The days passed on. The weather changed. The fresh, bright, cloudless days of the early Austral summer commenced to follow each other in unbroken peaceful beauty. The proud heart of the desolate woman was insensibly touched by the softening influences of the Great Mother. 'Bird and bee and blossom taught her'—a lesson of self-reproach and faintly shadowed amendment.
'Perhaps if I took him more easy like, he'd be a better man. Suppose he'd married Tessie, I wonder if he would have been different. She was always that quiet and patient with us all. She could get round Ned and bring him straight when no one else could. Anyhow I might have a try.'
Revolving good resolutions, Kate Trevenna, who, with all her faults, was energetic and most capable in household work, as are most of the bush-bred Australian girls of her class, set to work with a will and made her dwelling and everything within fifty feet of it as neat as a new pin. The forenoon having passed quickly in this occupation, she sat down to her mid-day meal,—a cup of tea, a slice of cold corned beef, with home-baked bread and butter of her own making,—when a traveller rode up. Him she knew well as a stock-rider on one of the far-out stations in the Monaro district.
'Come in and have a cup of tea, Billy. Let your horse go for a bit,' was the invitation by custom of the country. 'You've come a good way, by the look of him. I'm all alone, you see; Larry's gone a journey.'
'I know that, Mrs. Trevenna,' said the young fellow, taking off his saddle and putting a pair of hobbles on his horse before he permitted him his liberty; 'I've just come from Omeo.'
'Omeo? that's not where he went. He's nigh Monaro by this time, and going farther still.'
'Well, he was in Omeo last Monday,' said the stock-rider, 'or some one dashed like him. They talked as if it was Ballarat Harry. I don't know him, but anyhow Larry's bay horse Bredbo was there, for I seen him right enough. I couldn't be mistook about that. He was foaled near our old place.'
'Trevenna at Omeo! Then he never went to Monaro at all!' cried the woman, with such a look, partly of surprise and partly of wild reproach, in her eyes that the young man recoiled for an instant. Something was wrong, he saw with instinctive quickness. He made a futile effort to undo the domestic damage he felt he had brought to pass.
'Perhaps he changed his mind,' he suggested doubtfully. 'He's such a rum cove, is Larry. No one knows when he's comin' or goin' half the time.'
'I expect not,' answered the woman gloomily, as if talking to herself. 'Now look here, Billy Dykes,' she said suddenly, walking up to the man and looking into his face as if her flashing eyes could see his inmost thought, 'you and I knowed each other this years; you tell me all you heard about Larry, and keep nothing back, as you're a man.'