grew tight and his eyes moist, and for the first time in his life he experienced a satisfaction that had to do with neither eating nor working. He put one hand for a moment on his wife's shoulder, and with the extended forefinger of the other touched the small chubby hand that lay against her breast. Withdrawing it, he stood for a moment undecided whether to repeat the experiment, when the neighbour bustled up, and Taylor shuffled out of the room and into the cool air of the night. There he remembered the man who was in a worse plight than he had been, and he went to seek him.

He found him standing by a horse on the roadside, just beyond the boundary fence.

"You had better camp at the house for to-night," Taylor began, as he leaned over the fence and strained his eyes in an endeavour to make out where the dray the man had mentioned was standing.

"No; thanks all the same," the man answered. "I've fixed up everything, and can shove along."

"But there's the little 'un; and what about the—the other?" Taylor asked, as he put his foot on one rail and made as though to climb over the fence.

The man came up to him from the shadow.

"I've fixed all that up. She'll come along with me, while I leave the little 'un here, if you don't mind, till I've time to come back for it. This is Taylor's Flat, ain't it?"

"Yes," Taylor answered. "And I am Taylor."

"I guessed as much," the other replied; "they told me back along the road I should reach here about dark."

"Which way did you come?" Taylor asked.

"West," the other answered briefly.

"Far back?" Taylor inquired, somewhat puzzled at the arrival of a woman from the lonely wilderness of the west.

"Fairish," the other replied evasively; and Taylor grew suspicious.

"What were you doing, coming from the west with a woman like that in the dray?" he asked. "Seems to me it's a bit queer."

"Does it, mate? Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help that. I've enough to do without going into private matters. Do you mind keeping the youngster for a time? He wouldn't have much of a chance if I take him with me."

Taylor's mind, never very active, reverted to the scene he had witnessed before he left his wife and the orphan babe.

"You couldn't take him if you wanted to," he exclaimed. "My missus only lost hers yesterday, and she'd never give this one up now."

"Then you've had a bit of bad luck yourself?" the stranger said quickly. "Well, you know what it is, just as I do, and you'll know why I want to shove along. Good-bye, mate. You've done a real kind act to me. And see, if I don't get back in time, call him Tony, will you?"

"Tony?" Taylor repeated.

"That's it; after me, that is. But I hope I'm back. Anyhow, so long," the man said, as he turned away and proceeded to mount his horse.

"Here, hold on," Taylor exclaimed.

But the man did not seem to hear, and Taylor was halfway over the fence when the sound of a woman's voice, calling him, came from the direction of the hut. He paused and listened. It was the neighbour calling him.

The man had started his horse, and in a few minutes would be well on his way. He could soon overtake the man now and learn something more definite as to the parentage of the child he was practically adopting. He felt that more was due to him than the scant information that had been supplied; that the man who had called for his help, and received it, ought to be more explicit than he had been, and ought to show more confidence in him than to go off, as soon as the child was disposed of, in silence and mystery.

"Here, hold on," he repeated, as he climbed over the fence; but as he reached the ground on the other side he heard the cry repeated from the direction of the hut, and he paused, irresolute.

There might be a repetition of the scene that had occurred when he was called the previous day; the life of this second little creature might be going out like that of the other, and Taylor felt uneasy when he remembered the anguish in the mother's eyes and the wailing sorrow of her voice. If he ran after the man he would escape all that, for it would be over by the time that he returned; but even as the thought passed through his brain he resented it. Something of the feeling he had experienced when he saw his wife clutch at the child came to him, and without further heed for the stranger, he scrambled back over his fence and ran to the hut.

At the door he met the neighbour.

"She wouldn't rest till I called you," she said, jerking her head towards the interior. "Where's the other chap?"

"He's gone on," Taylor answered, as he went into the room and over to the bed where his wife lay.

She looked at him with a soft smile on her face.

"Look at him, Bill," she said, as she lifted the rough coverlet sufficiently to show where the little head was nestled on her arm. "He's come back to me from the other world."

For days Taylor waited, expecting that the man would come back or send word; but as nothing was seen or heard of him, he took counsel with his wife and the neighbour.

"Seems queer, that chap not doing anything," he said one evening, shortly before the neighbour left for her own home. "How will we name him?" he went on, glancing over at the sleeping infant his wife was holding in her arms. "He ain't ours really."

"He is ours. He is mine, mine," his wife answered quickly, as she held the baby tighter to her, and looked at her husband with a savage jealousy in her eyes.

"But there was that chap——" Taylor began.

"I don't care. I won't give him up. He's mine," she interrupted. "No one's going to have him; no one—never," she continued, as she rose to her feet and walked up and down the room, with her face bent over the child she held so closely to her.

The neighbour caught Taylor's eye and signed him to be quiet.

"Of course no one will have him but you," she said quietly. "I'd like to see who'd take him when Taylor's here. Why, he hasn't been round his boundary fences even, he's so took up with him."

Mrs. Taylor stopped in her walk, and turned to her husband with the jealous gleam still flickering in her eyes.

"Would you give him up, Bill?" she asked.

"Not me," he answered.

"Then we'll talk about his name," she interposed, before he could say more. "He's going to be called Richard Taylor."

"But that chap asked me—he said, 'Call him Tony, after me.' That's what he said, and I said——"

"I don't care what you said or what he said," she interrupted. "He should have stayed and looked after him, and not sneaked off in the dark, if he wanted to name him. Mrs. Garry says so too; don't you, Mrs. Garry?"

Mrs. Garry, directly appealed to, had to sustain the opinion she had already expressed in private.

"But I said I would," Taylor asserted. "I said I'd call him Tony."

"Well, call him Tony. Name him as Richard Taylor, and call him Tony for short," Mrs. Garry suggested.

"Tony!" Mrs. Taylor exclaimed scornfully. "What sort of a name do you call that? Why, it's only fit for a black-fellow."

"It'll do for short," Taylor said. "We'll name him Richard Taylor, and call him Tony for short."

CHAPTER II.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER.

Marmot's store stood at the end of Birralong, at the top of the township road, which was, in reality, the main road, along the sides of which Birralong had sprung up. It stood on the summit of a rise which sloped upwards through the town, so