-night at Warraluen." Catching Mahony's eye
fixed on her with a meaning emphasis, she changed colour. "I cannot sit
at home and think, doctor. I MUST distract myself; or I should go mad."

When he was in the saddle she showed him her dimples again, and her
small, even teeth. "I want you to bring your wife to see me next time
you come," she sad, patting the horse's neck. "I took a great fancy to
her--a sweet little woman!"

But Mahony, jogging downhill, said to himself he would think twice
before introducing Polly there. His young wife's sunny, girlish outlook
should not, with his consent, be clouded by a knowledge of the sordid
things this material prosperity hid from view. A whited sepulchre
seemed to him now the richly appointed house, the well-stocked gardens,
the acres on acres of good pasture-land: a fair outside when, within,
all was foul. He called to mind what he knew by hearsay of the owner.
Glendinning was one of the pioneer squatters of the district, had held
the run for close on fifteen years. Nowadays, when the land round was
entirely taken up, and a place like Ballarat stood within
stone's-throw, it was hard to imagine the awful solitude to which the
early settlers had been condemned. Then, with his next neighbour miles
and miles away, Melbourne, the nearest town, a couple of days' ride
through trackless bush, a man was a veritable prisoner in this desert
of paddocks, with not a soul to speak to but rough station-hands, and
nothing to occupy his mind but the damage done by summer droughts and
winter floods. No support or comradeship in the wife either--this poor
pretty foolish little woman: "With the brains of a pigeon!" Glendinning
had the name of being intelligent: was it, under these circumstances,
matter for wonder that he should seek to drown doubts, memories,
inevitable regrets; should be led on to the bitter discovery that
forgetfulness alone rendered life endurable? Yes, there was something
sinister in the dead stillness of the melancholy bush; in the harsh,
merciless sunlight of the late afternoon.

A couple of miles out his horse cast a shoe, and it was evening before
he reached home. Polly was watching for him on the doorstep, in a
twitter lest some accident had happened or he had had a brush with
bushrangers.

"It never rains but it pours, dear!" was her greeting: he had been
twice sent for to the Flat, to attend a woman in labour.--And with
barely time to wash the worst of the ride's dust