out of his safety-valve.

Hugh walked across the quadrangle, under the acacia tree, heavy with
blossoms, in which a myriad bees were droning at their work, and through
the house on to the front verandah, which looked over the wide sweep of
river-flat. Here he found his mother and Miss Harriott, the governess,
peeling apples for dumplings--great rosy-checked, solid-fleshed apples,
that the hill-country turns out in perfection. The old lady was slight
in figure, with a refined face, and a carriage erect in spite of her
years. Miss Harriott was of a languid Spanish type, with black eyes and
strongly-marked eyebrows. She had a petite, but well-rounded figure,
with curiously small hands and feet. Though only about twenty-four years
of age she had the sedate and unemotional look that one sees in doctors
and nurses---people who have looked on death and birth, and sorrow and
affliction. For Ellen Harriott had done her three years' course as a
nurse; she had a natural faculty for the business, and was in great
request among the wild folk of the mountains, who looked upon her (and
perhaps rightly) as quite equal to the Tarrong doctor in any emergency.
She knew them all, for she had lived nearly all her life at Kuryong.
When the family moved there from the back country a tutor was needed for
the boys, and an old broken-down gentleman accepted the billet at low
pay, on condition that he was allowed to bring his little daughter with
him. When he died, the daughter still stayed on, and was made governess
to the new generation of young folk. She was a queer, self-contained
girl, saying little; and as Hugh walked in, she looked up at him, and
wondered what new trouble was bringing him to his mother with the open
letter in his hand.

"Mother," said Hugh, "I have had a most extraordinary letter."

"From Mr. Grant?" said the old lady, "What does he say?"

She saw by her son's face that there was something more than usual
in the wind, but one who had lived her life, from fortune to poverty,
through strife and trial, was prepared to take things much more easily
than Hugh.

"Is it anything very serious?"

"His daughter's coming out to live here."

"What?"

"Yes, here's the letter. It only came this morning. Patsy was late, the
river is up. I'll read it to you."

Seating himself at the table, Hugh spread out the letter, and read it:--

Dear Gordon,

The last lot of wethers, though they topped the market, only realised
10/-. I t