to ask if I could do
anything,' Mrs Hensor said.

Lady Bridget sat up in bed, for the moment her most haughty self.

'Thank you; but there's no occasion for you to trouble, Mrs Hensor. I
would have sent for you if I had required your services.'

'And I'm not aware that I was engaged to give them,' snorted Mrs
Hensor. 'It was out of consideration for Mr McKeith that I came. I've
got quite enough to do at the Quarters, and I'm really glad not to have
to trouble myself down here--what with Mr Ninnis wanting extra cooking,
and Mr Harris in such a rage over Wombo's getting away--I'm wondering
if you heard anything last night, of that, Lady Bridget? And Harris is
put out, too, over Mr Maule going off with Harry the Blower, while he
was hunting for the black-boy. However,' Mrs Hensor concluded, 'the
master will be here tomorrow to see into the rights of things.'

'How do you know that the master will be here to-morrow?' asked Bridget
sharply.

'Harry the Blower brought me a letter from Mr McKeith,' replied Mrs
Hensor with malign triumph. 'I suppose he thought you'd be too busy
doing things with Mr Maule to bother over the station affairs, and that
Mr Ninnis might be out on the run--and so he wrote to tell me what he
wanted done as he often used to before.'

Lady Bridget closed her eyes, and leaned back against the pillows
trying hard to control the muscles of her face, and not to betray her
mortification. Moreover, she was certain that Mrs Hensor had stated the
exact truth.

'I should prefer to be alone,' she said, feeling the woman's eyes upon
her.

'Then I'll go, as you don't want me,' returned Mrs Hensor. 'But if I
was you, Lady Bridget, I'd take a dose of laudanum, and get myself into
a perspiration, for I believe it's a touch of dengue fever you've got
the matter with you.'

A touch of dengue in tropical Australia may be serious or the
reverse--sharp and short and critical, or tedious and less dangerous.
Lady Bridget's case was the sharp, short kind demanding prompt
treatment. When McKeith came home the following day, he found her
delirious, and incapable of recognizing him.

Worn out as was the strong man's frame--not only with wild jealousy and
tortured love, but with sleepless nights of patrol work, days in the
shearing-shed, sharp fighting with a second conflagration--fortunately
put out before much damage had been done--and a final dispersion of
Unionist forces, Colin never for one instant relaxed his wa