ld see. So monotonous, so dreary an
outlook, it was hardly possible to believe there was anything else
in the world, anything but this lonely little hut, with, for all its
paradise, the waterhole in the creek below.

Turner said nothing. It was exactly what he expected; he lived in a
similar place, a place without a creek close handy, where the only water
came from a well, and undiluted, was decidedly unpleasant to the taste.
No, in his eyes Stanesby had nothing to grumble at.

The owner of this palatial residence coo-eed shrilly.

"Jimmy; I say, Jimmy!"

A long, lank black boy, clad in a Crimean shirt and a pair of old riding
breeches, a world too big for him, rose lazily up from beside the house,
where he had been basking in the sun, and came towards them.

Stanesby dismounted and flung him his reins, Turner following suit.

"All gone sleep," said Jimmy, nodding his head in the direction of the
hut, a grin showing up the white of his regular teeth against his black
face.

"Come on in, Turner."

The door was open and the two men walked straight into the small hut.

It was very dark at first coming in out of the brilliant sunshine, but
as Turner's eyes grew accustomed to the light, he saw that the interior
was just exactly what he should have expected it to be. The floor was
hard earth, the walls were unlined, the meagre household goods were
scattered about in a way that did not say much for his friend's
hutkeeper, a shelf with a few old books and papers on it, was the only
sign of culture, and a rough curtain of sacking dividing the place in
two, was the only thing that was not common to every hut in all that
part of Western Australia.

"Howling swell, you are, old chap! Go in for two rooms I see."

The curtain was thrust aside, and to Turners astonishment, a girl's face
peered round it. A beautiful girl's face too, the like of which he
had not seen for many a year, if indeed, he had ever seen one like it
before; a face with oval, liquid dark eyes in whose depths a light lay
hidden, with full red pouting lips, and a broad low brow half hidden by
heavy masses of dark, untidy hair, which fell in picturesque confusion
over it. A beautiful face in shape and form, and rich dark colouring,
and Turner started back too astonished to speak. Such a face! Never
in all his life had he seen such a face, and the look turned on his
companion was easy enough to read.

"Come here, Kitty," said Stanesby in an unconcerned v