ed a little that she had some money to buy things for her
house, but it was the sort of wish she found it easy to conquer and
when, in a spirit of mischief she took the tar brush with which Louis
had been caulking the sides of the hut, and tarred CASTLE LASHCAIRN on
the corrugated roof, she _saw_ Castle Lashcairn rising there.

"After all, imaginary castles are the best," she told Louis after two
days spent in clearing away dust and spiders, and limewashing the
interior. "It only needs imaginary cleaning."

He was surveying his new white shelf on which the matronly Mrs. Beeton
seemed to incline towards the sober black New Testament and give a cold
shoulder to the lean-looking "Questing Cells" and the slim "Parsifal."
He had made and patented a very wonderful reflector for their little
lamp by cutting and bending a kerosene tin in such a way that it
mirrored six times the light inside. Sitting out on the verandah he
thought out the details of an arm-chair to be made out of a barrel Mr.
Twist had given him. They sat on the edge of the verandah, their legs
swinging. He was smoking--very distastefully--a pipe because there was
plenty of strong shag at the Homestead but no cigarettes. Marcella had
been watching him; it had amazed her to see how much more calmly he had
taken the cigarette famine than she had guessed possible.

"If I can go on like this, dearie," he said at last, "there'll be no
more bogeys. I've been busy--and very happy this last week. If I'm kept
busy--"

"You'll be kept busy," she said, smiling. "When we've cleared the twenty
acres of gorse it's all to be ploughed and planted. And when that's done
and there isn't a single other thing to do, we'll start to tunnel a hole
through the middle of the earth to Lashnagar, like they did in Jules
Verne's book."

"I'm keeping my body occupied," he went on slowly. "The point is, will
that satisfy my brain, and all of me?"

She looked down the little slope on the top of which Castle Lashcairn
stood. The five gum trees stretched up to the cloudless night sky; a few
hundred yards away the lake glimmered, star-reflecting and still. To the
left the lamp of the Homestead glowed, and "Oh Dry Those Tears" started
to groan out. Marcella waited for the line that almost sounded like a
collection of bass "brrrrrs" and then she spoke.

"If you can forget yourself, my dear--get swallowed up," she said
gently, and a silence fell between them.

The days drew into weeks. Cast