ver seen it! The country as far as you can
look is like the floor of an enormous oven, with the sky, red and
white-hot for a roof, and all the life there is, being slowly baked
inside. The birds are getting scarce, and it seems too much trouble for
those that are about to lift their voices. Except for a fiend of a
laughing-jackass in a gum tree close by the veranda that drives me mad
with his devilish chuckling.

Well, how do you think now, that her ladyship would have stood up
against these sort of conditions? Many a time, walking up and down the
veranda when I couldn't sleep, I've thanked my stars that there was no
woman hanging on to me any more. Most of the men on the river have sent
away their women--stockmen's wives and all. There was one here at the
Bachelors' Quarters, but I packed her off before I went to Leichardt's
Town.

I'm just waiting on to get Moongarr Bill's report of the country up
north--how it stands the drought, and what the chances are for pushing
out. As for the gold find--well, I'm not banking on that. As soon as I
hear--or if I don't hear in the course of the next two or three
weeks--I shall pull up stakes, and burn all my personal belongings,
except what a pair of saddle bags will carry.

Before long, I'm going to begin packing Biddy's things. They'll be
shipped off to her all right.

When the divorce business is over, I shall make new tracks, and you
won't hear of me unless I come out on top. I've got a queer feeling
inside me that I shall win through yet.

Well, I'm finished; and it's about time. I've run my pen over a good
many sheets, and it has been a kind of relief--I began writing this
about three weeks ago. Harry the Blower--that's the mailman--comes only
once a month now, and not on time at that.

I suppose the drought will break sooner or later, and when it breaks,
the Bank is certain to send up and take possession of what's left. So
I'm a ruined man, any way.

Good-bye, Joan, old friend. I've written to the lawyer, and Biddy will
be served with the papers soon after this reaches you. I'm not sending
her any message. If she doesn't understand, there's no use in
words--but YOU know this. She's been the one woman in the universe for
me--and there will never be another.

He signed his name at the end of the letter; and that was all.

CHAPTER 12

Harry the Blower came up with his mails a day or two later. Among the
letters he brought, there were three at least of spec