in the family, and she says not that she knows of.  It was a very unwise act to leave full management to Creyton and Benson in the face of such a drought.  One warning and marvellous escape such as he has had ought to be enough for a man with any sense.  I told him he’d be poor again if he didn’t take care, but he said he didn’t mind if all his property was blown into atoms, as it had done him more harm than good, whatever he means by talking that way.  Insanity is the only reason I can see for his conduct.  I thought he had his eye on Gertie, but I questioned her, and it appears he has never said anything to her.  I wonder what was his motive for going to Possum Gully that time?

Travel was indeed an unexpected development on the part of Harold Beecham.  He had such a marked aversion to anything of that sort, and never went even to Sydney or Melbourne for more than a few days at a stretch, and that on business or at a time of stock shows.

There were many conjectures re the motive of his visit to Possum Gully, but I held my peace.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

A Tale that is told and a Day that is done

There are others toiling and straining
’Neath burdens graver than mine;
They are weary, yet uncomplaining,—­
I know it, yet I repine: 
I know it, how time will ravage,
How time will level, and yet
I long with a longing savage,
I regret with a fierce regret.

A. L. GORDON. 
Possum Gully, 25th March, 1899

Christmas, only distinguished from the fifty-two slow Sundays of the year by plum-pudding, roast turkey, and a few bottles of home-made beer, has been once more; New Year, ushered in with sweet-scented midsummer wattle and bloom of gum- and box-tree has gone; February has followed, March is doing likewise, and my life is still the same.

What the future holds I know not, and am tonight so Weary that I do not care.

Time rules us all.  And life, indeed, is not
The thing we planned it out, ere hope was dead;
And then, we women cannot choose our lot.

Time is thorough in his work, and as that arch-cheat, Hope, gradually becomes a phantom of the past, the neck will grow inured to its yoke.

Tonight is one of the times when the littleness—­the abject littleness—­of all things in life comes home to me.

After all, what is there in vain ambition?  King or slave, we all must die, and when death knocks at our door, will it matter whether our life has been great or small, fast or slow, so long as it has been true—­true with the truth that will bring rest to the soul?

But the toughest lives are brittle,
And the bravest and the best
Lightly fall—­it matters little;
Now I only long for rest.

To weary hearts throbbing slowly in hopeless breasts the sweetest thing is rest.

And my heart is weary.  Oh, how it aches tonight—­not with the ache of a young heart passionately crying out for battle, but with the slow dead ache of an old heart returning vanquished and defeated!