It's really more like a well, without
much water in it, but with a rope and a bucket with a hole in it. That
bucket's the thing! You fill it a bumper, but it runs out faster than it
comes up, and you're lucky if you can pour a wineglassful into the crown
of your hat; but that wineglassful's sweeter than the last drop from the
bag; it's sweeter than honey from the honeycomb, and I shall say so all
my life!"

The boy's enthusiasm was very hard on Moya. It pricked every impression
deep in her heart for ever; she caught the contagion of his acute
receptivity, upon which the veriest trifles stamped themselves with
indelible definition; and it was the same with her. She felt that she
should never quite lose the sharp sensations of this one day of real
bush life, her first and her last.

Down the fence they fell in with frequent stragglers, and the mob
absorbed them in its sweep; then Moya made a sortie to the right, and
Ives lost sight of her through the cloud of dust in which she rode, till
the beat of hoofs came back with a scuttle of trotters, and the mob was
swollen by a score at least, and the thickening cloud pierced by Moya
radiant with success. Her habit was powdered as with sullen gold, and
the brown gold streamed in strands from her adorable head. Ives
worshipped her across the yellow gulf between their horses.

"Where's the dog?" she asked. "I'm certain that I heard one barking."

He turned his head and she heard it again, while the lagging rearguard
broke into a run.

"Yet you say you are no bushman!" remonstrated Moya. "No wonder you can
do without a four-wheeled dog!"

"It's my one worthy accomplishment," said the barker, modestly; "picked
it up in that other paddock; simply dumb with it, sometimes, when I
strike the covered-in well I was telling you about. But here we are at
the corner; there's a seven-mile fence to travel now, and then as much
again as we've done already. Sure you can stand it, Miss Bethune?"

"Is there any water on the way, if we run short?" queried Moya.

Ives considered.

"Well, there's an abandoned whim in the far corner, at the end of this
fence; the hut's a ruin, but the four-hundred-gallon tank belonging to
it was left good for the sake of anybody who might turn up thirsty. Of
course it may be empty, but we'll see."

"We'll chance it, Mr. Ives, and have another drink now!"

For it was nearing noon, and beyond the reek of the travelling mob, now
some couple of hundred stron