He was not there.  On the verandah was a “squareface” bottle, empty.  Wakening from a drugged sleep in the grey morning, his mouth ablaze, his brain muddled and full of resentment against her, he had remembered the gin he had brought home with him; there was not much left in the bottle.  He drank it, full of resentment against it for making him so unhappy.  He knew that ten pounds—­two months’ pay—­was in the cigarette-box on the shelf.  It was Mr. Twist’s birthday next Sunday and they had decided to give it back to him to buy tools.  Louis remembered it; fighting every inch of the way across the floor with the strength that the last few months had put into him, he took it out of the box.  Then, a thousand devils at his heels, he dashed off into the Bush on his thirty-mile mad tramp.

It was a week before she saw him again, and all the time she was aching to follow him.  But she knew she could not walk so far and, with a stern cussedness typical of her father, she went on with Louis’s work, not mentioning to the Twists that he was away, though they all wondered what had happened to him.  She burned the gorse as though it were whisky, almost savagely.  She tore at the roots in the ground as though they were the fierce desires of life to be ruthlessly uprooted, smashed out, burnt to ashes.  She was scarcely conscious of emotion; the smoke got into her eyes and blinded her; stooping to dig made her feel faint and ill, but in her desperate misery she attacked the work as even Louis in his best days had never done.  It was not until she had been at it nearly a week that Mrs. Twist found her out, and came across the clearing to her, looking indignant.

“Want to kill yourself, and have the child killed too kid?” she cried before she reached her.  “What the nation do you think you’re doing?”

“I won’t be paid for work that isn’t done,” said Marcella ungraciously.  She was so sore, so aching that she knew to her disgust, that she would be crying weakly on Mrs. Twist’s shoulder if she let herself be even commonly polite.

“Come on, kid, and have a cup of tea with me,” said Mrs. Twist gently.  “I know what it is to feel as if you could chew anyone’s head off.  It always takes me like that the last few weeks.  Where’s your boss?”

“He—­Oh, I don’t know.  I’ve got to do his work.  I daren’t let him think he can shirk like this!  He’ll never get back again if I make him think it doesn’t matter.  Mrs. Twist, I’m tired of it!” she cried with sudden fierce intensity.  “Never, never, never for a minute dare I be tired and weak; why I daren’t even think tired for a minute.  Always I’ve to be strong for him!  Oh—­” she suddenly choked and, flinging her spade aside, sat down clumsily on the ground, her face buried in her hands.  “If only Father could come alive for a few hours—­and thump him!”

Mrs. Twist made no enquiries about Louis; she had guessed a good deal and, by excessive tact, got Marcella to go across to the Homestead with her and rest for the remainder of the afternoon.  But she was back at her work again next morning grimly determined to show Louis that if he shirked his job she would do it for him.