towards the station, like the shreds of a white sea-fog blown too far
inland. Very quickly it approached, and the air became filled with a
pungent scent, and grew hot and stifling.

Without realizing the danger there was of the fire sweeping down on the
station, Ailleen walked back to the other end of the verandah and looked
away over the bush, and wherever she looked she saw smoke rising. The
country was on fire on every side.

A second glance in the direction she had first looked showed also that
the fire was rapidly travelling down the wind towards the station. Then
she understood, and hastily sought the blind woman.

"The bush is on fire," she said when she found her. "It is burning all
round and nobody seems to be about. We must get ready to go away in case
it comes too near."

"It will not come near here," Mrs. Dickson answered. "No fire ever has
yet. The men always turn out and stop it. That must be where Willy is. I
knew there was something when he did not come back. He is out fighting
it and saving the run. We need not be afraid."

"I don't know," Ailleen answered uneasily.

The air was becoming heavier and hotter every moment, and as she
looked, she saw how much nearer the massed clouds of smoke were rolling.

"You need not be afraid," Mrs. Dickson went on. "You may be sure Willy
is out with all the men he can muster, and they are keeping it back from
the paddocks. Willy is such a brave boy; and besides, he would do
anything rather than that harm should come to you."

"All the same I think I'll saddle----"

"Why do you never listen to what I say about Willy?" the blind woman
interrupted. "You know how anxious he is, and how he is always seeking
to please you. He is such a good boy, too. He would make----"

"I'd rather not talk about it, Mrs. Dickson," Ailleen interrupted.

She was growing impatient of the constant reference which the blind
woman made to Willy and his excellent qualities, and his sadness at her
distant bearing towards him.

"I cannot bear to have him unhappy," the elder woman said, sticking
loyally to the task the crafty youth had set her of softening the
obdurate girl to an appreciation of him and a recognition of his
possibilities as a suitor for her affections.

Ailleen, glancing round the smoke-bedimmed horizon, caught sight of the
figure of a man riding hastily across the paddock towards the house.

"There is some one coming," she said. "He seems to be riding to the back
o