Back I went to the hotel, my whole being raging against the man. In the face of this rivalry I learned what Sheilah really was to me, and for the first time I understood how I should feel if any man were to win her from me.
Next day, according to promise, I went down to the selection again, to find Sheilah sitting in the verandah. She was alone and received me very sweetly. I sat beside her talking of old days, and firmly resolved not to let her imagine that I had been in any way put out by her cousin's curious behaviour on the preceding day.
'We must celebrate your return in some way, Jim,' she said after a little while. 'It is a lovely morning, so what do you say to a ride?'
'The very thing!' I answered, only too thankful to do anything that would take me away from the house, and prevent my seeing the irate Colin again.
With that we went out to the back, and borrowing the milkboy's pony, I ran up two horses from the paddock for our use. After I had rubbed them down a bit I saddled them, and by the time I had done this Sheilah was dressed and ready. With a thrill running through me such as I had never known before, I swung her up into the saddle, and then mounted my own beast; after that, when the boy had let down the slip rails, away we went across the plains towards the hills. It was as lovely a morning as any man could wish to be out in. The soft breeze rustled among the trees and high grass, the clouds chased each other across the blue vault of heaven, the air was musical with birds, and now and again we would put up a kangaroo and send him hopping away from us as if his very life depended upon it. Sheilah was in the best of spirits and looked incomparably sweet and graceful. Just swaying to the motion of her horse as he covered the ground in a gentle canter, her body well balanced and her head thrown back, the wind nodding the feather in her pretty hat, and just a suspicion of a neat little boot showing beneath her habit, she made a picture pretty enough for a king. And now that Colin McLeod had come to make me understand how much I really loved her, I was induced to notice her beauties even more closely than before.
For nearly an hour we rode on, all the past forgotten, living only in the keen enjoyment of the present. Then, like a flash, the memory of my ride to the Blackfellow's Well—part of the very route we were now pursuing—rose before me. I saw again the dark night, the flashing tree trunks, the horses galloping on either side of me, and that horrible burden swaying on The Unknown's back. Then I saw the Blackfellow's Well, pictured myself digging that lonely grave among the rocks, and seemed again to hear the curlews crying from the pool below. I suppose something of the horror of the memory must have been reflected on my face, for Sheilah looked at me and then said,—
'Jim, what is the matter? You're as pale as death.'
'Nothing,' I answered hoarsely. 'A twinge of an old pain, that is all.'
'It must have been a bad one,' she answered quietly. 'Your face looked really ghastly.'