never mentioned it? Was she afraid of rousing regret and of
awakening painful memories.

* Cleanskin--Unbranded calf.

CHAPTER 11

McKeith's absence was longer than he had expected. Lady Bridget heard
from Harry the Blower on his return round with the down-going mails
that the little bush township of Tunumburra had become the scene of a
convocation of Pastoralists called to concert measures against the
threatened strike. The mailman reported that the district was now in a
state of great commotion, and the strikers, gathering silently in armed
force, prepared to defend their rights against a number of free
labourers whom the sheep-owners were importing from the South. The men
who had killed McKeith's horses were, according to the mailman,
entrenched in the Range, awaiting developments. It was thought that
nothing would happen on a large scale until the arrival of the free
labourers and the troops, which it was said the Government was sending.
Harry the Blower talked darkly of marauding bands, ambushed foes and
perilous encounters on his road, all of which waxed in number and
blood-thirstiness after the manner of Falstaff's men in buckram. But
nobody ever took Harry the Blower's yarns very seriously.

It would have been natural for Lady Bridget to work herself up into a
state of humanitarian excitement--the O'Hara's had always espoused
unpopular causes--but since the arrival of the English mail a curious
dreaminess had come upon her. She spent idle hours in the hammock on
the veranda, and would only rouse herself spasmodically to some trivial
burst of energy--perhaps a boiling water skirmish against white ants,
or a sudden fit of gardening--planting seeds, training the wild
cucumber vines upon the veranda posts, or watering the shrubs and
flowers within the rough paling fence that enclosed the house and
garden. A new-made garden, for ornament rather than for use, for the
staple produce was grown in the Chinaman's garden by the lagoon. Young
passion-fruit vines barely concealing the fences' nakedness, a mango, a
few small orange trees now in flower. A Brazilian cherry, two or three
flat-stone peach trees and loquets--all looking thirsty for rain--that
was all. The Old Humpey, as it was called, had creepers overgrowing its
roof, a nesting-place for frogs, lizards, snakes--and Lady Bridget,
brave enough for doughty deeds, could never overcome her terror of
horned beasts and reptiles. McKeith's office, where he e