that she recognised
also. Then her gaze came back to the veranda. To the open portmanteaux;
the different objects still strewing the ground; and then to the
shelf-table against the wall near the hammock, and, there, to his most
cherished possessions. She knew at once his mother's work-box, the
shabby SHAKESPEARE--the portraits, and, on top of all, the piece of
gum-tree bark.

She snatched her wrists from his grasp, darted to the shelf, seized the
shrivelled pice of bark, and pressed it against her bosom as though it
had been a living thing.

'Oh, you COULDN'T burn this! ... You were going to burn it with the
rest--but you COULDN'T--any more than you could have burned your
mother's things.... I thought of it all the way--I knew that if you
could burn this, too, there would be no hope for me any more. I PRAYED
that you might not burn it.'

'But how--how did you know I was going to burn the things?' he
stammered bewilderedly.

'I saw it all--I saw you--just like this, on the veranda--so thin and
hard and miserable--and so proud, yet--and stubborn--I saw it all--saw
the bonfire ready--And I saw this piece of bark--And then something
made you stop and you put it with your mother's things instead. You
remembered--Oh! Mate, you DID understand? You DID remember--that first
night by the camp fire--and we two--just we two'--she broke off sobbing.

'You saw--you saw--' he kept saying. 'But how--how did you know? Tell
me, Mate.'

'I saw it all in a dream--at Castle Gaverick. Three times I dreamed the
same dream; and I felt, inside me, that it was a prophetic warning.
We're like that, you know, we Irish Celts. And you--though you're a
Scotchman--you used to laugh at such things! But they're true; they're
true--I've had glints of second sight before. Joan Gildea understood.
When I told her, she believed it was a warning God had sent me, and she
said I must go to you--go at once lest it should be too late. She
wanted to come with me, but it would have been difficult for her to
leave her work, and I didn't want her--I wanted to come to you all on
my own.'

'And then?--then?' he asked breathlessly.

'Oh, then I left Castle Gaverick at once, and, in London, I took my
passage--there was an E. and A. boat just going to start. Of course I
knew the route. I got out of the steamer at Leuraville, and came
straight on by train--I didn't wait anywhere. I thought I'd get out at
Crocodile Creek and pay somebody to drive me up here. But