impassive. When the time came for her to sign the formal
documents which made Waroona Downs hers, Wallace placed a chair at the
table; but she ignored it, bending down gracefully as she signed her
name in beautifully flowing characters.

Old Dudgeon's hands, knotted and stiff with many a day's toil, were not
familiar with the pen. As he laboured with the coarse, splodgy strokes
which ranked as his signature, the sight of the delicate curves of the
letters she had made fanned the flame of his wrath still higher. He also
stood to sign, not because she had done so, but because he scorned to
use a chair which belonged to his enemies. When he drew back from the
table he saw how she had been standing almost behind him, looking over
his shoulder as he wrote. A smile which he read as a sign of derision
was on her lips and in her eyes.

He kicked the chair viciously towards her.

"Why don't you sit down, woman?" he exclaimed.

"Because I prefer to stand--man," she replied.

It was the first time he had heard her voice, and he started at the
sound, wincing as, with one quick, furtive glance, he met her eyes
again.

"Is that all you want?" he asked Wallace abruptly.

"Thank you, Mr. Dudgeon, that is all. Will you take the gold with you,
or leave it for safety in the bank?"

"Leave it at the bank, eh?" he sneered. "No, thank you, Mr. Wallace, I
trust you as far as I trust your bank, and you know how far that is
without my telling you."

"Very good, Mr. Dudgeon. Will you watch it while it is being carried to
your buggy? There are two troopers here who have acted as my escort
from the head office. If you care to take them with you as a
protection----"

"I want neither you nor your troopers," Dudgeon snarled. "I can take
care of myself and my money, too, without anyone's help."

He watched, with undisguised suspicion, while the counted piles of
sovereigns were replaced in the bags, while the bags were carried away
and stacked in the rackety old vehicle. Then, when the tally was
complete, he walked out of the bank, climbed into the buggy, gathered up
the reins and drove away without a word or a glance for anyone.

The bitterness of defeat was rankling in him, the defeat of his lifelong
determination that never, while he was on the earth to prevent it,
should a woman live where his faith in the sex had been wrecked. It was
bitter to think how he had been foiled after all by a woman, but still
more so when the woman was o