Just before daylight the judge was wakened by his host. He saw in an instant that something terrible had happened.
Mrs. Pennethorne had disappeared in the night, her husband knew not whither!
Even with his teeth chattering in his head, and his palsied old hand rattling the candlestick, he was compelled to state his theory of her absence.
Farrington, seeing he was not responsible for his actions, acted for him. He routed out all the station hands and scoured the country. They spent all day searching the scrub, dragging the dams and waterholes, and at nightfall had to give it up as hopeless.
Farrington and Pennethorne rode home together. Passing through a rocky gully, they noticed the smoke of a camp fire floating up into the still night air, and rode up to make inquiries. The blacks were at their evening meal. One filthy girl raised her head and looked up at them from her frowsy blankets. It was Mrs. Pennethorne!
After thirteen years of civilization the race instinct had proved too strong: the reek of the camp fires, the call of the Bush, and the fascination of the old savage life had come back upon her with double intensity, and so the last theory had to be written down a failure. Q.E.D.
Cupid and Psyche
"Handsome, amiable, and clever,
With a fortune and a wife;
So I make my start whenever
I would build the fancy life.
After all the bright ideal,
What a gulf there is between
Things that are, alas! too real
And the things that might have been!"
—Henry S. Leigh.