d so often and so kindly set us up with cows, had offered
to take him, and his father had consented to let him go. George Melvyn
had a large station outback, a large sheep-shearing machine, and other
improvements. Thence, strong in the hope of sixteen years, Horace set out
on horseback one springless spring morning ere the sun had risen, with
all his earthly possessions strapped before him. Bravely the horse
stepped out for its week's journey, and bravely its rider sat, leaving me
and the shadeless, wooden sun-baked house on the side of the hill, with
the regretlessness of teens--especially masculine teens. I watched him
depart until the clacking of his horse's hoofs grew faint on the stony
hillside and his form disappeared amid the she-oak scrub which crowned
the ridge to the westward. He was gone. Such is life. I sat down and
buried my face in my apron, too miserable even for tears. Here was
another article I ill could spare wrenched from my poorly and sparsely
furnished existence.

True, our intercourse had not always been carpeted with rose-leaves. His
pitiless scorn of my want of size and beauty had often given me a
sleepless night; but I felt no bitterness against him for this, but
merely cursed the Potter who had fashioned the clay that was thus
described.

On the other hand, he was the only one who had ever stood up and said a
word of extenuation for me in the teeth of a family squall. Father did
not count; my mother thought me bad from end to end; Gertie, in addition
to the gifts of beauty and lovableness, possessed that of holding with
the hare and running with the hound; but Horace once had put in a word
for me that I would never forget. I missed his presence in the house, his
pounding of the old piano with four dumb notes in the middle, as he
bawled thereto rollicking sea and comic songs; I missed his energetic
dissertations on spurs, whips, and blood-horses, and his spirited
rendering of snatches of Paterson and Gordon, as he came in and out,
banging doors and gates, teasing the cats and dogs and tormenting the
children.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The 3rd of December 1898

It was a very hot day. So extreme was the heat that to save the lives of
some young swallows my father had to put wet bags over the iron roof
above their nest. A galvanized-iron awning connected our kitchen and
house: in this some swallows had built, placing their nest so near the
iron that the young ones were baking with the