the night, then sometimes when
I was at work--and she had the baby--it was a girl--in her arms. And
by-and-bye she came to stay altogether.... I didn't blame her for going
away that time--it was no place for a woman.... She was a good wife to
me. She was a jolly girl when I married her. The little girl grew up
like her. I was going to send her down country to be educated--it was no
place for a girl.

"But a month, or a year, ago, Mary left me, and took the daughter, and
never came back till last night--this morning, I think it was. I thought
at first it was the girl with her hair done up, and her mother's skirt
on, to surprise her old dad. But it was Mary, my wife--as she was when
I married her. She said she couldn't stay, but she'd wait for me on the
road; on--the road...."

His arms fell, and his face went white. I got the water-bag. "Another
turn like that and you'll be gone," I thought, as he came to again. Then
I suddenly thought of a shanty that had been started, when I came that
way last, ten or twelve miles along the road, towards the town. There
was nothing for it but to leave him and ride on for help, and a cart of
some kind.

"You wait here till I come back," I said. "I'm going for the doctor."

He roused himself a little. "Best come up to the hut and get some grub.
The wife'll be waiting...." He was off the track again.

"Will you wait while I take the horse down to the creek?"

"Yes--I'll wait by the road."

"Look!" I said, "I'll leave the water-bag handy. Don't move till I come
back."

"I won't move--I'll wait by the road," he said.

I took the packhorse, which was the freshest and best, threw the
pack-saddle and bags into a bush, left the other horse to take care of
itself, and started for the shanty, leaving the old man with his back to
the tree, his arms folded, and his eyes on the horizon.

One of the chaps at the shanty rode on for the doctor at once, while the
other came back with me in a spring-cart. He told me that old Howlett's
wife had died in child-birth the first year on the selection--"she was a
fine girl he'd heered!" He told me the story as the old man had told it,
and in pretty well the same words, even to giving it as his opinion that
it was no place for a woman. "And he 'hatted' and brooded over it till
he went ratty."

I knew the rest. He not only thought that his wife, or the ghost of his
wife, had been with him all those years, but that the child had lived
and grown up,