In another moment men with pipes in their hands and sweat on their brows were edging toward the pair from right and left.

"Your name, I think, is Simons?" Naomi was saying, coolly, but so that all who had a mind might hear her. "I have no more to say to you, Simons, except that you will shear properly or go where they like their sheep to have lumps of flesh taken out and lumps of wool left on."

"Since when have you been over the board, miss?" asked Simons, a little more civilly under the eyes of his mates.

"I am not over the board," said Naomi, hotly, "but I am over the man who is."

She received instant cause to regret this speech.

"We wish you was!" cried two or three. "_You_ wouldn't make a blooming mull of things, you wouldn't!"

"I'll take my orders from Mr. Gilroy, and from n.o.body else," said Simons, defiantly.

"Well, you may take fair warning from me."

"That's as I like."

"It's as _I_ like," said Naomi. "And look here, I won't waste more words upon you and I won't stand your impertinence. Better throw down your shears now--for I've done with you--before I call upon your mates to take them from you."

"We don't need calling, miss, not we!"

Half a dozen fine fellows had stepped forward, with Harry at their head, and the affair was over. Simons had flung his shears on the floor with a clatter and a curse, and was striding out of the shed amid the hisses and imprecations of his comrades.

Naomi would have got away, too, for she had had more than enough of the whole business, but this was not so easy. Someone raised three cheers for her. They were given with a roar that shook the iron roof like thunder. And to cap all this a gray old shearer planted himself in her path.

"It's just this way, miss," said he. "We liked Simons little enough, but, begging your pardon, we like Mr. Gilroy less. He doesn't know how to treat us at all. He has no idea of bossing a shed like this. And mark my words, miss, unless you remove that man, and give us some smarter gentleman like, say, young Mr. Chester----"

"Ay, Chester'll do!"

"He knows his business!"

"He's a man, he is----"

"And the man for us!"

"Unless you give us someone more to our fancy, like young Mr. Chester,"

concluded the old man, doing his best to pacify his mates with look and gesture, "there'll be further trouble. This is only the beginning.

There'll be trouble, and maybe worse, until you make a change."

Naomi felt inexpressibly uncomfortable.

"Mr. Gilroy is the manager of this station," said she, for once with a slight tremor in her voice. "Any difference that you have with him, you must fight it out between you. I am quite sure that he means to be just.

I, at any rate, must interfere no more. I am sorry I interfered at all."

So they let her go at last, the piano-tuner following close upon her heels. He had stuck to her all the time with shut mouth and twitching fingers, ready for anything, as he was ready still. And the first person these two encountered in the open air was Gilroy himself, with so white a face and such busy lips that they hardly required him to tell them he had heard all.

"I am very sorry, Monty," said the girl, in a distressed tone which highly surprised her companion; "but I simply couldn't help it. You can't stand by and see a sheep cut to pieces without opening your mouth. Yet I know I was at fault."

"It's not much good knowing it now," returned Gilroy, ungraciously, as he rolled along at her side; "you should have thought of that first. As it is, you've given me away to the shed, and made a tough job twice as tough as it was before."

"I really am very sorry, Monty. I know I oughtn't to have interfered at all. At the same time, the man deserved sending away, and I am sure you would have been the first to send him had you seen what I saw. I know I should have waited and spoken to you; but I shall keep away from the shed in future."

"That won't undo this morning's mischief. I heard what the brutes said to you!"

"Then you must have heard what I said to them. Don't try to make me out worse than I am, Monty."

She laid her hand upon his arm, and Engelhardt, to his horror, saw tears on her lashes. Gilroy, however, would not look at her. Instead, he hailed the store-keeper, who had pa.s.sed them on his way to the huts.

"Make out Simons's account, Sandy," he shouted at the top of his voice, "and give him his check. Miss Pryse has thought fit to sack him over my head!"

Instantly her penitence froze to scorn.

"That was unnecessary," she said, in the same quiet tone she had employed toward the shearer, but dropping her arm and halting dead as she spoke. "If this is the way you treat the men, no wonder you can't manage them. Come, Mr. Engelhardt!"

And with this they turned their back on the manager, but not on the shed; that was not Naomi's way at all. She was pre-eminently one to be led, not driven, and she remained upon the scene, showing Engelhardt everything, and explaining the minutest details for his benefit, much longer than she would have dreamt of staying in the ordinary course of affairs. This involved luncheon in the manager's hut, at which meal Naomi appeared in the highest spirits, cracking jokes with Sanderson, chaffing the boy in spectacles, and clinking pannikins with everyone but the manager himself. The latter left early, after steadily sulking behind his plate, with his beard in his waistcoat and his yellow head presented like a bull's. Tom Chester was not there at all. Engelhardt was sorry, though the others treated him well enough to-day--Sanderson even cutting up his meat for him. It was three o'clock before Naomi and he started homeward in the old Shanghai.

With the wool-shed left a mile behind, they overtook a huge horseman leading a spare horse.

"That's our friend Simons," said Naomi. "I wonder what sort of a greeting he'll give me. None at all, I should imagine."

She was wrong. The shearer reined up on one side of the track, and gave her a low bow, wide-awake in hand, and with it a kind of a glaring grin that made his teeth stand out like bra.s.s-headed nails in the afternoon sunshine. Naomi laughed as they drove on.

"Pretty, wasn't it? That man loves me to distraction, I should say. On the whole we may claim to have had a rather lively day. First came that young lady on the near side, who's behaving herself so angelically now; and then the swingle-tree, which they've fixed up well enough to see us through this afternoon at any rate. Next there was our friend Simons; and after him, poor dear Monty Gilroy--who had cause to complain, mind you, Mr. Engelhardt. We mustn't forget that I had no sort of right to interfere. And now, unless I'm very much mistaken, we're on the point of meeting two more of our particular friends."

In fact, a couple of tramps were approaching, swag on back, with the slow swinging stride of their kind. Engelhardt colored hotly as he recognized the ruffians of the day before. They were walking on opposite sides of the track, and as the buggy cut between them the fat man unpocketed one hand and saluted them as they pa.s.sed.

"Not got a larger size yet?" he shouted out. "Why, that ain't a man at all!"

The poor piano-tuner felt red to his toes, and held his tongue with exceeding difficulty. But, as usual, Naomi and her laugh came to his rescue.

"How polite our friends are, to be sure! A bow here and a salute there!

Birds of a feather, too, if ever I saw any; you might look round, Mr.

Engelhardt, and see if they're flocking together."

"They are," said he, next minute.

Then Naomi looked for herself. They were descending a slight incline, and, sure enough, on top of the ridge stood the two tramps and the mounted shearer. Stamped clean against the sky, it looked much as though horses and men had been carved out of a single slab of ebony.

CHAPTER VIII

"THREE SHADOWS"

That night the piano-tuner came out in quite a new character, and with immediate success. He began repeating poetry in the moonlit veranda, and Naomi let him go on for an hour and a half; indeed, she made him; for she was in secret tribulation over one or two things that had happened during the day, and only too thankful, therefore, to be taken out of herself and made to think on other matters. Engelhardt did all this for her, and in so doing furthered his own advantage, too, almost as much as his own pleasure. At all events, Naomi took to her room a livelier interest in the piano-tuner than she had felt hitherto, while her own troubles were left, with her boots, outside the door.

It was true she had been interested in him from the beginning. He had so very soon revealed to her what she had never come in contact with before--a highly sensitized specimen of the artistic temperament. She did not know it by this name, or by any name at all; but she was not the less alive to his little group of interesting peculiarities, because of her inability to label the lot with one phrase. They interested her the more for that very reason; just as her instinct as to the possibilities that were in him was all the stronger for her incapacity to reason out her conviction in a satisfactory manner. Her intellectual experience was limited to a degree; but she had seen success in his face; and she now heard it in his voice when he quoted verses to her, so beautifully that she was delighted to listen whether she followed him or not. Her faith in him was sweetly unreasonable, but it was immensely strong. She was ready and even eager to back him heavily; and there are those who would rather have one brave girl do that on instinct, than win the votes of a hundred clear heads, basing their support upon a logical calculation.