r; the loose hide fell back, and the light
shone on a distinct brand. White as a sheet went Mary's face, and her
hand trembled so that she nearly let the candle fall.

"What are you adoin' of now?" shouted her father. "Hold the candle,
carn't you? You're worse than the old woman."

"Father! the beast is branded! See!---- What does PB stand for?"

"Poor Beggar, like myself. Hold the candle, carn't you?--and hold your
tongue."

Mary was startled again by hearing the tread of a horse, but it was only
the old grey munching round. Her father finished skinning, and drew the
carcase up to a make-shift "gallows". "Now you can go to bed," he said,
in a gentler tone.

She went to her bedroom--a small, low, slab skillion, built on to the
end of the house--and fell on her knees by the bunk.

"God help me! God help us all!" she cried.

She lay down, but could not sleep. She was nervously ill--nearly mad,
because of the dark, disgraceful cloud of trouble which hung over her
home. Always in trouble--always in trouble. It started long ago, when
her favourite brother Tom ran away. She was little more than a child
then, intensely sensitive; and when she sat in the old bark school she
fancied that the other children were thinking or whispering to each
other, "Her brother's in prison! Mary Wylie's brother's in prison! Tom
Wylie's in gaol!" She was thinking of it still. They were ever with her,
those horrible days and nights of the first shadow of shame. She had the
same horror of evil, the same fearful dread of disgrace that her mother
had. She had been ambitious; she had managed to read much, and had wild
dreams of going to the city and rising above the common level, but that
was all past now.

How could she rise when the cruel hand of disgrace was ever ready to
drag her down at any moment. "Ah, God!" she moaned in her misery, "if
we could only be born without kin--with no one to disgrace us but
ourselves! It's cruel, God, it's cruel to suffer for the crimes of
others!" She was getting selfish in her troubles--like her mother. "I
want to go away from the bush and all I know.... O God, help me to
go away from the bush!" Presently she fell asleep--if sleep it may be
called--and dreamt of sailing away, sailing away far out on the sea
beyond the horizon of her dread. Then came a horrible nightmare, in
which she and all her family were arrested for a terrible crime. She
woke in a fright, and saw a reddish glare on the window. Her fath