at noon, the silence struck her again.

All the long day there was a faint busy hum of insects in the air. It came from the grass, from the trees—the long tasselled branches of downy honey-sweet, white blossoms that hung from them. Yet this ceaseless chirring of insects, the leafy murmuring of the trees, twittering of birds in the brushwood, the murmuring of the wind in distant valleys, the intermittent crooning and drone of the creek—all the faint, sweet, earth voices dropped into the great quiet that brooded over the place as they might have into a mysterious ocean that absorbed and obliterated all sounds. The bright hours were rent by the momentary screeching and chatter of parroquets, as they flew, spreading the red, green and yellow of their breasts against the blue sky. At sunset and dawn there were merry melodious flutings, long, sweet, mating-calls, carollings and bursts of husky, gnomish laughter. Yet the silence remained, hovering and swallowing insatiably every sound.

She gazed at the wilderness of the trees about her. From the hill on which the cow paddock was she could see only the clearing and trees—trees standing in a green and undulating sea in every direction, clothing the hills so that they seemed no more than a dark moss clinging close to their sides. In the distance they took on all the misty shades of grey and blue, or stood purple, steeped in shadows, under a rain cloud. She remembered how she had wondered what their mystery contained for her when she had first seen them on the edge of the plains, and she and Donald had set their faces towards them.

She looked down on the child in her arms, and realised that they had brought him to her; from him, her eyes went to the brown roof of the hut with its back to the hillside, a thread of smoke curling from its brown and grey chimney, and to the stretches of dark, upturned earth before it. They had brought her this too, all the dear homeness of it, and a sense of peace and consolation filled her heart.

To throw off the spell of the silence she decided that she must work again. But what to do? Donald had said no fires were to be lit in the stumps because the smoke might attract wayfarers on the road, or wandering natives to the clearing. She sang to the child, fitfully, softly. Then, remembering the spinning wheel which stood in its muffling cloths against the wall in the hut, she brought it into the sunshine and laid Davey down on a shawl at her feet.

When she had a slender thread of yarn going and the spinning wheel began its familiar, communicative little click-clatter, her mind was set to old themes. She forgot place and time as her fingers pursued their familiar track. A gay little air went fluttering moth-wise over her lips to the accompaniment of the wheel, and the little tap tapping of its treadles. She glanced at the child every now and then, laughing and telling him that his mother had found the wherewithal to keep her busy and gay, as a bonny baby's mother ought to be, and that the song she was singing was a song that the women sang over their spinning wheels in the dear country that she had come from, far across the sea.

But the shadows fell quickly. The birds were calling, long and warningly, when she carried the wheel indoors, and busied herself for the evening milking.

Wherever she went the dog that had come from the Port with them, followed. He trailed in her footsteps when she went to the creek for water, or to the cow paddock. He lay with watchful eyes on the edge of the clearing, when she sat at her spinning in the afternoon, or walked backwards and forwards crooning Davey to sleep.

At about noon on the fourth day while she was making porridge for her midday meal, the dog started to his feet and barked furiously. He had been lying stretched on the mat in the doorway. For a moment her heart stood still. Then she went to the door.

"What is it, Jo?" she asked.

The dog's eyes were fixed on the trees and scrubby undergrowth to the left of the hut. Every short hair on his lean body bristled. He growled sullenly. Later in the afternoon, when she sat in the clearing spinning and singing with Davey on his shawl beside her, he started to his feet suddenly and snarled fiercely.

Mary looked at him again questioningly and her eyes flew to the edge of the trees in the direction he pointed. No quivering leaf nor threatening sound stirred the quiet. He subsided at her feet after a moment, but his ears, kept pricked, twitched uneasily; his eyes never left the edge of the trees. Once they twisted up to her and she read in them the clear expression of a pitiful uneasiness, the assurance of deathless fidelity, a prayer almost to go into the house.

She picked up the child and walked towards the hut. The dog followed, glancing uneasily towards the edge of the clearing. She shut the door on that side of the hut and went to the back door.

"Jo! Jo!" she called long and clearly.

He flew round to her.

Though her limbs trembled, Mary went up to the paddock and brought the cow down to the shed. She milked, with Davey on her knees and the dog crouched beside her; then, with the child on one arm and the milk pail on the other, she went towards the house again.

She did not go down to the creek for water as she usually did.

"It's not because I'm afraid, Davey," she murmured, "but Jo would not have barked like that for nothing. It was a warning, and it would not be nice of us to take no notice of him at all."

As she left the shed the dog darted savagely away. She did not notice that he was no longer at her heels until she had re-entered the hut. As she was going to call him, the words died on her lips. Two gaunt and ragged men stood in the doorway!

CHAPTER IV

Mary stood back from the threshold. The fear that had haunted her for days had suddenly left her.

At first glance she had seen that the men had rough pieces of wood in their hands. Her gaze was arrested by the taller, shaggier man who had sprung forward. He was about to speak roughly, breathlessly; but she anticipated him. Her eyes flew past him to the man who hung in his shadow. The gash of a wound was just visible under a grimy piece of rag wrapped across his forehead.

"He's hurt!" she cried, a sure instinct of protection urging her. "Come in, and I'll bind up your head. It wants water and a clean bandage. Oh, but you look starving, both of you! Have you lost your way in the hills? It's terrible to do that! But you're welcome indeed. Come in and have something to eat and rest yourselves."

The tall man hung in the doorway as though speech and reason had deserted him. But the other, whose thatch of reddish hair stood up strangely from the filthy rag that bound his forehead, raised his arm and took a step forward, the glare of madness in his eyes. But that movement was the last spurt of energy in him. He pitched forward and lay across the threshold.

"Oh, bring him in and put him on the bed there, and I'll try and do something for him," Mary cried, her eyes flying from the fallen body to the man who stood in the doorway.

He did as she asked and turned to her with watchful eyes.

"You hold the child for me while I bathe his head," she said, "it may bring him to."

She thrust Davey into his arms.

"Sit down, won't you?" she asked, smiling towards him, as she set some water on the fire and poured some more into a basin.

She tore up a piece of old linen and began very gently to bathe the unconscious man's head. He groaned as the pain stirred again. She spoke to him, saying that the wound would mend the sooner for being cleansed, and that it was a wonder he was alive at all with the state it was in. Sitting in Donald's chair, holding Davey in his arms, tightly, clumsily, the tall man watched her; his face turned to, and from her, as his eyes wandered apprehensively about the hut, and to the door.

"Here, ma'am," he said at last, snarling over the words, "Where's your man? I've