'What a naughty Wanderer!' she exclaimed, as, slackening her rein, she leaned a little forward, stroking her horse's glossy neck, and soothing him with practised address. At the same moment the four-horse team swept past the spot, and revealed the unwonted apparition to the gaze of the passengers, male and female, who, from the fixed attention they appeared to bestow upon her, were much interested in the situation. Apparently the young lady was not equally gratified, inasmuch as she turned her horse's head towards the distant line of timber which marked the line of the homestead, and swept across the plain like the daughter of a sheikh of the Nejd.

'What a handsome girl!' said a passenger on the box-seat; 'deuced fine horse too—good across country, I should say. Not a bushranger, I suppose, driver? They don't get themselves up like that, eh?'

'That's Miss Devereux of Corindah,' answered the driver, in a hushed, respectful accent, as who should say to the irreverent querist in Britain, 'That's the squire's daughter.' 'She came up here to see if the coach was coming; we're past our time, nearly half an hour. Got thinking, I suppose, and didn't know we was so close. I cracked my whip just to let her know like.'

'But suppose her horse had thrown her,' asked the inquiring stranger, 'what then?'

'Beggin' your pardon, sir, there's mighty few horses that can do that—not in these parts anyway. She can ride anything that you can lift her on; and she's as kind-hearted and well respected a young lady as ever touched bridle-rein.'

Now ever since Corindah had been 'taken up' in the good old days when occupation with stock and the payment of £10 per annum as license fee were the only obligatory conditions encumbering the sovereign right to use, say, half a million acres of pastoral land, the adjoining 'run' of Maroobil and its proprietors had been associated in men's minds among the floating population of the district.

Both had been 'taken up,' or legally occupied, the same year. The homesteads were at no great distance from each other, so placed with the view to being mutually handy in case of a sudden call to arms when the blacks were 'bad.' More than once on either side the 'fiery cross' had been sent forth, when every available horse and man, gun and pistol, of the summoned station had been furnished.

Old Mr. Atherstone, a Border Englishman, had died soon after Brian Devereux, leaving his son Harold, then a grave boy of twelve, precociously wise and practical as to the management of stock, and a great favourite with Pollie, then a tiny fairy of three years old, who used to throw up her hands and shout for joy when Harold's pony came galloping up to the garden gate. He had watched the child grow into a tall slip of a girl, with masses of bright hair, never very neatly braided. He had seen the unformed girl ripen into a beautiful maiden, an enchanting mixture to his eye of much of the old daring, wilful nature mingled with a sweet womanly consciousness inexpressibly attractive. He could hardly recollect the time when he had not been in love with Pollie Devereux. And now, in these latter years, he told himself that there was but one woman in the world for him—nor could it ever be otherwise.

Men varied much in their dispositions. He knew that by observation and experience. There was Bob Liverstone, whose heart (as he himself repeatedly averred) was broken beyond recovery, his prospects of happiness eternally ruined, his life blasted, because of the beautiful Miss Wharton, with her pale face, raven hair, and haunting eyes, who wouldn't have him. He broke his heart over again shamelessly within six months, after unsuccessful devotion to a blonde with eyes like blue china; and finally married a lady who bore not the least resemblance in mind, body, or estate to either of her predecessors being plump, and merely pretty, but exceptionally well dowered.

These and similar divagations of the ardent male adult Harold had seen—seen with alarm and surprise primarily, then with amused assent. For himself he could as little conceive such oscillations in his own tastes and affections as he could fancy himself emulating the somersaults of an acrobat or the witticisms of a clown. No! thrice no! For a man of his deep, dreamy, passionate, perhaps originally melancholy, nature there was but one sequel possible after the deliberate choice of youth had been ratified by the calm reason of manhood. If fate denied him this happiness, all too perfect for this world—the unearthly, unutterable bliss which her love would confer—there should be no counterfeit presentment, no mocking travesty of the heart's lost illusions. He had rightly judged that as yet the girl's feeling for him was that of a pure and deep friendship, but of friendship only. The love of a sister, unselfish, sinless, seraphic, not the fiercer passion akin to hate, despair, revenge in its inverted forces, bearing along with it the choicest fruits that mortal hands can cull, yet joined in unholy joy, in perverted triumph to the groans of the eternally lost, to the endless torment, the dread despair of the prison vaults beneath.