in
your arms and kiss her--and damn the world? I got on my horse again. She
must have thought me an ignorant brute, but I felt safer there. And when
I thought how I had nearly made a fool of myself, and been a cowardly
brute, and a rotten mate to my mate, I rode ten miles to find Jack and
get him home.

He straightened up again after a bit and went out and got another shed,
and they say that Peter M'Laughlan got hold of him there. I don't know
what Peter did to him then--Jack never spoke of it, even to me, his old
mate; but, anyway, at the end of the shearing season Jack's cheque
came home to Clara in a registered envelope, addressed in Peter's
hand-writing, and about a week later Jack turned up a changed man.

He got work as a temporary clerk in the branch government land office
at Solong, a pretty little farming town in a circle of blue hills on
the banks of a clear, willow-fringed river, where there were rich,
black-soil, river-flat farms, and vineyards on the red soil slopes, and
blue peaks in the distance. It was a great contrast to Ross's Creek.
Jack paid a deposit on an allotment of land, a bit out of town, on the
river bank, and built a little weather-board box of a cottage in spare
times, and planted roses and grape-vines to hide its ugliness by and by.
It wasn't much of a place, but Clara was mighty proud of it because it
was "our house." They were very happy, and she was beginning to feel
sure of Jack. She seemed to believe that the miserable old time was all
past and gone.

When the work at the land's office gave out, Jack did all sorts of jobs
about town, and at last, one shearing season, when there was a heavy
clip of wool, and shearers were getting L1 a hundred, he decided to go
out back. I know that Clara was against it, but he argued that it was
the only chance for him, and she persuaded herself that she could trust
him. I was knocking about Solong at the time, and Jack and I decided to
go out together and share his packhorse between us. He wrote to Beenaway
Shed, about three hundred: miles north-west in the Great Scrubs, and got
pens for both of us.

It was a fine fresh morning when we started; it was in a good season and
the country looked grand. When I rode up to Jack's place I saw his horse
and packhorse tied up outside the gate. He had wanted me to come up
the evening before and have tea with them and camp at his place for the
night. "Come up! man alive!" he said. "We'll make you a shake-down!