CHAPTER I

E-text prepared by Amy Sisson & Marc D'Hooghe

(http://www.freeliterature.org)

THE BLACK OPAL

by

KATHARINE SUSANNAH PRICHARD

Author of "The Pioneers," "Windlestraws," Etc.

London: William Heinemann

1921

_PART I_

CHAPTER I

A string of vehicles moved slowly out of the New Town, taking the road

over the long, low slope of the Ridge to the plains.

Nothing was moving on the wide stretch of the plains or under the fine,

clear blue sky of early spring, except this train of shabby,

dust-covered vehicles. The road, no more than a track of wheels on

shingly earth, wound lazily through paper daisies growing in drifts

beside it, and throwing a white coverlet to the dim, circling horizon.

The faint, dry fragrance of paper daisies was in the air; a native

cuckoo calling.

The little girl sitting beside Michael Brady in Newton's buggy glanced

behind her now and then. Michael was driving the old black horse from

the coach stables and Newton's bay mare, and Sophie and her father were

sitting beside him on the front seat. In the open back of the buggy

behind them lay a long box with wreaths and bunches of paper daisies and

budda blossoms over it.

Sophie knew all the people on the road, and to whom the horses and

buggies they had borrowed belonged. Jun Johnson and Charley Heathfield

were riding together in the Afghan storekeeper's sulky with his fat

white pony before them. Anwah Kaked and Mrs. Kaked had the store cart

themselves. Watty and Mrs. Frost were on the coach. Ed. Ventry was

driving them and had put up the second seat for George and Mrs. Woods

and Maggie Grant. Peter Newton and Cash Wilson followed in Newton's

newly varnished black sulky. Sam Nancarrow had given Martha M'Cready a

lift, and Pony-Fence Inglewood was driving Mrs. Archie and Mrs. Ted

Cross in Robb's old heavy buggy, with the shaggy draught mare used for

carting water in the township during the summer, in the shafts. The

Flails' home-made jinker, whose body was painted a dull yellow, came

last of the vehicles on the road. Sophie could just see Arthur Henty and

two or three stockmen from Warria riding through a thin haze of red

dust. But she knew men were walking two abreast behind the vehicles and

horsemen--Bill Grant, Archie and Ted Cross, and a score of miners from

the Three Mile and the Punti rush. At a curve of the road she had seen

Snow-Shoes and Potch straggling along behind the others, the old man

stooping to pick wild flowers by the roadside, and Potch plodding on,

looking straight in front of him.

Buggies, horses, and people, they had come all the way from her home at

the Old Town. Almost everybody who lived on Fallen Star Ridge was there,

driving, riding, or walking on the road across the plains behind

Michael, her father, and herself. It was all so strange to Sophie; she

felt so strange in the black dress she had on and which Mrs. Grant had

cut down from one of her own. There was a black ribbon on her old yellow

straw hat too, and she had on a pair of black cotton gloves.

Sophie could not believe her mother was what they called "dead"; that it

was her mother in the box with flowers on just behind her. They had

walked along this very road, singing and gathering wild flowers, and had

waited to watch the sun set, or the moon rise, so often.

She glanced at her father. He was sitting beside her, a piece of black

stuff on his arm and a strip of the same material round his old felt

hat. The tears poured down his cheeks, and he shook out the large, new,

white handkerchief he had bought at Chassy Robb's store that morning,

and blew his nose every few minutes. He spoke sometimes to Michael; but

Michael did not seem to hear him. Michael sat staring ahead, his face as

though cut in wood.

Sophie remembered Michael had been with her when Mrs. Grant said.... Her

mind went back over that.

"She's dead, Michael," Mrs. Grant had said.

And she had leaned against the window beside her mother's bed, crying.

Michael was on his knees by the bed. Sophie had thought Michael looked

so funny, kneeling like that, with his head in his hands, his great

heavy boots jutting up from the floor. The light, coming in through the

window near the head of the bed, shone on the nails in the soles of his

boots. It was so strange to see these two people whom she knew quite

well, and whom she had only seen doing quite ordinary, everyday things,

behaving like this. Sophie had gazed at her mother who seemed to be

sleeping. Then Mrs. Grant had come to her, her face working, tears

streaming down her cheeks. She had taken her hand and they had gone out

of the room together. Sophie could not remember what Mrs. Grant had said

to her then.... After a little while Mrs. Grant had gone back to the

room where her mother was, and Sophie went out to the lean-to where

Potch was milking the goats.

She told him what Mrs. Grant had said about her mother, and he stopped

milking. They had gazed at each other with inquiry and bewilderment in

their eyes; then Potch turned his face away as he sat on the

milking-stool, and Sophie knew he was crying. She wondered why other

people had cried so much and she had not cried at all.

When Potch was taking the bucket of milk across the yard, her father had

come round the corner of the house. His heavy figure with its broad,

stooping shoulders was outlined against the twilight sky. He made for

the door, shouting incoherently. Sophie and Potch stood still as they

saw him.

Catching sight of them, he had turned and come towards them.

"We're on opal," he cried; "on opal!"

There was a feverish light in his eyes; he was trembling with

excitement.

He had pulled a small, washed oatmeal bag from his pocket, untied the

string, tumbled some stones on to the outstretched palm of his hand, and

held them for Potch to look at.

"Not a bad bit in the lot.... Look at the fire, there in the black

potch!... And there's green and gold for you. A lovely bit of pattern!

And look at this ... and this!" he cried eagerly, going over the two or

three small knobbies in his hand.

Potch looked at him dazedly.

"Didn't they tell you--?" he began.

Her father had closed his hands over the stones and opal dirt.

"I'm going in now," he said, thrusting the opals into the bag.

He had gone towards the house again, shouting: "We're on opal! On opal!"

Sophie followed him indoors. Mrs. Grant had met her father on the

threshold of the room where her mother was.

"Why didn't you come when I sent for you?" she asked.

"I didn't think it could be as bad as you made out--that she was really

dying," Sophie could hear her father saying again. "And we'd just struck

opal, me and Jun, struck it rich. Got two or three stones already--great

stuff, lovely pattern, green and orange, and fire all through the black

potch. And there's more of it! Heaps more where it came from, Jun says.

We're next Watty and George Woods--and no end of good stuff's come out

of that claim."

Mrs. Grant stared at him as Potch had done. Then she stood back from the

doorway of the room behind her.

Every gesture of her father's, of Mrs. Grant's, and of Michael's, was

photographed on Sophie's brain. She could see that room again--the quiet

figure on the bed, light golden-brown hair, threaded with silver, lying

in thin plaits beside the face of yellow ivory; bare, thin arms and

hands lying over grey blankets and a counter-pane of faded red twill;

the window still framing a square of twilight sky on which stars were

glittering. Mrs. Grant had brought a candle and put it on the box near

the bed, and the candle light had flared on Mrs. Grant's figure, showing

it, gaunt and accusing, against the shadows of the room. It had showed

Sophie her father, also, between Michael and Mrs. Grant, looking from

one to the other of them, and to the still figure on the bed, with a

dazed, penitent expression....

The horses jogged slowly on the long, winding road. Sophie was conscious

of the sunshine, warm and bright, over the plains, the fragrance of

paper daisies in the air; the cuckoos calling in the distance. Her

father snuffled and wiped his eyes and nose with his new handkerchief as

he sat beside her.

"She was so good, Michael," he said, "too good for this world."

Michael did not reply.

"Too good for this world!" Paul murmured again.

He had said that at least a score of times this morning. Sophie had

heard him say it to people down at the house before they started. She

had never heard him talk of her mother like that before. She looked at

him, sensing vaguely, and resenting the banality. She thought of him as

he had always been with her mother and with her, querulous and

complaining, or noisy and rough when he had been drinking. They had

spent the night in a shed at the back of the house sometimes when he was

like that....

And her mother had said:

"You'll take care of Sophie, Michael?"

Sophie remembered how she had stood in the doorway of her mother's room,

that afternoon--How long ago was it? Not only a day surely? She had

stood there until her mother had seen her, awed without knowing why,

reluctant to move, afraid almost. Michael had nodded without speaking.

"As though she were your own child?"

"So help me, God," Michael said.

Her-mother's eyes had rested on Michael's face. She had smiled at him.

Sophie did not think she had ever seen her smile like that before,

although her smile had always been like a light on her face.

"Don't let him take her away," her mother had said after a moment. "I

want her to grow up in this place ... in the quiet ... never to know the

treacherous ... whirlpool ... of life beyond the Ridge."

Then her mother had seen and called to her.

Sophie glanced back at the slowly-moving train of vehicles. They had a

dreary, dream-like aspect. She felt as if she were moving in a dream.

Everything she saw, and heard, and did, was invested with unreality; she

had a vague, unfeeling curiosity about everything.

"You see, Michael," her father was saying when she heard him talking

again, "we'd just got out that big bit when Potch came and said that

Marya ... that Marya.... I couldn't believe it was true ... and there

was the opal! And when I got home in the evening she was gone. My poor

Marya! And I'd brought some of the stones to show her."

He broke down and wept. "Do you think she knows about the opal,

Michael?"

Michael did not reply. Sophie looked up at him. The pain of his face, a

sudden passionate grieving that wrung it, translated to her what this

dying of her mother meant. She huddled against Michael; in all her

trouble and bewilderment there seemed nothing to do but to keep close to

Michael.

And so they came to the gate of a fenced plot which was like a quiet

garden on the plains. Several young coolebahs, and two or three older

trees standing in it, scattered light shade; and a few head-stones and

wooden crosses, painted white or bleached by the weather, showed above

the waving grass and wild flowers.

Sophie held the reins when Michael got down to open the gate. Then he

took his seat again and they drove in through the gateway. Other people

tied their horses and buggies to the fence outside.

When all the people who had been driving, riding, or walking on the road

went towards an old coolebah under which the earth had been thrown up

and a grave had been dug, Michael told Sophie to go with her father and

stand beside them. She did so, and dull, grieving eyes were turned to

her; glances of pitiful sympathy. But Snow-Shoes came towards the little

crowd beside the tree, singing.

He was the last person to come into the cemetery, and everybody stared

at him. An old man in worn white moleskins and cotton shirt, an old

white felt hat on his head, the wrappings of bag and leather, which gave

him his name, on his feet--although snow never fell on the Ridge--he

swung towards them. The flowers he had gathered as he came along, not

otilypaper daisies, but the blue flowers of crowsfoot, gold buttons, and

creamy and lavender, sweet-scented budda blossoms, were done up in a

tight little bunch in his hand. He drew nearer still singing under his

breath, and Sophie realised he was going over and over the fragment of a

song that her mother had loved and used often to sing herself.

There was a curious smile in his eyes as he came to a standstill beside

her. The leaves of the coolebah were bronze and gold in the sunshine, a

white-tail in its branches reiterating plaintively: "Sweet pretty

creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael, George Woods, Archie Cross,

and Cash Wilson, came towards the tree, their shoulders bowed beneath

the burden they were carrying; but Snow-Shoes smiled at everybody as

though this were really a joyous occasion, and they did not understand.

Only he understood, and smiled because of his secret knowledge.

CHAPTER II

In a week or two Mrs. Rouminof's name had dropped out of Ridge life

almost as if she had never been part of it.

At first people talked of her, of Paul, of Sophie, and of Michael. They

gossiped of her looks and manner, of her strange air of serenity and

content, although her life on the Ridge was, they surmised, a hard one,

and different from the life she had come from. But her death caused no

more disturbance than a stone thrown into quiet water, falling to the

bottom, does. No one was surprised, when it was known Paul and Sophie

had gone to live with Michael. Everyone expected Michael would try to

look after them for a while, although they could not imagine where he

was going to find room for them in his small house filled with books.

It was natural enough that Michael should have taken charge of Sophie

and Rouminof, and that he should have made all arrangements for Mrs.

Rouminof's funeral. If it had been left to Paul to bury his wife, people

agreed, she would not have been buried at all; or, at least, not until

the community insisted. And Michael would have done as much for any

shiftless man. He was next-of-kin to all lonely and helpless men and

women on the Ridge, Michael Brady.

Every man, woman, or child on the Ridge knew Michael. His lean figure in

shabby blue dungarees, faded shirt, and weathered felt hat, with no more

than a few threads of its band left, was as familiar as any tree, shed,

or dump on the fields. He walked with a slight stoop, a pipe in his

mouth always, his head bent as though he were thinking hard; but there

was no hard thought in his eyes, only meditativeness, and a faint smile

if he were stopped and spoken to unexpectedly.

"You're a regular 'cyclopaedia, Michael," the men said sometimes when he,

had given information on a subject they were discussing.

"Not me," Michael would reply as often as not. "I just came across that

in a book I was reading the other day."

Ridge folk were proud of Michael's books, and strangers who saw his

miscellaneous collection--mostly of cheap editions, old school books,

and shilling, sixpenny, and penny publications of literary masterpieces,

poetry, and works on industrial and religious subjects--did not wonder

that it impressed Ridge folk, or that Michael's knowledge of the world

and affairs was what it was. He had tracts, leaflets, and small books on

almost every subject under the sun. Books were regarded as his Weakness,

and, remembering it, some of the men, when they had struck opal and left

the town, occasionally sent a box of any old books they happened to come

across to Michael, knowing that a printed page was a printed page to him

in the long evenings when he lay on the sofa under his window. Michael

himself had spent all the money he could, after satisfying the needs of

his everyday life, on those tracts, pamphlets, and cheap books he

hoarded in his hut on shelves made from wooden boxes and old

fruit-cases.

But there was nothing of the schoolmaster about him. He rarely gave

information unless he was asked for it. The men appreciated that,

although they were proud of his erudition and books. They knew dimly but

surely that Michael used his books for, not against, themselves; and he

was attached to books and learning, chiefly for what they could do for

them, his mates. In all community discussions his opinion carried

considerable weight. A matter was often talked over with more or less

heat, differences of opinion thrashed out while Michael smoked and

listened, weighing the arguments. He rarely spoke until his view was

asked for. Then in a couple of minutes he would straighten out the

subject of controversy, show what was to be said for and against a

proposition, sum up, and give his conclusions, for or against it.

Michael Brady, however, was much more the general utility man than

encyclopaedia of Fallen Star Ridge. If a traveller--swagman--died on the

road, it was Michael who saw he got a decent burial; Michael who was

sent for if a man had his head smashed in a brawl, or a wife died

unexpectedly. He was the court of final appeal in quarrels and

disagreements between mates; and once when Martha M'Cready was away in

Sydney, he had even brought a baby into the world. He was something of a

dentist, too, honorary dentist to anyone on the Ridge who wanted a tooth

pulled out; and the friend of any man, woman, or child in distress.

And he did things so quietly, so much as a matter of course, that people

did not notice what he did for them, or for the rest of the Ridge. They

took it for granted he liked doing what he did; that he liked helping

them. It was his sympathy, the sense of his oneness with all their

lives, and his shy, whimsical humour and innate refusal to be anything

more than they were, despite his books and the wisdom with which they

were quite willing to credit him, that gained for Michael the regard of

the people of the Ridge, and made him the unconscious power he was in

the community.

Of about middle height, and sparely built, Michael was forty-five, or

thereabouts, when Mrs. Rouminof died. He looked older, yet had the

vigour and energy of a much younger man. Crowsfeet had gathered at the

corners of his eyes, and there were the fines beneath them which all

back-country men have from screwing their sight against the brilliant

sunshine of the north-west. But the white of his eyes was as clear as

the shell of a bird's egg, the irises grey, flecked with hazel and

green, luminous, and ringed with fine black lines. When he pushed back

his hat, half a dozen lines from frowning against the glare were on his

forehead too. His thin, black hair, streaked with grey, lay flat across

and close to his head. He had a well-shaped nose and the sensitive

nostrils of a thoroughbred, although Michael himself said he was no

breed to speak of, but plain Australian--and proud of it. His father was

born in the country, and so was his mother. His father had been a

teemster, and his mother a storekeeper's daughter. Michael had wandered

from one mining field to another in his young days. He had worked in

Bendigo and Gippsland; later in Silver Town; and from the Barrier Ranges

had migrated to Chalk Cliffs, and from the Cliffs to Fallen Star Ridge.

He had been one of the first comers to the Ridge when opal was

discovered there.

The Rouminofs had been on Chalk Cliffs too, and had come to the Ridge in

the early days of the rush. Paul had set up at the Cliffs as an opal

buyer, it was said; but he knew very little about opal. Anybody could

sell him a stone for twice as much as it was worth, and he could never

get a price from other buyers for the stones he bought. He soon lost any

money he possessed, and had drifted and swung with the careless life of

the place. He had worked as a gouger for a while when the blocks were

bought up. Then when the rush to the Ridge started, and most of the men

tramped north to try their luck on the new fields, he went with them;

and Mrs. Rouminof and Sophie followed a little later on Ed. Ventry's

bullock wagon, when Ed. was taking stores to the rush.

Mrs. Rouminof had lived in a hut at the Old Town even after the township

was moved to the eastern slope of the Ridge. She had learnt a good deal

about opal on the Cliffs, and soon after she came to the Ridge set up a

cutting-wheel, and started cutting and polishing stones. Several of the

men brought her their stones, and after a while she was so good at her

work that she often added a couple of pounds to the value of a stone.

She kept a few goats too, to assure a means of livelihood when there was

no opal about, and she sold goats' milk and butter in the township. She

had never depended on Rouminof to earn a living, which was just as well,

Fallen Star folk agreed, since, as long as they had known him, he had

never done so. For a long time he had drifted between the mines and

Newton's, cadging drinks or borrowing money from anybody who would lend

to him. Sometimes he did odd jobs at Newton's or the mail stables for

the price of a few drinks; but no man who knew him would take up a

claim, or try working a mine with him.

His first mate on the Ridge had been Pony-Fence Inglewood. They sank a

hole on a likely spot behind the Old Town; but Paul soon got tired of

it. When they had not seen anything but bony potch for a while, Paul

made up his mind there was nothing in the place. Pony-Fence rather liked

it. He was for working a little longer, but to oblige his mate he agreed

to sink again. Soon after they had started, Paul began to appear at the

dump when the morning was half through, or not at all. Or, as often as

not, when he did decide to sling a pick, or dig a bit, he groaned so

about the pains in his back or his head that as often as not Pony-Fence

told him to go home and get the missus to give him something for it.

The mildest man on the fields, Pony-Fence Inglewood did not discover for

some time what the boys said was correct. There was nothing the matter

with Rum-Enough but a dislike of shifting mullock if he could get anyone

to shift it for him. When he did discover he was doing the work of the

firm, Pony-Fence and Paul had it out with each other, and parted

company. Pony-Fence took a new mate, Bully Bryant, a youngster from

Budda, who was anxious to put any amount of elbow grease into his search

for a fortune, and Paul drifted. He had several mates afterwards,

newcomers to the fields, who wanted someone to work with them, but they

were all of the same opinion about him.

"Tell Rum-Enough there's a bit of colour about, and he'll work like a

chow," they said; "but if y' don't see anything for a day or two, he

goes as flat as the day before yesterday."

If he had been working, and happened on a knobby, or a bit of black

potch with a light or two in it, Paul was like a child, crazy with

happiness. He could talk of nothing else. He thought of nothing else. He

slung his pick and shovelled dirt as long as you would let him, with a

devouring impatience, in a frenzy of eagerness. The smallest piece of

stone with no more than sun-flash was sufficient to put him in a state

of frantic excitement.

Strangers to the Ridge sometimes wanted to know whether Rouminof had

ever had a touch of the sun. But Ridge folk knew he was not mad. He had

the opal fever all right, they said, but he was not mad.

When Jun Johnson blew along at the end of one summer and could not get

anyone to work with him, he took Paul on. The two chummed up and started

to sink a hole together, and the men made bets as to the chance of their

ever getting ten or a dozen feet below ground; but before long they were

astounded to see the old saw of setting a thief to catch a thief working

true in this instance. If anybody was loafing on the new claim, it was

not Rouminof. He did every bit of his share of the first day's hard pick

work and shovelling. If anybody was slacking, it was Jun rather than

Paul. Jun kept his mate's nose to the grindstone, and worked more

successfully with him than anyone else had ever done. He knew it, too,

and was proud of his achievement. Joking over it at Newton's in the

evening, he would say:

"Great mate I've got now! Work? Never saw a chow work like him! Work his

fingers to the bone, he would, if I'd let him. It's a great life, a

gouger's, if only you've got the right sort of mate!"

Ordinarily, of course, mates shared their finds. There was no question

of what partners would get out of the luck of one or the other. But

Jun--he had his own little way of doing business, everybody knew. He had

been on the Ridge before. He and his mate did not have any sensational

luck, but they had saved up two or three packets of opal and taken them

down to Sydney to sell. Old Bill Olsen was his mate then, and, although

Bill had said nothing of the business, the men guessed there had been

something shady about it. Jun had his own story of what happened. He

said the old chap had "got on his ear" in Sydney, and that "a couple of

spielers had rooked him of his stones." But Bill no longer noticed Jun

if they passed each other on the same track on the Ridge, and Jun

pretended to be sore about it.

"It's dirt," he said, "the old boy treating me as if I had anything to

do with his bad luck losin' those stones!"

"Why don't you speak to him about it?" somebody asked.

"Oh, we had it out in Sydney," Jun replied, "and it's no good raking the

whole thing up again. Begones is bygones--that's my motto. But if any

man wants to have a grudge against me, well, let him. It's a free

country. That's all I've got to say. Besides, the poor old cuss isn't

all there, perhaps."

"Don't you fret," Michael had said, "he's all right. He's got as much

there as you or me, or any of us for that matter."

"Oh well, you know, Michael," Jun declared. He was not going to quarrel

with Michael Brady. "What you say goes, anyhow!"

That was how Jun established himself anywhere. He had an easy,

plausible, good-natured way. All the men laughed and drank with him and

gave him grudging admiration, notwithstanding the threads and shreds of

resentments and distrusts which old stories of his dealings, even with

mates, had put in their minds. None of those stories had been proved

against him, his friends said, Charley Heathfield among them. That was a

fact. But there were too many of them to be good for any man's soul,

Ridge men, who took Jun with a grain of salt, thought--Michael Brady,

George Woods, Archie Cross, and Watty Frost among them; but Charley

Heathfield, Michael's mate, had struck up a friendship with Jun since

his return to the Ridge.

George Woods and the Crosses said it was a case of birds of a feather,

but they did not say that to Michael. They knew Michael had the sort of

affection for Charley that a man has for a dog he has saved from

drowning.

Charley Heathfield had been down on his luck when he went to the Ridge,

his wife and a small boy with him; and the rush which he had expected to

bring him a couple of hundred pounds' worth of opal at least, if it did

not make his fortune, had left him worse off than it found him--a piece

of debris in its wake. He and Rouminof had put down a shaft together,

and as neither of them, after the first few weeks, did any more work

than they could help, and were drunk or quarrelling half of their time,

nothing came of their efforts.

Charley, when his wife died, was ill himself, and living in a hut a few

yards from Michael's. She had been a waitress in a city restaurant, and

he had married her, he said, because she could carry ten dishes of hot

soup on one arm and four trays on the other. A tall, stolid, pale-faced

woman, she had hated the back-country and her husband's sense of humour,

and had fretted herself to death rather than endure them. Charley had no

particular opinion of himself or of her. He called his youngster

Potch--"a little bit of Potch," he said, because the kid would never be

anything better than poor opal at the best of times.

Michael had nursed Charley while he was ill during that winter, and had

taken him in hand when he was well enough to get about again. Charley

was supposed to have weak lungs; but better food, steady habits, and the

fine, dry air of a mild summer set him up wonderfully. Snow-Shoes had

worked with Michael for a long time; he said that he was getting too old

for the everyday toil of the mine, though, when Michael talked of taking

on Charley to work with them. It would suit him all right if Michael

found another mate. Michael and Charley Heathfield had worked together

ever since, and Snow-Shoes had made his living as far as anybody knew by

noodling on the dumps.

But Charley and Michael had not come on a glimmer of opal worth speaking

of for nearly twelve months. They were hanging on to their claim, hoping

each day they would strike something good. There is a superstition among

the miners that luck often changes when it seems at its worst. Both

Charley and Michael had storekeeper's accounts as long as their arms,

and the men knew if their luck did not change soon, one or the other of

them would have to go over to Warria, or to one of the other stations,

and earn enough money there to keep the other going on the claim.

They had no doubt it would be Michael who would have to go. Charley was

not fond of work, and would be able to loaf away his time very

pleasantly on the mine, making only a pretence of doing anything, until

Michael returned. They wondered why Michael did not go and get a move

into his affairs at once. Paul and Sophie might have-something to do

with his putting off going, they told each other; Michael was anxious

how Paul and his luck would fare when it was a question of squaring up

with Jun, and as to how the squaring up, when it came, would affect

Sophie.

Some of them had been concerning themselves on Paul's account also. They

did not like a good deal they had seen of the way Jun was using Paul,

and they had resolved to see he got fair play when it was time for a

settlement of his and Jun's account. George Woods, Watty Frost, and Bill

Grant went along to talk the matter over with Michael one evening, and

found him fixing a shed at the back of the hut which he and Potch had

put up for Sophie and her father, a few yards from Charley Heathfield's,

and in line with Michael's own hut at the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.

"Paul says he's going away if he gets a good thing out of his and Jun's

find," George Woods said.

"It'll be a good thing--if he gets a fair deal," Michael replied.

"He'll get that--if we can fix it," Watty Frost said.

"Yes," Michael agreed.

"Can't think why you're taking so much trouble with this place if Paul

and Sophie are going away soon, Michael," George Woods remarked at the

end of their talk.

"They're not gone yet," Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling

across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.

The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no

betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did

not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be

done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it

would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away.

But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father

would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for

them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would

be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be

prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.

CHAPTER III

The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they

found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all

that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was

the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should

hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was

like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish

up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a

packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better

tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most

of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to

deal squarely by him.

Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about

like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for

everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times

they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell

their opal.

Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at

Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them

up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's

package knew that he had kept the best stones.

For a couple of weeks after they had come on their nest of knobbies, Jun

and Paul had gouged and shovelled dirt enthusiastically; but the wisp

fires, mysteriously and suddenly as they had come, had died out of the

stone they moved. Paul searched frantically. He and Jun worked like

bullocks; but the luck which had flashed on them was withdrawn. Although

they broke new tunnels, went through tons of opal dirt with their hands,

and tracked every trace of black potch through a reef of cement stone in

the mine, not a spark of blue or green light had they seen for over a

week. That was the way of black opal, everybody knew, and knew, too,

that the men who had been on a good patch of fired stone would not work

on a claim, shovelling dirt, long after it disappeared. They would be

off down to Sydney, if no buyer was due to visit the fields, eager to

make the most of the good time their luck and the opal would bring them.

"Opal only brings you bad luck when you don't get enough of it," Ridge

folk say.

George and Watty had a notion Jun would not stick to the claim much

longer, when they arranged the night at Newton's to settle his and

Paul's account with each other. Michael, the Crosses, Cash Wilson,

Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Bully Bryant, old Bill Olsen, and most

of the staunch Ridge men were in the bar, Charley Heathfield drinking

with Jun, when George Woods strolled over to the table where Rouminof

was showing Sam Nancarrow his stones. Sam was blacksmith, undertaker,

and electoral registrar in Fallen Star, and occasionally did odd

butchering jobs when there was no butcher in the township. He had the

reputation, too, of being one of the best judges of black opal on the

fields.

Paul was holding up a good-looking knobby so that red, green, and gold

lights glittered through its shining potch as he moved it.

"That's a nice bit of stone you've got, Rummy!" George exclaimed.

Paul agreed. "But you should see her by candle light, George!" he said

eagerly.

He held up the stone again so that it caught the light of a lamp hanging

over the bar where Peter Newton was standing. The eyes of two or three

of the men followed the stone as Paul moved it, and its internal fires

broke in showers of sparks.

"Look, look!" Paul cried, "now she's showin'!"

"How much have you got on her?" Sam Nancarrow asked.

"Jun thinks she'll bring L50 or L60 at least."

Sam's and George Woods' eyes met: L50 was a liberal estimate of the

stone's value. If Paul got L10 or L15 for it he would be doing well,

they knew.

"They're nice stones, aren't they?" Paul demanded, sorting over the

opals he had spread out on the table. He held up a piece of green potch

with a sun-flash through it.

"My oath!" George Woods exclaimed.

"But where's the big beaut.?" Archie Cross asked, looking over the

stones with George.

"Oh, Jun's got her," Paul replied. "Jun!" he called, "the boys want to

see the big stone."

"Right!" Jun swung across to the table. Several of the men by the bar

followed him. "She's all right," he said.

He sat down, pulled a shabby leather wallet from his pocket, opened it,

and took out a roll of dirty flannel; he undid the flannel carefully,

and spread the stones on the table. There were several pieces of opal in

the packet. The men, who had seen them before separately, uttered soft

oaths of admiration and surprise when they saw all the opals together.

Two knobbies were as big as almonds, and looked like black almonds,

fossilised, with red fire glinting through their green and gold; a large

flat stone had stars of red, green, amethyst, blue and gold shifting

over and melting into each other; and several smaller stones, all good

stuff, showed smouldering fire in depths of green and blue and gold-lit

darkness.

Jun held the biggest of the opals at arm's length from the light of the

hanging lamp. The men followed his movement, the light washing their

faces as it did the stone.

"There she goes!" Paul breathed.

"What have you got on her?"

"A hundred pounds, or thereabouts."

"You'll get it easy!"

Jun put the stone down. He took up another, a smaller piece of opal, of

even finer quality. The stars were strewn over and over each other in

its limpid black pool.

"Nice pattern," he said.

"Yes," Watty Frost murmured.

"She's not as big as the other ... but better pattern," Archie Cross

said.

"Reckon you'll get L100 for her too, Jun?"

"Yup!" Jun put down the stone.

Then he held up each stone in turn, and the men gave it the same level,

appraising glance. There was no envy in their admiration. In every man's

eyes was the same worshipful appreciation of black opal.

Jun was drunk with his luck. His luck, as much as Newton's beer, was in

his head this night. He had shown his stones before, but never like

this, the strength of his luck.

"How much do you think there is in your packet, Jun?" Archie Cross

asked.

Jun stretched his legs under the table.

"A thou' if there's a penny."

Archie whistled.

"And how much do you reckon there is in Rum-Enough's?" George Woods put

the question.

"Four or five hundred," Jun said; "but we're evens, of course."

He leaned across the table and winked at George.

"Oh, I say," Archie protested, "what's the game?"

They knew Jun wanted them to believe he was joking, humouring Paul. But

that was not what they had arranged this party for.

"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones, Jun?"

"What?"

Jun started and stared about him. It was so unusual for one man to

suggest to another what he ought to do, or that there was anything like

bad faith in his dealings with his mates, that his blood rose.

"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones?" George repeated,

mildly eyeing him over the bowl of his pipe.

"Yes," Watty butted in, "Rummy ought to hold a few of the good stones,

Jun. Y' see, you might be run into by rats ... or get knocked out--and

have them shook off you, like Oily did down in Sydney--and it'd be hard

on Rummy, that--"

"When I want your advice about how me and my mate's going to work

things, I'll ask you," Jun snarled.

"We don't mind giving it before we're asked, Jun," Watty explained

amiably.

Archie Cross leaned across the table. "How about giving Paul a couple of

those bits of decent pattern--if you stick to the big stone?" he said.

"What's the game?" Jun demanded, sitting up angrily. His hand went over

his stones.

"Wait on, Jun!" Michael said. "We're not thieves here. You don't have to

grab y'r stones."

Jun looked about him. He saw that men of the Ridge, in the bar, were all

standing round the table. Only Peter Newton was left beside the bar,

although Charley Heathfield, on the outer edge of the crowd, regarded

him with a smile of faint sympathy and cynicism. Paul leaned over the

table before him, and looked from Jun to the men who had fallen in round

the table, a dazed expression broadening on his face.

"What the hell's the matter?" Jun cried, starting to his feet. "What are

you chaps after? Can't I manage me own affairs and me mate's?"

The crowd moved a little, closer to him. There was no chance of making a

break for it.

George Woods laughed.

"Course you can't, Jun!" he said. "Not on the Ridge, you can't manage

your affairs and your mate's ... your way ... Not without a little

helpful advice from the rest of us.... Sit down!"

Jun glanced about him again; then, realising the intention on every

face, and something of the purpose at the back of it, he sat down again.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" he exclaimed. "I see--you believe old Olsen's

story. That's about the strength of it. Never thought ... a kid, or a

chicken, 'd believe that bloody yarn. Well, what's the advice ... boys?

Let's have it, and be done with it!"

"We'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. We won't say anything about ...

why," George remarked. "But the boys and I was just thinking it might be

as well if you and Rum-Enough sort of shared up the goods now, and then

... if he doesn't want to go to Sydney same time as you, Jun, he can

deal his goods here, or when he does go."

No one knew better than Jun the insult which all this seemingly

good-natured talking covered. He knew that neither he, nor any other

man, would have dared to suggest that Watty, or George, or Michael, were

not to be trusted to deal for their mates, to the death even. But then

he knew, too, they were to be trusted; that there was not money enough

in the world to buy their loyalty to each other and to their mates, and

that he could measure their suspicion of his good faith by his knowledge

of himself. To play their game as they would have played it was the only

thing for him to do, he recognised.

"Right!" he said, "I'm more than willing. In fact, I wouldn't have the

thing on me mind--seein' the way you chaps 've taken it. But 'd like to

know which one of you wouldn't 've done what I've done if Rum-Enough was

your mate?"

Every man was uneasily conscious that Jun was right. Any one of them, if

he had Paul for a mate, would have taken charge of the most valuable

stones, in Paul's interest as well as his own. At the same time, every

man felt pretty sure the thing was a horse of another colour where Jun

was concerned.

"Which one of us," George Woods inquired, "if a mate'd been set on by a

spieler in Sydney, would've let him stump his way to Brinarra and foot

it out here ... like you let old Olsen?"

Jun's expression changed; his features blenched, then a flame of blood

rushed over his face.

"It's a lie," he yelled. "He cleared out--I never saw him afterwards!"

"Oh well," George said, "we'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. Let's have a

look at that flat stone."

Jun handed him the stone.

George held it to the light.

"Nice bit of opal," he said, letting the light play over it a moment,

then passed it on to Michael and Watty.

"You keep the big stone, and Paul'll have this," Archie Cross said.

He put the stone beside Paul's' little heap of gems.

Jun sat back in his chair: his eyes smouldering as the men went over his

opals, appraising and allotting each one, putting some before Rouminof,

and some back before him. They dealt as judicially with the stones as

though they were a jury of experts, on the case--as they really were.

When their decisions were made, Jun had still rather the better of the

stones, although the division had been as nearly fair as possible.

Paul was too dazed and amazed to speak. He glanced dubiously from his

stones to Jun, who rolled his opals back in the strip of dirty flannel,

folded it into his leather wallet, and dropped that into his coat

pocket. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.

Big and swarthy, with eyes which took a deeper colour from the new blue

shirt he had on, Jun stood an inch or so above the other men.

"Well," he said, "you boys have put it across me to-night. You've made a

mistake ... but I'm not one to bear malice. You done right if you

thought I wasn't going to deal square by Rum-Enough ... but I'll lay you

any money you like I'd 've made more money for him by selling his stones

than he'll make himself--Still, that's your business ... if you want it

that way. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm just where I was--in luck.

And you chaps owe me something.... Come and have a drink."

Most of the men, who believed Jun was behaving with better grace than

they had expected him to, moved off to have a drink with him. They were

less sure than they had been earlier in the evening that they had done

Rouminof a good turn by giving him possession of his share of the opals.

It was just on the cards, they realised as Jun said, that instead of

doing Rouminof a good turn, if Jun had been going to deal squarely by

him, they had done him a rather bad one. Paul was pretty certain to make

a mess of trading his own stones, and to get about half their value from

an opal-buyer if he insisted on taking them down to Sydney to sell

himself.

"What'll you do now your fortune's fixed up, Rummy?" George Woods asked,

jokingly, when he and two or three men were left with Paul by the table.

"I'll get out of this," Paul said. "We'll go down to Sydney--me and

Sophie--and we'll say good-bye to the Ridge for good."

The men laughed. It was the old song of an outsider who cared nothing

for the life of the Ridge, when he got a couple of hundred pounds' worth

of opal. He thought he was made for life and would never come back to

the Ridge; but he always did when his money was spent. Only Michael,

standing a little behind George Woods, did not smile.

"But you can't live for ever on three or four hundred quid," Watty Frost

said.

"No," Paul replied eagerly, "but I can always make a bit playing at

dances, and Sophie's going to be a singer. You wait till people hear her

sing.... Her mother was a singer. She had a beautiful voice. When it

went we came here.... But Sophie can sing as well as her mother. And

she's young. She ought to make a name for herself."

He wrapped the stones before him in a piece of wadding, touching them

reverently, and folded them into the tin cigarette box Michael had given

him to carry about the first stones Jun had let him have. He was still

mystified over the business of the evening, and why the boys had made

Jun give him the other stones. He had been quite satisfied for Jun to

hold most of the stones, and the best ones, as any man on the Ridge

would be for his mate to take care of their common property. There was a

newspaper lying on the table. He took it, wrapped it carefully about his

precious box, tied a piece of strong string round it, and let the box

down carefully into the big, loose pocket of his shabby coat.

CHAPTER IV

Watty and George were well satisfied with their night's work when they

went out of the bar into the street. Michael was with them. He said

nothing, but they took it for granted he was as pleased as they were at

what had been done and the way in which it had been done. Michael was

always chary of words, and all night they had noticed that what they

called his "considering cap" had been well drawn over his brows. He

stood smoking beside them and listening abstractedly to what they were

saying.

"Well, that's fixed him," Watty remarked, glancing back into the room

they had just left.

Jun was leaning over the bar talking to Newton, the light from the lamp

above, on his red, handsome face, and cutting the bulk of his head and

shoulders from the gloom of the room and the rest of the men about him.

Peter Newton was serving drinks, and Jun laughing and joking

boisterously as he handed them on to the men.

"He's a clever devil!" George exclaimed.

"Yes," Michael said.

"Shouldn't wonder if he didn't clear out by the coach to-morrow," George

said.

"Nor me," Watty grunted.

"Well, he won't be taking Paul with him."

"Not to-morrow."

"No."

"But Rummy's going down to town soon as he can get, he says."

"Yes."

"Say, Michael, why don't you try scarin' him about losing his stones

like Bill Olsen did?"

"I have."

"What does he say?"

"Says," Michael smiled, "the sharks won't get any of his money or opal."

Watty snuffed contemptuously by way of exclamation.

"Well, I'll be getting along," Michael added, and talked away in the

direction of his hut.

George and Watty watched his spare figure sway down the road between the

rows of huts which formed the Fallen Star township. It was a misty

moonlight night, and the huts stood dark against the sheening screen of

sky, with here and there a glow of light through open doorways, or

small, square window panes.

"It's on Michael's mind, Rum-Enough's going and taking Sophie with him,"

George, said.

"I don't wonder," Watty replied. "He'll come a cropper, sure as eggs....

And what's to become of her? Michael 'd go to town with them if he had a

bean--but he hasn't. He's stony, I know."

Even to his mate he did not say why he knew, and George did not ask,

understanding Watty's silence. It was not very long since George himself

had given Michael a couple of pounds; but he had a very good idea

Michael had little to do with the use of that money. He guessed that he

would have less to do with whatever he got from Watty.

"Charley's going over to Warria to-morrow, isn't he?" he asked.

Watty grunted. "About time he did something. Michael's been grafting for

him for a couple of years ... and he'd have gone to the station

himself--only he didn't want to go away till he knew what Paul was going

to do. Been trying pretty hard to persuade him to leave Sophie--till

he's fixed up down town--but you wouldn't believe how obstinate the

idiot is. Thinks he can make a singer of her in no time ... then she'll

keep her old dad till kingdom come."

Michael's figure was lost to sight between the trees which encroached on

the track beyond the town. Jun was singing in the hotel. His great

rollicking voice came to George and Watty with shouts of laughter.

George, looking back through the open door, saw Rouminof had joined the

crowd round the bar.

He was drinking as George's glance fell on him.

"Think he's all right?" Watty asked.

George did not reply.

"You don't suppose Jun 'd try to take the stones off of him, do you,

George?" Watty inquired again. "You don't think----?"

"I don't suppose he'd dare, seein' we've ... let him know how we feel."

George spoke slowly, as if he were not quite sure of what he was saying.

"He knows his hide'd suffer if he tried."

"That's right."

Archie Cross came from the bar and joined them.

"He's trying to make up to the boys--he likes people to think he's

Christmas, Jun," he said, "and he just wants 'em to forget that

anything's been said--detrimental to his character like."

George was inclined to agree with Archie. They went to the form against

the wall of the hotel and sat there smoking for a while; then all three

got up to go home.

"You don't think we ought to see Rummy home?" Watty inquired

hesitatingly.

He was ashamed to suggest that Rouminof, drunk, and with four or five

hundred pounds' worth of opal in his pockets, was not as safe as if his

pockets were empty. But Jun had brought a curious unrest into the

community. Watty, or Archie, or George, themselves would have walked

about with the same stuff in their pockets without ever thinking anybody

might try to put a finger on it.

None of the three looked at each other as they thought over the

proposition. Then Archie spoke:

"I told Ted," he murmured apologetically, "to keep an eye on Rummy, as

he's coming home. If there's rats about, you never can tell what may

happen. We ain't discovered yet who put it over on Rummy and Jun on the

day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral. So I just worded Ted to keep an eye on

the old fool. He comes our track most of the way ... And if he's tight,

he might start sheddin' his stones out along the road--you never can

tell."

George Woods laughed. The big, genial soul of the man looked out of his

eyes.

"That's true," he said heartily.

Archie and he smiled into each other's eyes. They understood very well

what lay behind Archie's words; They could not bring themselves to admit

there was any danger to the sacred principle of Ridge life, that a mate

stands by a mate, in letting Rouminof wander home by himself. He might

be in danger if there were rats about; they would admit that. But rats,

the men who sneaked into other men's mines when they were on good stuff,

and took out their opal during the night, were never Ridge men. They

were new-comers, outsiders, strangers on the rushes, who had not learnt

or assimilated Ridge ideas.

After a few minutes George turned away. "Well, good-night, Archie," he

said.

Watty moved after him.

"'Night!" Archie replied.

George and Watty went along the road together, and Archie walked off in

the direction Michael had taken.

But Michael had not gone home. When the trees screened him from sight,

he had struck out across the Ridge, then, turning back on his tracks

behind the town, had made towards the Warria road. He walked, thinking

hard, without noticing where he was going, his mind full of Paul, of

Sophie, and of his promise.

Now that Paul had his opal, it was clear he would be able to do as he

wished--leave the Ridge and take Sophie with him. For the time being at

least he was out of Jun Johnson's hands--but Michael was sure he would

not stay out of them if he went to Sydney. How to prevent his

going--how, rather, to prevent Sophie going with him---that was

Michael's problem. He did not know what he was going to do.

He had asked Sophie not to go with her father. He had told her what her

mother had said, and tried to explain to her why her mother had not

wanted her to go away from the Ridge, or to become a public singer. But

Sophie was as excited about her future as her father was. It was natural

she should be, Michael assured himself. She was young, and had heard

wonderful stories of Sydney and the world beyond the Ridge. Sydney was

like the town in a fairy tale to her.

It was not to be expected, Michael confessed to himself, that Sophie

would choose to stay on Fallen Star Ridge. If she could only be

prevailed upon to put off her departure until she was older and better

able to take care of herself, he would be satisfied. If the worst came

to the worst, and she went to Sydney with her father soon, Michael had

decided to go with them. Peter Newton would give him a couple of pounds

for his books, he believed, and he would find something to do down in

Sydney. His roots were in the Ridge. Michael did not know how he was

going to live away from the mines; but anything seemed better than that

Sophie should be committed to what her mother had called "the

treacherous whirlpool" of life in a great city, with no one but her

father to look after her.

And her mother had said:

"Don't let him take her away, Michael."

Michael believed that Marya Rouminof intended Sophie to choose for

herself whether she would stay on the Ridge or not, when she was old

enough. But now she was little more than a child, sixteen, nearly

seventeen, young for her years in some ways and old in others. Michael

knew her mother had wanted Sophie to grow up on the Ridge and to realise

that all the potentialities of real and deep happiness were there.

"They say there's got to be a scapegoat in every family, Michael," she

had said once. "Someone has to pay for the happiness of the others. If

all that led to my coming here will mean happiness for Sophie, it will

not have been in vain."

"That's where you're wrong," Michael had told her.

"Looking for justice--poetic justice, isn't it, they call it?--in the

working out of things. There isn't any of this poetic justice except by

accident. The natural laws just go rolling on--laying us out under them.

All we can do is set our lives as far as possible in accordance with

them and stand by the consequences as well as we know how."

"Of course, you're right," she had sighed, "but----"

It was for that "but" Michael was fighting now. He knew what lay beyond

it--a yearning for her child to fare a little better in the battle of

life than she had. Striding almost unconsciously over the loose, shingly

ground, Michael was not aware what direction his steps were taking until

he saw glimmering white shapes above the grass and herbage of the

plains, and realised that he had walked to the gates of the cemetery.

With an uncomfortable sense of broken faith, he turned away from the

gate, unable to go in and sit under the tree there, to smoke and think,

as he sometimes did. He had used every argument with Paul to prevent his

taking Sophie away, he knew; but for the first time since Michael and he

had been acquainted with each other, Paul had shown a steady will. He

made up his mind he was "going to shake the dust of the Ridge off his

feet," he said. And that was the end of it. Michael almost wished the

men had let Jun clear out with his stones. That would have settled the

business. But, his instinct of an opal-miner asserting itself, he was

unable to wish Paul the loss of his luck, and Jun what he would have to

be to deprive Paul of it. He walked on chewing the cud of bitter and

troubled reflections.

"Don't let him take her away!" a voice seemed to cry suddenly after him.

Michael stopped; he snatched the hat from his head.

"No!" he said, "he shan't take her away!"

Startled by the sound of his own voice, the intensity of thinking which

had wrung it from him, dazed by the sudden strength of resolution which

had come over him, he stood, his face turned to the sky. The stars

rained their soft light over him. As he looked up to them, his soul went

from him by force of will. How long he stood like that, he did not know;

but when his eyes found the earth again he looked about him wonderingly.

After a little while he put on his hat and turned away. All the pain and

trouble were taken from his thinking; he was strangely soothed and

comforted. He went back along the road to the town, and, skirting the

trees and the houses on the far side, came again to the track below

Newton's.

Lights were still shining in the hotel although it was well after

midnight. Michael could hear voices in the clear air. A man was singing

one of Jun's choruses as he went down the road towards the Punti Rush.

Michael kept on his way. He was still wondering what he could do to

prevent Paul taking Sophie away; but he was no longer worried about

it--his brain was calm and clear; his step lighter than it had been for

a long time.

He heard the voices laughing and calling to each other as he walked on.

"Old Ted!" he commented to himself, recognising Ted Cross's voice. "He's

blithered!"

When he came to a fork in the tracks where one went off in the direction

of his, Charley's, and Rouminof's huts, and the other towards the

Crosses', Michael saw Ted Cross lumbering along in the direction of his

own hut.

"Must 've been saying good-night to Charley and Paul," he thought. A

little farther along the path he saw Charley and Paul, unsteady shadows

ahead of him in the moonlight, and Charley had his arm under Paul's,

helping him home.

"Good old Charley!" Michael thought, quickly appreciative of the man he

loved.

He could hear them talking, Rouminof's voice thick and expostulatory,

Charley's even and clear.

"Charley's all right. He's not showin', anyhow," Michael told himself.

He wondered at that. Charley was not often more sober than his company,

and he had been drinking a good deal, earlier in the evening.

Michael was a few yards behind them and was just going to quicken his

steps and hail Charley, when he saw the flash of white in Charley's

hand--something small, rather longer than square, a cigarette box

wrapped in newspaper, it might have been--and Michael saw Charley drop

it into the pocket of his coat.

Paul wandered on, talking stupidly, drowsily. He wanted to go to sleep

there on the roadside; but Charley led him on.

"You'll be better at home and in bed," he said. "You're nearly there

now."

Instinctively, with that flash of white, Michael had drawn into the

shadow of the trees which fringed the track. Charley, glancing back

along it, had not seen him. Several moments passed before Michael moved.

He knew what had happened, but the revelation was such a shock that his

brain would not react to it. Charley, his mate, Charley Heathfield had

stolen Paul's opals. The thing no man on the Ridge had attempted,

notwithstanding its easiness, Charley had done. Although he had seen,

Michael could scarcely believe that what he had seen, had happened.

The two men before him staggered and swayed together. Their huts stood

only a few yards from each other, a little farther along the track.

Charley took Paul to the door of his hut, opened it and pushed him in.

He stood beside the door, listening and looking down the track for a

second longer. Michael imagined he would want to know whether Paul would

discover his loss or just pitch forward and sleep where he lay. Then

Charley went on to his own hut and disappeared.

When the light glowed in his window, Michael went on up the track,

keeping well to the cover of the trees. Opposite the hut he took off his

boots. He put his feet down carefully, pressing the loose pebbles

beneath him, as he crossed the road. It seemed almost impossible to move

on that shingly ground without making a sound, and yet when he stood

beside the bark wall of Charley's room and could see through the smeared

pane of its small window, Charley had not heard a pebble slip. He was

sitting on the edge of his bed, the stub of a lighted candle in a saucer

on the bed beside him, and the box containing the opals lying near it as

if he were just going to cut the string and have a look at them. The

wall creaked as Michael leaned against it.

"Who's there?" Charley cried sharply.

He threw a blanket over the box on the bed and started to the door.

Michael moved round the corner of the house. He heard Potch call

sleepily:

"That you?"

Charley growled;

"Oh, go to sleep, can't you? Aren't you asleep yet?"

Potch murmured, and there was silence again.

Michael heard Charley go to the door, look out along the road, and turn

back into the hut. Then Michael moved along the wall to the window.

Charley was taking down some clothes hanging from nails along the inner

wall. He changed from the clothes he had on into them, picked up his

hat, lying where he had thrown it on the floor beside the bed when he

came in, rolled it up, straightened the brim and dinged the crown to his

liking. Then he picked up the packet of opal, put it in his coat pocket,

and went into the other room. Michael followed to the window which gave

on it. He saw Charley glance at the sofa as though he were contemplating

a stretch, but, thinking better of it, he settled into an easy,

bag-bottomed old chair by the table, pulled a newspaper to him, and

began to read by the guttering light of his candle.

Michael guessed why Charley had dressed, and why he had chosen to sit

and read rather than go to sleep. It was nearly morning, the first chill

of dawn in the air. The coach left at seven o'clock, and Charley meant

to catch the coach. He had no intention of going to Warria. Michael

began to get a bird's-eye view of the situation. He wondered whether

Charley had ever intended going to Warria. He realised Charley would go

off with the five pound note he had made him, Michael, get from Watty

Frost, as well as with Paul's opals. He began, to see clearly what that

would mean, too--Charley's getting away with Paul's opals. Paul would

not be able to take Sophie away....

In the branches of a shrub nearby, a white-tail was crying plaintively:

"Sweet pretty creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael remembered how

it had cried like that on the day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral.

Whether to go into the hut, tell Charley he knew what he had done, and

demand the return of the opals, or let him get away with them, Michael

had not decided, when Charley's hand went to his pocket, and, as it

closed over the package of opals, a smile of infantile satisfaction

flitted across his face. That smile, criminal in its treachery, enraged

Michael more than the deed itself. The candle Charley had been reading

by guttered out. He stumbled about the room looking for another. After a

while, as if he could not find one, he went back to his chair and

settled into it. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the dim pane

of the window by which Michael was standing.

Michael's mind seethed with resentment and anger. The thing he had

prayed for, that his brain had ached over, had been arranged. Rouminof

would not be able to take Sophie away. But Michael was too good a Ridge

man not to detest Charley's breach of the good faith of the Ridge.

Charley had been accepted by men of the Ridge as one of themselves--at

least, Michael believed he had.

George, Watty, the Crosses, and most of the other men would have

confessed to reservations where Charley Heathfield was concerned. But as

long as he had lived as a mate among them, they had been mates to him.

Michael did not want Rouminof to have his stones if having them meant

taking Sophie away, but he did not want him to lose them. He could not

allow Charley to get away with them, with that smile of infantile

satisfaction. If the men knew what he had done there would be little of

that smile left on his face when they had finished with him. Their

methods of dealing with rats were short and severe. And although he

deserved all he got from them, Michael was not able to decide to hand

Charley over to the justice of the men of the Ridge.

As he hesitated, wondering what to do, the sound of heavy, regular

breathing came to him, and, looking through the window, he saw that

Charley had done the last thing he intended to do--he had fallen asleep

in his chair.

In a vivid, circling flash, Michael's inspiration came to him. He went

across to his hut, lighted a candle when he got indoors, and took the

black pannikin he kept odd pieces of opal in, from the top of a

bookshelf. There was nothing of any great value in the pannikin--a few

pieces of coloured potch which would have made a packet for an

opal-buyer when he came along, and a rather good piece of stone in the

rough he had kept as a mascot for a number of years--that was all.

Michael turned them over. He went to the corner shelf and returned to

the table with a cigarette box the same size as the one Rouminof had

kept his opals in. Michael took a piece of soiled wadding from a drawer

in the table, rolled the stones in it, and fitted them into the box. He

wrapped the tin in a piece of newspaper and tied it with string. Then he

blew out his candle and went out of doors again.

He made his way carefully over the shingles to Charley's hut. When he

reached it, he leaned against the wall, listening to hear whether

Charley was still asleep. The sound of heavy breathing came slowly and

regularly. Michael went to the back of the hut. There was no door to it.

He went in, and slowly approached the chair in which Charley was

sleeping.

He could never come to any clear understanding with himself as to how he

had done what he did. He knew only a sick fear possessed him that

Charley would wake and find him, Michael, barefooted, like a thief in

his house. But he was not a thief, he assured himself. It was not

thieving to take from a thief.

Charley stirred uneasily. His arm went out; in the dim light Michael saw

it go over the pocket which held the packet of opal; his hand clutch at

it unconsciously. Sweating with fear and the nervous tension he was

under, Michael remained standing in the darkness. He waited, wondering

whether he would throw off Charley's hand and snatch the opal, or

whether he would stand till morning, hesitating, and wondering what to

do, and Charley would wake at last and find him there. He had decided to

wrench Charley's arm from the pocket, when Charley himself flung it out

with a sudden restless movement.

In an instant, almost mechanically, Michael's hand went to the pocket.

He lifted the packet there and put his own in its place.

The blood was booming in his ears when he turned to the door. A sense of

triumph unnerved him more than the execution of his inspiration. Charley

muttered and called out in his sleep as Michael passed through the

doorway.

Then the stars were over him. Michael drew a deep breath of the night

air and crossed to his own hut, the package of opal under his coat. Just

as he was entering he drew back, vaguely alarmed. A movement light as

thistledown seemed to have caught his ear. He thought he had detected a

faint shifting of the shingle nearby. He glanced about with quick

apprehension, went back to Charley's hut, listened, and looked around;

but Charley was still sleeping. Michael walked back to his own hut.

There was no sight or sound of a living thing in the wan, misty

moonlight of the dawn, except the white-tail which was still crying from

a wilga near Charley's hut.

The package under his coat felt very heavy and alive when he returned to

his own hut. Michael was disturbed by that faint sound he had heard, or

thought he had heard. He persuaded himself he had imagined it, that in

the overwrought state of his sensibilities the sound of his own breath,

and his step on the stones, had surprised and alarmed him. The tin of

opals burned against his body, seeming to scar the skin where it

pressed. Michael sickened at the thought of how what he had done might

look to anyone who had seen him. But he put the thought from him. It was

absurd. He had looked; there was no one about--nothing. He was allowing

his mind to play tricks with him. The success of what he had done made

him seem like a thief. But he was not a thief. The stones were

Rouminof's. He had taken them from Charley for him, and he would not

even look at them. He would keep them for Paul.

If Charley got away without discovering the change of the packets, as he

probably would, in the early morning and in his excitement to catch the

coach, he would be considered the thief. Rouminof would accuse him;

Charley would know his own guilt. He would not dare to confess what he

had done, even when he found that his package of opal had been changed.

He would not know when it had been changed. He would not know whether it

had been changed, perhaps, before he took it from Rouminof.

Charley might recognise the stones in that packet he had done up,

Michael realised; but he did not think so. Charley was not much of a

judge of opal. Michael did not think he would remember the few scraps of

sun-flash they had come on together, and Charley had never seen the

mascot he had put into the packet, with a remnant of feeling for the

memory of their working days together.

Michael did not light the candle when he went into his hut again. He

threw himself down on the bed in his clothes; he knew that he would not

sleep as he lay there. His brain burned and whirled, turning over the

happenings of the night and their consequences, likely and unlikely. The

package of opal lay heavy in his pocket. He took it out and dropped it

into a box of books at the end of the room.

He did not like what he had done, and yet he was glad he had done it.

When he could see more clearly, he was glad, too, that he had grasped

this opportunity to control circumstances. A reader and dreamer all his

days, he had begun to be doubtful of his own capacity for action. He

could think and plan, but he doubted whether he had strength of will to

carry out purposes he had dreamed a long time over. He was pleased, in

an odd, fierce way, that he had been able to do what he thought should

be done.

"But I don't want them.... I don't want the cursed stones," he argued

with himself. "I'll give them to him--to Paul, as soon as I know what

ought to be done about Sophie. She's not old enough to go yet--to know

her own mind--what she wants to do. When she's older she can decide for

herself. That's what her mother meant. She didn't mean for always ...

only while she's a little girl. By and by, when she's a woman, Sophie

can decide for herself. Now, she's got to stay here ... that's what I

promised."

"And Charley," he brooded. "He deserves all that's coming to him ... but

I couldn't give him away. The boys would half kill him if they got their

hands on to him. When will he find out? In the train, perhaps--or not

till he gets to Sydney.... He'll have my fiver, and the stones to go on

with--though they won't bring much. Still, they'll do to go on with....

Paul'll be a raving lunatic when he knows ... but he can't go--he can't

take Sophie away."

His brain surged over and over every phrase: his state of mind since he

had seen Charley and Paul on the road together; every argument he had

used with himself. He could not get away from the double sense of

disquiet and satisfaction.

An hour or two later he heard Charley moving about, then rush off down

the track, sending the loose stones flying under his feet as he ran to

catch the coach.

CHAPTER V

Watty was winding dirt, standing by the windlass on the top of the dump

over his and his mates' mine, when he saw Paul coming along the track

from the New Town. Paul was breaking into a run at every few yards, and

calling out. Watty threw the mullock from his hide bucket as it came up,

and lowered it again. He wound up another bucket. The creak of the

windlass, and the fall of the stone and earth as he threw them over the

dump, drowned the sound of Rouminof's voice. As he came nearer, Watty

saw that he was gibbering with rage, and crying like a child.

While he was still some distance away, Watty heard him sobbing and

calling out.

He stopped work to listen as Paul came to the foot of Michael's dump.

Ted Cross, who was winding dirt on the top of Crosses' mine, stopped to

listen too. Old Olsen got up from where he lay noodling on Jun's and

Paul's claim, and went across to Paul. Snow-Shoes, stretched across the

slope near where Watty was standing, lifted his head, his turning of

earth with a little blunt stick arrested for the moment.

"They've took me stones!... Took me stones!" Watty heard Paul cry to

Bill Olsen. And as he climbed the slope of Michael's dump he went on

crying: "Took me stones! Took me stones! Charley and Jun! Gone by the

coach! Michael!... They've gone by the coach and took me stones!"

Over and over again he said the same thing in an incoherent wail and

howl. He went down the shaft of Michael's mine, and Ted Cross came

across from his dump to Watty.

"Hear what he says, Watty?" he asked.

"Yes," Watty replied.

"It gets y'r wind----"

"If it's true," Watty ventured slowly.

"Seems to me it's true all right," Ted said. "Charley took him home last

night. I went along with them as far as the turn-off. Paul was a bit on

... and Archie asked me to keep an eye on him.... I was a bit on meself,

too ... but Charley came along with us--so I thought he'd be all

right.... Charley went off by the coach this morning.... Bill Olsen told

me.... And Michael was reck'ning on him goin' to Warria to-day, I know."

"That's right!"

"It'll be hard on Michael!"

Watty's gesture, upward jerk of his chin, and gusty breath, denoted his

agreement on that score.

Ted went back to his own claim, and Watty slid down the rope with his

next bucket to give his mates the news. It was nearly time to knock off

for the midday meal, and before long men from all the claims were

standing in groups hearing the story from Rouminof himself, or talking

it over together.

Michael had come up from his mine soon after Paul had gone down to him.

The men had seen him go off down the track to the New Town, his head

bent. They thought they knew why. Michael would feel his mate's

dishonour as though it were his own. He would not be able to believe

that what Paul said was true. He would want to know from Peter Newton

himself if it was a fact that Charley had gone out on the coach with Jun

and two girls who had been at the hotel.

Women were scarce on the opal fields, and the two girls who had come a

week before to help Mrs. Newton with the work of the hotel had been

having the time of their lives. Charley, Jun Johnson, and two or three

other men, had been shouting drinks for them from the time of their

arrival, and Mrs. Newton had made up her mind to send the girls back to

town by the next coach. Jun had appropriated the younger of the two, a

bright-eyed girl, and the elder, a full-bosomed, florid woman with

straw-coloured hair, had, as the boys said, "taken a fancy to Charley."

Paul had already told his story once or twice when Cash Wilson, George,

and Watty, went across to where he was standing, with half a dozen of

the men about him. They were listening gravely and smoking over Paul's

recital. There had been ratting epidemics on the Ridge; but robbery of a

mate by a mate had never occurred before. It struck at the fundamental

principle of their life in common. There was no mistaking the grave,

rather than indignant view men of the Ridge took of what Charley had

done. The Ridge code affirmed simply that "a mate stands by a mate." The

men say: "You can't go back on a mate." By those two recognitions they

had run their settlement. Far from all the ordinary institutions of law

and order, they had lived and worked together without need of them, by

appreciation of their relationship to each other as mates and as a

fraternity of mates. No one, who had lived under and seemed to accept

the principle of mateship, had ever before done as Charley had done.

"But Charley Heathfield was never one of us really," Ted Cross said. "He

was always an outsider."

"That's right, Ted," George Woods replied. "We only stuck him on

Michael's account."

Paul told George, Watty, and Cash the story he had been going over all

the morning--how he had gone home with Charley, how he remembered going

along the road with him, and then how he had wakened on the floor of his

own hut in the morning. Sophie was there. She was singing. He had

thought it was her mother. He had called her ... but Sophie had come to

him. And she had abused him. She had called him "a dirty, fat pig," and

told him to get out of the way because she wanted to sweep the floor.

He sobbed uncontrollably. The men sympathised with him. They knew the

loss of opal came harder on Rouminof than it would have on the rest of

them, because he was so mad about the stuff. They condoned the

abandonment of his grief as natural enough in a foreigner, too; but

after a while it irked them.

"Take a pull at y'rself, Rummy, can't you?" George Woods said irritably.

"What did Michael say?"

"Michael?" Paul looked at him, his eyes streaming.

George nodded.

"He did not say," Paul replied. "He threw down his pick. He would not

work any more ... and then he went down to Newton's to ask about

Charley."

Two or three of the men exchanged glances. That was the way they had

expected Michael to take the news. He would not have believed Paul's

story at first. They did not see Michael again that day. In the evening

Peter Newton told them how Michael had come to him, asking if it was

true Charley had gone on the coach with Jun Johnson and the girls. Peter

told Michael, he said, that Charley had gone on the coach, and that he

thought Rouminof's story looked black against Charley.

"Michael didn't say much," Peter explained, "but I don't think he could

help seeing what I said was true--however much he didn't want to."

Everybody knew Michael believed in Charley Heathfield. He had thought

the worst that could be said of Charley was that he was a good-natured,

rather shiftless fellow. All the men had responded to an odd attractive

faculty Charley exercised occasionally. He had played it like a woman

for Michael, and Michael had taken him on as a mate and worked with him

when no one else would. And now, the men guessed, that Michael, who had

done more than any of them to make the life of the Ridge what it was,

would feel more deeply and bitterly than any of them that Charley had

gone back on him and on what the Ridge stood for.

All they imagined Michael was suffering in the grief and bitterness of

spirit which come of misplaced faith, he was suffering. But they could

not imagine the other considerations which had overshadowed grief and

bitterness, the realisation that Sophie's life had been saved from what

looked like early wreckage, and the consciousness that the consequences

of what Charley had done, had fallen, not on Charley, but on himself.

Michael had lived like a child, with an open heart at the disposal of

his mates always; and the sense of Charley's guilt descending on him,

had created a subtle ostracism, a remote alienation from them.

He could not go to Newton's in the evening and talk things over with the

men as he ordinarily would have. He wandered over the dumps of deserted

rushes at the Old Town, his eyes on the ground or on the distant

horizons. He could still only believe he had done the best thing

possible under the circumstances. If he had let Charlie go away with the

stones, Sophie would have been saved, but Paul would have lost his

stones. As it was, Sophie was saved, and Paul had not lost his stones.

And Michael could not have given Charley away. Charley had been his

mate; they had worked together. The men might suspect, but they could

not convict him of being what he was unless they knew what Michael knew.

Charley had played on the affection, the simplicity of Michael's belief

in him. He had used them, but Michael had still a lingering tenderness

and sympathy for him. It was that which had made him put the one decent

piece of opal he possessed into the parcel he had made up for Charley to

take instead of Paul's stones. It was the first piece of good stuff he

had found on the Ridge, and he had kept it as a mascot--something of a

nest egg.

Michael wondered at the fate which had sent him along the track just

when Charley had taken Paul's stones. He was perplexed and impatient of

it. There would have been no complication, no conflict and turmoil if

only he had gone along the track a little later, or a little earlier.

But there was no altering what had happened. He had to bear the

responsibility of it. He had to meet the men, encounter the eyes of his

mates as he had never done before, with a reservation from them. If he

could give the stones to Paul at once, Michael knew he would disembarass

himself of any sense of guilt. But he could not do that. He was afraid

if Paul got possession of the opals again he would want to go away and

take Sophie with him.

Michael thought of taking Watty and George into his confidence, but to

do so would necessitate explanations--explanations which involved

talking of the promise he had made Sophie's mother and all that lay

behind their relationship. He shrank from allowing even the sympathetic

eyes of George and Watty to rest on what for him was wrapped in mystery

and inexplicable reverence. Besides, they both had wives, and Watty was

not permitted to know anything Mrs. Watty did not worm out of him sooner

or later. Michael decided that if he could not keep his own confidence

he could not expect anyone else to keep it. He must take the

responsibility of what he had done, and of maintaining his position in

respect to the opals until Sophie was older--old enough to do as she

wished with her life.

As he walked, gazing ahead, a hut formed itself out of the distance

before him, and then the dark shapes of bark huts huddled against the

white cliff of dumps at the Three Mile, under a starry sky. A glow came

from the interior of one or two of the houses. A chime of laughter, and

shredded fragments of talking drifted along in the clear air. Michael

felt strangely alone and outcast, hearing them and knowing that he could

not respond to their invitation.

In any one of those huts a place would be eagerly made for him if he

went into it; eyes would lighten with a smile; warm, kindly greetings

would go to his heart. But the talk would all be of the stealing of

Rouminof's opal, and of Charley and Jun, Michael knew. The people at the

Three Mile would have seen the coach pass. They would be talking about

it, about himself, and the girls who had driven away with Charley and

Jun.

Turning back, Michael walked again across the flat country towards the

Ridge. He sat for a while on a log near the tank paddock. A drugging

weariness permeated his body and brain, though his brain ticked

ceaselessly. Now and again one or other of Rouminof's opals flashed and

scintillated before him in the darkness, or moved off in starry flight

before his tired gaze. He was vaguely disturbed by the vision of them.

When he rose and went back towards the town, his feet dragged wearily.

There was a strange lightness at the back of his head, and he wondered

whether he were walking in the fields of heaven, and smiled to think of

that. At least one good thing would come of it all, he told himself over

and over again--Paul could not take Sophie away.

The houses and stores of the New Town were all in darkness when he

passed along the main street. Newton's was closed. There were no lights

in Rouminof's or Charley's huts as he went to his own door. Then a low

cry caught his ear. He listened, and went to the back door of Charley's

hut. The cry rose again with shuddering gasps for breath. Michael stood

in the doorway, listening. The sound came from the window. He went

towards it, and found Potch lying there on the bunk with his face to the

wall.

He had not heard Michael enter, and lay moaning brokenly. Michael had

not thought of Potch since the people at Newton's told him that a few

minutes, after the coach had gone Potch had come down to the hotel to

cut wood and do odd jobs in the stable, as he usually did. Mrs. Newton

said he stared at her, aghast, when she told him that his father had

left on the coach. Then he had started off at a run, taking the short

cut across country to the Three Mile.

Michael put out his hand. He could not endure that crying.

"Potch!" he said.

At the sound of his voice, Potch was silent. After a second he struggled

to his feet, and stood facing Michael.

"He's gone, Michael!" he cried.

"He might have taken you," Michael said.

"Taken me!" Potch's exclamation did away with any idea Michael had that

his son was grieving for Charley. "It wasn't that I minded----"

Michael did not know what to say. Potch continued:

"As soon as I knew, I went after him--thought I'd catch up the coach at

the Three Mile, and I did. I told him he'd have to come back--or hand

out that money. I saw you give it to him the other night and arrange

about going to Warria.... Mr. Ventry pulled up. But _he_ ... set the

horses going again. I tried to stop them, but the sandy bay let out a

kick and they went on again.... The swine!"

Michael had never imagined this stolid son of Charley's could show such

fire. He was trembling with rage and indignation. Michael rarely lost

his temper, but the blood rushed to his head in response to Potch's

story. Restraint was second nature with him, though, and he waited until

his own and Potch's fury had ebbed.

Then he moved to leave the hut.

"Come along," he said.

"Michael!"

There was such breaking unbelief and joy in the cry. Michael turned and

caught the boy's expression.

"You're coming along with me, Potch," he said.

Potch still stood regarding him with a dazed expression of worshipful

homage and gratitude. Michael put out his hand, and Potch clasped it.

"You and me," he said, "we both seem to be in the same boat, Potch....

Neither of us has got a mate. I'll be wanting someone to work with now.

We'd better be mates."

They went out of the hut together.

CHAPTER VI

Michael and Potch were at work next morning as soon as the first cuckoos

were calling. Michael had been at the windlass for an hour or

thereabouts, when Watty Frost, who was going along to his claim with

Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, saw Michael on the top of his

dump, tossing mullock.

"Who's Michael working with?" he asked.

Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant considered, and shook their heads, smoking

thoughtfully.

Snow-Shoes, where he lay sprawled across the slope of Crosses' dump,

glanced up at them, and the nickering wisp of a smile went through his

bright eyes. The three were standing at the foot of the dump before

separating.

"Who's Michael got with him?" Pony-Fence inquired, looking at

Snow-Shoes.

But the old man had turned his eyes back to the dump and was raking the

earth with his stick again, as if he had not heard what was said. No one

was deafer than Snow-Shoes when he did not want to hear.

Watty watched Michael as he bent over the windlass, his lean, slight

figure cut against the clear azure of the morning sky.

"It's to be hoped he's got a decent mate this time--that's all," he

said.

Pony-Fence and Bully were going off to their own claim when Potch came

up on the rope and stood by the windlass while Michael went down into

the mine.

"Well!" Watty gasped, "if that don't beat cock-fighting!"

Bully swore sympathetically, and watched Potch set to work. The three

watched him winding and throwing mullock from the hide buckets over the

dump with the jerky energy of a new chum, although Potch had done odd

jobs on the mines for a good many years. He had often taken his father's

turn of winding dirt, and had managed to keep himself by doing all

manner of scavenging in the township since he was quite a little chap,

but no one had taken him on as a mate till now. He was a big fellow,

too, Potch, seventeen or eighteen; and as they looked at him Watty and

Pony-Fence realised it was time someone gave Potch a chance on the

mines, although after the way his father had behaved Michael was about

the last person who might have been expected to give him that

chance--much less take him on as mate. Like father, like son, was one of

those superstitions Ridge folk had not quite got away from, and the men

who saw Potch working on Michael's mine wondered that, having been let

down by the father as badly as Charley had let Michael down, Michael

could still work with Potch, and give him the confidence a mate was

entitled to. But there was no piece of quixotism they did not think

Michael capable of. The very forlornness of Potch's position on the

Ridge, and because he would have to face out and live down the fact of

being Charley Heathfield's son, were recognised as most likely Michael's

reasons for taking Potch on to work with him.

Watty and Pony-Fence appreciated Michael's move and the point of view it

indicated. They knew men of the Ridge would endorse it and take Potch on

his merits. But being Charley's son, Potch would have to prove those

merits. They knew, too, that what Michael had done would help him to

tide over the first days of shame and difficulty as nothing else could

have, and it would start Potch on a better track in life than his father

had ever given him.

Bully had already gone off to his claim when Watty and Pony-Fence

separated. Watty broke the news to his mates when he joined them

underground.

"Who do y' think's Michael's new mate?" he asked.

George Woods rested on his pick.

Cash looked up from the corner where he was crouched working a streak of

green-fired stone from the red floor and lower wall of the mine.

"Potch!" Watty threw out as George and Cash waited for the information.

George swept the sweat from his forehead with a broad, steady gesture.

"He was bound to do something nobody else'd 've thought of, Michael!" he

said.

"That's right," Watty replied. "Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant were

saying," he went on, "he's had a pretty hard time, Potch, and it was

about up to somebody to give him a leg-up ... some sort of a start in

life. He may be all right ... on the other hand, there may not be much

to him...."

"That's right!" Cash muttered, beginning to work again.

"But I reck'n he's all right, Potch." George swung his pick again. His

blows echoed in the mine as they shattered the hard stone he was working

on.

Watty crawled off through a drive he was gouging in.

At midday Michael and Charley had always eaten their lunches in the

shelter where George Woods, Watty, and Cash Wilson ate theirs and

noodled their opal. They wondered whether Michael would join them this

day. He strolled over to the shelter with Potch beside him as Watty and

Cash, with a billy of steaming tea on a stick between them, came from

the open fire built round with stones, a few yards from the mine.

"Potch and me's mates," Michael explained to George as he sat down and

spread out his lunch, his smile whimsical and serene over the

information. "But we're lookin' for a third to the company. I reck'n a

lot of you chaps' luck is working on three. It's a lucky number, three,

they say."

Potch sat down beside him on the outer edge of the shelter's scrap of

shade.

"See you get one not afraid to do a bit of work, next time--that's all I

say," Watty growled.

The blood oozed slowly over Potch's heavy, quiet face. Nothing more was

said of Charley, but the men who saw his face realised that Potch was

not the insensible youth they had imagined.

Michael had watched him when they were below ground, and was surprised

at the way Potch set about his work. He had taken up his father's

gouging pick and spider as if he had been used to take them every day,

and he had set to work where Charley had left off. All the morning he

hewed at a face of honeycombed sandstone, his face tense with

concentration of energy, the sweat glistening on it as though it were

oiled under the light of a candle in his spider, stuck in the red earth

above him. Michael himself swung his pick in leisurely fashion, crumbled

dirt, and knocked off for a smoke now and then.

"Easy does it, Potch," he remarked, watching the boy's steady slogging.

"We've got no reason to bust ourselves in this mine."

At four o'clock they put their tools back against the wall and went

above ground. Michael fell in with the Crosses, who were noodling two or

three good-looking pieces of opal Archie had taken out during the

afternoon, and Potch streaked away through the scrub in the direction of

the Old Town.

Michael wondered where he was going. There was a purposeful hunch about

his shoulders as if he had a definite goal in view. Michael had intended

asking his new mate to go down to the New Town and get the meat for

their tea, but he went himself after he had yarned with Archie and Ted

Cross for a while.

When he returned to the hut, Potch was not there. Michael made a fire,

unwrapped his steak, hung it on a hook over the fire, and spread out the

pannikins, tin plates and knives and forks for his meal, putting a plate

and pannikin for Potch. He was kneeling before the fire giving the steak

a turn when Potch came in. Potch stood in the doorway, looking at

Michael as doubtfully as a stray kitten which did not know whether it

might enter.

"That you, Potch?" Michael called.

"Yes," Potch said.

Michael got up from the fire and carried the grilled steak on a plate to

the table.

"Well, you were nearly late for dinner," he remarked, as he cut the

steak in half and put a piece on the other plate for Potch. "You better

come along and tuck in now ... there's a great old crowd down at

Nancarrow's this evening. First time for nearly a month he's killed a

beast, and everybody wants a bit of steak. Sam gave me this as a sort of

treat; and it smells good."

Potch came into the kitchen and sat on the box Michael had drawn up to

the table for him.

"Been bringing in the goats for Sophie," he jerked out, looking at

Michael as if there were some need of explanation.

"Oh, that was it, was it?" Michael replied, getting on with his meal.

"Thought you'd flitted!"

Potch met his smile with a shadowy one. A big, clumsy-looking fellow,

with a dull, colourless face and dingy hair, he sat facing Michael, his

eyes anxious, as though he would like to explain further, but was afraid

to, or could not find words. His eyes were beautiful; but they were his

father's eyes, and Michael recoiled to qualms of misgiving, a faint

distrust, as he looked in them.

It was Ed. Ventry, however, who gave Potch his first claim to the

respect of men of the Ridge.

"How's that boy of Charley Heathfield's?" was his first question when

the coach came in from Budda, the following week.

"All right," Newton said. "Why?"

"He was near killed," Mr. Ventry replied. "Stopped us up at the Three

Mile that morning I was taking Charley and Jun down. He was all for

Charley stopping ... getting off the coach or something. I didn't get

what it was all about--money Charley'd got from Michael, I think. That's

the worst of bein' a bit hard of hearin' ... and bein' battered about by

that yaller-bay horse I bought at Warria couple of months ago."

"Potch tried to stop Charley getting away, did he?" Newton asked with

interest.

"He did," Ed. Ventry declared. "I pulled up, seein' something was wrong

... but what does that god-damned blighter Charley do but give a lurch

and grab me reins. Scared four months' growth out of the horses--and

away they went. I'd a colt I was breakin' in on the off-side--and he

landed Potch one--kicked him right out, I thought. As soon as I could, I

pulled up, but I see Potch making off across the plain, and he didn't

look like he was much hurt.... But it was a plucky thing he did, all

right ... and it's the last time I'll drive Charley Heathfield. I told

him straight. I'd as soon kill a man as not for putting a hand on me

reins, like he done--on me own coach, too!"

Snow-Shoes had drifted up to them as the coach stopped and Newton went

out to it. He stood beside Peter Newton while Mr. Ventry talked, rolling

tobacco. Snow-Shoes' eyes glimmered from one to the other of them when

Ed. Ventry had given the reason for his inquiry.

"Potch!" he murmured. "A little bit of potch!" And marched off down the

road, a straight, stately white figure, on the bare track under the

azure of the sky.

CHAPTER VII

"Give y' three," Watty said.

"Take 'em." George Woods did not turn. He was carefully working round a

brilliantly fired seam through black potch in the shin cracker he had

been breaking through two or three days before.

It was about lunch time, and Watty had crawled from his drive to the

centre of the mine. Cash was still at work, crouched against a corner of

the alley, a hundred yards or so from George; but he laid down his pick

when he heard Watty's voice, and went towards him.

"Who d'you think Michael's got as third man?"

"Snow-Shoes?"

"No."

"Old Bill Olsen?"

Watty could not contain himself to the third guess.

"Rum-Enough!" he said.

"He would." George chipped at the stone round his colour. "It was bound

to be a lame dog, anyhow--and it might as well've been Rummy as

anybody."

"That's right," Cash conceded.

"Bill Andrews told me," Watty said. "They've just broke through on the

other side of that drive I'm in...."

"It would be all right," he went on, "if Paul'd work for Michael like he

did for Jun. But is Michael the man to make him? Not by long chalks.

Potch is turning out all right, the boys say.... Michael says he works

like a chow ... has to make him put in the peg ... but they'll both be

havin' Rum-Enough on their hands before long--that's a sure thing."

Watty's, George's, and Cash's mine was one of the best worked and best

planned on the fields.

Watty and Cash inspected the streak George was working, and speculated

as to what it would yield. George leaned his pick against the wall,

eager, too, about the chances of what the thread of fire glittering in

the black potch would lead to. But he was proud of the mine as well as

the stone it had produced. It represented the first attempt to work a

claim systematically on the Ridge. George himself had planned and

prospected every inch of it; and before he went above ground for the

midday meal, he glanced about it as usual, affirming his pride and

satisfaction; but his eyes fell on the broken white stone about his

pitch.

"As soon as we get her out, I'll shift that stuff," he said.

When they went up for their meal, Michael did not join Watty, George,

and Cash as usual. He spread out his lunch and sat with Paul and Potch

in the shade of some wilgas beside his own mine. He knew that Rouminof

would not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter, and that Paul and

Potch would bring a certain reserve to the discussions of Ridge affairs

which took place there.

Potch saw Michael's eyes wander to where George was sitting yarning with

his mates. He knew Michael would rather have been over there; and yet

Michael seemed pleased to have got his own mine in working order again.

He talked over ways of developing it with Paul, asking his opinion, and

explaining why he believed the claim was good enough to stick to for a

while longer, although very little valuable stone had come out of it.

Potch wondered why his eyes rested on Paul with that faint smile of

satisfaction.

The Ridge discussed Michael and his new partnership backwards and forth,

and back again. Michael knew that, and was as amused as the rest of the

Ridge at the company he was keeping. Although he sat with his own mates

at midday, he was as often as not with the crowd under Newton's veranda

in the evening, discussing and settling the affairs of the Ridge and of

the universe. After a while he was more like his old self than he had

been for a long time--since Mrs. Rouminof's death--people said, when

they saw him going about again with a quiet smile and whimsical twist to

his mouth.

The gossips had talked a good deal about Michael and Mrs. Rouminof, but

neither she nor he had bothered their heads about the gossips.

Michael and Mrs. Rouminof had often been seen standing and talking

together when she was going home from the New Town with stores, or when

Michael was coming in from his hut. He had usually walked back along the

road with her, she for the most part, if it was in the evening, with no

hat on; he smoking the stubby black pipe that was rarely out of his

mouth. There was something in the way Mrs. Rouminof walked beside

Michael, in the way her hair blew out in tiny strands curling in the

wind and taking stray glints of light, in the way she smiled with a

vague underlying sweetness when she looked at Michael; there was

something in the way Michael slouched and smoked beside Mrs. Rouminof,

too, which made their meeting look more than any mere ordinary talking

and walking home together of two people. That was what Mrs. Watty Frost

said.

Mrs. Watty believed it was her duty in life to maintain the prejudices

of respectable society in Fallen Star township. She had a constitutional

respect for authority in whatever form it manifested itself. She stood

for washing on Monday, spring-cleaning, keeping herself to herself, and

uncompromising hostility to anything in the shape of a new idea which

threatened the old order of domesticity on the Ridge. And she let

everybody know it. She never went into the one street of the township

even at night without a hat on, and wore gloves whenever she walked

abroad. A little woman, with a mean, sour face, wrinkled like a walnut,

and small, bead-bright eyes, Mrs. Watty was one of those women who are

all energy and have no children to absorb their energies. She put all

her energy into resentment of the Ridge and the conditions Watty had

settled down to so comfortably and happily. She sighed for shops and a

suburb of Sydney, and repeatedly told Watty how nice it would be to have

a little milk shop near Sydney like her father and mother had had.

But Watty would not hear of the milk shop. He loved the Ridge, and the

milk shop was an evergreen bone of contention between him and his wife.

The only peace he ever got was when Mrs. Watty went away to Sydney for a

holiday, or he went with her, because she would rarely go away without

him. She could not be happy without Watty, people said. She had no one

to growl to and let off her irritation about things in general at, if he

were not there. Watty grew fat, and was always whistling cheerily,

nevertheless. Mrs. Watty cooked like an archangel, he said; and, to give

her her due, the men admitted that although she had never pretended to

approve of the life they led, Mrs. Watty had been a good wife to Watty.

But everybody, even Mrs. Watty, was as pleased as if a little fortune

had come to them, when, towards the end of their first week, Michael and

his company came on a patch of good stone. Michael struck it, following

the lead he had been working for some time, and, although not wonderful

in colour or quality, the opal cut out at about ten ounces and brought

L3 an ounce. Michael was able to wipe out some of his grocery score, so

was Paul, and Potch had money to burn.

Paul was very pleased with himself about it. The men began to call him a

mascot and to say he had brought Michael luck, as he had Jun Johnson.

There was no saying how the fortunes of the new partnership might

flourish, if he stuck to it. Paul, responding to the expressions of

goodwill and the inspiration of being on opal, put all his childish and

bullocky energy into working with Michael and Potch.

He still told everybody who would listen to him the story of the

wonderful stones he had found when he was working with Jun, and how they

had been stolen from him. They grew in number, value, and size every

time he spoke of them. And he wailed over what he had been going to do,

and what selling the stones would have meant to him and to Sophie. But

the partnership was working better than anybody had expected, and people

began to wonder whether, after all, Michael had done so badly for

himself with his brace of dead-beat mates.

CHAPTER VIII

In a few weeks thought of the robbery had ceased greatly to disturb

anybody. Michael settled down to working with his new mates, and the

Ridge accepted the new partnership as the most natural thing in the

world.

Life on the Ridge is usually as still as an inland lake. The settlement

is just that, a lake of life, in the country of wide plains stretching

westwards for hundreds on hundreds of miles, broken only by shingly

ridges to the sea, and eastwards, through pastoral districts, to the

coastal ranges, and the seaboard with its busy towns, ports, and cities.

In summer the plains are dead and dry; in a drought, deserts. The great

coolebahs standing with their feet in the river ways are green, and

scatter tattered shade. Their small, round leaves flash like mirrors in

the sun, and when the river water vanishes from about their feet, they

hold themselves in the sandy shallow bed of the rivers as if waiting

with imperturbable faith for the return of the waters. The surface of

the dry earth cracks. There are huge fissures where the water lay in

clayey hollows during the winter and spring. Along the stock routes and

beside the empty water-holes, sheep and cattle lie rotting. Their

carcasses, disembowelled by the crows, put an odour of putrefaction in

the air. The sky burns iron-grey with heat. The dust rises in heavy

reddish mist about stockmen or cattle on the roads.

But after the rains, in the winter or spring of a good season, the seeds

break sheath in a few hours; they sprout over-night, and a green mantle

is flung over the old earth which a few days before was as dead and dry

as a desert. In a little time the country is a flowering wilderness.

Trefoil, crow's-foot, clover, mallow, and wild mustard riot, tangling

and interweaving. The cattle browse through them lazily; stringing out

across the flowering fields, they look in the distance no more than

droves of mice; their red and black backs alone are visible above the

herbage. In places, wild candytuft in blossom spreads a quilt of palest

lavender in every direction on a wide circling horizon. Darling pea, the

colour of violets and smelling like them, threads through the candytuft

and lies in wedges, magenta and dark purple against the sky-line, a

hundred miles farther on. The sky is a wash of pale, exquisite blue,

which deepens as it rises to the zenith. The herbage glows beneath it,

so clear and pure is the light.

Farther inland, for miles, bachelor's buttons paint the earth raw gold.

Not a hair's breadth of colour shows on the plains except the dull red

of the road winding through them and the blue of the sky overhead. Paper

daisies fringe the gold, and then they lie, white as snow, for miles,

under the bare blue sky. Sometimes the magenta, purple, lavender, gold

and white of the herbage and wild flowers merge and mingle, and a

tapestry of incomparable beauty--a masterpiece of the Immortals--is

wrought on the bare earth.

During the spring and early summer of a good season, the air is filled

with the wild, thymey odour of herbs, and the dry, musky fragrance of

paper daisies. The crying of lambs, the baa-ing of ewes, and the piping

of mud-larks--their thin, silvery notes--go through the clear air and

are lost over the flowering land and against the blue sky.

Winter is rarely more than a season of rains on the Ridge. Cold winds

blow from the inland plains for a week or two. There are nights of frost

and sparkling stars. People shiver and crouch over their fires; but the

days have rarely more than a fresh tang in the air.

The rains as often as not are followed by floods. After a few days'

steady downpour, the shallow rivers and creeks on the plains overflow,

and their waters stretch out over the plains for thirteen, fourteen, and

sometimes twenty miles. Fords become impassable; bridges are washed

away. Fallen Star Ridge is cut off from the rest of the world until the

flood waters have soaked into the earth, as they do after a few days,

and the coach can take to the road again.

As spring passes into summer, the warmth of the sunshine loses its

mildness, and settles to a heavy taciturnity. The light, losing its

delicate brilliance, becomes a bared sword-blade striking the eyes.

Everything shrinks from the full gaze and blaze of the sun. Eyes ache,

the brain reels with the glare; mirages dance on the limitless horizons.

The scorched herbage falls into dust; water is drawn off from rivers and

water-holes. All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of

iron.

Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the

glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the

other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze

of a dust storm.

Ridge folk take the heat as primitive people do most acts of God, as a

matter of course, with stiff-lipped hardihood, which makes complaint the

manifestation of a poor spirit. They meet their difficulties with a

native humour which gives zest to flagging energies. Their houses, with

roofs whitened to throw off the heat, the dumps of crumbling white clay,

and the iron roofs of the billiard parlour, the hotel, and Watty Frost's

new house at the end of the town, shimmer in the intense light. At a

little distance they seem all quivering and dancing together.

Men like Michael, the Crosses, George Woods, Watty, and women like

Maggie Grant and Martha M'Cready, who had been on the Ridge a long time,

become inured to the heat. At least, they say that they "do not mind

it." No one hears a growl out of them, even when water is scarce and

flies and mosquitoes a plague. Their good spirits and grit keep the

community going through a trying summer. But even they raise their faces

to heaven when an unexpected shower comes, or autumn rains fall a little

earlier than usual.

In the early days, before stations were fenced, Bill M'Gaffy, a Warria

shepherd, grazing flocks on the plains, declared he had seen a star fall

on the Ridge. When he went into the station he showed the scraps of marl

and dark metallic stone he had picked up near where the star had fallen,

to James Henty, who had taken up Warria Station. The Ridge lay within

its boundary. James Henty had turned them over curiously, and surmised

that some meteoric stone had fallen on the Ridge. The place had always

been called Fallen Star Ridge after that; but opal was not found there,

and it did not begin to be known as the black opal field until several

years later.

In the first days of the rush to the Ridge, men of restless, reckless

temperament had foregathered at the Old Town. There had been wild nights

at the shanty. But the wilder spirits soon drifted away to Pigeon Creek

and the sapphire mines, and the sober and more serious of the miners had

settled to life on the new fields.

The first gathering of huts on the clay pan below the Ridge was known as

the Old Town; but it had been flooded so often, that, after people had

been washed out of their homes, and had been forced to take to the Ridge

for safety two or three times, it was decided to move the site of the

township to the brow of the Ridge, above the range of the flood waters

and near the new rush, where the most important mines on the field

promised to be.

A year or two ago, a score or so of bark and bag huts were ranged on

either side of the wide, unmade road space overgrown with herbage, and a

smithy, a weather-board hotel with roof of corrugated iron, a billiard

parlour, and a couple of stores, comprised the New Town. A wild cherry

tree, gnarled and ancient, which had been left in the middle of the road

near the hotel, bore the news of the district and public notices, nailed

to it on sheets of paper. A little below the hotel, on the same side,

Chassy Robb's store served as post-office, and the nearest approach to a

medicine shop in the township. Opposite was the Afghan's emporium. And

behind the stores and the miners' huts, everywhere, were the dumps

thrown up from mines and old rushes.

There was no police station nearer than fifty miles, and although

telegraph now links the New Town with Budda, the railway town,

communication with it for a long time was only by coach once or twice a

week; and even now all the fetching and carrying is done by a four or

six horse-coach and bullock-wagons. The community to all intents and

purposes governs itself according to popular custom and popular opinion,

the seat of government being Newton's big, earthen-floored bar, or the

brushwood shelters near the mines in which the men sit at midday to eat

their lunches and noodle--, go over, snip, and examine--the opal they

have taken out of the mines during the morning.

They hold their blocks of land by miner's right, and their houses are

their own. They formally recognise that they are citizens of the

Commonwealth and of the State of New South Wales, by voting at elections

and by accepting the Federal postal service. Some few of them, as well

as Newton and the storekeepers, pay income tax as compensation for those

privileges; but beyond that the Ridge lives its own life, and the

enactments of external authority are respected or disregarded as best

pleases it.

A sober, easy-going crowd, the Ridge miners do not trouble themselves

much about law. They have little need of it. They live in accord with

certain fundamental instincts, on terms of good fellowship with each

other.

"To go back on a mate," is recognised as the major crime of the Ridge

code.

Sometimes, during a rush, the wilder spirits who roam from one mining

camp to another in the back-country, drift back, and "hit things up" on

the Ridge, as the men say. But they soon drift away again. Sometimes, if

one of them strikes a good patch of opal and outstays his kind, as often

as not he sinks into the Ridge life, absorbs Ridge ways and ideas, and

is accepted into the fellowship of men of the Ridge. There is no

formality about the acceptance. It just happens naturally, that if a man

identifies himself with the Ridge principle of mateship, and will stand

by it as it will stand by him, he is recognised by Ridge men as one of

themselves. But if his ways and ideas savour of those the Ridge has

broken from, he remains an outsider, whatever good terms he may seem to

be on with everybody.

Sometimes a rush leaves a shiftless ne'er-do-well or two for the Ridge

to reckon with, but even these rarely disregard the Ridge code. If

claims are ratted it is said there are strangers about, and the miners

deal with rats according to their own ideas of justice. On the last

occasion it was applied, this justice had proved so effectual that there

had been no repetition of the offence.

Ridge miners find happiness in the sense of being free men. They are

satisfied in their own minds that it is not good for a man to work all

day at any mechanical toil; to use himself or allow anyone else to use

him like a working bullock. A man must have time to think, leisure to

enjoy being alive, they say. Is he alive only to work? To sleep worn out

with toil, and work again? It is not good enough, Ridge men say. They

have agreed between themselves that it is a fair thing to begin work

about 6.30 or 7 o'clock and knock off about four, with a couple of hours

above ground at noon for lunch--a snack of bread and cheese and a cup of

tea.

At four o'clock they come up from the mines, noodle their opal, put on

their coats, smoke and yarn, and saunter down to the town and their

homes. And it is this leisure end of the day which has given life on the

Ridge its tone of peace and quiet happiness, and has made Ridge miners

the thoughtful, well-informed men most of them are.

To a man they have decided against allowing any wealthy man or body of

wealthy men forming themselves into a company to buy up the mines, put

the men on a weekly wage, and work them, as the opal blocks at Chalk

Cliffs had been worked. There might be more money in it, there would be

a steadier means of livelihood; but the Ridge miners will not hear of

it.

"No," they say; "we'll put up with less money--and be our own masters."

Most of them worked on Chalk Cliffs' opal blocks, and they realised in

the early days of the new field the difference between the conditions

they had lived and worked under on the Cliffs and were living and

working under on the Ridge, where every man was the proprietor of his

own energies, worked as long as he liked, and was entitled to the full

benefit of his labour. They had yarned over these differences of

conditions at midday in the shelters beside the mines, discussed them in

the long evenings at Newton's, and without any committees, documents, or

bond--except the common interest of the individual and of the

fraternity--had come to the conclusion that at all costs they were going

to remain masters of their own mines.

Common thought and common experience were responsible for that

recognition of economic independence as the first value of their new

life together. Michael Brady had stood for it from the earliest days of

the settlement. He had pointed out that the only things which could give

joy in life, men might have on the Ridge, if they were satisfied to find

their joy in these things, and not look for it in enjoyment of the

superficial luxuries money could provide. Most of the real sources of

joy were every man's inheritance, but conditions of work, which wrung

him of energy and spirit, deprived him of leisure to enjoy them until he

was too weary to do more than sleep or seek the stimulus of alcohol.

Besides, these conditions recruited him with the merest subsistence for

his pains, very often--did not even guarantee that--and denied him the

capacity to appreciate the real sources of joy. But the beauty of the

world, the sky, and the stars, spring, summer, the grass, and the birds,

were for every man, Michael said. Any and every man could have immortal

happiness by hearing a bird sing, by gazing into the blue-dark depths of

the sky on a starry night. No man could sell his joy of these things. No

man could buy them. Love is for all men: no man can buy or sell love.

Pleasure in work, in jolly gatherings with friends, peace at the end of

the day, and satisfaction of his natural hungers, a man might have all

these things on the Ridge, if he were content with essentials.

Ridge miners' live fearlessly, with the magic of adventure in their

daily lives, the prospect of one day finding the great stone which is

the grail of every opal-miner's quest. They are satisfied if they get

enough opal to make a parcel for a buyer when he puts up for a night or

two at Newton's. A young man who sells good stones usually goes off to

Sydney to discover what life in other parts of the world is like, and to

take a draught of the gay life of cities. A married man gives his wife

and children a trip to the seaside or a holiday in town. But all drift

back to the Ridge when the taste of city life has begun to cloy, or when

all their money is spent. Once an opal miner, always an opal miner, the

Ridge folk say.

Among the men, only the shiftless and more worthless are not in sympathy

with Ridge ideas, and talk of money and what money will buy as the

things of first value in life. They describe the Fallen Star township as

a God-forsaken hole, and promise each other, as soon as their luck has

turned, they will leave it for ever, and have the time of their lives in

Sydney.

Women like Maggie Grant share their husband's minds. They read what the

men read, have the men's vision, and hold it with jealous enthusiasm.

Others, women used to the rough and simple existence of the

back-country, are satisfied with the life which gives them a husband,

home, and children. Those who sympathise with Mrs. Watty Frost regard

the men's attitude as more than half cussedness, sheer selfishness or

stick-in-the-mudness; and the more worthy and respectable they are, the

more they fret and fume at the earthen floors and open hearths of the

bark and bagging huts they live in, and pine for all the kick-shaws of

suburban villas. The discontented women are a minority, nevertheless.

Ridge folk as a whole have set their compass and steer the course of

their lives with unconscious philosophy, and yet a profound conviction

as to the rightness of what they are doing.

And the Ridge, which bears them, stands serenely under blue skies the

year long, rising like a backbone from the plains that stretch for

hundreds of miles on either side. A wide, dusty road crosses the plains.

The huts of the Three Mile and Fallen Star crouch beside it, and

everywhere on the rusty, shingle-strewn slopes of the Ridge, are the

holes and thrown-up heaps of white and raddled clay or broken

sandstone--traces of the search for that "ecstasy in the heart of

gloom," black opal, which the Fallen Star earth holds.

CHAPTER IX

Darling pea was lying in purple and magenta patches through the long

grass on the tank paddock when Sophie went with Ella and Mirry Flail to

gather wild flowers there.

Wild flowers did not grow anywhere on Fallen Star as they did in the

tank paddock. It was almost a place of faery to children of the Ridge.

The little ones were not allowed to go there by themselves for fear they

might fall into the waterhole which lay like a great square lake in the

middle of it, its steep, well-set-up banks of yellow clay, ruled with

the precision of a diagram in geometry. The water was almost as yellow

as the banks, thick and muddy looking; but it was good water, nothing on

earth the matter with it when you had boiled it and the sediment had

been allowed to settle, everybody on Fallen Star Ridge was prepared to

swear. It had to be drawn up by a pump which was worked by a donkey

engine, Sam Nancarrow, and his old fat roan draught mare, and carted to

the township when rain-water in the iron tanks beside the houses in

Fallen Star gave out.

During a dry season, or a very hot summer, all hands turned out to roof

the paddock tank with tarpaulins to prevent evaporation as far as

possible and so conserve the township's water supply. On a placard

facing the roadway a "severe penalty" was promised to anyone using it

without permission or making improper use of it.

Ella and Mirry were gathering sago flower--"wild sweet Alice," as they

called candytuft--yellow eye-bright, tiny pink starry flowers,

bluebells, small lavender daisies, taller white ones, and yellow

daisies, as well as Darling pea; but Sophie picked only long, trailing

stalks of the pea. She had as many as she could hold when she sat down

to arrange them into a tighter bunch.

Mirry and Ella Flail had always been good friends of Sophie's. Potch and

she had often gone on excursions with them, or to the swamp to cart

water when it was scarce and very dear in the township. And since Potch

had gone to work Sophie had no one to go about with but Mirry and Ella.

She pleased their mother by trying to teach them to read and write, and

they went noodling together, or gathering wild flowers. Sophie was three

or four years older than Mirry, who was the elder of the two Flails; she

felt much older since her mother's death nearly a year ago, and in the

black dress she had worn since then. She was just seventeen, and had put

her hair up into a knot at the back of her head. That made her feel

older, too. But she still liked to go for walks and wanderings with Ella

and Mirry. They knew so much about the birds and flowers, the trees, and

the ways of all the wild creatures: they were such wild creatures

themselves.

They came running to her, crying excitedly, their hands filled with

flowers, shedding them as they ran. Then, collapsing in the grass beside

Sophie, Mirry rolled over on her back and gazed up into the sky. Ella,

squatting on her thin, sunburnt little sticks of legs, was arranging her

flowers and glancing every now and then at Sophie with shy, loving

glances.

Sophie wondered why she had nothing of her old joyous zest in their

enterprises together. She used to be as wild and happy as Mirry and Ella

on an afternoon like this. But there was something of the shy, wild

spirit of a primitive people about Mirry and Ella, she remembered, some

of their blood, too. One of their mother's people, it was said, had been

a native of one of the river tribes.

Mirry had her mother's beautiful dark eyes, almost green in the light,

and freckled with hazel, and her pale, sallow skin. Ella, younger and

shyer, was more like her father. Her skin was not any darker than

Sophie's, and her eyes blue-grey, her features delicate, her hair

golden-brown that glinted in the sun.

"Sing to us, Sophie," Mirry said.

Sophie often sang to them when she and Ella and Mirry were out like

this. As she sat with them, dreaming in the sunshine, she sang almost

without any conscious effort; she just put up her chin, and the melodies

poured from her. Hearing her voice, as it ran in ripples and eddies

through the clear, warm air, hung and quivered and danced again,

delighted her.

Ella and Mirry listened in a trance of awe, reverence, and admiration.

Sophie had a dim vision of them, wide-eyed and still, against the tall

grass and flowers.

"My! You can sing, Sophie! Can't she, Ella?"

Ella nodded, gazing at Sophie with eyes of worshipping love.

"They say you're going away with your father ... and you're going to be

a great singer, Sophie," Mirry said.

"Yes," Sophie murmured tranquilly, "I am."

A bevy of black and brown birds flashed past them, flew in a wide

half-circle across the paddock, and alighted on a dead tree beyond the

fence.

"Look, look!" Mirry started to her feet. "A happy family! I wonder, are

the whole twelve there?"

She counted the birds, which were calling to each other with little

shrill cries.

"They're all there!" she announced. "Twelve of them. Mother says in some

parts they call them the twelve apostles. Sing again, Sophie," she

begged.

Ella smiled at Sophie. Her lips parted as though she would like to have

said that, too; but only her eyes entreated, and she went on putting her

flowers together.

As she sang, Sophie watched a pair of butterflies, white with black

lines and splashes of yellow and scarlet on their wings, hovering over

the flowered field of the paddock. She was so lost in her singing and

watching the butterflies, and the children were so intent listening to

her, that they did not hear a horseman coming slowly towards them along

the track. As he came up to them, Sophie's rippling notes broke and fell

to earth. Ella saw him first, and was on her feet in an instant. Mirry

and she, their wild instinct asserting itself, darted away and took

cover behind the trunks of the nearest trees.

Sophie looked after them, wondering whether she would follow them as she

used to; but she felt older and more staid now than she had a year ago.

She stood her ground, as the man, who was leading his horse, came to a

standstill before her.

She knew him well enough, Arthur Henty, the only son of old Henty of

Warria Station. She had seen him riding behind cattle or sheep on the

roads across the plains for years. Sometimes when Potch and she had met

him riding across the Ridge, or at the swamp, he had stopped to talk to

them. He had been at her mother's funeral, too; but as he stood before

her this afternoon, Sophie seemed to be seeing him for the first time.

A tall, slightly-built young man, in riding breeches and leggings, a

worn coat, and as weathered a felt hat as any man on the Ridge wore, his

clothes the colour of dust on the roads, he stood before her, smiling

slightly. His face was dark in the shadow of his hat, but the whole of

him, cut against the sunshine, had gilded outlines. And he seemed to be

seeing Sophie for the first time, too. She had jumped up and drawn back

from the track when the Flails ran away. He could not believe that this

tall girl in the black dress was the queer, elfish-like girl he had seen

running about the Ridge, bare-legged, with feet in goat-skin sandals,

and in the cemetery on the Warria road, not much more than a year ago.

Her elfish gaiety had deserted her. It was the black dress gave her face

the warm pallor of ivory, he thought, made her look staider, and as if

the sadness of all it symbolised had not left her. But her eyes,

strange, beautiful eyes, the green and blue of opal, with black rings on

the irises and great black pupils, had still the clear, unconscious gaze

of youth; her lips the sweet, sucking curves of a child's.

They stood so, smiling and staring at each other, a spell of silence on

each.

Sophie had dropped half her flowers as she sprang up at the sound of

someone approaching. She had clutched a few in one hand; the rest lay on

the grass about her, her hat beside them. Henty's eyes went to the trees

round which Mirry and Ella were peeping.

"They're wild birds, aren't they?" he said.

Sophie smiled. She liked the way his eyes narrowed to slits of sunshine

as he smiled.

"Are you going to sing, again?" he asked hesitatingly.

Sophie shook her head.

"My mother's awfully fond of that stuff," Henty said, looking at the

Darling pea Sophie had in her hand. "We haven't got any near the

homestead. I came into the paddock to get some for her."

Sophie held out her bunch.

"Not all of it," he said.

"I can get more," she said.

He took the flowers, and his vague smile changed to one of shy and

subtle understanding. Ella and Mirry found courage to join Sophie.

"Where's Potch?" Henty asked.

"He's working with Michael," Sophie said.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, and stood before her awkwardly, not knowing what to

talk about.

He was still thinking how different she was to the little girl he had

seen chasing goats on the Ridge no time before, and wondering what had

changed her so quickly, when Sophie stooped to pick up her hat. Then he

saw her short, dark hair twisted up into a knot at the back of her head.

Feeling intuitively that he was looking at the knot she was so proud of,

Sophie put on her hat quickly. A delicate colour moved on her neck and

cheeks. Arthur Henty found himself looking into her suffused eyes and

smiling at her smile of confusion.

"Well, we must be going now," Sophie said, a little breathlessly.

Henty said that he was going into the New Town and would walk along part

of the way with her. He tucked the flowers Sophie had given him into his

saddle-bag, and she and the children turned down the track. Ella, having

found her tongue, chattered eagerly. Arthur Henty strolled beside them,

smoking, his reins over his arm. Mirry wanted to ride his horse.

"Nobody rides this horse but me," Henty said. "She'd throw you into the

middle of next week."

"I can ride," Mirry said; "ride like a flea, the boys say."

She was used to straddling any pony or horse her brothers had in the

yard, and they had a name as the best horse-breakers in the district.

Henty laughed. "But you couldn't ride Beeswing," he said. "She doesn't

let anybody but me ride her. You can sit on, if you like; she won't mind

that so long as I've got hold of her."

The stirrup was too high for Mirry to reach, so he picked her up and put

her across the saddle. The mare shivered and shrank under the light

shock of Mirry's landing upon her, but Arthur Henty talked to her and

rubbed her head soothingly.

"It's all right ... all right, old girl," he muttered. "Think it was one

of those stinging flies? But it isn't, you see. It's only Mirry Flail.

She says she's a flea of a rider. But you'd learn her, wouldn't you, if

you got off with her by yourself?"

Ella giggled softly, peering at Mirry and Henty and at the beautiful

golden-red chestnut he was leading. Ed. Ventry had put Sophie on his

coach horses sometimes. He had let her go for a scamper with Potch on an

old horse or a likely colt now and then; but she knew she did not ride

well--not as Mirry rode.

They walked along the dusty road together when they had left the tank

paddock, Mirry chattering from Beeswing's back, Sophie, with Ella

clinging to one hand, on the other side of Henty. But Mirry soon tired

of riding a led horse at a snail's pace. When a sulphur-coloured

butterfly fluttered for a few minutes over a wild tobacco plant, she

slid from the saddle, on the far side, and was off over the plains to

have another look at the butterfly.

Ella was too shy or too frightened to get on the chestnut, even with

Henty holding her bridle.

"How about you, Sophie?" Arthur Henty asked.

Sophie nodded, but before he could help her she had put her foot into

the stirrup and swung into the saddle herself. Beeswing shivered again

to the new, strange weight on her back. Henty held her, muttering

soothingly. They went on again.

After a while, with a shy glance, and as if to please him, Sophie began

to sing, softly at first, so as not to startle the mare, and then

letting her voice out so that it rippled as easily and naturally as a

bird's. Henty, walking with a hand on the horse's bridle beside her,

heard again the song she had been singing in the tank paddock.

Ella was supposed to be carrying Sophie's flowers. She did not know she

had dropped nearly half of them, and that they were lying in a trail all

along the dusty road.

Henty did not speak when Sophie had finished. His pipe had gone out, and

he put it in his pocket. The stillness of her audience of two was so

intense that to escape it Sophie went on singing, and the chestnut did

not flinch. She went quietly to the pace of the song, as though she,

too, were enjoying its rapture and tenderness.

Then through the clear air came a rattle of wheels and jingle of

harness. Mirry, running towards them from the other side of the road,

called eagerly:

"It's the coach.... Mr. Ventry's got six horses in, and a man with him!"

Six horses indicated that a person of some importance was on board the

coach. Henty drew the chestnut to one side as the coach approached. Mr.

Ventry jerked his head in Henty's direction when he passed and saw

Arthur Henty with the Flail children and Sophie. The stranger beside him

eyed, with a faint smile of amusement, the cavalcade, the girl in the

black dress on the fine chestnut horse, the children with the flowers,

and the young man standing beside them. The man on the coach was a

clean-shaved, well-groomed, rather good-looking man of forty, or

thereabouts, and his clothes and appearance proclaimed him a man of the

world beyond the Ridge. His smile and stare annoyed Henty.

"It's Mr. Armitage," Mirry said. "The young one. He's not as nice as the

old man, my father says--and he doesn't know opal as well--but he gives

a good price."

They had reached the curve of the road where one arm turns to the town

and the other goes over the plains to Warria. Sophie slipped from the

horse.

"We'll take the short cut here," she said.

She stood looking at Arthur Henty for a moment, and in that moment Henty

knew that she had sensed his thought. She had guessed he was afraid of

having looked ridiculous trailing along the road with these children.

Sophie turned away. The young Flails bounded after her. Henty could hear

their laughter when he had ridden out some distance along the road.

From the slope of a dump Sophie saw him--the chestnut and her rider

loping into the sunset, and, looking after him, she finished her song.

"Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,

Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!

Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volera,

A fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sara!"

Dear name forever nursed in my memory thou shalt be,

For my heart first stirred to the delight of love for thee!

My thoughts and my desire will always be, dear name, toward thee,

And my last breath will be for thee, dear name.

The long, sweet notes and rippled melody followed Arthur Henty over the

plains in the quiet air of late afternoon. But the afternoon had been

spoilt for him. He was self-conscious and ill at ease about it all.

CHAPTER X

"Mr. Armitage is up at Newton's!" Paul yelled to Michael, when he saw

him at his back-door a few minutes after Sophie had given him the news.

"Not the old man?" Michael inquired.

"No, the young 'un."

Word was quickly bruited over the fields that the American, one of the

best buyers who came to the Ridge, had arrived by the evening coach. He

invariably had a good deal of money to spend, and gave a better price

than most of the local buyers.

Dawe P. Armitage had visited Fallen Star Ridge from the first year of

its existence as an opal field, and every year for years after that. But

when he began to complain about aches and pains in his bones, which he

refused to allow anybody to call rheumatism, and was assured he was well

over seventy and that the long rail and sea journey from New York City

to Fallen Star township were getting too much for him, he let his son,

whom he had made a partner in his business, make the journey for him.

John Lincoln Armitage had been going to the Ridge for two or three

years, and although the men liked him well enough, he was not as popular

with them as his father had been. And the old man, John Armitage said,

although he was nearly crippled with rheumatism, still grudged him his

yearly visit to the Ridge, and hated like poison letting anyone else do

his opal-buying.

Dawe Armitage had bought some of the best black opal found on the Ridge.

He had been a hard man to deal with, but the men had a grudging

admiration for him, a sort of fellow feeling of affection because of his

oneness with them in a passion for black opal. A grim, sturdy old

beggar, there was a certain quality about him, a gruff humour, sheer

doggedness, strength of purpose, and dead honesty within his point of

view, which kept an appreciative and kindly feeling for him in their

hearts. They knew he had preyed on them; but he had done it bluntly,

broadly, and in such an off-with-the-gloves-lads-style, that, after a

good fight over a stone and price, they had sometimes given in to him

for sheer amusement, and to let him have the satisfaction of thinking he

had gained his point.

Usually he set his price on a stone and would not budge from it. The

gougers knew this, and if their price on a stone was not Dawe

Armitage's, they did not waste breath on argument, except to draw the

old boy and get some diversion from his way of playing them. If a man

had a good stone and did not think anyone else was likely to give him

his figure, sometimes he sold ten minutes before the coach Armitage was

going down to town by, left Newton's. But, three or four times, when a

stone had taken his fancy and a miner was obdurate, the old man, with

his mind's eye full of the stone and the fires in its dazzling jet, had

suddenly sent for it and its owner, paid his price, and pocketed the

stone. He had wrapped up the gem, chuckling in defeat, and rejoicing to

have it at any price. As a rule he made three or four times as much as

he had given for opals he bought on the Ridge, but to Dawe Armitage the

satisfaction of making money on a transaction was nothing like the joy

of putting a coveted treasure into his wallet and driving off from

Fallen Star with it.

A gem merchant of considerable standing in the United States, Dawe

Armitage's collection of opals was world famous. He had put black opal

on the market, and had been the first to extol the splendour of the

stones found on Fallen Star Ridge. So different they were from the opal

found on Chalk Cliffs, or in any other part of the world, with the fires

in jetty potch rather than in the clear or milky medium people were

accustomed to, that at first timid and conventional souls were disturbed

and repelled by them. "They felt," they said, "that there was something

occultly evil about black opal." They had a curious fear and dread of

the stones as talismans of evil. Dawe Armitage scattered the quakers

like chaff with his scorn. They could not, he said, accept the

magnificent pessimism of black opal. They would not rejoice with pagan

abandonment in the beauty of those fires in black opal, realising that,

like the fires of life, they owed their brilliance, their transcendental

glory, to the dark setting. But every day the opals made worshippers of

sightseers. They mesmerised beholders who came to look at them.

When the coach rattled to a standstill outside the hotel, Peter Newton

went to the door of the bar. He knew John Armitage by the size and shape

of his dust-covered overalls. Armitage dismounted and pulled off his

gloves. Peter Newton went to meet him.

Armitage gripped his hand.

"Mighty glad to see you, Newton," he said, "and glad to see the Ridge

again. How are you all?"

Newton smiled, giving him greeting in downright Ridge style.

"Fine," he said. "Glad to see you, Mr. Armitage."

When he got indoors, Armitage threw off his coat. He and Peter had a

drink together, and then he went to have a wash and brush up before

dinner. Mrs. Newton came from the kitchen; she was pleased to see Mr.

Armitage, she said, and he shook hands with her and made her feel that

he was really quite delighted to see her. She spent a busy hour or so

making the best of her preparations for the evening meal, so that he

might repeat his usual little compliments about her cooking. Armitage

had his dinner in a small private sitting-room, and strolled out

afterwards to the veranda to smoke and yarn with the men.

He spent the evening with them there, and in the bar, hearing the news

of the Ridge and gossiping genially. He had come all the way from Sydney

the day before, spent the night in the train, and had no head for

business that night, he said. When he yarned with them, Fallen Star men

had a downright sense of liking John Armitage. He was a good sort, they

told each other; they appreciated his way of talking, and laughed over

the stories he told and the rare and racy Americanisms with which he

flavoured his speech for their benefit.

When he exerted himself to entertain and amuse them, they were as

pleased with him as a pack of women. And John Lincoln Armitage pleased

women, men of the Ridge guessed, the women of his own kind as well as

the women of Fallen Star who had talked to him now and then. His eyes

had a mild caress when they rested on a woman; it was not in the least

offensive, but carried challenge and appeal--a suggestion of sympathy.

He had a thousand little courtesies for women, the deference which comes

naturally to "a man of the world" for a member of "the fair sex." Mrs.

Newton was always flattered and delighted after a talk with him. He

asked her advice about opals he had bought or was going to buy, and,

although he did not make use of it very often, she was always pleased by

his manner of asking. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Archie Cross both

confessed to a partiality for Mr. Armitage, and even Mrs. Watty agreed

that he was "a real nice man"; and when he was in the township Mrs.

Henty and one of the girls usually drove over from the station and took

him back to Warria to stay a day or two before he went back to Sydney on

his return journey to New York.

Armitage was very keen to know whether there had been any sensational

finds on the Ridge during the year, and all about them. He wanted to

know who had been getting good stuff, and said that he had bought Jun's

stones in Sydney. The men exclaimed at that.

"I was surprised to hear," John Armitage said, "what happened to the

other parcel. You don't mean to say you think Charley Heathfield----?"

"We ain't tried him yet," Watty remarked cautiously, "but the evidence

is all against him."

Rouminof thrust himself forward, eager to tell his story. Realising the

proud position he might have been in this night with the opal-buyer if

he had had his opals, tears gathered in his eyes as he went over it all

again.

Armitage listened intently.

"Well, of all the rotten luck!" he exclaimed, when Paul had finished.

"Have another whisky, Rouminof? But what I can't make out," he added,

"is why, if he had the stones, Charley didn't come to me with them.... I

didn't buy anything but Jun's stuff before I came up here ... and he

just said it was half the find he was showing me. Nice bit of pattern in

that big black piece, eh? If Charley had the stones, you'd think he'd

've come along to me, or got Jun, or somebody to come along for him...."

"I don't know about that." George Woods felt for his reasons. "He

wouldn't want you--or anybody else to know he'd got them."

"That's right," Watty agreed.

"He's got them all right," Ted Cross declared. "You see, I seen him

taking Rummy home that night--and he cleared out next morning."

"I guess you boys know best." John Armitage sipped his whisky

thoughtfully. "But I'm mad to get the rest of the stones. Tell you the

truth, the old man hasn't been too pleased with my buying lately ... and

it would put him in no end of a good humour if I could take home with me

another packet of gems like the one I got from Jun. Jun knew I was keen

to get the stones ... and I can't help thinking ... if he knew they were

about, he'd put me in the way of getting them ... or them in my

way--somehow. You don't think ... anybody else could have been on the

job, and ... put it over on Charley, say...."

His eyes went over the faces of the men lounging against the bar, or

standing in groups about him. Michael was lifting his glass to drink,

and, for the fraction of a second the opal-buyer's glance wavered on his

face before it passed on.

"Not likely," George Woods said dryly.

Recognising the disfavour his suggestion raised, Armitage brushed it

aside.

"I don't think so, of course," he said.

And although he did not speak to him, or even look at him closely again,

John Armitage was thinking all the evening of the quiver, slight as the

tremor of a moth's wing, on Michael's face, when that inquiry had been

thrown out.

CHAPTER XI

Armitage was busy going over parcels of stone and bargaining with the

men for the greater part of the next day. He was beginning to have more

of Dawe Armitage's zest for the business; and, every time they met,

Ridge men found him shrewder, keener. His manner was genial and

easy-going with them; but there was a steel band in him somewhere, they

were sure.

The old man had been bluff, and as hard as nails; but they understood

him better than his son. John Armitage, they knew, was only

perfunctorily interested opal-buying at first; he had gone into it to

please the old man, but gradually the thing had taken hold of him. He

was not yet, however, anything like as good a judge of opal, and his

last buying on the Ridge had displeased his father considerably. John

Armitage had bought several parcels of good-looking opal; but one stone,

which had cost L50 in the rough, was not worth L5 when it was cut. A

grain of sand, Dawe Armitage swore he could have seen a mile away, went

through it, and it cracked on the wheel. A couple of parcels had brought

double what had been paid for them; but several stones John had given a

good price for were not worth half the amount, his father had said.

George Woods and Watty took John Armitage a couple of fine knobbies

during the morning, and the Crosses had shown him a parcel containing

two good green and blue stones with rippled lights; but they had more on

the parcel than Armitage felt inclined to pay, remembering the stormy

scene there had been with the old man over that last stone from Crosses'

mine which had cracked in the cutter's hands. Towards the end of the day

Mr. Armitage came to the conclusion, having gone over the stones the men

brought him, and having bought all he fancied, that there was very

little black opal of first quality about. He was meditating the fact,

leaning back in his chair in the sitting-room Newton had reserved for

him to see the gougers in, some pieces of opal, his scales and

microscope on the table before him, when Michael knocked.

Absorbed in his reflections, realising there would be little to show for

the trouble and pains of his long journey, and reviewing a slowly

germinating scheme and dream for the better output of opal from Fallen

Star, John Armitage did not at first pay any attention to the knock.

He had been thinking a good deal of Michael in connection with that

scheme. Michael, he knew, would be his chief opponent, if ever he tried

putting it into effect. When he had outlined his idea and vaguely formed

plans to his father, Dawe Armitage would have nothing to do with them.

He swept them aside uncompromisingly.

"You don't know what you're up against," he said. "There isn't a man on

the Ridge wouldn't fight like a pole-cat if you tried it on 'em. Give

'em a word of it--and we quit partnership, see? They wouldn't stand for

it--not for a second--and there'd be no more black opal for Armitage and

Son, if they got any idea on the Ridge you'd that sort of notion at the

back of your head."

But John Armitage refused to give up his idea. He went to it as a dog

goes to a planted bone--gnawed and chewed over it, contemplatively.

He had made this trip to Fallen Star with little result, and he was sure

a system of working the mines on scientific, up-to-date lines would

ensure the production of more stone. He wanted to talk organisation and

efficiency to men of the Ridge, to point out to them that organisation

and efficiency were of first value in production, not realising Ridge

men considered their methods both organised and efficient within their

means and for their purposes.

Michael knocked again, and Armitage called:

"Come in!" When he saw who had come into the room, he rose and greeted

Michael warmly.

"Oh, it's you, Michael!" he said, with a sense of guilt at the thoughts

Michael had interrupted. "I wondered what on earth had become of you.

The old man gave me no end of messages, and there are a couple of

magazines for you in my grip."

"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," Michael replied.

"Well, I hope you've got some good stuff," Armitage said.

Michael took the chair opposite to him on the other side of the table.

"I haven't got much," he said.

"I remember Newton told me you've been having rotten luck."

"It's looked up lately," Michael said, the flickering wisp of a smile in

his eyes. "The boys say Rummy's a luck-bringer.... He's working with me

now, and we've been getting some nice stone."

He took a small packet of opal from his pocket and put it on the table.

It was wrapped in newspaper. He unfastened the string, turned back the

cotton-wool in which the pieces of opal were packed, and spread them out

for Armitage to look at.

Armitage went over the stones. He put them, one by one, under his

microscope, and held them to and from the light.

"That's a nice bit of colour, Michael," he said, admiring a small piece

of grey potch with a black strain which flashed needling rays of green

and gold. "A little bit more of that, and you'd be all right, eh?"

Michael nodded. "We're on a streak now," he said. "It ought to work out

all right."

"I hope it will." Armitage held the piece of opal to the light and moved

it slowly. "Rouminof's working with you now--and Potch, they tell me?"

Michael nodded.

"Pretty hard on him, Charley's getting away with his stones like that!"

John Armitage probed the quiet eyes of the man before him with a swift

glance.

"You're right there, Mr. Armitage," Michael said. "Harder on Paul than

it would have been on anybody else. He's got the fever pretty bad."

Armitage laughed, handling a stone thoughtfully.

"I gave Jun a hundred pounds for his big stone. I'd give the same for

the other--if I could lay my hands on it, though the boys say it wasn't

quite as big, but better pattern."

"That's right," Michael said.

Silence lay between them for a moment.

"What have you got on the lot, Michael?" Armitage asked, picking up the

stones before him and going over them absent-mindedly.

"A tenner," Michael said.

Usually a gouger asked several pounds more than he expected to get. John

Armitage knew that; Michael knew he knew it. Armitage played with the

stones, hesitated as though his mind were not made up. There was not

much more than potch and colour in the bundle. He went over the stones

with the glass again.

"Oh well, Michael," he said, "we're old friends. I won't haggle with

you. Ten pounds--your own valuation."

He would get twice as much for the parcel, but the price was a good one.

Michael was surprised he had conceded it so easily.

Armitage pulled out his cheque-book and pushed a box of cigars across

the table. Michael took out his pipe.

"If you don't mind, Mr. Armitage," he said, "I'm more at home with

this."

"Please yourself, Michael," Armitage murmured, writing his cheque.

When Michael had put the cheque in his pocket, Armitage took a cigar,

nipped and lighted it, and leaned back in his chair again.

"Not much big stuff about, Michael," he remarked, conversationally.

"George Woods had some good stones," Michael said.

Armitage was not enthusiastic. "Pretty fair. But the old man will be

better pleased with the stuff I got from Jun Johnson than anything else

this trip.... I'd give a good deal to get the almond-shaped stone in

that other parcel."

Michael realised Mr. Armitage had said the same thing to him before. He

wondered why he had said it to him--what he was driving at.

"There were several good stones in Paul's parcel," he said.

His clear, quiet eyes met John Armitage's curious, inquiring gaze. He

was vaguely discomfited by Armitage's gaze, although he did not flinch

from it. He wondered what Mr. Armitage knew, that he should look like

that.

"It's been hard on Rouminof," Armitage murmured again.

Michael agreed.

"After the boys making Jun shell out, too! It doesn't seem to have been

much use, does it?"

"No," Michael said.

"And they say he was going to take that girl of his down to Sydney to

have her trained as a singer. She can sing, too. But her mother,

Michael--I heard her in _Dinorah_ ... when I was a little chap."

Enthusiasm lighted John Armitage's face. "She was wonderful.... The old

man says people were mad about her when she was in New York.... It was

said, you know, she belonged to some aristocratic Russian family, and

ran away with a rascally violinist--Rouminof. Can you believe it? ...

Went on the stage to keep him.... But she couldn't stand the life. Soon

after she was lost sight of.... I've often wondered how she drifted to

Fallen Star. But she liked being here, the old man says."

Michael nodded. There was silence between them a moment; then Michael

rose to go. The opal-buyer got up too, and flung out his arms,

stretching with relief to be done with his day's work.

"I've been cooped in here all day," he said. "I'll come along with you,

Michael. I'd like to have a look at the Punti Rush. Can you walk over

there with me?"

"'Course I can, Mr. Armitage," Michael said heartily.

They walked out of the hotel and through the town towards the rush,

where half a dozen new claims had been pegged a few weeks before.

Snow-Shoes passed then going out of the town to his hut, swinging along

the track and gazing before him with the eyes of a seer, his fine old

face set in a dream, serene dignity in every line of his erect and

slowly-moving figure.

Armitage looked after him.

"What a great old chap he is, Michael," he exclaimed. "You don't know

anything about him ... who he is, or where he comes from, do you?"

"No," Michael said.

"How does he live?"

"Noodles."

"He's never brought me any stone."

"Trades it with the storekeepers--though the boys do say"--Michael

looked with smiling eyes after Snow-Shoes--"he may be a bit of a miser,

loves opal more than the money it brings."

Armitage's interest deepened. "There are chaps like that. I've heard the

old man talk about a stone getting hold of a man sometimes--mesmerising

him. I believe the old man's a bit like that himself, you know. There

are two or three pieces of opal he's got from Fallen Star nothing on

earth will induce him to part with. We wanted a stone for an Indian

nabob's show tiara--something of that sort--not long ago. I fancied that

big knobby we got from George Woods; do you remember? But the old man

wouldn't part with it; not he! Said he'd see all the nabobs in the world

in--Hades, before they got that opal out of him!"

Michael laughed. The thought of hard-shelled old Dawe Armitage hoarding

opals tickled him immensely.

"Fact," Armitage continued. "He's got a couple of stones he's like a kid

over--takes them out, rubs them, and plays with them. And you should

hear him if I try to get them from him.... A packet of crackers isn't in

it with the old man."

"The boys'd like to hear that," Michael said.

"There's no doubt about the fascination the stuff exercises," John

Armitage went on. "You people say, once an opal-miner, always an

opal-miner; but I say, once an opal-buyer, always an opal-buyer. I

wasn't keen about this business when I came into it ... but it's got me

all right. I can't see myself coming to this God-forsaken part of the

world of yours for anything but black opal...."

That expression, whimsical and enigmatic, which was never very far from

them, had grown in Michael's eyes. He began to sense a motive in

Armitage's seemingly casual talk, and to understand why the opal-buyer

was so friendly.

"The old man tells a story," Armitage continued, "of that robbery up at

Blue Pigeon. You know the yarn I mean ... about sticking up a coach when

there was a good parcel of opal on board. Somebody did the bush-ranging

trick and got away with the opal.... The thief was caught, and the stuff

put for safety in an iron safe at the post office. And sight of the

opals corrupted one of the men in the post office.... He was caught ...

and then a mounted trooper took charge of them. And the stuff bewitched

him, too.... He tried to get away with it...."

"That's right," Michael murmured serenely.

Armitage eyed him keenly. He could scarcely believe the story he had got

from Jun, that the second parcel of stones had been exchanged after

Charley got them, or that they had been changed on Paul before Charley

got them from him.

Michael guessed Armitage was sounding him by talking so much of

Rouminof's stones and the robbery. He wondered what Armitage

knew--whether he knew anything which would attach him, Michael, to

knowledge of what had become of Paul's stones. There was always the

chance that Charley had recognised some of the opal in the parcel

substituted for Paul's, although none of the scraps were significant

enough to be remembered, Michael thought, and Charley was never keen

enough to have taken any notice of the sun-flash and fragments of

coloured potch they had taken out of the mine during the year. The brown

knobby, which Michael had kept for something of a sentimental reason,

because it was the first stone he had found on Fallen Star, Charley had

never seen.

But, probably, he remarked to himself, Armitage was only trying to get

information from him because he thought that Michael Brady was the most

likely man on the Ridge to know what had become of the stones, or to

guess what might have become of them.

As they walked and talked, these thoughts were an undercurrent in

Michael's mind. And the undercurrent of John Lincoln Armitage's mind,

through all his amiable and seemingly inconsequential gossip, was not

whether Michael had taken the stones, but why he had, and what had

become of them.

Armitage could not, at first, bring himself to credit the half-formed

suspicion which that quiver of Michael's face, when he had spoken of

what Jun said, had given him. Yet they were all more or less mad, people

who dealt with opal, he believed. It might not be for the sake of profit

Michael had taken the stones, if he had taken them--there was still a

shadow of doubt in his mind. John Armitage knew that any man on the

Ridge would have knocked him down for harbouring such a thought. Michael

was the little father, the knight without fear and without a stain, of

the Ridge. He reflected that Michael had never brought him much stone.

His father had often talked of Michael Brady and the way he had stuck to

gouging opal with precious little luck for many years. The parcel he had

sold that day was perhaps the best Michael had traded with Armitage and

Son for a long time. John Armitage wondered if any man could work so

long without having found good stuff, without having realised the hopes

which had materialised for so many other men of the Ridge.

They went over the new rush, inspected "prospects," and yarned with

Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, who had pegged out a claim there.

But as Armitage and he walked back to the town discussing the outlook of

the new field and the colour and potch some of the men already had to

show, Michael found himself in the undertow of an uneasy imagination. He

protested to himself that he was unnecessarily apprehensive, that all

Armitage was trying to get from him was any information which would

throw light on the disappearance of Paul's stones. And Armitage was

wondering whether Michael might not be an opal miser--whether the

mysterious fires of black opal might not have eaten into his brain as

they had into the brains of good men before him.

If they had, and if he had found the flaw in Michael's armour, John

Armitage realised that the way to fulfilment of his schemes for buying

the mines and working them on up-to-date lines, was opened up. If

Michael could be proved unfaithful to the law and ideals of Ridge, John

Armitage believed the men's faith in the fabric of their common life

would fall to pieces. He envisaged the eating of moths of doubt and

disappointment into the philosophy of the Ridge, the disintegration of

ideas which had held the men together, and made them stand together in

matters of common interest and service, as one man. He had almost

assured himself that if Michael was not the thief and hoarder of the

lost opals, he at least knew something of them, when a ripple of

laughter and gust of singing were flung into the air not far from them.

To Armitage it was as though some blithe spirit was mocking the

discovery he thought he had made, and the fruition it promised those

secret hopes of his.

"It's Sophie," Michael said.

They had come across the Ridge to the back of the huts. The light was

failing; the sky, from the earth upwards where the sunset had been, the

frail, limpid green of a shallow lagoon, deepening to blue, darker than

indigo. The crescent of a moon, faintly gilded, swung in the sky above

the dark shapes of the huts which stood by the track to the old

Flash-in-the-pan rush. The smoke of sandal-wood fires burning in the

huts was in the air. A goat bell tinkled....

Potch and Sophie were talking behind the hut somewhere; their

exclamations, laughter, a phrase or two of the song Sophie was singing

went through the quietness.

And it was all this he wanted to change! John Armitage caught the

revelation of the moment as he stood to listen to Sophie singing. He

understood as he had never done what the Ridge stood for--association of

people with the earth, their attachment to the primary needs of life,

the joyous flight of youthful spirits, this quiet happiness and peace at

evening when the work of the day was done.

As he came from the dumps, having said good-night to Michael, he saw

Sophie, a slight, girlish figure, on the track ahead of him. Her dress

flickered and flashed through the trees beside the track; it was a

wraithlike streak in the twilight. She was taking the milk down to

Newton's, and singing to herself as she walked. John Armitage quickened

his steps to overtake her.

CHAPTER XII

The visit of an opal-buyer ruffled ever so slightly the still surface of

life on the Ridge. When Armitage had gone, he was talked of for a few

days; the stones he had bought, the prices he had given for them, were

discussed. Some of his sayings, and the stories he had told, were

laughed over. Tricks of speech he had used, tried at first half in fun,

were adopted and dropped into the vernacular of the mines.

"Sure!" the men said as easily as an American; and sometimes, talking

with each other: "You've got another think coming to you"; or, "See,

you've got your nerve with you!"

For a night or two Michael went over the books and papers John Armitage

had brought him. At first he just glanced here and there through them,

and then he began to read systematically, and light glimmered in his

windows far into the night. He soaked the contents of two or three

reviews and several newspapers before giving himself to a book on

international finance in which old Armitage had written his name.

Michael thrilled to the stimulus of the book, the intellectual

excitement of the ideas it brought forth. He lived tumultuously within

the four bare walls of his room, arguing with himself, the author, the

world at large. Wrong and injustice enthroned, he saw in this book

describing the complexities of national and international systems of

finance, the subtle weaving and interweaving of webs of the

money-makers.

This was not the effect Dawe Armitage had expected his book to have; he

had expected to overawe and daze Michael with its impressive arraignment

of figures and its subtle and bewildering generalisations on credit and

foreign exchange. Michael's mind had cut through the fog raised by the

financier's jargon to the few small facts beneath it all. Neither dazed

nor dazzled, his brain had swung true to the magnetic meridian of his

faith. Far from the book having shown him the folly and futility of any

attempt against the Money Power, as Dawe Armitage, in a moment of

freakish humour had imagined it might, it had filled him with such an

intensity of fury that for a moment he believed he alone could

accomplish the regeneration of the world; that like St. Michael of old

he would go forth and slay the dragon, this chimera which was ravaging

the world, drawing the blood, beauty, and joy of youth, the peace and

wisdom of age; breaking manhood and womanhood with its merciless claws.

But falling back on a consciousness of self, as with broken wings he

realised he was neither archangel, nor super-man, but Michael Brady, an

ordinary, ill-educated man who read and dreamed a great deal, and gouged

for black opal on Fallen Star Ridge. He was a little bitter, and more

humble, for having entertained that radiant vision of himself.

John Armitage had been gone from the Ridge some weeks when Michael went

over in his mind every phase and phrase of the talk they had had. His

lips took a slight smile; it crept into his eyes, as he reviewed what he

had said and what John Armitage had said, smoking unconsciously.

Absorbed in his reading, he had thought little of John Armitage and that

walk to the new rush with him. Occasionally the memory of it had

nickered and glanced through his mind; but he was so obsessed by the

ideas this new reading had stirred, that he went about his everyday jobs

in the mine and in the hut, absent-mindedly, automatically, because they

were things he was in the habit of doing. Potch watched him anxiously;

Rouminof growled to him; Sophie laughed and flitted and sang, before his

eyes; but Michael had been only distantly conscious of what was going on

about him. George Woods and Watty guessed what was the matter; they knew

the symptoms of these reading and brooding bouts Michael was subject to.

The moods wore off when they put questions likely to draw information

and he began to talk out and discuss what he had been reading with them.

He had talked this one off, when suddenly he remembered how John

Armitage's eyes had dived into his during that walk to the new rush. He

could see Armitage's eyes again, keen grey eyes they were. And his

hands. Michael remembered how Armitage's hands had played over the opals

he had taken to show him. John Lincoln Armitage had the shrewd eyes of

any man who lives by his wits--lawyer, pickpocket, politician, or

financier--he decided; and the fine white hands of a woman. Only Michael

did not know any woman whose hands were as finely shaped and as white as

John Armitage's. Images of his clean-shaven, hot-house face of a city

dweller, slightly burned by his long journey on land and sea, recurred

to him; expressions, gestures, inflections of voice.

Michael smiled to himself in communion with his thoughts as he went over

the substance of Armitage's conversation, dissecting and shredding it

critically. The more he thought of what Armitage had said, the more he

found himself believing John Armitage had some information which caused

him to think that he, Michael, knew something of the whereabouts of the

stones. He could not convince himself Armitage believed he actually held

the stones, or that he had stolen them. Armitage had certainly given him

an opportunity to sell on the quiet if he had the stones; but his manner

was too tentative, mingled with a subtle respect, to carry the notion of

an overt suggestion of the sort, or the possession of incriminating

knowledge. Then there was the story of the old Cliffs robbery. Michael

wondered why Mr. Armitage had gone over that. On general principles,

doubting the truth of his long run of bad luck--or from curiosity

merely, perhaps. But Michael did not deceive himself that Armitage might

have told the story in order to discover whether there was something of

the miser in him, and whether--if Michael had anything to do with the

taking of Paul's opals--he might prefer to hold rather than sell them.

Michael was amused at the thought of himself as a miser. He went into

the matter as honestly as he could. He knew the power opal had with him,

the fascination of the search for it, which had brought him from the

Cliffs to the Ridge, and which had held him to the place, although the

life and ideas it had come to represent meant more to him now than black

opal. Still, he was an opal miner, and through all his lean years on the

Ridge he had been upheld by the thought of the stone he would find some

day.

He had dreamed of that stone. It had haunted his idle thoughts for

years. He had seen it in the dark of the mine, deep in the ruddy earth,

a mirror of jet with fires swarming, red, green, and gold in it.

Dreams of the great opal he would one day discover had comforted him

when storekeepers were asking for settlement of long-standing accounts.

He did not altogether believe he would find it, that wonderful piece of

black opal; but he dreamed, like a child, of finding it.

As he thought of it, and of John Armitage, the smile in his eyes

broadened. If Armitage knew of that stone of his dreams, he would

certainly think his surmise was correct and believe that Michael Brady

was a miser. But he had held the dream in a dark and distant corner of

his consciousness; had it out to mood and brood over only at rare and

distant intervals; and no one was aware of its existence.

Black opal had no more passionate lover than himself, Michael knew. He

trembled with instinctive eagerness, reverence, and delight, when he saw

a piece of beautiful stone; his eyes devoured it. But there was nothing

personal in his love. He might have been high priest of some mysterious

divinity; when she revealed herself he was consumed with adoration. In a

vague, whimsical way Michael realised this of himself, and yet, too,

that if ever he held the stone of his dreams in his hands, he would be

filled with a glorious and flooding sense of accomplishment; an ecstasy

would transport him. It would be beyond all value in money, that stone;

but he would not want to keep it to gaze on alone, he would want to give

it to the world as a thing of consummate beauty, for everybody to enjoy

the sight of and adore.

No, Michael assured himself, he was not a miser. And, he reflected, he

had not even looked at Paul's stones. For all he knew, the stones Paul

had been showing that night at Newton's might have been removed from the

box before he left Newton's. Someone might have done to Paul what he,

Michael, had done to Charley Heathfield, as Armitage had suggested.

Paul's little tin box was well enough known. He had been opening and

showing his stones at Newton's a long time before the night when Jun had

been induced to divide spoils. It would be just as well, Michael

decided, to see what the box did contain; and he promised himself that

he would open it and look over the stones--some evening. But he was not

inclined to hurry the engagement with himself to do so.

He had been glad enough to forget that he had anything to do with that

box of Paul's: it still lay among the books where he had thrown it. The

memory of the night on which he had seen Charley taking Paul home, and

of all that had happened afterwards, was blurred in an ugly vision for

him. It had become like the memory of a nightmare. He could scarcely

believe he had done what he had done; yet he knew he had. He drew a deep

breath of relief when he realised everything had worked out well so far.

Paul was working with him; they had won that little bit of luck to carry

them on; Sophie was growing up healthily, happily, on the Ridge. She was

growing so quickly, too. Within the last few months Michael had noticed

a subtle change in her. There was an indefinable air of a flower

approaching its bloom about her. People were beginning to talk of her

looks. Michael had seen eyes following her admiringly. Sophie walked

with a light, lithe grace; she was slight and straight, not tall really,

but she looked tall in the black dress she still wore and which came to

her ankles. There was less of the eager sprite about her, a suggestion

of some sobering experience in her eyes--the shadow of her mother's

death--which had banished her unthinking and careless childhood. But the

eyes still had the purity and radiance of a child's. And she seemed

happy--the happiest thing on the Ridge, Michael thought. The cadence of

her laughter and a ripple of her singing were never long out of the air

about her father's hut. Wherever she went, people said now: "Sing to us,

Sophie!"

And she sang, whenever she was asked, without the slightest

self-consciousness, and always those songs from old operas, or some of

the folk-songs her mother had taught her, which were the only songs she

knew.

Michael had seen a number of neighbours in the township and their wives

and children sitting round in one or other of their homes while Sophie

sang. He had seen a glow of pleasure transfuse people as they listened

to her pure and ringing notes. Singing, Sophie seemed actually to

diffuse happiness, her own joy in the melodies she flung into the air.

Oh, yes, Sophie was happy singing, Michael could permit himself to

believe now. She could make people happy by her singing. He had feared

her singing as a will-o'-the-wisp which would lead her away from him and

the Ridge. But when he heard her enthralling people in the huts with it,

he was not afraid.

Paul sometimes moaned about the chances she was missing, and that she

could be singing in theatres to great audiences. Sophie herself laughed

at him. She was quite content with the Ridge, it seemed, and to sing to

people on their verandas in the summer evenings or round the fires in

the winter. She might have had greater and finer audiences, the Ridge

folk said, but she could not have had more appreciative ones.

If she was singing in the town, Michael always went to bring her home,

and he was as pleased as Sophie to hear people say:

"You're not taking her away yet, Michael? The night's a pup!" or,

"Another ... just one more song, Sophie!"

And if she had been singing at Newton's, Michael liked to see the men

come to the door of the bar, holding up their glasses, and to hear their

call, as Sophie and he went down the road:

"Sophie! Sophie!"

"Skin off y'r nose!"

"All the luck!"

"Best respecks, Sophie!"

When Sophie did not know what to do with herself all the hours Michael

and Potch and her father were away at the mines, Michael had showed her

how to use her mother's cutting-wheel. He taught her all he knew of

opals, and Sophie was delighted with the idea of learning to cut and

polish gems as her mother had.

Michael gave her rough stones to practise on, and in no time she learnt

to handle them skilfully. George, Watty, and the Crosses brought her

some gems to face and polish for them, and they were so pleased with her

work that they promised to give her most of their stones to cut and

polish. She had two or three accidents, and was very crestfallen about

them; but Michael declared they were part of the education of an

opal-cutter and would teach her more about her work than anyone could

tell her.

To Michael those days were of infinite blessedness. They proved again

and again the right of what he had done. At first he was vaguely alarmed

and uneasy when he saw younger men of the Ridge, Roy O'Mara or Bully

Bryant, talking or walking with Sophie, or he saw her laughing and

talking with them. There was something about Sophie's bearing with them

which disturbed him--a subtle, unconscious witchery. Then he explained

it to himself. He guessed that the woman in her was waking, or awake. On

second thoughts he was not jealous or uneasy. It was natural enough the

boys should like Sophie, that she should like them; he recognised the

age-old call of sex in it all. And if Sophie loved and married a man of

the Ridge, the future would be clear, Michael thought. He could give

Paul the opals, and her husband could watch over Sophie and see no harm

came to her if she left the Ridge.

The uneasiness stirred again, though, one afternoon when he found her

walking from the tank paddock with Arthur Henty beside her. There was a

startled consciousness about them both when Michael joined them and

walked along the road with them. He had seen Sophie talking to Henty in

and about the township before, but it had not occurred to him there was

anything unusual about that. Sophie had gone about as she liked and

talked to whom she liked since she was a child. She was on good terms

with everyone in the countryside. No one knew where she went or what she

did in the long day while the men were at the mines. Because the

carillon of her laughter flew through those quiet days, Michael

instinctively had put up a prayer of thanksgiving. Sophie was happy, he

thought. He did not ask himself why; he was grateful; but a vague

disquiet made itself felt when he remembered how he had found her

walking with Arthur Henty, and the number of times he had seen her

talking to Arthur Henty at Chassy Robb's store, or on the tracks near

the town.

Fallen Star folk knew Arthur better than any of the Hentys. For years he

had been coming through the township with cattle or sheep, and had put

up at Newton's with stockmen on his way home, or when he was going to an

out-station beyond the Ridge.

His father, James Henty, had taken up land in the back-country long

before opal was found on Fallen Star Ridge. He had worked half a million

square acres on an arm of the Darling in the days before runs were

fenced, with only a few black shepherds and one white man, old Bill

M'Gaffy, to help him for the first year or two. But, after an era of

extraordinary prosperity, a series of droughts and misfortunes had

overwhelmed the station and thrown it on the tender mercies of the

banks.

The Hentys lived much as they had always done. They entertained as

usual, and there was no hint of a wolf near the door in the hearty,

good-natured, and liberal hospitality of the homestead. A constitutional

optimism enabled James Henty to believe Warria would ultimately throw

off its debts and the good old days return. Only at the end of a season,

when year after year he found there was no likelihood of being able to

meet even the yearly interest on mortgages, did he lose some of his

sanguine belief in the station's ability to right itself, and become

irritable beyond endurance, blaming any and everyone within hail for the

unsatisfactory estimates.

But usually Arthur bore the brunt of these outbursts. Arthur Henty had

gone from school to work on the station at the beginning of Warria's

decline from the years of plenty, and had borne the burden and not a

little of the blame for heavy losses during the droughts, without ever

attempting to shift or deny the responsibilities his father put upon

him.

"It does the old man good to have somebody to go off at," he explained

indifferently to his sister, Elizabeth, when she called him all the

fools under the sun for taking so much blackguarding sitting down.

Although James Henty's only son and manager of the station under his

father's autocratic rule, Arthur Henty lived and worked among Warria

stockmen as though he were one of them. His clothes were as worn and

heavy with dust as theirs; his hat was as weathered, his hands as

hard--sunburnt and broken with sores when barcoo was in the air. A

quiet, unassuming man, he never came the "Boss" over them. He passed on

the old man's orders, and, for the rest, worked as hard as any man on

the station.

He had never done anything remarkable that anyone could remember; but

the men he worked with liked him. Everybody rather liked Arthur Henty,

although nobody enthused about him. He had done man's work ever since he

was a boy, with no more than a couple of years' schooling; he had done

it steadily and as well as any other young man in the back-country. But

there was a curious, almost feminine weakness in him somewhere. The men

did not understand it. They thought he was too supine with his father;

that he ought to stand up to him more.

Arthur Henty preferred being out on the plains with them rather than in

at the home station, the men said. He looked happier when he was with

them; he whistled to them as they lay yarning round the camp-fire before

turning in. They had never heard anything like his whistling. He seemed

to be playing some small, fine, invisible flute as he gave them

old-fashioned airs, ragtime tunes, songs from the comic operas, and

miscellaneous melodies he had heard his sisters singing. No one had

heard him whistling like that at the station. Out on the plains, or in

the bar at Newton's, he was a different man. Once or twice when he had

been drinking, and a glass or two of beer or whisky had got to his head,

he had shown more the spirit that it was thought he possessed--as if,

when the conscious will was relaxed, a submerged self had leapt forth.

Men who had known him a long time wondered whether time would not

strengthen the fibres of that submerged self; but they had seen Arthur

Henty lose the elastic, hopeful outlook of youth, and sink gradually

into the place assigned him by his father, at first dutifully, then with

an indifference which slowly became apathy.

Mrs. Henty and the girls exclaimed with dismay and disgust when they

returned to the station after two years in town, and saw how rough and

unkempt-looking Arthur had become. They insisted on his having his hair

and beard cut at once, and that he should manicure his finger-nails.

After he had dressed for dinner and was clipped and shaved, they said he

looked more as if he belonged to them; but he was a shy, awkward boor,

and they did not know what to make of him. In his mother's hands, Arthur

was still a child, though, and she brought him back to the fold of the

family, drew his resistance--an odd, sullen resentment he had acquired

for the niceties of what she called "civilised society"--and made him

amenable to its discipline.

Elizabeth was twice the man her brother was, James Henty was fond of

declaring. She had all the vigour and dash he would have liked his son

to possess. "My daughter Elizabeth," he said as frequently as possible,

and was always talking of her feats with horses, and the clear-headed

and clever way she went about doing things, and getting her own way on

all and every occasion.

When the men rounded buck-jumpers into the yards on a Sunday morning,

Elizabeth would ride any Chris Este, the head stockman, let her near;

but Arthur never attempted to ride any of the warrigals. He steered

clear of horse-breaking and rough horses whenever he could, although he

broke and handled his own horses. In a curious way he shared a secret

feeling of his mother's for horses. She had never been able to overcome

an indefinable apprehension of the raw, half-broken horses of the

back-country, although her nerve had carried her through years of

acquaintance with them, innumerable accidents and misadventures, and

hundreds of miles of journeys at their mercy; and Arthur, although he

had lived and worked among horses as long as he could remember, had not

been able to lose something of the same feeling. His sister, suspecting

it, was frankly contemptuous; so was his father. It was the reason of

Henty's low estimate of his son's character generally. And the rumour

that Arthur Henty was shy of tough propositions in horses--"afraid of

horses"--had a good deal to do with the never more than luke-warm

respect men of the station and countryside had for him.

CHAPTER XIII

Sophie often met Arthur Henty on the road just out of the town. Usually

it was going to or coming from the tank paddock, or in the paddock, on

Friday afternoons, when he had been into Budda for the sales or to truck

sheep or cattle. They did not arrange to meet, but Sophie expected to

see Arthur when she went to the tank paddock, and she knew he expected

to find her there. She did not know why she liked being with Arthur

Henty so much, or why they were such golden occasions when she met him.

They did not talk much when they were together. Their eyes met; they

knew each other through their eyes--a something remote from themselves

was always working through their eyes. It drew them together.

When she was with Arthur Henty, Sophie knew she was filled with an

ineffable gaiety, a thing so delicate and ethereal that as she sang she

seemed to be filling the air with it. And Henty looked at her sometimes

as if he had discovered a new, strange, and beautiful creature, a

butterfly, or gnat, with gauzy, resplendent wings, whose beauty he was

bewildered and overcome by. The last time they had been together he had

longed to draw her to him and kiss her so that the virgin innocence

would leave her eyes; but fear or some conscientious scruple had

restrained him. He had been reluctant to awaken her, to change the

quality of her feeling towards him. He had let her go with a lingering

handclasp. In all their tender intimacy there had been no more of the

love-making of the flesh than the subtle interweavings of instincts and

fibres which this handclasp gave. Ridge folk had seen them walking

together. They had seen that subtle inclination of Sophie's and Arthur's

figures towards each other as they walked--the magnetic, gentle,

irresistible swaying towards each other--and the gossips began to

whisper and nod smilingly when they came across Arthur and Sophie on the

road. Sophie at first went her way unconscious of the whispers and

smiles. Then words were dropped slyly--people teased her about Arthur.

She realised they thought he was her sweetheart. Was he? She began to

wonder and think about it. He must be; she came to the conclusion

happily. Only sweethearts went for walks together as she and Arthur did.

"My mother says," Mirry Flail remarked one day, "she wouldn't be a bit

surprised to see you marrying Arthur Henty, Sophie, and going over to

live at Warria."

"Goodness!" Sophie exclaimed, surprised and delighted that anybody

should think such a thing.

"Marry Arthur Henty and go over and live at Warria." Her mind, like a

delighted little beaver, began to build on the idea. It did not alter

her bearing with Arthur. She was less shy and thoughtful with him,

perhaps; but he did not notice it, and she was carelessly and childishly

content to have found the meaning of why she and Arthur liked meeting

and talking together. People only felt as she and Arthur felt about each

other if they were going to marry and live "happy ever after," she

supposed.

When Michael was aware of what was being said, and of the foundation

there was for gossip, he was considerably disturbed. He went to talk to

Maggie Grant about it. She, he thought, would know more of what was in

the wind than he did, and be better able to gauge what the consequences

were likely to be to Sophie.

"I've been bothered about it myself, Michael," she said. "But neither

you nor me can live Sophie's life for her.... I don't see we can do

anything. His crowd'll do all the interfering, if I know anything about

them."

"I suppose so," Michael agreed.

"And, as far as I can see, it won't do any good our butting in," Mrs.

Grant continued. "You know Sophie's got a will of her own ... and she's

always had a good deal her own way. I've talked round the thing to her

... and I think she understands."

"You've always been real good to her, Maggie," Michael said gratefully.

"As to that"--the lines of Maggie Grant's broad, plain face rucked to

the strength of her feeling--"I've done what I could. But then, I'm fond

of her--fond of her as you are, Michael. That's saying a lot. And you

know what I thought of her mother. But it's no use us thinking we can

buy Sophie's experience for her. She's got to live ... and she's got to

suffer."

Busy with her opal-cutting, and happy with her thoughts, Sophie had no

idea of the misgiving Michael and Maggie Grant had on her account, or

that anyone was disturbed and unhappy because of her happiness. She sang

as she worked. The whirr of her wheel, the chirr of sandstone and potch

as they sheared away, made a small, busy noise, like the drone of an

insect, in her house all day; and every day some of the men brought her

stones to face and fix up. She had acquired such a reputation for making

the most of stones committed to her care that men came from the Three

Mile and from the Punti with opals for her to rough-out and polish.

Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara were often at Rouminof's in the evening, and

they heard about it when they looked in at Newton's later on, now and

then.

"You must be striking it pretty good down at the Punti, Bull," Watty

Frost ventured genially one night. "See you takin' stones for Sophie to

fix up pretty near every evenin'."

"There's some as sees too much," Bully remarked significantly.

"What you say, you say y'rself, Bull." Watty pulled thoughtfully on his

pipe, but his little blue eyes squinted over his fat, red-grained

cheeks, not in the least abashed.

"I do," Bull affirmed. "And them as sees too much ... won't see much ...

when I'm through with 'em."

"Mmm," Watty brooded. "That's a good thing to know, isn't it?"

He and the rest of the men continued to "sling off," as they said, at

Bully and Roy O'Mara as they saw fit, nevertheless.

The summer had been a mild one; it passed almost without a ripple of

excitement. There were several hot days, but cool changes blew over, and

the rains came before people had given up dreading the heat. Several new

prospects had been made, and there were expectations that holes sunk on

claims to the north of the Punti Rush would mean the opening up of a new

field.

Michael and Potch worked on in their old claim with very little to show

for their pains. Paul had slackened and lost interest as soon as the

fitful gleams of opal they were on had cut out. Michael was not the man

to manage Rummy, the men said.

Potch and Michael, however, seemed satisfied enough to regard Paul more

or less as a sleeping partner; to do the work of the mine and share with

him for keeping out of the way.

"Shouldn't wonder if they wouldn't rather have his room than his

company," Watty ventured, "and they just go shares with him so as

things'll be all right for Sophie."

"That's right!" Pony-Fence agreed.

The year had made a great difference to Potch. Doing man's work, going

about on equal terms with the men, the change of status from being a

youth at anybody's beck and call to doing work which entitled him to the

taken-for-granted dignity of being an independent individual, had made a

man of him. His frame had thickened and hardened. He looked years older

than he was really, and took being Michael's mate very seriously.

Michael had put up a shelter for himself and his mates, thinking that

Potch and Paul might not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter; but

George and Watty were loth to lose Michael's word from their councils.

They called him over nearly every day, on one pretext or another.

Sometimes his mates followed Michael. But Rouminof soon wearied of a

discussion on anything except opal, and wandered off to the other

shelters to discover whether anybody had struck anything good that

morning. Potch threw himself on the ground beside Michael when Michael

had invited him to go across to George and Watty's shelter with him, and

after a while the men did not notice him there any more than Michael's

shadow. He lay beside Michael, quite still, throwing crumbs to the birds

which came round the shelter, and did not seem to be listening to what

was said. But always when a man was heatedly and with some difficulty

trying to disentangle his mind on a subject of argument, he found

Potch's eyes on him, steady and absorbing, and knew from their intent

expression that Potch was following all he had to say with quick, grave

interest.

Some people were staying at Warria during the winter, and when there was

going to be a dance at the station Mrs. Henty wrote to ask Rouminof to

play for it. She could manage the piano music, she said, and if he would

tune his violin for the occasion, they would have a splendid band for

the young people. And, her letter had continued: "We should be so

pleased if your daughter would come with you."

Sophie was wildly excited at the invitation. She had been to Ridge race

balls for the last two or three years, but she had never even seen

Warria. Her father had played at a Warria ball once, years before, when

she was little; but she and her mother had not gone with him to the

station. She remembered quite well when he came home, how he had told

them of all the wonderful things there had been to eat at the

ball--stuffed chickens and crystallised fruit, iced cakes, and all

manner of sweets.

Sophie had heard of the Warria homestead since she was a child, of its

orange garden and great, cool rooms. It had loomed like the enchanted

castle of a legend through all her youthful imaginings. And now, as she

remembered what Mirry Flail had said, she was filled with delight and

excitement at the thought of seeing it.

She wondered whether Arthur had asked his mother to invite her to the

dance. She thought he must have; and with naive conceit imagined happily

that Arthur's mother must want to know her because she knew that Arthur

liked her. And Arthur's sisters--it would be nice to know them and to

talk to them. She went over and over in her mind the talks she would

have with Polly and Nina, and perhaps Elizabeth Henty, some day.

A few weeks before the ball she had seen Arthur riding through the

township with his sisters and a girl who was staying at Warria. He had

not seen her, and Sophie was glad, because suddenly she had felt shy and

confused at the thought of talking to him before a lot of people.

Besides, they all looked so jolly, and were having such a good time,

that she would not have known what to say to Arthur, or to his sisters,

just then.

When she told Mrs. Woods and Martha M'Cready about the invitation, they

smiled and teased her.

"Oh, that tells a tale!" they said.

Sophie laughed. She felt silly, and she was blushing, they said. But she

was very happy at having been asked to the ball. For weeks before she

found herself singing "Caro Nome" as she sat at work, went about the

house, or with Potch after the goats in the late afternoon.

Arthur liked that song better than any other, and its melody had become

mingled and interwoven with all her thoughts of him.

The twilight was deepening, on the evening a few days before the dance,

when Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara came up to Rouminof's hut, calling

Sophie. She was washing milk tins and tea dishes, and went to the door

singing to herself, a candle throwing a fluttering light before her.

"Your father sent us along for you, Sophie," Bully explained. "There's a

bit of a celebration on at Newton's to-night, and the boys want you to

sing for them."

Sophie turned from them, going into the house to put down her candle.

"All right," she said, pleased at the idea.

Michael came into the hut through, the back door. From his own room he

had heard Bully calling and then explaining why he and Roy O'Mara were

there.

"Don't go, Sophie," Michael said.

"But why, Michael?" Disappointment clouded Sophie's first bright

pleasure that the men had sent for her to sing to them, and her

eagerness to do as they asked.

"It's not right ... not good for you to sing down there when the boys

've been drinking," Michael said, unable to express clearly his

opposition to her singing at Newton's.

"Don't be a spoil-sport, Michael," the boys at the door called when they

saw he was trying to dissuade Sophie.

"Come along, Sophie," Roy called.

She looked from Bully and Roy to Michael, hesitating. Theirs was the

call of youth to youth, of youth to gaiety and adventure. She turned

away from Michael.

"I'm going, Michael," she said quickly, and swung to the door. Michael

heard her laughing as she went off along the track with Bully and Roy.

"Did you know Mr. Armitage is up?" Roy stopped to call back.

"No," Michael said.

"Came up by the coach this evening," Roy said, and ran after Bully and

Sophie.

It was a rowdy night at Newton's. Shearing was just over at Warria

sheds, and men with cheques to burn were crowding the bar and passages.

Sophie was hailed with cheers as she neared the veranda. Her father

staggered out towards her, waving his arms crazily. Sophie was surprised

when she found the crowd waiting for her. There were so many strangers

in it--rough men with heavy, inflamed faces--hardly one she knew among

them. A murmur and boisterous clamour of voices came from the bar. The

men on the veranda made way for her.

Her heart quailed when she looked into the big earthen-floored bar, and

saw its crowd of rough-haired, sun-red men, still wearing the clothes

they had been working in, grey flannel shirts and dungarees,

blood-splashed, grimy, and greasy with the "yolk" of fleeces they had

been handling. The smell of sheep and the sweat of long days of shearing

and struggling with restless beasts were in the air, with fumes of rank

tobacco and the flat, stale smell of beer. The hanging lamp over the bar

threw only a dim light through the fog of smoke the men had put up, and

which from the doorway completely obscured Peter Newton where he stood

behind the bar.

Sophie hung back.

"I'm not going in there," she said.

"Did you know Mr. Armitage was up?" Roy asked.

"No," she said.

He explained how Mr. Armitage had come unexpectedly by the coach that

evening. Sophie saw him among the men on the veranda.

"I'll sing here," she told Bully and Roy, leaning against a veranda

post.

She was a little afraid. But she knew she had always pleased Ridge folk

when she sang to them, so she put back her head and sang a song of youth

and youthful happiness she had sung on the veranda at Newton's before.

It did not matter that the words were in Italian, which nobody

understood. The dancing joyousness and laughing music of her notes

carried the men with them. The applause was noisy and enthusiastic.

Sophie laughed, delighted, yet almost afraid of her success.

Big and broad-shouldered, Bully Bryant stood at a little distance from

her, in front of everybody. Arthur Henty, leaning against the wall near

the door of the bar, smiled softly, foolishly, when she glanced at him.

He had been drinking, too, and was watching, and listening to her, with

the same look in his eyes as Bully.

Sophie caught the excitement about her. An exhilaration of pleasure

thrilled her. It was crude wine which went to her head, this admiration

and applause of strangers and of the men she had known since she was a

child. There was a wonderful elation in having them beg her to sing.

They looked actually hungry to hear her. She found Arthur Henty's eyes

resting on her with the expression she knew in them. An imp of

recklessness entered her. Her father beat the air as if he were leading

an orchestra, and she threw herself into the Shadow Song, singing with

an abandonment that carried her beyond consciousness of her

surroundings.

She sang again and again, and always in response to an eager tumult of

cheers, thudding of feet, joggling of glasses, chorus of broken cries:

"En-core, encore, Sophie!" An instinct of mischief and coquetry urging,

she glanced sometimes at Arthur, sometimes at Bully. Then with a glance

at Arthur, and for a last number, she began "Caro Nome," and gave to her

singing all the glamour and tenderness, the wild sweetness, the aria had

come to have for her, because she had sung it so often to Arthur when

they met and were walking along the road together. She was so carried

away by her singing, she did not realise what had happened until

afterwards.

She only knew that suddenly, roughly, she was grasped and lifted. She

saw Bully's face flaming before her own, gazed with terror and horror

into his eyes. His face was thrown against hers--and obliterated.

"Are you all right?" someone asked after a moment.

Awaking from the daze and bewilderment, Sophie looked up.

John Armitage was standing beside her; Potch nearby. They were on the

outskirts of the crowd on the veranda.

"Yes," she said.

The men on the veranda had broken into two parties; one was surging

towards the bar door, the other moving off down the road out of the

town. Michael came towards her.

"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," he said.

"Oh, Potch looked after her. I couldn't get near," John Armitage said.

An extraordinary quiet took possession of Sophie. When she was going

down the road with Potch and Michael, she said:

"Did Bully kiss me, Michael?"

"Yes," he replied.

"I don't know what happened then?"

"Arthur Henty knocked him down," Michael said.

She looked at him with scared eyes.

"They want to fight it out ... but they're both drunk. The boys are

trying to stop it."

"Oh, Michael!" Sophie cried on a little gasping breath; and looking into

her eyes he read her contrition, asking forgiveness, understanding all

that he had not been able to explain to her. She did not say, "I'll

never sing there, like that, any more." Her feeling was too deep for

words; but Michael knew she never would.

CHAPTER XIV

"It's what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball,"

Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin

Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.

Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods' mirror, a square of

glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant

sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new

dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was

also gazing at her and at it admiringly.

When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria,

Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.

"Sophie's got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael," she

said. "I'm not going to have people over there laughing at her, and

she's had nothing but her mother's old dresses, cut down--for goodness

knows how long."

"Will you get it?" Michael inquired anxiously.

Mrs. Grant nodded.

"Bessie Woods and I were thinking it might be pinspot muslin, with a bit

of lace on it," she said. "We could get the stuff at Chassy Robb's and

make it up between us."

"Right!" Michael replied, looking immensely relieved to have the

difficulty disposed of. "Tell Chassy to put it on my book."

So the pinspot muslin and some cheap creamy lace had been bought. Mrs.

Woods and Sophie settled on a style they found illustrating an

advertisement in a newspaper and which resembled a dress one of the

Henty girls had worn at the race ball the year before. Maggie Grant had

done all the plain sewing and Mrs. Woods the fixing and finishing

touches. They had consulted over and over again about sleeves and the

length of the skirt. The frock had been fitted at least a dozen times.

They had wondered where they would put the lace as a bit of trimming,

and had decided for frills at the elbows and a tucker in the V-shaped

neck of the blouse. They marvelled at their audacity, but felt sure they

had done the right thing when they cut the neck rather lower than they

would have for a dress to be worn in the daytime.

Martha M'Cready, insisting on having a finger in the pie, had pressed

the dress when it was finished, and she had washed and ironed Mrs.

George Woods' best embroidered petticoat for Sophie to wear with it.

And now Sophie was dressing in Mrs. Woods' bedroom because it had a

bigger mirror than her own room, and the three women were watching her,

giving little tugs and pats to the dress now and then, measuring it with

appraising glances of conscious pride in their workmanship, and joy at

Sophie's appearance in it. Sophie, her face flushed, her eyes shining,

turned to them every now and then, begging to know whether the skirt was

not a little full here, or a little flat there; and they pinched and

pulled, until it was thought nothing further could be done to improve

it.

Sophie was anxious about her hair. She had put it in plaits the night

before, and had kept it in them all the morning. Her hair had never been

in plaits before, and she had not liked the look of it when she saw it

all crisp and frizzy, like Mirry Flail's. She had used a wet brush to

get the crinkle out, but there was still a suggestion of it in the heavy

dark wave of her hair when she had done it up as usual.

"Your hair looks very nice--don't worry any more about it, Sophie,"

Martha M'Cready had said.

"My mother used to say there was nothing nicer for a young girl to wear

than white muslin," Mrs. Woods remarked, "and that sash of your mother's

looks real nice as a belt, Sophie."

The sash, a broad piece of blue and green silk shot like a piece of poor

opal, Sophie had found in a box of her mother's, and it was wound round

her waist as a belt and tied in a bow at the side.

"Turn round and let me see if the skirt's quite the same length all

round, Sophie," Mrs. Grant commanded.

"Yes, Maggie," Bessie Woods exclaimed complacently. "It's quite right."

Sophie glanced at herself in the glass again. Mrs. Woods had lent her a

pair of opal ear-rings, and Maggie Grant the one piece of finery she

possessed--a round piece of very fine black opal set in a rim of gold,

which Bill had given her when first she came to the Ridge.

Sophie had on for the first time, too, a necklace she had made herself

of stones the miners had given her at different times. There was a piece

of opal for almost every man on the fields, and she had strung them

together, with a beautiful knobby Potch had made her a present of for

her eighteenth birthday, a few days before, in the centre.

Just as she had finished dressing, Mrs. Watty Frost called in the

doorway: "Anybody at home?"

"Come in," Mrs. George Woods replied.

Mrs. Watty walked into the bedroom. She had a long slender parcel

wrapped in brown paper in her hand, but nobody noticed it at the time.

"My!" she exclaimed, staring at Sophie; "we are fine, aren't we?"

Sophie caught up her long, cotton gloves and pirouetted in happy

excitement.

"Aren't we?" she cried gaily. "Just look at my gloves! Did ever you see

such lovely long gloves, Mrs. Watty? And don't my ear-rings look nice?

But it does feel funny wearing ear-rings, doesn't it? I want to be

shaking my head all the time to make them joggle!"

She shook her head. The blue and green fires of the stones leapt and

sparkled. Her eyes seemed to catch fire from them. The women exchanged

admiring glances.

"Where's my handkerchief?" Sophie cried. "Father's late, isn't he? I'm

sure we'll be late! How long will it take to drive over to Warria?--An

hour? Goodness! And it'll be almost time for the dance to begin then!

Oh, don't my shoes look nice, Maggie?"

She looked down at her feet in the white cotton stockings and white

canvas shoes, with ankle straps, which Maggie Grant had sent into Budda

for. The hem of her skirt came just to her ankles. She played the new

shoes in and out from under it in little dancing steps, and the women

laughed at her, happy in her happiness.

"But you haven't got a fan, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said.

"A fan?" Sophie's eyes widened.

"You should oughter have a fan. In my young days it wasn't considered

decent to go to a ball without a fan," Mrs. Watty remarked grimly.

"Oh!" Sophie looked from one to the other of her advisers.

Mrs. George Woods was just going to say that it was a long time since

Mrs. Watty's young days, when Mrs. Watty took the brown paper from the

long, thin parcel she was carrying.

"I thought most likely you wouldn't have one," she said, "so I brought

this over."

She unfurled an old-fashioned, long-handled, sandal-wood fan, with birds

and flowers painted on the brown satin screen, and a little row of

feathers along the top. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Grant exchanged

glances that Mrs. Watty should pander to the vanity of an occasion.

"Mrs. Watty!" Sophie took the fan with a little cry of delight.

"My, aren't you a grown-up young lady now, Sophie?" Mrs. Woods

exclaimed, as Sophie unfurled the fan.

"But mind you take care of it, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said, stiffening

against the relaxing atmosphere of goodwill and excitement. "Watty got

it for me last trip he made to sea, before we was married, and I set a

good deal of store by it."

"Oh, I'll be ever so careful!" Sophie declared. She opened the fan.

"Isn't it pretty?"

Dropping into a chair, she murmured: "May I--have this dance with you,

Miss Rouminof?" And casting a shy upward glance over her fan, as if

answering for herself, "I don't mind if I do!"

Martha and Mrs. Woods laughed heartily, recognising Arthur Henty's way

of talking in the voice Sophie had imitated.

"That's the way to do it, Sophie," Mrs. Woods said; "only you shouldn't

say, 'Don't mind if I do,' but, 'It's a pleasure, I'm sure.'"

"It's a pleasure, I'm sure," Sophie mimed.

"Is she going to wear the dress over?" Mrs. Watty asked anxiously.

"Yes," Maggie Grant said. "Bessie's lending her a dust-coat. I don't

think it'll get crushed very much. You see, they won't arrive until it's

nearly time for the dance to begin, and we thought it'd be better for us

to help her to get fixed up. Everybody'll be so busy over at Warria--and

we thought she mightn't be able to get anybody to do up her dress for

her."

"That's right," Mrs. Watty said.

There was a rattle of wheels on the rough shingle near the hut.

"Here's your father, Sophie," Martha called.

"And Michael and Potch are in the kitchen wanting to have a look at you

before you go, Sophie," Maggie Grant said.

"Oh!" Sophie took the coat Mrs. Woods was lending her, and went out to

the kitchen with it on her arm.

Michael and Potch were there. They stared at her. But her radiant face,

the shining eyes, and the little smile which hovered on her mouth, held

their gaze more than the new white dress standing out in slight, stiff

folds all round her. The vision of her--incomparable youth and

loveliness she was to Michael--gripped him so that a moisture of love

and reverence dimmed his eyes.... And Potch just stared and stared at

her.

Paul was bawling from the buggy outside:

"Are you ready, Sophie? Sophie, are you ready?"

Mrs. Woods held the dust-coat. Very carefully Sophie edged herself into

it, and wrapped its nondescript buff-coloured folds over her dress. Then

she put the pink woollen scarf Martha had brought over her head, and

went out to the buggy. Her father was sitting aloft on the front seat,

driving Sam Nancarrow's old roan mare, and looking spruce and well

turned out in a new baggy suit which Michael had arranged for him to get

in order to look more of a credit to Sophie at the ball.

"See you take good care of her, Paul," Mrs. Grant called after him as

they drove off.

CHAPTER XV

The drive across the plains seemed interminable to Sophie.

Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went

along. He called to Sam Nancarrow's old nag, quite pleased to be having

a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially

about this and other balls he had been to.

Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said,

and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. "I do

look nice! I do look nice!" she assured herself.

It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought

she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs.

Woods' ear-rings, and that old sash of her mother's. She was a little

anxious, but very happy and excited.

She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road

or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then.

He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle

recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her

in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of

happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The

sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to

indigo as it climbed to the zenith.

When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue

from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted

Burton, the station book-keeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with

light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sand-papered,

came out to meet them.

"There you are, Rouminof!" he said. "Glad to see you. We were beginning

to be afraid you weren't coming!"

Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables.

Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men

were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was

standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did

not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup.

But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his

forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having

regained his feet, hit out blindly.

Potch had told Sophie what happened--she had made him find out in order

to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first

exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they

said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully

came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.

"If anybody'd 've told me I'd treat you like that, Sophie, I'd 've

killed him," he said. "I'd 've killed him.... You know how I feel about

you--you know how we all feel about you--and for me to have served you

like that--me that'd do anything in the world for you.... But it's no

good trying to say any more. It's no good tryin' to explain. It's got me

down...."

He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable,

that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It

was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to

see Bully like this.

"It's all right, Bully," she said. "I know ... you weren't yourself ...

and you didn't mean it."

He started to his feet and came to stand beside her. Sophie put her hand

in his; he gripped it hard, unable to say anything. Then, when he could

control his voice, he said:

"I went over to see Mr. Henty this morning ... and told him if anybody

else 'd done what I did, I'd 've done what he did."

Potch had said the men expected Bully would want to fight the thing out

when he was sober, and it was a big thing for him to have done what he

had. The punishing power of Bully's fists was well known, and he had

taken this way of punishing himself. Sophie understood that, She was

grateful and reconciled to him.

"I'm glad, Bully," she said. "Let's forget all about it."

So the matter ended. But it all came back to her as she saw the broken

red line on Arthur Henty's forehead.

She did not know that because of it she was an object of interest to the

crowd on the veranda. News of Arthur Henty's bout with Bully Bryant had

been very soon noised over the whole countryside. Most of the men who

came to the ball from Langi-Eumina and other stations had gleaned varied

and highly-coloured versions, and Arthur had been chaffed and twitted

until he was sore and ashamed of the whole incident. He could not

understand himself--the rush of rage, instinctive and unreasoning, which

had overwhelmed him when he hit out at Bully.

His mother protested that it was a shame to give Arthur such a bad time

for what was, after all, merely the chivalrous impulse of any decent

young man when a girl was treated lightly in his presence; but the men

and the girls who were staying at the station laughed and teased all the

more for the explanation. They pretended he was a very heroic and

quixotic young man, and asked about Sophie--whether she was pretty, and

whether it was true she sang well. They redoubled their efforts, and

goaded him to a state of sulky silence, when they knew she was coming to

the ball.

Arthur Henty had been conscious for some time of an undercurrent within

him drawing him to Sophie. He was afraid of, and resented it. He had not

thought of loving her, or marrying her. He had gone to the tank paddock

in the afternoons he knew she would be there, or had looked for her on

the Warria road when she had been to the cemetery, with a sensation of

drifting pleasantly. He had never before felt as he did when he was with

Sophie, that life was a clear and simple thing--pleasant, too; that

nothing could be better than walking over the plains through the limpid

twilight. He had liked to see the fires of opal run in her eyes when she

looked at him; to note the black lines on the outer rim of their

coloured orbs; the black lashes set in silken skin of purest ivory; the

curve of her chin and neck; the lines of her mouth, and the way she

walked; all these things he had loved. But he did not want to have the

responsibility of loving Sophie: he could not contemplate what wanting

to marry her would mean in tempests and turmoil with his family.

He had thought sometimes of a mediaeval knight wandering through

flowering fields with the girl on a horse beside him, in connection with

Sophie and himself. A reproduction of the well-known picture of the

knight and the girl hung in his mother's sitting-room. She had cut it

out of a magazine, and framed it, because it pleased her; and beneath

the picture, in fine print, Arthur had often read:

"I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful--a fairy's child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

"I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

For sideways would she lean, and sing

A faery's song."

As a small boy Arthur had been attracted by the picture, and his mother

had told him its story, and had read him Keats' poem. He had read it

ever so many times since then himself, and after he met Sophie in the

tank paddock that afternoon she had ridden home on his horse, some of

the verses haunted him with the thought of her. One day when they were

sitting by the track and she had been singing to him, he had made a

daisy chain and thrown it over her, murmuring sheepishly, in a caprice

of tenderness:

"I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love

And made sweet moan."

Sophie had asked about the poem. She had wanted to hear more, and he had

repeated as many verses as he could remember. When he had finished, she

had looked at him "as she did love" indeed, with eyes of sweet

confidence, yet withdrawing from him a little in shy and happy confusion

that he should think of her as anyone like the lady of the meads, who

was "full beautiful--a fairy's child."

But Arthur did not want to love her; he did not want to marry her. He

did not want to have rows with his father, differences with his mother.

The affair at Newton's had shown him where he was going.

Sophie was "a fairy's child," he decided. "Her hair as long, her foot

was light, and her eyes were wild"; but he did not want to be "a

wretched wight, alone and palely loitering" on her account; he did not

want to marry her. He would close her eyes with "kisses four," he told

himself, smiling at the precision of the knight of the chronicle;

"kisses four"--no more--and be done with the business.

Meanwhile, he wished Sophie were not coming to the ball. He would have

given anything to prevent her coming; but he could do nothing.

He had thought of escaping from the ball by going to the out-station

with the men; but his mother, foreseeing something of his intention, had

given him so much to do at the homestead for her, that he could not go

away. When the buggy with Sophie and her father drove up to the veranda,

there was a chorus of suppressed exclamations among the assembled

guests.

"Here she is, Art!"

"Buck up, old chap! None but the brave, etc."

Sophie did not hear the undertone of laughter and raillery which greeted

her arrival. She was quite unconscious that the people on the veranda

were interested in her at all, as she walked across the courtyard

listening to Mr. Burton's amiable commonplaces.

When Mr. Burton left her in a small room with chintz-covered chairs and

dressing-table, Sophie took off her old dust-coat and the pink scarf she

had tied over her hair. The mirror was longer than Mrs. Woods'. Her

dress looked very crushed when she saw it reflected. She tried to shake

out the creases. Her hair, too, was flat, and had blown into stringy

ends. A shade of disappointment dimmed the brightness of her mood as she

realised she was not looking nearly as nice as she had when she left the

Ridge.

Someone said: "May I come in?" and Polly Henty and another girl entered

the room.

Polly Henty had just left school. She was a round-faced, jolly-looking

girl of about Sophie's own age, and the girl with her was not much

older, pretty and sprightly, an inch or so taller than Polly, and

slight. She had grey eyes, and a fluff of dry-grass coloured hair about

a small, sharp-featured, fresh-complexioned face, neatly powdered.

Sophie knew something was wrong with her clothes the moment she

encountered the girls' curious and patronising glances as they came into

the room. Their appearance, too, took the skin from her vanity. Polly

had on a frock of silky white crepe, with no lace or decoration of any

kind, except a small gold locket and chain which she was wearing. But

her dress fell round her in graceful folds, showing her small,

well-rounded bust and hips, and she had on silk stockings and white

satin slippers. The other girl's frock was of pale pink, misty material,

so thin that her shoulders and arms showed through it as though there

were nothing on them. She had pinned a pink rose in her hair, too, so

that its petals just lay against the nape of her neck. Sophie thought

she had never seen anyone look so nice. She had never dreamed of such a

dress.

"Oh, Miss Rouminof," Polly said; "mother sent me to look for you. We're

just ready to start, and your father wants you to turn over his music

for him."

Sophie stood up, conscious that her dress was nothing like as pretty as

she had thought it. It stood out stiffly about her: the starched

petticoat crackled as she moved. She knew the lace should not have been

on her sleeves; that her shoes were of canvas, and creaked as she

walked; that her cotton gloves, and even the heavy, old-fashioned fan

she was carrying, were not what they ought to have been.

"Miss Chelmsford--Miss Rouminof," Polly said, looking from Sophie to the

girl in the pink dress.

Sophie said: "How do you do?" gravely, and put out her hand.

"Oh!... How do you do?" Miss Chelmsford responded hurriedly, and as if

just remembering she, too, had a hand.

Sophie went with Polly and her friend to the veranda, which was screened

in on one side with hessian to form a ball-room. Behind the hessian the

walls were draped with flags, sheaves of paper daisies, and bundles of

Darling pea. Red paper lanterns swung from the roof, threw a rosy glare

over the floor which had been polished until it shone like burnished

metal.

Polly Henty took Sophie to the piano where Mrs. Henty was playing the

opening bars of a waltz. Paul beside her, his violin under his arm,

stood looking with eager interest over the room where men and girls were

chatting in little groups.

Mrs. Henty nodded and smiled to Sophie. Her father signalled to her, and

she went to a seat near him.

Holding her hands over the piano, Mrs. Henty looked to Paul to see if he

were ready. He lifted his violin, tucked it under his chin, drew his

bow, and the piano and violin broke gaily, irregularly, uncertainly, at

first, into a measure which set and kept the couples swaying round the

edge of the ball-room.

Sophie watched them at first, dazed and interested. Under the glow of

the lanterns, the figures of the dancers looked strange and solemn. Some

of the dancers were moving without any conscious effort, just skimming

the floor like swallows; others were working hard as they danced. Tom

Henderson held Elizabeth Henty as if he never intended to let go of her,

and worked her arm up and down as if it were a semaphore.

Sophie had always admired Arthur's eldest sister, and she thought

Elizabeth the most beautiful-looking person she had ever seen this

evening. And that pink dress--how pretty it was! What had Polly said her

name was--the girl who wore it? Phyllis ... Phyllis Chelmsford....

Sophie watched the dress flutter among the dancers some time before she

noticed Miss Chelmsford was dancing with Arthur Henty.

She watched the couples revolving, dazed, and thinking vaguely about

them, noticing how pretty feet looked in satin slippers with high,

curved heels, wondering why some men danced with stiff knees and others

as if their knees had funny-bones like their elbows. The red light from

the lanterns made the whole scene look unreal; she felt as if she were

dreaming.

"Sophie!" her father cried sharply.

She turned his page. Her eyes wandered to Mrs. Henty, who sat with her

back to her. Sophie contemplated the bow of her back in its black frock

with Spanish lace scarf across it, the outline of the black lace on the

wrinkled skin of Mrs. Henty's neck, the loose, upward wave of her crisp

white hair, glinting silverly where the light caught it. Her face was

cobwebbed with wrinkles, but her features remained delicate and fine as

sculpturings in ancient ivory. Her eyes were bright: the sparkle of

youth still leapt in them. Her eyes had a slight smile of secret

sympathy and amusement as they flew over the roomful of people dancing.

Sophie watched dance after dance, while the music jingled and jangled.

Presently John Armitage appeared in the doorway with Nina Henty. Sophie

heard him apologising to Mrs. Henty for being late, and explaining that

he had stayed in the back-country a few days longer than usual for the

express purpose of coming to the ball.

Mrs. Henty replied that it was "better late than never," and a pleasure

to see Mr. Armitage at any time; and then he and Nina joined the throng

of the dancers.

Sophie drew her chair further back so that the piano screened her. The

disappointment and stillness which had descended upon her since she came

into the room tightened and settled. She had thought Arthur would surely

come to ask her for this dance; but when the waltz began she saw he was

dancing again with Phyllis Chelmsford. She sat very still, holding

herself so that she should not feel a pain which was hovering in the

background of her consciousness and waiting to grip her.

It was different, this sitting on a chair by herself and watching other

people dance, to anything that had ever happened to her. She had always

been the centre of Ridge balls, courted and made a lot of from the

moment she came into the hall. Even Arthur Henty had had to shoulder his

way if he wanted a waltz with her.

As the crowd brushed and swirled round the room, it became all blurred

to Sophie. The last rag of that mood of tremulous joyousness which had

invested her as she drove over the plains to the ball with her father,

left her. She sat very still; she could not see for a moment. The waltz

broke because she did not hear her father when he called her to turn the

page of his music; he knocked over his stand trying to turn the page

himself, and exclaimed angrily when Sophie did not jump to pick it up

for him.

After that she watched his book of music with an odd calm. She scarcely

looked at the dancers, praying for the time to come when the ball would

end and she could go home. The hours were heavy and dead; she thought it

would never be midnight or morning again. She was conscious of her

crushed dress and cotton gloves, and Mrs. Watty's big, old-fashioned

fan; but after the first shock of disappointment she was not ashamed of

them. She sat very straight and still in the midst of her finery; but

she put the fan on the chair behind her, and took off her gloves in

order to turn over the pages of her father's music more expertly.

She knew now she was not going to dance. She understood she had not been

invited as a guest like everybody else; but as the fiddler's little girl

to turn over his music for him. And when she was not watching the music,

she sat down in her chair beyond the piano, hoping no one would see or

speak to her.

Mrs. Henty spoke to her occasionally. Once she called pleasantly:

"Come here and let me look at your opals, child."

Sophie went to her, and Mrs. Henty lifted the necklace.

"What splendid stones!" she said.

Sophie looked into those bright eyes, very like Arthur's, with the same

shifting sands in them, but alien to her, she thought.

"Yes," she said quietly. She did not feel inclined to tell Mrs. Henty

about the stones.

Mrs. Henty admired the ear-rings, and looked appreciatively at the big

flat stone in Mrs. Grant's brooch. Sophie coloured under her attention.

She wished she had not worn the opals that did not belong to her.

Looking into Sophie's face, Mrs. Henty became aware of its sensitive,

unformed beauty, a beauty of expression rather than features, and of a

something indefinable which cast a glamour over the girl. She had been

considerably disturbed by Arthur's share in the brawl at Newton's. It

was so unlike Arthur to show fight of any sort. If it had not happened

after she had sent the invitation, Mrs. Henty would not have spoken of

Sophie when she asked Rouminof to play at the ball. As it was, she was

not sorry to see what manner of girl she was.

But as Sophie held a small, quiet face before her, with chin slightly

uplifted, and eyes steady and measuring, a little disdainful despite

their pain and surprise, Mrs. Henty realised it was a shame to have

brought this girl to the ball, in order to inspect her; to discover what

Arthur thought of her, and not in order that she might have a good time

like other girls. After all, she was young and used to having a good

time. Mrs. Henty heard enough of Ridge gossip to know any man on the

mines thought the world of Sophie Rouminof. She had seen them eager to

dance with her at race balls. It was not fair to have side-tracked her

about Arthur, Mrs. Henty confessed to herself. The fine, clear innocence

which looked from Sophie's eyes accused her. It made her feel mean and

cruel. She was disturbed by a sensation of guilt.

Paul was fidgeting at the first bars of the next dance, and, knowing the

long programme to go through, Mrs. Henty's hand fell from Sophie's

necklace, and Sophie went back to her chair.

But Mrs. Henty's thoughts wandered on the themes she had raised. She

played absent-mindedly, her fingers skipping and skirling on the notes.

She was realising what she had done. She had not meant to be cruel, she

protested: she had just wished to know how Arthur felt about the girl.

If he had wanted to dance with her, there was nothing to prevent him.

Arthur was dancing again with Phyllis, she noticed. She was a little

annoyed. He was overdoing the thing. And Phyllis was a minx! That was

the fourth time she had slipped and Arthur had held her up, the rose in

her hair brushing his cheek.

"Mother!" Polly called. "For goodness' sake ... what are you dreaming

of?"

The music had gone to the pace of Mrs. Henty's reverie until Polly

called. Then Mrs. Henty splashed out her chords and marked her rhythm

more briskly.

After all, Mrs. Henty concluded, if Arthur and Phyllis had taken a fancy

to each, other--at last--and were getting on, she could not afford to

espouse the other girl's cause. What good would it do? She wanted Arthur

to marry Phyllis. His father did. Phyllis was the only daughter of old

Chelmsford, of Yuina Yuina, whose cattle sales were the envy of

pastoralists on both sides of the Queensland border. Phyllis's

inheritance and the knowledge that the interests of Warria were allied

to those of Andrew Chelmsford of Yuina, would ensure a new lease of hope

and opportunity for Warria.... Whereas it would be worse than awful if

Arthur contemplated anything like marriage with this girl from the

Ridge.

Mrs. Henty's conscience was uneasy all the same. When the dance was

ended, she called Arthur to her.

"For goodness' sake, dear, ask that child to dance with you," she said

when he came to her. "She's been sitting here all the evening by

herself."

"I was just going to," Sophie heard Arthur say.

He came towards her.

"Will you have the next dance with me, Sophie?" he asked.

She did not look at him.

"No," she said.

"Oh, I say----" He sat down beside her. "I've had to dance with these

people who are staying with us," he added awkwardly.

Her eyes turned to him, all the stormy fires of opal running in them.

"You don't _have_ to dance with me," she said.

He got up and stood indecisively a moment.

"Of course not," he said, "but I want to."

"I don't want to dance with you," Sophie said.

He turned away from her, went down the ball-room, and out through the

doorway in the hessian wall. Everyone had gone to supper. Mrs. Henty had

left the piano. Paul himself had gone to have some refreshment which was

being served in the dining-room across the courtyard. From the square,

washed with the silver radiance of moonlight which she could see through

the open space in the hessian, came a tinkle of glasses and spoons,

fragments of talking and laughter. Sophie heard a clear, girlish voice

cry: "Oh, Arthur!"

She clenched her hands; she thought that she was going to cry; but

stiffening against the inclination, she sat fighting down the pain which

was gripping her, and longed for the time to come when she could go home

and be out in the dark, alone.

John Armitage entered the ball-room as if looking for someone. Glancing

in the direction of the piano, he saw Sophie.

"There you are, Sophie!" he exclaimed heartily. "And, would you believe

it, I've only just discovered you were here."

He sat down beside her, and talked lightly, kindly, for a moment. But

Sophie was in no mood for talking. John Armitage had guessed something

of her crisis when he came into the room and found her sitting by

herself. He had seen the affair at Newton's, and knew enough of Fallen

Star gossip to understand how Sophie would resent Arthur Henty's

treatment of her. He could see she was a sorely hurt little creature,

holding herself together, but throbbing with pain and anger. She could

not talk; she could only think of Arthur Henty, whose voice they heard

occasionally out of doors. He was more than jolly after supper. Armitage

had seen him swallow nearly a glassful of raw whisky. His face had gone

a ghastly white after it. Rouminof had been drinking too. He came into

the room unsteadily when Mrs. Henty took her seat at the piano again;

but he played better.

Armitage's eyes went to her necklace.

"What lovely stones, Sophie!" he said.

Sophie looked up. "Yes, aren't they? The men gave them to me--there's a

stone for every one. This is Michael's!"--she touched each stone as she

named it--"Potch gave me that, and Bully Bryant that."

Her eyes caught Armitage's with a little smile.

"It's easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge," he said. "And here

am I--come hundreds of miles ... can't get anything like that piece of

stuff in your brooch."

"That's Mrs. Grant's," Sophie confessed.

"And your ear-rings, Sophie!" Armitage said. "'Clare to goodness,' as my

old nurse used to say, I didn't think you could look such a witch. But I

always have said black opal ear-rings would make a witch of a New

England spinster."

Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he

looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and

appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.

Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was

an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have,

of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so

extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in

this out-of-the-way part of the world.

John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world's contempt for churlish

treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have

permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying

Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in

distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her

defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her

disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.

"May I have the next dance, Sophie?" he inquired.

Sophie glanced up at him.

"I'm not dancing," she said.

Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his

resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her ear-rings

swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked

more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the

opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the

room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.

"Why aren't you dancing, Sophie?" John Armitage asked.

His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.

"No one asked me to, until the dance before supper--then I didn't want

to," she said.

The dance was already in motion.

"You'll have this one with me, won't you?"

John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. "Please!"

he insisted.

Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held

her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will

not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and

when

the music stopped, Mr. Armitage took her through the doorway into the

moonlight with the other couples. They walked to the garden where, the

orange trees were in blossom.

"Oh!" Sophie breathed, her arm still on his, and a little giddy.

The earth was steeped in purest radiance; the orange blossoms swam like

stars on the dark bushes; their fragrance filled the air.

Sophie held up her face as if to drink. "Isn't it lovely?" she murmured.

A black butterfly with white etchings on his wings hovered over an

orange bush they were standing near, as if bewildered by the moonlight

and mistaking it for the light of a strange day.

Armitage spread his handkerchief on a wooden seat.

"I thought you'd like it," he said. "Let's sit here--I've put down my

handkerchief because there's a dew, although the air seems so dry."

When the music began again Sophie got up.

"Don't let us go in yet," he begged.

"But----" she demurred.

"We'll stay here for this, and have the next dance," Armitage said.

Sophie hesitated. She wondered why Mr. Armitage was being so nice to

her, understanding a little. She smiled into his eyes, dallying with the

temptation. John Armitage had seen women's eyes like that before; then

fall to the appeal of his own. But in Sophie's eyes he found something

he had not seen very often--a will-o'the-wisp of infinite wispishness

which incited him to pursue and to insist, while it eluded and flew from

him.

When she danced with John Armitage again, Sophie looked up, laughed, and

played her eyes and smiles for him as she had seen Phyllis Chelmsford do

for Arthur. At first, shyly, she had exerted herself to please him, and

Armitage had responded to her tentative efforts; but presently she found

herself enjoying the game. And Armitage was so surprised at the charm

she revealed as she exerted herself to please him, that he responded

with an enthusiasm he had not contemplated. But their mutual success at

this oldest diversion in the world, while it surprised and delighted

them, did not delight their hosts. Mr. and Mrs. Henty were surprised;

then frankly scandalised. Several young men asked Sophie to dance with

them after she had danced with John Armitage. She thanked them, but

refused, saying she did not wish to dance very much. She sat in her

chair by the piano except when she was dancing with Mr. Armitage, or was

in the garden with him.

CHAPTER XVI

"See Ed. means to do you well with a six-horse team this evening, Mr.

Armitage," Peter Newton said, while Armitage was having his early meal

before starting on his all-night drive into Budda.

Newton remembered afterwards that John Armitage did not seem as

interested and jolly as usual. Ordinarily he was interested in

everything, and cordial with everybody; but this evening he was quiet

and preoccupied.

"Hardly had a word to say for himself," Peter Newton said.

Armitage had watched Ed. bring the old bone-shaking shandrydan he called

a coach up to the hotel, and put a couple of young horses into it. He

had a colt on the wheel he was breaking-in, and a sturdy old dark bay

beside him, a pair of fine rusty bays ahead of them, and a sorrel, and

chestnut youngster in the lead. He had got old Olsen and two men on the

hotel veranda to help him harness-up, and it took them all their time to

get the leaders into the traces. Bags had to be thrown over the heads of

the young horses before anything could be done with them, and it took

three men to hold on to the team until Ed. Ventry got into his seat and

gathered up the reins. Armitage put his valise on the coach and shook

hands all round. He got into his seat beside Ed. and wrapped a tarpaulin

lined with possum skin over his knees.

"Let her go, Olly," Ed. yelled.

The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses' heads.

The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the

steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to

throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders

dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle

and clash of gear, Ed. Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands,

pulling on them, and yelling:

"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders--yer! I'll warm yer....

Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get

alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"

Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of

the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at

any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon

took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and

they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was

reached.

"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards.

"Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that

day he was dead quiet."

"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.

"'No, Ed,' he says.

"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you

got this trip?'

"'No,' he says. But, by God--if I'd known what he got----"

It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six

o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning

train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at

the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train

left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and

scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding

in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.

"Could've swore I left Baldy at the Ridge," he said to the boy who

looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.

"Thought he was there meself," the lad replied, imitating Ed.'s

perplexed head-scratching.

At the Ridge, when he made his next trip, they were able to tell Mr.

Ventry how the baldy-face happened to be at Budda when Ed. thought he

was at Fallen Star, although Ed. heard some of the explanation from

Potch and Michael a day or two later. Sophie had ridden the baldy-face

into Budda the night he drove Mr. Armitage to catch the train for

Sydney. No one discovered she had gone until the end of next day. Then

Potch went to Michael.

"Michael," he said; "she's gone."

During the evening Paul had been heard calling Sophie. He asked Potch

whether he had seen her. Potch said he had not. But it was nothing

unusual for Sophie to wander off for a day on an excursion with Ella or

Mirry Flail, so neither he nor Michael thought much of not having seen

her all day, until Paul remarked querulously to Potch that he did not

know where Sophie was. Looking into her room Potch saw her bed had not

been slept in, although the room was disordered. He went up to the town,

to Mrs. Newton and to the Flails', to ask whether they had seen anything

of Sophie. Mirry Flail said she had seen her on one of the coach-stable

horses, riding out towards the Three Mile the evening before. Potch knew

instinctively that Sophie had gone away from the moment Paul had spoken

to him. She had lived away from him during the last few months; but

watching her with always anxious, devout eyes, he had known more of her

than anyone else.

Lying full stretch on his sofa, Michael was reading when Potch came into

the hut. His stricken face communicated the seriousness of his news.

Michael had no reason to ask who the "she" Potch spoke of was: there was

only one woman for whom Potch would look like that. But Michael's mind

was paralysed by the shock of the thing Potch had said. He could neither

stir nor speak.

"I'm riding into Budda, to find out if she went down by the train,"

Potch said. "I think she did, Michael. She's been talking about going to

Sydney ... a good deal lately.... She was asking me about it--day before

yesterday ... but I never thought--I never thought she wanted to go so

soon ... and that she'd go like this. But I think she has gone.... And

she was afraid to tell us--to let you know.... She said you'd made up

your mind you didn't want her to go ... she'd heard her mother tell you

not to let her go, and if ever she was going she wouldn't tell you...."

Potch's explanation, broken and incoherent as it was, gave Michael's

thought and feeling time to reassert themselves.

He said: "See if Chassy can lend me his pony, and I'll come with you,

Potch."

They rode into Budda that night, and inquiry from the station-master

gave them the information they sought. A girl in a black frock had taken

a second-class ticket for Sydney. He did not notice very much what she

was like. She had come to the window by herself; she had no luggage; he

had seen her later sitting in a corner of a second-class compartment by

herself. The boy, a stranger to the district, who had clipped her

ticket, said she was crying when he asked for her ticket. He had asked

why she was crying. She had said she was going away, and she did not

like going away from the back-country. She was going away--to study

singing, she said, but would be coming back some day.

Michael determined to go to Sydney by the morning train to try to find

Sophie. He went to Ed. Ventry and borrowed five pounds from him.

"That explains how the baldy-face got here," Ed. said.

Michael nodded. He could not talk about Sophie. Potch explained why they

wanted the money as well as he could.

"It's no good trying to bring her back if she doesn't want to come,

Michael," Potch had said before Michael left for Sydney.

"No," Michael agreed.

"If you could get her fixed up with somebody to stay with," Potch

suggested; "and see she was all right for money ... it might be the best

thing to do. I've got a bit of dough put by, Michael.... I'll send that

down to you and go over to one of the stations for a while to keep us

goin'--if we want more."

Michael assented.

"You might try round and see if you could find Mr. Armitage," Potch

said, just before the train went. "He might have seen something of her."

"Yes," Michael replied, drearily.

Potch waited until the train left, and started back to Fallen Star in

the evening.

A week later a letter came for Michael. It was in Sophie's handwriting.

Potch was beside himself with anxiety and excitement. He wrote to

Michael, care of an opal-buyer they were on good terms with and who

might know where Michael was staying. In the bewilderment of his going,

Potch had not thought to ask Michael where he would live, or where a

letter would find him.

Michael came back to Fallen Star when he received the letter. He had not

seen Sophie. No one he knew or had spoken to had seen anything of her

after she left the train. Michael handed the letter to Potch as soon as

he got back into the hut.

Sophie wrote that she had gone away because she wanted to learn to be a

singer, and that she would be on her way to America when they received

it. She explained that she had made up her mind to go quite suddenly,

and she had not wanted Michael to know because she remembered his

promise to her mother. She knew he would not let her go away from the

Ridge if he could help it. She had sold her necklace, she said, and had

got L100 for it, so had plenty of money. Potch and Michael were not to

worry about her. She would be all right, and when she had made a name

for herself as a singer, she would come home to the Ridge to see them.

"Don't be angry, Michael dear," the letter ended, "with your lovingest

Sophie."

Potch looked at Michael; he wondered whether the thought in his own mind

had reached Michael's. But

Michael was too dazed and overwhelmed to think at all.

"There's one thing, Potch," he said; "if she's gone to America, we could

write to Mr. Armitage and ask him to keep an eye on her. And," he added,

"if she's gone to America ... it's just likely she may be on the same

boat as Mr. Armitage, and he'd look after her."

Potch watched his face. The thought in his mind had not occurred to

Michael, then, he surmised.

"He'd see she came to no harm."

"Yes," Potch said.

But he had seen John Armitage talking to Sophie on the Ridge over near

Snow-Shoes' hut the afternoon after the dance at Warria. He knew Mr.

Armitage had driven Sophie home after the dance, too. Paul had been too

drunk to stand, much less drive. Potch had knocked off early in the mine

to go across to the Three Mile that afternoon. Then it had surprised

Potch to see Sophie sitting and talking to Mr. Armitage as though they

were very good friends; but, beyond a vague, jealous alarm, he had not

attached any importance to it until he knew Sophie had gone down to

Sydney by the same train as Mr. Armitage. She had said she was going to

America, too, and he was going there. Potch had lived all his days on

the Ridge; he knew nothing of the world outside, and its ways, except

what he had learnt from books. But an instinct where Sophie was

concerned had warned him of a link between her going away and John

Armitage. That meeting of theirs came to have an extraordinary

significance in his mind. He had thought out the chances of Sophie's

having gone with Mr. Armitage as far as he could. But Michael had not

associated her going with him, it was clear. It had never occurred to

him that Mr. Armitage could have anything to do with Sophie's going

away. It had not occurred to the rest of the Ridge folk either.

Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as

he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her

as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having

gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be

able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.

"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said,

"then she'll send for you."

"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time

here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."

Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then,

for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing

him through the delirium of sun-stroke.

A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers--Jun Johnson

and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him--and

Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been

down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.

When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found

Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.

"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You

think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well,

you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof

is--here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If

I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face

round here for a bit? Not much...."

Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to

his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage

he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.

"I know you chaps--I know how you feel about things; and quite right,

too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that--why, he's not fit to wipe

your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let

run with the rest."

He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business

than any man-jack of you--no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is

bygones--that's my motto. But I tell you--and that's the strength of

it--I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man

here. D'y' believe me?"

It was said in good earnest enough, even Watty and George had to admit.

It was either the best bit of bluff they had ever listened to, or else

Jun, for once in a way, was enjoying the luxury of telling the truth.

"We're all good triers here, Jun," George said, "but we're not as green

as we're painted."

Jun regarded his beer meditatively; then he said:

"Look here, you chaps, suppose I put it to you straight: I ain't always

been what you might call the clean potato ... but I ain't always been

married, either. Well, I'm married now--married to the best little girl

ever I struck...."

The idea of Jun taking married life seriously amused two or three of the

men. Smiles began to go round, and broadened as he talked. That they did

not please Jun was evident.

"Well, seein' I've taken on family responsibilities," he went on--"Was

you smiling, Watty?"

"Me? Oh, no, Jun," the offender replied, meekly; "it was only the

stummick-ache took me. It does that way sometimes. You mightn't think

so, but I always look as if I was smilin' when I've got the

stummick-ache."

George Woods, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and some of the others laughed,

taking Watty's explanation for what it was worth. But Jun continued

solemnly, playing the reformed blackguard to his own satisfaction.

"Seein' I've taken on family responsibilities, I want to run straight. I

don't want my kids to think there was anything crook about their dad."

If he moved no one else, he contrived to feel deeply moved himself at

the prospect of how his unborn children were going to regard him. The

men who had always more or less believed in him managed to convince

themselves that Jun meant what he said. George and Watty realised he had

put up a good case, that he was getting at them in the only way

possible.

Michael moved out of the crowd round the door towards the bar. Peter

Newton put his daily ration of beer on the bar.

"'Lo, Michael," Jun said.

"'Lo, Jun," Michael said.

"Well," Jun concluded, tossing off his beer; "that's the way it is,

boys. Believe me if y'r like, and if y'r don't like--lump it.

"But there's one thing more I've got to tell you," he added; "and if you

find what I've been saying hard to believe, you'll find this harder: I

don't believe Charley got those stones of Rummy's."

"What?"

The query was like the crack of a whip-lash. There was a restive,

restless movement among the men.

"I don't believe Charley got those stones either," Jun declared. "'Got,'

I said, not 'took.' All I know is, he was like a sick fish when he

reached Sydney ... and sold all the opal he had with him. He was lively

enough when we started out. I give you that. Maybe he took Rum-Enough's

stones all right; but somebody put it over on him. I thought it might be

Emmy--that yeller-haired tart, you remember, went down with us. She was

a tart, and no mistake. My little girl, now--she was never ... like

that! But Maud says she doesn't think so, because Emmy turned Charley

out neck and crop when she found he'd got no cash. He got mighty little

for the bit of stone he had with him ... I'll take my oath. He came

round to borrow from me a day or two after we arrived. And he was ragin'

mad about something.... If he shook the stones off Rum-Enough, it's my

belief somebody shook them off of him, either in the train or here--or

off of Rummy before he got them...."

Several of the men muttered and grunted their protest. But Jun held to

his point, and the talk became more general. Jun asked for news of the

fields: what had been done, and who was getting the stuff. Somebody said

John Armitage had been up and had bought a few nice stones from the

Crosses, Pony-Fence, and Bully Bryant.

"Armitage?" Jun said. "He's always a good man--gives a fair price. He

bought my stones, that last lot ... gave me a hundred pounds for the big

knobby. But it fair took my breath away to hear young Sophie Rouminof

had gone off with him."

Michael was standing beside him before the words were well out of his

mouth.

"What did you say?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry, Michael," Jun replied, after a quick, scared glance at the

faces of the men about him. "But I took it for granted you all knew, of

course. We saw them a good bit together down in Sydney, Maud and me, and

she said she saw Sophie on the _Zealanida_ the day the boat sailed. Maud

was down seeing a friend off, and she saw Sophie and Mr. Armitage on

board. She said--"

Michael turned heavily, and swung out of the bar.

Jun looked after him. In the faces of the men he read what a bomb his

news had been among them.

"I wouldn't have said that for a lot," he said, "if I'd 've thought

Michael didn't know. But, Lord, I thought he knew ... I thought you all

knew."

In the days which followed, as he wandered over the plains in the late

afternoon and evening, Michael tried to come to some understanding with

himself of what had happened. At first he had been too overcast by the

sense of loss to realise more than that Sophie had gone away. But now,

beyond her going, he could see the failure of his own effort to control

circumstances. He had failed; Sophie had gone; she had left the Ridge.

"God," he groaned; "with the best intentions in the world, what an awful

mess we make of things!"

Michael wondered whether it would have been worse for Sophie if she had

gone away with Paul when her mother died. At least, Sophie was older now

and better able to take care of herself.

He blamed himself because she had gone away as she had, all the same;

the failure of the Ridge to hold her as well as his own failure beat him

to the earth. He had hoped Sophie would care for the things her mother

had cared for. He had tried to explain them to her. But Sophie, he

thought now, had more the restless temperament of her father. He had not

understood her young spirit, its craving for music, laughter,

admiration, and the life that could give them to her. He had thought the

Ridge would be enough for her, as it had been for her mother.

Michael never thought of Mrs. Rouminof as dead. He thought of her as

though she were living some distance from him, that was all. In the

evening he looked up at the stars, and there was one in which she seemed

to be. Always he felt as if she were looking at him when its mild

radiance fell over him. And now he looked to that star as if trying to

explain and beg forgiveness.

His heart was sore because Sophie had left him without a word of

affection or any explanation. His fear and anxiety for her gave him no

peace. He sweated in agony with them for a long time, crying to her

mother, praying her to believe he had not failed in his trust through

lack of desire to serve her, but through a fault of understanding. If

she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained

that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with

the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and

sorrow for herself.

Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by

seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother's way. He had opposed

the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it;

and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise

and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into

channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas

identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the

hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.

Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted

Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from

Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding

Paul's opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would

not do Sophie any harm.... His having them now could not injure

Sophie.... Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he

came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He

tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always

with him.... But Paul was delirious with sun-stroke, he remembered; it

would be foolish to give him the stones just then.... As soon as that

touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the

opals and explain how he came to have them....

_PART II_

CHAPTER I

The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes

blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms

continued until March.

Through the heat came the baa-ing of sheep on the plains, moving in

great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying

of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from

the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were

marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the

road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust

from the plains.

It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather.

Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of

it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was

dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before

the heat of the day began.

In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump,

handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone,

shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of

the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air.

But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay,

moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers

stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up

from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the

busy underground world of the mines.

As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul

when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium

of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it.

Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning;

he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with

Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open

sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once,

in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti--the

yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard

near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the

goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch

saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or

cheese for the two huts.

People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they

regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch

Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of.

And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of

his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if

he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so.

He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself

did.

A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought

much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little

bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley

Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had

rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff

of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself

was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of

the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody

who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find

eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all

the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house,

thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.

"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't

anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael

for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.

George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for

Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when

Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder

than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.

At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the

brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of

the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying

nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds

with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there

was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or

knew something of.

Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the

old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real

friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was

that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a

subtle, inexplicable fascination.

As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had

left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm

comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it,

there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."

Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe

Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would

be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year.

George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the

Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to

prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and

rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be

driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what

his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and

Son and men of the Ridge.

When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George.

"DEAR BRADY," it said, "I need hardly say your letter was a great shock

to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he

denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since

found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her

passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to

leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy

production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of

this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power.

Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment

of my son's behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations

between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I

need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me

personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my

business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the

best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady--whom I will regard as

under my charge--you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps

point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to

visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to

visit sins of the children upon the fathers.

"Yours very truly,

"DAWE P. ARMITAGE."

"The old man seems fair broken up," Watty remarked.

"Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with

Armitage and Son--again," George replied. "If she's all right ... well

... perhaps it'll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn't get on

all right ... they won't neither."

"That's right," Watty muttered.

The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for

hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had

crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes

of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains,

and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in

tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man

and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light;

the sky, dim, and smoking with heat.

Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with

sun-stroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to

eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for

some time, and a haze the sun-stroke had left hovered over his mind.

Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping,

Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle,

and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or

dozed the hot, still, midday hours away.

When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which

came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to

make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put

before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one

day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched

Potch with the birds.

Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay

on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until

Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation

of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or white-tail,

to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was

a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would

be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to

have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and

entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not

their common property.

When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for

granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had

his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion

which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and

assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had

at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived

down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing

for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had

found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep,

mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken

from other loves.

Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give

to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him.

He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to

tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was

holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance

tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his

mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.

Paul's illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about

the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his

touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits

again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let

him know how he came to have them.

All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the

opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch's belief in him,

and for not telling Potch how Paul's opals came into his possession.

In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the

troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed

words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the

stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton's bar. Suddenly it

occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the

package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of

books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.

He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul's

cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his

books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he

found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the

box--only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.

Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none

had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough

handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again

more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were

all right while he was about it, he thought.

He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table.

Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin;

and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted

them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the

candle-light. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in--a piece of

opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its

black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless

night.

One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle,

letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in

the stones--blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red--melted, sprayed, and

scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.

"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and

emotion.

With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of

colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not

only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a

sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining

depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.

Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung

unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.

Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood

up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that

Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained

how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay,

instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing

what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really

guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a

miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones

as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at,

tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and

flashing.

But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually

sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement.

He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was

doing.

"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.

"No," Michael said. "Why?"

He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the

light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.

"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this

way."

The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between

them. Michael lifted his head to listen.

"Who's that?" he asked;

Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars,

was blank in the doorway.

"May I come in?" a woman's voice called. Her figure wavered in the

doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into

the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the

threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes,

laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes

went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.

"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on

the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see

what you can do for her?"

Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so

ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to

Maud.

"All right," he said.

He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of

the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.

"My," she cried eagerly, "that's a pretty stone, Michael!" She turned it

back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks

of red and gold.

"Just been noodlin' over some old scraps ... and came across it,"

Michael said awkwardly.

It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He

could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul's opals

before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had.

"Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle," Maud said. "Doin' a

bit of dealin' myself. I'll give you a good price for it, Michael."

"It's goin' into a parcel," he replied.

"Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know," Maud said.

"Comin', Potch?"

She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael

caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street

urchin's, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut.