g we were camping by a hot spring for the
women to do some cooking and washing. My patient disappeared with an old
thing we called Aunt Maggie. Presently we trekked again, and I was
feeling horribly uneasy about her, when I nearly dropped. There she was,
sailing along in the midst of the other women, with the kid in her arms,
looking as cool as a cucumber! Lord, I did feel small!"

He laughed reminiscently, and lighted his pipe.

"It seems right to me," she said, looking away through the drifting
smoke. "Why should the coming of life mean pain for someone?"

"Don't know, old lady. But it does. I say, how do you think I'm getting
on?"

They looked across the clearing and felt rather proud.

"I love it," he said simply, "taking nature in hand a bit--she's a
wicked old harridan, isn't she? A naughty old lady gone wrong! Look at
that gorse! We'll have spuds here in no time, and then, in a few years,
wheat. I feel I'm making a dint on the face of the earth at last. In a
hundred year's time, when I'm forgotten, the effect of these few months'
work will be felt. I say, am I talking hot air?"

"Not a bit. But let's do a bit more--Jerry calls it scene-shifting."

She tossed the last piece of cake to an inquisitive kookaburra who had
been watching the meal optimistically, with bright eyes and nodding
head. It was a triumph, this cake--in several ways. The stationmaster at
Cook's Wall had built his "bosker hotel" at last, and had made it a
store at which one could buy fruit, jam, sugar and various luxuries.
Louis had been in twice to the store lately, and had actually remembered
the seed-cake on the _Oriana_ when he saw caraway seeds in the store. He
volunteered the information that there was whisky for sale at the store,
but did not mention whether he had wanted to buy it or not.

He got up, taking the mattock. Marcella began to fight a great stem
running along the ground.

"Devilish stuff," he said, turning back to look at her. "See that little
patch over there?"

She nodded, following his eyes. A brisk little gorse bush was bursting
from the ground. A few feet away another was keeping it company.

"Devilish stuff!" he repeated. "Just like a cancer--in pathology. You
chop the damned thing out, root and branch, and there it pops out again,
miles away from where it started. Look at that piece there."

He attacked the little plant with rather unnecessary severity and dug up
a thin, tough, cord-like root which he threw