me towards her, reaching out his arms. "Forgive me," he said.

"Oh, no, never!" she cried with horror.

The cry had been heard outside, and Houghton entered the room, to find
his wife, all her strength gone, turning a face of horror upon Cayley.
She stretched out her arms to her husband with a pitiful cry. "Tom," she
said, "Tom, take me away."

He took her gently in his arms.

Cayley stood with his hand upon his horse's neck. "Houghton," he said
in a low voice, "I have been telling your wife what I was, and who I am.
She is shocked. I had better go."

The woman's head had dropped on her husband's shoulder. Houghton waited
to see if she would look up. But she did not.

"Well, good-bye to you both," Cayley said, stepped through the window,
and vaulted on his horse's back. "I'm going to see if the devil's as
black as he's painted." Then, setting spurs to his horse, he galloped
away through the palms to the gate.

......................

A year later Hyland the bushranger was shot in a struggle with the
mounted police sent to capture him.

The planter's wife read of it in England, whither she had gone on a
visit.

"It is better so," she said to herself, calmly. "And he wished it, I am
sure."

For now she knew the whole truth, and she did not love her husband
less--but more.

BARBARA GOLDING

The last time John Osgood saw Barbara Golding was on a certain summer
afternoon at the lonely Post, Telegraph, and Customs Station known as
Rahway, on the Queensland coast. It was at Rahway also that he first
and last saw Mr. Louis Bachelor. He had had excellent opportunities
for knowing Barbara Golding; for many years she had been governess (and
something more) to his sisters Janet, Agnes and Lorna. She had been
engaged in Sydney as governess simply, but Wandenong cattle station
was far up country, and she gradually came to perform the functions
of milliner and dressmaker, encouraged thereto by the family for her
unerring taste and skill. Her salary, however, had been proportionately
increased, and it did not decline when her office as governess became
practically a sinecure as her pupils passed beyond the sphere of the
schoolroom. Perhaps George Osgood, father of John Osgood, and owner of
Wandenong, did not make an allowance to Barbara Golding for her services
as counsellor and confidant of his family; but neither did he subtract
anything from her earnings in those infrequent years when she journeyed
al