us this evening; her heart was hurt now, and she held
her hand close to it, while tears started from her eyes and glistened in
the light of the moon, which was rising over the gap ahead.

"Oh, if I could only go away from the bush!" she moaned.

The old horse plodded on, and now and then shook his head--sadly, it
seemed--as if he knew her troubles and was sorry.

She passed another clearing, and presently came to a small homestead in
a stringy-bark hollow below a great gap in the ridges--"Deadman's
Gap". The place was called "Deadman's Hollow", and looked like it.
The "house"--a low, two-roomed affair, with skillions--was built of
half-round slabs and stringy-bark, and was nearly all roof; the bark,
being darkened from recent rain, gave it a drearier appearance than
usual.

A big, coarse-looking youth of about twenty was nailing a green kangaroo
skin to the slabs; he was out of temper because he had bruised his
thumb. The girl unstrapped the parcels and carried them in; as she
passed her brother, she said:

"Take the saddle off for me, will you, Jack?"

"Oh, carnt yer take it off yerself?" he snarled; "carnt yer see I'm
busy?"

She took off the saddle and bridle, and carried them into a shed, where
she hung them on a beam. The patient old hack shook himself with an
energy that seemed ill-advised, considering his age and condition, and
went off towards the "dam".

An old woman sat in the main room beside a fireplace which took up
almost the entire end of the house. A plank-table, supported on stakes
driven into the ground, stood in the middle of the room, and two slab
benches were fixtures on each side. The floor was clay. All was clean
and poverty-stricken; all that could be whitewashed was white, and
everything that could be washed was scrubbed. The slab shelves were
covered with clean newspapers, on which bright tins, and pannikins, and
fragments of crockery were set to the greatest advantage. The walls,
however, were disfigured by Christmas supplements of illustrated
journals.

The girl came in and sat down wearily on a stool opposite to the old
woman.

"Are you any better, mother?" she asked.

"Very little, Mary, very little. Have you seen your father?"

"No."

"I wonder where he is?"

"You might wonder. What's the use of worrying about it, mother?"

"I suppose he's drinking again."

"Most likely. Worrying yourself to death won't help it!"

The old woman sat and moaned about her troubles, as o