nce to impulse. But if he had kissed her then,
she would not have rebelled.

'Colin, what are you thinking of?' she said, and he answered in a tone,
husky with pent emotion.

'I was thinking of our camp to-night--of how we should be alone
together in the starlight.... And of how I want to make you happy and
of how wonderful it all is--like some impossible dream.'

'Yes. I've been feeling too that it is like a dream,' she replied
gravely.

'A bit of nightmare so far, I'm afraid, for you, Biddy,' he said
shaking himself free from sentiment. 'But this part of it will soon be
over.'

He got up, pulled the blind down behind her, and readjusted the cabbage
leaf under her head. Just then, the train pulled up at a station where
there were selectors' holdings, and a German woman was lugging along a
crate of garden produce. He jumped out and bought another cabbage from
which he shredded a fresh cool leaf for her pillow. And at that they
laughed and he relapsed into normal commonplace.

When she got out at Fig Tree Mount, he took her across the sandy street
to the nearest and largest of the public houses which had 'Station
Hotel' printed on it in big blue letters--a glaring, crude, zinc-roofed
box with a dirty veranda that seemed a receptacle for rubbish and a
lounge for kangaroo dogs, to say nothing of drunken men. The dogs took
no notice of the male loungers, but started a vigorous barking at the
sight of a lady. There was the usual bar at one end, the usual noise
going on inside, and the usual groups of bush loafers outside. Several
riding horses were hitched up to the palings at a right angle with the
Bar, and a bullock dray loaded with wool-bales--on the top of which a
whole family appeared to reside under a canvas tilt--was drawn up in
the road. The beasts were a repulsive sight, with whip-weals on their
panting sides, their great heads bowed under the yoke and their
slavering tongues protruding. Bridget looked at everything with a wide
detached gaze, as she followed her husband along the hotel veranda.
McKeith, motioning to his wife to proceed, stopped to peer at the faces
of two men lying in a drunken sleep on the boards.

'Not my men, anyway,' he said, rejoining her. 'But that will keep.' The
place seemed deserted and in disorder. There were glimpses through the
open windows of unmade beds within, and, on the veranda, lay some red
blankets bundled together. Colin took his wife into a parlour, where
flies buzzed r