st she said to him,
when we were together--

'Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?'

'No,' said Jack.

'Do you, Mr Wilson?' she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on
me, and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day.

'Yes,' I said, 'I do a little.' Then there was a silence, and I had to
say something else.

'Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?' I asked.

'Yes,' she said, 'but I can't get any one to play with me here of an
evening, the men are generally playing cards or reading.' Then she said,
'It's very dull these long winter evenings when you've got nothing to
do. Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he's away.'

I saw Jack winking at me urgently.

'I'll play a game with you, if you like,' I said, 'but I ain't much of a
player.'

'Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson! When shall you have an evening to spare?'

We fixed it for that same evening. We got chummy over the draughts. I
had a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away from
the pub.

Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black without committing
herself. Women have ways--or perhaps Jack did it. Anyway, next day the
Boss came round and said to me--

'Look here, Joe, you've got no occasion to stay at the pub. Bring along
your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house. You
can have your tucker here.'

He was a good sort, was Black the squatter: a squatter of the old
school, who'd shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn't see
why he should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times
with any of his old station hands that happened to come along. But he'd
married an Englishwoman after the hardships were over, and she'd never
got any Australian notions.

Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed
up for me. I'm not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed that
good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint. After tea
I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap. I don't
remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down
first. There was about two feet between us. We got very chummy and
confidential. She told me about her childhood and her father.

He'd been an old mate of Black's, a younger son of a well-to-do English
family (with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia
with a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are, with
more or less. They think they're hard don