bereft of breath, but flushed as much with
pleasure as with the rosy glow of the Riverina sunrise which fell upon
him even as she spoke; she was on the verandah before he recovered his
self-possession.

"Your horse'll be ready in two!" he bawled, and rushed to make good his
word. Moya had to remind him of the water-bag after all.

First and last she had not delayed him so very long, and the red blob of
a sun was but clear of the horizon when they obtained their first
unimpeded view of it. This was when they looked back from the gate
leading into Butcher-boy: the homestead pines still ran deep into the
red, and an ink-pot would still have yielded their hue.

In Butcher-boy, which was three miles across, there was nothing for them
to do but to ride after their shadows and to talk as they rode, neck
and neck, along the fluted yellow ribbon miscalled a road, between tufts
of sea-green saltbush and faraway clumps of trees.

"I wish I wasn't such a duffer in the bush," said Ives, resolved to make
the most of the first lady he had met for months. "The rum thing is that
I'm frightfully keen on the life."

"Are you really?" queried Moya, and she was interested on her own
account, for what might have been.

"Honestly," said Ives, "though I begin to see it isn't the life for me.
The whole thing appeals to one, somehow; getting up in the middle of the
night (though it was an awful bore), running up the horses (though I
can't even crack a stock-whip), and just now the station trees against
the sunrise. It's so open and fresh and free, and unlike everything
else; it gets at me to the core; but, of course, they don't give me my
rations for that."

"Should you really like to spend all your days here?"

"No; but I shouldn't be surprised if I were to spend half my nights here
for the term of my natural life! I shall come back to these paddocks in
my dreams. I can't tell why, but I feel it in my bones; it's the light,
the smell, the extraordinary sense of space, and all the little things
as well. The dust and scuttle of the sheep when two or three are
gathered together; it's really beastly, but I shall smell it and hear it
till I die."

Moya glanced sidelong at her companion, and all was enthusiasm behind
the dusty spectacles. There was something in this new chum after all.
Moya wondered what.

"You're not going to stick to it, then?"

Ives laughed.

"I'm afraid it won't stick to me. I can't see sheep, I'm no real good
wit