rough exterior of the man would close suddenly over those secret
chambers, when evening came, it would seem as though the camp fire
illuminated them once more.

After the first time or two, he allowed her to boss the camp 'lay-out.'
It was she who spread the blankets on Wombo's beds of grass tree tops
and dry herbage. Wombo and the 'big feller White Mary' (the adjective
used metaphorically as expressive of distinction) made great friends in
those days--out of which friendship sprang, alas! in due time, certain
tragic happenings. It was Lady Bridget who would set the billy boiling
and who, after one or two failures, succeeded in making excellent
johnny-cakes. She remembered her first performance in that line under
the eyes of a small group of admiring spectators--her husband 'just
waiting to see how the new-chum cook shaped,' and, as he said the
words, she, glancing up from the sheet of bark and the dough she was
kneading, caught a look in his face which was something she could never
in all her life forget. And Moongarr Bill with the horses' reins over
his arm, and the two black-boys agape, beady eyes twinkling, white
teeth glistening, emitting their queer guttural clicks of approbation,
and an occasional 'My word! Bujeri you, Lathy-chap,' the nearest they
could get to Moongarr Bill's accepted form of address. There was joy,
glory to Lady Bridget in this playing of the squaw and fending for her
man, ceasing to be the goddess and becoming the primal woman.

And the sports, and songs, and stories by the camp fire! Moongarr
Bill's yarns, Colin's exploring tales, Wombo's and Cudgee's dances and
corroboree-tunes--strange, weird music that had a fascination for Lady
Bridget. She, too, would get up and sing CARMEN'S famous air, and the
Neapolitan peasant songs of her mother's youth. Never, for sure, had
the gaunt gum trees echoed back such strains as these.

But time came when all the romance of barbarism seemed to have fizzled
out and only cruel realities remained--when work and worry turned
McKeith from the worshipping lover into the rough-tongued, irritable
bushman--when his 'hands' deserted him, his cattle died and things
generally went wrong, and when he showed himself something of the
hard-headed, parsimonious, ill-conditioned Scotch mongrel that
Steadbolt had called him. When, indeed, he seemed to have forgotten
that Lady Bridget O'Hara had graciously permitted him to worship her,
but had not bargained for being treate