CHAPTER III.

THE BELLE OF BIRRALONG.

The two riders who had passed Marmot's store amid a cloud of dust, drew
rein at the school-house gate, the girl turning her horse off the road
and alongside the gate so that she could lean down and pull back the
catch. As the gate swung open, she looked over her shoulder to where her
long, thin-limbed companion sat still in the saddle.

"Thank you," she said. "You have come a long distance out of your way,
but it is your own fault."

"That's nothing," he replied. "Only--I say--mayn't I come in?"

She walked her horse through the gateway as he spoke, and, wheeling it,
swung to the gate before she looked up and answered him.

"You said as far as the gate--and you are as far as the gate," she said,
with a mischievous smile on her face.

"Yes; but----here, hold on," he exclaimed as, with a wave of her hand,
just as she had waved it to the group on Marmot's verandah, the girl
started her horse up the narrow pathway that led past the school-house
into the paddock behind the cottage where she and her father, the
schoolmaster, lived.

[Illustration: "THANK YOU," SHE SAID. [_Page 30._]

The youth looked after her, with something of a glitter in his watery
blue eyes. As her horse entered the narrow space between the
school-house wall and the yard fence, the girl looked back again and
laughed, and the youth dug his spurs unnecessarily hard into his horse's
sides as he resumed his ride down the road. He felt that he ought to
have followed her through the gate--and he dared not.

The girl meanwhile rode past the cottage, which stood back from the
school-house, and into the paddock beyond, giving a soft coo-ee as she
passed. The horse found its own way to the shed where the bridle and
saddle were kept, and the girl lightly slipped from its back and took
off both. Having put them inside the shed, she roughly groomed the
horse--which stood so still, it seemed to be proud of the
attention--before returning to the cottage, the horse following her as
far as it could, with its nose rubbing against her shoulder.

Inside the cottage a pale, delicate-looking man sat in a chair in front
of a wood fire, on which a kettle was boiling and steaming. He put down
the book he was reading as she came in.

"I wasn't long, Dad, was I?" she asked, as she came across the room to
his side and bent down with her hand on his.

"No, child," he answered softly. "What news had the Murrays?"

"Oh,