Bart was on Wilgandra Station to meet them--Bart, healthy-looking and

sinewy, if thin; he wore white flannel trousers, a white linen coat, and

a new straw hat with a new fly-veil attached. Mrs. Cameron had looked

when her husband cried, 'There's Bart,' with eyes that expected to see

an out-at-elbow lad, possibly barefoot, probably ill-developed. But

there was nothing she would have changed.

'Of course they all wanted to come to meet you,' the boy said, when the

first glad greetings were over, and the great panting, shrieking train

had become just a quiet black thread climbing the side of the next rise.

'But I didn't want to crowd the buggy.'

'The buggy!' his father said. 'I was just going into the hotel to get

one. I'm glad you thought to order it.'

'It's Mr. Stevenson's,' Bart said. 'He sent it down this morning for me

to meet you in,' and he led them with much satisfaction to the handsome

roomy sociable he had in waiting. Their own solitary equipage, the

shabby cart drawn by Tramby and driven by young Daly, was in readiness

for the many boxes.

Once, in carrying the luggage to the cart, Bart and his father found

themselves alone on the station for a moment. Bart gave a laughing

glance from his father's to his own apparel.

'Isn't it a lark?' he said. 'I feel quite shy of myself, don't you?'

'Do the girls look nice?' Cameron said anxiously.

'Spiffin,' said Bart, 'and Miss Browne's got a new dress, and even

curled her hair. I say, have you told mother about Miss Browne?'

'Yes, she is quite prepared.'

'And she knows about the selection?'

'She knows about the selection.'

'We've--we've been tidying up a bit, dad. I think you'll find it's a

bit--er--tidier.' There was a flush on the boy's cheek, a look of

suppressed excitement in his eyes. 'Let's get on now; the horse doesn't

like to stand, and everything's in.'

They drove up the road that wound out of civilised Wilgandra away to

parts where the bush took on its wild character again, and rolled either

side of them in unbroken severity and loneliness for miles.

But it was early winter now, and the thankful land lay smiling and

happy-eyed beneath a cooler sky. Even the newest clearings flaunted

rich carpets of grass, green as grass only springs where a bush fire has

purged the ground for it. The air was fragrant with the bush scents

that rise after rain. A cool, quiet breeze swayed the boughs of the

ocean-waste of trees, here and there it lifted the long string of

warm-coloured bark--autumn's royal rags--that hung from the silvered

trunks.

Cameron was driving, and mechanically turned the horse's head at the

place where he had always turned for the sliprails of his selection.

And there were no sliprails!

He turned an astonished glance at Bart, but the boy's eyes only danced.

'I'll get down and open the gate,' he said demurely, and jumped down

while his father stared at the neat white gate with The Rosery painted

on in black letters. Could this be Dunks' selection that stretched

before the head of the horse that bore them slowly along? This the

grey, dreary place that had cast its colour over the souls of those who

looked at it. A drive ran up from the gate to the house, not a smooth,

red gravelled drive by any means, but it was cleared and stumped now all

its length and width, and went with pleasant windings between the trees.

A low white two-rail fence divided the bush and sheep ground from the

land about the house; the small orchard showed freshly ploughed up and

trenched between the trees; a vegetable garden was laid out, and the

peas and beans were above the ground already. The flower-beds near the

house were dug and weeded, as if they had been beds in the Botanical

Gardens; and dahlias, little sunflowers, and cosmea of all shades made a

gay mass of colour. The pixies' hands had even attacked the cottage;

Cameron himself had given it a coat of red paint that had much altered

its forlorn aspect; these new hands had carried the coat of paint even

over the dreary galvanised iron roof, had 'picked out' the chimneys, and

windows, and verandah-posts with white, added a seven-foot verandah all

round, and knocked a French window into the walls here and there.

'Why,' cried Challis, 'it's the sweetest, darlingest little place I ever

saw! Oh, I never want to go away from it again!'

Mrs. Cameron was looking with eyes full of pleased surprise.

'Why, Jim,' she said, 'why, dearest, it is really very nice, very nice

indeed, so peaceful-looking. You did not prepare me for anything like

this.'

Cameron swallowed a lump in his throat.

'I didn't prepare myself,' he began; but his wife's hand was fluttering

to the fastening of the sociable door, and her ears were no longer for

him, for Hermie and Roly were running out to meet her.

Such a rushing into arms, such kissings, such a choking of laughter and

tears! Mrs. Cameron held Hermie to her and from her, and to her again,

and marvelled to find her almost a woman.

'My pretty girl, my pretty girl!' she said, the fond tears starting, and

Hermie blushed herself into even lovelier colour than before.

Challis kissed her sister and clung to her a moment, then stood away shy

and pink, almost crying. Hermie's hair was done 'on top,' her dress was

long, so long; she was very pretty and sweet-looking; but oh, there

would never be any whispering and whispering in bed--she was far too

grown up for that.

Roly came up to the sister and submitted the edge of his left ear to her

kiss. He looked at her critically.

'Did the Queen cry when you came away?' he said.

'I didn't notice,' said Challis. 'She was in the garden when I went to

say good-bye, and she waved her handkerchief when I got back to the

house--perhaps she had been crying into it.'

'Floss, Floss! I want my baby,' the mother's voice was saying.

Hermie looked about her distressed.

'Will you take no notice just yet, darling?' she said. 'She is

very--shy, but she won't be able to stay away long; she's hiding

somewhere.'

'Well, look here,' Roly said, 'I suppose she'll be wanting to come out

here and see you----'

'Who?' said Challis, who also was looking longingly for the little girl

she was going to put to bed at night.

'That Queen-woman, of course,' said Roly. 'Look here, you can tell her

straight before she comes I'm not going to take my tent down for her.

You can let her have Miss Browne's bedroom, and you can't see it from

that window. Miss Browne's got a cheek. Wanted me to take it down just

for you and mother, cos she says it's untidy.'

'Why, we're dying to see the tent, aren't we, mother?' Challis said.

Mrs. Cameron's arm went round her boy's shoulder, and her lips down to

his round, closely cropped head. He dodged skilfully.

'Come and see the tent,' he said. Then a gush of gentler feeling came

up in his little boy-heart, and he moved up to her again and rubbed his

head on her arm. 'If you like,' he said, 'I'll let you sleep out in it

to-night, but not her,' and he pointed a finger at Challis; 'she'd get

messing about and trying to tidy up.'

He dragged them round to the back of the cottage, where the tent stood,

a most dilapidated spread of ragged canvas.

'Look here,' the owner said, nearly bursting with pride, 'up there,

that's the fly, keeps it cool. I can sit in it on the hottest day.'

'No one else could,' laughed Bart.

Roly took no heed of the depreciation.

'See that? That's my water-bag; hang it in a draught, and it's as cool

as you like.'

'No,' said Bart again, 'only as _you_ like.'

'See this? Keep my meat in it, flies can't get in, hang it up out of

the way. Here's my gridiron--here's my frying-pan.'

'Why,' cried Hermie, 'Miss Browne's been looking for the frying-pan all

the morning!'

'Let her cook her things in the oven,' said Roly. 'See this? It's my

bunk, made it myself--just legs of trees, and you stretch canvas on it.

No sheets for me, only this blue blanket----'

The blanket moved convulsively, a little brown bare foot was sticking

out of one end of it, a strand of straight light hair showed at the

other.

'Flossie!' the mother cried, and made a rush at the bunk.

The small girl sat up.

'Go away!' she said. 'Go away! I won't be kissed. I'm not your girl.

Keep your old dolls for yourself.'

'Flossie,' cried the mother, 'Flossie!' and tried to gather her up as if

she had been two instead of seven, and tried to kiss her; but Floss

covered her face tightly with her bony little hands.

'Floss,' said Cameron, 'don't be ridiculous. Kiss your mother, and why

are you not dressed?'

Hermie was looking ready to cry. Had she not herself put the child a

clean white frock on, and tried to curl her hair and seen her into shoes

and stockings? And here was the naughty little thing barefoot, and in a

ragged print frock!

'Kiss your mother,' Cameron said sternly, the surprised pain on his

wife's face angering him against the child.

Floss turned a sullen little face to her mother, but her lips did not

move.

'Now kiss Challis,' the father said; for the mother, stooping over the

child, had hidden it from him that he had only been half obeyed. Challis

came forward to put a loving arm round the ragged shoulder. But Floss

struggled to the ground, dived under the bunk, dragged at one of the

tent-pegs, and was out and flying off to the bush like a wild rabbit

before any one could stop her.

'Go and fetch her back, Bart,' Cameron said, extreme annoyance in his

tone.

'It was to be expected,' Mrs. Cameron said, but she looked a little

white. 'We mustn't force her; you must let me lay siege to the fortress

my own way.'

They went into the cottage, and Miss Browne showed herself--Miss Browne,

with her usual strands of hair in little tight curls round her forehead,

and a ready-made blouse and skirt of white pique vainly endeavouring to

accommodate itself to her figure.

'Oh dear!' she said, 'most ashamed, most grieved, Floss, peculiar

disposition, soon come round, hope a pleasant journey, hot, dusty, must

be hungry, Roly, ashamed, grieved, most untidy tent, unwilling to take

it down, like to wash and take hats off, bedroom, show the way, dinner,

hoped they would like it, not what they were accustomed to, holes in

curtains, had not had time to mend them, must excuse table, afraid not a

good manager, ignorant many things.'

'Everything is very nice,' Mrs. Cameron said. 'I am quite sure you have

always done your best. Mr. Cameron has told me how hard you have

worked, and you must let me thank you for it. There, there, I am afraid

you have overtired yourself preparing for us. Don't trouble any more,

we are going to shake down into place at once, Challis and I, and forget

we have ever been away.'

'Oh, my love,' said Miss Browne, 'my dear, oh, my love!' and went away

into the kitchen, and wept happily all the time she helped Lizzie to

dish up the dinner.

'Be quick,' said Roly, as the travellers went to a bedroom to take off

their hats, 'there's fowls for dinner. It's Bluey, and Speckle, and

Whitey. Whitey'll be the fattest, he was mine.'

'Oh dear,' said Hermie, as she shut the bedroom door, 'I wish he hadn't

said that. Now father won't eat any. He never eats meat at all, but he

likes poultry unless any one says anything like that. He says he likes

to think of dinner just as dinner, and hates to remember the things have

once been walking about. Now it won't be roast fowl at all to him, but

just Whitey.'

'I don't think he heard,' said Challis; 'he was looking at the roses on

the dinner-table, and saying, "I hope they didn't break my Souvenir de

Terese Levet when they plucked these."'

Hermie laughed.

'Dear old dad!' she said. 'Mother, I don't know how he could have done

so long without you if it had not been for his roses.'

'I must go down and see them,' the mother said, and tossed her bonnet

off hastily. 'See, he is already going out to them. Is there time

before dinner, darling? Plainly he can't wait any longer.'

She went through the long window on to the verandah, and caught him up.

Challis was taking off her hat, brushing her hair, removing the signs of

travel with a dainty deftness born of so frequent journeys. Hermie's

eyes followed her everywhere. They saw a girl not tall for her fourteen

years, slender, not over strong-looking. Soft light hair fell away down

her back, curlless, waveless. The greyish, hazel eyes were full of quiet

shining, the face was thin, yet soft and childish, the mouth sensitive,

a little sad.

'Oh,' she said, 'the smell of the soap, Hermie! I can see the other

bedroom so well--the Wilgandra one, and your bed was near the fireplace,

and mine had white tassels on, and there was a pink vase on the

washstand for our tooth-brushes.'

Hermie looked in slight bewilderment at the pieces of common household

soap that her sister held; she did not realise that the girl had seen

and smelt nothing but scented since she went away, and that this plain

yellow piece was pungent with the old days.

'Where am I going to sleep, Hermie?' said the little girl, and her heart

throbbed with the hope that Hermie would cry, 'With me, of course.'

'Bart is going to sleep out in the tent with Roly,' Hermie said, hanging

up the well-cut little travelling-coat with a sigh for its style.

'You'll have his room.'

'Where do you sleep?' Challis ventured.

'Dad and Bart built me a little room across there,' said Hermie.

'And Floss?'

'Her cot is in Miss Browne's room.'

Challis was glad bed-time was still some hours off; she had never yet

slept in a room all to herself, but did not like to tell Hermie so.

Roly banged at the door. 'There you go,' he said, 'grabbing everything,

Hermie. She wants to come out and finish looking at the tent.'

'Finish looking at your grandmother!' laughed Hermie, then blushed

vexedly. That was such a favourite phrase of Bart's she unconsciously

fell into it herself; but what would Challis think of such slang,

Challis, who was used to the conversation of cultured, travelled people?

Challis, who looked such a little lady in her well-cut English-looking

clothes, and spoke with the clipped, clear pronunciation her mother had

insisted upon all these years?

Challis, of course, would think her a boor, an uneducated, unrefined

Australian back-blocks girl. Well, whose fault was it if she was?' She

turned to her sister coldly. 'If you have finished we may as well go.'

Challis followed her meekly.

'Flossie,' said the mother, going into a bedroom when it was eight

o'clock at night, and the rebel had come in and put herself to bed,

'I've just been unpacking my box and found this for Hermie. Do you

think it is pretty?'

She held up the daintiest of hats.

Flossie looked at it, then squeezed her eyes up tight.

'Don't want to see it,' she said.

'We are unpacking the boxes,' the mother said; 'I thought you might like

to put your dressing-gown on and come and watch.'

'Don't want to watch,' said Floss; 'haven't got any dressing-gown.'

Mrs. Cameron was standing in the bedroom doorway. She held out a box of

fascinating doll's tea-things.

'Those are rather pretty, aren't they?' she said. 'We almost decided on

a blue set, but then these little pink flowers seemed so fresh-looking

we took it.'

Flossie sent a devouring gaze to the beautiful boxful through the bars

of her cot. Then she squeezed her eyes up tightly again.

'Wouldn't look at them,' she said.

The mother went away, and the darkness deepened in the room, and Floss

lay gazing with hard eyes at a patch of light thrown from the

living-room lamp upon the ceiling.

Her heart swelled more and more; she pictured miserable scenes in which,

while the rest of the family flaunted about in silk, she, Floss, was

attired in rags and had crusts only to eat.

'Only,' she muttered to herself, 'I won't eat them, and then I'll die,

and p'r'aps she'll be sorry.'

There was a movement in the room.

'I think I'll lie down quietly on your bed for an hour, Miss Browne,'

the mother's voice was saying; 'it will do my head good. Yes, thank

you, I have the bottle of lavender water here; I never travel without

getting a bad head.'

Miss Browne shook up the pillows and left her; this idea of making

capital out of the headache was her own. 'Flossie never can bear any

one to suffer,' she said. 'I always remember when I first came here,

and she was only about three, some one cut a snake in half along the

road. And what must the child do but rush from us and pick up one

half--by the mercy of God, the tail half! You remember, Hermie? Bart,

my love, you can't have forgotten that shocking day? She came running

back to us crying dreadfully, and with that horrible thing in her hands.

"Mend it, mend it!" she sobbed "oh, poor sing, poor sing, mend it

twick!"'

So Mrs. Cameron went to lie on the bed far from Floss, and to sigh

occasionally, once or twice to moan, as indeed she could, for her

headache was severe.

At the sighs there were restless movements in the cot; at the first moan

the little figure climbed over the rail.

'I don't mind bathing your head,' she said, her voice a little unsteady.

'Is it hurting you much?'

'Yes,' sighed the mother, 'it is very bad.'

Floss dipped her handkerchief in the water-jug, and kept laying it

softly on the aching forehead. For ten minutes Mrs. Cameron allowed

herself to be thus ministered to, and presently the child sat down on

the bed, almost within the arm that yearned to circle her. 'Would you

like me to fan it?' she whispered. 'Fanning is good.'

'I would rather you laid your little hand on it,' said the mother.

The little hand lay there instantly.

'I think a kiss on it would do it more good than anything else,'

whispered the mother, 'just a little one, sweetheart, sweetheart.'

'I couldn't,' quavered Floss. 'I promised faithfly and somenley.'

'Promised who?'

'Me.'

'What do you mean?'

'When you say, "See my finger wet, see it dry, cut my throat suresever I

die," you've got to keep to it.'

'And you promised yourself like that that you wouldn't kiss

me--me--mamma, who has been away for years and years breaking her heart

for her little baby.'

'Oh,' gasped Floss, the fortress nearly down, 'but we might have got

dropsy, truly, dropsy and deafness, me and Roly; May Daly's mother says

so; you gen'ally get them after measles.'

'But you didn't, you didn't, Tiny. I prayed and prayed over the seas to

God to take care of you all for me, and I knew He would. See how well

and strong you all are! But ah, I never thought Tiny would break my

heart like this.'

Her voice quivered--fell away; Floss, putting up an uncertain hand

through the darkness, found the cheek above her quite wet.

'Mother!' she cried, and was face downward in a minute sobbing

relievedly on her mother's breast.

When they had lain together happy and quiet for a little time, the

mother stirred to go, for Miss Browne must come to bed.

Floss gave her a final hug. 'I do love you,' she said.

'My baby,' murmured the mother. Floss shook back her straight hair and

climbed off the bed and got into her own.

'But I'm not going to let that Challis off,' she said. 'I'll just have

to take it out of her.'

*CHAPTER XVII*

*Crossing the Veldt*

'Why criest them for thy hurt? Thy pain is incurable.'

'Truly this is my grief, and I must bear it.'

'Thus saith the Lord, Such as are for death, to death

and such as are for the sword, to the sword.'

_Jeremiah_.

His good horse under him, a thunder-clouded sky above, a strange country

astretch on every side, Mortimer was off, despatches in his pocket from

his own colonel to the colonel of an Imperial regiment stationed some

hundred and thirty miles away.

The day hung heavy from the sky, the land lay sad hearted and

patient-eyed beneath it.

Yet now for the first time in all the weeks he had been on African soil

Mortimer felt at home with his surroundings, even happy in them. The

tumultuous days that lay behind him--he felt that some other, not he,

had been living them. The frantic excitement of the send-off, the days

at sea, the storm or two, the troubles with the horses, the uneventful

landing on the unfamiliar shores, the hurried packing off up country by

train, the feverish days and nights in camp at the bewildered little

village that saw the armies of the greatest nation on earth swarming

about its quiet fields, his first patrol and the fierce whizz and rattle

of marvellously harmless bullets from a deserted-looking kopje, his

first battle, with its horrid nightmare of flashing lights and

thundering guns, its pools of blood, its contorted human faces, its

agonised horses writhing in the dust--these were all nothing to him now,

but the coloured bits of glass one shakes about in a kaleidoscope.

The smell of tents and of spent gunpowder was no longer in his nostrils;

the brown earth alone sent up its homely odour, and he drew the breath

of it in with thankfulness. Such a quiet country; silent little farms

asleep in the afternoon's sunshine, their crops long since ready, but

gathered only by the birds. The cottages, some of them empty of all

signs of habitation, some of them with their doors carefully locked on

all a woman's treasure of furniture and homely things.

Here and there the sheep had not been driven off, but cropped placidly

at the plentiful pasturage. Mortimer's heart went out to the brown soft

things.

On and on he rode, finding his way with a bushman's instinct for the

right path.

The sky grew grey and more grey.

Up from the west rolled a great woollen cloud that drooped lower and

lower till it burst with a sudden fury over the land, as if shrapnel

shells charged with hail had exploded in mid-air. Mortimer put up his

collar, and ducked his head to the heavy ice-drops that struck him on

every side. He looked in vain for shelter; the veldt rolled smooth and

gently undulating in all directions, and no tree was anywhere. To the

left a kopje loomed in the darkness ahead, to the right he had seen when

on the last rise the white gleaming palings and lights of a farm. He

pulled his watch out, and just made out in the rapidly falling darkness

that it was eight o'clock. His colonel had advised him to camp for the

night somewhere, lest he should lose his way in the darkness, and start

off again at earliest dawn. He rapidly resolved to make the farm his

halting-place, should, as was most likely, it prove to be unoccupied.

The rumour that two lines of defence would join across this part of the

country had swiftly cleared the sparsely occupied place. The thought of

camping among the rocks of the kopje he did not entertain, having by

this the same firmly rooted distrust of that kind of geological

formation that the British soldier will carry henceforth in all ages.

He forced his plunging horse along; the terrified beast was trembling in

every limb with fright at the blinding lightning.

The sound of voices on the road made him push forward harder than ever,

his hand going swiftly to the pocket that held his revolver; then he

found it was women's voices he heard, a woman's cry of anguish came

after him. He wheeled his horse round, and went back slowly, almost

feeling his way in the darkness.

A flash of lightning showed him a cart with a fallen horse, an old man,

and three girls.

'What's wrong?' he asked.

The old man began to explain rapidly in Dutch, but a girl who was

stooping over the horse rose up and came to him.

'Our horse has been struck,' she said in perfectly good English; 'one

wheel was struck too, and blazed for a minute, but the rain has put it

out.'

'Are none of you hurt?' said Mortimer.

'None; it is wonderful!' said the girl.

'Then run along all of you as hard as you can,' said Mortimer. 'There's

a farm and shelter I think quite close. I'll take the old man up on my

horse.'

'We can't leave the cart,' said the girl.

'Oh, confound the cart!' said Mortimer, struggling with his plunging

horse. 'You can get it after the storm is over.'

'We have some one in it,' said the unemotionable voice of the girl. 'He

is dead.'

Again the anguished cry of one of the other girls rose through the rain.

Mortimer rode round the cart twice before he could think what to do.

'Whose farm is it? Is any one living on it?' he said.

'It is ours,' said the girl; 'we were almost home.'

'Who is at the farm--how many?' Mortimer said, having no inclination to

run the risk of being made a prisoner before his despatches were safe.

'My mother, we girls, our grandfather here, and some children.'

'I think I had better put up my horse in the shafts,' said Mortimer,

'though I much doubt if he'll go.'

'It is no use, the wheel is broken,' said the girl. 'We were just going

to carry him home, only they will not do anything but cry. Anna, Emma,

for shame! What use are tears? Come, we are strong; let us carry him

out of this rain.' The girls still moaned and wept, however, and she

spoke sharply again to them, this time in Dutch, the language in which

their lamentations had been.

'See here,' said Mortimer, 'I will take him up on my saddle.' He

dismounted and went to the cart and felt about nervously. The

English-speaking girl lifted up a rug, and there on pillows on the cart

lay a dead young Boer.

'Are you sure he's dead?' Mortimer said. The hands, though wet with

rain, were hardly stiff, the body had some faint warmth.

The girl was helping him to lift.

'He is quite dead,' she said. 'He was wounded and going down by train

to a Hospital. But as he passed this place, his home, he made them put

him out on the station, and send for us to take him home. We brought the

cart and pillows, but he had died in the waiting-shed before we got

there. We are taking him home to bury.' The other girls shrilled loudly

again. 'Anna, Emma,' she said, with more sharp words in Dutch. Then,

excusingly, to Stevenson, and with pity in her voice, 'He was to have

married one of them, the other is his sister.'

Mortimer got the dead man up before him, held him with one arm and rode

slowly, the girls and the old man hurrying by his side. The farm lay

about a quarter of a mile away. The English-speaking girl opened the

gate.

'There is a ditch all the way up; don't stumble in it,' she said. 'I

must go on and warn his mother.' She ran forward in the darkness. A

turn in the path, and the lamplight from the farmhouse sent out its rays

into the night. Some children, small boys chiefly, clustered at the

door; in front of them stood the girl and another woman, fifty or sixty

years old.

Mortimer with their aid lifted his burden down, and laid it on a bed in

an inner room. He gave a fearful glance at the elder woman, the man's

mother. She was a big woman, not fat, like the Boer women generally

are, but of angular outline, and with sharp high cheek-bones, and brown

piercing eyes.

She was of English parentage, married in early girlhood to a Boer

farmer, and become mother of one daughter and six sons. Her husband had

fallen with the handful at Jameson's Raid; two sons had with their

life-blood helped on the British reverse at Modder River, one lay buried

on the field at Elandslaagte, one at Magersfontein, one had been flung

in the river at Jacobsdal, here was the sixth come home to her.

She turned from the bed a moment to her niece, the English-speaking

girl, who had been a teacher in Johannesburg, but had come to her aunt

for refuge at the beginning of the war, and remained as mainstay of the

farm.

'Take those shrieking girls out of my hearing, Linda!' she said. 'Let

no one come in to me.' She closed the door of the bedroom in their

faces.

Linda turned away.

'I must get some hot drinks,' she said. 'Grandfather and the girls will

take cold. Where are you going?'

'Oh, I'll get along now,' said Mortimer.

'Nonsense!' said the girl; 'you must dry yourself and eat and drink.'

She moved towards the kitchen.

'Oh,' said Mortimer, 'I'd better go. Just think, I might have been one

of the lot who knocked that poor chap over.'

'We cannot stay to think of that,' the girl answered. 'You helped us;

you must stay till the storm is over.'

'But,' urged Mortimer again, 'how will _she_ feel?' and he glanced at

the closed bedroom door.

'Oh, she understands,' said Linda; 'her feeling is not against

individuals. Your soldiers have eaten and rested here three or four

times, for we are almost the only people left. We stay because we have

nowhere to go, and we none of us care what happens.'

Mortimer went to the door.

'I must see to my poor horse,' he said presently.

The girl summoned the stolid-faced little boys--sons they were of the

sons who were slain. She gave them a lantern, and bade them show the

strange guest the stables. Then she ran to the kitchen herself.

Mortimer was twenty minutes drying down his horse, feeding it, making it

comfortable, for the fate of his despatches rested on its welfare. Then

he went back to the kitchen.

The mother was there. She had left her dead after a few minutes, to

busy herself with the task of getting all the wet figures into dry

garments. She was mixing drinks, hot, strong drinks that made the girls

blink and choke even while it restored them. She had the grandfather

wrapped in rugs, sitting closest of all to the fire.

When Mortimer stood in the doorway, dripping helmet, dripping khaki

suit, she moved towards him.

'Drink this,' she said, and gave him a deep mug of hot liquid.

He swallowed it gratefully, for the cold seemed in his very bones.

'Here are some clothes,' she said, and picked up a rough farming-suit

that she had laid in readiness on a chair--'here is a room.' She

stepped across the passage. 'Change at once, and hand me your wet

things to dry.'

Mortimer obeyed her, and, after doing so, sat down on the bed to await

the call to eat of the food the girl Linda was preparing.

And then outraged nature took her revenge. He had not slept for

fifty-six hours; he had been in the saddle eighteen hours of yesterday,

and twelve of to-day. It was three hours before he knew anything more,

and then it was only his cramped position on the bed that woke him;

except for that he would have slept the clock round.

He sat up numbed, his heart beating suffocatingly. Where were his

despatches? What clothes were these he wore? He fell to his feet, a

groan of horror bursting from him. What was this he had done--raw,

careless, culpable soldier that he was? He had never taken the

envelopes from the clothes he had handed the woman--the woman whose

sons' and husband's deaths lay at his country's door, still unavenged!

Two strides took him down the hall to the kitchen, his face was like

ashes. All the little house lay still as the tall, thin young farmer

who, in the front room, was taking his rest for ever from the ploughing

of fields, the sowing and reaping of crops, the blind and strenuous

guarding of his land and liberty at the command of those in the high

places.

The fire still burnt brightly in the grate. Linda sat before it so

plunged in mournful thought she did not hear the young bushman's

footfall.

Across one side of the fire a clothes-horse stood holding the draggled

skirts of the girls, the grandfather's moleskin clothes, the familiar

khaki of the uniform he had disgraced.

His hand clutched the coat convulsively; beads of sheer terror stood on

his forehead. Then he sat down suddenly, the passion of relief bringing

the tears of relief to his eyes.

The papers were there untouched; the long envelopes with the red army

seal upon them stuck up out of his breast-pocket in full view! That

woman, the mother whose sons were dead, that clear-headed young girl,

they must both have known the importance of the papers, yet neither had

laid a finger upon them, since he was their guest, their helper!

Linda smiled at him in a pale way.

'You have come to say you are hungry,' she said. 'I went to your room

twice, but you slept so soundly I thought the food might wait.' She put

a dish before him, meat and vegetables mixed up together. 'This is hot,

at least, and nourishing,' she said.

He thanked her, his voice still thick from agitation, then ate while she

went back to her morbid gazing at the glowing fire.

'Do you know it is twelve o'clock?' he said presently. 'Won't you go to

bed? I am afraid you have sat up to keep this fire alight for the

food.'

She pushed back the thick hair from her forehead. No one could call her

pretty, but the clear eyes and the patience and strength of the young

mouth struck one.

'I think I was trying to see the end of the war,' she said, sighing;

'but it takes better sight than mine.'

'You?' he said pityingly. 'Have you lost any one very near--nearer than

these cousins?'

She blenched a moment.

'One of them,' she said. 'I had been married to one of them--a week.

We will not speak of that.'

He begged her pardon, his throat thick again.

She fought her lip quiet.

'Oh,' she said, 'it is the same everywhere; our lovers, our husbands,

our sons--all gone from us! Some will come back, of course, but crushed

and mutilated. A little time, and your army will only have a handful of

women to contend against.'

'We, too,' he said, 'we have lost our brothers, our fathers, our sons.

Everywhere we have women mourning.'

'Yes,' she said, 'I suppose so.' She sat silent a little time. 'But

then it was you who came,' she urged again. 'We used to be quiet and

happy in our own way, even if we were unprogressive and unintelligent.

It seems, to a woman, we might have been left alone.'

'Ah, but,' he said, 'there were bigger issues than that at stake. You

have read--I can see that you have read--you must know why we are

fighting.'

'Somewhere at the top,' she said, with a wan smile, 'there may be a

few--a very few--on both sides who know. But our men don't know. They

have been told they will lose their liberty and homes if they don't

fight; that is all any of my cousins knew, and they went off to death,

not cheerfully, but because there was nothing else to be done. Your

men, of course they come because they are sent, and they fight their

best because they are brave and obey orders. We have been

insolent--isn't that what you say of us?--and we must be crushed. But

some of you must know the rights of it all. Think how much wiser you

are than we. You read while we plough. Those of you who know should

stay behind.'

'No,' he smiled; 'that is not our way either. We are no different from

you. We pay a few great men to do the thinking for us, and if they say

it's got to be fighting, then, whatever it seems to us individually,

collectively we just shoot.'

The fire burnt lower and lower; it was the only light in the room, for

the oil-lamp, exhausted, had died out. Outside the rain still fell in

straight soaking sheets over the thatched roof of the little house. A

wind moaned restlessly over the empty country; you fancied it was lost

and full of woe, because it had no trees to wander through. Once or

twice a horse whinnied, once or twice there came through the night the

inexpressibly mournful sound of the bleat of a sheep. You felt the rain

was like no other rain at all; it seemed as if the land, swollen-eyed,

was weeping in the quiet of midnight for its unutterable woes.

The girl's head drooped back against the wall. Sleep had claimed her;

but, by the anguish of the mouth and the pitiful stirring of the breast,

you knew it was but to show her the body of her young husband, cast with

a score of others in a trench, all wet with red.

Stevenson sat, a cold sweat upon his brow; he felt he was the only soul

awake on all the frightful continent.

Then through the silence of the house came a woman's voice reading the

Bible--the mother seated a foot away from her quiet son. The thin wood

offered no resistance to the sound of her voice.

'"Gather up thy wares out of the land, O thou that abidest in the siege.

For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will sling out the inhabitants of the

land at this time, and will distress them, that they may feel it. Woe

is me for my hurt! My wound is grievous: but I said, Truly this is my

grief, and I must bear it."'

The sound of the voice pierced into Linda's wretched slumbers. She

opened dilated eyes, and stared wildly at Mortimer. And the voice went

on again:

'"My tent is spoiled, and all my cords are broken: my children are gone

forth of me, and they are not: there is none to stretch forth my tent

any more, and to set up my curtains. For the shepherds are become

brutish, and have not inquired of the Lord: therefore they have not

prospered, and all their flocks are scattered. The voice of a rumour,

behold it cometh, and a great commotion out of the north country, to

make the cities of Judah a desolation, a dwelling-place of jackals."'

'Oh,' said the girl with a sobbing breath, 'it is only aunt, of course;

she often reads aloud like that. But, oh, I have had such dreams--such

frightful dreams!'

The voice went on.

'"O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man

that walketh to direct his steps. O Lord, correct me"'--the tone of the

voice fell a little--'"but with judgment; not in Thine anger, lest Thou

bring me--to nothing."'

'I dreamt--I dreamt,' said the girl, pressing both hands on her

throbbing heart--'ah, I could never tell you what I dreamt!'

'Hush,' said Mortimer, 'don't try, don't try! Won't you go to your

room, and try to sleep in comfort?'

She looked at him with distended eyes.

'I daren't,' she said. 'O God, I never shall dare to sleep again!'

The voice rose; the horrible exultant thrill in it made the flesh creep.

'"Pour out Thy fury upon the heathen that know Thee not, and upon the

families that call not on Thy name: for they have devoured Jacob, yea,

they have devoured him and consumed him, and have laid waste his

habitation."'

The girl staggered to her feet.

'I will go and sit with her,' she said; 'she should not be alone.'

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*A Skirmish by the Way*

At earliest dawn Mortimer was up and away again.

Linda had risen up and prepared breakfast for him; quiet, capable,

busied with frying-pan, fire, the setting of a place at table; he looked

at her as she moved about the kitchen, and wondered had not the sight of

her face of agony last night been a dream? She even rallied him a

little.

'You must eat well,' she said, as she put fried eggs and bacon before

him--the pleasantest meal he had eaten since he had left Sydney; 'you

don't want to be out another night with those despatches of yours

loose.'

'I want shooting,' he said, his forehead burning.

'Oh no,' she said, 'you are young yet to it all; you will have plenty of

time to learn carefulness before the war is over.'

'I hope so,' he said.

'I am afraid so,' she assented.

Something struck him. That soldier-farmer in the quiet front room--who

was to bury him? who dig his grave?

'If I had thought,' he said, 'I would have done it myself the--the

grave, you know--instead of having breakfast. You girls cannot do it.

Is the old man strong enough? I would do it now, but my time is not my

own.' He looked at his watch.

'I have sent the three little boys to Du Toit's farm,' she said, 'five

miles away, to ask them to send two of their Kaffir boys down. All of

ours have gone off.'

He shook hands with her when he was going, thanked her for all she had

done.

'It is nothing,' she said; 'we have to thank you, yet we don't, you

notice. It is war-time. Good-bye.'

The grey air freshened as the sun climbed foot by foot up over the great

kop to the east. The night's storm had left the veldt fragrant as our

own bush after rain. The deserted farms looked at him, a mist of sleep

and forgetfulness in their eyes. Those every-day fences, those gates

made for farmers to pass through, farmers' daughters to lean on watching

for their lovers, farmers' children to swing on--was it possible half a

dozen regiments had gone crashing through and over them, hastening to

headquarters only a week before?

Mortimer looked at the healthy land with a bushman's appreciative eyes.

He wondered now many sheep the farms held. A Boer prisoner at the camp

had told him the country carried a sheep to six acres, an ostrich to

twelve, and a horse to twenty. He speculated loosely on the chances

there would be for an army of drought-ruined Australian settlers to come

here after the war with modern implements and knowledge, and astonish

these pastoralists, who were a century at least behind Europe in the way

of agriculture.

'Even Cameron's ahead of them,' Mortimer thought, his mind reverting

sadly to the poor little selection at Wilgandra that bounded Hermie's

life.

A heavy waggon went past drawn by a span of mules, and driven by a

Kaffir, who cracked a whip of such length that the ordinary stockwhip

was nowhere beside it.

A bent old man, with a cart of vegetables and a horse too decrepit for

the war, crept by. Smoke in a place or two went up from the chimneys of

the scattered farmhouses. The continent was awake.

Riding yesterday, Mortimer had never known when he might run into a Boer

picket, but the farther he went now the danger lessened--in another

dozen miles he ought to be somewhere about the beginning of the line the

British had made to defend a railway. And after that his ride would lie

through country dotted over by the British army.

He pushed on; his horse was fresh and ready again after the night's rest

and a couple of good feeds; his own spirits, chiefly owing to his

excellent breakfast, began to rise again and push his carelessness from

the chief place in his mind; he grew aflame for a chance to prove his

courage, and respect himself once more. Before he left the camp it had

been held that a big engagement was certain in a very few days; his mind

leapt forward to it now with a keenly sharpened appetite, and he beheld

himself making famous his country's name by impossible feats of

strength.

Crack! To the left of him a firearm went off; the bullet passed clear

over his head, and rattled on some loose stones as it fell.

He glanced round less in fear than astonishment. At the spot the veldt

was singularly clear, and the nearest kopje was far beyond rifle-range.

Whir! A second shot struck his helmet, a third grazed his shoulder!

His horse plunged and reared; he spun it round and faced a clump of

karoo bushes twenty yards to his left, the only place from which the

shots could have come, and even these seemed absurd, for no shrub was

more than two or three feet high. He raised his revolver; his finger

was at the trigger. Then he saw three small faces over the edge of one

of the bushes--three that he knew; they were the stolid, secret-looking

little boys who had lighted him to the stable last night.

[Illustration: HIS HORSE PLUNGED AND REARED.]

'The little sweeps!' he muttered, but moved his finger from the trigger,

even though he kept the revolver cocked at them.

'Do you want me to blow the brains of all three of you out?' he called.

'Lay down those guns this minute, or I will.' He was close up to them,

and a sharp glance among the sparse bushes showed him that beyond these

small youths he had no other attackers. At the sight of British might

in the concrete form of a mounted soldier standing right over them, two

of the lads instantly laid down their ponderous old style weapons. The

third essayed another shot, but his rifle kicked and the bullet went

wild.

'You young beggar!' said Stevenson; 'put it down this instant.'

The lad obeyed sullenly; he was the eldest of the three, and yet not

more than twelve; a thickset boy with a heavy, brooding face and fine

eyes.

'And what's the meaning of this little performance?' said Mortimer.

Two of the boys had very little knowledge of English, but the eldest had

been quick to pick it up from his grandmother and Linda, who had just

become his aunt.

'You killed our fathers,' he said doggedly. 'They've taken all the good

guns with them, or we wouldn't have missed like this.'

Mortimer had no doubt of it; as it was, the shots had landed so near to

the mark that it was plain what was the Boer boys' pastime at present.

There was something about the three small lads that reminded Mortimer

irresistibly of Roly--Roly, hung all over with the kitchen cutlery, or

prowling about the bush with a broken-barrelled gun, Roly lying face

downward behind a great ant-bed and picking off his foes at a lightning

rate. He found it hard not to smile.

'Hand me up those guns,' he said to the eldest boy.

The boy gave him a stubborn glance, and it needed the discharge of a

cartridge over his head to bring him to obedience. Then he handed the

poor old musket up sullenly to the conqueror.

'See here,' Mortimer said, 'you'll make fine soldiers by-and-by. Don't

go and get yourselves into trouble while you're young, and so ruin your

chances. If it had happened to be some one less in a hurry than I am,

he'd have marched you over and seen you among the prisoners, just to

keep you out of mischief.'

'He'd have to catch us first,' said the boy, with a defiant smile.

'There is such a thing as putting a bullet into the legs,' said Mortimer

gravely. 'But now cut along and fetch those Kaffirs for your aunt.'

The boys turned round and struck off dejectedly in a new direction; they

had come three miles off the road their aunt had sent them by to execute

this plot, secretly formed by the eldest boy, for killing off one at

least of the enemy.

When Mortimer looked round again, they were mere specks on the veldt.

'Poor little beggars!' he said, smiling as he thought over the adventure

again. He flung two of the rifles into the river; the third he carried

with him as far as the British camp, and gave it to some one of the

ambulance there, promising a five-pound note if it were kept safely till

the end of the war.

'Roly'll go off his head at such a trophy,' he thought.

He handed in his despatches not many hours later, with no further

adventures.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*The Mood of a Maid*

'Do you know what it is to seek oceans, and to find puddles, to long for

whirlwinds, and have to do the best you can with the bellows? That's my

case.'

Bartie had gone up to Coolooli for the afternoon. Old Mr. Stevenson had

taken a great fancy to the boy, and prophesied that he had the making of

a fine squatter in him.

Stevenson had ridden in to the selection on his way from Wilgandra. It

was not often he passed the neat new gate in these days without turning

in. He always felt a pleasant glow of conscious virtue, as his eyes

marked all the improvements that had so suddenly sprung up.

'Me boy's pleasing me,' he would mutter. 'It wasn't much to ask.'

He told the surprised Cameron that it was his fad to leave none of his

property unimproved, and that he was merely making the trial on this

particular selection, to see what might be done with a small holding.

Cameron was rather relieved than otherwise that he no longer owned the

place; the money he had borrowed on it at different times was almost

equal to the sum he had paid for it at first. With such a landlord it

was a much less responsible thing to be merely a tenant, especially as

Stevenson, since he had foreclosed, would accept no rent, professing

that he was getting the place ready for some one who could not take

possession for a year or two, and that it was a convenience to him for

Cameron to stay on the place and keep it in order. The long-established

character of the man as hard and close kept any suspicion from Cameron

that he was being helped out of kindness.

The old man had come in this afternoon to carry Bartie up to Coolooli

with him, to show him the new invention he was about to try for the

destruction of rabbits. Bart rushed off to get his horse ready while

Stevenson stayed talking of the war and his son to Mrs. Cameron. It was

quite a surprise to her when she learned much later that the old man had

five other sons. This one at the front was the only one he ever spoke

about.

He liked talking to this practical, sensible mother of the family. He

felt amazed that such a shiftless fellow as Cameron should own such a

treasure, and he felt, as he looked at her, that the salvation of the

family would have been assured after her arrival, even if he himself had

not lent a hand. With Hermie his manner was unconsciously somewhat

aggressive, and she shrank from the rugged-faced old man who looked at

her so sharply from under his bushy eyebrows. He saw her one day as he

passed her in the verandah, reading a book fresh from London. Mrs.

Cameron saw to it that the poor girl had time now for such rest and

recreation.

'Can you make soap and candles?' he said, stopping suddenly in front of

her.

It was not likely such arts had been learned on Dunks' selection.

'No,' said Hermie. 'At least, we did try once with the fat to make

soap, but it went wrong.'

'How would you instruct your men to corn beef or make mutton hams?'

Hermie looked at him distressed.

'I have never done any,' she said.

'Humph!' he growled, and went to untie his horse, muttering, 'A pretty

wife, a pretty wife!' to himself.

This particular afternoon Bart went off in high spirits, Challis

watching him wistfully from the verandah.

Hermie was--oh, who knew where Hermie was? Wandering up and down among

the roses perhaps, her eyes soft with tears--Challis had found her like

that two or three times--or reading poetry in some quiet corner in the

paddocks, or writing it in the secret solitude of her bedroom, or on

Tramby's back riding, riding with dreamy eyes down the road to the

sunset. Wherever she was, she did not want Challis.

Mrs. Cameron was with her husband. Up and down the path they walked,

his arm round her waist, her hand in his, talking, talking a little of

the future, not at all of the quivering past, mostly of the tender

all-sufficing present. Challis, who had had such sweet monopoly of her

mother for so long, missed it exceedingly now, while readily acquiescing

that the turn for the others had come. She looked from the verandah

with yearning eyes. It seemed months instead of weeks since she had

poured all her hopes and imaginings and longings and queer little

fancies into that ever-ready ear.

Roly? Roly was killing his Boers down in the paddock, or wheeling heavy

loads of earth to make kopjes in the bush. He would tell her to 'clear

out of the way of lyddite shells,' if she sought him out.

Floss? Floss, who hated a needle, was sitting on the grass making, with

incredible labour, a pincushion for the mother she had begun to love

with an almost fierce affection. Challis would have liked to go and help

her, but the child, if she pricked her fingers till they were empty of

blood, would have no stitch set in it that was not her own. Furthermore,

all the dreams on the Utopia were dispersed. Challis had never buttoned

one of the little girl's garments, never tied a sash, never brushed out

a curl. The small woman had dressed herself independently ever since

she was three, and indignantly scorned all help; she hated sashes--her

straight light hair she raked herself. And though she accepted in an

offhand fashion the toys Challis had chosen with such love and interest,

she kept up an inexplicably warlike attitude towards her, and deprecated

her on every possible occasion. Her hands--'Pooh! Well, I would be

ashamed to have hands that colour! S'pose you never take your gloves

off?' 'Frightened to walk in the bush 'cause of snakes! Well, some

girls are ninnies!' 'Never been-on a horse--'fraid to get on Tramby!

Why, she--Floss--had galloped all over on Tramby without a saddle when

she was only four!'

Challis, sensitively aware of her own want of courage to explore and

grow familiar with these bush things, got into the habit of shrinking

away when Floss came on the scene.

There seemed no niche left for her in this home she had looked forward

to; that was what it was. The place, rightly hers, had filled up

entirely during her long absence.

No one understood her, or tried to. They took it for granted that her

genius and her life abroad had lifted her to a higher plane than the one

on which they themselves lived. It might be very cultivated and

beautiful up there, but they were not familiar with it, and therefore

did not take any interest in it.

The girl tried hard to get on to their plane, and be interested in their

things; but they knew she was trying hard, and it merely irritated them.

Let her stay where she belonged.

It was so lonely, too--so very lonely. Used to the pleasant uproar and

friendliness and excitement of cities, this little clearing in the great

silent bush oppressed her intolerably after a week or two.

She had been a little ill before leaving Sydney. The doctors had said

her nervous system was completely run down--a shocking thing in a child!

They advised complete rest for several months, and expressed their

opinion that the quiet bush life at Wilgandra and roughing it with

children, who would take her out of herself, would be the best possible

thing for her, and the triumphal career could be resumed later on.

So there were to be no concerts yet, no happy strivings to interpret

Chopin's varying moods to a breathless audience, to reach up with

Mendelssohn to his pleasant sunlit heights, to go down with Wagner to

strange depths that stirred her soul. She was to practise very little,

to appear in public not at all. The papers expressed their regret at

her illness, and said a kind thing or two. After that her name had no

mention in them.

One paragraph she had read had touched her to the quick. Some

interviewer who had been to see her in Sydney wrote in his paper, 'Thank

Heaven, she is not pretty! Her chances are hereby much greater.'

Poor little Fifteen! Her pillow was wet that night. She felt she had

much rather he had said, 'She has no genius, but she is very pretty.'

She longed for Hermie's shining wavy hair, for the sweet blue of her

eyes, the pink that pulsed about her cheeks. Who cared if you could

interpret the waves and storms of Lizst's rhapsodies, and let the keen

little rifts of melody in between the thunder until the almost

intolerable sweetness made the heart ache? Who cared that Leschetizky

himself had taught you and had tears in his eyes once, when you had

played to him the wind in the trees just as he himself heard it? What

did all these things matter? Every one went home from your concerts and

forgot all about you. Oh, surely it were better to be so exquisitely

pretty that all who saw you loved you on the spot!

She looked at herself again and again in the glass that night. Until

that wounding paragraph, she had never given one thought to her looks;

the sensitive small face, the grey eyes drenched with this new tragedy,

the fair straight hair falling over her shoulders--not pretty, not

pretty, and all the world knew it now!

She drifted in from the verandah to the living-room, where the piano

stood open as Hermie had left it, when, imagining Challis out of hearing

an hour or two ago, she had sat down to it for a few minutes. But the

cheap tinkling stuff that comprised poor Hermie's _repertoire_--the

jingling waltzes, the pretty-pretty compositions of Gustave Lange and

Brindley Richards, 'Edelweiss' and 'Longing,' 'Warblings at Eve,' and

such--they set her ear horribly on edge, though she would rather have

died than have said so. It were less torture to hear Flossie thumping

conscientiously away at 'The Blue Bells of Scotland' and 'We're a'

Noddin'.'

The very piano was a heartache; it was seven years since it had been

tuned, and despite the careful dusting of Miss Browne, the silverfish

led a gay existence in its interior, and ate all the softness and depth

from the notes.

But this afternoon the girl, with that vague misery tugging at her

heart, was driven to it; nothing else could ease her. She put her foot

down on the soft pedal, to keep the discordant jangle away, and avoiding

as much as she could the B that was flat, and the D that was dumb, and

the F sharp that Roly had torn off bodily, she worked off the gloom that

oppressed her with Beethoven and Bach.

Roly came in. He was arming himself for a new attack on Ladysmith; he

had the kitchen poker and the stove-brush, the tin-opener, a knife from

a broken plough, a genuine boomerang, the corkscrew, the gravy-strainer,

and the carving-knife, disposed about his person, and he came into the

living-room, his eye roving about in search of fresh implements of

warfare. Nothing seemed to appeal to him, however, and he was going out

again discontentedly when he noticed his new sister had dropped her

hands from the keyboard, and was resting her forehead there instead.

He approached her with some awe.

'Can you play with your head too?' he asked; then he noticed there were

tears running down her cheeks. 'Don't cry,' he said; 'I'll run out and

ask mother to let you off. Did she say you'd got to practise an hour?

Oh, I'll soon get her to let you off!'

Challis smiled faintly through her tears.

'It's all right,' she said; 'don't disturb mother. No one told me to

practise.'

'Well, you _are_ a muggins!' said the uncouth bushikin. 'Catch _me_

setting myself a copy or a sum! Why don't you go out and play?'

Challis let a new tear fall.

'I don't know how to play at anything,' she said. 'I never had any one

to play with.'

Roly's breast swelled with magnanimity.

'Look here,' he said, 'you can be Cronje if you like. Here, you can

have these two for your weapons.' He handed her the stove-brush and the

corkscrew. 'Come on down here, I'll soon show you how to do it.'

Challis shook her head.

'No,' she said, 'I'm fifteen; it's too late to learn now. I'll just

have to go on playing and playing at concerts. And who cares when

you're playing your very best, and have practised one composition six

hours a day? Who cares?' She looked at him miserably.

'Look here, Chall,' he said, a most brotherly, kindly tone in his voice,

'it's only because you play such fat-headed things, that's why they

don't care. I can't listen to them myself. Often when I've been digging

my garden outside the window, and you've started to play, I've just had

to go away. If you'd learn some nice-sounding pieces now, instead of

things like Flossie's scales, only worse! There's Peter Small's sister,

down in W'gandra, you ought to hear _her_ play; she can play "Soldiers

of the Queen," and "Sons of the Empire," and "Absent-Minded Beggar," and

"Girl He Left Behind Him," and all those things, and she jumps her hands

about, and runs up and down, and crosses them just as much as you do.

If you like, I'll ask Peter to get her to lend you them; I'm friends

with Peter just now.'

Challis smiled and dried her tears.

'I mightn't be able to play them, Roly,' she said; 'so I don't think

I'll trouble you to ask.'

'Oh,' said Roly encouragingly, 'you'd soon pick them up. You could

watch her a few times, and notice how she does them. But I'll have to

be going now, Challis, if you don't want me. I'll be down in the bush

at the back, if you want to come and have a try to play. Don't let on

to Brownie that I've collared this.' He pointed to the gravy-strainer

that adorned his breast. I'll bring it back all right.'

Left alone once more, Challis wandered about the little house. Miss

Browne's door was half open, to let in the evening breeze. Miss Browne

herself, her day's work finished, was sitting at the table writing a

multitude of letters with a happy flush on her cheeks.

Challis looked on wistfully.

'Would you mind if I came in and sat with you?' she said.

Miss Browne dropped her pen and jumped up to welcome her.

'My dear, my love, why, you know you may; most pleased, most delighted,

whenever you like--honoured, most delighted.'

Challis stepped into the little room.

*CHAPTER XX*

*Miss Browne*

'I shall have no man's love

For ever, and no face of children born

Or tender lips upon me.

Far off from flowers or any love of man

Shall my life be for ever.'

What was it that broke the barriers down? The wet eyelashes of the

little music-maker? The droop of her soft mouth? Or came there across

that poor room one of those divine waves of sympathy and understanding

that wash at times from a richly endowed soul to a lonely stunted one?

Miss Browne found herself telling anything and everything that had

happened in her life, and even the things that might have happened. Not

that the whole of them made a sum of any account, if you condensed them;

but, told ramblingly and with pauses for tears, they fell pathetically

on the young listening ears.

Thirty-eight grey years! Life in this country town and that country

town, in this crowded suburb or on that out-back station or selection--a

hireling always. The first twenty-five had dragged by under English

skies that even in summer had no sun for a motherless, fatherless girl,

pupil-teacher from the age of fourteen. She bore twelve years of it

patiently enough, and indeed would have borne another score, but two

friends, stronger, more restless souls than she, though chained to the

same life, told her they were going to break through it all, strike out

of the stagnant waters of suburban England into the fresh, glittering

sea the other side of the world.

They were saving their salaries to pay their passage to Australia.

Governesses were royally paid out there, they had heard, and more than

that--they whispered this a little ashamed--husbands grew on every bush.

Miss Browne scraped and saved for a year, cheerfully shivering without a

winter jacket, happily heedless of the rain that came through the holes

of her umbrella. If it had been a question of economising in her diet,

she would have brought herself down to a crust a day, in her eagerness

to make a plunge into a different life, but fortunately governesses are

'all found.' The three women cheerfully cramped their bodies

third-class for the voyage, letting their souls soar boundlessly in the

pleasant evenings on deck.

They came to their new land, saw it, and after a few years were

conquered. Almost the same conditions of life, the same sickening

struggle of a multitude of educated women for one poor place, the same

grey outlook. One found a husband; he took her to some heaven-forgotten

corner of North Queensland, where she had for neighbours Japanese and

Chinese and Javanese, and he drank, as the men all do in those forgotten

corners, where alligators are to be found on the river-banks, and

coloured labour crowds out the white man's efforts. She bore him six

children in eight years, and then died thankfully. The second woman

went into a hospital and became a nurse; for the last five years she had

been in Western Australia, kept busy with the typhoid in Perth. Once in

a while she wrote to Miss Browne; once or twice she had eagerly said she

was 'all but engaged,' but later letters never confirmed the hope, and

now a dull commonplace had settled down over the correspondence.

Miss Browne drifted from place to place, place to place; there was

nothing she was capable of doing really well, and no land has a

hospitable welcome for such.

'It is a funny thing,' she said to Challis, 'but, however hard I try, I

never seem able to do things like other people can.' Her eyes stared in

front of her. 'If it had been your mother now in my place, she could

have managed; she is made of the stuff that never goes under. But you

would have thought any one like I am would have been sheltered

and--cared for--as so many women are cared for.'

Challis stroked her restlessly moving hand.

'Sometimes,' she continued--her voice dropped, her eyes stared straight

out before her--'sometimes I can't help feeling as if Providence has

pushed me out to the front, and quite forgotten to give me anything to

fight with.'

Then she pulled herself together reprovingly.

'Of course, that attitude is very wrong of me,' she said. 'It is only

very seldom I think that, my love.'

Challis squeezed her hand sympathetically.

'It will all come right some day,' she said, with the large vague

hopefulness of the very young.

'That's what I have always told myself,' said Miss Browne; 'but you must

see, my love, if--if it does not come right very soon, it will be too

late. I am thirty-eight--there, there is no need to mention it to

Hermie or the rest of the family, my love.'

'But thirty-eight is not old,' said Challis, so eager to comfort, she

left truth to take care of itself. 'Think what lots of people are

fifty, and they don't think themselves a bit old.'

'But who will marry you after you are thirty-eight?' said poor Miss

Browne, unable to keep any ache back to-night.

'Oh,' said Challis, 'lots of people don't get married, and they are as

happy as anything.'

Miss Browne's lip quivered.

'If I had been asked,' she said, 'then I should not mind so much. But I

am--thirty-eight, and no one has--ever asked me.'

Challis put her arm round the poor woman's neck; she stroked her cheek,

patted her shoulder.

'Of course,' Miss Browne said at last, sitting up with tremulous,

red-eyed dignity, 'there is no need to tell Hermie that, my love.'

'But you must have lots of friends,' said Challis, looking at the number

of envelopes lying on the dressing-table. The colour ran up into Miss

Browne's face. She half put her hand over the letters, then drew it

back.

'If I told you about these, you would think me so foolish, my dear,' she

faltered.

'Oh no, I wouldn't!' said Challis. 'Now I know you so well, I seem to

understand everything.'

Miss Browne got some little papers out of a drawer, English penny

weeklies devoted to 'ladies' interests.' She turned to the Answers to

Correspondents pages, 'Advice on Courtship and Marriage.'

'Those marked with a little cross are the answers to me,' whispered Miss

Browne. And Challis read these three marked paragraphs:

'_Fair Australienne_ writes: "I am the only daughter of a very wealthy

squatter, and have two lovers. One is a squatter on an adjoining

station, the other an English baronet travelling in Australia. If I

marry the baronet, I must leave my father, who loves me dearly; but I

care for him more than I do for the squatter. What would you advise me

to do?"

And the 'Aunt Lucy' who conducted the page had replied:

'Marry where your heart dictates. Could you not induce your father to

live in England with you?'

'_Sweet Rock Lily_.--"I am eighteen, and, my friends tell me, very, very

beautiful. I am governess in a wealthy family, and the son is deeply in

love with me. If he marries me, he will be disinherited. What should I

do? I love him very much. And will you tell me a remedy for thin hair?"

'The editor's answer is: "Try to overcome the prejudice of the family,

_Rock Lily_, and all will go well. Bay rum and bitter apples is an

excellent tonic."

'_Little Wattle Blossom_.--"I am seventeen, and only just out of the

schoolroom. I am passionately in love with a young handsome man, who

loves me in return; but my parents are trying to force me into a

marriage with an old foreign nobleman. They have even fixed the wedding

day, and I am kept a prisoner. What would you advise me to do?"

'The editor's answer is: "You cannot be forced into a marriage in these

days. Refuse firmly. In four years you will be of age. In answer to

your second question, your friend had better try massage for the crow's

feet and thin neck."'

Challis read in extreme puzzlement.

'I hardly understand,' she said. 'How do you mean--these are to you?'

'It is only my foolishness, my love,' said Miss Browne, gathering them

up again; 'but I get a great deal of pleasure out of it. The days the

mail comes and I get the papers, I am so excited I don't know what to

do. You get into the way of feeling it really is yourself.'

But this phase of Miss Browne was beyond Challis's comprehension, and

she only looked doubtfully at the papers, so Miss Browne was swift to

change the subject.

'These letters,' she said, 'are to the Melbourne and Adelaide art

societies. I should like to tell you about this, my love. Your father,

about four years ago, painted a picture, and something happened that

made him try to burn it. Well, we managed to prevent that, and I got

hold of it and hid it away. He has forgotten all about it now, imagines

I sold it, but I haven't, and it occurred to me lately to write to

several artists and describe the picture to them, and see if they would

buy it. I did not mention your father's name; just said it was by a

friend of mine--you will forgive me for the liberty, my love?'

'But didn't you send the picture?' said Challis. 'They could hardly

tell from a description.'

'I had no money,' said Miss Browne, sighing 'I made inquiries at

Wilgandra, but it would cost so much to have it packed and sent to

Sydney. And there is the risk of losing it. I was _very_ careful over

the description; it took me five long evenings to write--I left no

detail out.'

'And what happened?' said Challis.

Miss Browne flushed.

'Courtesy seems dying out,' she said. 'Not one of them answered. It

might have been any lady writing--they could not know it was only I.'

Challis asked more questions about the picture. She asked to be shown

it, and waited patiently while Miss Browne disinterred it from under the

bed, and took off the old counterpane with which it was wrapped.

'I have never seen any great picture-galleries,' said Miss Browne, 'but

I know there is something about this that must be good. It could not

work up the feelings in me that it does, if it were just an ordinary

picture. Look at the man's eyes, my love--isn't the hopelessness

frightful?--and yet look at him well. You just know he'll keep on

trying and trying till he gets there.'

Challis gazed at it for a long time.

'Yes,' she said slowly; 'that is how it makes me feel. I feel I want to

beg him to stop trying, and lie down and go to sleep. But it wouldn't

be any use. You feel the storm will last for ever, and the captain will

go on trying for ever to get to wherever he has made up his mind to get

to.'

'Your father intends it to represent the Flying Dutchman,' said Miss

Browne.

'Oh yes!' Challis said. 'Of course. I ought to have known. But it is

just like this picture--just as sad. And I play it too. Wagner, you

know,--Der fliegende Hollander,--it makes you want to cry.'

'My love,' cried Miss Browne, 'you say you know an artist in Paris.

Why, surely that would be the very thing! I believe they are all

jealous of him in Sydney. Write to your friend. He would take notice

of a letter from you. Write to him, and send the picture too. You can

afford to, and it is not likely to go astray, since you know the exact

address. Suppose we start to do it now?'

Challis sprang up with shining eyes. It seemed the loveliest plan in

the world.

'It shall be our secret, you dear, dear thing!' she cried. 'We won't

tell a single soul in the world--not even mother. Let's write it down

that we promise.' She pushed pen and ink to Miss Browne. 'Write on

this paper,' she said, '"I promise Challis Cameron faithfully I won't

tell any one in the world."'

Miss Browne wrote the compact down, smiling.

Challis seized the pen.

'I promise Miss Brown faithfully I won't tell,' she wrote.

'Oh, my dear, my love!' said Miss Browne distressed. 'My love, how

careless of you! I spell my name with an "e." I never thought you would

forget, my love. No, don't add it on there; it looks as if it were an

afterthought. Please write it again. We have always spelt our name with

an "e," my love.'

*CHAPTER XXI*

*The Morning Cables*

'With rending of cheek and of hair,

Lament ye, mourn for him, weep.'

Bart came clattering at a great pace up the path with the mail. It was

the midday dinner-time; and such pleasant appetising foods were the

order of the day now, boylike he did not care to be a moment late.

He took the saddle off, laid it down on the verandah, drove the horse

down to the first paddock, and hastened in to the dining-room.

His father was just unfolding the daily paper he had brought, and

opening it to find the war cables.

'Read them out, Jim,' said Mrs. Cameron, looking up from her task of

apportioning the peas and cauliflower and potatoes.

Cameron read out the headings:

'"DESPERATE FIGHTING AT KRUG'S SPRUIT."

"GALLANT ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE GUNS."

"OFFICERS SERVING THE ARTILLERY."

"FIFTEEN THOUSAND BOERS IN ACTION."

"BRITISH UNDER A GALLING CROSS-FIRE."

"BRITISH CASUALTIES."

"CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES PRIVATE."

"LOSSES OF AUSTRALIAN TROOPS."'

The last two headings sent Cameron's eyes hurrying down the long column

to seek details.

'Oh,' he said, 'poor lad, poor lad! Oh, I'm sorry for this--sorry for

this!'

'Not old Morty,' said Bart--'not poor old Morty, dad?' Yet even as he

spoke he knew it must be, for who else of all the contingent had they a

personal interest in? He pushed his chair back and went to his father's

shoulder. His eyes read the meagre paragraph, and burnt with swift

tears for his friend.

'CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES TROOPER'

was the heading of the cable. Below it said:

'During the engagement, Trooper Stevenson, of the N.S.W. Bush

Contingent, made a most gallant rescue. He galloped to the assistance

of General Strong, whose horse had fallen, and bore him under a scathing

fire to a place of safety. General Strong escaped unhurt, and obtained

another horse, but while galloping after his troop through the dusk,

Stevenson was hit by a bullet, and killed instantaneously.'

'Just the sort of thing old Morty would do,' Bart said, his throat

thick.

'I am thinking of the poor old man,' said Mrs. Cameron. 'It will kill

him. Jim, you had better go up; you might be able to do something.

None of the other sons are at home.'

'I'll go, certainly,' Cameron said; 'but it won't kill him. His pride

in the lad's courage will keep him up.'

'I say,' said Bart, 'he won't have got the paper yet. That fellow

Barnes was waiting for the mail while I was, and he had been drinking

frightfully. It'll be hours before he gets back. I saw him turn in to

the Golden Fleece as I came along.'

A strange stifled cry came from the end of the table. It was no use;

Miss Browne had fought desperately to keep her self-control, but nature

was too strong for her, and she was struggling with a piteous fit of

hysterics.

Mrs. Cameron went round to her, got her to the sofa, opened the neck of

her dress, administered cold water, spoke firmly and decidedly to her.

There was nothing in the poor woman's cries for a long time, and she

only pushed at Mrs. Cameron, as if trying to force her away. Finally a

word came from her choking throat:

'Hermie!' she cried, and pointed to the open door. 'Go--to--Hermie.'

Where was Hermie? Mrs. Cameron looked round in surprise. It seemed

only two minutes since she had been cutting the bread, and laughing at

Roly because he had arranged his plate as a battle-field, with the peas

for the army, the cauliflower as a kopje, the mashed potatoes in dots

for the tents, while a slice of beef made the enemy's laager, and a

gravy river flowed between the troops. Why had she left the table like

this?

'Go--to--Hermie!' gasped the shivering, sobbing woman on the sofa.

'I--am--all right--quick, quick!'

Where had the girl gone? No one but Miss Browne had even noticed her

chair was empty.

Mr. Cameron armed himself with another tumbler of cold water, and came

across to the sofa.

'I will look after Miss Browne,' he said. 'You go to Hermie; perhaps she

was a little faint.'

'Down--the--path,' gasped Miss Browne, 'near the wattles, most likely.'

Mrs. Cameron made her way down the path, looking from left to right, a

puzzled expression on her face. The girl was nowhere to be seen. She

looked among the roses, in the various shady corners, beneath the trees.

Finally she came to the thick-growing wattles near the fence, and a

gleam of blue cambric showed through the leaves. The mother went in

among the bushes, and found the girl face downward on the ground,

sobbing in so bitter and heartbroken a way that she was quite alarmed

for a moment. Then a wondering comprehension came; her girl was almost

a woman. Was it possible she had cared for this friend of the family in

a different way from Bart and Floss and Roly?

'My poor little girl!' she said, and sat down on the ground beside her,

and lifted the bright head that had been Morty's perpetual delight on to

her knee.

But Hermie pulled herself away, and rose wildly to her feet, and ran

this way among the bushes with her broken heart, and then that way.

'Oh,' she sobbed, 'go away, go away--I want to be alone! Oh, it is my

fault!--I want to be alone--oh, mother, mother!'--and she came back to

her mother's side, and fell down beside her again, clinging to her

piteously. The mother said nothing at all--just stroked her hair and let

her weep as she would, and soon a little calmness came back to the girl.

'Oh,' she said, 'if you knew how I loved him, mother!'

'Did you, my darling?' said the tender mother, and never showed the ache

that was at her heart because her child had kept so great a thing as

this from her confidence.

'Ever since he went I have been loving him,' Hermie said, 'and yet when

he told me, I sent him away, and he was so miserable. I am sure that is

why he went to the war.'

'And you thought you did not care for him, then?' said Mrs. Cameron.

'Well, darling, that was not your fault.'

'Oh, it was--it was!' said Hermie. 'You don't understand, of course.

You never could. But I shall be miserable now all my life!'

'You found you had made a mistake, and you cared for him after all?'

said Mrs. Cameron.

'I didn't know quite how much till to-day!' sobbed Hermie. 'I have kept

thinking of him and thinking of him ever since he went; out now--oh, now

it is too late! I know I shall love him till I die.'

The mother's heart ached, as all mothers' must do when their children

have to stand alone in a grief, and there can no longer be any kissing

of the place to make it well.

'It seems as if I have been blind,' went on the girl, sometimes wiping

the tears away and hiding her swollen eyes, sometimes letting them

trickle unchecked down her cheeks. 'I can't tell you how silly and

small I have been--thinking men ought to be just like men in books, and

never looking at what they really are. Oh, he was so good, such a brave

fellow; ever since he has gone, people are always telling different

brave or kind things he has been doing ever since he was a boy. And,

just because he wore clothes and ties I didn't like, and sometimes

knocked things over, I----'

Her voice choked, and she fell to sobbing again heart-brokenly.

Mrs. Cameron was silent again for a space; but when as the time went on

the girl seemed to abandon herself more and more to her grief, she rose

to her feet and drew the sobbing figure up also.

'There is a hard task before you, dear one,' she said, 'but I know you

will do it.'

Hermie gazed at her helplessly.

'His poor old father does not know yet, for Bart tells me his man Barnes

is still drinking in Wilgandra. I want you to go up to Coolooli and

break it to him.'

'Me?' gasped Hermie. 'Me?'

'Yes, you, my dear. You cared for his son; it will establish a bond

between you, and make it a little easier for him.'

'Oh, I couldn't!' cried the girl, shrinking back, actual alarm on her

face. 'Oh, it is cruel of you to even ask me, mother! Why should I do

such a thing? Surely it is hard enough already for me!'

'Because you are a woman, my dear, and must always think of yourself

last,' the mother said quietly. 'How soon can you be ready to start?'

One glance the girl gave at her mother's face that was so quietly

expectant that she would do the right thing. Her head lifted a little,

and her mouth tried to compose itself.

'I have only my skirt to put on,' she said; 'I can do it while Bart

saddles Tramby for me.'

Up to the cottage she walked again, and put on the neat blue

riding-skirt her mother had lately made her. She bathed her red eyes;

she drank two tumblers of cold water, to take the choking from her

throat.

'Father will go with you,' the mother said, coming to the door; 'but

when you get to Coolooli you can ride on ahead.'

Through the pleasant winter sunshine they rode, up hill, down dale,

across bush stretches where Mortimer's horse had worn a path for them.

Coolooli faced them at last, secret stern-looking, with its curtainless

windows, its garden barren of sweet flowers. It was the first time the

girl had been so near her lover's home.

She was among the trees now that lined the drive leading up to the

house; her father had dropped behind, and was to follow on in half an

hour.

Her heart seemed fluttering in her throat; a deadly sickness possessed

her.

The old man was standing at a table on the verandah; he had a great map

of the Transvaal spread open before him, and, with small flags stuck in

it here and there, was following his son's footsteps.

He turned at the sound of the horse's hoofs. When he saw the rider he

went down instantly on to the path, to help her to dismount.

'Well, little missie,' he said, 'it's not often you ride this way.' He

looked at her colourless cheeks keenly. 'What is the matter--can't you

jump down?'

She absolutely could not, and he had almost to lift her off her saddle.

He tied the horse's reins loosely round the verandah-post, and looked at

her again from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. He told himself he knew

what was the matter. The family was in difficulties again, and had sent

this particular member of it as an emissary to borrow money. Well, this

freak of his son's was going to cost him dear. Still, the little thing

was trembling dreadfully, and evidently did not like her task. He put

his hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

'Out with it, lassie,' he said; 'how much do you want?'

Hermie clung to his arm--her very lips were white.

'Mortimer has been very brave,' she said; 'he has done something

magnificent.' Her voice fell.

'My lad!' he cried, in a changed tone. 'Where? show me--I haven't seen

the paper yet.'

She clung to it.

'You will be very proud of him,' she said 'All Australia is talking of

him to-day.'

He pulled vigorously at the paper; his creased old face had a strangely

illumined look; his hands were trembling with eagerness.

'I knowed it,' he said; 'he always had grit. I've kep' expectin' this.

Well, I'll lie quiet in me grave now, whenever the Lord up there likes.'

'Yes,' the girl continued, and gave him the paper. 'All the world is

proud of him to-day, so that must help you. He gave his life to save

the general's.'

The old man drew a curious breath, and sat down on his chair; he opened

the paper and read the paragraph. Then he read it again, and again, and

again, until his eyes had carried the news to his brain twenty times at

least.

'It was a fine thing to do,' he said at last.

'Yes,' said Hermie.

'No other Australian's been mentioned like that.'

'No,' said poor Hermie.

'It was a fine thing to do,' he repeated. He got little further than

that all the time the girl stayed; even when Cameron came up, all

a-quiver with deep sympathy, he still only said, 'It was a fine thing to

do.' After an hour or so, he looked at them expectantly.

'I suppose you'll have to be getting back?' he said; and Cameron and

Hermie rose at once.

He saw them down the steps, and even helped Hermie on her horse again.

Cameron rode on.

'Good-bye, missie,' he said. Then he shot an almost aggressive look at

her. 'You ought to be fine and set up that a fellow like that loved

you.'

'I am,' said Hermie bravely. 'I shall be proud of it just as long as I

live, Mr. Stevenson.'

He softened a little, then looked suddenly old and very tired.

'I want to be alone now,' he said. 'But I don't mind if you come up

again to-morrow.'

With that he went back to the house, the paper still in his hand. But

the next day, when she went, she found him pacing the place like a

wounded tiger. The servants told her he had been very quiet all the

morning and the previous evening, and had told them all several times

about the fine thing his son had done. But Barnes had brought in the

day's papers an hour ago, and he had been raging like this ever since.

The girl found him with bloodshot eyes and clenched hands, walking the

big verandahs.

'Go away!' he shouted when he saw her. She turned and went into the

house at once, to wait the passing of the mood. She stood at the window

of one of the handsome rooms, and looked with dreary eyes out to the

twin hill that lay bathed in the clear sunshine half a mile away, and

never knew how often Mortimer had sat at that same window, smoking his

after-dinner pipe, and building his sunny cottage for her on the bright

hill-top.

Presently the old man came in to her.

'Take the paper from me,' he said quaveringly, and held it out to her.

'If I read it any more, I'll lose me reason!'

The girl looked startled.

'I didn't know there was anything new to-day,' she said. 'Bart told me

he had lost our paper on the way.' Her eyes, large with fear and grief,

tore through the cables they had kept back from her at the selection.

'Private Stevenson,' said a paragraph, 'did not die instantaneously. He

was shot through the jaw and through one lung, and dragged himself to a

rock, leaving a long trail of blood behind. He must have lingered in

frightful agony all night, for when his body was picked up by the

ambulance, it was found that he had written the word "Cold" on the

ground with his finger.'

'Dear God, how can they do this?' Mrs. Cameron had cried, when she saw

the paragraph. 'Have they no sense of pity or decency, that they print

these frightful details? This is more terrible a thousandfold for those

who loved him than the plain news that he was dead.'

The poor little girl, who had gone up so resolved to be calm and brave,

screamed out uncontrollably at the cruel news, then buried her head in

her hands to keep the moans back.

The old man brought her a glass of water from the sideboard.

'Let's tear it up,' he said, and rent the horrid news in pieces. 'Let's

only remember the boy did the right thing, and died like a man.'

He found himself comforting the girl who had come to comfort him. She

found herself telling him with streaming eyes how she had loved his boy

and thought of him, even though at the time he asked her she had said,

'No.'

'If only he could have known!' she sobbed. 'Perhaps, perhaps he was

thinking of me part of that night when he--was cold.'

The next day there was another cable about the affair.

'The trooper who saved General Strong's life at Krug's Spruit was

Private Mark Stevenson, of the Queensland Contingent, not Mortimer

Stevenson of the New South Wales, as reported yesterday.'

Hermie tore along the road to Coolooli to rejoice with the old man,

since before she had gone to grieve with him.

He was sitting on the verandah looking very shaken and bewildered, and

reading the third cable as often as he had read the first.

'I--hardly understand,' he said feebly.

Hermie had seized his two hands, and was shaking them joyously.

'He is alive--alive!' she cried.

He looked at her piteously.

'Didn't he do that fine thing at all?' he said.

'No,' she cried. 'Some other man did it, thank God! He is alive,

alive--Mortimer--he is not dead!

He drew his hands out of her eager ones a little pettishly.

'They should be more careful with these cables,' he said.

'Oh,' she cried happily, 'we will forgive them anything! He is

alive--alive!'

'But he never did that fine thing,' he repeated sadly.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*Conclusion*

'Let one more attest

I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and

all was for best.'

Life, so long a hopeless tangle, smoothed itself out at last for the

little family. Challis was well again, and had gone off to give a series

of concerts in the respective capitals of each colony; gone off in high

spirits, touched with sweet responsibility, inasmuch as she was the

bread-winner for the family. Mr. Cameron went with her this time, and

her mother stayed thankfully at home on the selection. And Australia,

despite the fact that she neither recited 'The Absent-Minded Beggar,'

nor yet had 'Sons of the Empire' in her _repertoire_, gave her so warm a

welcome everywhere that in three months she was back again at The Rosery

with a fresh thousand pounds put to her credit in the bank.

This pleasant sum was to pay passages across the sea for all the family.

For, warm-hearted as the big overgrown young island had proved, its

eager, easily roused enthusiasm would soon be turned upon some other

object, and there would be no permanent opening for the girl-musician.

She must go to the little, pulsing, crowded island the other side of the

world for that.

Mrs. Cameron had the plan of campaign all in readiness in her head.

They were to find an ideal house in a pleasant countrified suburb just

out of London, and Challis, accompanied by her father, was to fulfil her

English engagements from there.

When she went abroad, they would all, when possible, go with her, and

make headquarters in some inexpensive French or German village. The

benefit of a varied life like this would be incalculable to the young

ones, after the stagnant years at Wilgandra.

Bart was to go to an English public school the moment they touched land

after the voyage. He had but three or four years left now in which to

crowd all his school education, and he was eager to begin. In general

education and the making of moral fibre, Wilgandra had done a better

work than Eton or Rugby could ever hope to do.

'But I shall come back and be a squatter,' he always insisted. 'No

other life for me.'

'If he sticks to that,' old Stevenson said to his father, 'send him back

to me. I'll give him a start, and be thankful to do it. He's got the

stuff in him to make the kind of man this country wants.'

Then he fell to chuckling over the memory of the calf that Bart had sold

him, and so started the intimacy between them.

Hermie was to travel as much as possible, take lessons in various

subjects from good masters, and go on with her general education under

the able guidance of her mother. And there were picnics and dances and

all manner of brightness for her in her mother's campaign, to counteract

the grey monotony of her earlier girlhood.

And, when the war was over, one in khaki would step in and take the

young life into his keeping, and make all the sunshine for it that a

boundless love makes possible.

On his far battle-fields Mortimer knew now the little girl's heart was

his own. His father had written to him one of his characteristic

letters.

'I'm glad to hear, my boy, you're still alive, but it was a fine thing

that other fellow Stevenson did for his general. I take pride that my

name's the same. But perhaps you'll get a chance yet to do the same

thing. I've been looking round, and I think the hill over the way will

make the best place for your house, and I daresay two or three thousand

a year would keep you going for a time, as she's not flighty and used to

fine things, like Luke's wife. It's a pity she can't make soap and such

things, but maybe she can learn; she may favour her mother, who seems a

sensible body, more than that fool of a father of hers. I'll give the

little baggage credit, at all events, for being fond of you. A nice job

of it I had with her, when we thought it was you killed instead of that

fine fellow Mark Stevenson. She was nearly crazy, because she said you'd

never know how she loved you.'

[Illustration: ONE OF HIS FATHER'S CHARACTERISTIC LETTERS.]

So Mortimer fought the rest of his battles with a light heart, and many

a night, when the veldt slumbered restlessly beneath its covering of

white, harmless-looking tents, he lay happily awake, thinking of the

green twin hill at home and the bright cottage that was going to crown

it.

'But I shall insist that he travels about with you for a year or two

before you settle down,' said the mother; 'it will do you both good. And

he must bring you for a visit home to us at least every three years.'

The girl went on her way, shyly, sweetly, learning all she might to fit

her for the high office of woman and wife.

Miss Browne?

At first Mrs. Cameron had almost obeyed the natural impulse to dismiss

her kindly, give her a handsome present of money, and help her to find a

comfortable situation. But the vision perpetually haunted her of the

poor woman with a strand of dull hair blown loose, and her blouse and

skirt not quite meeting, and her face moist with perspiration, toiling

in one hot country town after another, getting sparks in her eyes,

cooking other peoples' food, dragging fat babies out for a walk,

battling helplessly with naughty small boys and girls, and distractedly

saying to them, 'My love, my dear.'

This while she and her own family, their eyes turned eagerly to a

glowing future, sailed thankfully away from all the misery and monotony

of the past.

She could not do it. The woman seemed to stand right in their path, a

moral responsibility for all their lives.

So while Mr. Cameron was away with Challis on the Australian tour, she

filled in all her spare time undertaking a mission to Miss Browne. Her

first battle was to make the woman respect herself, trust herself. She

ordered some clothes for her, well-cut coats and skirts, warm-coloured

home dresses with soft lace to hide the bony neck and wrists. She gave

deep thought to a style of doing her hair, and having found it, kept her

to it, insisting that she should give plenty of time to curling those

helpless strands and brushing them and getting them into good condition.

She encouraged her to form her own opinions on things, and teased her

gently out of her little eccentricities of speech. She applied herself

energetically to making her capable and efficient in the branches of

housekeeping which all these years she had so hopelessly muddled. The

mission was sheer hard, exhausting work--there were times when it seemed

almost desperate; but women have battled far harder and with far less

hope of success with the Island blacks or the far Chinese, and here was

her work come to her hand.

'Why,' cried the changed woman, at the end of a day that had seen the

accomplishment of a most respectable pie-crust, an almost invisible

patch on a coat, and a hard piece of music mastered, 'I shall be able to

ask for ten shillings a week, I am sure, when I go to the registry

office again; I never used to get more than five or six until I came to

Mr. Cameron, and I am sure I was not worth the ten he used to pay me

then.'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Cameron, 'you have finished with registry offices.

I want you to come to England with us, and help me with Floss and Roly.'

This decision she and her husband had only just arrived at; to leave her

behind, even improved as she was, would mean she would soon sink back

without stimulus into her dreary ways. So Challis gave yet one more

concert in a country town, to pay for the extra passage money and

frocks, and the future they left to look after itself. She had a

relative or two in England who might give her a home; if not, well,

unless life went very crookedly again, they would always keep a corner

for her themselves wherever they lived.

But before they had been in London six months the pleased Fates relieved

them of their anxiety.

Next door to them in the pleasant home they had made was a widower, just

getting over--and without overmuch difficulty--the loss of a wife who

had insisted upon managing his very soul as well as his house, and his

two children and his very respectable cheque-book.

His small ones were running wild--he noted the contrast between them and

Floss and Roly, whom Miss Browne seemed now to manage so admirably. The

intimacy increased; the change from his past, overruled existence to the

companionship of this gentle lady-help, who deferred humbly to his

opinions, and asked his advice, and was curiously grateful for the

smallest attention, was such a restful novelty to him that he offered

her his hand and heart and lonely little children forthwith.

And now that Fortune, so long harsh and uncompromising, had taken to

flinging gifts at the family with unstinted hand, it did not leave

Cameron himself out of its scheme of sudden generosity.

The picture of the ship had found its way safely from under Miss

Browne's bed at Wilgandra across the sea to the artist who painted in

leafy Fontainebleau pictures the world was pleased to stand and look at

long.

And the man's artist-soul rose in recognition of the passion and

strength that had gone forth into the brush that had worked so

feverishly in that far-away bush township.

An important Paris exhibition was just coming on. He rushed up to the

city with the canvas, and his influence got it in at the right time, and

saw it well hung. The second day the exhibition was opened it sold for

two hundred guineas, and the path Cameron had ached to walk on all his

life was at last open to his feet.

The day had not dropped her burdens from the backs of these people for

ever; it had merely strengthened weak shoulders with soldierly

discipline, and readjusted the weight.

Bright days, sad days, separations, meetings, temptations, love, death,

all would come along, as they always have done, as they always will.

For this is Life we fare upon, and not just a little journey to ask

smooth ground for all the way.