by the hens that ran wild, and buried in
the earth; half a sheep wrapped in canvas, surrounded by great clouds of
flies gave evidence that it had been long dead.

"Help yourself, missus. We'll all kip together. You'll find a bag o'
flour in the hammock," said the stationmaster, and wandered off to get
on with his hotel and his station.

Marcella looked at Louis and laughed.

"What luck! Here's a chance to experiment! If we get to the station
where they want a cook, to-morrow, I'll be able to say I gave every
satisfaction in my last place."

"Always supposing we're aren't all dead before then," said Louis.

The first job was to boil water and wash the plates on which she amused
herself by tracing the remains of quite half a dozen different meals.
She felt sickened by the sight of the dead sheep; Louis seemed unmoved
as he ran an anatomical eye over it and hacked off slices with a blunt
knife. He became very wise on the subject of flapjacks and felt that
Marcella was not quite playing up to him when she preferred to make
omelets. The meal was quite a success in spite of the fact that, when it
was ready Louis had difficulty in beating up the host and the other
guests, and there was nowhere to keep warm the mutton which congealed
and stuck hard on the plates. But no one troubled about such a detail.
They ate with enjoyment and drank vast quantities of tea with much sugar
and no milk.

They had an unbearably stuffy night in the breathless railway carriage;
once Marcella went out on the platform and sat down for awhile listening
to the echo-like barking of dingoes out on the ranges. In less than five
minutes she was back again, her feet and hands prickling and sore with
the bites of ants and sandflies. She was not at all sorry when dawn came
at half-past three. She was disappointed in the creek; it had sounded
luxuriously moist from the note of pride in the stationmaster's voice
when he mentioned it. It turned out to be a suncracked water-course
with a little muddy water lying in hollows, and one or two deeper holes
from which the manganese miners got their water. She had been hoping for
a swim: she had to be content with dipping a handkerchief in one of the
hollows and wiping her face with it, since all the rest was needed for
drinking.

"Next time yous come along we'll have had a drop o' rain, an' then you
can drownd yourselfs if you want to," said the stationmaster.

They started out at four o'clock with the infor