ws, and the men had ridden off to help
those of whom she told, and left her unnoticed, lying where the sun
poured down on her in the full force of summer, scorching the sight out
of her eyes. From that day she had been sightless, and soon after she
was alone, save for the boy she idolized, for her husband had gone to
the north to buy store cattle, and had disappeared from the ken of man,
till a skeleton, with two broken spears through the ribs, and the
remains of a swag and clothes, identified by some friends as Dickson's,
were found in the neighbourhood whither he had intended to journey.

So the station had languished for the want of a guiding hand and head,
while the owner passed her days sitting on the verandah, with her
sightless eyes fixed where a clump of trees grew thickly on the spot
where the coach had been stuck up so many years before. A slim hand-rail
ran from a corner of the verandah to the clump three hundred yards away,
and round the trees a high three-rail fence was built, with a gate where
the hand-rail met it, and no one of the station ever went there save the
Lady of Barellan; for it was a strange fancy, born of the fever that had
followed the loss of her sight, some said, that she had of going there,
feeling her way by the hand-rail, and staying there alone and silent,
musing.

She was sitting on the verandah as the four rode up, with her eyes,
which, save for a fixity of gaze, showed nothing of their affliction,
staring away into the distance where the clump of trees stood out,
purple-blue in their shade above the buff of the sun-dried grass and
against the pure, transparent azure of the sky overhead.

Dickson mounted the steps leading on to the verandah, with Nellie close
upon him and Ailleen further behind; while Bobby, not having outgrown
the uneasiness of youth, remained in the saddle holding the bridles of
the other three horses as well as his own.

"Here's Nellie," Dickson said abruptly, as he reached the chair where
the sightless woman sat.

"How do you do, Nellie?" she said simply, as she held out her hand.

"And this is the other--Ailleen," he added, before Nellie could answer.

Ailleen, looking into the clear, open eyes which looked so steadily into
hers, and were so different from what she had pictured to herself, took
the extended hand.

"I am so glad to be able to see you. Oh, I forgot--I'm so sorry," she
added quickly.

"Dearie, dearie," the blind woman said, in a gentle, ca