will bring you to the station. It's four or five days' journey from here, I think, and maybe there'll be a job with cattle there. Drovers are being wanted everywhere—they were when we came up from the Port nearly a year ago."

"Yes," he said, "we heard in the Island that every man in the country's wanting to be gold-hunting, and that the cattle-owners can't get beasts to the market. They're running off wild, where the stockmen have left them. We want any job that'll bring food and money to begin with, and they say men with cattle are not making too particular inquiries as to whose doing their drovin' so long as it's done."

She put Davey in his basket, and went back to the hut. When she reappeared, it was with some bread and a bottle of milk wrapped in a piece of bagging.

"You'll have no trouble about water, because there are creeks all through the hills," she said, as she put the bundle into his hand.

Steve had gone off without speaking to her. He was slouching towards the trees.

The tall man took the food from her. Their eyes met.

"Have I ever seen you before? I seem to know you," she asked, distress on her face.

"Pray God not, ma'am," he said.

"What is your name?"

"You'd better not know."

For a moment, in a storm of gratitude and emotion, his mind trembled on the verge of self-revelation. His face worked uncertainly.

"I cannot say what I want to," he said at last, as if restraint denied him almost any expression at all. "This is a debt, ma'am. If ever, in any way, I can repay, I will. But there's no way of letting you know what you have done for me."

For a moment his eyes held hers. Then he turned away, and she watched him stride across the clearing and disappear among the trees.