ttended, in the very year that we went
down.

We shared a hut behind the mission homestead, and shared much
converse before we slept.

'It's purple and gold,' Vine said. 'I came out to find a beastly
ruin.'

'And you find the Victorian Sixth Decade mummified,' I said.

'Don't sneer!'

'Well, pressed in lavender,' I amended.

For early did'st thou leave the world, with powers
Fresh, undiverted to the world without,
Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,
Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.

'That describes Kent's Hegira, doesn't it? He's stopped where we
two were, when we went down, in ever so many ways.'

'Hurray!' cried Vine, tossing his boot up, 'I came out to find a
beastly ruin, and I've found my lost youth, nothing more nor
less! Bless you!'

But his ecstasy was to culminate on the following morning. Kent
had mounted him on one of his two mules, and piloted him on the
other to see some Bush paintings three miles away.

I grew a little uneasy, they were so long gone, for I knew well
what a lot of country lay between us and my own mission station.
I was due there by sunrise or soon after, on the morrow. Mrs.
Kent was strumming away on the piano old dance tunes that I
remembered barrel-organ melodies of now remote days, days when a
bi-weekly shave sufficed me. I stood in the doorway and beat
time. Whenever were we going to get started at this rate? At last
the mules came cantering up the wagon-road.

'Get a move on,' I shouted to Vine as he pulled up before the
door. But just at that moment Mrs. Kent began on 'The Reign of
the Roses.' Vine, who had kicked a foot out of its stirrup, did
not dismount. He sat drinking in the dance-measure. Louder and
louder she played the air, and, humming it over, he drove his
foot home. Shaking up the reins, he cantered his mule round and
round the sun-dial in front of the door. Round and round he went,
still humming, while those wiry and sun-burnt wrists pounded away
at the dance-music.

'How long is this going on?' I pleaded. I began to see the humor
of the thing when I watched our carriers. They were gaping as at
a new kind of circus. At last Mrs. Kent gave over, not very soon,
however; the melody was evidently a favorite of hers.

'Is there not a cause?' pleaded Vine, when he had dismounted
lingeringly, and was facing my reproaches for his wanton delay.
He muttered something about a merry