When she had a slender thread of yarn going and the spinning wheel began its familiar, communicative little click-clatter, her mind was set to old themes. She forgot place and time as her fingers pursued their familiar track. A gay little air went fluttering moth-wise over her lips to the accompaniment of the wheel, and the little tap tapping of its treadles. She glanced at the child every now and then, laughing and telling him that his mother had found the wherewithal to keep her busy and gay, as a bonny baby's mother ought to be, and that the song she was singing was a song that the women sang over their spinning wheels in the dear country that she had come from, far across the sea.
But the shadows fell quickly. The birds were calling, long and warningly, when she carried the wheel indoors, and busied herself for the evening milking.
Wherever she went the dog that had come from the Port with them, followed. He trailed in her footsteps when she went to the creek for water, or to the cow paddock. He lay with watchful eyes on the edge of the clearing, when she sat at her spinning in the afternoon, or walked backwards and forwards crooning Davey to sleep.
At about noon on the fourth day while she was making porridge for her midday meal, the dog started to his feet and barked furiously. He had been lying stretched on the mat in the doorway. For a moment her heart stood still. Then she went to the door.
"What is it, Jo?" she asked.
The dog's eyes were fixed on the trees and scrubby undergrowth to the left of the hut. Every short hair on his lean body bristled. He growled sullenly. Later in the afternoon, when she sat in the clearing spinning and singing with Davey on his shawl beside her, he started to his feet suddenly and snarled fiercely.
Mary looked at him again questioningly and her eyes flew to the edge of the trees in the direction he pointed. No quivering leaf nor threatening sound stirred the quiet. He subsided at her feet after a moment, but his ears, kept pricked, twitched uneasily; his eyes never left the edge of the trees. Once they twisted up to her and she read in them the clear expression of a pitiful uneasiness, the assurance of deathless fidelity, a prayer almost to go into the house.
She picked up the child and walked towards the hut. The dog followed, glancing uneasily towards the edge of the clearing. She shut the door on that side of the hut and went to the back door.
"Jo! Jo!" she called long and clearly.
He flew round to her.