e between them. His long upper lip
closed tightly on the lower one, and he hunched his great shoulders.

'Well, that sort of argufying won't muster the cattle,' he observed
drily, plagiarising Harry the Blower. She changed the subject.

'Did you have a good muster?'

'Oh, fair! Between three and four hundred head. The water is running
still up in the range. We should have done better if that skunk Wombo
hadn't bolted.'

Lady Bridget leaned forward with interest.

'Oh! Then he HAS gone after the black-gin. Brave Wombo!'

'I wouldn't care a cuss whether he went after the black-gin or not;
she's a half-caste, by the way, and all the worse for that. And he
might stop with her, if it wasn't that he knows the country, and can
spot the gullies where the cattle hide. I've no use for
sentiment--especially black sentiment--when it's a case of a forced
sale to keep me going. My heavens! there's only one thing, Biddy, that
could break me, and it's drought. I believe we're in for a long one,
and unless I can make sales quickly and get money to sink new bores on
the run, things will go hardly with me. Harry the Blower spoke naked
truth for once in his life.'

'Oh! but there's sure to be rain soon. It looked so like it last
night,' she answered lightly.

'LOOKED so like it! Yes, and ended in wind and dust. Sure sign of
drought! I must be off.... Here, give me the LEICHARDT LAND CHRONICLE,
and don't expect me till you see me.... And by the way, Biddy, I hear
there's a Unionist Organiser going the round of the stations and
pretending to parley with the masters. Don't you be philanthropic
enough to let him open his jaws--I've told Ninnis he's to be hounded
off before he has time to get off his saddle.'

'Colin, you are unjust all round. You were very unjust to Wombo. Why
shouldn't the poor black-boy marry as well as you or anyone else?'

McKeith gave a hard laugh.

'I'm not preventing him from marrying. I only said I wasn't going to
have his gin on my station.'

'You wouldn't listen when he told you that he didn't dare go back to
his tribe--because his gin's husband threatened to kill him.'

'My sympathies are with the gin's husband. What business has Wombo to
steal another man's wife?'

'The husband broke her head with a nulla-nulla, and she loves Wombo and
Wombo loves her. I consider that any woman, whether she's black or
white, who lives with her husband while she loves another man is
committing a sin,' said Lady Bri