He stroked her hair for a while in silence, and then, with a laugh, said, "We'll have to give up this sort of thing, you know; it'll be getting you talked about, and that'll never do."

She hardly knew what he meant. Having lived so long in a fool's paradise, she could not realise that her world was coming down about her ears.

"We'll have to be proper in future," he said. "I've had the most fiendish run of bad luck lately, and it's just as well there never was any engagement between us. It would have had to come to nothing."

She drew back, and looked at him with frightened eyes. He had great power over her--this big, masterful man, whom she had looked upon as her lover; and she could not believe that a little trouble about money could really make any difference to him. She believed him able to overcome any such difficulty as that of earning a living for her and himself.

"But, Gavan," she said, "what have I done?"

"Done, little girl? you've done nothing. It's all my fault. I've lost heart over things lately, and it will only harm you if we keep up this pretence of being engaged. Nothing can come of it."

"Why not? Why can't we wait?"

"Wait! To be stuck in Tarrong all my life among these people, and up to my neck in debt! No, little woman, as soon as ever I can get things squared up, I'm off out of this, and I dare say we'll never see each other again. I've made a mess of things here, and I'm off somewhere else."

It seemed almost incredible to her that a man could so throw up the fight; and then a thought flashed into her mind.

"It is not because Miss Grant has come that you do this?"

He laughed with a well-simulated indifference.

"Miss Grant!" he said, "I have only seen her twice--that day on the coach and last night."

She seemed to study the question, still holding his hands, and looking up into his face. The light in the room was stronger, and there were sounds as if some of the household were stirring.

"So we must say 'Good-bye!'" she said, "just because you are short of money. Gavan, I would have thought more of you, had you told me you were tired of me and were going in for the other girl. I think I could have respected you at any rate; but to sneak out on the story of not being able to afford it--"

His face darkened, and he began to speak, but she stopped him, and went on in a pa.s.sionless sort of voice. "Some one is coming," she said, "and we must say good-bye; and since you wish it, it is Good-bye.' But I'm not a child, to change my fancies in a day, so I won't promise to forget. And I think you have treated me very badly, so neither will I promise to forgive. I had set my heart on you, Gavan. You seemed to me--but there, it's no use talking. I suppose I should be meek and mild, and--"

"But, Ellen--"

"No, don't interrupt me. It is the last talk together we shall have. I suppose I can go governessing, or nursing, to the end of the chapter. It seems a dreary outlook, doesn't it? Now go, and remember that I do not forgive easily. I had built such castles, Gavan, and now--" She slipped quietly from the room, and was gone.

Gavan Blake drove home, feeling a trifle uneasy. He had expected some sort of outburst, but the curious way in which she had taken it rather non-plussed him.

"She won't stick a knife in herself, I suppose," he mused. "Just like her to do something unusual. Anyway, she has too much pride to talk about it--and the affair had to come to an end sooner or later."

And feeling that if not "on with the new love," he was, at any rate, satisfactorily "off with the old," Blake drove his spanking ponies off to Tarrong, while Ellen Harriott went about her household work with a face as inscrutable and calm as though no stone had ruffled the mill-pond of her existence.

CHAPTER XIII. THE RIVALS.

For the next couple of weeks, affairs at Kuryong flowed on in usual station style. A saddle-horse was brought in for Miss Grant, and out of her numerous boxes that young lady produced a Bond Street outfit that fairly silenced criticism. She rode well too, having been taught in England, and she, Poss, Binjie and Hugh had some great scampers after kangaroos, half-wild horses, or anything else that would get up and run in front of them. She was always so fresh, cheerful, and ready for any excitement that the two boys became infatuated in four days, and had to be hunted home on the fifth, or they would have both proposed. Some days she spent at the homestead housekeeping, cooking, and giving out rations to swagmen--the wild, half-crazed travellers who came in at sundown for the dole of flour, tea and sugar, which was theirs by bush custom. Some days she spent with the children, and with them learnt a lot of bush life. It being holiday-time, they practically ran wild all over the place, spending whole days in long tramps to remote parts in pursuit of game. They had no "play," as that term is known to English children.

They didn't play at being hunters. They were hunters in real earnest, and their habits and customs had come to resemble very closely those of savage tribes that live by the chase.

With them Mary had numberless new experiences. She got accustomed to seeing the boys climb big trees by cutting steps in the bark with a tomahawk, going out on the most giddy heights after birds' nests, or dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow limb. She learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of a hollow log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken refuge there, and which flashed out as if shot from a catapult on being poked from the other end with a long stick. She learned to mark the hiding-place of the young wild-ducks that scuttled and dived, and hid themselves with such super-natural cunning in the reedy pools. She saw the native companions, those great, solemn, grey birds, go through their fantastic and intricate dances, forming squares, pirouetting, advancing, and retreating with the solemnity of professional dancing-masters. She lay on the river-bank with the children, gun in hand, breathless with excitement, waiting for the rising of the duck-billed platypus--that quaint combination of fish, flesh and fowl--as he dived in the quiet waters, a train of small bubbles marking his track. She fished in deep pools for the great, sleepy, hundred-pound cod-fish that sucked down bait and hook, holus-bolus, and then were hauled in with hardly any resistance, and lived for days contentedly, tethered to the bank by a line through their gills.

In these amus.e.m.e.nts time pa.s.sed pleasantly enough, and by the time school-work was resumed Mary Grant had become one of the family.

Of Hugh she at first saw little. His work took him out on the run all day long, looking after sheep in the paddocks, or perhaps toiling day after day in the great, dusty drafting-yards. In the cool of the afternoon the two girls would often canter over the four miles or so of timbered country to the yards, and wait till Hugh had finished his day's work. As a rule, Poss or Binjie, perhaps both, were in attendance to escort Miss Harriott, with the result that Hugh and Mary found themselves paired off to ride home together. Before long he found himself looking forward to these rides with more anxiety than he cared to acknowledge, and in a very short time he was head over ears in love with her.

Any man, being much alone with any woman in a country house, will fall in love with her; but a man such as Hugh Gordon, ardent, imaginative, and very young, meeting every day a woman as beautiful as Mary Grant, was bound to fall a victim. He soon became her absolute worshipper. All day long, in the lonely rides through the bush, in the hot and dusty hours at the sheep-yards, through the pleasant, lazy canter home in the cool of the evening, his fancies were full of her--her beauty and her charm. It was happiness enough for him to be near her, to feel the soft touch of her hand, to catch the faint scent that seemed to linger in her hair. After the day's work they would stroll together about the wonderful old garden, and watch the sunlight die away on the western hills, and the long strings of wild fowl hurrying down the river to their nightly haunts. Sometimes he would manage to get home for lunch, and afterwards, on the pretext of showing her the run, would saddle a horse for her, and off they would go for a long ride through the mountains. Or there were sheep to inspect, or fences to look at--an excuse for an excursion was never lacking.

For the present he made no sign; he was quite contented to act as confidant and adviser, and many a long talk they had together over the various troubles that beset the manager of a station.

It would hardly be supposed that a girl could give much advice on such matters, and at first her total ignorance of the various difficulties amused him; but when she came to understand them better, her cool common-sense compelled his admiration. His temperament was nervous and excitable, and he let things fret him. She took everything in a cheery spirit, and laughed him out of his worries. One would not expect to find many troubles in rearing sheep and selling their wool; but the management of any big station is a heavy task, and Kuryong would have driven Job mad.

The sheep themselves, to begin with, seem always in league against their owners. Merinos, though apparently estimable animals, are in reality dangerous monomaniacs, whose sole desire is to ruin the man that owns them. Their object is to die, and to do so with as much trouble to their owners as they possibly can. They die in the droughts when the gra.s.s, roasted to a dull white by the sun, comes out by the roots and blows about the bare paddocks; they die in the wet, when the long gra.s.s in the sodden gullies breeds "fluke" and "bottle" and all sorts of hideous complaints. They get burnt in bush fires from sheer malice, refusing to run in any given direction, but charging round and round in a ring till they are calcined. They get drowned by refusing to leave flooded country, though hunted with frenzied earnestness.

It was not the sheep so much as the neighbours whose depredations were drawing lines on Hugh Gordon's face. "I wouldn't care," he confided to Miss Grant, "if they only took a beast or two. But the sheep are going by hundreds. We mustered five hundred short in one paddock this month.

And there isn't a Doyle or a Donohoe cow but has three calves at least, and two of each three belong to us."

He dared not prosecute them. No local jury would convict in face of the hostility that would be aroused. They had made "alibis" a special study; the very judges were staggered by the calmness and plausibility with which they got themselves out of difficulties.

A big station with a lot of hostile neighbours is like a whale with the killers round it; it is open to attack on all sides, and cannot retaliate. A match dropped carelessly in a patch of gra.s.s sets miles of country in a blaze. Hugh, as he missed the stock, and saw fences cut and gra.s.s burnt, could only grind his teeth and hope that a lucky chance would put some of the enemy in his power. To Mary it seemed incredible that in the nineteenth century people should be able to steal sheep without suffering for it; and Hugh soon saw that she was a true daughter of William Grant, as far as fighting was concerned. She listened with set teeth to all stories of depredation and trespa.s.s, and they talked over many a plan together. But though they became quite friendly their intimacy seemed to make no progress. To her he was rather the employee than the friend. In fact he did not get on half so far as did Gavan Blake, who came up to Kuryong occasionally, and made himself so agreeable that already his name was being coupled with that of the heiress. Ellen Harriott always spoke to Blake when he came to the station, and gave no sign of jealousy at his attentions to Mary Grant; but she was waiting and watching, as one who has been a nurse learns to do. And things were in this state when an unexpected event put an altogether different complexion on affairs.

CHAPTER XIV. RED MICK AND HIS SHEEP DOGS.

When Hugh came home one day with his face, as usual, full of trouble, Mary began to laugh him out of it.

"Well, Mr. Hugh, which is it to-day--the Doyles or the Donohoes? Have they been stealing sheep or breaking gates?"

"Oh, it's all very well for you to laugh," he said; "you don't understand. Some of that gang up the river went into the stud paddock yesterday to cut down a tree for a bee's nest, and left the tree burning; might have set the whole run--forty thousand acres of dry gra.s.s--in a blaze. Then they drove their dray against the gate, knocking it sideways, and a lot of the stud sheep got out into the other paddock, and I'll have to be off at day-break to-morrow to get 'em back."

"Why don't you summon the wretches, and have them put in gaol, or go and break their gates, and cut down their trees?" she said, with a cheerful ignorance of details.

"I daren't--simply daren't. If I summoned one of them, I'd never have dry gra.s.s but there'd be fires. I'd never have fat sheep but there'd be dogs among 'em. They ride all over the run; but if a bird belonging to the station flew over one of their selections they'd summon me for trespa.s.s. There's no end to the injury a spiteful neighbour can do you in this sort of country. And your father would blame me."

"Why?"

"Oh, it's part of the management of a station to get on with your neighbours. Never quarrel if you can help it. But since shearing troubles started we have no friends at all."

"Well," she said, "I should like to have a look at those desperate neighbours I hear so much about. Red Mick Donohoe rode past the other day on such a beautiful horse, and he opened the gate for us, and asked if he might come down to hear me sing. Think of that, now."

"Very well," he said. "We'll go for a ride up that way to-morrow afternoon. We might find Red Mick killing some of our sheep, and you can go into the box as the lady detective. If you'll only sing him into gaol, the station will pay you at the same rate as Patti gets!"

Next afternoon they cantered away up the river towards the mountains.

Poss and Binjie had long ago laid their dearest possessions at her feet, begging her to ride them--horses so precious that it had hitherto been deemed sacrilege to put a side-saddle on them. She had the divine gift of "hands," and all manner of excitable, pulling horses went quietly and smoothly under her management. Her English training had taught her to ride over jumps, and she was very anxious to have a try at post-and-rail fences.

After much pressing, Hugh had this day allowed her to try Obadiah, Binjie's celebrated show jumper, an animal that could be trusted to jump anything he could see over; so during their ride to the habitat of the Donohoes they left the regular track, and followed one of the fences for a mile or two, looking for a suitable place to try the horse. No good place offered itself, as the timber was thick, and the country so rugged that she would have had to ride at a stiff post-and-rail either up or down a steep slope. Loitering along, far off the track, they crossed a little ridge where stringybark trees, with an undergrowth of bushes and saplings, formed a regular thicket.