s, my father, in the way of birth, and fortune. I daresay, you
guessed that, Lady Bridget?'

She tossed her head back impatiently. 'Oh what DOES that matter! Go on,
please.'

'He'd been a farmer, Glasgow way'--McKeith still pronounced it
'Glesca,' 'and my mother was a minister's daughter, as good a woman and
as true a lady as ever breathed. But that's neither here nor there in
what turned out a bad business. Well, we all emigrated out here, and,
after a while, my old dad bought a station on the Lower Leura--taken in
he was, of course, over the deal, and not realising that it was
unsettled country in those days. So the whole family of us started up
from the coast to it.... He drove my mother and my two sisters just
grown up, and a woman servant--Marty--in a double buggy, and Jerry the
bullock driver and me in the dray with him and taught me to drive
bullocks. There were stock-boys, two of them riding along side.

'It took us three and a half weeks, to reach the station, averaging
about thirty miles a day and camping out each night.

'I'd like you to camp out in the Bush sometime, Lady Bridget, right
away from everything--it'ud be an experience that 'ud live with you all
your life--My word! It's like nothing else--lying straight under the
Southern Cross and watching its pointers, and, one by one, the stars
coming up above the gum trees--and the queer wild smell of the gums and
the loneliness of it all--not a sound until the birds begin at dawn but
the HOP-HOP of the Wallabies, and the funny noises of opossums, and the
crying of the curlews and native dogs--dingoes we call 'em.... Well,
there! I won't bother you with all that--though, truly, I tell you,
it's the nearest touch with the Infinite I'VE ever known.... Lord! I
remember the first night I camped right in the Bush--me rolled in my
blanket on one side of the fire, and Leura-Jim the black-boy on the
other. And the wonder of it all coming over me as I lay broad awake
thinking of the contrast between London and its teeming millions--and
the awful solitude of the Bush.... I wonder if your blood would have
run cold as mine did when the grass rustled under stealthy footsteps
and me thinking it was the blacks sneaking us--and the relief of
hearing three dismal howls and knowing it was dingoes and not blacks.'

'I'd have loved it' murmured Bridget tensely. 'Go on, please.'

'Well, I've got to come to the tragedy. It began this way through an
act of kindness on our jou