Suddenly a change came over her features and she stepped out on to a grassy patch. A crowd of men watched her, and their expressions showed horror and intense fear. There was perfect silence for a moment, and suddenly a voice cried out in tones so hoarse as to be unrecognizable, “My God” and a man turned and fled. All the rest of the miners followed him, their faces white and strained, and little work was done that day at the mine.

And in a little saloon near by, half the men were drinking deeply, drinking to forget the horror they had just witnessed; and they laughed brazenly and made coarse jests in their fear, but not one of them spoke to the other of what he had seen.

BOOK III
EXIT THE WORLD
(After the War)

CHAPTER I
AT WALLA BALLA

Nurse Mavis Wylton looked after her patients cheerfully; she was glad of something to do. Life had been very dull in the little township and although the advent of the two Englishmen had made her unaccountably homesick, it had done a great deal toward breaking the monotony.

In the first year of the Great War she had taken up nursing, had tended the suffering on the muddy battlefields of Flanders, had seen service under the scorching sun of Salonica, had continued her labours in Malta, Gibraltar and Egypt. She was in Cairo when the Armistice was signed, and applied for a post in Australia at the conclusion of the War.

An orphan, she had no ties in the dear old Mother Country; her only brother was sleeping in the company of thousands of others in the battle-scarred region of Ypres. She was interested in her two patients—they had come from the mine in an unaccountable manner: she heard the story of the strange woman who had accompanied them and only half believed it—it sounded so very improbable. How could it be true? What was it Mr. Travers had said? She remembered his exact words.

“Nurse, it was horrible,” he told her. “As we watched, it—the woman’s face—seemed to dry up and wrinkle until it looked like parchment. The outstretched arms grew thin and bony; the body trembled violently and crumpled up and fell to the ground,—and when I went closer all trace of the woman had vanished and there was only a little patch of brown dust on the ground and a little purple package that she had been wearing fastened to her back.” The nurse could hardly believe anything so horrible, so uncanny. Yes, poor Jez-Riah had had her wish. She had seen the sun, had drunk in God’s pure air. But the atmosphere was too rare, and she had died. Died? Nay, withered up, and returned to the dust from which she had sprung, and nothing remained of the strange, underworld creature, but a little powdery matter that was blown away to the four winds of the heaven she had just existed to see.

Both Alan and Desmond lay in a semi-comatose condition for many days. Their hardships had been so great, their experiences so terrible, that it was marvellous that they had returned sane to the upper world. As it was, both suffered from brain fever, and were now being nursed back to health and strength. The crisis over, both boys were on the high road to convalescence. Side by side in little narrow beds they lay, and gradually the knowledge of their adventures came back to them.

Mavis had just entered the room one day when Alan broke the silence. “Nurse, what day is it?”