of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves) with
auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs.
The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace
was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole
across, with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots.

Mary didn't seem able to eat. She sat on the three-legged stool near the
fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me.
Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been: she was
thinner now. She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much
when she was pleased or excited. I thought at times that there was
something very German about her expression; also something aristocratic
about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she
spoke. There was nothing aristocratic about me. Mary was German in
figure and walk. I used sometimes to call her 'Little Duchy' and 'Pigeon
Toes'. She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate
knit in her forehead between the eyes.

Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.

'What is it, Mary?'

She turned her face farther from me. I felt tired, disappointed, and
irritated--suffering from a reaction.

'Now, what is it, Mary?' I asked; 'I'm sick of this sort of thing.
Haven't you got everything you wanted? You've had your own way. What's
the matter with you now?'

'You know very well, Joe.'

'But I DON'T know,' I said. I knew too well.

She said nothing.

'Look here, Mary,' I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, 'don't go on
like that; tell me what's the matter?'

'It's only this,' she said suddenly, 'I can't stand this life here; it
will kill me!'

I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.

'This is more than a man can stand!' I shouted. 'You know very well that
it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this! Why weren't
you content to stay in Gulgong?'

'And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?' asked Mary quietly.

(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was. A
wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield. One street, each
side of the dusty main road; three or four one-storey square brick
cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron that glared in the heat--four
rooms and a passage--the police-station, bank-manager and schoolmaster's
cottages, &c. Half-a-dozen tumble-down weather-boa