Buckolts' Gate.

Then came the critical time at the Lower Sliprails. The shadows from the
setting sun lengthened quickly on the siding, and then the sun slipped
out of sight over a "saddle" in the ridges, and all was soon dusk save
the sunlit peaks of the Blue Mountains away to the east over the sweeps
of blue-grey bush.

"Ah, well! Mary," said Harry, "I must make a start now."

"You'll--you'll look after Jim, won't you, Harry?" said Mary.

"I will, Mary, for your sake."

Her mouth began to twitch, her chin to tremble, and her eyes brimmed
suddenly.

"You must cheer up, Mary," he said with her in his arms. "I'll be back
before you know where you are, and then we'll be married right off at
once and settle down for life."

She smiled bravely.

"Good-bye, Mary!"

"Good-bye, Harry!"

He led his horse through the rails and lifted them, with trembling
hands, and shot them home. Another kiss across the top rail and he got
on his horse. She mounted the lower rail, and he brought his horse close
alongside the fence and stooped to kiss her again.

"Cheer up, Mary!" he said. "I'll tell you what I'll do--when I come back
I'll whistle when I reach the Spur and you be here to let the sliprails
down for me. I'll time myself to get here about sundown. I'll whistle
`Willie Riley,' so you'll know it's me. Good-bye, little girl! I must go
now. Don't fret--the time will soon go by."

He turned, swung his horse, and rode slowly down the track, turning now
and again to wave his hand to her, with a farewell flourish of his hat
as he rounded the Spur. His track, five hundred miles, or perhaps a
thousand, into the great north-west; his time, six months, or perhaps a
year. Hers a hundred yards or so back to the dusty, dreary drudgery of
selection life. The daylight faded into starlight, the sidings grew
very dim, and a faint white figure blurred against the bars of the
slip-panel.

ACT II

It was the last day of the threshing--shortly after New Year--at Rocky
Rises. The green boughs, which had been lashed to the veranda-posts on
Christmas Eve, had withered and been used for firewood. The travelling
steamer had gone with its gang of men, and the family sat down to
tea, the men tired with hard work and heat, and with prickly heat and
irritating wheaten chaff and dust under their clothes--and with smut
(for the crop had been a smutty one) "up their brains" as Uncle Abel
said--the women worn out with cooking for a big gang o