n, asking me to stay the night at Kuryong."

"Ho! My oath! Stop at Kuryong, eh? That's cause you saved the heiress?
Well, go in and win. You won't know us when you marry the owner of
Kuryong. What's she like, Gav? Pretty girl, ain't she? Has she any
sense?"

"Much as you have," growled Blake.

"Oh, don't get nasty. Only I thought you were a bit shook on the
governess there--what about that darnce at the Show ball, eh? I say, you
couldn't lend us a tenner till Saturday?"

"No, I could not--" And this was the literal truth, for Gavan Blake
had run himself right out of money, and was living on credit--not an
enviable position at any time, and one doubly insupportable to a man
of his temperament. And again his thoughts went back to the girl he
had saved, and he pondered how different things might have been--might,
perhaps, still be.

CHAPTER XI. A WALK IN THE MOONLIGHT.

The Court at Ballarook was over, and Gavan Blake turned his horses'
heads in a direction he had never taken before--along the road to
Kuryong. As he drove along, his thoughts were anything but pleasant.
Behind him always stalked the grim spectre of detection and arrest; and,
even should a lucky windfall help to pay his debts, he could not save
the money either to buy a practice in Sydney or to maintain himself
while he was building one up. He thought of the pitiful smallness of his
chances at Tarrong, and then of Ellen Harriott. What should he do about
her? Well, sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. He would play
for his own hand throughout. With which reflection he drove into the
Kuryong yard.

When he drove up, the family had gathered round the fire in the quaint,
old-fashioned, low-ceiled sitting-room; for the evenings were
still chilly. The children were gravely and quietly sharpening
terrific-looking knives on small stones; the old lady had some
needlework; while Mary and Ellen and Poss and Binjie talked about
horses, that being practically the only subject open to the two boys.

After a time Mrs. Gordon said, "Won't you sing something?" and Mary sat
down to the piano and sang to them. Such singing no one there had ever
heard before. Her deep contralto voice was powerful, flexible, and
obviously well-trained; besides which she had the great natural gift
of putting "feeling" into her singing. The children sat spellbound. The
station-hands and house-servants, who had been playing the concertina
and yarning on the wood-heap at