THE BOY
IN THE BUSH

BY

D. H. LAWRENCE

AND

M. L. SKINNER

NEW YORK

THOMAS SELTZER

1924

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. [Jack Arrives in Australia]
II. [The Twin Lambs]
III. [Driving to Wandoo]
IV. [Wandoo]
V. [The Lambs Come Home]
VI. [In the Yard]
VII. [Out Back and Some Letters]
VIII. [Home for Christmas]
IX. [New Year's Eve]
X. [Shadows Before]
XI. [Blows]
XII. [The Great Passing]
XIII. [Tom and Jack Ride Together]
XIV. [Jamboree]
XV. [Uncle John Grant]
XVI. [On the Road]
XVII. [After Two Years]
XVIII. [The Governor's Dance]
XIX. [The Welcome at Wandoo]
XX. [The Last of Easu]
XXI. [Lost]
XXII. [The Find]
XXIII. [Gold]
XXIV. [The Offer to Mary]
XXV. [Trot, Trot Back Again]
XXVI. [The Rider on the Red Horse]

THE BOY IN THE BUSH

[CHAPTER I]

JACK ARRIVES IN AUSTRALIA

I

He stepped ashore, looking like a lamb. Far be it from me to say he was the lamb he looked. Else why should he have been sent out of England? But a good-looking boy he was, with dark blue eyes and the complexion of a girl and a bearing just a little too lamb-like to be convincing.

He stepped ashore in the newest of new colonies, glancing quickly around, but preserving his lamb-like quietness. Down came his elegant kit, and was dumped on the wharf: a kit that included a brand-new pigskin saddle and bridle, nailed up in a box straight from a smart shop in London. He kept his eye on that also, the tail of his well-bred eye.

Behind him was the wool ship that had brought him from England. This nondescript port was Fremantle, in West Australia; might have been anywhere or nowhere. In his pocket he had a letter of introduction to a well-known colonial lawyer, in which, as he was aware, was folded also a draft on a West Australian bank. In his purse he had a five-pound note. In his head were a few irritating memories. In his heart he felt a certain excited flutter at being in a real new land, where a man could be really free. Though what he meant by "free" he never stopped to define. He left everything suitably vague.

Meanwhile, he waited for events to develop, as if it were none of his business.

This was forty years ago, when it was still a long, long way to Australia, and the land was still full of the lure of promise. There were gold and pearl findings, bush and bush-ranging, the back of beyond and everything desirable. Much misery, too, ignored by all except the miserable.

And Jack was not quite eighteen, so he ignored a great deal. He didn't pay much attention even to his surroundings, yet from the end of the wharf he saw pure sky above, the pure, unknown, unsullied sea to westward; the ruffled, tumbled sand glistened like fine silver, the air was the air of a new world, unbreathed by man.

The only prize Jack had ever won at school was for Scripture. The Bible language exerted a certain fascination over him, and in the background of his consciousness the Bible images always hovered. When he was moved, it was Scripture that came to his aid. So now he stood, silent with the shyness of youth, thinking over and over: "There shall be a new heaven and a new earth."

Not far off among the sand near the harbour mouth lay the township, a place of strong, ugly, oblong houses of white stone with unshuttered bottle-glass windows and a low white-washed wall going round, like a sort of compound; that there was a huge stone prison with a high whitewashed wall. Nearer the harbour, a few new tall warehouse buildings, and sheds, long sheds, and a little wooden railway station. Further out again, windmills for milling flour, the mill-sails turning in the transparent breeze from the sea. Right in the middle of the township was a stolid new Victorian church with a turret: and this was the one thing he knew he disliked in the view.

On the wharf everything was busy. The old wool steamer lay important in dock, people were crowding on deck and crowding the wharf in a very informal manner, porters were running with baggage, a chain was clanking, and little groups of emigrants stood forlorn, looking for their wooden chests, swinging their odd bundles done up in coloured kerchiefs. The uttermost ends of the earth! All so lost, and yet so familiar. So familiar, and so lost. The people like provincial people at home. The railway running through the sand hills. And the feeling of remote unreality.

This was his mother's country. She had been born and raised here, and she had told him about it, many a time, like a fable. And this was what it was like! How could she feel she actually belonged to it? Nobody could belong to it.

Himself, he belonged to Bedford, England. And Bedford College. But his mind turned away from this in repugnance. Suddenly he turned desirously to the unreality of place.

Jack was waiting for Mr. George, the lawyer to whom his letter of introduction was addressed. Mr. George had shaken hands with him on deck: a stout and breezy gentleman, who had been carried away again on the gusts of his own breeze, among the steamer crowd, and had forgotten his young charge. Jack patiently waited. Adult and responsible people with stout waistcoats had a habit, he knew, of being needed elsewhere.

Mr. George! And all his mother's humorous stories about him! This notable character of the Western lonely colony, this rumbustical old gentleman who had a "terrific memory," who was "full of quotations" and who "never forgot a face"—Jack waited the more calmly, sure of being recognised again by him—was to be seen in the distance with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat armholes, passively surveying the scene with a quiet, shrewd eye, before hailing another acquaintance and delivering another sally. He had a "tongue like a razor" and frightened the women to death. Seeing him there on the wharf, elderly, stout and decidedly old-fashioned, Jack had a little difficulty in reconciling him with the hearty colonial hero of his mother's stories.

How he had missed a seat on the bench, for example. He was to become a judge. But while acting on probation, or whatever it is called, a man came up before him charged with wife-beating, and serious maltreatment of his better half. A verdict of "not guilty" was returned. "Two years hard labour," said Mr. George, who didn't like the looks of the fellow. There was a protest. "Verdict stands!" said Mr. George. "Two years hard labour. Give it him for not beating her and breaking her head. He should have done. He should have done. 'Twas fairly proved!"

So Mr. George had remained a lawyer, instead of becoming a judge. A stout, shabby, provincial-looking old man with baggy trousers that seemed as if they were slipping down. Jack had still to get used to that sort of trousers. One of his mother's heroes!

But the whole scene was still outside the boy's vague, almost trancelike state. The commotion of unloading went on—people stood in groups, the lumpers were already at work with the winches, bringing bales and boxes from the hold. The Jewish gentleman standing just there had a red nose. He swung his cane uneasily. He must be well-off, to judge by his links and watch-chain. But then why did his trousers hang so low and baggy, and why was his waistcoat of yellow cloth—that cloth cost a guinea a yard, Jack knew it from his horsey acquaintances—so dirty and frayed?

Western Australia in the year 1882. Jack had read all about it in the official report on the steamer. The colony had three years before celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Many people still remembered the fiasco of the first attempt at the Swan River Settlement. Captain Stirling brought the first boatload of prospective settlers. The Government promised not to defile the land with convicts. But the promise was broken. The convicts had come: and that stone prison-building must have been the convict station. He knew from his mother's stories. But he also knew that the convicts were now gone again. The "Establishment" had been closed down already for ten years or more.

A land must have its ups and downs. And the first thing the old world had to ship to the new world was its sins, and the first shipments were of sinners. That was what his mother said. Jack felt a certain sympathy. He felt a sympathy with the empty "Establishment" and the departed convicts. He himself was mysteriously a "sinner." He felt he was born such: just as he was born with his deceptive handsome look of innocence. He was a sinner, a Cain. Not that he was aware of having committed anything that seemed to himself particularly sinful. No, he was not aware of having "sinned." He was not aware that he ever would "sin."

But that wasn't the point. Curiously enough, that wasn't the point. The men who commit sins and who know they commit sins usually get on quite well with the world. Jack knew he would never get on well with the world. He was a sinner. He knew that as far as the world went, he was a sinner, born condemned. Perhaps it had come to him from his mother's careless, rich, uncanny Australian blood. Perhaps it was a recoil from his father's military-gentleman nature. His father was an officer in Her Majesty's Army. An officer in Her Majesty's Army. For some reason, there was always a touch of the fantastic and ridiculous, to Jack, in being an officer in Her Majesty's Army. Quite a high and responsible officer, usually stationed in command in one or other of Her Britannic Majesty's Colonies.

Why did Jack find his father slightly fantastic? Why was that gentleman in uniform who appeared occasionally, very resplendent and somehow very "good," why was he always unreal and fantastic to the little boy left at home in England? Why was he even more fantastic when he wore a black coat and genteel grey trousers? He was handsome and pleasant, and indisputably "good." Then why, oh, why should he have appeared fantastic to his own little boy, who was so much like him in appearance?

"The spitten image!" one of his nurses had said. And Jack never forgave it. He thought it meant a spat-upon image, or an image in spit. This he resented and repudiated absolutely, though it remained vague.

"Oh, you little sinner!" said the same nurse, half caressingly. And this the boy had accepted as his natural appellation. He was a little sinner. As he grew older, he was a young sinner. Now, as he approached manhood, he was a sinner without modification.

Not, we repeat, that he was ever able to understand wherein his sinfulness lay. He knew his father was a "good man."—"The colonel, your father, is such a good man, so you must be a good little boy and grow up like him."—"There is no better example of an English gentleman than your father, the general. All you have to do is to grow up like him."

Jack knew from the start that he wouldn't. And therein lay the sin, presumably. Or the root of the sin.

He did not dislike his father. The general was kind and simple and amiable. How could anyone dislike him? But to the boy he was always just a little fantastic, like the policeman in a Punch-and-Judy show.

Jack loved his mother with a love that could not but be intermittent, for sometimes she stayed in England and "lived" with him, and more often she left him and went off with his father to Jamaica or some such place—or to India or Khartoum, names that were in his blood—leaving the boy in the charge of a paternal Aunt. He didn't think much of the Aunt.

But he liked the warm, flushed, rather muddled delight of his mother. She was a handsome, ripe Australian woman with warm colouring and soft flesh, absolutely kindly in a humorous, off-hand fashion, warm with a jolly sensuousness, and good in a wicked sort of way. She sat in the sun and laughed and refused to quarrel, refused also to weep. When she had to leave her little boy a spasm would contract her face and make her look ugly, so the child was glad if she went quickly. But she was in love with her husband, who was still more in love with her, so off she went laughing sensuously across seven seas, quarrelling with nobody, pitching her camp in true colonial fashion wherever she found herself, yet always with a touch of sensuous luxury, Persian rugs and silk cushions and dresses of rich material. She was the despair of the true English wives, for you couldn't disapprove of her, she was the dearest thing imaginable, and yet she introduced a pleasant, semi-luxurious sense of—of what? Why, almost of sin. Not positive sin. She was really the dearest thing imaginable. But the feeling that there was no fence between sin and virtue. As if sin were, so to speak, the unreclaimed bush, and goodness were only the claims that the settlers had managed to fence in. And there was so much more bush than settlement. And the one was as good as the other, save that they served different ends. And that you always had the wild and endless bush all round your little claim, and coming and going was always through the wild and innocent, but non-moral bush. Which non-moral bush had a devil in it. Oh, yes! But a wild and comprehensible devil, like bush-rangers who did brutal and lawless things. Whereas the tame devil of the settlement, drunkenness and greediness and foolish pride, he was more scaring.

"My dear, there's tame innocence and wild innocence, and tame devils and wild devils, and tame morality and wild morality. Let's camp in the bush and be good." That was her attitude, always. "Let's camp in the bush and be good." She was an Australian from a wild Australian homestead. And she was like a wild sweet animal. Always the sense of space and lack of restrictions, and it didn't matter what you did, so long as you were good inside yourself.

Her husband was in love with her, completely. To him it mattered very much what you did. So perhaps her easy indifference to English rail-fences satisfied in him the iconoclast that lies at the bottom of all men.

She was not well-bred. There was a certain "cottage" geniality about her. But also a sense of great, unfenced spaces, that put the ordinary ladylikeness rather at a loss. A real colonial, from the newest, wildest, remotest colony.

She loved her little boy. But also she loved her husband, and she loved the army life. She preferred, really, to be with her husband. And you can't trail a child about. And she lived in all the world, and she couldn't bear to be poked in a village in England. Not for long. And she was used to having men about her. Mostly men. Jolly men.

So her heart smarted for her little boy. But she had to leave him. And he loved her, but did not dream of depending on her. He knew it as a tiny child. He would never have to depend on anybody. His father would pay money for him. But his father was rather jealous of him. Jealous even of his beauty as a tiny child, in spite of the fact that the child was the "spitten" image of the father: dark blue eyes, curly hair, peach-bloom skin. Only the child had the easy way of accommodating himself to life and circumstances, like his mother, and a certain readiness to laugh, even when he was by himself. The easy laugh that made his nurse say "You little sinner!"

He knew he was a little sinner. It rather amused him.

Jack's mind jolted awake as he made a grab at his hat, nearly knocking it off, realizing that he was being introduced to two men: or that two men were being introduced to him. They shook hands very casually, giggling at the same time to one another in a suppressed manner. Jack blushed furiously, embarrassed, not knowing what they were laughing at.

Just beside him, the Jewish gentleman was effusively greeting another Jewish gentleman. In fact, they were kissing: which made Jack curl with disgust. But he couldn't move away, because there were bales behind him, people on two sides, and a big dog was dancing and barking in front of him, at something which it saw away below through a crack in the wharf timbers. The dog seemed to be a mixture of wolf and greyhound. Queer specimen! Later, he knew it was called a kangaroo dog.

"Mr. A. Bell and Mr. Swallow. Mr. Jack Grant from England." This was Mr. George introducing him to the two men, and going on without any change, with a queer puffing of the lips: "Prh! Bah! Wolf and Hider! Wolf and Hider!"

This left Jack, completely mystified. And why were Mr. Bell and Mr. Swallow laughing so convulsedly? Was it the dog?

"You remember his father, Bell, out here in '59.—Captain Grant. Married Surgeon-Captain Reid's youngest daughter, from Woolamooloo Station."

The gentleman said: "Pleased to make your acquaintance," which was a phrase that embarrassed Jack because he didn't know what to answer. Should one say, "Thank you!"—or "The pleasure is mine!" or "So am I to make yours!" He mumbled: "How do you do!"

However, it didn't matter, for the two men kept the laugh between themselves, while Mr. George took on a colonial distrait look, then blew out his cheeks and ejaculated: "Mercy and truth have met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other." This was said in a matter-of-fact way. Jack knew it was a quotation from the Psalms, but not what it was aimed at. The two men were laughing more openly at the joke.

Was the joke against himself? Was it his own righteousness that was funny? He blushed furiously once more.

II

But Mr. George ignored the boy's evident embarrassment, and strolled off with one of the gentlemen—whether Bell or Swallow, Jack did not know—towards the train.

The remaining gentleman—either Bell or Swallow—clapped the uncomfortable youth comfortably on the shoulder.

"New chum, eh?—Not in the know? I'll tell you."—They set off after the other two.

"By gad, 's a funny thing! You've got to laugh if old George is about, though he never moves a muscle. Dry as a ship's biscuit. D'y'see the Jews kissing? They've been at law for two years, those two blossoms. One's name is Wolf and the other's Hider, and Mr. George is Wolf's attorney. Never able to do anything, because you couldn't get Hider into the open.—See the joke? Hider! Sneak Hider! Hider under the rafters! Hider hidden! And the Wolf couldn't unearth him. Though George showed up Wolf for what he is: a mean, grasping, contentious mongrel of a man. Now they meet to kiss. See them? The suit ended in a mush. But that dog there hunting a rat right under their feet—wasn't that beautiful? Old George couldn't miss it.—'Mercy and truth have met together,' ha! ha! However he finds his text for everything, beats me—"

Jack laughed, and walked in a daze beside his new acquaintance. He felt he had fallen overhead into Australia, instead of arriving naturally.

The wood-eating little engine was gasping in front of a little train of open carriages. Jack remarked on her tender piled high with chunks of wood.

"Yes, we stoke 'er with timber. We carry all we can. And if we're going a long way, to York, when she's burned up all she can carry she stops in the bush and we all get down, passengers and all, to chop a new supply. See the axe there? She carries half a dozen on a long trip."

The three men, all wearing old-fashioned whiskers, pulled out tobacco pouches the moment they were seated, and started their pipes. They were all stout, and their clothes were slack, and they behaved with such absolute unconcern that it made Jack self-conscious.

He sat rather stiffly, remembering the things his mother had told him. Her father, Surgeon-Captain Reid, had arrived at the Swan River on a man-of-war, on his very first voyage. He had landed with Captain Fremantle from H. M. S. "Challenger," when that officer took formal possession of the country in the name of His Majesty King George IV. He had seen the first transport, the "Parmelia," prevented by heavy gales from landing her goods and passengers on the mainland, disembark all on Garden Island, where the men of the "Challenger" were busy clearing ground and erecting temporary houses. That was in midwinter, June 1827: and Jack's grandfather! Now it was midwinter, June 1882: and mere Jack.

Midwinter! A pure blue sky and a warm, crystal air. The brush outside green, rather dull green, the sandy country dry. It was like English June, English midsummer. Why call it midwinter? Except for a certain dull look of the bushes.

They were passing the convict station. The "Establishment" had not lasted long; from about 1850 to 1870. Not like New South Wales, which had a purely convict origin. Western Australia was more respectable.

He remembered his mother always praised the convicts, said they had been a blessing to the colony. Western Australia had been too big and barren a mouthful for the first pioneers to chew, even though they were gentlemen of pluck and education and bit off their claims bravely. Came the rush that followed occupation, a rush of estimable and highly respectable British workmen. But even these were unprepared for the hardships that awaited them in Western Australia. The country was too much for them.

It needed the convicts to make a real impression: the convicts with their law, and discipline, and all their governmental outfit: and their forced labour. Soldiers, doctors, lawyers, spiritual pastors and earthly masters . . . and the convicts condemned to obey. This was the beginning of the colony.

Thought speaks! Mr. Swallow, identified as the gentleman with the long, lean ruddy face and large nose and vague brown eye, leaned forward and jerked his pipe stem towards the open window.

"See that beautiful road running through the sand, sir? That road extends to Perth and over the Causeway and away up country, branching in all directions, like the arteries of the human body. Built by the sappers and miners with convict labour, sir. Yes with convict labour. Also the bridge over which we are crossing."

Jack looked out at the road, but was much more enchanted by the full, soft river of heavenly blue water, on whose surface he looked eagerly for the black swans. He didn't see any.

"Oh yes! Oh yes! You'll find 'em wild in their native state a little way up," said Mr. Swallow.

Beyond the river were sheets of sand again, white sand, stretching around on every side.

"It must have been here that the Carpenter wept—" Jack said in his unexpected young voice that was still slightly hoarse, as he poked his face out of the window.

The three gentlemen were silent in passive consternation, till Mr. George swelled his cheeks and continued:

"Like anything to see such quantities of sand." Then he snorted and blew his nose.

Mr. Bell at once recognized the Westralian joke, which had been handed on to Jack by his mother.

"Hit it, my son!" he cried, clapping his hands on his knees. "In the first five minutes. Useless! Useless! A gentleman of discernment, that's what you are. Just the sort we want in this colony—a gentleman of discernment. A gentleman without it planted us here, fifty years ago in the blank, blank sand. What's the consequence? Clogged, cloyed, cramped, sand-smothered, that's what we are."

"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Swallow.

"Sorrow, Sin, and Sand," repeated Mr. Bell.

Jack was puzzled and amused by their free and easy, confidential way, which was still a little ceremonious. Slightly ceremonious, and in their shirt-sleeves, so to speak. The same with their curious, Cockney pronunciation, their accurate grammar and their slight pomposity. They never said "you," merely "y'"—"That's what y'are." And their drawling, almost sneering manner was very odd, contrasting with the shirtsleeves familiarity, the shabby clothes and the pleasant way they had of nodding at you when they talked to you.

"Yes, yes, Mr. Grant," continued Mr. Bell, while Jack wished he wouldn't Mister him—"A gentleman without discernment induced certain politicians in the British Cabinet to invest in these vast areas. This same gentleman got himself created King of Groperland, and came out here with a small number of fool followers. These fool followers, for every three quid's worth of goods they brought with them, were given forty acres of land apiece—"

"Of sand," said Mr. George.

"—and a million acres of fine promises," continued Mr. Bell unmoved. "Therefore the fool followers, mostly younger sons of good family, anxious to own property—"

"In parties of five females to one male—Prrrh!" snorted Mr. George.

"—came. They were informed that the soil was well adapted to the cultivation of tobacco! Of cotton! Of sugar! Of flax! And that cattle could be raised to supply His Majesty's ships with salt beef—and horses could be reared to supply the army in India—"

"With Kangaroos and Wallabies."

"—the cavalry, that is. So they came and were landed in the sand—"

"And told to stick their head in it, so they shouldn't see death staring at 'em."

"—along with the goods they had brought."

"A harp!" cried Mr. George. "My mother brought a harp and a Paisley shawl and got five hundred acres for 'em—estimated value of harp being twenty guineas. She'd better have gone straight to heaven with it."

"Yes, sir!" continued Mr. Bell, unheeding.

"No, sir!" broke in Mr. George. "Do you wish me unborn?"

Mr. Bell paused to smile, then continued:

"Mr. Grant, sir, these gentle ladies and gentlemen were dumped in the sand along with their goods. Well, there were a few cattle and sheep and horses. But what else? Harps. Paisley shawls. Ornamental glass cases of wax fruit, for the mantelpiece; family Bibles and a family coach, sir. For that family coach, sir, the bringer got a thousand acres of land. And it ended its days where they landed it, on the beach, for there wasn't an inch of road to drive it over, nor anywhere to drive it to. They took off its wheels and there it lay. I myself have sat in it."

"Ridden in his coach," smiled Mr. George.

"My mother," continued Mr. Bell, "was a clergyman's daughter. I myself was born in a bush humpy, and my mother died shortly after—"

"Of chagrin! Of chagrin!" muttered Mr. George.

"We will draw a veil over the sufferings of those years—"

"Oh, but we made good! We made good!" put in Mr. Swallow comfortably. "What are you grousing about? We made good. There you sit, Bell, made of money, and grousing, anybody would think you wanted a loan of two bob."

"By the waters of Babylon there we sat down—" said Mr. George.

"Did we! No we didn't. We rowed up the Swan River. That's what my father did. A sturdy British yeoman, Mr. Grant."

"Where did he get the boat from?" asked Mr. Bell.

"An old ship. I was a baby, sir, in a tartan frock. Remember it to this day, sitting in my mother's lap. My father got that boat off a whaler. It had been stove in, and wasn't fit for the sea. But he made it fit for the river, and they rowed up the Swan—my father and a couple of 'indented' servants, as we called them. We landed in the Upper Swan valley. I remember that camp fire, sir, as well as I remember anything."

"Better than most things," put in Mr. George.

"We cleared off the scrub, we lifted the stones into heaps, we planted corn and wheat—"

"The babe in the tartan frock steering the plough."

"Yes, sir, later on.—Our flocks prospered, our land bore fruit, our family flourished—"

"On milk and honey—"

"Oh, cry off, Swallow!" ejaculated Mr. Bell. "Your father fought flood and drought for forty odd years. The floods of '62 broke his heart, and the floods in '72 ruined you. And this is '82, so don't talk too loud."

"Ruined! When was I ever ruined?" cried Mr. Swallow. "Sheep one-hundred-and-ten per cent—for some herds, as you know, gentlemen, throw twins and triplets. Cattle ninety per cent, horses fifty: and a ready market for 'em all."

"Pests," Mr. Bell was saying, "one million per cent. Rust destroys fourteen thousand acres of wheat crop, just as the country is getting on its feet. Dingoes breed 135 per cent, and kill sheep to match. Cattle run wild and are no more seen. Horses cost the eyes out of your head before you can catch 'em, break 'em, train 'em and ship 'em to the Indian market."

"Moth and rust! Moth and rust!" murmured Mr. George absently.

III

Jack, with the uncomfortable philosophy of youth, sat still and let the verbal waters rage. Until he was startled by a question from Mr. George.

"Well, sir, what were you sent out for?"

This was a colonial little joke at the "Establishment" identity's expense. But unfortunately it hit Jack too. He had been sent gut, really, because he was too tiresome to keep at home. Too fond of "low" company. Too often a frequenter of the stables. Too indifferent to the higher claims of society. They feared a waster in the bud. So they shipped the bud to the antipodes, to let it blossom there upside down.

But Jack was not going to give himself away.

"To go on the land, sir," he replied. Which was true.—But what had his father said in the letter? He flushed and looked angry, his dark blue eyes going very dark, "I was expelled from school," he added calmly. "And I was sent down from the Agricultural College. That's why I have come out a year before my time. But I was coming—to go on the land—anyway—"

He ended in a stammer. He rather hated adults: he definitely hated them in tribunal.

Mr. George held up his hand deprecatingly.

"Say nothing! Say nothing! Your father made no mention of anything. Tell us when you know us, if y'like. But you aren't called on to indict yourself.—That was a silly joke of mine. Forget it.—You came to go on the land, as your father informs me.—I knew your father, long before you were born. But I knew your mother better."

"So did I," said Mr. Swallow. "And grieved the day that ever a military gentleman carried her away from Western Australia. She was one of our home-grown flowers, was Katie Reid, and I never saw a Rose of England that could touch her."

Jack now flushed deeper than ever.

"Though," said Mr. George slyly, "if you've got a prank up y'r sleeve, that you can tell us about—come on with it, my son. We've none of us forgotten being shipped to England for a schooling."

"Oh well!" said Jack. He always said "Oh well!" when he didn't know what to say. "You mean at the Agricultural College? Oh well!—Well, I was the youngest there, stableboy and harness-cleaner and all that. Oh well! You see there'd been a chivoo the night before. The lads had a grudge against the council, because they gave us bread and cheese, and no butter, for supper, and cocoa with no milk. And we weren't just little nippers. We were—Oh well! Most of the chaps were men, really—eighteen—nineteen—twenty. As much as twenty-three. I was the youngest. I didn't care. But the chaps were different. There were many who had failed at the big entrance exams for the Indian Civil, or the Naval or Military, and they were big, hungry chaps, you can bet—"

"I should say so," nodded Mr. George approvingly.

"Well, there was a chivoo. They held me on their shoulders and I smashed the Principal's windows."

You could see by Jack's face how he had enjoyed breaking those windows.

"What with?" asked Mr. George.

"With a wooden gym club."

"Wanton destruction of property. Prrrh!"

"The boss was frightened. But he raised Old Harry and said he'd go up to town and report us to the council. So he ordered the trap right away, to catch the nine o'clock train. And I had to take the trap round to the front door—"

Here Jack paused. He didn't want to go further.

"And so—" said Mr. George.

"And so, when I stepped away from the horse's head, the Principal jerked the reins in the nasty way he had and the horse bolted."

"Couldn't the fellow pull her up? Man in a position like that ought to know how to drive a horse."

Jack watched their faces closely. On his own face was that subtle look of innocence, which veiled a look of life-and-death defiance.

"The reins weren't buckled into the bit, sir. No man could drive that horse," he said quietly.

A look of amusement tinged with misgiving spread over Mr. George's face. But he was a true colonial. He had to hear the end of a story against powers-that-be.

"And how did it end?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," said Jack. "He broke his leg in the accident."

The three Australians burst into a laugh. Chiefly because when Jack said, "I'm sorry," he really meant it. He was really sorry for the hurt man. But for the hurt Principal he wasn't sorry. As soon as the Principal was on the ground with a broken leg, Jack saw only the hurt man, and none of the office. And his heart was troubled for the hurt man.

But if the mischief was to do again, he would probably do it. He couldn't repent. And yet his feelings were genuinely touched. Which made him comical.

"You're a corker!" said Mr. George, shaking his head with new misgiving.

"So you were sent down," said Mr. Bell. "And y'r father thought he'd better ship you straight out here, eh? Best thing for you, I'll be bound. I'll bet you never learned a ha'porth at that place."

"Oh well! I think I learned a lot."

"When to sow and when to reap and a latin motto attached!"

"No, sir, not that. I learned to vet."

"Vet?"

"Well sir, you see, the head groom was a gentleman veterinary surgeon and he had a weakness, as he called it. So when he was strong he taught me to vet, and when he had his attacks, I'd go out with the cart and collect him at a pub and bring him home under the straw, in return for kindness shown."

"A nice sort of school! Prrrh! Bahl" snorted Mr. George.

"Oh, that wasn't on the curriculum, sir. My mother says there'll be rascals in heaven, if you look for them."

"And you keep on looking, eh?—Well—I wouldn't, if I were you. Especially in this country, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go vetting any more for any drunken groom in the world, if I were you. Nor breaking windows, nor leaving reins unbuckled either. And I'll tell you for why. It becomes a habit. You get a habit of going with rascals, and then you're done. Because in this country you'll find plenty of scamps, and plenty of wasters. And the sight of them is enough—nasty, low-down lot.—This is a great big country, where an honest man can go his own way into the back of beyond, if he likes. But the minute he begins to go crooked, or slack, the country breaks him. It breaks him, and he's neither fit for God nor man any more. You beware of this country, my boy, and don't try to play larks with it. It's all right playing a prank on an old fool of a fossil out there in England. They need a few pranks played on them, they do. But out here—no! Keep all your strength and all your wits to fight the bush. It's a great big country, and it needs men, men, not wasters. It's a great big country, and it wants men. You can go your way and do what you want: take up land, go on a sheep station, lumber, or try the goldfields. But whatever you do, live up to your fate like a man. And keep square with yourself. Never mind other people. But keep square with yourself."

Jack, staring out of the window, saw miles of dull dark-green scrub spreading away on every side to a bright sky-line. He could hear his mother's voice:

"Earn a good opinion of yourself and never mind the world's opinion. You know when there's the right glow inside you. That's the spirit of God inside you."

But this "right glow" business puzzled him a little. He was inclined to believe he felt it while he was smashing the Principal's window-glass, and while he was "vetting" with the drunken groom. Yet the words fascinated him: "The right glow inside you—the spirit of God inside you."

He sat motionless on his seat, while the Australians kept on talking about the colony.—"Have y'patience? Perseverance? Have ye that?—She wants y' and y' offspring. And the bones y'll leave behind y'. All of y' interests, y' hopes, y' life, and the same of y' sons and sons' sons. An' she doesn't care if y' go nor stay, neither. Makes no difference to her. She's waiting, drowsy. No hurry. Wants millions of yer. But she's waited endless ages and can wait endless more. Only she must have men—understand? If they're lazy derelicts and ne'er-do-wells, she'll eat 'em up. But she's waiting for real men—British to the bone—"

"The lad's no more than a boy, yet, George. Dry up a bit with your men—British to the bone."

"Don't toll at me, Bell.—I've been here since '31, so let me speak. Came in old sailing-ship, 'Rockingham'—wrecked on coast—left nothing but her name, township of Rockingham. Nice place to fish.—Was sent back to London to school, '41—in another sailing-vessel and wasn't wrecked this time. 'Shepherd,' laden colonial produce.—The first steam vessel didn't come till '45—the 'Driver.' Wonderful advancement.—Wonderful advancement in the colony too, when I came back. Came back a notary.—Couple of churches, Mill Street Jetty, Grammar School opened, Causeway built, lot of exploration done. Eyre had legged it from Adelaide—all in my time, all in my time—"

IV

Jack felt it might go on forever. He was becoming stupefied. Mercifully, the train jerked to a standstill beside a wooden platform, that was separated from a sandy space by a picket fence. A porter put his hand to his mouth and yelled, "Perth," just for the look of the thing—because where else could it be? They all burst out of the train. The town stood up in the sand: wooden houses with wooden platforms blown over with sand.

And Mr. George was still at it.—"Yes, Bell, wait for the salty sand to mature. Wait for a few of us to die—and decay! Mature—manure, that's what's wanted. Dead men in the sand, dead men's bones in the gravel. That's what'll mature this country. The people you bury in it. Only good fertilizer. Dead men are like seed in the ground. When a few more like you and me, Bell, are worked in—"

[CHAPTER II]

THE TWIN LAMBS

I

Jack was tired and a little land-sick, after the long voyage. He felt dazed and rather unhappy, and saw as through a glass, darkly. For he could not yet get used to the fixed land under his feet, after the long weeks on the steamer. And these people went on as if they were wound up, curiously oblivious of him and his feelings. A dream world, with a dark glass between his eyes and it. An uneasy dream.

He waited on the platform. Mr. George had again disappeared somewhere. The train was already backing away.

It was evening, and the setting sun from the west, where the great empty sea spread unseen, cast a radiance in the etherealized air, melting the brick shops and the wooden houses and the sandy places in a sort of amethyst glow. And again Jack saw the magic clarity of this new world, as through a glass, darkly. He felt the cool snap of night in the air, coming strange and crude out of the jewel sky. And it seemed to him he was looking through the wrong end of a field-glass, at a far, far country.

Where was Mr. George? Had he gone off to read the letter again, or to inquire about the draft on the bank? Everyone had left the station, the wagonette cabs had driven away. What was to be done? Ought he to have mentioned an hotel? He'd better say something. He'd better say—

But here was Mr. George, with a serious face, coming straight up to say something.

"That vet," he said, "did he think you had a natural gift for veterinary work?"

"He said so, sir. My mother's father was a naval surgeon—if that has anything to do with it."

"Nothing at all.—I knew the old gentleman—and another silly old fossil he was, too.—But he's dead, so well make the best of him.—No, it was your character I wanted to get at.—Your father wants you to go on a farm or station for twelve months, and sends a pound a week for your board. Suppose you know—?"

"Yes—I hope it's enough."

"Oh, it's enough, if you're all right yourself—I was thinking of Ellis' place. I've got the twins here now. They're kinsmen of yours, the Ellises—and of mine, too. We're all related, in clans and cliques and gangs, out here in this colony. Your mother belongs to the Ellis clan.—Well, now. Ellis' place is a fine home farm, and not too far. Only he's got a family of fine young lambs, my step-sister's children into the bargain. And y'see, if y're a wolf in sheep's clothing—for you look mild enough—why, I oughtn't be sending you among them. Young lasses and boys bred and reared out there in the bush, why—. Come now, son—y' father protected you by silence.—But you're not in court, and you needn't heed me. Tell me straight out what you were expelled from your Bedford school for."

Jack was silent for a moment, rather pale about the nose. "I was nabbed," he said in a colourless voice, "at a fight with fists for a purse of sovereigns, laid either side. Plenty of others were there. But they got away, and the police nabbed me for the school colours on my cap. My father was just back from Ceylon, and he stood by me. But the Head said for the sake of example and for the name of the school I'd better be chucked out. They were talking about the school in the newspapers. The Head said he was sorry to expel me."

Mr. George blew his nose into a large yellow red-spotted handkerchief, and looked for a few moments into the distance.

"Seems to me you let yourself be made a bit of a cat's paw of," he said dubiously.

"I suppose it's because I don't care," said Jack.

"But you ought to care.—Why don't y'?"

There was no answer.

"You'll have to care some day or other," the old man continued.

"Do you know, sir, which hotel I shall go to?" asked Jack.

"You'll go to no hotel. You'll come home with me.—But mind y'. I've got my two young nieces, Ellis' twins, couple of girls, Ellis' daughters, where I'm going to send you. They're at my house. And there's my other niece, Mary, who I'm very fond of. She's not an Ellis, she's a Rath, and an orphan, lives with her Aunt Matilda, my sister. They don't live with me. None of 'em live with me. I live alone, except for a good, plain cook, since my wife died.—But I tell you, they're visiting me. And I shall look to you to behave yourself, now: both here and at Wandoo, which is Ellis' station. I'll take you there in the morning.—But y'see now where I'm taking you: among a pack of innocent sheep that's probably never seen a goat to say Boh! to—or Baa! if you like—makes no difference. We don't raise goats in Western Australia, as I'm aware of.—But I'm telling you, if you're a wolf in sheep's clothing—. No, you needn't say anything. You probably don't know what you are, anyhow. So come on. I'll tell somebody to bring your bags—looks a rare jorum to me—and we'll walk."

II

They walked off the timber platform into the sand, and Jack had his first experience of "sand-groping." The sand was thick and fine and soft, so he was glad to reach the oyster-shell path running up Wellington Street, in front of the shops. They passed along the street of brick cottages and two-storied houses, to Barrack Street, where Jack looked with some surprise on the pretentious buildings that stood up in the dusk: the handsome square red brick tower of the Town Hall, and on the sandy hill to the left, the fine white edifice of the Roman Catholic Church, which building was already older than Jack himself. Beyond the Town Hall was the Church of England. "See it!" said Mr. George. "That's where your father and mother were married. Slap-dash, military wedding, more muslin and red jackets than would stock a shop."

Mr. George spoke to everybody he met, ladies and gentlemen alike. The ladies seemed a bit old-fashioned, the gentlemen all wore nether garments at least four sizes too large for them. Jack was much piqued by this pioneering habit. And they all seemed very friendly and easy-going, like men in a pub at home.

"What did the Bedford Headmaster say he was sorry to lose you for? Smart at your books, were you?"

"I was good at Scripture and Shakespeare, but not at the other things.—I expect he was sorry to lose me from the football eleven. I was the cock there."

Mr. George blew his nose loudly, gasped, prrrhed, and said:

"You'd better say rooster, my son, here in Australia—especially in polite society. We're a trifle more particular than they are in England, I suppose.—Well, and what else have you got to crow about?"

If Jack had been the sulky sort, he would now have begun to get sulky. As it was, he was tired of being continually pulled up. But he fell back on his own peculiar callous indifference.

"I was captain of the first football eleven," he said in his indifferent voice, "and not bad in front of the sticks. And I took the long distance running cup a year under age. I tell you because you ask me."

Then Mr. George astonished Jack again by turning and planting himself in front of him like Balaam's ass, in the middle of the path, standing with feet apart in his big elephant trousers, snorting behind a walrus moustache, glaring and extending a large and powerful hand. He shook hands vigorously, saying, "You'll do, my son. You'll do for me."

Then he resumed his walk.

III

"Yes, sir, you'll do for me," resumed the old man. "For I can see you're a gentleman."

Jack was rather taken aback. He had come to Australia to be a man, a wild, bushy man among men. His father was a gentleman.

"I think I'd rather be a man than a gentleman," he said.

Mr. George stood still, feet apart, as if he had been shot.

"What's the difference?" he cried in a falsetto, sarcastic tone. "What's the difference? Can't be a man unless you are a gentleman. Take that from me. You might say I'm not a gentleman. Sense of the ridiculous runs away with me, for one thing. But, in order to be the best man I could, I've tried to be all the gentleman I could. No hanky-pankying about it.—You're a gentleman born.—I'm not, not altogether. Don't you go trying to upset what you are. But whether you're a bush-whacker or a lumper you can be a gentleman. A gentleman's a man who never laughs to wound, who's honest with himself and his own judge in the sight of the Almighty.—That's the Government House down there among the trees, river just beyond.—That's my house, there, see. I'm going to hand you over to the girls, once we get there. So I shan't see you again, not to talk to. I want to tell you then, that I put my confidence in you, and you're going to play up like a gentleman. And I want you to know, as between gentlemen, not merely between an old man and a boy: but as between gentlemen, if you ever need any help, or a word of advice come to me. Come to me, and I'll do my best."

He once more shook hands, this time in a conclusive manner.

Jack had looked to left and right as they walked, half listening to the endless old man. He saw sandy blocks of land beside the road, and scattered, ugly buildings, most of them new. He made out the turrets and gables of the Government House, in the dusk among trees, and he imagined the wide clear river below those trees.

Turning down an unmade road, they approached a two-storied brick house with narrow verandahs, whose wooden supports rested nakedly on the sand below. There was no garden, fence, or anything: just an oyster-shell path across the sand, a pipe-clayed doorstep, a brass knocker, a narrow wooden verandah, a few flower-pots.

Mr. George opened the door and showed the boy into the narrow wooden hall. There was a delicious smell of cooking. Jack climbed the thin, flimsy stairs, and was shown into his bedroom. A four-poster bed with a crochet quilt and frilled pillows, a mahogany chest of drawers with swivel looking-glass, a washstand with china set complete. England all over again.—Even his bag was there, and his brushes were set out for him.

He had landed!

IV

As he made his toilet, he heard a certain fluttering outside his door. He waited for it to subside, and when all seemed still, opened to go downstairs. There stood two girls, giggling and blushing, waiting arm in arm to pounce on him.

"Oh, isn't he beau!" exclaimed one of the girls, in a sort of aside. And the other broke into a high laugh.

Jack remained dumbfounded, reddening to the roots of his hair. But his dark-blue eyes lingered for a moment on the two girlish faces. They were evidently the twins. They had the same thin, soft, slightly-tanned, warm-looking faces, a little wild, and the same marked features. But the brows of one were level, and her fair hair, darkish fair, was all crisp, curly round her temples, and she looked up at you from under her level brows with queer yellow-grey eyes, shy, wild, and yet with a queer effrontery, like a wild-cat under a bush. The other had blue eyes and a bigger nose, and it was she who said, "Oh, isn't he beau!"

The one with the yellow eyes stuck out her slim hand awkwardly, gazing at him and saying:

"I suppose you're cousin Jack, Beau."

He shook hands first with one, then with the other, and could not find a word to say. The one with the yellow eyes was evidently the leader of the two.

"Tea is ready," she said, "if you're coming down."

She spoke this over her shoulder. There was the same colour in her tawny eyes as in her crisp tawny hair, but her brows were darker. She had a forehead, Jack decided, like the plaster-cast of Minerva. And she had the queerest way of looking at you under her brows, and over her shoulder. Funny pair of lambs, these.

The two girls went downstairs arm in arm, at a run. This is quite a feat, but evidently they were used to it.

Jack looked on life, social life inside a house, as something to be borne in silence. These two girls were certainly a desperate addition. He heard them burst into the parlour, the other one repeating:

"He's coming. Here comes Beau."

"I thought his name was Jack. Bow is it!" exclaimed a voice.

He entered the parlour with his elbows at his sides, his starched collar feeling very stiff. He was aware of the usual hideous room, rather barer than at home: plush cushions on a horse-hair sofa, and a green carpet: a large stout woman with reddish hair in a silk frock and gold chains, and Mr. George introducing her as Mrs. Watson, otherwise Aunt Matilda. She put diamond-ringed hands on Jack's shoulders and looked into his face, which he thought a repellent procedure.

"So like your father, dear boy; how's your dear mother?"

And in spite of his inward fury of resistance, she kissed him. For she was but a woman of forty-two.

"Quite well, thank you," said Jack: though considering he had been at sea for six weeks, he knew as little about his mother's health as did Aunt Matilda herself.

"Did y' blow y' candle out?" asked Mr. George.

"No he didn't," answered the tawny girl. "I'll go and do it."

And she flashed away upstairs like a panther.

"I suppose the twins introduced themselves," said Mr. George.

"No they didn't," said the other one.

"Only christened you Bow.—You'll be somebody or other's beau before very long, I'll warrant.—This is Grace, Grace Ellis, you know, where you're going to live. And her sister who's gone upstairs to blow your candle out, is Monica.—Can't be too careful of fire in these dry places.—Most folks say they can't tell 'em apart, but I call it nonsense."

"Ancien, beau, bon, cher, adjectives which precede," said the one called Monica, jerking herself into the room, after blowing out the candle.

"There's your father," said Mr. George. And Aunt Matilda fluttered into the hall, while the twins betrayed no interest at all. The tawny one stared at Jack and kept slinking about like a lean young panther to get a different view of him. For all the world as if she was going to pounce on him, like a cat on a bird. He, permanently flushed, kept his self-possession in a boyish and rather handsome, if stiff, manner.

Mr. Ellis was stout, clean-shaven, red-faced, and shabby and baggy, and good-natured in appearance.

"This is the young gentleman—Mr. Grant—called in Westralia Bow, so named by Miss Monica Ellis."

"By Miss Grace, if you please," snapped Monica.

"Tea's ready. Tea's ready."

They trooped into the dining room where a large table was spread. Aunt Matilda seated herself behind the tea-kettle, Mr. George sat at the other end, before the pile of plates and the carvers, and the others took their places where they would. Jack modestly sat on Aunt Matilda's left hand, so the tawny Monica at once pounced on the chair opposite.

Entered the Good Plain Cook with a dish covered with a pewter cover, and followed by a small, dark, ugly, quiet girl carrying the vegetable dishes.

"That's my niece Mary, Jack. Lives with Aunt Matilda here, who won't spare her or I'd have her to live here with me. Now you know everybody. What's for tea?"

He was dangerously clashing the knife on the steel. Then lifting the cover, he disclosed a young pig roasted in all its glory of gravy. Mary meanwhile had nodded her head at Jack and looked at him with her big, queer, very black eyes. You might have thought she had native blood. She sat down to serve the vegetables.

"Grace, there's a fly in the milk," said Aunt Matilda, who was already pouring large cups of tea. Grace seized the milk jug and jerked from the room.

"Do you take milk and sugar, as your dear father used to, John?" asked Aunt Matilda of the youth on her left.

"Call him Bow. Bow's his name out here—John's too stiff and Jack's too common!" exclaimed Mr. George, elbows deep in carving.

"Bow'll do for me," put in Mrs. Ellis, who said little.

"Mary, is there any mustard?" said Aunt Matilda.

Jack rose vaguely to go and get it, but Aunt Matilda seized him by the arm and pushed him back.

"Sit still. She knows where it is."

"Monica, come and carry the cups, there's a good girl."

"Now which end of the pig do you like, Jack?" asked Mr. George. "Matilda, will this do for you?" He held up a piece on the fork. Mary arrived with a ponderous gyrating cruet-stand, which she made place for in the middle of the table.

"What about bread?" said Aunt Matilda. "I'm sure John eats bread with his meat. Fetch some bread, Grace, for your cousin John."

"Everybody did it," thought Jack in despair, as he tried to eat amid the hustle. "No servants, nothing ever still. On the go all the time."

"Girls going to the concert tonight?" asked Mr. George.

"If anybody will go with us," replied Monica, with a tawny look at Jack.

"There's Bow," said Mr. George, "Bow'll like to go."

Under the she-lion peering of Monica, Jack was incapable of answer.

"Let the poor boy rest," said Aunt Matilda. "Just landed after a six thousand mile voyage, and you rush him out next minute to a concert. Let him stop at home quietly with me, and have a quiet chat about the dear ones he's left behind.—Aren't you going to the concert with the girls, Jacob?"

This was addressed to Mr. Ellis, who took a gulp of tea and shook his head mutely.

"I'd rather go to the concert, I think," said Jack under the queer yellow glower of Monica's eyes, and the full black moons of Mary's.

"Good for you, my boy," said Mr. George. "Bow by name and Bow by nature. And well set up, with three strings to his Bow already."

Monica once more peered tawnily, and Mary glanced a black, furtive glance. Aunt Matilda looked down on him and Grace, at his side, peered up.

For the first time since childhood, Jack found himself in a really female setting. Instinctively he avoided women: but particularly he avoided girls. With girls and women he felt exposed to some sort of danger—as if something were going to seize him by the neck, from behind, when he wasn't looking. He relied on men for safety. But curiously enough, these two elderly men gave him no shelter whatever. They seemed to throw him a victim to these frightful "lambs." In England, there was an esprit de corps among men. Man for man was a tower of strength against the females. Here in this place men deserted one another as soon as the women put in an appearance. They left the field entirely to the females.

In the first half-hour Jack realised he was thrown a victim to these tawny and black young cats. And there was nothing to do but bear up.

"Have you got an evening suit?" asked Grace, who was always the one to ponder things out.

"Yes—a sort of a one," said Jack.

"Oh, good! Oh, put it on! Do put it on."

"Leave the lad alone," said Mr. George. "Let him go as he is."

"No," said Aunt Matilda. "He has his father's handsome presence. Let him make the best of himself. I think I'll go to the concert after all."

After dinner there was a bustle. Monica flew up to light his candle for him, and stood there peering behind the flame when he came upstairs.

"You haven't much time," she said, as if she were going to spear him.

"All right," he answered, in his hoarse young voice. And he stood in torment till she left his room.

He was just tying his tie when there came a flutter and a tapping. Aunt Matilda's voice saying: "Nearly time. Are you almost ready?"

"Half a minute!" he crowed hoarsely, like an unhappy young cock.

But the door stealthily opened, and Aunt Matilda peeped in.

"Oh, tying his tie!" she said, satisfactorily, when she perceived that he was dressed as far as discretion demanded. And she entered in full blow. Behind her hovered Grace—then Monica—and in the doorway Mary. It seemed to Jack that Aunt Matilda was the most objectionable of the lot, Monica the brazenest, Grace the most ill-mannered, and Mary the most repulsive, with her dark face. He struggled in discomfort with his tie.

"Let Mary do it," said Aunt Matilda.

"No, no!" he barked. "I can do it."

"Come on, Mary. Come and tie John's tie."

Mary came quietly forward.

"Let me do it for you, Bow," she said in her quiet, insinuating voice, looking at him with her inky eyes and standing in front of him till his knees felt weak and his throat strangled. He was purple in the face, struggling with his tie in the presence of the lambs.

"He'll never get it done," said Monica, from behind the yellow glare.

"Let me do it," said Mary, and lifting her hands decisively she took the two ends of the tie from him.

He held his breath and lifted his eyes to the ceiling and felt as if the front of his body were being roasted. Mary, the devil-puss, seemed endless ages fastening the tie. Then she twitched it at his throat and it was done, just as he was on the point of suffocation.

"Are those your best braces?" said Grace. "They're awfully pretty with rose-buds." And she fingered the band.

"I suppose you put on evening dress for the last dinner on board," said Aunt Matilda. "Nothing makes me cry like Auld Lang Syne, that last night, before you land next day. But it's fifteen years since I went over to England."

"I don't suppose we shall any of us ever go," said Grace longingly.

"Unless you marry Bow," said Monica abruptly.

"I can't marry him unless he asks me," said Grace.

"He'll ask nobody for a good many years to come," said Aunt Matilda with satisfaction.

"Hasn't he got lovely eyelashes?" said Grace impersonally.

"He'd almost do for a girl," said Monica.

"Not if you look at his ears," said Mary, with odd decision. He felt that Mary was bent on saving his manhood.

He breathed as if the air around him were red-hot. He would have to get out, or die. He plunged into his coat, pulling down his shirt-cuffs with a jerk.

"What funny green cuff-links," said Grace. "Are they pot?"

"Malachite," said Jack.

"What's malachite?"

There was no answer. He put a white silk muffler round his neck to protect his collar.

"Oh, look at his initials in lavender silk!"

At last he was in his overcoat, and in the street with the bevy.

"Leave your overcoat open, so it shows your shirt-front as you walk," said Grace, forcibly unbuttoning the said coat. "I think that looks so lovely. Doesn't he look lovely, Monica? Everybody will be asking who he is."

"Tell them he's the son of General Grant," said Aunt Matilda, with complete satisfaction, as she sailed at his side.

Life is principally a matter of endurance. This was the sum of Jack's philosophy. He put it into practice this evening.

It was a benefit concert in the Town Hall, with the Episcopalian Choir singing, "Angels Ever Bright and Fair," and a violinist from Germany playing violin solos, and a lady vocalist from Melbourne singing "home" solos, while local stars variously coruscated. Aunt Matilda filled up the end of the seat—like a massive book-end: and the others like slender volumes of romance were squeezed in between her and another stout book-end. Jack had the heaving warmth of Aunt Matilda on his right, the electric wriggle of Monica on his left, and he continued to breathe red-hot air.

The concert was a ludicrous continuation of shameful and ridiculous noise to him. Each item seemed inordinately long and he hoped for the next, which when it came, seemed worse than the last. The people who performed seemed to him in a ghastly humiliating position. One stout mother-of-thousands leaned forward and simply gurgled about riding over the brow of a hill and seeing a fair city beyond, and a young knight in silver armour riding toward her with shining face, to greet her on the spot as his lady fair and lady dear. Jack looked at her in pained amazement. And yet when the songs-tress from Melbourne, in a rich contralto, began to moan in a Scotch accent:

"And it's o-o-oh! that I'm longing for my ain folk,
Though the-e-ey be but lowly, puir and plain folk—
I am far across the sea
But my heart will ever be-e-e-e-e
At home in dear old Scotland with my ain folk,"

Jack suddenly wanted to howl. He had never been to Scotland and his father, General Grant, with his mother, was at present in Malta. And he hadn't got any "ain folk," and he didn't want any. Yet it was all he could do to keep the tears from showing in his eyes, as his heart fairly broke in him. And Aunt Matilda crowded him a little more suffocatingly on the right, and Monica wriggled more hatefully than ever on the left, and that beastly Mary leaned forward to glance appreciatively at him, with her low-down black eyes. And he felt as if the front of his body was scorched. And a smouldering desire for revenge awoke deep down in him.

People were always trying to "do things" to you. Why couldn't they leave you done? Dirty cads to sing "My Ain Folk," and then stare in your face to see how it got you.

But life was a matter of endurance, with possible revenge later on.

When at last he got home and could go to bed, he felt he had gained a brief respite. There was no lock to the door—so he put the arm-chair against it, for a barricade.

And he felt he had been once more sold. He had thought he was coming to a wild and woolly world. But all the way out he had been forced to play the gentlemanly son of his father. And here it was hell on earth, with these women let loose all over you, and these ghastly concerts, and these hideous meals, and these awful flimsy, choky houses. Far better the Agricultural College. Far better England.

He was sick with homesickness as he flung himself into bed. And it seemed to him he was always homesick for some place which he had never known and perhaps never would know. He was always homesick for somewhere else. He always hated where he was, silently but deeply.

Different people. The place would be all right, but for the people.

He hated women. He hated the kind of nausea he felt after they had crowded on him. The yellow cat-eyes of that deadly Monica! The inky eyes of that low-down Mary! The big nose of that Grace: she was the most tolerable. And the indecency of the red-haired Aunt Matilda, with her gold chains.

He flung his trousers in one direction, and the loathsome starched shirt in another, and his underwear in another. When he was quite clear of all his clothing he clenched his fists and reached them up, and stretched hard, hard as if to stretch himself clear of it all. Then he did a few thoughtless exercises, to shake off the world. He wanted the muscles of his body to move, to shake off the contact of the world. As a dog coming out of the water shakes himself, so Jack stood there slowly, intensely going through his exercises, slowly sloughing the contact of the world from his young, resistant white body. And his hair fell loose into curl, and the alert defiance came into his eyes as he threw apart his arms and opened his young chest. Anything, anything to forget the world and to throw the contact of people off his limbs and his chest. Keen and savage as a Greek gymnast, he struck the air with his arms, with his legs.

Till at last he felt he had broken through the mesh. His blood was running free, he had shattered the film that other people put over him, as if snails had crawled over him. His skin was free and alive. He glowered at the door, and made the barricade more safe.

Then he dived into his nightshirt, and felt the world was his own again. At least in his own immediate vicinity. Which was all he cared about for the moment.

[CHAPTER III]

DRIVING TO WANDOO

I

Jack started before dawn next morning, for Wandoo. Mr. George had business which took him south, so he decided to carry the boy along on the coach. Mr. Ellis also was returning home in the coach, but the twins, those lambs, were staying behind. In the chilly dark, Jack climbed the front of the buggy to sit on the seat beside the driver. He was huddled in his overcoat, the happiest boy alive. For now at last he was "getting away," as he always wanted to "get away." From what, he didn't stop to consider, and still less did he realise towards what. Because however far you may get away from one thing, by so much do you draw near to another.

And this is the Fata Morgana of Liberty, or Freedom. She may lead you very definitely away from to-day's prison. But she also very definitely leads you towards some other prison. Liberty is a changing of prisons, to people who seek only liberty.

Away went the buggy at a spanking trot, the driver pointing out the phosphoric glow of the river, as they descended to the Causeway. Stars still shone overhead, but the sky was beginning to open inland. The buggy ran softly over the damp sand, the two horses were full of life. There was an aroma of damp sand, and a fresh breeze from the river as they crossed.

Jack didn't want to talk. But the driver couldn't miss the opportunity.

"I drives this coach backards and forrards to Albany week in week out, years without end amen, and a good two hundred miles o' land to cover, taking six days clear with two 'osses, and them in relays fifteen or twenty miles, sometimes over, as on the outland reach past Wagin."

"Ever get held up?"

"No sir, can't say as I do. Who'd there be to hold me up in Western Australia? And if there was, the mounted police'd soon settle 'em. There's nobody to hold me up but my old woman, and she drives the coach for me up Middle Swan way."

"Can she drive?"

"You back your life she can. Bred and born to it. Drive an' swear at the 'osses like a trooper, when she's a mind. Swear! I'd never ha' thought it of 'er, when I rode behind 'er as a groom."

"How?"

"Oh, she took me in, she did, pretty. But after all, what's a lady but a woman! Though far be it from me to say: 'What's a woman but a lady!' If I'd gone down on my hands an' knees to her, in them days, I should have expected her to kick me. And what does she do? Rode out of the park gates and stopped. So she did. Turns to me. 'Grey,' she says, 'here's money. You go to London and buy yourself clothes like what a grocer would buy. Avoid looking like a butler or a groom. And when you've got an outfit, dress and make yourself look like a grocer,' she said, though I never had any connections with grocery in my life—'and go to the office in Victoria Street and take two passages to Australia.' That was what she said. Just Australia. When the man in the office asked me, where to in Australia, I didn't know what to say. 'Oh, we'll go in at the first gate,' I said. And so it was Fremantle. 'Yes,' she said, 'we're going to elope. Nice thing for me,' thinks I. But I says, 'All right, Miss.' She was a pearl beyond price, was Miss Ethel. So she seemed to me then. Now she's a termagant as ever was: in double 'arness, collar-proud."

The coachman flicked the horses. Jack looked at him in amazement. He was a man with a whitish-looking beard, in the dim light.

"And did she have any children?"

"She's got five."

"And does she regret it?"

"At times, I suppose. But as I say to her, if anybody was took in, it was me. I always thought her a perfect lady. So when she lets fly at me: 'Call yourself a man?' I just say to her: 'Call yourself a lady?' And she comes round all right."

Jack's consciousness began to go dim. He was aware of a strange dim booming almost like guns in the distance, and the driver's voice saying, "Frogs, sir. Way back in the days before ever a British ship came here, they say the Dutchmen came, and was frightened off by the croaking of the bull frogs: Couldn't make it out a-nohow!"—The horses' hoofs were echoing on the boarded Causeway, and from the little islands alongside came the amazing croaking, barking, booing and booming of the frogs.

II

When Jack looked round again it was day. And the driver's beard was black. He was a man with a thin red face and black beard and queer grey eyes that had a mocking sort of secret in them.

"I thought your beard was white," said Jack.

"Ay, with rime. With frost. Not with anything else."

"I didn't expect hoar-frost here."

"Well—it's not so very common. Not like the Old Country."

Jack realised they always spoke patronisingly of the Old Country, poor old place, as if it couldn't help being what it was.

The man's grey eyes with the amused secret glanced quickly at Jack.

"Not quite awake yet?" he said.

"Oh, yes," said Jack.

"Coming out to settle, I hope," said the driver. "We can do with a few spruce young lads. I've got five daughters to contend with. Why there's six A1 families in Perth, maybe you've heard, and six in the country, and possibly six round Fremantle, and nary one of 'em but's got seven daughters. Seven daughters——"

Jack did not hear. He seemed to be saying, in reply to some question, "I'm Jack Hector Grant."

"Contrairy," the servants had called him, and "naughty little boy," his Aunts. Insubordinate, untrustworthy. Such things they said of him. His soul pricked from all the things, but he guessed they were not far wrong.

What did his mother think of him? And his father? He didn't know them very well. They only came home sometimes, and then they seemed to him reasonable and delightful people. The Wandering Grants, Lady Bewley had called them.

Was he a liar? When they called him a liar, was it true? It was. And yet he never really felt a liar. "Don't ask, and you'll get no lies told you." It was a phrase from his nurse, and he always wanted to use it to his hateful Aunts. "Say you're sorry! Say you're sorry!" Wasn't that forcing him to tell lies, when he wasn't sorry? His Aunts always seemed to him despicable liars. He himself was just an ordinary liar. He lied because he didn't want them to know what he'd done, even when he'd done right.

So they threatened him with that loathsome "policeman." Or they dropped him over the garden fence into the field beyond. There he sat in a sort of Crusoe solitary confinement. A vast row of back fences, and a vast, vast field. Himself squatting immovable, and an Aunt coming to demand sharply through the fence: "Say you're sorry. Say you want to be a good little boy. Say it, or you won't come in to dinner. You'll stay there all night."

He wasn't sorry, he didn't want to be a good little boy, therefore he wouldn't "say it"; so he got a piece of bread and butter pushed through the fence. And then he faced the emptiness of the field and set off, to find himself somehow in the kitchen-garden of the manor-house. A servant had seen him, and brought him before her ladyship, who was herself walking in the garden.

"Who are you, little boy?"

"I'm Jack Hector Grant"—a pause. "Who are you?"

"I'm Lady Bewley."

They eyed one another.

"And where were you wandering to, in my garden?"

"I wasn't wand'rin'. I was walkin'."

"Were you? Come, then, and walk with me, will you?"

She took his hand and led him along a path. He didn't quite know if he was a prisoner. But her hand was gentle, and she seemed a quiet, sad lady. She stepped with him through wide-open window-doors. He looked uneasily round the drawing-room, then at the quiet lady.

"Where was you born?" he asked her.

"Why, you funny boy, I was born in this house."

"My mother wasn't. She was born in Australia. And my father was born in India. And I can't remember where I was born."

A servant had brought in the tea-tray. The child was sitting on a foot-stool. The lady seemed not to be listening. There was a dark cake.

"My mother said I wasn't never to ask for cake, but if somebody was to offer me some, I needn't say No fank you."

"Yes, you shall have some cake," said the lady. "So you are one of the Wandering Grants, and you don't know where you were born?"

"But I think I was born in my mother's bed."

"I suppose you were.—And how old are you?"

"I'm four. How old are you?"

"A great deal older than that.—But tell me, what were you doing in my garden."

"I don't know. Well, I comed by mistake."

"How was that?"

"'Cause I wouldn't say I was sorry I told a lie. Well, I wasn't sorry. But I wasn't wandrin' in your garden. I was only walkin'. I was walkin' out of the meadow where they put me——"

——"And I says, she may have been born in a 'all, but she'll die in a wooden shack."

"Who? Who will?"

"I was tellin' you about my old woman.—Look! There's a joey runnin' there along the track."

Jack looked, and saw a funny little animal half leaping, half running along.

"We call them baby 'roos, joeys, you understand, and they make the cutest little pets you ever did imagine."

They were still in sandy country, on a good road not far from the river, and Jack saw the little chap jump to cover. The tall gum trees with their brownish pale smooth stems and loose strips of bark stood tall and straight and still, scattered like a thin forest that spread unending, rising from a low, heath-like undergrowth. It seemed open, and yet weird, enclosing you in its vast emptiness. This bush, that he had heard so much of! The sun had climbed out of the mist, and was becoming gold and powerful in a limpid sky. The leaves of the gum trees hung like heavy narrow blades, inert and colourless, in a weight of silence. Save when they came to a more open place, and a flock of green parrots flew shrieking, "Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!" At least that was what the driver said they cried.—The lower air was still somewhat chilly from the mist. A number of black-and-white handsome birds, that they call magpies, flew alongside in the bush, keeping pace for a time with the buggy. And once a wallaby ran alongside for a while on the path, a bigger 'roo than the joey, and very funny, leaping persistently alongside with his little hands dangling.

It was a new country after all. It was different. A small exultance grew inside the youth. After all, he had got away, into a country that men had not yet clutched into their grip. Where you could do as you liked, without being stifled by people. He still had a secret intention of doing as he liked, though what it was he would do when he could do as he liked, he did not know. Nothing very definite. And yet something stirred in his bowels as he saw the endless bush, and the noisy green parrots and the queer, tame kangaroos: and no man.

"It's dingy country down here," the coachman was saying. "Not good for much. No good for nothing except cemetery, though Mr. George says he believes in it. And there's nothing you can do with it, seeing as how many gents what come in the first place has gone away for ever, lock stock and barrel, leaving nothing but their 'claims' on the land itself, so nobody else can touch it." Here he shook the reins on the horses' backs. "But I hopes you settles, and makes good, and marries and has children, like me and my old woman, sir. She've put five daughters into the total, born in a shack, though their mother was born in Pontesbeach Hall——"

But Jack's mind drifted away from the driver. He was in that third state, not uncommon to youth, which seems to intervene between reality and dream. The bush, the coach, the wallabies, the coachdriver were not very real to him. Neither was his own self and his own past very real to him. There seemed to him to be another mute core to himself. Apart from the known Jack Grant, and apart from the world as he had known it. Even apart from this Australia which was so unknown to him.

As a matter of fact, he had not yet come-to in Australia. He had not yet extricated himself from England and the ship. Half of himself was left behind, and the other half was gone ahead. So there he sat, mute and stupid.

He only knew he wanted something, and he resented something. He resented having been so much found fault with. They had hated him because he preferred to make friends among "good-for-nothings." But as he saw it, "good-for-nothings" were the only ones that had any daring. Not altogether tamed. He loathed the thought of harness. He hated tameness, hated it, hated it. The thought of it made his innocent face take on a really devilish look. And because of his hatred of harness, he hated answering the questions that people put to him. Neither did he ask many, for his own part. But now one popped out.

"There are policemen here, are there?"

"Yes, sir, a good force of mounted police, a smart body of men. And they're needed. Western Australia is full of old prisoners, black fellers, and white ones too. The whites, born here, is called 'gropers,' if you take me, sir. Sand-gropers. And they all need protection one from the other. And there's half-pay officers, civil and military, and clergy, scattered through the bush——"

"Need protecting from one another, and yet he says there's nobody to hold up the coach," thought Jack to himself, cynically.

The bush had alternated with patches of wild scrub. But now came clearings: a little wooden house, and an orchard of trees planted in rows, with a grazing field beyond. Then more flat meadows, and ploughed spaces, and a humpy or a shack here and there: children playing around, and hens: then a regular homestead, with a verandah on either side, and creepers climbing up, and fences about.

"The soil is red!" said Jack.

"Clay! That's clay! No more sand, except in patches, all the way to Albany. This is Guildford where the roses grow."

They clattered across a narrow wooden bridge with a white railing, and up to a wooden inn where the horses were to be changed. Jack got down in the road, and saw Mr. George and Mr. Ellis both sleepily emerge and pass without a word into the place marked BAR.

"I think I'll walk on a bit," said Jack, "if you'll pick me up."

But at that moment a fleecy white head peering out of the back of the coach cried:

"Oh, Mr. Gwey! Oh, Mr. Gwey! They've frowed away a perfectly good cat."

The driver went over with Jack to where the chubby arm was pointing, and saw the body of a cat stretched by the trodden grass. It was quite dead. They stood looking at it, Grey explaining that it was a good skin and it certainly was a pity to waste it, and he hoped someone would find it who would tan it before it went too far, for as for him, he could not take it along in the coach, the passengers might object before they reached Albany, though the weather was cooling up a bit.

Jack laughed and went back to the coach to throw off his overcoat. He loved the crazy inconsequence of everything. He stepped along the road feeling his legs thrilling with new life. The thrill and exultance of new life. And yet somewhere in his breast and throat tears were heaving. Why? Why? He didn't know. Only he wanted to cry till he died. And at the same time, he felt such a strength and a new power of life in his legs as he strode the Australian way, that he threw back his head in a sort of exultance.

Let the exultance conquer. Let the tears go to blazes.

When the coach came alongside, there was the old danger-look in his eyes, a defiance, and something of the cat-look of a young lion. He did not mount, but walked on up the hill. They were climbing the steep Darling Ranges, and soon he had a wonderful view. There was the wonderful clean new country spread out below him, so big, so soft, so ancient in its virginity. And far beyond, the gleam of that strange empty sea. He saw the grey-green bush ribboned with blue rivers, winding to an unknown sea. And in his heart he was determining to get what he wanted. Even though he did not know what it was he wanted. In his heart he clinched his determination to get it. To get it out of this ancient country's virginity.

He waited at the top of the hill. The horses came clop-clopping up. Morning was warm and full of sun. They had rolled up the flaps of the wagonette, and there was the beaming face of Mr. George, and the purple face of Mr. Ellis, and the back of the head of the floss-haired child.

Jack looked back again, when he had climbed to his seat and the horses were breathing, to where the foot of the grey-bush hills rested in a valley ribboned with rivers and patched with cultivation, all frail and delicate in a dim ethereal light.

"A land of promise! A land of promise," said Mr. George. "When I was young I bid £1080 for 2,700 acres of it. But Hammersley bid twenty pounds more, and got it.—Take up land, Jack Grant, take up land. Buy, beg, borrow or steal land, but get it, sir, get it."

"Hell have to go farther back to find it," said Mr. Ellis, from his blue face. "He'll get none of what he sees there."

"Oh, if he means to stay, he can jump it.—The law is always bendin' and breakin', bendin' and breakin'."

"Well, if he's going to live with me, Mr. George, don't put him on to land-snatching," said Mr. Ellis. And the two men fell to a discussion of Land Acts, Grants, Holdings, Claims, and Jack soon ceased to listen. He thought the land looked lovely. But he had no desire to own any of it. He never felt the possibility of "owning" land. There the land was, for eternity. How could he own it?—Anyhow, it made no appeal to him along those lines.

But Mr. Ellis loved "timber" and broke the spell by pointing and saying:

"See them trees, Jack my boy? Jarrah! Hills run one into the other way to the Blackwood River. Hundreds of miles of beautiful jarrah timber. The trees like this barren iron-stone formation. It's well they do, for nothing else does."

"There's one o' the mud-brick buildings the convicts lived in, while they were building the road," said the driver, not to be done out of his say. "One of the convicts broke and got away. Mostly when they went off they was driven in by the bush. But this one never. They say he's wanderin' yet. I say, dead."

Mr. George was explaining the landscape.

"Down there, Darlington. Governor Darling went down and never came back. Went home the quick way.—Boya, native word for rock. Mahogany Creek just above there. They'll see us coming. Kids watch from the rise, run back and holloa. Pa catches rooster, black girl blows fire, Ma mixes paste, yardman peels spuds,—dinner when we get there."

"And, sir, Sam has a good brew, none better. Also, sir, though it looks lonesome, he's mostly got company."

"How's that?"

"Well, sir, everyone comes for miles round to hear his missus play the harmonium. Got it out from England, and if it doesn't break your heart to hear it! The voice of the past! You'd love to hear it, Mr. Grant, being new from home."

"I'm sure I should," said Jack, thinking of the concert.

The dinner at Mahogany Creek was as Mr. George had said. Afterwards, on again through the bush.

Towards the end of the afternoon the coach pulled up at a little by-road, where stood a basket-work shay, and a tall young fellow in very old clothes lounging with loose legs.

"'Ere y'are!" said Grey, and walking the horses to the side of the road, he scrambled down to pull water from a well. "Here we are!" said Mr. Ellis from the back of the coach, where the tall youth was just receiving the floss-haired baby between his big red hands. Fat Mr. Ellis got down. The youth began pulling out Jack's bags and boxes, and Jack hurried round to help him.

"This is Tom," said Mr. Ellis.

"Pleased to meet you," said Tom, holding out a big hand and clasping Jack's hand hard for a moment. Then they went on piling the luggage on the wicker shay.

"That's the lot!" called Mr. Ellis.

"Good-bye, Jack!" said Mr. George, leaning his grey head out of the coach. "Be good and you'll be happy."

Over which speech Jack puzzled mutely. But the floss-haired baby girl was embracing his trouser legs.

"I never knew you were an Ellis," he said to her.

"Ay, she's another of 'em," said Mr. Ellis.

The coach was going. Jack went over awkwardly and offered the driver a two-shilling piece.

"Put it back in y'r pocket, lad, y'll want it more than I shall," said Grey unceremoniously. "The best o' luck to you, an' I mean it."

They all packed into the shay, Jack sitting with his back to the horses, the little girl tied in beside him, his smaller luggage bundled where it could be stowed; and in absolute silence they drove through the silence of the standing, motionless gum trees. Jack had never felt such silence. At last they pulled up. Tom jumped down and drew a slip-rail, and they passed a log fence, inside which there were many sheep, though it was still bush. Tom got in again and they drove through bush, with occasional sheep. Then Tom got down again—Jack could not see for what purpose. The youth fetched an axe out of the cart and started chopping. A tree was across the road: he was chopping at the broken part. There came a sweet scent.

"Raspberry jam!" said Mr. Ellis. "That's acacia acuminata, a beautiful wood, good for fences, posts, pipes, walking-sticks. And they're burning it off by the million acres."

Tom pulled the trunk aside, and drove on again till he came to another gate. Then they saw ahead a great clearing in the bush, and in the midst of the clearing a "ginger-bread" house, made of wood slabs, with a shingle roof running low all round to the verandahs. A woman in dark homespun cloth with an apron and sunbonnet, and a young bearded man in moleskins and blue shirt, came out with a cheery shout.

"You get along inside and have some tea," said the young bearded man. "I'll change the horses."

The woman lifted down the baby, after having untied her.

There was a door in the front of the house, a window on each side. But they all went round under the eaves to the mud-brick kitchen behind, and had tea. The woman hardly spoke, but she smiled and passed the tea and nursed Ellie. When the young bearded man came in, he smiled and said:

"I've got the mail out of the shay, Mr. Ellis."

"That's all right," said Mr. Ellis.

After which no one spoke again.

When they set off once more, there was a splendid pair of greys on either side the pole.

"Bill and Lil," said Mr. Ellis. "My own breed. Angus lends us his for the twenty miles to the cross roads. We've just changed them and got our own. There's another twenty miles yet."

It now began to rain, and gradually grew dark and cold. The bush was dree, the dreest thing Jack had ever known. Rugs and mackintoshes were fetched out, the baby was fastened snug in a corner out of the wet, and the horses kept up a steady pace. And then, as Nature went to roost, Mr. Ellis woke up and pulled out his pipe, to begin a conversation.

"How's Ma?"

"Great!"

"How's Gran?"

"Same."

"All well?"

"Yes."

"He's come twenty miles," thought Jack, "and he only asks now!"

"See the doctor in town, Dad?" asked Tom.

"I did."

"What'd he say?"

"Oh, heart's wrong all right, just what Rackett said. But might live to be older than he is. So I might too, lad."

"So you will an' all, Dad."

And then Mr. Ellis, as if desperate to change the conversation, pulling hard at his pipe:

"Jersey cow calved?"

"Yes."

"Bull again?"

"No, heifer. Beauty."

They both smiled silently. Then Tom's tongue suddenly was loose.

"Little beauty, she is. And the Berkshire has farrowed nine little prize-winners. Cowslip came on with 'er butter since she come on to the barley. I cot them twins Og an' Magog peltin' the dogs with eggs, an' them so scarce, so I wopped 'em both. That black spaniel bitch, I had to kill her for she worried one o' the last batch o' sucking pigs, though I don't know how she come to do such a thing. I've finished fallowin' in the bottom meadow, an' I'm glad you're back to tell us what to get on wif."

"How's clearing in th' Long Mile Paddock?"

"Only bin down there once. Sam's doin' all right."

"Hear anything of the Gum Tree Gully clearing gang?"

"Message from Spencer, an' y' t'go down some time—as soon's y' can."

"Well, I want the land reclaimed this year, an' I want it gone on with. Never know what'll happen, Tom. I'd like for you to go down there, Tom. You c'n take th' young feller behind here with you, soon's the girls come home."

"What's he like?"

"Seems a likely enough young chap. Old George put in a good word for'm."

"Bit of a toff."

"Never you mind, s' long's his head's not toffy."

"Know anything?"

"Shouldn't say so."

"Some fool?"

"Don't know. You find out for y'self."

Silence.

Jack heard it all. But if he hadn't heard it, he could easily have imagined it.

"Yes, you find out," he thought to himself, going dazed with fatigue and indifference as he huddled under the blanket, hearing the horses' hoofs clop-clop! and the rain splash on his shoulders. Sometimes the horses pulled slow and hard in the dark, sometimes they bowled along. He could see nothing. Sometimes there was a snort and jangle of harness, and the wheels resounding hollow. "Bridging something," thought Jack. And he wondered how they found their way in the utter dark, for there were no lamps. The trees dripped heavily.

And then, at the end of all things, Tom jumped down and opened a gate. Hope! But on and on and on. Stop!—hope!—another gate. On and on. Same again. And so interminably.

Till at last some intuition seemed to communicate to Jack the presence of home.—The rain had stopped, the moon was out. Ghostly and weird the bush, with white trunks spreading like skeletons. There opened a clearing, and a dog barked. A horse neighed near at hand. There were no trees, a herd of animals was moving in the dusk. And then a dark house loomed ahead, unlighted. The shay drove on, and round to the back. A door opened, a woman's figure stood in the candle-light and firelight.

"All right, Ma!" called Tom.

"All right, dear!" called Mr. Ellis.

"All right!" shrilled a little voice——

Well, here they were, in the kitchen. Mrs. Ellis was a brown-haired woman with a tired look in her eyes. She looked a long time at Jack, holding his hand in her one hand and feeling his wet coat with the other.

"You're wet. But you can go to bed when you've had your supper. I hope you'll be all right. Tom'll look after you."

She was hoping that he would only bring good with him. She was all mother: and mother of her own children first. She felt kindly towards him. But he was another woman's son.

When they had eaten, Tom led the newcomer away out of the house, across a little yard, threw open a door in the dark, and lit a candle stuck in the neck of a bottle. Jack looked round at the mud floor, the windowless window, the unlined wooden walls, the calico ceiling, and he was glad. He was to share this cubby hole, as they called it, with the other Ellis boys. His truckle bed was fresh and clean. He was content. It wasn't stuffy, it was rough and remote.

When he opened his portmanteau to get out his nightshirt he asked Tom where he was to put his clothes. For there was no cupboard or chest of drawers or anything.

"On your back or under your bed," said Tom. "Or I might find y' an old packing case, if y're decent.—But say, ol' bloke, lemme give y'a hint. Don't y' get sidey or nosey up here, puttin' on jam an suchlike, f'r if y'do y'll shame me in front of strangers, an' I won't stand it."

"Jam, did you say?"

"Yes, jam, macaroni, cockadoodle. We're plain people out here-aways, not mantel ornaments nor dickey-toffs, an' we want no flash sparks round, see?"

"I'm no flash spark," said Jack. "Not enough for 'em at home. It's too much fist and too little toff, that's the matter with me."

"C'n y' use y'r fists?"

"Like to try me?"

Jack shaped up to him.

"Oh for the love o' Mike," laughed Tom, "stow the haw-haw gab! You'll do me though, I think."

"I'll try to oblige," said Jack, rolling into bed.

"Here!" said Tom sharply. "Out y' get an' say y' prayers."

"What sortta example for them kids of ours, gettin' into bed an' forgettin' y'r prayers?"

Jack eyed the youth.

"You say yours?" he asked.

"Should say I do. Gran is on ter me right cruel if I don't see to it, whoever sleeps in this cubby. They has ter say their prayers, see?"

"All right!" said Jack laconically.

And he obediently got up, kneeled on the mud floor, and gabbled through his quota. Somewhere in his heart he was touched by the simple honesty of the boy. And somewhere else he was writhing with slow, contemptuous repugnance at the vulgar tyranny.

But he called again to his aid that natural indifference of his, grounded on contempt. And also a natural boyish tolerance, because he saw that Tom had a naive, if rather vulgar, good-will.

He gabbled through his prayers wearily, but scrupulously to the last Amen. Then rolled again into bed to sleep till morning, and forget, forget, forget! He depended on his power of absolute forgetting.

[CHAPTER IV]

WANDOO

I

Two things struggled in Jack's mind when he awoke in the morning. The first was the brave idea that he had left everything behind, that he had done with his boyhood and was going to enter into his own. The second was a noise of somebody quoting Latin and clicking wooden dumb-bells.

Jack opened his eyes. There were four beds in the cubby hole. Between two beds stood a thin boy of about thirteen, swinging dumb-bells, and facing two small urchins who were faithfully imitating him, except that they did not repeat the Latin tags. They were all dressed in short breeches loosely held up by braces, and under-vests.

Veni! up went their arms smartly,—vidi! down came the dubs to horizontal,—vici! the clubs were down by their sides.

Jack smiled to himself and dozed again. It was scarcely dawn. He was dimly aware of the rain pattering on the shingle roof.

"Ain't ye gettin' up this morning?"

It was Tom standing contemplating him. The children had run out barefoot and bare-armed in the rain.

"Is it morning?" asked Jack, stretching.

"Not half. We've fed th' osses. Come on."

"Where do I wash?"

"At the pump. Look slippy and get your clothes on. Our men live over at Red's, we have to look sharp in the morning."

Jack looked slippy, and went out to wash in the tin dish by the pump. The rain was abating, but it seemed a damp performance.

By the time he was really awake, the day had come clear. It was a fine morning, the air fresh with the smell of flowering shrubs: silver wattle, spirea, daphne and syringa which Ellis grew in his garden. Already the sun was coming warm.

The house was a low stone building with a few trees round it. But all the life went on here at the back, here where the pump was, and the various yards and wooden out-buildings. There was a vista of open clearing, and a few huge gum-trees. The sky was already blue, a certain mist lay below the great isolated trees.

In the yard a score of motherless lambs were penned, bleating, their silly faces looking up at Jack confidently, expecting the milk bottle. He walked with his hands in the pockets of his old English tweeds, feeling over-dressed and a bit out of place. Cows were tethered to posts or standing loose about the fenced yard, and the half-caste Tim, and Lennie, the dumb-bell boy, and a girl, were silently milking. The heavy, pure silence of the Australian morning.

Jack stood at a little distance. A cat whisked across the yard and ran up a queer-looking pine-tree, a dissipated old cow moved about at random. "Hey you!" shouted Tom impatiently, "Take hoult of that cart toss nosin' his way inter th' chaff-house, and bring him here. An' see to that grey's ropes: she's chewin' 'em free. Look slippy, make yourself useful."

There was a tone of amiability and intimacy mixed with this bossy shouting. Jack ran to the cart toss. He couldn't help liking Tom and the rest. They were so queer and naive, and they seemed oddly forlorn, like waifs lost in this new country. Jack had always had a leaning towards waifs and lost people. They were the only people whose bossing he didn't mind.

The children at their various tasks were singing in shrill, clear voices, with a sort of street-arab abandon. Lennie, the boy, would break the shrilling of the twin urchins with a sudden musical yell, from the side of the cow he was milking. And they seemed to sing anything, songs, poetry, nonsense, anything that came into their heads, like birds singing variously and at random.

"The blue, the fresh, the ever free
I am where I would ever be
With the blue above, and the blue below—"

Then a yell from Lennie by the cows:

"And wherever thus in childhood's our—"

The twins:

"I never was on the dull tame shore
But I loved the great sea more and more—"

Again a sudden and commanding yell from Lennie.

"I never loved a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But, when it came to know me well
And love me—"

Here the twins, as if hypnotized, howled out—

"—it was sure to die."

They kept up this ragged yelling in the new, soft morning, like lost wild things. Jack laughed to himself. But they were quite serious. The elders were dumb-silent. Only the youngsters made all this noise. Was it a sort of protest against the great silence of the country? Was it their young, lost effort in the noiseless antipodes, whose noiselessness seems like a doom at last? They yelled away like wild little lost things, with an uncanny abandon. It pleased Jack.

II

They had all gone silent again, and collected under the peppermint tree at the back door, where Ma ladled out tea into mugs for everybody. Ma was Mrs. Ellis. She still had the tired, distant look in her eyes, and a tired bearing, and she seemed to take no notice of anybody, either when she was in the kitchen or when she came out with pie to the group squatting under the tree. When anyone said: "Some more tea, Ma!" she silently ladled out the brew. Jack was not a very intent observer. But he was-struck by Mrs. Ellis' silence and her "drawn" look.

Tom came and hitched himself up against the trunk of the tree. Lennie was sitting opposite on a log, holding his tin mug and eyeing the stranger in silence. On another log sat the two urchins, sturdy, wild little brats, barefooted, bare-legged, bare-armed, as Jack had first seen them, their dress still consisting of a little pair of pants and a cotton undervest: and a pair of braces. The last seemed by far the most important garment. Lennie was clothed, or unclothed, the same, while Tom had added a pair of boots. The bare arms out of the cotton vests were brown and smooth, and they gave the boys and the youth a curiously naked look. A girl of about twelve, in a dark-blue spotted pinafore and a rag of red hair-ribbon, sat on a little stump near the twins. She was silent like her mother—but not yet "drawn."

"What d'ye think of Og an' Magog?" said Tom, pointing with his mug at the twins. "Called for giants 'cos they're so small."

Jack did not know what to think. He tried to smile benevolently.

"An' that's Katie," continued Tom, indicating the girl, who at once looked foolish. "She's younger'n Lennie, but she's pretty near his size. He's another little 'un. Little an' cheeky, that's what he is. Too much cheek for his age—which is fourteen. You'll have to keep him in his place, I tell you straight."

"Ef ye ken!" murmured Len with a sour face.

Then, chirping up with a real street-arab pertness, he seemed to ignore Jack as he asked brightly of Tom:

"An' who's My Lord Duke of Early Risin', if I might be told?—For before Gosh he sports a tidy raiment."

"Now, Len, none o' yer lingo!" warned Tom.

"Who is he, anyway, as you should go tellin' him to keep me in my place?"

"No offence intended, I'm sure," said Jack pleasantly.

"Taken though!" said Lennie, with such a black look that Jack's colour rose in spite of himself.

"You keep a civil tongue in your head, or I'll punch it for you," he said. He and Lennie stared each other in the eye.

Lennie had a beautiful little face, with an odd pathos like some lovely girl, and grey eyes that could change to black. Jack felt a certain pang of love for him, and in the same instant remembered that she-lioness cub of a Monica. Perhaps she too had the same odd, lovely pathos, like a young animal that runs alert and alone in the wood. Why did these children seem so motherless and fatherless, so much on their own?—It was very much how Jack felt himself. Yet he was not pathetic.

Lennie suddenly smiled whimsically, and Jack knew he was let into the boy's heart. Queer! Up till now they had all kept a door shut against him. Now Len had opened the door. Jack saw the winsomeness and pathos of the boy vividly, and loved him, too. But it was still remote. And still mixed up in it was the long stare of that Monica.

"That's right, you tell 'im," said Tom. "What I say here—no back chat, an' no tales told. That's what's the motto on this station."

"Obey an' please my Lord Tom Noddy,"

"So God shall love and angels aid ye——" said Lennie, standing tip-toe on his log and balancing his bare feet, and repeating his rhyme with an abstract impudence, as if the fiends of air could hear him.

"Aw, shut up, you!" said Tom. "You've got ter get them 'osses down to Red's. Take Jack an' show him."

"I'll show him," said Len, munching a large piece of pie as he set off.

"Ken ye ride, Jack?"

Jack didn't answer, because his riding didn't amount to much.

III

Len unhitched four heavy horses, led them into the yard, and put the ropes into Jack's hands. The child marched so confidently under the noses of the great creatures, as they planted their shaggy feet. And he was such a midget, and with his brown bare arms and bare legs and feet, and his vivid face, he looked so "tender." Jack's heart moved with tenderness.

"Don't you ever wear boots?" he asked.

"Not if I k'n help it. Them kids now, they won't neither, 'n I don't blame 'em. Last boots Ma sent for was found all over the manure heap, so the old man said he'd buy no more boots, an' a good job too. The only thing as scares me is double-gees: spikes all roads and Satan's face on three sides. Ever see double-gees?"

Len was leading three ponderous horses. He started peering on the road, the horses marching just behind his quick little figure. Then he found a burr with three queer sides and a sort of face on each side with sticking-out hair.

He was a funny kid, with his scraps of Latin and tags of poetry. Jack wondered that he wasn't self-conscious and ashamed to quote poetry. But he wasn't. He chirped them off, the bits of verse, as if they were a natural form of expression.

They had led the horses to another stable. Len again gave the ropes to Jack, disappeared, and returned leading a saddled stock-horse. Holding the reins of the saddle-horse, the boy scrambled up the neck of one of the big draft-horses like a monkey.

"Which are you goin' to ride?" he asked Jack from the height. "I'm taking three an' leading Lucy. You take the other three."

So he received the three halter ropes.

"I think I'll walk," said Jack.

"Please y'self. You k'n open the gates easy walkin'; and comin' back I'll do it, 'n you k'n ride Lucy an I'll ride behind pinion so's I can slip down easy."

Yes, Lennie was a joy. On the return journey, when Jack was in the saddle riding Lucy, Len flew up behind him and stood on the horse's crupper, his hands on Jack's shoulders, crying: "Let 'er go!" At the first gate, he slid down like a drop of water, then up again, this time sitting back to back with Jack, facing the horse's tail, and whistling briskly. Suddenly he stopped whistling, and said:

"Y've seen everybody but Gran an' Doc. Rackett, haven' you? He teaches me—a rum sortta dock he is, too, never there when he's wanted. But he's a real doctor all right: signs death certificates an' no questions asked. Y' c'd do a murder, 'n if you was on the right side of him, y'd never be hung. He'd say the corpse died of natural causes."

"I didn't know a corpse died," said Jack laughing.

"Didn't yer? Well yer know now!—Gran's as good as a corpse, an' she don't want her die. She put on Granfer's grave: 'Left desolate, but not without hope.' So they all thought she'd get married again. But she never.—Did y' go to one of them English schools?"

"Yes."

"Ever wear a bell-topper?"

"Once or twice."

"Gosh!—May I never go to school, God help me. I should die of shame and disgrace. Arrayed like a little black pea in a pod, learnin' to be useless. Look at Rackett. School, an' Cambridge, an' comes inter money. Wastes it. Wastes his life. Now he's teachin' me, an' th' only useful thing he ever did."

After a pause, Jack ventured.

"Who is Dr. Rackett?"

"A waster. Down and out waster. He's got a sin. I don't know what it is, but it's wastin' his soul away."

IV

It was no use Jack's trying to thread it all together. It was a bewilderment, so he let it remain so. It seemed to him, that right at the very core of all of them was the same bewildered vagueness: Mr. Ellis, Mrs. Ellis, Tom, the men—they all had that empty bewildered vagueness at the middle of them. Perhaps Lennie was most on the spot. The others just could attend to their jobs, no more.

Jack still had no acquaintance with anyone but Tom and Len. He never got an answer from Og and Magog. They just grinned and wriggled. Then there was Katie. Then Harry, a fat, blue-eyed small boy. And then that floss-haired Ellie who had come from Perth. And smaller than her, the baby. All very confusing.

The second morning, when they were at the proper breakfast, Dad suddenly said:

"Ma! D'ye know where the new narcissus bulbs are gone? I was waiting to plant 'em till I got back."

"I've not seen them since ye put them in the shed at the end of the verandah, dear."

"Well, they're gone."

Dead silence.

"Is 'em like onions?" asked Og, pricking up intelligently.

"Yes. They are! Have you seen them?" asked Dad sternly.

"I see Baby eatin' 'em, Dad," replied Og calmly.

"What, my bulbs, as I got out from England! Why, what the dickens, Ma, d'you let that mischievous monkey loose for? My precious narcissus bulbs, the first I've ever had. An' besides—Ma! I'm not sure but what they're poison."

The parents looked at one another, then at the gay baby. There is a general consternation. Ma gets the long, evil blue bottle of castor oil and forcibly administers a spoonful to the screaming baby. Dad hurries away, unable to look on the torture of the baby—the last of his name. He goes to hunt for the bulbs in the verandah shed. Tom says, "By Gosh!" and sits stupefied. Katie jumps up and smacks Og for telling tales, and Magog flies at Katie for touching Og. Jack, as a visitor, unused to family life, is a little puzzled.

Lennie meanwhile calmly continues to eat his large mutton chop. The floss-haired Ellie toddles off talking to herself. She comes back just as intent, wriggles on her chair on her stomach, manages to mount, and puts her two fists on the table, clutching various nibbled, onion-like roots.

"Vem's vem, ain't they, Dad? She never ate 'em. She got 'em out vis mornin' and was suckin' 'em, so I took 'em from her an' hid 'em for you."

"Should Dad have said Narcissi or Narcissuses?" asked Len from over his coffee mug, in the hollow voice of one who speaks out of his cups.

Nobody answered. The baby was shining with castor oil. Jack sat in a kind of stupefaction. Everybody ate mutton chops in noisy silence, oppressively, and chewed huge doorsteps of bread.

Then there entered a melancholy, well-dressed young fellow who looked like a daguerreotype of a melancholy young gentleman. He sauntered in in silence, and pulling out his chair, sat down at table without a word. Katie ran to bring his breakfast, which was on a plate on the hearth, keeping warm. Then she sat down again. The meal was even more oppressive. Everybody was eating quickly, to get away.

And then Gran opened the door leading from the parlour, and stood there like the portrait of an old, old lady, stood there immovable, just looking on, like some ghost. Jack's blood ran cold. The boys, pushing back their empty plates, went quietly out to the verandah, to the air. Jack followed, clutching his cap, that he had held all the time on his knee.

Len was pulling off his shirt. The boys had to wear shirts at meal times.

This was the wild new country! Jack's sense of bewilderment deepened. Also he felt a sort of passionate love for the family—as a savage must feel for his tribe. He felt he would never leave the family. He must always be near them, always in close physical contact with them. And yet he was just a trifle horrified by it all.

[CHAPTER V]

THE LAMBS COME HOME

I

A month later Tom and Lennie went off with the greys, Bill and Lil, to fetch the girls. It had been wet, so Jack had spent most of his day in the sheds mending corn sacks. He was dressed now in thick cotton trousers, coloured shirt, and grey woollen socks, and copper-toed boots. When he went ploughing, by Tom's advice he wore "lasting" socks—none.

His tweed coat hung on a nail on the wall of the cubby, his good trousers and vest were under the mattress of his bed. The only useful garment he had brought had been the old riding breeches of the Agricultural College days.

On the back of his Tom-clipped hair was an ant-heap of an old felt hat, and so he sat, hour after hour, sewing the sacks with a big needle. He was certainly not unhappy. He had a sort of passion for the family. The family was almost his vice. He felt he must be there with the family, and then nothing else mattered. Dad and Ma were the silent, unobtrusive pillars of the house. Tom was the important young person. Lennie was the soul of the place. Og and Magog were the mischievous life. Then there was Harry, whom Jack didn't like, and the little girls, to be looked after. Dr. Rackett hovered round like an uneasy ghost, and Gran was there in her room. Now the girls were coming home.

Jack felt he had sunk into the family, merged his individuality, and he would never get out. His own father and mother, England, or the future, meant nothing to him. He loved this family. He loved Tom, and Lennie, and he wanted always to be with all of them. This was how it had taken him: as a real passion.

He loved, too, the ugly stone house, especially the south side, the shady side, which was the back where the peppermint tree stood. If you entered the front door—which nobody did—you were in a tiny passage from which opened the parlour on one side, and the dying room on the other. Tom called it the dying room because it had never been used for any other purpose by the family. Old Mr. Ellis had been carried down there to die. So had his brother Willie. As Tom explained: "The staircase is too narrow to handle a coffin."

Through the passage you dropped a step into the living room. On the right from this you stepped up a step into the kitchen, and on the left, up a step into Gran's room. Gran's room had once been the whole house: the rest had been added on. It is often so in Australia.

From the sitting room you went straight on to the back verandah, and there were the four trees, and a fenced-in garden, and the yards. The garden had gay flowers, because Mr. Ellis loved them, and a round, stone-walled well. Alongside was the yard, marked off by the four trees into a square: a mulberry one side the kitchen door, a pepper the other, a photosphorum with a seat under it a little way off, and across, a Norfolk pine and half a fir tree.

Tom would talk to Jack about the family: a terrible tangle, they both thought. Why, there was Gran, endless years old! Dad was fifty, and he and Uncle Easu (dead) were her twins and her only sons. However, she had seven daughters and, it seemed to Jack, hundreds of grandchildren, most of them grown up with more children of their own.

"I could never remember all their names," he declared.

"I don't try," said Tom. "Neither does Gran. And I don't believe she cares a tuppenny for 'em—for any of 'em, except Dad and us."

Gran was a delicate old lady with a lace cap, and white curly hair, and an ivory face. She made a great impression on Jack, as if she were the presiding deity of the family. Over her head as she sat by the sitting room fire an old clock tick-tocked. That impressed Jack, too. There was something weird in her age, her pallor, her white hair and white cap, her remoteness. She was very important in the house, but mostly invisible.

Lennie, Katie, Og and Magog, Harry, Ellie with the floss-hair and the baby: these counted as "the children." Tom, who had had another mother, not Ma, was different. And now the other twins, Monica and Grace, were coming. These were the lambs. Jack, as he sat mending the sacks, passionately in love with the family and happy doing any sort of work there, thought of himself as a wolf in sheep's clothing, and laughed.

He wondered why he didn't like Harry. Harry was six, rather fat and handsome, and strong as a baby bull. But he was always tormenting Baby. Or was it Baby tormenting Harry?

Harry had got a picture book, and was finding out letters. Baby crawled over and fell on the book. Harry snatched it away. Baby began to scream. Ma interfered.

"Let Baby have it, dear."

"She'll tear it, Ma."

"Let her, dear. I'll get you another."

"When?"

"Some day, Harry. When I go to Perth."

"Ya.—Some day! Will ye get it Monday?"

"Oh, Harry, do be quiet, do——"

Then Baby and Harry tore the book between them in their shrieking struggles, while Harry battered the cover on the baby's head. And a hot, dangerous, bullying look would come into his eyes, the look of a bully. Jack knew that look already. He would know it better before he had done with Australia.

And yet Baby adored Harry. He was her one god.

Jack always marvelled over that baby. To him it was a little monster. It had not lived twelve months, yet God alone knew the things it knew. The ecstacy with which it smacked its red lips and showed its toothless gums over sweet, sloppy food. The diabolic screams if it was thwarted. The way it spat out "lumps" from the porridge! How on earth, at that age, had it come to have such a mortal hatred for lumps in porridge? The way its nose had to be held when it was given castor oil! And again, though it protested so violently against lumps in porridge, how it loved such abominations as plaster, earth, or the scrapings of the pig's bucket.

When you found it cramming dirt into its mouth, and scolded it, it would hold up its hands wistfully to have them cleaned. And it didn't mind a bit, then, if you swabbed its mouth out with a lump of rag.

It was a girl. It loved having a new clean frock on. Would sit gurgling and patting its stomach, in a new smart frock, so pleased with itself. Astounding!

It loved bulls and stallions and great pigs, running between their legs. And yet it yelled in unholy terror if fowls or dogs came near. Went into convulsions over the friendly old dog, or a quiet hen pecking near its feet.

It was always trying to scuttle into the stable, where the horses stood. And it had an imbecile desire to put its hand in the fire. And it adored that blue-eyed bully of a Harry, and didn't care a straw for the mother that slaved for it. Harry, who treated it with scorn and hate, pinching it, cuffing it, shoving it out of its favorite positions—off the grass patch, off the hearth-rug, off the sofa-end. But it knew exactly the moment to retaliate, to claw his cap from his head and clutch his fair curls, or to sweep his bread and jam on to the floor, into the dust, if possible ....

To Jack it was all just incredible.

II

But it was part of the family, and so he loved it.

He dearly loved the cheeky Len.

"What d'y' want ter say 'feece' for? Why can't yer say 'fyce' like any other bloke?—and why d'y' wash y'fyce before y'wash y'hands?"

"I like the water clean for my face."

"What about your dirty hands, smarmin' them over it?"

"You use a flannel or a sponge."

"If y've got one! Y'don't find 'em growin' in th' bush. Why can't y' learn offa me now, an' be proper. Ye'll be such an awful sukey when y'goes out campin', y'll shame y'self. Y'should wash y'hands first. Frow away th' water if y'not short, but y' will be. Then when y've got y'hands all soapy, sop y' fyce up an' down, not round an' round like a cat does. Then pop y' nut under th' pump an' wring it dry. Don't never waste y' huckaback on it. Y'll want that f' somefin' else."

"What else shall I want my towel for?"

"Wroppin' up things in, meat an' damper, an't'lay down for y'meal, against th' ants, or to put over it against th' insex."

Then from Tom.

"Hey, nipper knowall, dry up! I've taught you the way you should behave, haven't I? Well, I can teach Jack Grant, without any help from you. Skedaddle!"

"Hope y' can! Sorry for y', havin' to try," said Len as he skedaddled.

Tom was the head of the clan, and the others gave him leal obedience and a genuine, if impudent homage.

"What a funny kid!" said Jack. "He's different from the rest of you, and his lingo's rotten."

"He's not dif!" said Tom. "'Xactly same. Same's all of us—same's all the nips round here. He went t' same school as Monica and Grace an' me, to Aunt's school in th' settlement, till Dr. Rackett came. If he's any different, he got it from him: he's English."

Jack noticed they always spoke of Dr. Rackett as if he were a species of rattlesnake that they kept tame about the place.

"But Ma got Dad to get the Doc, 'cos she can't bear to part with Len even for a day—to give'm lessons at home.—I suppose he's her eldest son.—Doc needn't, he's well-to-do. But he likes it, when he's here. When he's not, Lennie slopes off and reads what he pleases. But it makes no difference to Len, he's real clever. And—" Tom added grinning—"he wouldn't speak like you do neither, not for all the tin in a cow's bucket."

To Jack, fresh from an English Public school, Len was amazing. If he hurt himself sharply, he sat and cried for a minute or two. Tears came straight out, as if smitten from a rock. If he read a piece of sorrowful poetry, he just sat and cried, wiping his eyes on his arm without heeding anybody. He was greedy, and when he wanted to, he ate enormously, in front of grown-up people. And yet you never minded. He talked poetry, or raggy bits of Latin, with great sententiousness and in the most awful accent, and without a qualm. Everything he did was right in his own eyes. Perfectly right in his own eyes.

His mother was fascinated by him.

Three things he did well: he rode, bare-back, standing up, lying down, anyhow. He rode like a circus rider. Also he boasted—heavens high. And thirdly, he could laugh. There was something so sudden, so blithe, so impish, so daring, and so wistful in his lit-up face when he laughed, that your heart melted in you like a drop of water.

Jack loved him passionately: as one of the family.

And yet even to Lennie, Tom was the hero. Tom, the slow Tom, the rather stupid Tom. To Lennie Tom's very stupidity was manly. Tom was so dependable, so manly, such a capable director. He never gave trouble to anyone, he was so complacent and self-reliant. Lennie was the love-child, the elf. But Tom was the good, ordinary Man, and therefore the hero.

Jack also loved Tom. But he did not accept his manliness so absolutely. And it hurt him a little, that the strange sensitive Len should put himself so absolutely in obedience and second place to the good plain fellow. But it was so. Tom was the chief. Even to Jack.

III

When Tom was away, Jack felt as if the pivot of all activity was missing. Mr. Ellis was not the real pivot. It was the plain, red-faced Tom.

Tom had talked a good deal, in snatches, to Jack. It was the family that bothered him, as usual. He always talked the family.

"My grandfather came out here in the early days. He was a merchant and lost all his money in some East India business. He married Gran in Melbourne, then they came out here. They had a bit of a struggle, but they made good. Then Grampa died without leaving a will: which complicated things for Gran. Dad and Easu was twins, but Dad was the oldest. But Dad had wandered: he was gone for years and no one knows what he did all the time.

"But Gran liked him best, and he was the eldest son, so she had this place all fixed up for him when he came back. She'd a deal of trouble getting the Reds out. All the A'nts were on their side—on the Red's side. We always call Uncle Easu's family the Reds. And Aunt Emmie says she's sure Uncle Easu was born first, and not Dad. And that Gran took a fancy to Dad from the first, so she said he was the eldest. Anyhow it's neither here nor there.—I hope to goodness I never get twins.—It runs in the family, and of all the awful things! Though the Easu's have got no twins. Seven sons and no girls, and no twins. Uncle Easu's dead, so young Red runs their place.

"Uncle Easu was a nasty scrub, anyway. He married the servant girl, and a servant girl no better than she should be, they say.

"He didn't make no will, either. Making no wills runs in the family, as well as twins. Dad won't. His Dad wouldn't, and he won't neither."

Which meant, Jack knew, that by the law of the colony the property would come to Tom.

"Oh. Gran's crafty all right! She never got herself talked about, turning the Reds out! She saved up a stocking—Gran always has a stocking. And she saved up an' bought 'em out. She persuaded them that the land beyond this was better'n this. She worked in with 'em while Dad was away, like the fingers on your hand: and bought that old barn of a place over yonder for 'em, and bounced 'em into it. Gran's crafty, when it's anyone she cares about. Now it's Len.

"Anyhow there it was when Dad came back, Wandoo all ready for him. He brought me wrapped in a blanket. Old Tim, our half-caste man, was his servant and there was my old nurse. That's all there is we know about me. I know no more, neither who I am nor where I sprung from. And Dad never lets on.

"He came back with a bit of money, and Gran made him marry Ma to mind me. She said I was such a squalling little grub, and she wanted me brought up decent. So Ma did it. But Gran never quite fancied me.

"It's a funny thing, seeing how I come, that I should be so steady and ordinary, and Len should be so clever and unsteady. You'd ha' thought I should be Len and him me.

"Who was my mother? That's what I want to know. Who was she? And Dad won't never say.

"Anyhow she wasn't black, so what does it matter, anyhow?

"But it does matter!"—Tom brought his fist down with a smack in the palm of his other hand. "Nobody is ordinary to their mother, and I'm ordinary to everybody, and I wish I wasn't."

Funny of Tom. Everybody depended on him so, he was the hero of the establishment, because he was so steady and ordinary and dependable. And now even he was wishing himself different. You never knew how folks would take themselves.

IV

As for the Reds, Jack had been over to their place once or twice. They were a rough crowd of men and youths, father and mother both dead. A bachelor establishment. When there was any extra work to be done, the Wandoos went over there to help. And the Reds came over to Wandoo the same. In fact they came more often to Wandoo than the Ellises went to them.

Jack felt the Reds didn't like him. So he didn't care for them. Red Ellis, the eldest son, was about thirty years old, a tall, sinewy, red-faced man with reddish hair and reddish beard and staring blue eyes. One morning when Tom and Mr. Ellis were out mustering and tallying, Jack was sent over to the Red house. This was during Jack's first fortnight at Wandoo.

Red the eldest met him in the yard.

"Where's y'oss?"

"I haven't one. Mr. Ellis said you'd lend me one."

"Can y' ride?"

"More or less."

"What d'ye want wearin' that Hyde Park costume out here for?"

"I've nothing else to ride in," said Jack, who was in his old riding breeches.

"Can't y' ride in trousers?"

"Can't keep 'em over my knees, yet."

"Better learn then, smart 'n'lively. Keep them down, 'n' y'socks up. Come on then, blast ye, an' I'll see about a horse."

They went to the stockyard, an immense place. But it was an empty desert now, save for a couple of black-boys holding a wild-looking bay. Red called out to them:

"Caught Stampede, have y'? Well, let 'im go again afore y' break y' necks. Y'r not to ride him, d'y hear?—What's in the stables, Ned?"

"Your mare, master. Waiting for you."

"What y' got besides, ye grinning jackasses? Find something for Mr. Grant here, an' look slippy."

"Oh, master, no horse in, no knowin' stranger come."

Red turned to Jack. Easu was a coarse, swivel-eyed, loose-jointed tall fellow.

"Y' hear that. Th' only thing left in this yard is Stampede. Ye k'n take him or leave him, if y'r frightened of him. I'm goin' tallyin' sheep, an' goin' now. If ye stop around idlin' all day, y'needn't tell Uncle 'twas my fault."

Jack hesitated. From a colonial point of view, he couldn't ride well, and he knew it. Yet he hated Easu's insulting way. Easu went grinning to the stable to fetch his mare, pleased with himself. He didn't want the young Jackeroo planted on him, to teach any blankey thing to.

Jack went slowly over to the quivering Stampede, and asked the blacks if they had ever ridden him. One answered:

"Me only fella ride 'im some time master not tomorrow. Me an' Ned catch him in mob longa time—Try break him—no good. He come back paddock one day. Ned wantta break him. No good. Master tell 'im let 'im go now."

Red Easu came walking out of the stable, chewing a stalk.

"Put the saddle on him," said Jack to the blacks. "Ill try."

The boys grinned and scuffled round. They rather liked the job. By being very quick and light, Jack got into the saddle, and gripped. The boys stood back, the horse stood up, and then whirled around on his hind legs, and round and down. Then up and away like a squib round the yard. The boys scattered, so did Easu, but Jack, because it was natural for his legs to grip and stick, stuck on. His bones rattled, his hat flew off, his heart beat high. But unless the horse came down backwards on top of him, he could stay on. And he was not really afraid. He thought: "If he doesn't go down backwards on top of me, I shall be all right." And to the boys he called: "Open the gate!" Meanwhile he tried to quiet the horse. "Steady now, steady!" he said, in a low, intimate voice. "Steady boy!" And all the time he held on with his thighs and knees, like iron.

He did not believe in the innate viciousness of the horse. He never believed in the innate viciousness of anything, except a man. And he did not want to fight the horse for simple mastery. He wanted just to hold it hard with his legs until it soothed down a little, and he and it could come to an understanding. But he must never relax the hold of his hard legs, or he was dead.

Stampede was not ready for the gate. He sprang fiercely at it as if it had been guarded by fire. Once in the open, he ran, and bucked, and bucked, and ran, and kicked, and bucked, and ran. Jack stuck on with the lower half of his body like a vise, feeling as if his head would be jerked off his shoulders. It was becoming hard work. But he knew, unless he stuck on, he was a dead man.

Then he was aware that Stampede was bolting, and Easu was coming along on a grey mare.

Now they reached the far gate, and a miracle happened. Stampede stood still while Red came up and opened the gate. Jack was conscious of a body of live muscle and palpitating fire between his legs, of a furious head tossing hair like hot wire, and bits of white foam. Also he was aware of the trembling in his own thighs, and the sensual exertion of gripping that hot wild body in the power of his own legs. Gripping the hot horse in a grip of sensual mastery that made him tremble strangely with a curious quivering. Yet he dared not relax.

"Go!" said Red. And away they went. Stampede bolted like the wind, and Jack held on with his knees and by balance. He was thrilled, really: frightened externally, but internally keyed up. And never for a moment did he relax his mind's attention, nor the attention of his own tossed body. The worst was the corkscrew bucks, when he nearly went over the brute's head. And the moments of vindictive hate, when he would kill the beast and be killed a thousand times, rather than be beaten. Up he went, off the saddle, and down he came again, with a shattering jerk, down on the front of the saddle. The balance he kept was a mystery even to himself, his body was so flung about, by the volcano of furious life beneath him. He felt himself shaken to pieces, his bones rattled all out of socket. But they got there, out to the sheep paddock where a group of Reds and black-boys stood staring in silence.

Jack jumped off, though his knees were weak and his hands trembling. The horse stood dark with sweat. Quickly he unbuckled the saddle and bridle and pulled them off, and gave the horse a clap on its wet neck. Away it went, wild again, and free.

Jack glanced at the Reds, and then at Easu. Red Easu met his eyes, and the two stared at one another. It was the defiance of the hostile colonial, brutal and retrogressive, against the old mastery of the old country. Jack was barely conscious. Yet he was not afraid, inside himself, of the swivel-eyed brute of a fellow. He knew that Easu was not a better man than himself, though he was bigger, older, and on his own ground. But Jack had the pride of his own, old, well-bred country behind him, and he would never go back on his breeding. He was not going to yield in manliness before the colonial way of life: the brutishness, the commonness. Inwardly he would not give in to it. But the best of it, the colonial honesty and simplicity, that he loved.

There are two sides to colonials, as to everything. One side he loved. The other he refused and defied.

These decisions are not mental, but they are critical in the soul of a boy of eighteen. And the destiny of nations hangs on such silent, almost unconscious decisions.

Esau—they called him Easu, but the name was Esau—turned to a black, and bellowed:

"Give master your horse, and carry that bally saddle home."

Then silently they all turned to the sheep-tallying.

V

Jack was still sewing sacks. It was afternoon. He listened for the sound of the shay, though he did not expect it until nightfall at least.

His ear, training to the Australian alertness, began to detect unusual sounds. Or perhaps it was not his ear. The old bushman seems to have developed a further faculty, a psychic faculty of "sensing" some unusual disturbance in the atmosphere, and reading it. Jack was a very new Australian. Yet he had become aware of this faculty in Tom, and he wanted it for himself. He wanted to be able to hear the inaudible, like a sort of clair-audience.

All he could hear was the audible: and all he could see was the visible. The children were playing in the yard: he could see them in the dust. Mrs. Ellis was still at the wash-tub: he saw the steam. Katie was upstairs: he had seen her catching a hornet in the window. The men were out ploughing, the horses were away. The pigs were walking round grunting, the cows and poultry were all in the paddock. Gran never made a sound, unless she suddenly appeared on the scene like the Lord in Judgment. And Dr. Rackett was always quiet: often uncannily so.

It was still rainy season, but a warm, mellow, sleepy afternoon, with no real sound at all. He got up and stood on the threshold to stretch himself. And there, coming by the grain-shed, he saw a little cortege in which the first individual he distinguished was Red Easu.

"Go in," shouted Red, "and tell A'nt as Herberts had an accident, and we're bringin' him in."

Sure enough, they were carrying a man on a gate.

Mrs. Ellis clicked:

"Tt-tt-tt-tt-tt! They run to us when they're in trouble." But she went at once to the linen closet, and on into the living room.

Gran was sitting in a corner by a little fire.

"Who's hurt?" she inquired testily. "Not one of the family, I hope and pray."

"Jack says it's Red Herbert," replied Mrs. Ellis.

"Put him in the cubby with the boys, then."

But Mrs. Ellis thought of her beloved boys, and hesitated.

"Do you think it's much, Jack?" she asked.

"They're carrying him on a gate," said Jack. "It looks bad."

"Dear o'me!" snapped Gran, in her brittle fashion. "Why couldn't you say so?—Well then—if you don't want to put him in the cubby, there's a bed in my room. Put him there. But I should have thought he could have had Tom's bed, and Tom could have slept here on the sofa."

"Poor Tom," thought Jack.

"Don't"—Gran banged her stick on the floor—"stand there like a pair of sawneys! Get to work! Get to work!"

Jack was staring at the ground and twirling his hat. Gran hobbled forward. He noticed to his surprise that she had a wooden leg. And she stamped it at him:

"Go and fetch that rascal of a doctor!" she cried, in a startling loud voice.

Jack went. Dr. Rackett was not in his room, for Jack halloed and knocked at every door. He peeped into the rooms, whose doors were slightly opened. This must be the girls' room—two beds, neat white quilts, blue bow at the window. When would they be home? Here was the family bed, with two cots in the room as well. He came to a shut door. This must be it. He knocked and halloed again. No sound. Jack felt as if he were bound to come upon a Bluebeard's chamber. He hated looking in these bedrooms.

He knocked again, and opened the door. A queer smell, like chemicals. A dark room, with the blind down: a few books, a feeling of dark dreariness. But no Doctor. "So that's that!" thought Jack.

In spite of himself his boots clattered going down, and made him nervous. Why did the inside of the house, where he never went, seem so secret, and rather horrible? He peeped into the dismal little drawing room. Not there of course! Opposite was the dying room, the door wide open. Nobody ever was there.

Rackett was not in the house, that was certain. Jack slunk out, went to the paddock, caught Lucy the saddle-horse; saddled her and cantered aimlessly round, within hearing of the homestead. The afternoon was passing. Not a soul was in sight. The gum-trees hung their sharp leaves like obvious ghosts, with the hateful motionlessness of gum-trees. And though flowers were out, they were queer, scentless, unspeaking sort of flowers, even the red ones that were ragged like fire. Nothing spoke. The distances were clear and mellow and beautiful, but soulless, and nobody alive in the world. The silent, lonely gruesomeness of Australia gave Jack the blues.

It surely was milking time. Jack returned quietly to the yard. Still nobody alive in the world. As if everyone had died. Yes, there was the half-caste Tim in the distance, bringing up the slow, unwilling cows, slowly, like slow dreams.

And there was Dad coming out of the back door, in his shirt sleeves: bluer and puffier than ever, with his usual serene expression, and his look of boss, which came from his waistcoat and watchchain. Dad always wore his waistcoat and watchchain, and seemed almost over-dressed in it.

Came Og and Magog running with quick little steps, and Len slinking round the doorpost, and Harry marching alone, and Katie dragging her feet, and Baby crawling. Jack was glad to see them. They had all been indoors to look at the accident. And it had been a dull, dead, empty afternoon, with all the life emptied out of it. Even now the family, the beloved family, seemed a trifle gruesome to Jack.

He helped to milk: a job he was not good at. Dad even took a stool and milked also. As usual Dad did nothing but supervise. It was a good thing to have a real large family that made supervising worth while. So Tom said, "It's a good thing to have nine children, you can clear some work with 'em, if you're their Dad." That's why Jack was by no means one too many. Dad supervised him too.

They got the milking done somehow. Jack changed his boots, washed himself, and put on his coat. He nearly trod on the baby as he walked across to the kitchen in the dying light. He lifted her and carried her in.

Usually "tea"—which meant mutton chops and eggs and steaks as well—was ready when they came in from milking. Today Mr. Ellis was putting eucalyptus sticks under the kettle, making the eternally familiar scent of the kitchen, and Mrs. Ellis was setting the table there. Usually, they lived in the living room from breakfast on. But today, tea was to be in the kitchen, with a silence and a cloud in the air like a funeral. But there was plenty of noise coming from Gran's room.

Jack had to have Baby beside him for the meal. And she put sticky hands in his hair and leaned over and chewed and sputtered crumbs, wet crumbs in his ear. Then she tried to wriggle down, but the evening was chill and her hands and feet were cold and Mrs. Ellis said to keep her up. Jack felt he couldn't stand it any longer, when suddenly she fell asleep, the most unexpected thing in the world, and Mrs. Ellis carried off her and Harry, to bed.

Ah, the family! The family! Jack still loved it. It seemed to fill the whole of life for him. He did not want to be alone, save at moments. And yet, on an afternoon like today, he somehow realised that even the family wouldn't last forever. What then? What then?

He couldn't bear the thought of getting married to one woman and coming home to a house with only himself and this one woman in it. Then the slow and lonely process of babies coming. The thought of such a future was dreadful to him. He didn't want it. He didn't want his own children. He wanted this family: always this family. And yet there was something gruesome to him about the empty bedrooms and the uncanny privacies even of this family. He didn't want to think of their privacies.

VI

Three of the Reds trooped out through the sitting room, lean, red-faced, hairy, heavy-footed, uncouth figures, for their tea. The Wandoo Ellises were aristocratic in comparison. They asked Jack to go and help hold Herbert down, because he was fractious. "He's that fractious!"

Jack didn't in the least want to have to handle any of the Reds, but he had to go. He found himself taking the two steps down into the dark living room, and the two steps up into Gran's room beyond.

Why need the family be so quiet in the kitchen, when there was such a hubbub in here? Alan Ellis was holding one leg of the injured party, and Ross Ellis the other, and they both addressed the recumbent figure as if it were an injured horse with a Whoa there! Steady on, now! Steady, boy, steady! Whilst Easu, bending terribly over the prostrate figure, clutched both its arms in a vice, and cursed Jack for not coming sooner to take one arm.

Herbert had hurt his head, and turned fractious. Jack took the one arm. Easu was on the other side of the bed, his reddish fair beard glowing. There was a queer power in Easu, which fascinated Jack a little. Beyond, Gran was sitting up in bed, among many white pillows, like Red Riding Hood's grandmother. A bright fire of wood logs was burning in the open hearth, and four or five tallow candles smoked duskily. But a screen was put between Gran's four-poster and Herbert's bed, a screen made of a wooden clothes-horse covered with sheets. Jack, however, from his position by Herbert's pillow, could see beyond the screen to Gran's section.

His attention was drawn by the patient. Herbert's movements were sudden and convulsive, and always in a sudden jerking towards the right side of the bed. Easu had given Jack the left arm to hold, and as soon as Herbert became violent, Jack couldn't hold him. The left arm, lean and hard as iron, broke free, and Easu jumped up and cursed Jack.

Here was a pretty scene! With Gran mumbling to herself on the other side the hideous sheeted screen!

There was nothing for it but to use cool intelligence—a thing the Reds did not possess. Jack had lost his hold again, and Easu like a reddish, glistening demon was gripping the sick man's two arms and arching over him. Jack called up his old veterinary experience and proceeded to detach himself.

He noticed first: that Herbert was far less fierce when they didn't resist him. Second, that he stopped groaning when his eyes fell away from the men around him. Third, that all the convulsive jerky movements, which had thrown him out of the bed several times, were towards the right side of the bed.

Then why not bind him to the left?

The left arm had again escaped his grasp, and Easu's exasperated fury was only held in check by Gran's presence. Jack went out of the room and found Katie.

"Hunt me out an old sheet," he said.

"What for?" she asked, but went off to do his bidding.

When she came back she said:

"Mother says they don't want to bandage Herbert, do they?"

"I'm going to try and bind him. I shan't hurt him," he replied.

"Oh Jack, don't let them send for me to sit with him—I hate sickness."

"You give us a hand then with this sheet."

Between them they prepared strong bands. Jack noosed one with sailor's knots round Katie's hands, and fastened it to the table leg.

"Pull!" he ordered. "Pull as hard as you can." And as she pulled, "Does it hint, now?"

"Not a bit," she said.

Jack went back to the sick room. Herbert was quiet, the three brothers were sulky and silent. They wanted above all things to get out, to get away. You could see that. Easu glanced at Jack's hand. There was something tense and alert about Easu, like a great, wiry bird with enormous power in its lean, red neck and its lean limbs.

"I thought we'd best bind him so as not to hurt him," said Jack. "I know how to do it, I think."

The brothers said not a word, but let him go ahead. And Jack bound the left arm and the left leg, and put a band round the body of the patient. They looked on, rather distantly interested. Easu released the convulsive left arm of his brother. Jack took the sick man's hand soothingly, held it soothingly, then slipped his hand up the hairy fore-arm and got the band attached just above the elbow. Then he fastened the ends to the bed-head. He felt quite certain he was doing right. While he was busy Mrs. Ellis came in. She watched in silence, too. When it was done, Jack looked at her.

"I believe it'll do," she said with a nod of approval. And then, to the cowed, hulking brothers, "You might as well go and get your tea."

They bumped into one another trying to get through the door. Jack noticed they were in their stocking feet. They stooped outside the door to pick up their boots.

"Good idea!" he thought. And he took off his own boots. It made him feel more on the job.

Mrs. Ellis went round the white bed-sheet screen to sit with Gran. Jack went blowing out the reeking candles on the sick man's side of the same screen. Then he sat on a hard chair facing the staring, grimacing patient. He felt sorry for him, but repelled by him. Yet as Herbert tossed his wiry, hairy free arm and jerked his hairy, sharp-featured face, Jack wanted to help him.

He remembered the vet's advice: "Get the creatures' confidence, lad, and you can do anything with 'em. Horse or man, cat or canary, get the creature's confidence, and if anything can be done, you can do it."

Jack wanted now to proceed to get the creature's confidence. He knew it was a matter of will: of holding the other creature's will with his own will. But gently, and in a kindly spirit.

He held Herbert's hard fingers softly in his own hand, and said softly: "Keep quiet, old man, keep quiet. I'm here. I'll take care of you. You rest. You go to sleep. I won't leave you. I'll take care of you."

Herbert lay still as if listening. His muscles relaxed. He seemed dreadfully tired—Jack could feel it. He was dreadfully, dreadfully tired. Perhaps the womanless, brutal life of the Reds had made him so tired. He seemed to go to sleep. Then he jerked awake, and the convulsive struggling began again, with the frightful rolling of the eyes.

But the steady bonds that held him seemed to comfort him, and Jack quietly took the clutching fingers again. And the sick man's eyes, in their rolling, rested on the quiet, abstract face of the youth, with strange watching. Jack did not move. And again Herbert's tension seemed to relax. He seemed in an agony of desire to sleep, but the agony of desire was so great, that the very fear of it jerked the sick man into horrible wakefulness.

Jack was saying silently, with his will: "Don't worry! Don't worry, old man! Don't worry! You go to sleep. I'll look after you."

And as he sat in dead silence, saying these things, he felt as if the fluid of his life ran out of his fingers into the fingers of the hurt man. He was left weak and limp. And Herbert began to go to sleep, really to sleep.

Jack sat in a daze, with the virtue gone out of him. And Herbert's fingers were soft and childlike again in their relaxation.

The boy started a little, feeling someone pat him on the shoulder. It was Mrs. Ellis, patting him in commendation, because the patient was sunk deep in sleep. Then she went out.

Following her with his eyes, Jack saw another figure in the doorway. It was Red Easu, like a wolf out of the shadow, looking in. And Jack quietly let slip the heavy, sleeping fingers of the sick man. But he did not move his posture. Then he was aware that Easu had gone again.

VII

It was late, and the noise of rain outside, and weird wind blowing. Mrs. Ellis had been in and whispered that Dr. Rackett was not home yet—that he had probably waited somewhere for the shay. And that she had told the Reds to keep away.

There was dead silence save for the weather outside, and a noise of the fire. The candles were all blown out.

He was startled by hearing Gran's voice:

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings—"

"She's reading," thought Jack, though there was no light to read by. And he wondered why the old lady wasn't asleep.

"I knew y'r mother's father, Jack Grant," came the thin, petulant voice. "He cut off my leg. Devil of a fella wouldn't let me die when I wanted to. Cut it off without a murmur, and no chloroform."

The thin voice was so devilishly awake, in the darkness of the night, like a voice out of the past piercing the inert present.

"What did he care! What did he care! Not a bit," Gran went on. "And y're another. You take after him. You're such another. You're a throw-back, to your mother's father. I was wondering what I was going to do with those great galoots in my room all night. I'm glad it's you."

Jack thought: "Lord, have I got to sit here all night!"

"You've got the night before you," said Gran's demonishly wakeful voice, uncanny in its thin alertness, in the deep night. "So come round here to the fireside an' make y'self comfortable."

Jack rose obediently and went round the screen. After all, an arm-chair would be welcome.

"Well, say something," said Gran.

The boy peered at her in the dusk, in a kind of fear.

"Then light me a candle, for the land's sake," she said pettishly.

He took a tin candle-stick with a tallow candle, blew the fire and made a yellow light. She looked like a carved ivory Chinese figure, almost grotesque, among her pillows.

"Yes, y'r like y'r grandfather: a stocky, stubborn man as didn't say much, but dare do anything. And never had a son.—Hard as nails the man was."

"More family!" thought Jack wearily, disapproving of Gran's language thoroughly.

"Had two daughters though, and disowned the eldest. Your mother was the youngest. The eldest got herself into trouble and he turned her out. Regular obstinate fool, and no bowels of compassion. That's how men are when y' let 'em. You're the same."

Jack was so sleepy, so sleepy, and the words of the old woman seemed like something pricking him.

"I'd have stood by her—but I was her age, and what could I do? I'd have married her father if I could, for he was a widower. But he married another woman for his second, and I went by ship to Melbourne, and then I took poor old Ellis."

What on earth made her say these things, he didn't know, for he was dead sleepy, and if he'd been wide awake he wouldn't have wanted her to unload this sort of stuff on him. But she went on, like the old demon she was:

"Men are fools, and women make 'em what they are. I followed your Aunt Lizzie up, years after. She married a man in the mounted police, and he sent the boy off. The boy was a bit weak-minded, and the man wouldn't have him. So the lad disappeared into the bush. They say he was canny enough about business and farming, but a bit off about people. Anyway he was Mary's half-brother: you met Mary in Perth. Her scamp of a father was father of that illegitimate boy. But she's an orphan now, poor child: like that illegitimate half-brother of hers."

Jack looked up pathetically. He didn't want to hear. And Gran suddenly laughed at him, with the sudden daring, winsome laugh, like Lennie.

"Y're a bundle of conventions, like y'r grandfather," she said tenderly. "But y've got a kinder heart. I suppose that's from y'r English father. Folks are tough in Australia: tough as whit-leather.—Y'll be tempted to sin, but y'wont be tempted to condemn. And never you mind. Trust yourself, Jack Grant. Earn a good opinion of yourself, and never mind other folks. You've only got to live once. You know when you're spirit glows—trust that. That's you! That's the spirit of God in you. Trust in that, and you'll never grow old. If you knuckle under, you'll grow old."

She paused for a time.

"Though I don't know that I've much room to talk," she ruminated on. "There was my son Esau, he never knuckled under, and though he's dead, I've not much good to say of him. But then he never had a kind heart: never. Never a woman loved Esau, though some feared him. I was not among 'em. Not I. I feared no man, not even your grand-father: except a little. But look at Dad here now. He's got a kind heart: as kind a heart as ever beat. And he's gone old. And he's got heart disease. And he knuckled under. Ay, he knuckled under to me, he did, poor lad. And he'll go off sudden, when his heart gives way. That's how it is with kind-hearted men. They knuckle under, and they die young. Like Dad here. He'll never make old bones. Poor lad!"

She mused again in silence.

"There's nothing to win in life, when all's said and done, but a good opinion of yourself. I've watched and I know. God is y'rself. Or put it the other way if you like: y'rself is God. So win a good opinion of yourself, and watch the glow inside you."

Queer, thought Jack, that this should be an old woman's philosophy. Yourself is God! Partly he believed it, partly he didn't. He didn't know what he believed.—Watch the glow inside you. That he understood.

He liked Gran. She was so alone in life, amid all her children. He himself was a lone wolf too: among the lambs of the family. And perhaps Red Easu was a lone wolf.

"But what was I telling you?" Gran resumed. "About your illegitimate cousin. I followed him up too. He went back beyond Atherton, and took up land. He's got a tidy place now, and he's never married. He's wrong in his head about people, but all right about the farm. I'm hoping that place'll come to Mary one day, for the child's got nothing. She's a good child—a good child. Her mother was a niece of mine."

She seemed to be going to sleep. But like Herbert, she roused again.

"Y'd better marry Mary. Make up your mind to it," she said.

And instantly he rebelled against the thought. Never.

"Perhaps I'd ought to have said: 'The best in yourself is God,'" she mused. "Perhaps that's more it. The best in yourself is God. But then who's going to say what is the best in yourself. A kind man knuckles under, and thinks it's the best in himself. And a hard man holds out, and thinks that's the best in himself. And its not good for a kind man to knuckle under, and it's not good for a hard-hearted man to hold out. What's to be done, deary-me, what's to be done. And no matter what we say, people will be as they are.—You can but watch the glow."

She really did doze off. And Jack stole away to the other side of the screen to escape her, leaving the candle burning.

VIII

He sat down thankfully on the hard chair by Herbert's side, glad to get away from women. Glad to be with men, if it was only Herbert. Glad to doze and feel alone: to feel alone.

He awoke with a jerk and a cramped neck, and there was Tom peeping in. Tom? They must be back. Jack's chair creaked as he made a movement to get up. But Tom only waved his hand and disappeared. Mean of Tom.

They must be back. The twins must be back. The family was replenished. He stared with sleepy eyes, and a heavy, sleepy, sleepy head.

And the next thing he heard was a soft, alert voice saying: "Hello, Bow!" Queer how it echoed in his dark consciousness as he slept, this soft "Hello, Bow!"

There they were, both laughing, fresh with the wind and rain. Grace standing just behind Monica, Monica's hair all tight crisp with rain, blond at the temples, darker on the head, and her fresh face laughing, and her yellow eyes looking with that long, meaningful look that had no meaning, peering into his sleepy eyes. He felt something stir inside him.

"Hello, Bow!" she said again, putting her fingers on his sleeve, "We've got back." And still in his sleep-stupor he stared without answering a word.

"You aren't awake!" she whispered, putting her cold hand suddenly on his face, and laughing as he started back. A new look came into his eyes as he stared startled at her, and she bent her head, turning aside.

"Poo! Smells of stinking candles in here!" whispered Grace.

Someone else was there. It was Red Easu in the doorway, saying in a hoarse voice:

"Want me to take a spell with Herbert?"

Monica glanced back at him with a strange look. He loomed weird and tall, with his rather long, red neck and glistening beard and quick blue eyes. A certain sense of power came with him.

"Hello, girls, got back!" he added to the twins, who watched him without speaking.

"Who's there?" said Gran's voice from the other side of the screen. "Is it the girls back? Has Mary come with you?"

As if in answer to the summons, Mary appeared in the doorway, wearing a white apron. She glanced first at Jack, with her black eyes, and then at Gran. Monica was watching her with a sideways lynx look, and Grace was looking at everybody with big blue eyes, while Easu looked down from his uncouth, ostrich height.

"Hello, Gran!" said Mary, going to the other side of the screen to kiss the old lady. The twins followed suit.

"Want me to take a spell in here?" said Easu, jerking his thumb at the sleeping Herbert. Easu wore black trousers hitched up high with braces over a dark-grey flannel shirt, and leather leggings, but no boots. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up from his sinewy brown arms. His reddish fair hair was thick and rather long. He spoke in a deep gruff voice, that he made as quiet as possible, and he seemed to show a gruff sort of submissiveness to Jack, at the moment.

"No, Easu," replied Gran, "I can't do with you, Jack Grant will manage."

The sick man was sleeping through it all like the dead.

"I can take a turn," said Mary's soft, low, insidious voice.

"No, not you either, Mary. You go to 'sleep after that drive. Go, all of you, go to bed. I can't do with you all in here. Has Dr. Rackett come?"

"No," said Easu.

"Then go away, all of you. I can't do with you," said Gran.

Mary came round the screen and shook hands with Jack, looking him full in the eyes with her black eyes, so that he was uncomfortable. She made him more uncomfortable than Monica did. Monica had slunk also round the screen, and was standing with one foot trailing, watching. She watched just as closely when Mary shook hands with the embarrassed Easu.

They all retreated silently to the door. Grace went first. And with her big, dark-blue eyes she glanced back inquisitively at Jack. Mary went next—she too turning in the door to give him a look and an intimate, furtive-seeming smile. Then came Monica, and like a wolf she lingered in the door looking back with a long, meaningful, meaningless sidelong look before she took her departure. Then on her heels went Easu, and he did not look back. He seemed to loom over the girls.

"Blow the light out," said Gran.

He went round to blow out the candle. Gran lay there like an old angel. Queer old soul—framed by pillow frills.

"Yourself is God!"

Jack thought of that with a certain exultance.

He went over and made up the fire. Then he sat in the arm-chair. Herbert was moving. He went over to soothe him. The sick man moaned steadily for some time, for a long time, then went still again. Jack slept in the hard chair.

He woke up cramped and cold, and went round to the arm-chair by the fire. Gran was sleeping like an inert bit of ivory. He softly attended to the fire and sat down in the arm-chair.

He was riding a horse a long, long way, on a journey that would never end. He couldn't stop the horse till it stopped of itself. And it would never stop. A voice said: What has he done? And a voice answered: Conquered the world.—But the horse did not stop. And he woke and saw shadows on the wall, and slept again. Things had all turned to dough—his hands were heavy with dough. He woke and looked at his hands to see if it were so. How loudly and fiercely the clock ticked!

Not dough, but boxing gloves. He was fighting inside a ring, fighting with somebody who was and who wasn't Easu. He could beat Easu—he couldn't beat Easu. Easu had knocked him down; he was lying writhing with pain and couldn't rise, while they were counting him out. In three more seconds he would be counted out! Horror!

He woke, it was midnight and Herbert was writhing.

"Did I sleep a minute, Herbert?" he whispered.

"My head! My head! It jerks so!"

"Does it, old man? Never mind."

And the next thought was: "There must have been gun-powder in that piece of wood, in the fire."

IX

It was half-past one, and Mary unexpectedly appeared with tray and lighted candle, and cocoa-milk for Jack and arrowroot for Herbert. She fed Herbert with a spoon, and he swallowed, but made no sign that he understood.

"How did he get the accident?" Jack whispered.

"His horse threw him against a tree."

"Wish Rackett would come," whispered Jack.

Mary shook her head and they were silent.

"How old are you, Mary?" Jack asked.

"Nineteen."

"I'm eighteen at the end of this month."

"I know.—But I'm much older than you."

Jack looked at her queer dark muzzle. She seemed to have a queer, humble complacency of her own.

"She"—Jack nodded his head towards Gran—"says that knuckling under makes you old."

Mary laughed suddenly.

"Then I'm a thousand," she said.

"What do you knuckle under for?" he asked.

She looked up at him slowly, and again something quick and hot stirred in him, from her dark, queer, humble, yet assured face.

"It's my way," she said, with an odd smile.

"Funny way to have," he replied, and suddenly he was embarrassed. And he thought of Monica's dare-devil way.

He felt embarrassed.

"I must have my own way," said Mary, with another odd, beseeching, and yet darkly confident smile.

"Yourself is God," thought Jack.—But he said nothing, because he felt uncomfortable.

And Mary went away with the tray and the light, and he was glad when she was gone.

X

The worst part of the night. Nothing happened—and that was perhaps the worst part of it. Fortified by the powers of darkness, the slightest sounds took on momentous importance, but nothing happened. He expected something—but nothing came.

Gran asleep there, in all the fixed motionlessness of her years, a queer white clot. And young Herbert asleep or unconscious, sending wild vibrations from his brain.

The thought of Monica seemed to flutter subjectively in Jack's soul, the thought of Mary objectively. That is, Monica was somehow inside him, in his blood, like a sister. And Mary was outside him, like a black-boy. Both of them engaging his soul. And yet he was alone, all alone in the universe. These two only beset him. Or did he beset them?

The oppossums made a furious bombilation as they ran up and down, back and forth between the roof and ceiling, like an army moving. And suddenly, shatteringly a nut would come down on the old shingle roof from the Moreton Bay fig outside, with a crash like a gun, while the branches dangled and clanked against the timber walls. An immense, uncanny strider! And him alone in the lonely, uncanny, timeless core of the night.

Slowly the night went by. And weird things awoke in the boy's soul, things he could never quite put to sleep again. He felt as if this night he had entered into a dense, impenetrable thicket. As if he would never get out. He knew he would never get out.

He awoke again with a start. Was it the first light? Herbert was stirring. Jack went quickly to him.

Herbert opened dazed eyes, and mutely looked at Jack. A look of intelligence came, and as quickly passed. He groaned, and the torment came over him once more. Whatever was the matter with him? He writhed and struggled, groaning—then relapsed into a cold, inert silence. It was as if he were dying. As if he, or something in him, had decided to die.

Jack was terribly startled. In terror, he mixed a little brandy and milk, and tried to pour spoonfuls down the unresisting throat. He quickly fetched a hot stone from the fire, wrapped it in a piece of blanket, and put it in the bed.

Then he sat down and took the young man's hand softly in his own and whispered intensely: "Come back, Herbert! Come back! Come back!"

With all his will he summoned the inert spirit. He was terribly afraid the other would die. He sat and watched with a fixed, intent will. And Herbert relaxed again, the life came round his eyes again.

"Oh, God!" thought Jack. "I shall die. I shall die myself. What sort of a life have I got to live before I die? Oh, God, what sort of a life have I got between me and when I die?"

And it all seemed a mystery to him. The God he called on was a dark, almost fearful mystery. The life he had to live was a kind of doom. The choice he had was no choice. "Yourself is God." It wasn't true. There was a terrible God somewhere else. And nothing else than this.

Because, inside himself, he was alone, without father or mother or place or people. Just a separate living thing. And he could not choose his doom of living nor his dying. Somewhere outside himself was a terrible God who decreed.

He was afraid of the thicket of life, in which he found himself like a solitary, strange animal. He would have to find his way through: all the way to death. But what sort of way? What sort of life? What sort of life between him and death?

He didn't know. He only knew that something must be. That he was in a strange bush, and by himself. And that he must find his way through.

[CHAPTER VI]

IN THE YARD

I

Ah, good to be out in the open air again! Beyond all telling good! Those indoor rooms were like coffins. To be dead, and to writhe unreleased in the coffin, that was what those indoor rooms were like.

"God, when I die, let me pass right away," prayed Jack. "Lord, I promise to live my life right out, so that when I die I pass over and don't lie wriggling in the coffin!"

Mary had come as soon as it was light, and found Herbert asleep and Jack staring at him in a stupor.

"You go to sleep now, Bow," said Mary softly, laying her hand on his arm.

He looked at her in a kind of horror, as if she were part of the dark interior. He didn't want to go to sleep. He wanted to wake. He stood in the yard and stared around stupefied at the early morning. Then he went and hauled Lennie and the twins out of their bunks. Tom was already up. Then he went, stripped to the waist, to the pump.

"Pump over my nut, Lennie," he shouted, holding his head at the pump spout. Oh, 'twas so good to shout at somebody. He must shout.

And Lennie pumped away like a little imp.

When Jack looked out of the towel at the day, he saw the sky fresh with yellow light, and some red still on the horizon above the grey gum-trees. It all seemed crisp and snappy. It was life.

"Ain't yer goin' ter do any of yer monkey trickin' this morning?" shouted Lennie at him.

Jack shook his head, and rubbed his white young shoulders with the towel. Lennie, standing by the wash-tin in his little undervest and loose little breeches, was watching closely.

"Can you answer me a riddle, Lennie?" asked Jack.

"Til try," said Len briskly, and Og and Magog jumped up in gay expectation.

"What is God, anyhow?" asked Jack.

"Y'd better let my father hear y'," replied Lennie, with a dangerous nod of the head.

"No, but I mean it. Suppose Herbert had died. I want to know what God is."

Jack still had the inner darkness of that room in his eyes.

"I'll tell y'," said Len briskly. "God is a Higher Law than the Constitution."

Jack thought about it. A higher law than the law of the land. Maybe!—The answer left him cold.

"And what is self?" he asked.

"Crikey! Stop up another night! It 'ud make ye sawney.—But I'll tell y' what self is."

"Self is a wilderness of sweets. And selves
They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy."

Len was pleased with this. But Jack heard only words.

"Ask me one, Jack! Ask me one!" pleaded Og.

"All right. What's success, Og? asked Jack, smiling.

"Success! Success! Why, success—"

"Success is t'grow a big bingy like a bloke from town, 'n a watch-chain acrost it with a gold dial in y' fob, and ter be allowed ter spout as much gab as y've got bref left over from y' indigest," cut in Lennie, with delight.

"That was my riddle," yelled Og, rushing at him.

"Ask me one! Ask me one, Jack! Ask me one," yelled Magog.

"What's failure?" asked Jack, laughing.

"T' be down on y' uppers an' hev no visible means of supportin' y'r pants up whilst y' slog t' the' nearest pub t'cadge a beer spot," crowed Lennie in delight, while he fenced off Og.

Both twins made an assault and battery upon him.

"D'ye know y'r own answers?" yelled Len at Jack.

"No."

The brazenness of the admission flabbergasted the twins. They stalked off. Len drew up a three-legged stool, and sat down to milk, explaining impatiently that success comes to those that work and don't drink.

"But"—he reverted to his original thought—"ye've gotta work, not go wastin' y'r feme as you generally do of a morning-boundin' about makin' a kangaroo of y'self; tippin' y' elbows and holdin' back y' nut as if y' had a woppin' fine drink in both hands, and gone screwed with joy afore you drained it; lyin' flat on y' hands an' toes, an' heavin' up an' down, up an' down, like a race-horse iguana frightened by a cat; an' stalkin' an' stoopin' as if y'wanted ter catch a bird round a corner; or roundin' up on imaginary things, makin' out t'hit 'em slap-bang-whizz on the mitts they ain't got; whippin' round an' bobbin' like a cornered billy-goat; skippin' up an' down like sis wif a rope, an' makin' a general high falutin' ass of y'self."

"I see you and the twins with clubs," said Jack.

"Oh, that! That's more for music an' one-two-three-four," said Len.

"You see I'm in training," said Jack.

"What for? Want ter teach the old sows to start dancin' on th' corn-bin floor?"

"No, I want to keep in training, for if I ever have a big fight."

"Who with?"

"Oh, I don't know. But I love a round with the fists. I'll teach you."

"All right. But why don't y' chuck farmin' an' go in f' prize fightin'?"

"I wish I could. But my father said no. An' perhaps he's right. But the best thing I know is to fight a fair round. I'll teach you, Len."

"Huh! What's the sense! If y' want exercise, y' c'n rub that horse down a bit cleaner than y' are doin'."

"Stop y' sauce, nipper, or I'll be after y' with a strap!" called Tom. "Come on, Jack. Tea! Timothy's bangin' the billy-can. And just you land that nipper a clout."

"Let him 'it me! Garn, let him!" cried Len, scooting up with his milk-stool and pail and looking like David skirmishing before Goliath. He wasn't laughing. There was a demonish little street-arab hostility in his face.

"Don't you like me, Len?" Jack asked, a bit soft this morning. Len's face at once suffused with a delightful roguishness.

"Aw, yes—if y' like!—I'll be dressin' up in Katie's skirts n' spoonin' y' one of these bright nights."

He whipped away with his milk-pail, like a young lizard.

II

"Look at Bow, he looks like an owl," said Grace at breakfast.

"What d'y call 'im Bow for?" asked Len.

"Like a girl, with his eyes double size," said Monica.

"You'd better go to sleep, Jack," said Mrs. Ellis.

"Take a nap, lad," said Mr. Ellis. "There's nothin' for y' to do this morning."

Jack was going stupefied again, as the sun grew warm. He didn't hear half that was said. But the girls were very attentive to him. Mary was not there: she was sitting with Herbert. But Monica and Grace waited on him as if he had been their lord. It was a new experience for him: Monica jumping up and whipping away his cup with her slim hand, to bring it back filled, and Grace insisting on opening a special jar of jam for him. Drowsy as he was, their attention made his blood stir. It was so new to him.

Mary came in from the sitting room: they were still in the kitchen.

"Herbert is awake," she said. "He wants to be untied. Bow, do you think he ought to?"

Jack rose in silence and went through to Gran's room. Herbert lay quite still, but he was himself. Only shattered and wordless. He looked at Jack and murmured:

"Can't y' untie me?"

Jack went at once to unfasten the linen bands. The twins, Monica and Grace, stood watching from the doorway. Mary was at his side to help.

"Don't let 'em come in," said Herbert, looking into Jack's face.

Jack nodded and went to the door.

"He wants to be left alone," he said.

"Mustn't we come, Bow?" said Monica, making queer yellow eyes at him.

"Best not," he said. "Don't let anybody come. He wants absolute quiet."

"All right." She looked at him with a heavy look of obedience, as if making an offering. They were not going to question his authority. She drew Grace away: both the girls humble. Jack slowly and unconsciously flushed. Then he went back to the bed.

"I want something," murmured Herbert wanly. "Send that other away."

"Go away, Mary. He wants a man to attend to him," said Jack.

Mary looked a long, dark look at Jack. Then she, too, submitted.

"All right," she said, turning darkly away.

And it came into his mind, with utter absurdity, that he ought to kiss her for this submission. And he hated the thought.

Herbert was a boy of nineteen, uncouth, and savagely shy. Jack had to do the menial offices for him.

The sick man went to sleep again almost immediately, and Jack returned to the kitchen. He heard voices from outside.

Ma and Grace were washing up at the slab. Dad was sitting under the photosphorum tree, with Effie on one knee, cutting up tobacco in the palm of his hand. Tom was leaning against the tree, the children sat about. Lennie skipped up and offered a seat on a stump.

"Sit yourself down, Bow," he said, using the nickname. "I'd be a knot instead of a bow if I had to nurse Red Herbert."

Monica came slinking up from the shade, and stood with her skirt touching Jack's arm. Mary was carrying away the dishes.

"I've been telling Tom," said Mr. Ellis, "that he can take the clearing gang over to his A'nt Greenlow's for the shearing, an' then get back an' clear for all he's worth, till Christmas. Y'might as well go along with him, Jack. We can get along all right here without y', now th' girls are back. Till Christmas, that is. We s'll want y' back for the harvest."

There was a dead silence. Jack didn't want to go.

"Then y' can go back to the clearing, and burn off. I need that land reclaimed, over against the little chaps grows up and wants to be farmers. Besides"—and he looked round at Ma—"we're a bit overstocked in' the house just now, an' we'll be glad of the cubby for Herbert, if he's on the mend."

Dad resumed cutting up his tobacco in the palm of his hand.

"Jack can't leave Herbert, Uncle," said Mary quietly, "he won't let anybody else do for him."

"Eh?" said Mr. Ellis, looking up.

"Herbert won't let me do for him," said Mary. "He'll only let Bow."

Mr. Ellis dropped his head in silence.

"In that case," he said slowly, "in that case, we must wait a bit.—Where's that darned Rackett put himself? This is his job."

There was still silence.

"Somebody had best go an', look for him," said Tom.

"Ay," said Mr. Ellis.

There was more silence. Monica, standing close to Jack, seemed to be fiercely sheltering him from this eviction. And Mary, at a distance, was like Moses' sister watching over events. It made Jack feel queer and thrilled, the girls all concentrating on him. It was as if it put power in his chest, and made a man of him.

Someone was riding up. It was Red Easu. He slung himself off his horse, and stalked slowly up.

"Herbert dead?" he asked humorously.

"Doing nicely," said Dad, very brief.

"I'll go an' have a look at 'm," said Easu, sitting on the step and pulling off his boots.

"Don't wake him if he's asleep. Don't frighten him, whatever you do," said Jack, anxious for his charge.

Easu looked at Jack with an insolent stare: a curious stare.

"Frighten him?" he said. "What with?"

"Jack's been up with him all night," put in Monica fiercely.

"He nearly died in the night," said Jack.

There was dead silence. Easu stared, poised like some menacing bird. Then he went indoors in his stocking feet.