he colour was coming
back into his face, and he didn't look like an unnaturally stiff and
staring corpse. I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her. I sneaked
another look at her.

She was staring straight before her,--I never saw a woman's face change
so suddenly--I never saw a woman's eyes so haggard and hopeless. Then
her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long shuddering breath,
like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped from her wide
open eyes down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of stone. And in the
firelight they seemed tinged with blood.

I looked away quick, feeling full up myself. And presently (I hadn't
seen her look round) she said--

'Go to bed.'

'Beg pardon?' (Her face was the same as before the tears.)

'Go to bed. There's a bed made for you inside on the sofa.'

'But--the team--I must----'

'What?'

'The team. I left it at the camp. I must look to it.'

'Oh! Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning--or
send the half-caste. Now you go to bed, and get a good rest. The boy
will be all right. I'll see to that.'

I went out--it was a relief to get out--and looked to the mare. Brighten
had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box, but she couldn't eat
yet. She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg and then the other,
with her nose over the box--and she sobbed. I put my arms round her neck
and my face down on her ragged mane, and cried for the second time since
I was a boy.

* Maize or Indian corn--wheat is never called corn in
Australia.--

As I started to go in I heard Brighten's sister-in-law say, suddenly and
sharply--

'Take THAT away, Jessie.'

And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black
bottle.

The moon had gone behind the range. I stood for a minute between the
house and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window.

She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table. She bent over
Jim and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro.

I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon. I woke just in time
to hear the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten's
sister-in-law. He was asking her out to our place and she promising to
come.

'And now,' says Jim, 'I want to go home to "muffer" in "The Same Ol'
Fling".'

'What?'

Jim repeated.

'Oh! "The Same Old Thing",--the waggon.'

The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten,
loo