. He was awake and looking out. Now he has
lain down again, and as soon as I hear him snoring I shall try once
more.'

A fresh fit of shivering seized Bridget.

'This won't do,' he said, and went hurriedly into his own room which
opened a few doors down on to the veranda, and coming back with an
opossum rug on his arm and a glass of brandy and water in his hand, he
made her drink the spirits and wrapped the rug round her. Presently the
shivering ceased.

A moon-gleam between two clouds closing on each other showed her his
eyes glowing with sombre passion. She saw that he was holding himself
under stern restraint. Though where they were, the veranda running
between the end of the Old Humpey and the new house, made a kind of
passage so that they were in shadow, there was a possibility of
watchful eyes discovering their whereabouts.

'Will you go back to your room, and I'll get rid of these goats,' he
said, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way. 'I supose there isn't a
yard where I could put them, nearer than their own by the lagoon.'

'I don't think so,' she answered dully, and without stirring from where
she crouched upon the steps. When he urged her anew to go back to bed,
she answered petulantly:

'Oh, do let me be. I like the wind and the rain--they're soothing. And
I couldn't sleep now until I know that Wombo is safe in the scrub.'

He made no further protest, but set to work shepherding the goats. She
watched him drive them out of the gate till his dark form and the
piebald shapes he was driving before him were lost in the night. She
knew that it would take some little time to pen them all securely in
their fold. But the night was young yet.

From shivering, the fire of the brandy and the warmth of the fur rug
had turned her temperature to fever heat. She felt keenly excited; the
blood in her veins seemed boiling, and the occasional raindrops and
moist wind were pleasant on her face. She had gone to the end of the
veranda and stood there with long withes of the native cucumber vine
that grew over the Old Humpey swaying around her in the breeze. There
was not a light in the place. Even moon and stars were now veiled. Her
brain raced round desperate and futile schemes for eluding the
vigilance of the Police Inspector. She wished now that she had thought
of asking him to dinner and putting opium into his coffee--that was the
sort of thing they did in novels. She did not know that a less
developed brain than