm about his neck, and kept him willing prisoner. "What about your promise?" he said once more.

She had not done with coquetry. "What makes you think I am so fond of you?"

"And don't you like me a little bit? A little bit?"

"Perhaps a little bit." She put both arms about his neck. "My good friend, you are everything in the world to me. My silly life begins and ends in you. This great love of mine has quite eaten me up. Why, what would I do without you. You came as a brand to a cold hearth and set it aflame. Something in my heart sings now all day long."

Passion came over them as a surge of the sea, as a storm of wind. They bent close to each other, thinking no thought. Their breaths mingled. Their hearts marked one time.

At last she released her prisoner. Her eyes were shining in the dark. She began to speak in a low, eager voice. She might have been a messenger bringing glad tidings.

"You will never understand what this love has meant to me. You and I—we are different metals refining in the same furnace, and the fire does not treat us alike. My life at last has become easy to live. It is a simple and a grand thing. Think of Dingo Gap or Pelican Pool without sun or flies. Wouldn't they be wonderful places? Well, I find life changed as much as that. The little happenings no more have power to annoy. My eyes are strong to see straight ahead. In all matters I am undisturbed. This love of mine is a holy thing. It will brook no meanness. It will stoop to no crooked ways. Something cries out in my heart to grow and grow. I would bring you a wide-open mind. I would offer you a body as beautiful as that girl we talked of half-an-hour ago."

She began again. "And now, my good friend—yes, you who look at me so fondly—I am going to hurt you a little bit. I am going to tell you you have brought me my moments of sorrow. For a long time now I have known that your love and my love are of different kinds. Bad hours arrived for me once when an evil spirit whispered that you did not understand me, and therefore you could not truly love me. The whisperer said Nature demanded you should go hungering after a woman, and there was no choice but me. The whisperer said until you knew me, and demanded me because of your new knowledge, that my affections were anchored in the sands.

"But I have pushed aside the whisperer. I love you, and that is all that matters. For love knows nothing of hunger and unrest, of hope grown old and other miseries. Love is the clear light, and those the winds that wrestle for it, that are not of it and can never hurt it. But you will not test my strength? Answer me. You will not test it?"

"No, my girl. But your words could be kinder. I have no quick tongue like yours to tell my tale. I know this, that I am weary of waiting for you. Don't let us waste more of life. We have the whole world to see, and when we have grown tired, we shall come back here. The old home I am so sick of will grow beautiful under your care. I shall ride away in the morning, knowing evening will find you waiting for me——"

"Yes, yes, I shall be waiting for you, and you will arrive hot and tired, and you will say 'I won't eat anything.' But I shall coax you. And later on we shall sit together in the light of this same old moon, which will have travelled round a few times more, and will have become a little paler with watching. And we shall talk about olden days. And then we shall begin to grow old together, and I shall count your first grey hairs and—why, Jim, you are laughing at me!"

"Am I? Then give me my promise, for I must go home."

"What am I to say, Jim? You know I want the marriage as much as you do. But father is an old man, and there is nobody but me to look after him. He wouldn't think of giving up the mine to live with us. If you like, we can ask him again to-night. Then if he says no, I shall stay with him a little longer, and at last we must tell him it is our turn to choose. That's fair, Jim, isn't it? No, don't look sulky. I am quite right."

"You won't always put it off like this? I am growing bad-tempered over there."

"You silly boy, you are only a few miles away. We see each other every week. But we may catch father in a soft moment. We must find him after he has locked the tanks. He'll be in such a good humour at the thought of a fight to-morrow, that he may say yes. Let's find him now. Go away, stupid, I want to get up."

Maud rose to her feet, shook out her dress, and pushed her hair out with her fingers. She kissed Power for the last time, and they went down the steps into the moonlight. She ran ahead, taking little heed of her footing. The stones in the creek were thick and rough, and she trod them with quick feet while Power crunched behind. The stable was not far away, and they followed the fence towards it. The horses stood together with drooped heads at the lower end of the yard. All this quarter of the camp was picked out plainly in the moonlight.

A figure moved about the stable. It was Neville back from his rounds. Maud nodded her head in his direction.

"There's father waiting for us," she said. "Now Mr.-my-friend-Jim, are you feeling as brave as you were?"

"You must look after me."

"Certainly not. I never pretended to be brave."

"I shall find courage somehow."

Old Neville's voice arrived. "Be smart ye two. You've been an awful time. I expected ye gone long ago, Power. That fool groom has jammed the door so as I can't get in. I'll let him hear about it to-morrow. See if you can do anything. He, he! ye'll have to do something, or ye'll go bareback home. What did ye want to come along for, Maud? Can't you let him alone for a minute? That's the way to sicken a man of ye." All three met outside the stable door. "D'ye see what I mean?" Neville said.

Power moved the door in course of time. The old man went in first with the lantern. "Take the saddle and hurry up. I want to get to bed."

Power carried the saddle to the fence. Maud had taken the bridle and had gone in search of the horse which knew her and would stand. In a little while she was leading it back. Power had taken his opportunity.

"Mr. Neville, Maud and I talked things over to-night, and we want to get married. You won't mind, I hope?"

The old man was rooting with his stick in a corner of the stable. "Er?" he said, looking up.

"We're thinking of getting married," Power said again louder.

"Have you still that in your heads? I told ye 'No' before. Here, come here. Look at that fellow! I'll fire him off the lease before he's any older. Look at him! Thrown it all in a corner. No, ye must wait. Ye're both young, and I'm an old man. Goodness! look here! Maud's an annoying girl, but I'd be put out without her. Here's the mare. Come outside with ye. Maud, I hear you're on again about gettin' married. I won't have it. Ye've plenty of time for that sort of thing."

"You're not fair, father. You're not a bit fair. You won't listen to reason. You never discuss anything. I'm not a child still. When will you realize that?"

The old man lifted his shaggy eyebrows over the lantern. He seemed rather surprised. "Listen to reason! And you come to me when everyone is in bed. Ye call that reason! It's just like you. Bah!"

"Maud is right, Mr. Neville. You haven't been fair about this." Power's temper was never hard to discover, and Maud frowned him quiet. The old man looked at the ground, and scratched his head a moment or two and wagged it.

"I suppose, Power, ye'll be round in a day or two?"

"I'm bringing cattle through the end of this week."

"I'll talk about it then. Now be away with you. Come home, Maud."

The old man of Surprise blew out the lantern and began the journey to the house. Maud in meek mood followed him.

"Good night, Jim," were her last words.

"Good night," Power called back.

Power saddled the mare, and let down the slip-rail of the yard. His whip was coiled on his arm. In a moment he was mounted and had turned towards home.

CHAPTER III Pelican Pool

Kaloona Homestead lies distant from Surprise fifteen Queensland miles, and the traveller by that road learns a Queensland mile is a mile and anything you wish beyond. The red track runs all the way—over outcrops of rock, across grassy levels and through dry creek beds, nearly to the gateway of the homestead. Kaloona Homestead stands among timber on one of the big holes of the river.

All the traffic of the neighbourhood takes this direction, and keeps safe the roadway from the teeth of the waiting bush. Once a week the mine buggy journeys to outlying shafts. Out of the distance crawl a pair of horses, an ancient four-wheeled carriage, two men seated up there in collarless shirts and khaki trousers, a swinging waterbottle and a following of dust. Once a month Mr. Carroll, timekeeper, armed with revolver and sustained with thoughts of a peg at the farther end, bumps along in the back seat of the buggy with the pay for the smaller mines. Along this path the horse-driver bullies a groaning load to the mine furnaces, and wins the plain by ready tongue and a generous hand. His dogs shuffle in the shade of the waggon. The copper gougers come in from labours in the far places, and follow the red way to store and hotel; and the kangaroo shooter, astride his shabby beast, arrives with empty provision bags from lonely hunting grounds. But commonly you travel all day under a greedy sun, and meet none of these things. The plain rolls away, and no wayfarer appears, unless there leap up a kangaroo startled in his bed chamber.

Power took the homeward road with never a thought to its emptiness. He was no apprentice to the bush. He could read the signs of the way, be the time day or night. Now a moon was in the middle of the sky, the path was well trodden, a fair mount carried him, and the night cooled—the journey would be done in the turning of his thoughts. He rode with loose rein, idle spur, and seat easy in the saddle. Yet a clever horse might not have got the better of him.

The mare carried him at a fast walk, asking neither check nor spur. Single tents, tents in twos and threes, and rickety lean-tos rose up among the gullies on both hands, and quickly a score of them had fallen behind. In none burned a light, and no greeting arrived other than the quick bark of curs. A bend of the road and the base of the hill cut off the camp. From now forward the journey would prove a lonely business. The creak of a saddle and the brief pad of hoofs in the dust were to be the song of voyage.

Afoot or on horseback, Power was a wide-awake man. He saw most of what was worth seeing. He could see, realize and do on the instant. But he had his moments of reflection. He was aware of the tents, the lean-tos and the rubbish on the ground. But he had fallen into thought before going far on the way. Were he devout lover, now was the scene and now the hour to delight in the virtues of his lady.

He loosened his feet in the stirrups to the tips of his toes, and lifted his hat from his head. A vague breeze moved across his cheek, and he turned gratefully to it; but it was dead as soon as it was born. Still, the night was cooling, and the plain was wide and free after the verandah at Surprise. The moon had taken station in the middle of the sky, frighting all but a few stars which gleamed wanly here and there. She was a lamp to all that great red country—by day full of majesty, now touched to beauty by her genius. The walk of the mare soothed him strangely.

Power was a man of fair learning and experience. He was a bushman born, but the South had given him education of some width. He had had a share of travel. He could remember other lands and fair cities. Men, now forgotten, had rubbed shoulders with him; and one or two women had passed in and out of his life with a few laughs and sighs. Seldom he called them to mind. Maud Neville only had brought him to captivity. Her brain was mate for his brain, her heart was mate for his heart: there would be bonds to bind them when passion had passed away.

His thoughts went back to her, where he had seen her last following the old man towards the house. He found himself thinking very tenderly of her. Soon now she would come across to brighten the old homestead, and life would never be quite the same again. He must pull his habits into shape. He must remember freedom would have to go in harness, and the curb might chafe at first. He must be abroad at dawn and home by nightfall, and give up this riding over the country as the humour took him. The cattle camp must see him less, the hearth must see him more; others could do the rough work, and they would do it as well as he.

There came to mind the first time he had seen Maud Neville, a day or two after the coach had brought her from the South. He had not discovered her charm in the beginning. He put a high price on beauty always, and here was a girl but poorly favoured. But that she made the old man's home bright there was no denying, and now he walked in willing captivity. He loved her, and she loved him almost too well. She read him to the last word, while her own face was covered with a veil which he had not the skill to pluck aside. She had said a little while ago that he had much to learn in the art of loving, and perhaps she had spoken the truth. His affection only had his spare time, and was shabby exchange for a spiritual love like her own. Yet she seemed content. Well, she should teach him in the days to come, and she would find him a ready student. Just now he was on the way home, and to-morrow was bringing a long day with cattle. There were other things for a man to do besides making love.

He tumbled back to everyday matters when the mare whinnied loudly. He looked about him. He found he had been carried into the plains. Behind, and on the left hand, ranges filled the horizon; ahead ran the dark belt of timber which followed the river. Power guessed at it rather than saw it. Pelican Pool was four miles away in a straight line; but the road bent in a little distance, and met the river several miles lower down.

All at once Power grew alert. The sight of a riderless horse called for more than a meander of thoughts. The animal stood a long way off in the shadow of a small tree near the track. It was saddled, and the reins hung to the ground. Power looked about the neighbourhood for the rider, and quickly found him, spread out in the middle of the road. At once he shook the mare into life and trotted forward. The horse under the tree whinnied at their approach; but there was no movement from the form in the path. At the last moment the mare took fright, and Power was hard employed to bring her to reason. He jumped presently to the ground and bent over the body. He found a heavy man in middle years lying on his back, breathing with deep snores. It was a matter for proof if the man were hurt; but there was no doubt of his drunkenness. A bottle of whisky filled a pocket. The fellow's head was cut, and blood had dried on it; but search discovered no other injury, and Power took him by the shoulder and shook him—firmly at first, afterwards roughly. The snores turned into chokes, the chokes became groans. Power tired of such a tardy cure, and exchanged hand for foot. The fallen man opened his eyes.

"Day, mate. Wot do you think you're doing to a cove?"

"Are you all right?" Power said.

"Right enough to stop a cove going through me pockets." The fellow licked his lips. "It's flamin' hot, mate!"

"Get up," said Power.

"Wot's got you so blooming anxious?"

"I found you on the road just now. There's the horse under the tree. It's midnight. You'll have to hurry some to be anywhere by morning."

"I'm stayin' here."

"You'll perish when the sun gets up." There was a silence while they looked at each other. Then the man swore, struggled a little and sat up. "Have you far to go?" Power said.

"Pelican Pool."

"Are you Gregory?"

"That's me when I'm home."

Power lost patience. "Well, what the devil are you doing? Are you coming or staying?"

"You're a nice bloke to help a sick cove." Gregory came across the whisky bottle. He dragged it from his pocket, and waved it in the moonlight. "I reckon I've a thirst you couldn't buy; no, not fer ten quid. Have one at the same time? No! I reckoned as much from a long-faced coot like you!"

"Get up," Power said, "and I'll give you a hand with the horse."

The beast waited for Power to catch it. Gregory had found his feet, and stood in the middle of the path looking at the whisky bottle. He proved very groggy; but recourse to the bottle put him in braver spirit, and he fell to cursing Surprise and all that lies within its gates.

"Here you are," Power said. "Go steady. I'll leg you up."

It took trouble and a pretty play of oaths to bring about the lifting up. The horse stood like a rock. Gregory swore his leg was broken; but he gained the saddle, and afterwards kept balance in a surprising way. Power, in no good temper, turned things over, and decided to take him to the Pool. It meant a journey longer by five miles—bad luck which swearing wouldn't mend.

"Come on," he said. "I'm going your way. Shake up that beast of yours. I don't want to be all night."

He turned the mare's head to Pelican Pool, and she started the journey, walking fast. The other horse kept company at a jog-trot. Gregory began a rough ride. But he held his attention to the whisky bottle, and had spilled a big part of it before they were a mile on the way. The empty bottle was thrown grandly to the ground. As time went by he turned very friendly.

"I'll be showing you something in a mile or two—my oath! yes—the best copper show in the Gulf, or in Queensland for that matter. There's a fortune there, I say. D'yer hear me? I'll be driving my buggy and pair yet. I'll be buying more grog in a day than that cove at the pub sells in a year. No more blanky shovelling for me, you make no error. I'll have all the buyers in the country there 'fore the week's out. Old Neville down at Surprise, he'll be on his knees prayin' me to sell it him. 'Ear me?"

"I hear you," Power said. And with the last bit of good temper left he added, "Are you far down?"

"Matter o' thirty foot, and ore all the way. I tell yer I'll be the richest man this side of Brisbane. 'Ear wot I say?"

With spells of talk and spells of silence, they made the rest of the journey. Gregory was more master of himself on a horse than on the ground, and at the hour's end the travelling was done. Where they approached it the river ran in the rains with a two-mile span; but now the bed was dry and filled with stones and sand. Many mean trees grew in this country. Over stones and sand the riders passed, and under trees bearing in their branches the rubbish of forgotten floods. As they went on, the timber became dense and grew to a noble size; and presently here and there among distant laced branches showed the surface of Pelican Pool. The water was lit by the light of the moon. The Pool was shrinking every day; but it still covered a mile of country, and its breadth was a fair swimmer's journey.

"Where's the camp?" Power said.

"By the castor-oil bush."

Thereupon they inclined to the right hand. Large reaches of the Pool were now plainly to be seen—very fair they showed in the moonlight, with weeds trailing about the water, and here and there a large white lily a-bloom. Small fishes leaped in the shallows. Trees leaned patiently over both banks, spreading knotted arms. Now the camp came out of the trees. Two tents were rigged side by side; and not very far off had been built a room of poles and hessian. About an open-air fireplace were the ashes of the day's fire. A dog tied near the tents uncurled at their coming, and fell to barking with great good will.

"We're here," Gregory said. "The old woman must have turned in."

"Better quiet the dog, then," Power answered. "Go steady there. I'll see you down."

He jumped to the ground and threw a stone at the dog, which dropped its tail and stopped barking. He held Gregory's horse, and Gregory climbed down. The man was fairly on his legs, when a keen voice called from one of the tents—"Is that you, boss? Boosed, I suppose?"

"There's a gen'leman here to see yer," Gregory shouted.

"Wot?"

"A gen'leman to see yer."

"Aw, blast yer, come to bed an' don't wake me up."

"I tell yer a gen'leman's here."

"Can't yer shut it?"

"Gen'leman. I say. Gen'leman."

A pause followed on this. At last the voice from the tent cried—"Get up, Moll, and see wot dad's after. I've not had a square sleep fer a week."

"Aw," said somebody in the second tent.

But in that tent a person stirred. Gregory shouted again. "Be quick, Moll. Light a lantern. The moon's no good to me in these durned trees."

"Wait a minute, can't yer?"

Power picked up the reins and remounted the mare. He had had his fill of the affair, and was riding away. "You're right now," he said to Gregory. "Good night." The gleam of a lantern appeared through the canvas of the tent. "Good night," Power called out a second time. The tent door was pushed aside, and a girl came into the open, holding a lighted lantern above her head.

Power pulled up his beast. The girl that stood there was scantily dressed. Her hair fell down her back. She was very near him, and she held the lantern that she might look him over; but the rays of light fell all about her own head and shoulders. She stared at him, not a whit disturbed at the sudden meeting.

A moment had brought Power face to face with the great experience of his life. The girl's beauty was beyond any imagining. He sat astride the mare with dropped reins, staring at her.

There, in a broken tent, in that forgotten place by the river, was one of those women who have commanded the tears and prayers of men since the world began to turn. The girl stood with the light of the lantern falling about her, with that in the carriage of her head for which a sage would forget his learning, with that in her eyes for which a saint would forego his hope of Paradise, with that in her form for which a poet would break the strings of his lyre. To look a moment on her was to grow hungry, to look long on her was to banish peace.

For that most cunning work of a great craftsman was a chalice holding the poisoned potion of desire; that rich body was an altar whereon burned the fires of longing; that loveliness was doomed to linger as midwife to men's tears. The spirit of all that is untamed made home in that form, and beside it dwelt the spirit of all that shall not find rest. And sight of that fairness brought taste of what man reaches for and may not touch, of what man climbs after to fall from with bruised knees.

Her figure was quick and strong and supple; her hair lay about her head as an aureole; her eyes were great and bright and deep; her feet were slender and without blemish; her lips waited on the coming of some supreme adventure.

Quite suddenly Power found the girl speaking to him. She held her head a little sideways and was looking over him.

"Are you camping here, Mister?" she said.

Power was startled out of his words. He sat up straight again. "No, thanks. I came along with your father. I'm going on now."

"We can give you a shake-down. It's no worry."

"No, thanks. I must get home. I'm mustering to-morrow. Good night."

"Good night, Mister."

Power rode home at a foot pace. He thought of the girl all the way. Her beauty had moved him more than anything he had known.

Midnight had chimed at Surprise, and the camp was asleep. The party telling stories from their long chairs outside the staff quarters had been broken up an hour since in a last "A-haw." Mr. Wells had forgotten his cornet, and Mr. Horrington, rather muddled, had found his stretcher and blown out the light. Houses, humpies and tents were in the dark. But outside, the pallor of the moon fell, making filigree work of the leaves on the trees, and staring coldly into the eyes of sleepy curs, which blinked back from their beds in the grasses.

The camp was asleep; but one person had stayed awake. The slight figure of a woman sat at the top of the steps leading down from the verandah of Neville's house. She sat crouched up, chin in hands, so still as to be unearthly. She had sat thus with hardly a movement for a long time.

Maud had said good night to her father on their return. The house had seemed stifling. She went into her bedroom, drew the curtains wide from the window so that the room was filled with light, opened the door leading to the verandah, undressed, and went to bed. For more than an hour she lay awake, counting the moonbeams on the wall, and listening to the song of the mosquitoes. Then she gave up pretence. She sat up in bed, slipped a wrap round her, and crossed to the window on bare feet. The night looked very charming outside, and soon she left the room, crossed the bare boards lightly as a night spirit, and came to a little balcony at the head of the steps leading down from the verandah. She sat down on the top step, putting her naked feet on the one below.

Yes, the night was charming out here—calm, empty and cooled by the ghosts of little breezes, which fluttered an instant on her face and fainted. There was pleasure in believing that she was the only one awake. It was strange to look on this slumbering camp, bearding the wilderness. She might have been a sentry watching that the hungry bush did not devour it in the hours of night. This habit of keeping the night watch had become a custom lately. The hour brought her more profit than any other of the twenty-four. She was not hot and fagged; she spoke the truth to herself; she could trust her judgments. The calm watered her soul as a shower of rain, so that it swelled up, and flowers broke from it. It was wonderful this growth of soul which lately had been her portion, this serenity brought about by losing herself in another. Sitting here, she told herself how thankful she ought to be. Night was very kind, like some nurse who whispers her child into sweet dreams.

This comprehension of life, this sureness of decision, had all grown up in two years. This renouncing of oneself that another might profit was the fountain from which gushed the purest waters at which the spirit could drink. Yet how many drank at that fountain? Instead, they sat at the windows of their houses in the streets of life, and remarked indifferently the pale faces glued to the panes across the way. Unless it happened that someone, sick with the bloodless silence, broke down one of those bolted doors and pushed inside, the faces sat always staring down the street, and the winds of desolation sweeping down the chimney at even, scattered the flames upon the hearth, and starved the watchers at their seats.

A good love was a wonderful thing, like the fire of the refiner, burning away the dross and leaving the pure metal. She had found it a philosopher's stone, making life golden, giving her humour to laugh when her father was tiresome, leaving her proof against the little annoyances of the day. And better than that. No shortcomings in the man she loved caused her misgiving now. He was easy to anger; a little selfish sometimes; he was thoughtless often. But love had brought understanding of him, and understanding meant forgiveness. She blessed him as she thought of him on his way across the plain, rejoicing that she might serve him, thankful to him for the growth of spirit he had caused in her.

The little breezes sighed, fanned her a moment and passed on, a few leaves turned on the trees; but she sat wrapped in the serenity of her contemplation.

CHAPTER IV Kaloona Run

Power was abroad again before sunrise. Daylight moved over the country, and he bathed, dressed, and pulled on his boots while butcher birds called, and small finches bobbed and twittered in the bushes. As he made an end of his task, the sun rose with menacing countenance. He went outside, looked which way the breeze was, and next walked down the track to the stable. He stopped at the door, threw it open, and cried out loud, "Scandalous Jack! Hullo there!"

At the back of the stable sounded a shuffling, and a small man, with bristling beard and chipped yellow teeth set in a weather-worn face, came out of the shadow, broom in hand. He stood in front of Power, and put his hands together on top of the broom handle, spat carefully, wiped his hairy mouth and shouted—"Marnin', Guv'nor. You're late."

Power nodded. "I was late back from Surprise last night. I'll be away after breakfast though. Did they get in the black horse?"

"Aye, they brought him in yesterday. He broke from the mob and showed Mick his heels for two mile. He's first rate—a bit soft maybe—and as cranky as ever. Ye must watch him or he'll pelt you this side o' the flat. Aye, aye, ye may ride above a bit, but I'm telling yer." Scandalous jerked his head.

"I'll look at him."

"Come on then."

The two men disappeared into the stable. They came to a stall at the end of a row, and there, tied to a ring in the manger, stood a grand upstanding horse, black-coated from poll to coronet, which met their coming with ears laid down and a white flash of teeth. It was an animal to fill the eye of any man. It stood at sixteen hands to an inch or so either way, ribbed up as a barrel, with great quarters and shoulders sloped for speed. Its head was delicate for all its other proportions, but there was that in the eye to tell a man to go about his business warily. It showed a fair condition for a first day's stabling.

"Yes, he's pretty right," Power said. He called out to the animal to stand over, and went to its head, and he had looked it all about before coming away.

"Mick got off with his lot?" he said.

Scandalous Jack went on speaking at a shout. "Aye, they were away be four in the marnin'. Mick says he'll be mustered and have the mob at Ten Mile midday. You're meeting him there, Guv'nor, for the cutting out, I reckon?" Power nodded his head. "Mick says to-night's camp's going up lower end of Pelican Pool." Scandalous looked very wise.

"What do you mean?"

"Mick's doin' good work there."

"You're a fool, Scandalous."

"I may be that. Some fools see more than wise men with spectacles. Have ye heard about the gouger's girl there?"

"What about her?"

"Mick's silly as a snake on her. They say she's a daddy for looks."

"I'm for breakfast," Power said. "Give this horse a look over. I'll want him in an hour."

Power went to breakfast. It was ready for him in a low bare room, with fly netting on doors and windows. One door opened on a verandah, where creepers waged war with the climate. Mrs. Elliott, the cook, and Maggie, the maid of all other work, had found excuse to wait for him. He knew the sign of old, and prepared to be discreet. He nodded his good morning. "Breakfast in?" he asked.

Maggie answered with great good will. "It's been getting cold this ten minutes."

She was a handsome girl in the early morning, before the heat fagged her. Mrs. Elliott, in middle life, ample and beaming, busied herself briskly doing nothing, waiting to take the talk her way. The two women attacked him together.

"You must eat a good breakfast, Mr. Power. You've a long day before you. You were very late abed, Mr. Power. You can't burn the candle at both ends."

"He's always late, Mrs. Elliott, when he comes back from Surprise." The women shook their heads at each other. "And how was Miss Neville, Mr. Power?"

"She was very well, thanks. I must get a turkey or a wallaby. I've lost my appetite for curry and steak half the week, and steak and curry the other half."

"And me so put about with the breakfast," exclaimed Mrs. Elliott, twisting her apron. "All men are the same, ungrateful, every man jack o' them. As soon look for gratitude from calves in a branding yard. Now I suppose as Miss Neville she'll be turning over a date for the wedding?"

"You're learning too many secrets, Mrs. Elliott."

"I know more than other folk already."

"And that means?"

Mrs. Elliott twirled her apron once more and looked wise. "I'm hinting nothing. I know where Mick O'Neill goes of a night."

Power tipped himself back in the chair. "What are you cackling over this morning? I hope your news is fresher than last?"

"What's he running after that gel for?"

"I've not heard of any girl."

"He's a good fer nothing fellow, and the little hussy's no better."

Maggie took up the tale. "They're all stupid on her 'cos she has a few looks. That's all a man wants."

"They're not all like that, Meg. Mr. Power here, he has more sense. He took up with Miss Neville, and though she's as nice as may be, her looks are nothing out of the bag."

Power said something under his breath. He went on with his breakfast, and the women despaired of him. In the end, out of a full mouth, he said:—

"You had better see Scandalous Jack. I'm too hungry for talking. He wanted to tell me a lot this morning."

"That nasty little man! I wouldn't demean myself with him. I told him half an hour since I'd put a kettle o' water over him if he showed his ugly face in at the door agen."

The women withdrew routed.

In a little while Power followed them from the room. Standing in the verandah, he lit a pipe. His swag had gone on in the cook's waggon, and there remained only a few minutes' office work and he might get away. The old willingness to be in the saddle took hold of him. His heart was in the cattle work. The longest day made him more ready for the next. A good horse, a whip to his hand, the bellow of a mob in his ears—these things kept his heart evergreen.

Morning had come, the birds had whistled him from bed, the sun had climbed up; but the glamour of last night had not passed quite away. He found himself—and little pleased he was at it—he found himself more than once waking to the day's affairs from dreams of a girl holding up a lantern at the doorway of a tent by a river.

Mrs. Elliott had forgiven the churlishness of breakfast, and waited with an ample lunch, secure from sun and flies. He promised to be back some day or other, took up a dripping water-bag and his whip, and passed to the stable. The black horse, saddled and waiting, fidgeted by the door, and Scandalous Jack was taking aggressive charge.

Scandalous thrust up his hard face to shout a warning.

"He'll be shaking yer up, boss, I reckon. He fooled me half an hour 'fore I had the saddle on him."

"Wants a day's work," Power said. He looked over the girths and secured the water-bag. All he did was gentle and cautious. At the touch of the wet canvas the black horse snorted, reared up and swung about. Scandalous, very fond of his corns, retired in a hurry. With voice and a firm handling Power kept the beast in check. He had completed matters in a few minutes. Whereupon he coiled the whip on his arm, and drew together the reins. He went about the mounting with cunning, and when the moment of moments came, was in the saddle in one movement.

The black horse squealed, and its head went down between its legs as a stone from a catapult. It came high off the ground, all four feet together, in a great bucking plunge which tried all Power's skill to ride. The ground fell away from him and spun about, there came to his ears a great straining of leather, and he knew a fierce shock as the brute went to earth. Instinct set him leaning back, with legs fierce gripping and toes down pointing. Horse and rider went up again, with a heave tremendous beyond belief, and there was an instant when Power stared down at emptiness. They were down and up in one breathing, and away with great bounds that threw them across the yard. A heave, a thud, a grunt and a swing brought them about, and on the heels of it they were going up into the air again. Down then and up into space again, all four feet together, groaning with the effort, while the hot dust streamed into Power's face. The rally was over in a dozen seconds, and the horse stood heaving, and Power settled himself in the saddle.

"Rough horse that!" Scandalous shouted from the fence.

"He makes it too hot to last."

"Don't take him cheap on that lay. He'll be rid of yer yet. He'll give yer all you know one of these days, and I'm taking no odds on who's the better."

It had just turned eight o'clock when Power began the ride, but already the sun was powerful, and the birds flagged at their songs. He journeyed at walking pace, watching the horse carefully the first few miles. Last traces of early cool were departing. A few threads of gossamer shimmered among the spikes of the grasses, and blundering hoofs tore them apart. A few feeding kangaroos sat at late breakfast. The homestead moved behind the trees, and he and the beast he rode were all that passed across the plain.

He grew contented at once now he had made a beginning of the day's work. As another man forgets his ill-humours in the counting-house, or the library, or his mistress's bower, so Power turned for distraction to his saddle and his whip. A bushman's heart was his birthright; a bushman's cunning was the legacy of fiery summer afternoons on horseback, and frosty winter dawns spent abroad. In the dreariest page of Nature he found reading. His eye was quick to read the riddle of the ways. The fall of a hill, the sweep of a dry creek bed, a few patterings of passage in the dust—these answered most questions he asked. In that country was no better judge of where to come up with a mob of cattle, nor one, be it night or day, who rode straighter to a point. He passed over the plain sitting easy in the saddle, pipe in mouth, whip on arm, his head fallen forward, as a man sits asleep. But his eyes peered abroad, and his brain was active. He rode to muster as the knight of old rode to the tourney.

His way led by a short cut through the ranges. The trysting place lay just beyond. At a few miles end, he was entering a pass of magnificence. The ranges lifted up on either hand, with mighty boulders resting about their sides, and difficult caves—home of bat and wallaby—opening dark mouths. The way took him below stunted trees, and over brittle fallen boughs, and across stones which slipped beneath the horse's feet. A second gully crossed the head of the pass, and escapes led into the hills. Here was an old watch-ground of the blacks. The difficult part of the journey had come. Power left the saddle for the ground. The path turned left-handed, to clamber over a multitude of rocks to easier country. In the rains a waterfall swirled this way. Here and again here a pool of clear water was lodged in a basin of rock, and above one such pool Nature had scooped a shelter in the hill. Past tribes of men had left rude paintings on the wall. With snorts and steadying cries the journey was done, and man and beast came out into a wide timbered prospect.

It was a fair spot to hap on in that desolate country, with a good gathering of trees about a dry creek bed, and one or two late birds twittering in them, and a muster of insects going about their day's work over the hot ground. There were grateful patches of shade. This was Ten Mile. At noon O'Neill had vowed to be at hand with the mob. Power looked at the sun and guessed at ten o'clock. He turned over whether to go farther; but a wait in the shade was better argument than a ride in the open. He took the saddle from the black horse, and tethered the beast in a cool place, and he himself lay down at hand for a pipe and his thoughts. Presently a thread of smoke curled into the hot air, driving away disappointed the flies which came in their hosts a-visiting.

It was pleasant work lying here in the shade with nothing to disturb a fellow for an hour or two until the cattle came along, and the sunshine heat finding a way into the shadow to make a man drowsy. It was good to lie flat on one's back, blinking at the sunbeams through the leaves. It was good, too, to suck at a pipe and watch the blue smoke go up. And again it was good listening to the twitter of a few birds, and—opening eyes—to see insects examining the ins and outs of the tree trunks. It brought memories of other such lazy hours, snatched between a hard morning and a hard afternoon. Give a man good health and work, and there was little else he wanted to bring content.

How the smell of the scrub lingered this morning. Ordinarily the sun drove it early away. If he lived too long and became an old blind man, he would get someone to lead him to a patch of scrub at early morning that he might sharpen memory there.

It must be hot in the open. The sunlight was burning him wherever a break in the boughs let it through. He was a lucky chap to own this great stretch of country, and every head of cattle on it, to have good horses to ride, and to be his own master. No doubt there were unlucky devils who never had these good things. A man knew little enough of other men when all was said and done, and cared little enough for their troubles either, if truth be told.

Yet things were a shade out of tune to-day, pretend as he might; put the feeling by as he would. Presently he sat up. With an oath, he knocked out his empty pipe on a stone. He whipped himself for a fool. He was a man with a mind of his own, he was in love with another woman; and a girl twenty years old, who had not spoken a dozen words to him, was taking up his thoughts all day. Ah! but she was the most perfect thing he had known.

The heat of the day came into the spot of his choosing, the sun climbed into the sky, and he judged the hour towards noon. He rose to his feet, pushed a handkerchief about his face, and grew busy gathering sticks on a square of barren ground.

There came through the timber, after many minutes, a far-off murmur, such as might travel from a distant surge of the sea, or from a heavy wind moving in a hollow. It was vague, and many would have been at pains to pick it up; but the horse lifted ears to it, and Power came out of his brown study. It arrived as a murmur; but the passing minutes gave it volume. It was strangely exciting. Power knew it from the beginning. It was the roar of a mob of cattle driven against their will.

Presently the sound turned to broken bellowing, and into the tumult entered the snapping of boughs, the bang of whips, and the fierce voices of men. Power stood up. The mob must round the foot of a hill before coming into view. He laid a hand on the horse's bridle and waited for them.

They came in a little while—one or two as a beginning, afterwards the body of them. They dawdled forward, picking at the grass tufts, horning one another, and lifting heads to bellow. They showed to the eye a hardy, good-coloured mob of store cattle, the big part of them six-year bullocks, more ready for a doze by a waterhole than for this journey in the sun with men hanging at their houghs. They counted two hundred maybe, and three white stockmen and a couple of blackfellows handled them, turning them on the flanks, and hunting them forward in the rear. They were a suspicion nervous, and gave Power a wide berth; but the noon heat made them easy handling. By the time they were round the foot of the hill, a stockman, pulling about his horse, rid himself of their company and cantered across. The man pulled up a big chestnut animal a few yards from Power, and showed a happy, handsome face under a big brimmed hat. He was a good figure of a man, riding his horse with a swagger. He had wide kneepads to his saddle, and long rusty spurs at his heels, a shirt wide open at the neck, and in his hand a whip. His skin was brown. Sitting there, he looked a hardy fellow, one to put a good day's work behind him.

He had pulled his horse up from the canter. "Day, Mr. Power."

"Good day, Mick. They came along all right?"

"Yes, boss. A strong lot. Good travellers. An' quiet enough too. We'll make Morning Springs Wednesday certain."

Power nodded his head. "Did you cut those few out?"

"All bar a half-dozen. We can fix 'em at the camp to-night. There's a roan bull to be dropped. I don't know how he came with this lot. I didn't see him when we picked 'em up. He wants watching. He's cranky in the head." So speaking, the man leaned over and pointed his whip at a beast on the outside of the mob. "I suppose we're making camp here for an hour or two."

"My oath, yes. I'll get a fire going."

Mick O'Neill turned his horse about and put it to the canter. Again he made a figure becoming his name as the daddy stockman for a hundred miles about. Power filled a quart pot at the water-bag, and built and lit a fire. The flames rushed to embrace the hot wood. Others of the company arrived with filled quart pots and pushed them into the flames. The blackfellows held the cattle until they had drawn out and dropped to their knees. The horses were unsaddled and unbitted. The quart pots came from the fire. The tea was made. The sticks were trodden into the sand, and the company took themselves into the shade, to sprawl there, one eye waiting for the cattle, one hand waiting for the flies.

They kept to camp through the heat of the day, and little was spoken the while. They smoked and stared up through a lattice of leaves at the lofty sky. The fierceness of the sun was spent when Power gave the signal by sitting up. The horses were saddled, the men found their seats—there was galloping of hoofs, a banging of whips, and the mob flowed on the journey over the plain.

It was half-past six in the evening and the sun was down on the western sky, when the mob splashed into the shallows at the lower end of Pelican Pool. Cleanskin Joe, the lean rusty cook, who had spent a busy life darkening the doorways of most hotels in Queensland and New South Wales, had arrived there early in the morning, steering a two-horse buckboard loaded up with swags, camp furniture and tucker bags. Cleanskin Joe had built his fireplace, had put his Johnnie-cake in the ashes, had talked half the day with Jackie the black horse-tailer, coming after him with spare horses. Now, with his stew simmering, he cast a hundred glances into the distance for the tardy cattle. His eyes, once quick to meet an emergency, were bleared a trifle from that constant darkening of doors. But finally they and his ears could not be deceived, and he peered into the camp oven and turned the contents with a long-handled ladle.

Now all the world knows that cooks from sheep stations give you grilled chops and curry and stew the round of the year, and cooks on cattle stations serve grilled steak and curry and stew until you turn aside in sorrow; but Cleanskin Joe was a man of resource, and every breakfast he chopped up rissoles, rolling them on the back of the buckboard where had gathered the grime of ten years' honest service. Because of this, and because too many whiskies had cured him of a love of water, either for inside or outer use, he had won his name of Cleanskin Joe.

He was a man of history.

Once upon a time Cleanskin Joe and the Honourable So-and-so, both out at elbows with the world just then, had found a copper show a round forty miles from the nearest hotel. They woke up one morning on bowing terms with wealth. They had broken a new lode going any percentage you like of ore. They stared at it without a word to say.

The Honourable So-and-so had a vision. He saw dogs and women and wine.

And Cleanskin Joe saw the price of a whisky.

And Mr. So-and-so saw horses and cards and more wine.

And Cleanskin Joe saw the price of another whisky.

And Mr. So-and-so saw freedom from the Jews, and green tables and yet more wine.

And Cleanskin Joe saw prices of endless whiskies.

Then said Mr. So-and-so, "Our one chance, old man, is to miss the hotel." Cleanskin Joe wagged his head. Said Mr. So-and-so, "We must cut the waggon road to miss it by a dozen miles."

They drove their road over rise and down dip, plying the tools with right good will because of that vision. One night Mr. So-and-so would say—"How about direction, dear fellow? Are we enough to the right?" And next night it was Cleanskin Joe. "I reckon we're safe to miss that blankey place now, holdin' left as we're doing."

But who shall win when Fate plays hide-and-seek? On the hottest day of the hottest summer in man's memory, they drove the road into a clearing of the bush where the doors of the Drink-me-Dry Hotel leaned open to meet them.

. . . . . . .

Cleanskin Joe blinked his eyes through the smoke when Power cantered up. "Evening, boss. I was lookin' for yer an hour since. What time do yer want tucker ready?"

"Half an hour will finish us. There's a bit of cutting out to do. What about a drop of tea?"

"Right on the spot. Take care. It's durned hot."

Power drank the tea, and urged his horse about. The bullocks straggled from the pool where they had been drinking. Power had given orders to keep the horses from water, and the cattle were rounded up on the way from the shallows.

Presently the mob was bunched. First there came a time of talking and shaking of heads. At the end of it, Power and O'Neill worked a way into the jumble of animals, looking this way and that for the half dozen cows, and keeping a wide eye for accidents. The beasts gave them fair roadway, backing over here and there with snorting and a sweep of the head. "Here we are," Power said.

He leaned a little forward and with a nice movement dropped his whip on to the quarters of a red cow. On the instant the black horse answered the signal. Power gave the reins to its neck and sat back with waiting whip. Not far away O'Neill followed ready for what might come. The black horse moved to the red cow's shoulder, and steered her with a pretty cunning to the outside of the mob, nor lost place a single time, though she twisted, turned and propped with skill. It was a game of trick and shift to liven the eye of any man. She came presently to the outermost circle, bellowing with nervousness and hurry. The black horse was at her shoulder goading her farther into the open. She lost her head and trotted a few paces from the mob, and that moment turned the scales against her. As the black horse got into his stride, Power let out his whip, and O'Neill came up behind with a hurry of hoofs. They fell upon her with a scramble of blows. She bellowed, threw up her head, tried to swing back to the mob, slipped, heard the bang of whips about her ears, and took to her heels across the plain, with both men at her tail. She showed them her heels for a quarter of a mile. "She's right!" Power cried out.

The last of the cows was cut out as dusk began to settle. There remained only a few minutes to dark. "There's that bull yet," Power said. He sat on a heaving horse, and lifted his hat from his head. The men pushed a passage into the mob again. The herd was showing rather nervous, and took handling to hold together. The roan bull met their coming with a bellow and a shake of the head. But the black horse stood to his shoulder, and the journey to the outside began. All the way the bull showed little liking for the hustling, but his efforts to trick the enemy availed him nothing, and he found himself of a sudden on the outside of the mob, and a black horse urging him farther into the open. In a flash he turned very ugly. It was the turn of a hair whether he rushed or not. There was no waiting to add up chances, a wasted moment meant his loss into the mob. Power brought his whip down, and a long broad mark curled up in the smoking hair. The bull roared and dropped his head. He was coming this time with no two meanings. Power swept up the reins to pull the horse aside. Ill luck was at his back. He found himself jammed in a press of cattle. He shook his feet clear of the stirrups. He made ready with the whip again. He cut into the bull again, and he felt the horse go beneath him, and himself falling back into a huddle of bellowing beasts. With all his might he pulled the horse clear of the horns. Horse and bull and he came down in a scurry on the ground. He rolled clear of the saddle. He scrambled on to a knee. He spat the dust from his mouth. And then the mob at his back split, and O'Neill rode up in a fury, a whip waiting in his hand. The bull was on its knees, jerking to its feet. A hurry of blows fell about its face. It stumbled, slipped, and sprawled on its back. The whip stopped falling, and a man jumped from his horse to the ground. With great quickness he caught up the bull's tail, and thrust a foot into a hollow of its hip. Thus he held it on the ground without any great effort. There was shouting as the men called to each other.

"Are yer orl right?"

"Think so."

"Can you get clear?"

"Aye!"

On the words followed a scramble of hoofs and a heave as the black horse gained his haunches. Power was on his feet, and had thrown a leg across the saddle. Another scramble, another heave gave the horse its legs and Power a seat a-top of it. Power swung it to one hand with rein and spurs, and leant far from the saddle towards the horse standing by. "Let go when you can!" he cried out. "I have your horse!"

The man on the ground sprang clear of the bull. He clapped both hands on the arch of the saddle, and vaulted into the seat. Shaken, and with lost breath, the bull found its feet, but it had not thrown the sweat from its eyes before the whips fell on it with a cruel fury. Its courage was no more. It took to its heels across the plain.

"Close go that," O'Neill said. "Are you hurt any?"

"No, I fell clear. You got me out of a hole. I'll do as much for you some day."

"All in a day's work," O'Neill said. "'Struth! I reckon it's time for a pipe."

Quite suddenly the night stepped into the shoes of day. Darkness arrived in a hurry, and the stars pushed themselves out of the sky. The camp was chosen, the first watch was set. The horses, hobbled and with bells about their necks, moved musically into the shadows, the little company found the way to the cook's fire. There was stew in the camp oven, and a ladle at hand. A pile of tin dishes was on the ground. The Johnnie-cake waited on a box, and the earth lay spread for a table. There is many a worse roof than the sky offers, and many a more restless bed than a mattress of grasses.

Supper ended, and there came the hour when pipes are pulled out. Power went out of the firelight presently, and listened to the mob getting to camp for the night. There was a little bellowing from over there, and now and then sounds of scurry, but nothing to cause unquiet. He came back to O'Neill. "I'm going across to Gregory's for a while," he said. "He was talking about a copper show of his. I'll be back for my watch. I don't think you will have any trouble. Good night." He thought O'Neill looked up over-quickly. "I don't think you will have any trouble," he repeated. "Would you sooner I stayed? I will if you like."

"There's no need, boss," said the other indifferently. "I didn't know you knew them over there." The man began whistling.

"So long, then."

"So long, boss."

CHAPTER V The Hut By Pelican Pool

Power picked up his whip by way of company, and took the road to the camp. The journey was done in ten minutes' time. The moon had not risen, and he found the place in darkness, and from somewhere at hand came the sudden bark of the dog. The tents were empty, but the hessian building—a shabby affair—showed lamplight through half-a-dozen holes, and sounds of movement came from inside. The gouger called out roughly to the dog, but the brute barked on at full voice, backing away into the shadows. Power brought his whip-handle down on the door-post. The doorway was empty of a door, and he looked into a room lit by a couple of lanterns. He had time to see a table and seats, knocked together haphazard, and a woman of middle life bending over a basin at the farther end. Then the opening was filled by the gouger, who peered out into the dark.

"Good evening," Power said.

"Same to you," said the gouger. And he added with a wrinkling up of his eyes—"I can't see more than half way through a brick wall in this durned light. Anything up?"

"I'm camping on the Pool to-night. You told me to take a look at your show when I was round. I've come along on the chance. Maybe I've turned up at an off time. In that case it's my own funeral, that's all. Couldn't get away before."

"So that's the lay. You're right enough. I'll fix you in a shake. It's five minutes through the scrub. I can pick yer up a specimen or two what's lying round about the shanty, if the women have let 'em be. But, but"——the gouger began to lose his words and screw his mouth up and finger his beard——. "Strike me," he said. "Strike me if I know you."

The woman had left her work, and now peered over his shoulder. She nudged him. "Yes, yer do, boss," she said in a heavy whisper. "It's Mr. Power, of Kaloona—him as brought yer back last night."

"You aren't getting at me?" said he of the beard in an aside.

"Aw!"

Then Gregory, the gouger, turned very friendly.

"Mr. Power it is," he cried out, rolling the upper half of his body, and showing his dirty teeth. "It's Mr. Power come for a look at the show. My eyes haven't got the hang o' the dark yet. Come inside, Mr. Power. I'm glad you found the way here, square and all I am."

With something of a to-do the couple backed from the doorway, and Power went into the room. Two lamps, placed high up, gave the light, which was poor and depressing, and round about the globes beat frantically a great army of insects. Power went into the room, and the close air made him pause. He stopped to blink his eyes at the light. A moment later he looked up, and across the table, busy at some cups in a basin, he saw the girl he had dreamed of half the day.

The wonder of her beauty came over him again with a feeling akin to pain. She was looking him in the face with frank curiosity. He it was who felt embarrassed and first turned away. He laughed at his scruples next moment, and returned her stare for stare. He looked her over slowly to discover her secret. And he succeeded ill. For her loveliness was anchored to no this or that. She stood in the shabby room, a jewel of such price as asked no setting. Her beauty would never stale, having found the secret of the dawn which arrives morning by morning, ready and wonderful, though all else is passing by in the turning of the years. The men, who presently would come to kneel in homage there, would wonder at this glorious body no less the last hour than the first.

Her hair was brown and shining, and heaped up about her head. Her eyes were of a dark colour, of great size, and moment by moment sleepy with dreams or bright with brief fires. Her mouth was heavy with passion and gaoler of a thousand quick moods; her lips were bright, and behind them little teeth gleamed white and charming. Her dress was open at the neck, where her firm throat swept to her bosom. Her arms, bare to the elbows, had taken their brown from the sun, but their shapeliness was a wonder and delight. Her hands were slender and quick as they moved in the water. What age was she? Twenty, it might be.

"Good evening, Mister," she said.

"Good evening," he answered.

Gregory and his wife were hovering at his back. It was "Sit down, Mr. Power," and "Make yerself at home, Mr. Power. I wish we had a better seat for you, Mr. Power; but we haven't been here above two week, and the boss isn't for doing more graft than he need."

"It's that show, as I've told the old gel. It tires a bloke out," said Gregory. The woman answered him with a curl of the lip.

Power sat down on an up-ended box. He could put his elbow on the table, which had been knocked together slap-dash with a few nails. After further to-do Gregory sat at hand with a pipe in his mouth. The women started again on their business. In the pause in matters which came on this sitting down Power felt the staleness of the room. He had time to wonder why he had come. He took a second look at Mrs. Gregory. She showed the ruins of good looks which the climate and hard living had squandered. Her face was full of greed and craft. The man at his side was a mixture of rogue and fool. Power had given up a smoke and a yarn in the cool for this. For he didn't care the crack of a whip for the show. His line was cattle, not copper. Then the girl had brought him here. And to-morrow he was to see the girl he loved. He was a fool for his pains.

He was a fool for his pains, yet he would not have been more content staying away. Something drew him here by roots deep down in him. How her beauty moved him! Here stood a savage child, with her longings crudely waiting on her lips, possessed of a body which was holy. Why was she here, growing up alone and unwatched, to age before her time? It was the law that painted the wings of the butterfly and brought the cripple into the world; the law, jumbled beyond man's following, that caused suns to blaze and worlds to groan in labour that meanest gnat might spin a giddy hour.

He must pull himself together.

"That was your mob on the road this afternoon, I reckon?" the woman asked, looking up of a sudden.

"Yes, we came from the Ten Mile."

"A handy lot," Gregory said, wagging his head, and spitting with a pretty skill through the doorway.

"Do you reckon to be long on the road with them?" the woman asked once more.

"I'm travelling to Morning Springs. We ought to be back inside the week."

The washing had come to an end. The girl collected the clean crockery and grew busy at a shelf. The woman threw the water outside the door, and dried her hands on a rag. "You come for a look at the boss's show?" she said as she finished.

"Yes, I heard one or two speaking of it, and thought I might come along."

"Do you do anything in the copper way?"

"I've an interest in a show or two. I don't go much on it."

"The boss's show looks A1. One of the Surprise men was down for a look round in the morning."

"Ah, who was that?"

"Mr. —— Moll, what's his name?"

"Mr. King," said the girl.

"And what did King say about it?"

"He talked big enough," Gregory put in. "But he seemed as interested in the gel there. He said he might be along agen."

"Dad, yer tongue's too big for yer mouth."

"Well, he seemed uncommon shook on yer. I reckon he thought yer show better than my show. A-haw, haw, haw! A-haw, haw, he-haw!"

"Mr. King is a pleasant-spoken gentleman," Mrs. Gregory said.

"And," said Gregory, "I'd have thought him pleasanter if he had come to a bargain."

The girl, Moll Gregory, came back from the shelf. She put both hands upon the table, and bent a little over it. Her great eyes looked into Power's face. "Do you know Mr. King?" she said.

"I often run across him."

"Wot is he like?"

"King's a good fellow."

"He says funny things."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, he looked at me, you know, like men look when they're after a lark, and he says: 'I came to look at copper and I found gold.' I couldn't take up his meaning quite, but I guessed he was trying to fool me."

The woman interrupted. "Maybe you're thinking of making an offer for the show?"

"Don't rush him, old woman. Maybe I'll hang on to it."

"No, yer won't. You'll sell out and clear from the game. I want to see some life. I'm tired of these dull holes, I am. You'll fool the thing up and get took down, as you've been a dozen times."

Something in this sentence put Gregory on a new turn of thought, for he put his pipe on the table, clawed his beard a moment, and got up. "D'yer know anything of wire strainers?" He began to hunt in a corner and brought out parts of a clumsy machine, together with a tangle of wire. The woman flew at him.

"If you'd give by that foolery and do a bit of shovelling we might be better off. Who wants a wire strainer where there isn't a fence for two hundred mile? You make me sick, yer do."

"Steady on, mother." Gregory fell into explanation, and in time brought out a potato digger of his invention, and illustrated that fortune was but a stay-away. Mrs. Gregory gave over talk, and drew an ancient illustrated paper from somewhere, and sat down to turn the leaves. The girl employed herself with one thing and another, going in and out of the doorway, and seeming intent on her business; but Power knew she watched him, and he himself missed nothing she did. Her beauty was beyond the telling. Whether she walked, whether she sat, whether she stood a moment by the doorway peering into the night, she was so wonderful that nothing else was worth the looking.

What was happening to him to-night!

At last Gregory was persuaded to put his inventions back in their corner and light lanterns. "You'd better come along, gel," he said. "We may want you to hold a light." He and Moll Gregory and Power set out, and Power came to remember the journey as many pictures of one girl who passed from light into shadow and from shadow into light. She strode beside him with the free walk of a goddess. They arrived at the shaft, and she stood over the black mouth, holding a lantern to guide the downward clamber. From his station at the bottom, Power saw her bending overhead, with one hand on the windlass for support, and the stars of the sky gathered together for background. He looked here and there at the broken earth as Gregory bade him, and the dull green of the copper appeared in abundance. It was dirty work and hot, with ever a trickle of dirt down the back of the neck, and he wished himself well up at the top again. They had climbed up presently, and very soon had made the road home. The close air of the hut gave them ill greeting. Gregory put down the lantern noisily on the table, blew a big breath out of his mouth, and ran a finger round the neck of his shirt.

"This weather's no good for climbing about in," he said.

The woman looked up from her paper with a keen face. "Wot did you think of the show, Mr. Power?"

"I don't know much about that sort of thing, Mrs. Gregory. It looks thundering good."

Gregory began to think. "There's specimens about the place," he said, "but durn me if I know where to come on them."

"You left two or three by the pool, Dad."

"Could you find 'em?"

"Maybe."

"Have a look then, gel."

"It doesn't matter," Power said.

"It will be no worry." Moll Gregory picked up the lantern and was going out of the door. Power crossed the room of a sudden.

"I'll come with you. It will save bringing them back."

"Orl right, Mr. Power."

They went out into the dark. The moon would rise in a few minutes; but now the night was dark and still and close. The sky was filled with stars shining with the fierce heat of the tropics. The Southern Cross lay against the horizon; but in the North, Orion was climbing up, and the Scorpion curled his tail in the middle of the sky. The dog shuffled from the shadows after them, and very soon man and girl had passed between the trees by the bank of the waterhole. They were walking side by side, the girl bearing the lantern, and it was as they came upon the bank that Moll Gregory broke silence.

"It was round here," she said, pausing to take bearing. "Dad left them one day when he couldn't be bothered taking them home."

She put the lantern this way and that, and they made careful search. But their trouble was empty of profit.

"This is where they was," she said. "Maybe Mr. King lifted them. There's been no one else this way."

"It doesn't matter," Power answered. "The show was good enough."

They were looking into the Pool, which the gloom made mysterious and of great size. The water was fretted with the images of stars. Big moths came out of the dark to beat against the lantern. Power spoke because it was impossible to stand there without a reason.

"A grand place this."

"It isn't so bad. Bit slow after Mount Milton."

"Do you want people?"

"I'm not particular; but a gel wants a bit of life sometimes. It's terrible weary of a time without a sight of anyone new. Sometimes I'm fair spoiling for a bit of fun."

"What do you do with yourself? Do you read?"

"I'm no great hand at learning. I got no schoolin'."

"Never been to school?"

"No, we always lived out back where there was none. I've not been christened neither. Never saw a church for that matter. There was a parson what came round our parts once with a pack-'orse. I fair scared him out of his life when I let on about it. He was for fixing me straight then."

"Why didn't you let him?"

"Something happened. I forget."

There came a space of silence. She lifted her great eyes. "Yes, I'm spoiling for a bit of life. I'm sick of seeing nothing. I reckon maybe you've moved about, Mister?"

"I travelled a bit."

"That Mr. King, he's been about a bit."

"Did he say so?"

"Yes, he said—aw, it doesn't matter what he said. It was something stupid."

"What was it?"

"Aw——"

"Tell me."

"Aw, he only said as he'd been all over the world, but hadn't met a gel to equal me. He said all the silks and satins in the world would never do me proper. He said as he'd be back in a day or two. Do you reckon he'll come?"

It was Power who was put out of countenance. He said after a moment—"D'you want him to come?"

"I won't be worried if he do. He knows how to talk a gel round."

The moon began to rise. As it left the horizon it was as large as a cartwheel and as rich as a copper platter. Its light began to find a way into many places. The waters of the Pool grew very fair. But nothing in that prospect was fair as the girl at Power's side.

Who knows what thoughts just then came knocking at the doors of his brain? Truth to tell he fell to frowning and nursing his lower lip. The girl was impatient before he came out of his brown study.

"I have to get back," he said. "The moon is up. I am taking next watch."

"Mick O'Neill is with you, isn't he?"

"He is in charge now. I relieve him. D'you know him?"

"He's often this way."

They were on the way back to the hut. "Is he interested in copper, too?"

The girl looked up in a puzzled way.

"Well, copper or no copper," Power said of a sudden, "you've a straight man there. I don't know any better one. That's about it."

He fell into thought again, walking at no great pace with eyes upon the ground. His preoccupation brought a pout to the girl's lips. She said: "You're to be a week on the road, aren't you?"

"That's about it."

"Will you be seeing us agen?"

"Would you like me to?"

"I reckon dad likes a yarn of a night."

"And what about yourself?"

"Aw, yes." Saying this she looked up and laughed.

"Listen, girl, here's the camp. Stand still. King told you he had never met a girl to equal you. I can tell you more than that. I can tell you that no queen with her crown on her head and her throne underneath her ever held the power you hold. You can make the wise man foolish, and fill the fool with learning. You can take the clean man to the mire, and cause the dirty man to wash his hands. Ah, girl! don't listen."

"Aw, get out," she said.

"Back agen." Gregory called out, pushing his bunch of dirty beard out at the door. "Did you tumble on them?"

"No luck," Power said. "It's no matter. There isn't any doubt about the show. I'm back to say good night. I've my watch to stand over there."

"Won't you have a cup of tea," said the woman, coming to the door.

"Not this time; I can't wait. I'm sorry."

"Ye'll be back sometime?"

"Yes, I'll look you up in a few days. Maybe you'll have opened up the show a bit by then. Well, good night."

"Good night, Mr. Power."

"Good night, Mr. Power."

"So long, Mister."

CHAPTER VI The Coach comes to Surprise

Next day Power kept his promise, and rode into Surprise as soon as he could. He let go the horse in a yard, and tramped the stony stretch which lies before the house. Outside the accountant's office he came across Mr. Neville and Maud. He heard Maud's cry, "Well done, Jim," and the old man waved a stick in the act of pouncing on a passer by. Maud came up in great glee.

"How quick you've been. I was not expecting you till sunset."

"I've had good luck. They're a strong lot. Mick O'Neill is taking them to the hollow. You must ride out with me to-night for a look at them."

"But I can't, Jim. And I'd love to. These wretched people come to-day. Don't you remember? I can't leave them to father the first night."

"I forgot them. Hang it! that settles it, I suppose."

"We're on the way to meet the coach now. Come along. You have nothing else to do, have you?"

"I'll come, of course. You ought to pull that hat down, girl. Your face is getting burnt to bits."

"You said you liked me brown."

Old Neville was hard engaged with the passer by. The two people heard his harangue, and saw him blowing cigar smoke in a hurry. Soon he drove the enemy through the office door, pursuing him hard in retreat. At once Maud went close to Power.

"Jim," she said, "I've been so nice to father all day. He is splendid just now. As soon as you get him alone, ask him about our marriage. He'll be reasonable this time, I know. I'll find you a chance. Why, Jim, what's the matter to-day?"

"Matter with me?"

"Yes, you're down on your luck, aren't you?"

"You are always thinking something, Maud."

The thread of talk was broken, and they wandered into the office with nothing to say. It was built of iron sheets, held together with wooden beams. Frequent ledgers and other dreary volumes took their rest upon the tables, and files of ageing papers dangled by strings along the walls. The dust of spent willy-willys had found the upper shelves, and many an industrious fly had left a lifetime's labour on ceiling and woodwork. The corpulent cockroach walked here after the heat of the day, and the spider spread his net in the loftier corners. For at Surprise a happy line is drawn between the must-be and the need-not, and the word "broom" is not used among the best people.

The place was full of a sickly heat, but the day was Saturday, and King only had stayed behind. They found him writing at the lower end. Half-way down Neville had secured his victim between a table and a chair. The person in this unhappy case was an elderly man of a very broken appearance. He might have been a gentleman a long time ago. His hair was grey, but a moustache of any colour you please drooped over his mouth. His eyes were pale blue, with a blink, and his chin grew a day-old stubble of beard. He wore round his neck a collar of many washings and a doubtful ironing, and a tie in a limp old age. He wore no coat, which is the summer fashion; his trousers were of khaki stuff and wrinkled meekly at his boots. The toes of his boots leaned up in search of something kinder than the stones. On the little finger of his left hand showed the signet ring of the house of Horrington, of Such-and-such Hall, England.

Prosperity and Mr. Horrington were coldly acquainted. Horrington was an idealist among men. Some pass their days mapping out new continents, others knit their brows over the printing press and the steam engine. Horrington had resolved on reading the riddle of how to build a fortune within call of a hotel and without hard work. He had met with poor success. He had eschewed hard work, and he had lived within reach of a hotel; but prosperity had shrugged shoulders at him. Devotion to an idea had lost him the affection of his cousin, Sir John; had found him a passage to Australia; had drifted him presently from town to bush. Unable to contend singly with ill-fortune, he had married a faded woman, who took him and his burdens, no one knew why. Mrs. Horrington painted a little, sang a little, worked her needle a little, played the piano a little—and these arts she taught the daughters of those parents who are not exacting if terms be cheap. So Horrington had kept constant to his idea. But the lean times had brought the pair to an alien land. For at Surprise they paint only when a new coat is due to the poppet-legs, and only ply the needle should a wall need repair. At Surprise the mouth-organ and the concertina soothe the ache for higher things.

The old man came to an end of his breath.

"Sir," Mr. Horrington began with a certain dignity. "You will own I have heard you with patience."

"Eh?" the old man grunted.

"And I repeat I have every right to complain on finding myself put on a beggarly allowance of water at a moment's notice."

"We may be doing a perish before the rains come."

"Why, Good Lord! sir, what's a kerosene tin of water to a family? My wife is not a strong woman, and like all women in poor health, she's ready to blame others for her shortcomings. She has it at the back of her mind that I make a difficulty carrying the water; though, Good Lord! I've scraped my shins often enough on the tins. When I turned up with a single bucket this morning, and the goat had to go short, she put the blame at once on me. She wouldn't listen until she saw for herself the tanks were locked. Then home she went to throw herself on the bed. 'Never enough wood chopped to light a fire, now no water to wash with, not a soul to speak to, never anything to look at'—that's what I listened to until I left the place."

"Where did ye go to?"

"I had an appointment."

"Near the hotel, I reckon."

"Your joke, sir, could be in better taste. I had business with one of the shift bosses."

"At the hotel?"

"We did happen to meet at the hotel."

"He, he!"

"Because I have been unfortunate, sir, I think there is no need for rudeness. In a politer country, where I have ridden my twice or three times weekly to my cousin's hounds, I——"

The old man broke up the audience with a flourish of his stick.

King left his work when Maud and Power arrived. "Oh, Jim, I've just remembered." Maud called out. "Mr. King was down at the river yesterday, and saw the pretty girl. You know whom I mean? Mr. King hasn't been the same since. None of his balances came right this morning. He said she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen. Didn't you, Mr. King?"

"I expect so."

"Jim, you must see her, just to tell me it's true what they say. Would you think her the loveliest thing in the world?"

"I don't know."

"Don't look so glum over it. Will you go and see her?"

"I have seen her."

"You? When?"

"On the way home when I left you last time."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think of it."

"You stupid! And what was she like?"

"Like? Oh, she was very pretty."

"Is that all you can say? Tell me about her. What was she doing?"

"Doing? I don't know what she was doing. She had a lantern in her hand."

"You want shaking, Jim! Mr. King told me much more. Didn't you look at her? Mr. King said a hundred shadows were at hide-and-seek in her hair, and when he came to talk about her eyes, he sat down—the words in his mouth stopped his tongue moving."

"Perhaps that is why Power says nothing now," King said.

"I hope not," Maud cried quickly. And she fell to teasing. "No, poor old Jim was thinking of his bullocks when he saw her."

"What should I have thought about, the cattle or Moll Gregory?"

"Neither. You should have been thinking of me. I see you know her name."

"Yes, I've learned that."

King shut up the ledger with a bang. "That's enough for Saturday. What's next? A smoke, a drink or the coach? I vote a drink."

"I vote the coach," Maud cried.

"Here's a cigarette," said Power. "You must find it hot here of an afternoon."

"I do. The sun gets round on to the wall, and I feel as charitable as a woman with an empty woodbox."

"You ought to give up this uncomfortable bachelor life, Mr. King," said Maud. "You ought to go down South and marry some nice girl."

"Alas! my purse is not as full as once it was. A fool and his money are soon parted, they say. I should have to marry a girl with money, and a girl and her money are equally soon married—by someone else."

Neville came up behind. "How ye do chatter, Maud. We'd better get along to that coach. Who's coming? King, ye had better come along." He jerked his head over his shoulder. "Hey, Horrington, ye can tell your wife she can have what water she wants and I'll be by to see you carry it." Marching four abreast, they passed out of the office.

Surprise is not a beautiful place. The hills holding it are the greenest in that country, and lean up and down in gentle curves. But the bottom of the basin has grown shabby with much use. Patches of sand cover it, in company with clumps of spinifex put out of repair by disillusioned goats. The tents and humpies of the camp rise up on this in seedy and unordered rank, and low-born fowls doze at the doorways. In the middle of the congregation stands one building somewhat more gracious. A glittering roof protects it, and there is paint upon the walls. Above the doorway runs the legend—Surprise Valley Hotel.

On Saturday afternoon they keep holiday at Surprise. It is then the butcher kills for the second time in the week, and Mrs. Bloxham, Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Niven meet at his lean-to for Sunday's dinner and a half-hour gossip. They find talk until the coach arrives. About the same time, Bloxham, Johnson and Niven put an eye to their premises, pulling together a hole in the wall here, a slit in the roof there. They, in due course, turn steps to the hotel for the coming of the coach. At four o'clock, about that place, you find all the best people of Surprise.

The party from the office took the direction of the hotel. Old Neville with a great play of his stick held the lead. He kept the talk his way. Said he: "I can't make out what this fellow is coming for. Bringing his wife, too. She'd as well been left behind. He wrote something about coming for a holiday, being in poor health or something. It beats me what he thinks to find here. He'll be leavin' by the first coach, I reckon. I shan't mind. I've too much on hand to be trotting round with beef tea. Maud will have to see to them."

"Selwyn is the name, isn't it?" Power said.

The old man nodded his head. "Huh, huh! There was an assayer of that name here once three or four year back. There was no houses then; didn't scarce run a tent, and he and me and a couple of other fellows was camped where the stable is. He had some damned silver thing something like a flute, and one night a feller out of pity asked him to play it. It was the horriblest row ever you heard. The chap that asked him made some excuse and went so far away he nearly got bushed. He went on playing till near midnight, I reckon. When we were all asleep the damned row woke us up again. I sits up and lets fly in a great rage: 'For God's sake, man,' I said, 'a fair thing is a fair thing. We've listened to you half the damned night already. D'ye think,' says I—and then I see all of a sudden it was the dingoes howling. He, he! Huh, huh, huh!"

"Father, you put a bit to that story every time."

"And it's not everyone knows how to do that, my girl."

"Hullo, here's a new place," Power said. "You've grown it since last week."

"Smith, the schoolmaster," answered the old man with a jerk of the head. "He's doing his week here. I mean to catch him home if I can. I'm the man for a gentleman that lets his horse into my feed-room."

"Let him alone, father. He is hunted enough without you. You must have seen him, Jim. He's the man that looks as though something is just about to happen. He's married to a book and never gets past the first chapter. We ought to be sorry for him. He's meant for a town. I don't know what brought him here. Let's be romantic. Perhaps he loved some girl and lost her."

"In that case," King said, "I'll keep my sympathy. There are enough mourners for the man who has loved some woman and lost her. My heart goes out to the man who has loved some woman and can't lose her."

"Huh, huh!" cried the old man from the lead. "Ye needn't pity him, Maud. He has some woman to follow him round."

They had come to a couple of tents standing solitary. Neville rattled in the doorway of the first with his stick. "Hey, there, who's home?" The tent door was open for the world to look inside. At a table, consisting of a large board placed on a couple of travelling bags, Mr. Smith sat writing. An armful of books was at his elbow, and a litter of papers had tumbled round his heels. He was a man of fair complexion, going early bald on top. He sighed with great melancholy when the knock came, and put a hand to his forehead. On top of this he conjured up a mechanical smile and rose to his feet.

"You, Mr. Neville? Turned hot, hasn't it? Can I do anything?"

"I suppose ye know your horse had its head into my chaff half the morning? The last ton ran me up eighteen shilling a bag."

Mr. Smith shut his eyes. "I've driven it over the other way twice this afternoon," he said. "I sat down five minutes ago."

"I'm talking of the morning."

"I was at school then."

"That don't put my chaff in the bag."

Maud came to the front. "That's enough, father. I hope the horse had a good dinner. It does the Company good to give away a little chaff. How is the book getting on?"

Mr. Smith shook his head. "According to the time-table the third chapter would have been finished this week, but everything is turning out against it. I am afraid this life isn't conducive to study, and my unfortunate poverty precludes me from obtaining the necessary reference books. Directly I sit down, there's the dog to put out, or the cat to put in, and, honestly, as my name is Pericles Smith——"

"Perry!" a woman's voice called from somewhere, "there's a wretched goat at the flour."

"Instantly, darling." Mr. Smith closed his eyes. "I live in the hope of getting an hour to myself one day; but for ten years——"

"Perry, there's another goat joining it."

"At once, dear. I suppose I shall write the words 'Chapter Four' some day, but——"

"Well, I'm not going to stay here while you chatter any longer," interrupted the old man, moving off, "and you, Smith, you look after that horse of yours or ye'll find yourself reading a pretty long bill."

They came away with Smith still in the doorway.

"I wish he wouldn't make me laugh. I am so sorry for him," said Maud.

King made answer. "It's not the best of lives this, packing up for somewhere at the end of every week, knowing the sun will be at the back of your neck all day, and a dozen wild children wait at the journey-end for the ABC to be knocked into their heads. I am content to stay plain John King."

"A man can say he has put a good day's work behind him," Power said, "and that's as well. It helps to pull his thoughts straight at night."

"Jim, you are taking life so heavily to-day. I had to cheer up Mr. King this morning because he looked too long at the pretty girl. Now you have caught the blues somewhere."

The butcher's shop stands on this side of the hotel, and on Tuesday and Saturday the butcher stands behind his block, and chops your fate up with the meat. Mrs. Niven, Mrs. Boulder and Mrs. Bullock grow very humble when they go a-shopping. It is "Mr. Simpson, and how's the heat been using yer, and is there any chance of a bit o' the silverside this time?" And "Mr. Simpson, and I suppose the flies is worrying yer a treat, and I take it it's my turn for the undercut." And Simpson, with a to-do of knife and steel makes answer. "Now, I'm givin' wot there is, and I'm not givin' nothing else, and if yer aren't satisfied, yer can go elsewhere. I reckon the next butcher isn't farther than Mount Milton, and I reckon Mount Milton isn't more than seventy mile."

"Aw, you are gettin' at us, Mr. Simpson," comes the timid chorus.

The bakery stands between the butcher's and the hotel, presenting itself to the world as a building of wood and bagging of a very cutthroat appearance. Mr. Regan, baker, being a man of parts, turns a pleasant sovereign or two in the little "Crown and Anchor" saloon at the back. A couple of nights a week the policeman looks in to run the bank for an hour or so. It's "Now don't stand feeling yer corns there as though yer ole woman was watching. Choose yer crown, and pick yer anchor. The dice aren't loaded more than my old grandad's gun was, and I never see him try to blow to bits anything stronger than his nose. Come on, gents, every throw a crown, and every chuck an anchor. An' don't forget time's flying, as the monkey said when he 'eaved the clock through the winder."

They took their stand under the hotel verandah. In twos and threes Surprise strolled to the meeting ground. Neville waved his stick a dozen times and grunted a how-de-do and shouted. Mr. Horrington appeared presently, and later disappeared; and others of note swelled the congregation. In a doorway loitered Barcoo Bill, as graceful a hand at duffing a horse as you might find this side of the border. Into stout argument had fallen one-eyed Sal, who, armed with a crowbar, and fortified with a bottle of Dewar's best, had once upon a time defeated the only policeman in a single round go-as-you-please affair. In a patch of shade kicked his heels Iron-jawed Dick, who, for the price of a drink, had lifted in his teeth a table laid for dinner. Other people—tall and short, lean and stout—took their stand up and down the way, and kept ever the tail of an eye on the horizon. Dusty curs mooched about, and sat down suddenly to beat their stomachs with a back leg. At half the posts were hitched high-rumped horses with rusty saddles a-top of them.

The walk in the sun had left King a good deal the worse for wear. He pulled forth a handkerchief and pushed it about his face. "If," said he, making an end, "things are ordered properly in the world to come, we shall have a special heaven to ourselves. There the sun will totter through the sky in a mild old age, the rivers will run water, the goats will come home to be milked, and the woodbox will never empty. And an angel will wait at the gates holding out a flypaper in place of a flaming sword."

"Hey?" cried the old man in a sudden excitement. He was beating his stick at the distance.

. . . . . . .

The five goose-rumped horses, in a lather of sweat, and chastened with a great following of flies and dust clouds, had lumbered the coach to the top of the last rise, and the first tents of Surprise, and the poppet heads of the mine were marching into view, as Mrs. Selwyn stated for the third time on the journey that she did not know whether she was on her crown or her toes. From the box seat, Joe Gantley, mailman, steered his team with bored fingers, jerking his head to the right now and then to clear his throat, and spitting the flies from his lips on occasion in an every-day sort of way. Selwyn and Mrs. Selwyn were packed beside him, where the sun leaned down, the dust climbed up, and there was perpetual prospect of heaving flanks and clicking hoofs.

Mrs. Selwyn had come to the struggle in a dust coat and a veil of many folds; and in face of a hundred difficulties that massive woman had lost no jot of dignity, remaining to the end a most inspiring spectacle.

Selwyn had made the best of a bad place at the end of the row. By a judicious play of elbow and hip he had widened his share of matters, and now could lean a little easier and find a bit of support for the hollow of his back. He had grown shabby from the funnel of dust rising from the top of the wheel, but he was not a man to be put about by small matters, as he was always very ready to let you know.

Hilton Selwyn, a director of the Surprise Copper Mining Company, and gentleman of no other special business, was at this time between fifty and fifty-five, but lean and active in spite of middle age. Cleancut in feature, upright in carriage, he suggested the military man, and his youthful step would have passed him as any age. It was only on discovery of the thinned grey hair and close-clipped tobacco-stained moustache that one understood half a century had gone over his head.

Half a century had gone over his head and health had become treacherous. He could crawl through a swamp at dawn on the chance of an odd teal, and come home to a thumping breakfast; but two minutes weeding in the garden brought on sciatica. Similarly he could stand all day in a drizzle of rain persuading a trout to rise, and more than one biting July breakfast-time had found him half naked worming a way across the lawn of his country place to a flock of pigeon feeding in the timber; but indoors his only seat was right over the fire, where he took the warmth from everybody—as Mrs. Selwyn was often good enough to tell him.

It was to get himself into better fettle that he sought the present change of scene. He woke up one evening of last winter from his after-dinner sleep in the best arm-chair. The waking up was a delicate matter. He gave two long drawn-out yawns. He shot a fist into the air and stretched slowly, rolled himself into a sitting position, blinked once or twice, screwed up his face as though he had a bad taste in the mouth, caught hold of the mantelpiece and pulled himself on to his legs. He rocked about a little, screwed up his face again, and at last quite woke up. His hair was like a storm at sea, his tie was crooked, his dress clothes were creased.

In the manner of a man announcing news of deep interest he spoke:

"I feel a little better now. I think I deserve a cigarette." He felt in his pockets for his cigarette case. He looked on the floor, in the fender, and under the cushions of the arm-chair. "Dear me! Where's my cigarette case?"

"You don't think I have it, do you?" Mrs. Selwyn asked coldly. She had been playing hostess to a couple of friends while the host slept.

"I don't know where it is; it's not here, anyhow." A terrific frown came over his face. "This accursed habit of tidying is making the house impossible to live in. One puts a thing down, and the next minute some interfering meddler picks it up and hides it, and then forgets where they put it. Curse everybody!"

Mrs. Selwyn grew very stiff. "Is this language meant for me? I shall not submit another moment to it. I am very pleased your cigarette case is lost. I hope it has gone for good. You are a perfect plague with your things. It is very good of anyone to touch them at all. In future they can lie where they drop as far as I am concerned."

"I hope everyone else will be equally kind. There may be a chance of finding things then. Life's not worth living as it is, with a troop of women following one about picking up every little thing one puts down and then losing it."

Selwyn shouted at the top of his voice. "Jane!" The parlourmaid came in. His smile was charming. "I've lost my cigarettes, Jane. They are nowhere to be found."

"The case is on the mantelpiece, sir, in the library, where you left it this afternoon."

"Ah!" Selwyn saved an awkward situation by finding a pipe and cleaning it. Mrs. Selwyn watched him keenly. He cried out suddenly.

"You women amuse me. You live in an agony of unrest in case a bit of ash gets on a chair or rug, and shorten your lives with the excitement of finding a fishing-bag with a few fish in it on a drawing-room sofa instead of in the kitchen. There never was a woman yet with a true idea of comfort. Hullo! chocolates here. They don't look bad at all." He proved his words by diving into the box and bringing out a handful, which he munched with obvious satisfaction.

"I believe in a man liking sweets. It shows he doesn't drink." He munched on a moment or two. Then he smiled with the charm that deceived guests into believing him a solicitous host. "Now who is going to play or sing? I am sure none of you are entertaining Harry as I should have done had health allowed. By the way though, I did hear some music. I think I must have been asleep. It was that sherry we had at dinner. It's a fatal thing to wet one's whistle with. A glass or two of sherry followed by the genial blaze of a good fire on the pit of the stomach, and the case is hopeless. I expect these chocolates will play up with my hollow tooth. It's a sad thing to arrive at my time of life and begin to feel oneself giving way everywhere. I can't get about as I used to. A hard day's shooting knocks me up." He shook his head in deeply sympathetic manner.

"Haven't you done enough talking about yourself?"

"I'm talking because I'm the only one here with any ideas of conversation. You are all sitting like a crowd at a wake before the whisky is passed round."

"You give everybody a racking headache."

"I'm very sorry. I don't know why, but there it is, I never get headaches."

"Nothing would ever kill you."

"You needn't be so annoyed about it. As a matter of fact I've not been at all well these last few months; only, unlike other people, I make no fuss about it. I've a thundering good mind to see a doctor to-morrow. I jolly well will."

Great matters followed on that little upset. The rocky state of his health came as a thunderbolt to Selwyn. His medical man said an entire change of scene and climate was absolutely needful. What better place than Surprise where every worry could be put behind? With a fishing-rod and a gun-case in the baggage a man should be good for a six-month's stay. Mrs. Selwyn began with a stout refusal. She knew as well as she was alive the affair would end disastrously. She had a presentiment some calamity was waiting. She could foresee with her capable brain how unfitted Hilton was for the whole business. Her heart was in her mouth at the mere thought of the journey. And look at the expense. "Think of my purse!" she cried. "Think of my pocket!" Finally she fell into agreement, so as to be at hand to say "I told you so."

Thus it came about that a fiery November afternoon found the Selwyns covering the last mile of the journey. The back of the coach was a-choke with wares. The mail bags shared the bottom with the Selwyn luggage, and a round dozen of other parcels held the hopes of as many women at Surprise. Mrs. Niven, Mrs. Bloxham, Mrs. Anybody-else-you-please, lured by a catalogue, had summoned them in a halting hand weeks before, and had spent spare time counting up the days to their coming. On top of this bundle of wares, in no ways a bed of their choosing, were chained Selwyn's proved bodyguard, the sharers of his board, almost the sharers of his bed. They were a mangy pointer of great age, and a terrier with a punishing jaw. The pointer had fallen into a miserable doze; but the terrier yet nursed hope of sudden calamity, and kept a quarrelsome eye at half-cock.

With a crack of the whip, a spurt from the goose-rumped horses, and a stir among the waiting congregation, the coach rolled to a standstill before Surprise Valley Hotel. Such was the manner of the Selywn coming.

. . . . . . .

That evening it wanted half-an-hour to the rise of the moon when Power left Neville's verandah for his horse and the journey home. The lights were going out over all the camp. Maud followed at his side for a good-bye. The old man fussed after them as far as the back door.

"Don't chatter too long, gel. I won't be left with them people, d'ye hear? I may be wrong, but I think it won't take me time to be sick o' the pair of them. I may be wrong, huh, huh! Goodness! Look at the lid off the dustbin again. That woman don't do a thing she's told. Look at it! Some people breeds flies for a fancy. Hope ye have a good trip, Power. See you again in a week."

The hill begins at the very backdoor of the house, and lifts a wide breast of broken red rock into the cooler spaces. There are many seats about the top, and all breezes go that way. The poet, the refugee and the sighing swain thither may turn steps to find easement of their state. But few visit the hilltop, for the poet has no place on the books of the Surprise Mining Company, and the refugee need not take such a lengthy journey, while love ever keeps its hiding-places ready at hand.

The old man turned into the house, and Maud Neville put her hands on Power's shoulders. "A few minutes don't matter, Jim. This is our first time to-day. We'll go up the hill a moment."

They went up there, and sat down upon the warm, red rock. The camp was a few points of light in the dark; but many white stars filled the sky in old places—the Cross to the South, the Belt to the North, the Scorpion where you must crane the neck to find it. In such a dark lovers must sit closely if they would not be lost.

"Jim, to-day has been a failure, hasn't it?"

"I didn't mean it to be."

"You have had the blues all day, and those wretched people came before I could cure you."

"I shall be back in a week, Maud."

"I had worked father so hard, and all for nothing. I know it was not your fault. There wasn't one chance."

"I'll have a pipe now we have sat down."

"See the stars marching into their old places. What a lot they see. Do you think they look right into us?"

"Let us hope not."

"Do you love me, Jim?"

"Must I say it again?"

"As much as you say you do?"

"I forget how much I said."

"Because sometimes ... well ... sometimes."

"What happens sometimes?"

"Ah, Jim, is there always to be a 'sometimes?' Why do I have always the little stab at my heart? Is the whisperer true who says I do most of the loving?"

She heard no answer.

"Sometimes I am afraid of what waits for us. And always I love you very, very much. No, no, I am not afraid. I am now the wise woman. Along the road my heart has come I have found the thorny places, but I am learning to tread them with a shrug of pain and to march on where the way opens out. There are aloes in the sweet cake of love; but let us eat, for the spices will forget the aloes. The cook cooks well, but he has not all the ingredients to his hand, and they go hungry who demand only the stars for food." Her arms found his shoulders. Her kisses found his lips.

"What an eloquent little tongue you have, girl! How can I find the words to answer you?"

"Don't talk a minute." But she herself spoke again in a little while.

"Time goes by."

"It does."

"Two years ago we were strangers. We got along without each other. How funny that! What did you find in me to want me? Jim, aren't you ever going to answer to-night?"

There was no answer.

"Friend Jim, do cheer up."

"I'm cheered up. Things are wrong to-day. I don't know why. These things happen sometimes. My fault, no doubt. The bush is a good enough place, girl, but it doesn't do to start thinking there."

He put silence to flight by getting to his feet. "I must stand watch by midnight. A week will bring me back again. We'll say good night here. Good night."

"Good night, Jim. Seven days are flying towards me on damaged wings."

"Good night again, girl. Let your blessings follow me while I am away."

CHAPTER VII The Return to Surprise

The week was beggared, and had borrowed two days from the next, when Power came riding back to Surprise. He had left the musterers and the cook's waggon after breakfast to find their own way home, and a steady walk all day across the plain brought him at evening to the bottom of the long slope of Dingo Gap, and a bare half-dozen miles from Surprise. Man and beast had made small matter of the journey.

Power came back in better cheer. Reflection stays at the fireside when a man rides off at the heels of a mob of cattle, and Power came home with only the recollections of a summer madness to flick his memory. A mile of difficult travelling hid him from the crossways, and who denies Fate sits there sometimes pointing the path to follow?

Half-way up the distance, where the road swings back upon itself, and a hurly-burly of rocks shuts the sight from climbing farther, where it takes a good man to steer a buggy—there, I say to you, Power met Moll Gregory, astride a shabby horse, face to face. She was going down and he was going up, and they must halt their horses to divide the way.

At once the old sickness returned. Leech, thou hast tinkered with thine ointments, bring now the knife to heal. The beast was knock-kneed and at odds with age, with a moulding saddle across its back and a sack of goods hanging at either side. The girl was dressed in coarse stuff cut out with poor skill on some close night by the light of a hurricane lamp. A big hat, sitting on her head like a roof, spoiled the fury of the suns; yet that beauty found full forgiveness for the shabby setting.

The horses waited side by side, and Moll Gregory sat an arm's length away; but the nearness cost her no effort, and she looked up unconcerned. The frown left Power's forehead.

"Hullo, Mister; back again?"

"You are well loaded up," he said. "Two tucker bags full to the throat."

"I get the tucker now. Mum and me reckon to keep Dad home if we can. He's too much trouble when he gets a drop into him."

"It's a long way round by the Gap."

"It makes a change."

"How has the show turned out?"

"A1. But dad isn't over fond of a shovel. He's took up with the wire strainer again, and says there's heaps of money in it when it gets going. You should hear him and mum on at it of a night." She laughed. Her voice was charming when no words defiled it. She waved the flies away and lifted her hat a little. She may have thought Power looked at the hat overlong, for she said: "It isn't great shakes, is it?"

"Better than getting burnt up."

"The suns have took longer than I remember doing me harm. Anyway there wouldn't be many to growl if I was spoilt. Maybe a gum-tree or two by the river, or old Bluey the dog might see a change. There's none else to take notice."

It was for Power to come forward with the compliment; but she received silence for her pains. She pouted charmingly as a child might do.

All the moods sat in her eyes, and a hurry of passions, grave and gay, waited on her ready lips. Had she been a little older, or read another page of life, she might have understood those silences, and taking pity, have set her horse upon the road. But she looked across to say:

"I reckon you don't take much account of looks in a girl." She failed again. A third time she tried. "Others do."

"I see," he said. He pushed a hand across his face, for the flies held high festival that afternoon. "We didn't leave you lonely when we rode off?"

"No," came with a toss of the head. "All men aren't like you, Mr. Power. Some knows a neat ankle, though it takes the best part of a dozen mile through the bush to find it."

"And this bold knight, is he young and charming?"

"No, he isn't. He's fat, and sweats when he walks. But he knows how to talk a girl round, and he calls me his Princess."

"Then it is a royal courtship on both sides." She did not understand. "King is your courtier," he said. "I'm glad we didn't all forget you." There fell a little pause and his forehead wrinkled up. Then he said earnestly: "Answer me, girl. I am not asking for nothing. Mick O'Neill is in love with you. Do you mean to run square with him; or is he to be the dog barking up the tree, and the 'possum not at home?"

She showed a flash of temper for the first time.

"My name is Moll Gregory, my address is North Queensland, and I am not telling what I do to every feller stopping me on the road."

But she met her better at this business. Power broke in on top of her. "He is a good man, and he'll play you straight, whether you play him straight or don't. He is my friend, that's all."

The anger went out of their faces. Power was searching for something to say, but she was the quicker.

"I'm not going to quarrel with you yet," she said, her head to one side. "It's too dead dull on the river to start scaring blokes away. When will you come along for another look at the show? Dad's done a bit you know there. He's dotty on the wire strainer. That's what has slowed him up. What about to-night?"

"Not to-night. Another day. To-morrow, if you like."

"To-night."

"Not to-night."

"To-night," she said again, frowning.

"To-morrow."

"I reckon you don't have too many manners, Mister. A girl don't say to-night too often, you know."

"I——oh, why won't to-morrow do?"

"Very well," she said, much put out and taking no trouble to hide it. "I'll talk to meself to-night while mum and dad fights over the wire strainer. Only I reckon a girl don't feel too good when she says to-night and a feller says to-morrow."

"Then to-night it is."

The smiles ran all about her face. "That's a promise, Mister?"

"Yes."

"And early?"

"Not too late."

She leaned a little out of the saddle, with her dainty teeth just apart. "They say you are a smart man among cattle, Mister."

"That's good news."

"It takes a quick man to be a daddy stockman, don't it?"

"It does."

"Then I reckon all your quickness has gone into cattle," she answered, and broke into another peal of laughter, and flicked the old horse awake, and so passed on down the road.

Power drew his reins together and finished the journey up the hill. You look upon a very fair prospect from the summit of Dingo Gap; long lines of hills lifting broad bosoms to the sky; far behind on the plain the broad belt of the river; ahead the broken pathway dipping downward to Surprise. Power was short-sighted that evening, and waiting up there to breathe his horse he fell into a brown study, and looked from a pinnacle of his soul down a valley long as the roadway of Dingo Gap. Mayhap he called himself turncoat, wearer of any man's livery, weathercock to flap wings to every wind; sufficient it is, he left his thoughts presently, for the day grew old, and by sunset he had ridden into the beginnings of Surprise. With a nod here, a good day there, he passed to the stable and spent the last minutes of daylight serving his horse. That matter to his mind, he turned steps towards the house.

Maud Neville sat before the house alone. At his coming, she jumped up in great good spirits. He guessed she had counted on the meeting, for she wore a dress he had noticed once. Yet he must remark the wear and tear of summer on her face, and fall out of humour at his own keenness of sight. He did his best to meet her mood. "Back once again," he called out.

"You owe us two days," she answered. And next she cried: "Jim, Jim, I'm so glad." She left the kisses she had waiting for him till later on, as Messrs Boulder and Niven took the evening against the store across the way, pipe at mouth, the tail of an eye cocked for whatever might go forward.

Standing there at the doorstep of the house Power became suddenly aware that he had to his credit a long day's ride, and that he was tired. The cries of the crickets and other evening insects entered his consciousness, and with surprise he remarked the afterglow of the sunset, and realised night would fall in a few minutes. This slight fatigue affected him suddenly and strangely. He saw with new vision the pure soul of the woman who waited now ready to receive him. Always she met him with open hands, whether he came in good humour or in bad. She bore the tiring summer days without repining, and, more than that, from the daily course of affairs extracted a philosophy of life. He was tired after the day's ride, and here she stood desiring only to banish his fatigue by her ministrations. She had had her own day's work, but that was unremembered. She had learned that giving was more profitable than taking. He saw how often he hunted the shadow and missed the substance.

The cries of the insects began again while the afterglow faded in the sky. The promise he had made an hour since came to mind. He bent his brows at thought of it. Well, it was given now. It must be kept. Maud was leading the way into the house, and he was following her mechanically. In the dining-room a table was laid for one person. The cloth was clean; all was ready to hand. She had done this on the chance of his coming to-night. This joy of service was love. And he too claimed to love. Yet he had put himself out little enough when all was said and done—came much when he wanted, went much when he wished. What a good woman she was, yet he always had to be telling himself this. He was one of those heavy-eyed dullards who would not believe in the butterfly because the chrysalis was a poor thing.

What was happening this evening that he was for ever dreaming? He had often enough been a bit tired; but it had not caused melancholy. Why shirk the point? The child on the road had moved him beyond all experience. She had put a torch to his thoughts. She had seemed an echo of all lovers who had tripped down the corridors of time.

"Wake up, Jim! You are tired, poor boy."

"I have been at it all day. Give me something to eat."

"See, we expected you. While you wash I shall have it all ready."

He left the room, and a minute or two later he found the meal waiting for him, and she in a seat opposite, elbows on table, hands making a cup for her chin, her face gay and full of fondness. "Sit down, Jim, and begin at the beginning."

He went through his examination, and at the same time made a good supper. He received a shake of the head or a nod, a pout or a frown according to the telling of his story.

"Jim, do you know what I did this morning? I woke up very early and found there had been a sudden change in the night. Quite a cold breeze was blowing. I had to get up at once. I couldn't help myself. When I was dressed I called out to father I was going for a ride, and went looking for old Stockings. It was breaking dawn, and sharp enough to remind you of winter. Stockings was quite lively for an old fellow. I went straight out into the plain past the Conical Hill. The sky was growing brighter all the time. The birds were singing as if it were winter, and the hoofs of Stockings rang out clear. Plenty of kangaroos were abroad, and one old man stood up and refused to budge as we went by. I pushed on across the plain as long as the sunrise lasted, looking back now and then to see I wasn't losing Conical Hill. The cold stayed until the sun was over the horizon, and then I turned Stockings round and began to walk home. I was thinking that forty, fifty or sixty miles away you had seen this same sunrise, and felt the same cold in your bones. I understood then how much the life meant to you, and why you were always ready for a muster or a journey down the roads with cattle. Jim, I think a man working abroad has a better chance of reading life straight than a girl who belongs to the four walls of a house. A man must be a dunce to stay untaught by a morning like to-day. What's making you frown?"

"I'm not frowning, and I don't think you are right, Maud. When all is added up, a woman sees her way surer than a man. A good dog has the best religion. He serves his master through fair weather and foul—he heels the cattle in season, he chews his bones in season, and takes his kicks in season. He knows the art of ready service. A woman comes next for quick learning; but a man doesn't find the right way without hurt.... Maud, I have something to say. I want you to understand it now. The best man is ill put together. He may be brave, but he runs crooked in his dealings. He may be good at heart, and a pair of stranger eyes turn him off the course. Listen, girl ... if things ... well if ever I turn defaulter, put all of me in the scales, and maybe a thing or two will help pull the balance nearer straight."

"Poor old Jim, don't talk in that heavy way! You have been too hard at it this week. You are tired. I know of something to put you right."

"Where are you going?... What have you there?"

A bottle of wine was held up to him.

"We have feasted the visitors since you went away. This is one of the last. Don't tell father."

"Not this time, Maud. Another day will do."

"Do what you are told. Open it."

He obeyed.

"Fill both glasses and stand up."

"What madness are you after?"

"I said, stand up. That's right. Now hear what I have to say." She lifted up her glass. She stood by the light of the window, but outside side darkness was falling fast.

"Drink, Jim, for these glasses have been filled in honour of the past as we have lived it, and of the future as it shall be shaped. The grape ferments, and the red wine results; lovers quarrel and good understanding is born. The orchard blossoms, the blossoms fall to the ground, but from the boughs come forth the fruit. Love arrives with spiced dishes, but when the meats have staled, on the table lies the bread of life. We are learning understanding; but other pages of that book remain for our reading. Drink to receive the clean heart, the straight purpose, and the good comradeship which walks with those things. Let cowardice be unknown between us. The mistake made, we will bare it in our hands, knowing the other will understand."

Who knows what Power saw in that ruddy wine drunk in the darkened room? He pledged the toast to the end. With never a word more between them they put down their glasses.

"The others are in the verandah," Maud said to break the spell, "you must talk to them for half-an-hour. Come along."

She led the way. Darkness had fallen in a clap while he ate, and lamps had been brought outside. In the distance Mr. Wells was testing his cornet for the evening's work. From the verandah came sounds of raised voices, and at a first look about, the place was full of people. Neville had kept his old seat. At the other end Selwyn appeared well off. Mrs. Selwyn and King, with Scabbyback the mangy pointer, and Gripper the terrier, filled less important places. Somebody smoked good cigars.

The battle for supremacy between the two veterans had led to a division of honours. Neville had won his old place handy to the waterbags and the whisky, but Selwyn had the cigars and matches at his elbow, and was deep down in his chair, with feet resting at a great height against the wall, as behoved a man whose health was in a rocky state, and no mistake about it. Mrs. Selwyn endured a straight-backed chair; and King, who liked comfort, but who cared more for peace, was poorly served.

The talk was broken off for a moment when Maud led in Power. Selwyn rose to smile with great charm, and later sank back into the same seat with reluctance, apparently persuaded to keep it against his will. The talk flowed on again.

"You have wakened up since I was away, Mr. Selwyn," Maud said.

"Yes, isn't it a pest?" Mrs. Selwyn exclaimed. "We have had such a peaceful half hour."

One thing remained to Selwyn from the ruins of his wrecked health. He could get his forty minutes' nap after a good meal. "Now, look here," he had said in the bedroom before dinner, shaking a tobacco-stained finger, "this absurd stand-on-ceremony is doing me harm. There was excuse for staying awake the first night or two; but my infernal good manners have carried things to an extreme. Now, look here," said he, wagging the yellow finger, "when we have had dinner, sing to them, or talk to the girl about clothes, or do something else; but at all costs distract the family from me, so that I can get my sleep. I like hearing the gentle hum of voices when I'm comatose."

"What's your news, Power?" the old man grunted from his corner. "Morning Springs still in the same place, I expect?"

"Have you come from Morning Springs?" Mrs. Selwyn cried. "What a desperate place! I stood there in the blazing sun half the day waiting for the coach. The top of my head was coming off. The place was turning round me."

"Did you see anybody?" said the old man.

"Milbanks was in. He says it is pretty dry out his way. Says things won't be too good if the rains are late. Claney asked after you. He has a silica show in tow. The Reverend Five-aces turned up at the hotel a couple of nights and seemed in form."

"He sounds a gentleman to keep an eye on," said Selwyn. "I think I shall button my pockets when he comes to shrive me."

"You would do better with a sixth ace in your hat," said King. "He may be out here one day soon. He's due for a visit."

"He lost a game when I was in," Power went on.

"Hey!" cried the old man. "How was that, lad?"

"Half-a-dozen of us were at the hotel pretty late, and he made one of a bridge four. Upstairs a man was dying in the horrors. He had shouted out all night—very badly. As time went on he grew quiet. Mrs. Smith, the landlady, a good churchgoer, runs into the room presently. 'Mr. Thomas, there's a man upstairs very sick. He's dying, Sir, or I'll never live to tell another. Come upstairs, Mr. Thomas, and lend him the comforts of the Church.'

"Five-aces looks at her, and looks at his hand with the king and queen there and all the royal family, and he fingers his chin and says, 'There's no call for this fluster, Mrs. Smith. He has a pretty strong voice still. There's no call for an hour or two. Maybe I'll take a look that way when we've played out the rubber.'

"Half an hour later Mrs. Smith comes in again in great bustle. Oh! Mr. Thomas as true as I mean to go light through Purgatory, he cannot last much longer. I tell ye he'll be gone if ye wait.'

"'Mrs. Smith,' Five-aces then says very short, and frowning down his chin. 'I have every card to my hand. Your business will keep as long as the rubber, it's my belief.'

"Presently Mrs. Smith comes in again. Old Five-aces looks very black. 'It's no good, Mrs. Smith, I have just gone "no trumps." I shall get a "little slam" out of this.'

"'Ye needn't put yourself about, Sir,' says she. 'There's been a "grand slam" upstairs.'"

Mrs. Selwyn shuddered. "Mr. Power, how could you tell such a horrible story. I feel most unwell."

"I am sorry, Mrs. Selwyn. I won't offend again."

"I pray the creature stays away until I'm gone."

Neville chuckled again in his corner. "You would find him charming until you sat down to bridge. Many is the yarn we have had over a whisky. He can tell the best story for a hundred miles round. Maybe better men could be found to pilot the soul to Heaven, but he can claim always to be at the pilot's post, and that's the Bridge. There's a good one, Maud, gel. He, he! Huh, huh, huh!"

Mrs. Selwyn had not yet recovered. "I sincerely hope our other clergy have a better sense of fitness," she said.

Neville was having trouble with his pipe. "A parson comes round these parts with a pack-horse or two every six months for a couple of days, and that is as good as one can expect. He don't get two hundred a year wages, and has to feed himself and his horses. With chaff round our parts up to eighteen shilling a bag, I would shake my head at the job myself. He don't get more than a dozen at his service, for half laughs at him, and the other half, that would go, laugh too because the first half laughs."

"If he comes while we are here, I shall make a point of going," Mrs. Selwyn said.

"Hey, Power!" cried Neville, jerking his thumb. "Here's the whisky."

"A good idea," said King.

"Excellent," echoed Selwyn.

"Father, your fight this afternoon seems to have cheered you up," said Maud.

"What fight?" Power asked.

"The fellers sent Robson up to ask me to unlock the tanks. I put him to the right-about pretty quick. A-huh-huh-huh!"

Selwyn sat up. "Did you get much sport on your trip, Mr. Power? There must have been some thundering good chances early in the morning. Nobody to blunder about and disturb the game from year end to year end."

"A man doesn't get much spare time with cattle," Power answered. "He rides all day, and stands his two watches at night. He is inclined to leave hunting for another time. The cook took a rifle in the waggon, and got a turkey or two; but he sees double, and generally aims at the wrong bird. We had sport of another kind, though, which might have turned into something nasty."

"Ah! How was that?"

"On the border of this run and the next is a stretch of timbered country called Derby's Ten Mile. It is a good bit of country, with big holes holding water all the year, and Simpson, of Kurrajong, my neighbour, keeps it as a horse paddock. For all the fine trees by the river, the place has a bad name. You can't get a man of those parts to camp there the night. There is a story of a swagman murdered on the big hole by his mate twenty years ago. I believe the tale is true, but whether or no, they say on calm nights something cries out in the paddock. This time the cry will sound low down, the next time it will come from the air, and never twice in the same place. You can find a score of men to swear to this. Simpson assured me on moonlight nights he has known the horses stampede from the other side of the river.

"A carrier I knew told me an accident to his waggon once forced him to camp there one night. It was winter, freezing hard—as cold as the Pole—and you could hear a horse bell a dozen miles. He was sitting over the fire thinking of turning into bed, when he heard a queer screech by a clump of timber a couple of miles away. 'Some blanky bird,' he says. He had come round to thoughts of bed again, when he heard the screech a second time, and not more than a mile off, and on the top of it every horse came flying across the dry river bed. They went past him as though they weren't stopping this side of the sea. In a shake the fellow had turned colder than the frost, and he was asking himself what was the trouble, when something shrieked at him, not the length of a bullock team off. He felt a breath of ice in his face——"

Behind the house a fowl gave a blood-curdling death-cry. Gooseflesh rose on the spine of the bravest there. Thanks to that self-command which had stood Mrs. Selwyn in stead on so many occasions, she exclaimed, "What's that?" and no more. But afterwards she owned that for five minutes she was turning hot and cold. The cry was repeated more faintly. Steps sounded outside, and at the same time came the voice of Mrs. Nankervis, the cook, exclaiming out loud. Her steps advanced in a hurry across the house. She burst through the doorway, all wind and heavy breaths, and hands pressed to her ample sides.

"Lord save us! There's a python got the yaller pullet under the house."

"Python!" cried Selwyn, clapping hands to the arms of his chair. "What size?"

"Ah! Like that!" Mrs. Nankervis threw her arms out right and left. "Twenty foot! Thirty foot!"

Selwyn scrambled to his feet. "What magnificent luck!"

"It don't go twenty foot, nor half it," said Neville, feeling for his stick. "The small ones turn up now and then. The big fellows sit tight in the bush. The pullet's gone. That's a pity. I reckoned on her turning out a good layer."

There was a pushing back of chairs. Somebody took the lanterns from the wall. Selwyn, Mrs. Nankervis and the dogs went through the door at the one moment. The rest of the company followed at their heels.

But, beyond the light thrown by the lanterns, the night showed very black, and the hurry of the party abated. The old man began to chuckle from the rear. "Go ahead," he said. "I can see satisfactory from here. You have got a lantern, Mr. Selwyn. Ye can get under the house. Put the lantern round about the piles first. Unless the snake is half way to Morning Springs, I reckon it's better to take the first look at him from the distance. Afterwards ye can wear him for a comforter round your neck. A-huh-huh-huh!"

"Hilton, I entreat you to moderate your excitement and consider what you are about. I don't know whether I am on my crown or my toes."

Selwyn trembled with anticipation. The cigar did a step-dance between his teeth. He seemed to grow lean before the eyes of the company. He held forward the lantern and re-gripped his stick. Step by step he advanced among the piles holding up the house. Bring all your eyes to look. The hunter has gone forth to slay. Pace by pace he made his ground. Inch by inch he obtained a more cunning hold of his staff. Gripper, the terrier, wrinkled at the nose and very stiff at tail, followed him to the field of battle; but Scabbyback the ancient pointer scratched in the shadows as though digging out the very sea-serpent itself.

"Get out of that, you mangy muddler," Selwyn said, prodding him on the way.

The light from the lanterns thrust far into the shadows; and, behold, upon a patch of sand among the piles was discovered the python heaped in an evil mass and holding the dead fowl among his coils. Black he showed, and dark green in places, and supple and wicked and beautiful and fierce and fascinating and treacherous all in one glance, so that a man must look to admire, and yet turn his head in loathing.

"That's him! That's him!" said Neville. "And I reckoned he wouldn't wait our visit."

"Hilton, I implore you," Mrs. Selwyn cried. That was her single moment of weakness.

Selwyn hooked the lantern on a convenient ledge, where the light fell in all corners of the battle-field. The python made no business of departure, but stared at this hurly-burly from cold eyes in a shovel head as big as a woman's hand. Forward went Selwyn to the combat, taut and tucked up, but never a moment in doubt. All the while he talked to himself, assuring all who cared to listen, courage and a stout right hand must win, and that the gentle persuasion of a boxwood club at the nape of the neck must settle the account even of the serpent of Eden.

"A-ha, gently does it. Keep back, sir"—and a yelp told that Gripper had tested the weight of his master's staff. "Kindly, kindly, is my way. Bring a lantern this way—more to the right—more to the right. A-ha, my beauty, allow me to introduce the friend in my hand."

Neville wagged his head from the back of affairs. "Power, ye had better see what he's doing," he said. "He'll be getting into mischief. That will be a big feller when he's pulled straight."

As Power stepped forward, Mrs. Nankervis ran out of the house with the gun.

"There's sense, woman," said Neville. "Hey, Power, give him this."

Power put Maud in charge of a lantern, and took the gun. "That's rather a risky business, Mr. Selwyn," he said. "He is too big for a stick."

Selwyn stretched out a ravenous hand for the gun. He planted his legs wide apart and put it to his shoulder. The great serpent, head flattened down, stared from callous eyes. Gripper showed every tooth. Scabbyback had found business in the distance. Mrs. Selwyn closed her eyes and summoned all her fortitude. There was a moment when everybody waited. A roar sounded underneath the house. The snake whipped his head up and down again in a single movement. His coils fell apart in the twinkling of an eyelid, and riot was let loose. Selwyn, scrambling back, knocked the lantern to the ground, and the light jumped up and went out.

The python thrashed the wooden piles, embraced them, rolled free again, knotted itself upon the ground, and fell in a writhing agony among the hunters.

"Give me the lamp, girl," Power cried out, "and get out quick."

Maud held out the lamp. Power took the lamp. Power bounded back. Something struck him across the leg. He leapt farther back. The python in hideous pain beat at the piles and at the air. Power heard Selwyn beside him mutter "Magnificent, magnificent."

"Shoot, man; shoot!" Power cried. Selwyn raised the gun. Power pushed forward the lantern to make best use of it. Selwyn fired point blank. The uproar in the confined space was immense. There was a heave of the coils. The python was blown in half.

The company drew slowly near, and Selwyn fell into a grand attitude, "A-ha," he said. "The old hand has not lost its cunning. A right and left, and there he lies. Fifteen foot if an inch, by Jove!"

Very terrible the python looked in death, torn about on the bloody sand with muscles yet twitching. Mrs. Selwyn closed her eyes. "Hilton, every day you have less consideration for my feelings."

"He'll be a fair size stretched," said the old man, poking with his stick. "I'm sorry about that pullet. Hold that lamp straight, Maud. Ye'll have the glass smoked. Some of you had better get this mess cleaned before the ants come. Shall we go back to the verandah, Mrs. Selwyn? Snakes don't get through the fly-netting."

They persuaded Selwyn back to everyday, and Power and he were mourners at the funeral. While they went about the ceremony, Maud and King wandered a little way into the dark. They could watch the sextons going in and out of the lamplight, Power moving quickly about the matter, and Selwyn very full of his past performance. Their own employment—finding seats on the warm stones—was the better one, for the night was hot, as are most nights when you go to live at Surprise.

"Have you nothing to say to-night, Mr. King? Are a cigarette and the dark all you want these latter days? Be wise, and give up looking for copper by Pelican Pool. I tell you gold would not be worth the labour. Give by, give by, and gain your right mind among the ledgers over there."

"There is more reading by the Pool than in all those dreary books."

"A midsummer madness has seized you."

"Yet I would not find cure for my folly."

"But look at your ages. A girl of twenty has done this."

"The young man to the matured woman; the old man to the maid. And this is the reason. The young man looks forward to what is to be, but the old man stares over his shoulder at what is slipping away."

"It is a fancy that must pass. You say she neither reads nor writes."

"She is a lantern by whose light I read the Book of Life."

"Mr. King, are you serious this time or not?"

"Laugh at me if you like. I know what I am loving. She is young and wild—a flower of these hot grounds, quick come to bloom, quick to pass away, and without a soul, even as these bush flowers are without scent. She should sleep upon a couch of blossoms, and go abroad crowned with garlands; and I would play the elderly satyr and pipe her through the summer."

Power came across. The funeral was over; but Selwyn waited yet by the grave, smoking a fresh cigar in honour of combat valiantly fought and splendidly won. King got up, and in the talk that started walked away.

"Sit down, Jim," Maud said.

"Maud, I shall not be staying to-night. I'll come across to-morrow, though."

"What?" she answered coldly, and frowning of a sudden.

"I've work I must fix up. I am as sorry as you are. I shall be across to-morrow."

"You have never had sudden work like this that wouldn't keep."

"Maybe there won't be any again. Come, it can't be helped. I must get away."

"Good night, then."

"Don't be silly, Maud."

"It is useless crying when a thing can't be mended. So good night."

"You'll think better of things to-morrow. Then, there it is—good night."

She kissed him coldly when he bent his head; but repenting in the same breath, she drew him to her. "Jim, you told me so suddenly, and I am horribly disappointed. Good luck to you until to-morrow."

He had nothing to say.

CHAPTER VIII The Banks of the Pool

Power rode out of Surprise with the hag of reproach seated at the crupper of his horse. He would have proved poor company for a wayfarer; but fortune left him to follow the road alone, and he pushed his fagged mount to some pace, and ate up the distance to Pelican Pool.

The evening had aged when he arrived on the bank of the Pool. The hour was ten o'clock. We woo sleep early at Surprise, for she proves wilful mistress here, and Power believed himself too late. He heard the whimper of the dog, and a bark checked in the throat, and then the horse jumped under him in a difficult shy. He threw a glance into the dark for the cause, and, lo! Moll Gregory sat at the foot of a tree as still as the trunk supporting her. At once the hag of reproach left her seat. Moll rose from her waiting place and came forward with a little laugh of greeting. The jealous dark stole her countenance from Power's eyes, but her figure defied its embrace, and she came up to his horse young and careless and bewitching. He thought of a young tree starting on its journey towards the sky. He tightened the rein, the horse stood still, and he fell to staring down on her. Straightway he forgot time and the ill humours of the day.

"You are awful late, Mister?"

"It's a long way from Surprise."

"I was near giving you up, and then, Mr. Power, you would have caught it next time we met. I'm not a girl for a fellow to say yes and no to all the day."

"But now I am forgiven, I must get down. What about the horse? There's not a yard round here, is there?"

"Dad is always talking of putting up something, but I haven't seen it yet."

"He is quiet enough. I'll hitch him here. There's the saddle to come off. I won't be long."

When the saddle stood on end at the foot of a tree, and the bit hung loose, then Power made ready for what the hour would bring. The insects were busy, creeping down neck and ears, and crickets kept concert in all corners of the dark. It would grow no cooler until dawn, and soon afterwards the sun would start up into the sky. At a little distance, a light shone through the hessian wall of Gregory's dining-room, and sometimes a voice came from there. Power felt in no mood for the inside of the place.

"I have been riding all day. Where shall we sit down?"

He was led to a seat by the tree trunk. They sat down a little apart. Branches held a latticed canopy over them, and the lattice work let in the starlit sky. The dog mooched round as company.

"So you had given me up?"

"Yes, Mister. I'd been waiting there I forget how long. Dad and Mum started to row when we was washing up, and I flung out of the place in a temper. I set about a bit of fishing by the Pool. It isn't bad fun these nights. Sometimes you get a bonza haul. But it's awful dreary sitting by the bank alone. I don't know what's took me lately, but I get terrible tired of things. I reckon it's since Mr. King told me of all there was to be seen away from here."

They sat in a lap of land on top of the bank, where it fell sharp to the water, and just now a fish leapt in the shallows.

"Shall we fish, Mr. Power?" she said. "The rod is down there somewhere. They were too slow when I came out, and I gave it over."

"We will."

They found a roadway down the bank. They found the rod. They sat upon the bank. She put the rod over the water, and Power took a pipe from his pocket.

"They call you Moll, don't they? I am going to be a friend of yours. May I call you Molly? I think it prettier than Moll."

"Orl right, Mister. We won't quarrel over it. I reckon the mosquitoes like fishing too. Do you fish ever?"

"Sometimes. I shoot most when there's spare time. I like fishing though."

"Struth! Something's at me now. I won't yank yet. These fellers give a good bite when they mean business."

"Do you often come here? I've ridden by many times and watered my horse here; I've watered a good few mobs of cattle here, too. But I never knew how beautiful it was until I fished to-night."

"Now and again I get fair sick of Mum and Dad, and then I come and fish or take a walk along the bank. I like listening to the things that move in the dark."

"What do you hear?"

"Oh, the fishes are always jumping in the shallows, and sometimes a crocodile sticks his nose up, and times I surprise a turtle in the sands. There's plenty of kangaroos thumping along for a drink—strike me! Hark at that fellow."

"Yes, he's noisy enough for an old man—Molly."

"Can't you get out 'Molly' easier? There's no call to jerk your head over it."

"It was not hard to say. It lies gently on the tongue. And so you make friends with the animals? If you are here in winter time you will find the pelicans fishing at dawn, and spoonbills, too, as white as snow. You have heard of snow, I suppose? It falls among the mountains down South in July and August—Molly."

"It don't come easy yet. I reckon Molly is no harder to say than 'My Princess.'"

"Does it fall as kindly on the ear as 'My Princess?'"

"I like 'My Princess,' and I like Molly. I can do with two friends since I was so long without one.... Now, what are you thinking of, Mister? You sit staring at the Pool and sucking yer pipe. Why don't yer talk? You are as dummy as the fishes what won't come at my hook."

"I was thinking a week or two can make a queer change in a man's fortune."

"It do. Luck takes a turn times when things look dreadful hopeless. Straight wire. I tell you I've watched the water o' nights, and thought about settling things up. And then, like a cow to a new-dropped calf, you fellows came along to liven things."

"We came along one day and found you here, and now all the roads on Kaloona run lean to Pelican Pool. Molly, do you know all you have done? Think, Molly, a moment. Have you kind word for my friend, Mick O'Neill? Or for Mr. King driving through the heat from Surprise?"

"Good enough for them what they get."

"Don't you believe in love?"

"Mr. Power, you are too fond of questions. I shall be giving you the rod soon to hold. Don't you think a girl may have a bit of fun? It's awful hard when a man likes you to tell him to clear out. Wake up, Mister; you are awful dilly sometimes. What do you see in the water to stare at?"

"Every 'yes' spoken now will take a deal of unspeaking later on. Tell me, are you a little fond of Mick?"

"I reckon there's a bite. Look at the float, and the water rippling."

"That bite can wait your answer."

"He's a good figure of a man, isn't he?"

"He is."

"He can sit a bad horse with the next man, can't he?"

"He can."

"He's pretty slick through scrub, and isn't the last on the heels of a mob. I reckon many a girl wouldn't toss her head there."

"And Mr. King?"

"He knows how to talk to a girl; but it don't take his fat off him, do it? He's as old as Dad; but he's shook on me, and no error. He puffs terrible in the sun, but he comes as often as he can. He told me there would be something for me in a coach or two, but I said he could keep it. First I liked a bit of attention, it had been so dull; but now I can get as good elsewhere."

"Send him gently about his business, then, for I think loving is easier than unloving."

"There's not going to be any sending about business. He can come if he wants, and he can stay away. I know how to be not at home, and he can try his hand talking to Bluey, the dog. Now, don't start preaching, Mister. You can go on sucking that pipe. I'm not at the call of every feller of fifty who gets shook on me."

"Your own troubles will come one day, Molly, and you will grow a little kinder because of them. The new boot is poor company for the foot, and the heart grows softer with a bit of wear and tear. And so you are ready to punish two men, and all their crime was looking overlong into your eyes. Are only your glances kind, Molly? Have the suns of twenty summers baked your little heart? Haven't you a memory or two of sorrow stored away to make you softer now? No, don't pout."

"Mr. Power, you seem uncommon interested in other people. I don't see call for you to worry what I do. I reckon my comings and goings aren't your concern. Mister, you can hear well from where you are. It's time you took a hand at fishing."

"Have you never found time to fall in love; or have you been too busy saying 'no?' Molly, you were born a candle, and men will come from all the corners, like the bush insects, to scorch in your flame. Where did you steal your hands? A sculptor would break his chisel despairing of them. What Paradise gave you them that the bush might stare them into decay? Molly, Molly, you must have a soul, or what sits in your eyes all day making men drunken?"

"Mr. Power, you're a poor fisherman."

"Have you never loved, Molly?"

"Maybe yes, and maybe no, and it's not you, Mr. Power, I'm starting blabbing to."

"Tell me."

"Aw, you'd laugh."

"No."

"Straight wire?"

"Straight wire."

"There's nothing to tell. Some's been round that I've laughed at and sent away, nor thought nor cared what came of them. And one or two I've liked a little. And one or two has made me cry. But when one fellow goes, there's another to come after him."

"Has a man held you in his arms? Have you ever been kissed into kindness? What are you laughing at? Don't laugh, I say!"

"Of course a girl's been kissed. I don't think ever was a time I wasn't kissed. Why a girl would go dummy with only an old dog as mate, and a kangaroo or two, and maybe an old goanna to watch. What are you frowning for? My lips aren't kissed away."

"The jewel that takes long getting is highest priced. Let's go back to fishing. You have told me enough.... No, I can't fish to-night. We might be a hundred miles away from anyone down here. Sooner or later you will go away; but I shall never ride past the Pool again without remembering you. I shall come here every year, when the castor-oil tree flowers, for it was flowering when first I saw Molly Gregory standing in the doorway of her tent, holding a lantern above her head.... Isn't it still? The night is too close.... Molly, why are you so beautiful? Don't you know the night is in love with you? That's why the fishes are jumping. Don't you know the kangaroo and his mate are stooping to drink down there, that they may share the same pool with you? Molly, a man and a girl are only young once. It is all over in a few quick years. All life to live in that time. A world to see.... Molly, wake up. Don't look into your lap. Your rich body is spoiling. The bush is jealous of beauty, and would claw the fairest works with her lean fingers. Molly, wake up and live."

"Aw, talk, talk, and who is the better for it in the end? I can go back to the humpy more miserable, if that is what you want. Mr. King comes with his grand tales, and drives off in the buggy, leaving a girl to cry her eyes out in a room of bags. I hate the bush. I would spit it out of my mouth, as Dad spits the suckings of his pipe out at the door. What does the bush give you? Just gives you nothing. Never a man or a girl to speak to. Just wash up, wash up, wash up. And carry the water from the creek. And bail up the goats when you've got them. And a ride to the store as a treat. And make your Johnny cake half the week, because you haven't the heart to make bread, or haven't built the oven. And no schooling. And not a church to go to, even if you did want to. And just the clothes to wear as nobody will take in town. And growl, growl, growl all day from everyone round. And if you have a few looks, there's nobody to tell you what they think of them. Oh, you don't know how sick I am of it. I fall dreaming sometimes, and think some man comes and takes me right away. And then Mum gets on to me for mooning. I'll get married some day to a looney boundary rider, and live in a hut all me life, and have a pack of children, and grow as skinny as the best of them. If I have daddy looks then I'll sell them to the first man who'll pay me. The first man to take me away can have me, and he can drop me when he's tired."

"Don't talk like that. Don't dare to talk like that. You and I will fall out, girl, if there's much of that spoken."

"Turning parson, Mr. Power?... Listen, there's Mum. Hallo! What is it?"

A voice came through the dark. "Mick O'Neill's round for half-an-hour. Aren't yer coming in? You'll go ratty moonin' there all night."

"Coming!"

The spell was broken. Power forsook fairyland for everyday. Moll Gregory and he walked towards the house through the close night. The spikes of the grasses bent under their feet, and insects voyaging through the dark brushed their faces. Gregory stood in the doorway of the hut, fingering his dirty beard and talking to O'Neill. "Hullo, Moll, got company?" he cried. "Why, it's Mr. Power. Come right in. There's always a seat inside here waiting for Mr. Power."

"Hullo, boss," O'Neill said, "I thought you were down at Surprise."

"I promised to look in some time or other. Good evening, Mrs. Gregory; you have late visitors to-night."

The company found seats in the mean room, which was hard taxed to serve everybody. There was no change in the place since Power had gone away. On the rough table stood the wash basin. The shelf at the back held the crockery. The boxes stood on end for seats. The wire strainer and the potato digger lay in the corner. Power took all in as he filled his pipe again.

"I reckon you make the old place lively dropping in like this," Mrs. Gregory began, looking from one to the other, and leering at Gregory when the time came. "Dad was saying you had been a long while away, and must be hitched up on the road."

"Things went like wedding bells," said Power. "We put in a couple of days at Morning Springs. That kept us."

"A bit of a spree?" questioned Gregory.

"We are respectable men on Kaloona."

Mick O'Neill had sat down, pushing his spurred feet in front of him across the room. He had brought a new shirt on his back and had dressed his legs in clean trousers, belted with a bright knotted handkerchief. A hat with a gay dent in the crown had fallen upon the table. He had arrived pleased in advance with what might befall, a laugh prisoned in his mouth, a merry word harnessed to his tongue. He sat there, a man forgetting the past where the present was kind; a good fellow who must quicken the heart of any man or woman. Maybe so thought Power, who lost little of what went round.

"Things aren't much changed here, are they, Mr. Power?" said Gregory in a minute or two. "A man don't feel much like putting a house ship-shape at night after a day's shovelling. That show has got me beat. Gone down into rock now."

"It's time I kept my promise of a hand," said Mick. "I reckoned for you to be half way under the river."

"No buyers since we were away?" Power asked.

"Mr. King still has it in his eye; but it's gaff, and he has found a better show than mine. A-haw, haw, haw! A-haw!"

"We've missed you gentlemen since you went," Mrs. Gregory followed up, looking hard at the visitors. "Haven't we, Moll?"

"Dunno. What's this, Mick? Did you bring along your music? Good lad!"

O'Neill picked up an accordion from the floor. "You said you liked a bit of fun. I thought to knock a tune or two out later on."

"That's what we want here," cried Gregory very loud. "Do you think you could find mine, mother; or was it broke up?"

"Have a look in the tent. It was under the stretcher last."

In a little while Gregory came from the tent blowing the dust from his accordion, and the rest of the evening passed on speedy heels with song and tune and dance. The dust was kicked out of the earth floor by stepping feet, and sounds of "hurrah" startled the elderly night. Faces flushed; voices grew loud. Gregory swung on his box, opening and closing his arms, knocking the sweat from his forehead, and sending abroad his "A-haw." Mrs. Gregory grown amiable watched from the back, and busied herself presently boiling a kettle of water.

Power left the hut for the homeward road ere the merrymaking was worn out. The music followed him through the dark, as he saddled and bitted his horse. He had made ready soon, and had turned the beast home. A soft bed waited him at Kaloona instead of the couch of grasses that had been his portion for the week. But maybe he was to sleep no better because of it.

CHAPTER IX How the Days pass by at Surprise

Every day of the week, at fall of dark, I grope my way here into my tent at Surprise, light the hurricane lamp, hook it to the beam overhead, find paper and pen, and spur myself to the telling of a page more of this story. Sometimes a timid breeze comes through the doorway to cool the rising temper of the night; oftener the tent walls droop on their wooden framework; and neither pipe nor cigarette will bring me cheer.

The night wears on; the mosquito sharpens his appetite, and a fringe of the great army of flying things which moves abroad in the dark, flutters, jumps and creeps in at the doorway to the light. By half-past eight the attack has begun. Crickets in sober grey coats, black-banded on the legs, lead the advance; large crickets and small crickets. Great green grasshoppers follow; long and narrow grasshoppers, broad and deep-chested grasshoppers. Purple grasshoppers arrive on their heels; and now they come, large and small and in all habits. At nine o'clock they cover the ceiling, staring at the lamp with big stupid eyes; and strange moths and flies and flying ants have begun the Dance of Death about the globe.

Tilt back the chair; find the towel; neck and ears must be covered for the rest of the sitting. When the clock shows half-past nine, pack up the papers again, and step to the doorway awhile that contemplation may bring better humour. Then to bed.

At last my story is well begun, and a few days must wear out at Surprise and Kaloona before the tale moves much forward again. The cook puts the pot to boil. Little is to show when the lid first is lifted but the water is heating nevertheless.

Power came riding into Surprise now and again, and little he seemed altered, unless his temper had grown crotchety. The camp endured at Pelican Pool. Maud Neville went about the day's work as before and, if she was troubled ever so little so that she rose in the morning with a faint clutch at her heart—well, few at Surprise are without their crosses. Mr. Horrington, clambering off his stretcher, rather rocky in the morning, finds his eye filled with the wood-heap at the back door and a blunt axe standing by the wall, and hears Mrs. Horrington, clinking a billycan, crunch behind him along the path to the goat pen. Few would believe how unwell a man can feel at half-past six in the morning with a poor night's sleep behind him, and a wood-heap at his elbow.

Come morning then, come night; come laughter, come sorrow—the day's work goes forward. Saturday brings the coach bumping from Morning Springs. Monday, eight o'clock, hears the whistle beginning again the week. Shabby little camp set down in the wilderness, yours is the soul of the drudge, who finds brief time for singing at her labour, who finds still less time for tears.

On Monday mornings they do the washing at Surprise. Mrs. Bullock, brisk and brawny, sitting up in bed to rub her eyes, nudges Bullock from his last ten minutes' sleep.

"Don't forget the copper, dad. Yer left me with two sticks last time. Yer don't expect a woman to swing an axe as well as wash and bake and run after you from morning to night."

Mrs. Niven, dyspeptic and dolorous, wakes Niven with her high-pitched tones.

"Is it going to be the same this week? What does it worry you if a woman kills herself at the tub while you snore there all day? Look at Boulder, Bloxham and Bullock bin up half-an-hour, I reckon, runnin' round for their wives. And women come to me and say—'My! Mrs. Niven, you looks very poorly lately,—and I got to say the heat has took me dreadful, but it's runnin' after you, lifting tubs of water, and scratching on a wood-heap for wood that isn't there that done it."

Boulder, Bloxham and Johnson are rising up elsewhere.

Through the morning is great bustle and to-do, a filling of pitchers, a lifting of buckets, a running in and out of the sun to open-air fireplaces, a prodding of clothes in coppers with sticks, wringings, beatings, rinsings, re-wringings. The morning is gone as soon as begun.

By noonday whistle the clothes are spread on line and bush and fallen log; and Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Niven and Mrs. Boulder, rather short of breath, and distinctly short of speech, are dishing up the dinner a minute or two late. Coming home from the mine it is well to be discreet. Sitting down to lunch at Mrs. Simpson's bush boarding-house I talk very small on these occasions.

The wash dries early at Surprise and by three o'clock Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Niven and Mrs. Boulder are abroad again plucking the strange things down. When the whistle blows at five o'clock the irons are put by and the heaviest day of the week is over.

On Mondays they wash, and on Mondays by another law, the men go forth in clean clothes. If you are one to notice such things, you can tell the week in the month by the shirts going to work. Mr. Carroll, timekeeper, is especially regular this way. First and third Mondays bring him to the office in blue tie and white trousers with an iron mould in the seat; second and fourth Mondays show him in spotted tie and blue trousers weary at the knees. Simpson, the butcher, clips his moustache every first Sunday in the month, and changes from a man of walrus appearance to a brigand with shabby brown teeth.

But every day of the month the single boot-last of Surprise is in demand, as one or other person sits down with a pair of half-soles from the store to patch his boots against the ill-humours of the stones.

Now and then of a morning, between breakfast wash-up and the midday cooking, Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Niven and Mrs. Simpson slip across to the store for a packet of this or that, and any news that may be running round. It happens often that luck chooses them the same ten minutes; and Mrs. Boulder and Mrs. Bloxham may be passing by just then. Mr. Wells, storeman, agile and anxious, very quick at a piece of news, very slow at totting up an account, puts hands wide on the counter and gives a brisk "Good morning. Turned dreadful hot, Mrs. Simpson. Looks like summer come at last."

"It do," says Mrs. Simpson, casting an eye about the place.

Mrs. Bullock, leaning far across the counter, takes a look behind the scenes; and Mrs. Niven, standing a little out of the press, lifts her hat upon her head, drops it down again and makes speech.

"I was took bad agen last night before bed. This is no place for a woman, I tell you that short. I'll take another box of pills, same as last."

"All gone, Mrs. Niven," says Mr. Wells, bringing his hands off the counter with a jump and shaking his head. "Not a box or bottle of medicine nearer than Morning Springs. The last lot was very popular. There'll be something else with the next team sure."

"You never do have a thing in when it's wanted; that's speaking straight," joins in Mrs. Boulder, leaning farther over the counter. "I'll have that packet of spices down there. It's the last there is, I dare say, and a pound of tea and two of matches, and that's all."

"Good morning, Mrs. Bloxham. Good morning, Mrs. Boulder."

"Good morning. Good morning. Good morning."

"I was took bad agen last night before bed," says Mrs. Niven, "and now I come here and find not a dose of anything in the store. This is no land for a woman, I say, and I've said it before, and I wouldn't be surprised if I say it again."

"Well, Mrs. Boulder," says Mrs. Simpson, "is it true Mr. Regan won't give Kerrisk any bread since they had the row two day back? I heard something about it, but couldn't make a story of it. Seeing that you came across that way, I thought you might have heard."

"Small things don't worry me," says Mrs. Boulder, of stately and severe aspect. "Live and let live when you're out these ways is what's to do. I heard something last night of someone here that would be a shame to repeat."

"Mrs. Boulder?" comes the chorus.

"Mr. Wells, when it comes to my turn I'll have five of sugar and a pair of bootlaces, and see that it's a better pair than last. They didn't stay whole two days," continues Mrs. Boulder.

"Mrs. Boulder, what was that you heard tell?"

"It would do better with keeping, Mrs. Simpson. Mr. Wells, that was a beautiful tune you played last night. Yes, Mrs. Simpson, my news would do better with keeping, but we're all friends here. Well I heard say Mr. King over at the office there was doing a deal too much running up and down to the river lately. It don't take much guessing to know what that means."

"Quite likely, Mrs. Boulder. And he isn't the only one, I dare say. Leaving him, what do you reckon brought them two at the house up to these parts for? Selwyn the name is. Come from Melbourne, I hear. I heard say he was one of the heads of the Company, though I wouldn't go much on him doing a day's work."

"No need, Mrs. Simpson. That sort only wear white collars and sit round a table and talk big. Mrs. Nankervis, the cook up there, told me he and Mrs. don't hit it off, not a bit. She says it's a fact."

"When is the girl and Mr. Power from Kaloona comin' to a point? He's kept her waiting long enough."

"They say he's not too keen, but she's keeping him to it."

"There's no telling, Mrs. Bloxham. The old man would find a change looking after himself. I wouldn't be surprised if he looked round on his own account then. They say he was pretty gay thirty year back. Back for home agen, Mrs. Boulder? Good morning to you. My turn now, Mr. Wells."