Seaforth stretched out his hands and drew her to him.  “God bless you, my dear, but you are wrong,” he said, “All I had was yours two years ago.”

It was some little time later when a creaking wagon swung round a bend of the road, and the bronzed rancher on the driving-seat laughed softly to himself as he saw Miss Townshead sitting demurely but with downcast face on one end of the cedar, and Seaforth, who appeared suspiciously unconcerned, at least six feet away.  That was not just how he had seen them when with the soft dust muffling the rattle of wheels he and his team came out of the shadows which hung athwart the bend.  The wagon was old and weather-scarred, the harness rudely patched with hide, but it is possible there was room in the life of strenuous toil the bushman lived for the romance that brightens everything, and he shouted a mirthful greeting to them as he whipped his team.  Then as the wagon jolted on out under the sombre archway into the brightness of the sun there came drifting back to them the refrain of a song.  It was one sung often in the bush of that country at the time, and the two who sat listening in the green stillness that sunny afternoon grasped the verity that underlay its crude sentimentality.  Shorn of its harshness, by the distance the voice rang bravely through the thud of hoofs and rattle, of wheels, and there was in the half-heard words and jingling rhythm what there was in the sunshine and scent of steaming earth, the life and hope of the eternal spring.

Seaforth laughed a little as he stretched his hand out to the girl, but the light which shone back at him from her eyes was softer than that of mirth.

“I think that man knows what we know,” he said.  “Come out into the sunlight.  The world is not what it was an hour ago.”

They were plodding down the dazzling road, one on either side of the dusty bicycle under the open sky when he spoke again.

“All this makes me sorry for Harry.”

“Yes,” said the girl reflectively, for she saw there was more to follow.

Seaforth bent his head.  “He has so little now.  Hallam has beaten us all round, and Harry’s face takes my sleep away.  Everything he hoped for has been taken from him, and he is lame, you see.”

Nellie Townshead glanced at him swiftly.  “One would scarcely notice it.  You have something in your mind, Charley.”

Seaforth’s face was troubled as he answered her.  “It is a little difficult to put into words, and if it was anybody else than Harry I would not try.  Still, Alice Deringham is almost as much to him as you are to me—­and I don’t think she knows the truth, you see.”

Nellie Townshead flushed a little, and there was a trace of anger in her eyes.  “If Miss Deringham is punished for her wicked pride what is that to you?”

“Nothing,” said Seaforth quietly.  “Still—­because of what I saw at the ranch—­I am sorry for her, and Harry, who has been a very good friend to me, is being punished too.  We have so much, you and I, and he has nothing now.”