id.

"Well, hang it all, man, she looks as if she had been having a jolly bad
time, and really she's only a child."

"A child, is she? A child that's very well able to take care of herself.
I haven't been beating her, if that's what you 're thinking. I suppose
I may be allowed to go into the head-station occasionally without asking
my hutkeeper's leave."

"Oh! that's the trouble, is it? Depends upon your hutkeeper, I should
say. I don't ask mine, but then--"

Turner paused, and Stanesby answered the unspoken thoughts with an oath.

"Oh, if you feel that way," began Turner, but his companion flung
himself out of the hut angrily.

Then the girl turned round, and Turner wondered to himself if she were
going to repeat the performance of last night. But no, she was quiet and
subdued now, as if all hope, all resentment even, had left her.

"Going to the head station?" she asked, and her voice was soft and low
and very sweet, with just a trace of the guttural enunciation of
her mother's race; but she spoke good English, far better than her
appearance seemed to warrant, and did no small credit to old Miss
Howard's training.

"Yes, yes, of course. We're going to the head station, but Stanesby 'll
be back in a day or two," he added soothingly, because of the sorrow on
her face. And then he hated himself for saying so much. What business
was it of his?

She stepped forward and laid both hands on his arm.

"Don't take him away, don't, don't!" she pleaded.

Her big dark eyes were swimming with tears, and there was an intensity
of earnestness in her tones that went to the young man's heart. Besides,
he was young, and she was very good to look upon.

"My dear child," he said, his anger against his old friend growing,
"I have nothing in the world to do with it. He must go into the
head-station sometimes. He must have gone often before."

She dropped her hands and leaned back wearily against the wall.

"No," she said, "no, not when the myalls are down along the creek."

"Good Lord! Those d----d black fellows! I never thought of them. But
they won't touch you!"

She looked up and smiled faintly, as if amused at his ignorance.

"Kitty tumble down," she said, relapsing into the blackfellows' English.

"Oh! come, I say," said Turner, "this'll never do." And he went outside
in search of Stanesby, whom he found strapping their swags on to the
packhorse.

"Look here, I say, old man, that poor little beggar's frightened o