moment, and into his mind there stole
a new and strange impulse. The emptiness that had been manifest to him
as he stood leaning over the slim rail across the paddock seemed to fill
up until his throat grew tight and his eyes moist, and for the first
time in his life he experienced a satisfaction that had to do with
neither eating nor working. He put one hand for a moment on his wife's
shoulder, and with the extended forefinger of the other touched the
small chubby hand that lay against her breast. Withdrawing it, he stood
for a moment undecided whether to repeat the experiment, when the
neighbour bustled up, and Taylor shuffled out of the room and into the
cool air of the night. There he remembered the man who was in a worse
plight than he had been, and he went to seek him.

He found him standing by a horse on the roadside, just beyond the
boundary fence.

"You had better camp at the house for to-night," Taylor began, as he
leaned over the fence and strained his eyes in an endeavour to make out
where the dray the man had mentioned was standing.

"No; thanks all the same," the man answered. "I've fixed up everything,
and can shove along."

"But there's the little 'un; and what about the--the other?" Taylor
asked, as he put his foot on one rail and made as though to climb over
the fence.

The man came up to him from the shadow.

"I've fixed all that up. She'll come along with me, while I leave the
little 'un here, if you don't mind, till I've time to come back for it.
This is Taylor's Flat, ain't it?"

"Yes," Taylor answered. "And I am Taylor."

"I guessed as much," the other replied; "they told me back along the
road I should reach here about dark."

"Which way did you come?" Taylor asked.

"West," the other answered briefly.

"Far back?" Taylor inquired, somewhat puzzled at the arrival of a woman
from the lonely wilderness of the west.

"Fairish," the other replied evasively; and Taylor grew suspicious.

"What were you doing, coming from the west with a woman like that in the
dray?" he asked. "Seems to me it's a bit queer."

"Does it, mate? Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help that. I've enough to
do without going into private matters. Do you mind keeping the youngster
for a time? He wouldn't have much of a chance if I take him with me."

Taylor's mind, never very active, reverted to the scene he had witnessed
before he left his wife and the orphan babe.

"You couldn't take him if you wanted to," he e