‘Why do you think that?’

’’Cause you can’t keep white men on the runs these times; they prefer the rushes.  Squatter, J.P., ain’t the little god almighty he used to be when he held his hands as if they were niggers bought an’ paid for.’

Done was silent and thoughtful for a few minutes.  The knowledge of his proximity to Lucy Woodrow awakened mixed feelings, and contrition was prominent.  He had promised to write to her.  He remembered how anxious she seemed to win the promise, and how deep her interest in him had been.  Suffused with a melancholy tenderness, he told himself he had never forgotten her; her image had lived in his heart as in a shrine, screened perhaps, but only for sanctity’s sake.  No thought of Aurora stole in to disturb his unconscious hypocrisy.  He had an unexpected longing to see Lucy again.

‘Fact is, Mike,’ he said presently, ’there is a ship mate of mine down there at Macdougal’s I should very much like to meet again.  What do you say?’

‘I’m on.  This shipmate, is she married or single?’ Mike accented the third person feminine.

’Single.  She is teaching Macdougal’s youngsters.  I had no other friend aboard.’  Aurora obtruded now, and he looked into his mate’s face.  It was suspiciously vacant.  ‘What the devil are you thinking of, Mike?’ he said with warmth.

‘A friend o’ mine,’ answered Mike.

‘Oh!’

‘Aurora!’

’The devil you are?  It’s an infernal impertinence, then, let me tell you.’

‘That Irish girl would tear hair like a mountain cat,’ continued Mike serenely.

‘You’re wrong, Mike, quite wrong,’ said Jim impressively.  ’This girl is—­well, absolutely different.’

Done found the trip to Boobyalla very much longer than he had expected, but the mates reached the homestead at about two o’clock.  The place was almost deserted.  Two or three wolfish cattle-dogs ran from the huts, and barked at them in a half hearted kind of way; a black boy shouted from the shed, and two gins came to the kitchen door, watching them.  On the shady side of the same structure a dilapidated, miserable-looking white man of about fifty lay in a drunken sleep, buzzed over by a swarm of flies.  The dwelling-house was a wandering weather-board structure with shingle roofs and iron chimneys; a deep veranda, partly latticed, ran round three sides, and ebullient creepers of many kinds swarmed over the house at their own wild will.  The homestead faced into a big garden spreading into an orchard, now green and gay with the verdancy and the blooms of spring.

’Didn’t I tell you?  Not a white man round but the motherless drunk there,’ said Mike.

One of the cattle-dogs had returned to the side of the sleeper, and employed himself snapping at the greedy flies, yapping impatiently to keep them from the man’s face.

‘No boss sit down there, Mary?’ said Mike, addressing the eider of the gins.