l the full force of the
dark-lashed eyes was recognised. Within them lay the secret of the power
she wielded.

Although not above the average height, a graceful and well-proportioned
figure gave the impression of a greater stature. One of the most
accomplished horsewomen who ever sat a side-saddle, her appearance on
horseback would alone have sufficed, in a community like Waroona, to
have won for her the admiration and homage of the public. But there were
yet other reasons for the popularity she acquired within an hour of her
arrival.

Forty miles from a railway, the township was the centre of a district
divided into a series of sheep stations. When the season came for
shearing the wool and despatching it to the markets in the cities on the
coast hundreds of miles away, the population was fairly respectable in
point of numbers, though with the riff-raff which formed the army of
camp followers moving in the track of the shearers and teamsters,
respectability was not otherwise manifest. But at other periods of the
year, there were few men and fewer women scattered over the area marked
on the map as Waroona, and including as many square miles as some
English counties possess acres. Wherefore the arrival of any new-comer
was an event; but when that new-comer was a woman, and one, moreover, of
the many personal charms and accomplishments of Mrs. Burke, it was
inevitable that her advent should form the subject of something more
than passing interest.

Her frank manner of speech also helped her, for there is nothing more
objectionable to the average Colonial than the person who is reserved on
the subject of his or her private and personal concerns.

There was no such reserve with Mrs. Burke. She had not been twenty-four
hours in Waroona before it was known that she was a young widow left
with a stepson to bring up and educate on the rents from an impoverished
Irish estate. Year by year it became more and more difficult, she said,
to collect those rents from tenants to whom politics were more
attractive than commercial obligations. Therefore, when a chance
occurred for her to sell the estate, she did not hesitate to entertain
it. But, in order that her stepson might still derive as much benefit as
possible from the wreck of his ancestors' wealth, she determined, before
selling, to seek in Australia a new heritage for the last of the Burkes.

Waroona Downs was suggested to her as the very place to suit her, and
Gale at onc