t we had
in the colony.... Our shepherds were very good men, but all had their
numbers from the Governor ... they had all been convicted ... but not of
doing anything wrong...."

Oh dear!--what a mistake Gwen had made about those sheep! But how could
she have known? She knew so little about the colony--had even asked
General Rawnsley, when they were talking of Van Diemen's Land, if he
knew where "Tasmania" was! She tried to head off the pastoral
convicts--the cancelled men, who had become numbers. "When Dolly comes,
she will see the mill too. And it will go round and round by then." She
clung in a sort of desperation to Dolly and Dave, having tested their
power as talismans to drive away the black spectres that hung about.

But the mill was as Scylla to their Charybidis. "Phoebe dearest!" said
old Maisie suddenly, "when did father die?"

"When did our father die?" said Granny Marrable. "Nigh upon forty-six
years ago. Yes--forty-six."

"How can that be?--forty-six--forty-six!" The words were shadowily
spoken, as by a speaker too weary to question them, yet dissatisfied.
"How can my father have died then? That was when my sister died, and my
little girl I left behind."

"Oh, _how_ I wish she could sleep!" Gwen exclaimed under her breath.
Granny Marrable said:--"She will sleep, my lady, before very long." She
said it with such a quiet self-command, that Gwen accepted the obvious
meaning that the sleeper would sleep again, as before. Perhaps nothing
else was meant.

There had been a time, just after she first came to the strange truth of
her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the sequence of
events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by turns, either looming
large and excluding the view of the other alternately. But, that Phoebe
and Ruth were there, beside her, was the fact that kept the strongest
hold of her mind.

* * * * *

Eleven o'clock. Granny Marrable had been right, and old Maisie had slept
again, or seemed to sleep, after some dutiful useless attempts to head
off Death by trivialities of nourishment. The clock-hand, intent upon
its second, oblivious of its predecessors, incredulous of those to come,
was near halfway to midnight when Ruth Thrale, rising from beside her
mother, came to her fellow-watchers in the front-room and said:--"I
think she moved."

Both came to the bedside. Yes--she had moved a little, and was trying to
speak. Gwen, half seated, half