ittle granite cap, at the
foot of which you saw a charming house, covered with green creepers,
and backed by huts, sheepyards, a woolshed, and the usual concomitants
of a flourishing Australian sheep station. Behind all again towered
lofty, dark hanging woods, closing the prospect.

This is Toonarbin, where Mary Hawker, with her leal and trusty cousin
Tom Troubridge for partner, has pitched her tent, after all her
spasmodic, tragical troubles, and here she is leading as happy, and by
consequence as uninteresting, an existence as ever fell to the lot of a
handsome woman yet.

Mary and Miss Thornton had stayed with the Buckleys until good cousin
Tom had got a house ready to receive them, and then they moved up and
took possession. Mary and Tom were from the first copartners, and,
latterly, Miss Thornton had invested her money, about 2,000 pounds, in
the station. Matters were very prosperous, and, after a few years, Tom
began to get weighty and didactic in his speech, and to think of
turning his attention to politics.

To Mary the past seemed like a dream--as an old dream, well-nigh
forgotten. The scene was so changed that at times she could hardly
believe that all those dark old days were real. Could she, now so busy
and happy, be the same woman who sat worn and frightened over the dying
fire with poor Captain Saxon? Is she the same woman whose husband was
hurried off one wild night, and transported for coining? Or is all that
a hideous imagination?

No. Here is the pledge and proof that it is all too terribly real. This
boy, whom she loves so wildly and fiercely, is that man's son, and his
father, for aught she knows, is alive, and only a few poor hundred
miles off. Never mind; let it be forgotten as though it never was. So
she forgot it, and was happy.

But not always. Sometimes she could not but remember what she was, in
spite of the many kind friends who surrounded her, and the new and busy
life she led. Then would come a fit of despondency, almost of despair,
but the natural elasticity of her temper soon dispersed these clouds,
and she was her old self again.

Her very old self, indeed. That delicate-minded, intellectual old maid,
Miss Thornton, used to remark with silent horror on what she called
Mary's levity of behaviour with men, but more especially with honest
Tom Troubridge. Many a time, when the old lady was sitting darning (she
was always darning; she used to begin darning the things before they
were