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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Black Opal, by Katharine Susannah Prichard
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Black Opal
+
+
+Author: Katharine Susannah Prichard
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011  [eBook #36710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK OPAL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Amy Sisson & Marc D'Hooghe
+(http://www.freeliterature.org)
+
+
+
+THE BLACK OPAL
+
+by
+
+KATHARINE SUSANNAH PRICHARD
+
+Author of "The Pioneers," "Windlestraws," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: William Heinemann
+1921
+
+
+
+
+_PART I_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A string of vehicles moved slowly out of the New Town, taking the road
+over the long, low slope of the Ridge to the plains.
+
+Nothing was moving on the wide stretch of the plains or under the fine,
+clear blue sky of early spring, except this train of shabby,
+dust-covered vehicles. The road, no more than a track of wheels on
+shingly earth, wound lazily through paper daisies growing in drifts
+beside it, and throwing a white coverlet to the dim, circling horizon.
+The faint, dry fragrance of paper daisies was in the air; a native
+cuckoo calling.
+
+The little girl sitting beside Michael Brady in Newton's buggy glanced
+behind her now and then. Michael was driving the old black horse from
+the coach stables and Newton's bay mare, and Sophie and her father were
+sitting beside him on the front seat. In the open back of the buggy
+behind them lay a long box with wreaths and bunches of paper daisies and
+budda blossoms over it.
+
+Sophie knew all the people on the road, and to whom the horses and
+buggies they had borrowed belonged. Jun Johnson and Charley Heathfield
+were riding together in the Afghan storekeeper's sulky with his fat
+white pony before them. Anwah Kaked and Mrs. Kaked had the store cart
+themselves. Watty and Mrs. Frost were on the coach. Ed. Ventry was
+driving them and had put up the second seat for George and Mrs. Woods
+and Maggie Grant. Peter Newton and Cash Wilson followed in Newton's
+newly varnished black sulky. Sam Nancarrow had given Martha M'Cready a
+lift, and Pony-Fence Inglewood was driving Mrs. Archie and Mrs. Ted
+Cross in Robb's old heavy buggy, with the shaggy draught mare used for
+carting water in the township during the summer, in the shafts. The
+Flails' home-made jinker, whose body was painted a dull yellow, came
+last of the vehicles on the road. Sophie could just see Arthur Henty and
+two or three stockmen from Warria riding through a thin haze of red
+dust. But she knew men were walking two abreast behind the vehicles and
+horsemen--Bill Grant, Archie and Ted Cross, and a score of miners from
+the Three Mile and the Punti rush. At a curve of the road she had seen
+Snow-Shoes and Potch straggling along behind the others, the old man
+stooping to pick wild flowers by the roadside, and Potch plodding on,
+looking straight in front of him.
+
+Buggies, horses, and people, they had come all the way from her home at
+the Old Town. Almost everybody who lived on Fallen Star Ridge was there,
+driving, riding, or walking on the road across the plains behind
+Michael, her father, and herself. It was all so strange to Sophie; she
+felt so strange in the black dress she had on and which Mrs. Grant had
+cut down from one of her own. There was a black ribbon on her old yellow
+straw hat too, and she had on a pair of black cotton gloves.
+
+Sophie could not believe her mother was what they called "dead"; that it
+was her mother in the box with flowers on just behind her. They had
+walked along this very road, singing and gathering wild flowers, and had
+waited to watch the sun set, or the moon rise, so often.
+
+She glanced at her father. He was sitting beside her, a piece of black
+stuff on his arm and a strip of the same material round his old felt
+hat. The tears poured down his cheeks, and he shook out the large, new,
+white handkerchief he had bought at Chassy Robb's store that morning,
+and blew his nose every few minutes. He spoke sometimes to Michael; but
+Michael did not seem to hear him. Michael sat staring ahead, his face as
+though cut in wood.
+
+Sophie remembered Michael had been with her when Mrs. Grant said.... Her
+mind went back over that.
+
+"She's dead, Michael," Mrs. Grant had said.
+
+And she had leaned against the window beside her mother's bed, crying.
+Michael was on his knees by the bed. Sophie had thought Michael looked
+so funny, kneeling like that, with his head in his hands, his great
+heavy boots jutting up from the floor. The light, coming in through the
+window near the head of the bed, shone on the nails in the soles of his
+boots. It was so strange to see these two people whom she knew quite
+well, and whom she had only seen doing quite ordinary, everyday things,
+behaving like this. Sophie had gazed at her mother who seemed to be
+sleeping. Then Mrs. Grant had come to her, her face working, tears
+streaming down her cheeks. She had taken her hand and they had gone out
+of the room together. Sophie could not remember what Mrs. Grant had said
+to her then.... After a little while Mrs. Grant had gone back to the
+room where her mother was, and Sophie went out to the lean-to where
+Potch was milking the goats.
+
+She told him what Mrs. Grant had said about her mother, and he stopped
+milking. They had gazed at each other with inquiry and bewilderment in
+their eyes; then Potch turned his face away as he sat on the
+milking-stool, and Sophie knew he was crying. She wondered why other
+people had cried so much and she had not cried at all.
+
+When Potch was taking the bucket of milk across the yard, her father had
+come round the corner of the house. His heavy figure with its broad,
+stooping shoulders was outlined against the twilight sky. He made for
+the door, shouting incoherently. Sophie and Potch stood still as they
+saw him.
+
+Catching sight of them, he had turned and come towards them.
+
+"We're on opal," he cried; "on opal!"
+
+There was a feverish light in his eyes; he was trembling with
+excitement.
+
+He had pulled a small, washed oatmeal bag from his pocket, untied the
+string, tumbled some stones on to the outstretched palm of his hand, and
+held them for Potch to look at.
+
+"Not a bad bit in the lot.... Look at the fire, there in the black
+potch!... And there's green and gold for you. A lovely bit of pattern!
+And look at this ... and this!" he cried eagerly, going over the two or
+three small knobbies in his hand.
+
+Potch looked at him dazedly.
+
+"Didn't they tell you--?" he began.
+
+Her father had closed his hands over the stones and opal dirt.
+
+"I'm going in now," he said, thrusting the opals into the bag.
+
+He had gone towards the house again, shouting: "We're on opal! On opal!"
+
+Sophie followed him indoors. Mrs. Grant had met her father on the
+threshold of the room where her mother was.
+
+"Why didn't you come when I sent for you?" she asked.
+
+"I didn't think it could be as bad as you made out--that she was really
+dying," Sophie could hear her father saying again. "And we'd just struck
+opal, me and Jun, struck it rich. Got two or three stones already--great
+stuff, lovely pattern, green and orange, and fire all through the black
+potch. And there's more of it! Heaps more where it came from, Jun says.
+We're next Watty and George Woods--and no end of good stuff's come out
+of that claim."
+
+Mrs. Grant stared at him as Potch had done. Then she stood back from the
+doorway of the room behind her.
+
+Every gesture of her father's, of Mrs. Grant's, and of Michael's, was
+photographed on Sophie's brain. She could see that room again--the quiet
+figure on the bed, light golden-brown hair, threaded with silver, lying
+in thin plaits beside the face of yellow ivory; bare, thin arms and
+hands lying over grey blankets and a counter-pane of faded red twill;
+the window still framing a square of twilight sky on which stars were
+glittering. Mrs. Grant had brought a candle and put it on the box near
+the bed, and the candle light had flared on Mrs. Grant's figure, showing
+it, gaunt and accusing, against the shadows of the room. It had showed
+Sophie her father, also, between Michael and Mrs. Grant, looking from
+one to the other of them, and to the still figure on the bed, with a
+dazed, penitent expression....
+
+The horses jogged slowly on the long, winding road. Sophie was conscious
+of the sunshine, warm and bright, over the plains, the fragrance of
+paper daisies in the air; the cuckoos calling in the distance. Her
+father snuffled and wiped his eyes and nose with his new handkerchief as
+he sat beside her.
+
+"She was so good, Michael," he said, "too good for this world."
+
+Michael did not reply.
+
+"Too good for this world!" Paul murmured again.
+
+He had said that at least a score of times this morning. Sophie had
+heard him say it to people down at the house before they started. She
+had never heard him talk of her mother like that before. She looked at
+him, sensing vaguely, and resenting the banality. She thought of him as
+he had always been with her mother and with her, querulous and
+complaining, or noisy and rough when he had been drinking. They had
+spent the night in a shed at the back of the house sometimes when he was
+like that....
+
+And her mother had said:
+
+"You'll take care of Sophie, Michael?"
+
+Sophie remembered how she had stood in the doorway of her mother's room,
+that afternoon--How long ago was it? Not only a day surely? She had
+stood there until her mother had seen her, awed without knowing why,
+reluctant to move, afraid almost. Michael had nodded without speaking.
+
+"As though she were your own child?"
+
+"So help me, God," Michael said.
+
+Her-mother's eyes had rested on Michael's face. She had smiled at him.
+Sophie did not think she had ever seen her smile like that before,
+although her smile had always been like a light on her face.
+
+"Don't let him take her away," her mother had said after a moment. "I
+want her to grow up in this place ... in the quiet ... never to know the
+treacherous ... whirlpool ... of life beyond the Ridge."
+
+Then her mother had seen and called to her.
+
+Sophie glanced back at the slowly-moving train of vehicles. They had a
+dreary, dream-like aspect. She felt as if she were moving in a dream.
+Everything she saw, and heard, and did, was invested with unreality; she
+had a vague, unfeeling curiosity about everything.
+
+"You see, Michael," her father was saying when she heard him talking
+again, "we'd just got out that big bit when Potch came and said that
+Marya ... that Marya.... I couldn't believe it was true ... and there
+was the opal! And when I got home in the evening she was gone. My poor
+Marya! And I'd brought some of the stones to show her."
+
+He broke down and wept. "Do you think she knows about the opal,
+Michael?"
+
+Michael did not reply. Sophie looked up at him. The pain of his face, a
+sudden passionate grieving that wrung it, translated to her what this
+dying of her mother meant. She huddled against Michael; in all her
+trouble and bewilderment there seemed nothing to do but to keep close to
+Michael.
+
+And so they came to the gate of a fenced plot which was like a quiet
+garden on the plains. Several young coolebahs, and two or three older
+trees standing in it, scattered light shade; and a few head-stones and
+wooden crosses, painted white or bleached by the weather, showed above
+the waving grass and wild flowers.
+
+Sophie held the reins when Michael got down to open the gate. Then he
+took his seat again and they drove in through the gateway. Other people
+tied their horses and buggies to the fence outside.
+
+When all the people who had been driving, riding, or walking on the road
+went towards an old coolebah under which the earth had been thrown up
+and a grave had been dug, Michael told Sophie to go with her father and
+stand beside them. She did so, and dull, grieving eyes were turned to
+her; glances of pitiful sympathy. But Snow-Shoes came towards the little
+crowd beside the tree, singing.
+
+He was the last person to come into the cemetery, and everybody stared
+at him. An old man in worn white moleskins and cotton shirt, an old
+white felt hat on his head, the wrappings of bag and leather, which gave
+him his name, on his feet--although snow never fell on the Ridge--he
+swung towards them. The flowers he had gathered as he came along, not
+otilypaper daisies, but the blue flowers of crowsfoot, gold buttons, and
+creamy and lavender, sweet-scented budda blossoms, were done up in a
+tight little bunch in his hand. He drew nearer still singing under his
+breath, and Sophie realised he was going over and over the fragment of a
+song that her mother had loved and used often to sing herself.
+
+There was a curious smile in his eyes as he came to a standstill beside
+her. The leaves of the coolebah were bronze and gold in the sunshine, a
+white-tail in its branches reiterating plaintively: "Sweet pretty
+creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael, George Woods, Archie Cross,
+and Cash Wilson, came towards the tree, their shoulders bowed beneath
+the burden they were carrying; but Snow-Shoes smiled at everybody as
+though this were really a joyous occasion, and they did not understand.
+Only he understood, and smiled because of his secret knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+In a week or two Mrs. Rouminof's name had dropped out of Ridge life
+almost as if she had never been part of it.
+
+At first people talked of her, of Paul, of Sophie, and of Michael. They
+gossiped of her looks and manner, of her strange air of serenity and
+content, although her life on the Ridge was, they surmised, a hard one,
+and different from the life she had come from. But her death caused no
+more disturbance than a stone thrown into quiet water, falling to the
+bottom, does. No one was surprised, when it was known Paul and Sophie
+had gone to live with Michael. Everyone expected Michael would try to
+look after them for a while, although they could not imagine where he
+was going to find room for them in his small house filled with books.
+
+It was natural enough that Michael should have taken charge of Sophie
+and Rouminof, and that he should have made all arrangements for Mrs.
+Rouminof's funeral. If it had been left to Paul to bury his wife, people
+agreed, she would not have been buried at all; or, at least, not until
+the community insisted. And Michael would have done as much for any
+shiftless man. He was next-of-kin to all lonely and helpless men and
+women on the Ridge, Michael Brady.
+
+Every man, woman, or child on the Ridge knew Michael. His lean figure in
+shabby blue dungarees, faded shirt, and weathered felt hat, with no more
+than a few threads of its band left, was as familiar as any tree, shed,
+or dump on the fields. He walked with a slight stoop, a pipe in his
+mouth always, his head bent as though he were thinking hard; but there
+was no hard thought in his eyes, only meditativeness, and a faint smile
+if he were stopped and spoken to unexpectedly.
+
+"You're a regular 'cyclopædia, Michael," the men said sometimes when he,
+had given information on a subject they were discussing.
+
+"Not me," Michael would reply as often as not. "I just came across that
+in a book I was reading the other day."
+
+Ridge folk were proud of Michael's books, and strangers who saw his
+miscellaneous collection--mostly of cheap editions, old school books,
+and shilling, sixpenny, and penny publications of literary masterpieces,
+poetry, and works on industrial and religious subjects--did not wonder
+that it impressed Ridge folk, or that Michael's knowledge of the world
+and affairs was what it was. He had tracts, leaflets, and small books on
+almost every subject under the sun. Books were regarded as his Weakness,
+and, remembering it, some of the men, when they had struck opal and left
+the town, occasionally sent a box of any old books they happened to come
+across to Michael, knowing that a printed page was a printed page to him
+in the long evenings when he lay on the sofa under his window. Michael
+himself had spent all the money he could, after satisfying the needs of
+his everyday life, on those tracts, pamphlets, and cheap books he
+hoarded in his hut on shelves made from wooden boxes and old
+fruit-cases.
+
+But there was nothing of the schoolmaster about him. He rarely gave
+information unless he was asked for it. The men appreciated that,
+although they were proud of his erudition and books. They knew dimly but
+surely that Michael used his books for, not against, themselves; and he
+was attached to books and learning, chiefly for what they could do for
+them, his mates. In all community discussions his opinion carried
+considerable weight. A matter was often talked over with more or less
+heat, differences of opinion thrashed out while Michael smoked and
+listened, weighing the arguments. He rarely spoke until his view was
+asked for. Then in a couple of minutes he would straighten out the
+subject of controversy, show what was to be said for and against a
+proposition, sum up, and give his conclusions, for or against it.
+
+Michael Brady, however, was much more the general utility man than
+encyclopædia of Fallen Star Ridge. If a traveller--swagman--died on the
+road, it was Michael who saw he got a decent burial; Michael who was
+sent for if a man had his head smashed in a brawl, or a wife died
+unexpectedly. He was the court of final appeal in quarrels and
+disagreements between mates; and once when Martha M'Cready was away in
+Sydney, he had even brought a baby into the world. He was something of a
+dentist, too, honorary dentist to anyone on the Ridge who wanted a tooth
+pulled out; and the friend of any man, woman, or child in distress.
+
+And he did things so quietly, so much as a matter of course, that people
+did not notice what he did for them, or for the rest of the Ridge. They
+took it for granted he liked doing what he did; that he liked helping
+them. It was his sympathy, the sense of his oneness with all their
+lives, and his shy, whimsical humour and innate refusal to be anything
+more than they were, despite his books and the wisdom with which they
+were quite willing to credit him, that gained for Michael the regard of
+the people of the Ridge, and made him the unconscious power he was in
+the community.
+
+Of about middle height, and sparely built, Michael was forty-five, or
+thereabouts, when Mrs. Rouminof died. He looked older, yet had the
+vigour and energy of a much younger man. Crowsfeet had gathered at the
+corners of his eyes, and there were the fines beneath them which all
+back-country men have from screwing their sight against the brilliant
+sunshine of the north-west. But the white of his eyes was as clear as
+the shell of a bird's egg, the irises grey, flecked with hazel and
+green, luminous, and ringed with fine black lines. When he pushed back
+his hat, half a dozen lines from frowning against the glare were on his
+forehead too. His thin, black hair, streaked with grey, lay flat across
+and close to his head. He had a well-shaped nose and the sensitive
+nostrils of a thoroughbred, although Michael himself said he was no
+breed to speak of, but plain Australian--and proud of it. His father was
+born in the country, and so was his mother. His father had been a
+teemster, and his mother a storekeeper's daughter. Michael had wandered
+from one mining field to another in his young days. He had worked in
+Bendigo and Gippsland; later in Silver Town; and from the Barrier Ranges
+had migrated to Chalk Cliffs, and from the Cliffs to Fallen Star Ridge.
+He had been one of the first comers to the Ridge when opal was
+discovered there.
+
+The Rouminofs had been on Chalk Cliffs too, and had come to the Ridge in
+the early days of the rush. Paul had set up at the Cliffs as an opal
+buyer, it was said; but he knew very little about opal. Anybody could
+sell him a stone for twice as much as it was worth, and he could never
+get a price from other buyers for the stones he bought. He soon lost any
+money he possessed, and had drifted and swung with the careless life of
+the place. He had worked as a gouger for a while when the blocks were
+bought up. Then when the rush to the Ridge started, and most of the men
+tramped north to try their luck on the new fields, he went with them;
+and Mrs. Rouminof and Sophie followed a little later on Ed. Ventry's
+bullock wagon, when Ed. was taking stores to the rush.
+
+Mrs. Rouminof had lived in a hut at the Old Town even after the township
+was moved to the eastern slope of the Ridge. She had learnt a good deal
+about opal on the Cliffs, and soon after she came to the Ridge set up a
+cutting-wheel, and started cutting and polishing stones. Several of the
+men brought her their stones, and after a while she was so good at her
+work that she often added a couple of pounds to the value of a stone.
+She kept a few goats too, to assure a means of livelihood when there was
+no opal about, and she sold goats' milk and butter in the township. She
+had never depended on Rouminof to earn a living, which was just as well,
+Fallen Star folk agreed, since, as long as they had known him, he had
+never done so. For a long time he had drifted between the mines and
+Newton's, cadging drinks or borrowing money from anybody who would lend
+to him. Sometimes he did odd jobs at Newton's or the mail stables for
+the price of a few drinks; but no man who knew him would take up a
+claim, or try working a mine with him.
+
+His first mate on the Ridge had been Pony-Fence Inglewood. They sank a
+hole on a likely spot behind the Old Town; but Paul soon got tired of
+it. When they had not seen anything but bony potch for a while, Paul
+made up his mind there was nothing in the place. Pony-Fence rather liked
+it. He was for working a little longer, but to oblige his mate he agreed
+to sink again. Soon after they had started, Paul began to appear at the
+dump when the morning was half through, or not at all. Or, as often as
+not, when he did decide to sling a pick, or dig a bit, he groaned so
+about the pains in his back or his head that as often as not Pony-Fence
+told him to go home and get the missus to give him something for it.
+
+The mildest man on the fields, Pony-Fence Inglewood did not discover for
+some time what the boys said was correct. There was nothing the matter
+with Rum-Enough but a dislike of shifting mullock if he could get anyone
+to shift it for him. When he did discover he was doing the work of the
+firm, Pony-Fence and Paul had it out with each other, and parted
+company. Pony-Fence took a new mate, Bully Bryant, a youngster from
+Budda, who was anxious to put any amount of elbow grease into his search
+for a fortune, and Paul drifted. He had several mates afterwards,
+newcomers to the fields, who wanted someone to work with them, but they
+were all of the same opinion about him.
+
+"Tell Rum-Enough there's a bit of colour about, and he'll work like a
+chow," they said; "but if y' don't see anything for a day or two, he
+goes as flat as the day before yesterday."
+
+If he had been working, and happened on a knobby, or a bit of black
+potch with a light or two in it, Paul was like a child, crazy with
+happiness. He could talk of nothing else. He thought of nothing else. He
+slung his pick and shovelled dirt as long as you would let him, with a
+devouring impatience, in a frenzy of eagerness. The smallest piece of
+stone with no more than sun-flash was sufficient to put him in a state
+of frantic excitement.
+
+Strangers to the Ridge sometimes wanted to know whether Rouminof had
+ever had a touch of the sun. But Ridge folk knew he was not mad. He had
+the opal fever all right, they said, but he was not mad.
+
+When Jun Johnson blew along at the end of one summer and could not get
+anyone to work with him, he took Paul on. The two chummed up and started
+to sink a hole together, and the men made bets as to the chance of their
+ever getting ten or a dozen feet below ground; but before long they were
+astounded to see the old saw of setting a thief to catch a thief working
+true in this instance. If anybody was loafing on the new claim, it was
+not Rouminof. He did every bit of his share of the first day's hard pick
+work and shovelling. If anybody was slacking, it was Jun rather than
+Paul. Jun kept his mate's nose to the grindstone, and worked more
+successfully with him than anyone else had ever done. He knew it, too,
+and was proud of his achievement. Joking over it at Newton's in the
+evening, he would say:
+
+"Great mate I've got now! Work? Never saw a chow work like him! Work his
+fingers to the bone, he would, if I'd let him. It's a great life, a
+gouger's, if only you've got the right sort of mate!"
+
+Ordinarily, of course, mates shared their finds. There was no question
+of what partners would get out of the luck of one or the other. But
+Jun--he had his own little way of doing business, everybody knew. He had
+been on the Ridge before. He and his mate did not have any sensational
+luck, but they had saved up two or three packets of opal and taken them
+down to Sydney to sell. Old Bill Olsen was his mate then, and, although
+Bill had said nothing of the business, the men guessed there had been
+something shady about it. Jun had his own story of what happened. He
+said the old chap had "got on his ear" in Sydney, and that "a couple of
+spielers had rooked him of his stones." But Bill no longer noticed Jun
+if they passed each other on the same track on the Ridge, and Jun
+pretended to be sore about it.
+
+"It's dirt," he said, "the old boy treating me as if I had anything to
+do with his bad luck losin' those stones!"
+
+"Why don't you speak to him about it?" somebody asked.
+
+"Oh, we had it out in Sydney," Jun replied, "and it's no good raking the
+whole thing up again. Begones is bygones--that's my motto. But if any
+man wants to have a grudge against me, well, let him. It's a free
+country. That's all I've got to say. Besides, the poor old cuss isn't
+all there, perhaps."
+
+"Don't you fret," Michael had said, "he's all right. He's got as much
+there as you or me, or any of us for that matter."
+
+"Oh well, you know, Michael," Jun declared. He was not going to quarrel
+with Michael Brady. "What you say goes, anyhow!"
+
+That was how Jun established himself anywhere. He had an easy,
+plausible, good-natured way. All the men laughed and drank with him and
+gave him grudging admiration, notwithstanding the threads and shreds of
+resentments and distrusts which old stories of his dealings, even with
+mates, had put in their minds. None of those stories had been proved
+against him, his friends said, Charley Heathfield among them. That was a
+fact. But there were too many of them to be good for any man's soul,
+Ridge men, who took Jun with a grain of salt, thought--Michael Brady,
+George Woods, Archie Cross, and Watty Frost among them; but Charley
+Heathfield, Michael's mate, had struck up a friendship with Jun since
+his return to the Ridge.
+
+George Woods and the Crosses said it was a case of birds of a feather,
+but they did not say that to Michael. They knew Michael had the sort of
+affection for Charley that a man has for a dog he has saved from
+drowning.
+
+Charley Heathfield had been down on his luck when he went to the Ridge,
+his wife and a small boy with him; and the rush which he had expected to
+bring him a couple of hundred pounds' worth of opal at least, if it did
+not make his fortune, had left him worse off than it found him--a piece
+of debris in its wake. He and Rouminof had put down a shaft together,
+and as neither of them, after the first few weeks, did any more work
+than they could help, and were drunk or quarrelling half of their time,
+nothing came of their efforts.
+
+Charley, when his wife died, was ill himself, and living in a hut a few
+yards from Michael's. She had been a waitress in a city restaurant, and
+he had married her, he said, because she could carry ten dishes of hot
+soup on one arm and four trays on the other. A tall, stolid, pale-faced
+woman, she had hated the back-country and her husband's sense of humour,
+and had fretted herself to death rather than endure them. Charley had no
+particular opinion of himself or of her. He called his youngster
+Potch--"a little bit of Potch," he said, because the kid would never be
+anything better than poor opal at the best of times.
+
+Michael had nursed Charley while he was ill during that winter, and had
+taken him in hand when he was well enough to get about again. Charley
+was supposed to have weak lungs; but better food, steady habits, and the
+fine, dry air of a mild summer set him up wonderfully. Snow-Shoes had
+worked with Michael for a long time; he said that he was getting too old
+for the everyday toil of the mine, though, when Michael talked of taking
+on Charley to work with them. It would suit him all right if Michael
+found another mate. Michael and Charley Heathfield had worked together
+ever since, and Snow-Shoes had made his living as far as anybody knew by
+noodling on the dumps.
+
+But Charley and Michael had not come on a glimmer of opal worth speaking
+of for nearly twelve months. They were hanging on to their claim, hoping
+each day they would strike something good. There is a superstition among
+the miners that luck often changes when it seems at its worst. Both
+Charley and Michael had storekeeper's accounts as long as their arms,
+and the men knew if their luck did not change soon, one or the other of
+them would have to go over to Warria, or to one of the other stations,
+and earn enough money there to keep the other going on the claim.
+
+They had no doubt it would be Michael who would have to go. Charley was
+not fond of work, and would be able to loaf away his time very
+pleasantly on the mine, making only a pretence of doing anything, until
+Michael returned. They wondered why Michael did not go and get a move
+into his affairs at once. Paul and Sophie might have-something to do
+with his putting off going, they told each other; Michael was anxious
+how Paul and his luck would fare when it was a question of squaring up
+with Jun, and as to how the squaring up, when it came, would affect
+Sophie.
+
+Some of them had been concerning themselves on Paul's account also. They
+did not like a good deal they had seen of the way Jun was using Paul,
+and they had resolved to see he got fair play when it was time for a
+settlement of his and Jun's account. George Woods, Watty Frost, and Bill
+Grant went along to talk the matter over with Michael one evening, and
+found him fixing a shed at the back of the hut which he and Potch had
+put up for Sophie and her father, a few yards from Charley Heathfield's,
+and in line with Michael's own hut at the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
+
+"Paul says he's going away if he gets a good thing out of his and Jun's
+find," George Woods said.
+
+"It'll be a good thing--if he gets a fair deal," Michael replied.
+
+"He'll get that--if we can fix it," Watty Frost said.
+
+"Yes," Michael agreed.
+
+"Can't think why you're taking so much trouble with this place if Paul
+and Sophie are going away soon, Michael," George Woods remarked at the
+end of their talk.
+
+"They're not gone yet," Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling
+across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.
+
+The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no
+betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did
+not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be
+done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it
+would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away.
+But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father
+would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for
+them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would
+be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be
+prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they
+found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all
+that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was
+the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should
+hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was
+like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish
+up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a
+packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better
+tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most
+of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to
+deal squarely by him.
+
+Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about
+like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for
+everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times
+they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell
+their opal.
+
+Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at
+Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them
+up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's
+package knew that he had kept the best stones.
+
+For a couple of weeks after they had come on their nest of knobbies, Jun
+and Paul had gouged and shovelled dirt enthusiastically; but the wisp
+fires, mysteriously and suddenly as they had come, had died out of the
+stone they moved. Paul searched frantically. He and Jun worked like
+bullocks; but the luck which had flashed on them was withdrawn. Although
+they broke new tunnels, went through tons of opal dirt with their hands,
+and tracked every trace of black potch through a reef of cement stone in
+the mine, not a spark of blue or green light had they seen for over a
+week. That was the way of black opal, everybody knew, and knew, too,
+that the men who had been on a good patch of fired stone would not work
+on a claim, shovelling dirt, long after it disappeared. They would be
+off down to Sydney, if no buyer was due to visit the fields, eager to
+make the most of the good time their luck and the opal would bring them.
+"Opal only brings you bad luck when you don't get enough of it," Ridge
+folk say.
+
+George and Watty had a notion Jun would not stick to the claim much
+longer, when they arranged the night at Newton's to settle his and
+Paul's account with each other. Michael, the Crosses, Cash Wilson,
+Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Bully Bryant, old Bill Olsen, and most
+of the staunch Ridge men were in the bar, Charley Heathfield drinking
+with Jun, when George Woods strolled over to the table where Rouminof
+was showing Sam Nancarrow his stones. Sam was blacksmith, undertaker,
+and electoral registrar in Fallen Star, and occasionally did odd
+butchering jobs when there was no butcher in the township. He had the
+reputation, too, of being one of the best judges of black opal on the
+fields.
+
+Paul was holding up a good-looking knobby so that red, green, and gold
+lights glittered through its shining potch as he moved it.
+
+"That's a nice bit of stone you've got, Rummy!" George exclaimed.
+
+Paul agreed. "But you should see her by candle light, George!" he said
+eagerly.
+
+He held up the stone again so that it caught the light of a lamp hanging
+over the bar where Peter Newton was standing. The eyes of two or three
+of the men followed the stone as Paul moved it, and its internal fires
+broke in showers of sparks.
+
+"Look, look!" Paul cried, "now she's showin'!"
+
+"How much have you got on her?" Sam Nancarrow asked.
+
+"Jun thinks she'll bring £50 or £60 at least."
+
+Sam's and George Woods' eyes met: £50 was a liberal estimate of the
+stone's value. If Paul got £10 or £15 for it he would be doing well,
+they knew.
+
+"They're nice stones, aren't they?" Paul demanded, sorting over the
+opals he had spread out on the table. He held up a piece of green potch
+with a sun-flash through it.
+
+"My oath!" George Woods exclaimed.
+
+"But where's the big beaut.?" Archie Cross asked, looking over the
+stones with George.
+
+"Oh, Jun's got her," Paul replied. "Jun!" he called, "the boys want to
+see the big stone."
+
+"Right!" Jun swung across to the table. Several of the men by the bar
+followed him. "She's all right," he said.
+
+He sat down, pulled a shabby leather wallet from his pocket, opened it,
+and took out a roll of dirty flannel; he undid the flannel carefully,
+and spread the stones on the table. There were several pieces of opal in
+the packet. The men, who had seen them before separately, uttered soft
+oaths of admiration and surprise when they saw all the opals together.
+Two knobbies were as big as almonds, and looked like black almonds,
+fossilised, with red fire glinting through their green and gold; a large
+flat stone had stars of red, green, amethyst, blue and gold shifting
+over and melting into each other; and several smaller stones, all good
+stuff, showed smouldering fire in depths of green and blue and gold-lit
+darkness.
+
+Jun held the biggest of the opals at arm's length from the light of the
+hanging lamp. The men followed his movement, the light washing their
+faces as it did the stone.
+
+"There she goes!" Paul breathed.
+
+"What have you got on her?"
+
+"A hundred pounds, or thereabouts."
+
+"You'll get it easy!"
+
+Jun put the stone down. He took up another, a smaller piece of opal, of
+even finer quality. The stars were strewn over and over each other in
+its limpid black pool.
+
+"Nice pattern," he said.
+
+"Yes," Watty Frost murmured.
+
+"She's not as big as the other ... but better pattern," Archie Cross
+said.
+
+"Reckon you'll get £100 for her too, Jun?"
+
+"Yup!" Jun put down the stone.
+
+Then he held up each stone in turn, and the men gave it the same level,
+appraising glance. There was no envy in their admiration. In every man's
+eyes was the same worshipful appreciation of black opal.
+
+Jun was drunk with his luck. His luck, as much as Newton's beer, was in
+his head this night. He had shown his stones before, but never like
+this, the strength of his luck.
+
+"How much do you think there is in your packet, Jun?" Archie Cross
+asked.
+
+Jun stretched his legs under the table.
+
+"A thou' if there's a penny."
+
+Archie whistled.
+
+"And how much do you reckon there is in Rum-Enough's?" George Woods put
+the question.
+
+"Four or five hundred," Jun said; "but we're evens, of course."
+
+He leaned across the table and winked at George.
+
+"Oh, I say," Archie protested, "what's the game?"
+
+They knew Jun wanted them to believe he was joking, humouring Paul. But
+that was not what they had arranged this party for.
+
+"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones, Jun?"
+
+"What?"
+
+Jun started and stared about him. It was so unusual for one man to
+suggest to another what he ought to do, or that there was anything like
+bad faith in his dealings with his mates, that his blood rose.
+
+"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones?" George repeated,
+mildly eyeing him over the bowl of his pipe.
+
+"Yes," Watty butted in, "Rummy ought to hold a few of the good stones,
+Jun. Y' see, you might be run into by rats ... or get knocked out--and
+have them shook off you, like Oily did down in Sydney--and it'd be hard
+on Rummy, that--"
+
+"When I want your advice about how me and my mate's going to work
+things, I'll ask you," Jun snarled.
+
+"We don't mind giving it before we're asked, Jun," Watty explained
+amiably.
+
+Archie Cross leaned across the table. "How about giving Paul a couple of
+those bits of decent pattern--if you stick to the big stone?" he said.
+
+"What's the game?" Jun demanded, sitting up angrily. His hand went over
+his stones.
+
+"Wait on, Jun!" Michael said. "We're not thieves here. You don't have to
+grab y'r stones."
+
+Jun looked about him. He saw that men of the Ridge, in the bar, were all
+standing round the table. Only Peter Newton was left beside the bar,
+although Charley Heathfield, on the outer edge of the crowd, regarded
+him with a smile of faint sympathy and cynicism. Paul leaned over the
+table before him, and looked from Jun to the men who had fallen in round
+the table, a dazed expression broadening on his face.
+
+"What the hell's the matter?" Jun cried, starting to his feet. "What are
+you chaps after? Can't I manage me own affairs and me mate's?"
+
+The crowd moved a little, closer to him. There was no chance of making a
+break for it.
+
+George Woods laughed.
+
+"Course you can't, Jun!" he said. "Not on the Ridge, you can't manage
+your affairs and your mate's ... your way ... Not without a little
+helpful advice from the rest of us.... Sit down!"
+
+Jun glanced about him again; then, realising the intention on every
+face, and something of the purpose at the back of it, he sat down again.
+
+"Well, I'm jiggered!" he exclaimed. "I see--you believe old Olsen's
+story. That's about the strength of it. Never thought ... a kid, or a
+chicken, 'd believe that bloody yarn. Well, what's the advice ... boys?
+Let's have it, and be done with it!"
+
+"We'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. We won't say anything about ...
+why," George remarked. "But the boys and I was just thinking it might be
+as well if you and Rum-Enough sort of shared up the goods now, and then
+... if he doesn't want to go to Sydney same time as you, Jun, he can
+deal his goods here, or when he does go."
+
+No one knew better than Jun the insult which all this seemingly
+good-natured talking covered. He knew that neither he, nor any other
+man, would have dared to suggest that Watty, or George, or Michael, were
+not to be trusted to deal for their mates, to the death even. But then
+he knew, too, they were to be trusted; that there was not money enough
+in the world to buy their loyalty to each other and to their mates, and
+that he could measure their suspicion of his good faith by his knowledge
+of himself. To play their game as they would have played it was the only
+thing for him to do, he recognised.
+
+"Right!" he said, "I'm more than willing. In fact, I wouldn't have the
+thing on me mind--seein' the way you chaps 've taken it. But 'd like to
+know which one of you wouldn't 've done what I've done if Rum-Enough was
+your mate?"
+
+Every man was uneasily conscious that Jun was right. Any one of them, if
+he had Paul for a mate, would have taken charge of the most valuable
+stones, in Paul's interest as well as his own. At the same time, every
+man felt pretty sure the thing was a horse of another colour where Jun
+was concerned.
+
+"Which one of us," George Woods inquired, "if a mate'd been set on by a
+spieler in Sydney, would've let him stump his way to Brinarra and foot
+it out here ... like you let old Olsen?"
+
+Jun's expression changed; his features blenched, then a flame of blood
+rushed over his face.
+
+"It's a lie," he yelled. "He cleared out--I never saw him afterwards!"
+
+"Oh well," George said, "we'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. Let's have a
+look at that flat stone."
+
+Jun handed him the stone.
+
+George held it to the light.
+
+"Nice bit of opal," he said, letting the light play over it a moment,
+then passed it on to Michael and Watty.
+
+"You keep the big stone, and Paul'll have this," Archie Cross said.
+
+He put the stone beside Paul's' little heap of gems.
+
+Jun sat back in his chair: his eyes smouldering as the men went over his
+opals, appraising and allotting each one, putting some before Rouminof,
+and some back before him. They dealt as judicially with the stones as
+though they were a jury of experts, on the case--as they really were.
+When their decisions were made, Jun had still rather the better of the
+stones, although the division had been as nearly fair as possible.
+
+Paul was too dazed and amazed to speak. He glanced dubiously from his
+stones to Jun, who rolled his opals back in the strip of dirty flannel,
+folded it into his leather wallet, and dropped that into his coat
+pocket. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.
+
+Big and swarthy, with eyes which took a deeper colour from the new blue
+shirt he had on, Jun stood an inch or so above the other men.
+
+"Well," he said, "you boys have put it across me to-night. You've made a
+mistake ... but I'm not one to bear malice. You done right if you
+thought I wasn't going to deal square by Rum-Enough ... but I'll lay you
+any money you like I'd 've made more money for him by selling his stones
+than he'll make himself--Still, that's your business ... if you want it
+that way. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm just where I was--in luck.
+And you chaps owe me something.... Come and have a drink."
+
+Most of the men, who believed Jun was behaving with better grace than
+they had expected him to, moved off to have a drink with him. They were
+less sure than they had been earlier in the evening that they had done
+Rouminof a good turn by giving him possession of his share of the opals.
+It was just on the cards, they realised as Jun said, that instead of
+doing Rouminof a good turn, if Jun had been going to deal squarely by
+him, they had done him a rather bad one. Paul was pretty certain to make
+a mess of trading his own stones, and to get about half their value from
+an opal-buyer if he insisted on taking them down to Sydney to sell
+himself.
+
+"What'll you do now your fortune's fixed up, Rummy?" George Woods asked,
+jokingly, when he and two or three men were left with Paul by the table.
+
+"I'll get out of this," Paul said. "We'll go down to Sydney--me and
+Sophie--and we'll say good-bye to the Ridge for good."
+
+The men laughed. It was the old song of an outsider who cared nothing
+for the life of the Ridge, when he got a couple of hundred pounds' worth
+of opal. He thought he was made for life and would never come back to
+the Ridge; but he always did when his money was spent. Only Michael,
+standing a little behind George Woods, did not smile.
+
+"But you can't live for ever on three or four hundred quid," Watty Frost
+said.
+
+"No," Paul replied eagerly, "but I can always make a bit playing at
+dances, and Sophie's going to be a singer. You wait till people hear her
+sing.... Her mother was a singer. She had a beautiful voice. When it
+went we came here.... But Sophie can sing as well as her mother. And
+she's young. She ought to make a name for herself."
+
+He wrapped the stones before him in a piece of wadding, touching them
+reverently, and folded them into the tin cigarette box Michael had given
+him to carry about the first stones Jun had let him have. He was still
+mystified over the business of the evening, and why the boys had made
+Jun give him the other stones. He had been quite satisfied for Jun to
+hold most of the stones, and the best ones, as any man on the Ridge
+would be for his mate to take care of their common property. There was a
+newspaper lying on the table. He took it, wrapped it carefully about his
+precious box, tied a piece of strong string round it, and let the box
+down carefully into the big, loose pocket of his shabby coat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Watty and George were well satisfied with their night's work when they
+went out of the bar into the street. Michael was with them. He said
+nothing, but they took it for granted he was as pleased as they were at
+what had been done and the way in which it had been done. Michael was
+always chary of words, and all night they had noticed that what they
+called his "considering cap" had been well drawn over his brows. He
+stood smoking beside them and listening abstractedly to what they were
+saying.
+
+"Well, that's fixed him," Watty remarked, glancing back into the room
+they had just left.
+
+Jun was leaning over the bar talking to Newton, the light from the lamp
+above, on his red, handsome face, and cutting the bulk of his head and
+shoulders from the gloom of the room and the rest of the men about him.
+Peter Newton was serving drinks, and Jun laughing and joking
+boisterously as he handed them on to the men.
+
+"He's a clever devil!" George exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," Michael said.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if he didn't clear out by the coach to-morrow," George
+said.
+
+"Nor me," Watty grunted.
+
+"Well, he won't be taking Paul with him."
+
+"Not to-morrow."
+
+"No."
+
+"But Rummy's going down to town soon as he can get, he says."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Say, Michael, why don't you try scarin' him about losing his stones
+like Bill Olsen did?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Says," Michael smiled, "the sharks won't get any of his money or opal."
+
+Watty snuffed contemptuously by way of exclamation.
+
+"Well, I'll be getting along," Michael added, and talked away in the
+direction of his hut.
+
+George and Watty watched his spare figure sway down the road between the
+rows of huts which formed the Fallen Star township. It was a misty
+moonlight night, and the huts stood dark against the sheening screen of
+sky, with here and there a glow of light through open doorways, or
+small, square window panes.
+
+"It's on Michael's mind, Rum-Enough's going and taking Sophie with him,"
+George, said.
+
+"I don't wonder," Watty replied. "He'll come a cropper, sure as eggs....
+And what's to become of her? Michael 'd go to town with them if he had a
+bean--but he hasn't. He's stony, I know."
+
+Even to his mate he did not say why he knew, and George did not ask,
+understanding Watty's silence. It was not very long since George himself
+had given Michael a couple of pounds; but he had a very good idea
+Michael had little to do with the use of that money. He guessed that he
+would have less to do with whatever he got from Watty.
+
+"Charley's going over to Warria to-morrow, isn't he?" he asked.
+
+Watty grunted. "About time he did something. Michael's been grafting for
+him for a couple of years ... and he'd have gone to the station
+himself--only he didn't want to go away till he knew what Paul was going
+to do. Been trying pretty hard to persuade him to leave Sophie--till
+he's fixed up down town--but you wouldn't believe how obstinate the
+idiot is. Thinks he can make a singer of her in no time ... then she'll
+keep her old dad till kingdom come."
+
+Michael's figure was lost to sight between the trees which encroached on
+the track beyond the town. Jun was singing in the hotel. His great
+rollicking voice came to George and Watty with shouts of laughter.
+George, looking back through the open door, saw Rouminof had joined the
+crowd round the bar.
+
+He was drinking as George's glance fell on him.
+
+"Think he's all right?" Watty asked.
+
+George did not reply.
+
+"You don't suppose Jun 'd try to take the stones off of him, do you,
+George?" Watty inquired again. "You don't think----?"
+
+"I don't suppose he'd dare, seein' we've ... let him know how we feel."
+
+George spoke slowly, as if he were not quite sure of what he was saying.
+
+"He knows his hide'd suffer if he tried."
+
+"That's right."
+
+Archie Cross came from the bar and joined them.
+
+"He's trying to make up to the boys--he likes people to think he's
+Christmas, Jun," he said, "and he just wants 'em to forget that
+anything's been said--detrimental to his character like."
+
+George was inclined to agree with Archie. They went to the form against
+the wall of the hotel and sat there smoking for a while; then all three
+got up to go home.
+
+"You don't think we ought to see Rummy home?" Watty inquired
+hesitatingly.
+
+He was ashamed to suggest that Rouminof, drunk, and with four or five
+hundred pounds' worth of opal in his pockets, was not as safe as if his
+pockets were empty. But Jun had brought a curious unrest into the
+community. Watty, or Archie, or George, themselves would have walked
+about with the same stuff in their pockets without ever thinking anybody
+might try to put a finger on it.
+
+None of the three looked at each other as they thought over the
+proposition. Then Archie spoke:
+
+"I told Ted," he murmured apologetically, "to keep an eye on Rummy, as
+he's coming home. If there's rats about, you never can tell what may
+happen. We ain't discovered yet who put it over on Rummy and Jun on the
+day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral. So I just worded Ted to keep an eye on
+the old fool. He comes our track most of the way ... And if he's tight,
+he might start sheddin' his stones out along the road--you never can
+tell."
+
+George Woods laughed. The big, genial soul of the man looked out of his
+eyes.
+
+"That's true," he said heartily.
+
+Archie and he smiled into each other's eyes. They understood very well
+what lay behind Archie's words; They could not bring themselves to admit
+there was any danger to the sacred principle of Ridge life, that a mate
+stands by a mate, in letting Rouminof wander home by himself. He might
+be in danger if there were rats about; they would admit that. But rats,
+the men who sneaked into other men's mines when they were on good stuff,
+and took out their opal during the night, were never Ridge men. They
+were new-comers, outsiders, strangers on the rushes, who had not learnt
+or assimilated Ridge ideas.
+
+After a few minutes George turned away. "Well, good-night, Archie," he
+said.
+
+Watty moved after him.
+
+"'Night!" Archie replied.
+
+George and Watty went along the road together, and Archie walked off in
+the direction Michael had taken.
+
+But Michael had not gone home. When the trees screened him from sight,
+he had struck out across the Ridge, then, turning back on his tracks
+behind the town, had made towards the Warria road. He walked, thinking
+hard, without noticing where he was going, his mind full of Paul, of
+Sophie, and of his promise.
+
+Now that Paul had his opal, it was clear he would be able to do as he
+wished--leave the Ridge and take Sophie with him. For the time being at
+least he was out of Jun Johnson's hands--but Michael was sure he would
+not stay out of them if he went to Sydney. How to prevent his
+going--how, rather, to prevent Sophie going with him---that was
+Michael's problem. He did not know what he was going to do.
+
+He had asked Sophie not to go with her father. He had told her what her
+mother had said, and tried to explain to her why her mother had not
+wanted her to go away from the Ridge, or to become a public singer. But
+Sophie was as excited about her future as her father was. It was natural
+she should be, Michael assured himself. She was young, and had heard
+wonderful stories of Sydney and the world beyond the Ridge. Sydney was
+like the town in a fairy tale to her.
+
+It was not to be expected, Michael confessed to himself, that Sophie
+would choose to stay on Fallen Star Ridge. If she could only be
+prevailed upon to put off her departure until she was older and better
+able to take care of herself, he would be satisfied. If the worst came
+to the worst, and she went to Sydney with her father soon, Michael had
+decided to go with them. Peter Newton would give him a couple of pounds
+for his books, he believed, and he would find something to do down in
+Sydney. His roots were in the Ridge. Michael did not know how he was
+going to live away from the mines; but anything seemed better than that
+Sophie should be committed to what her mother had called "the
+treacherous whirlpool" of life in a great city, with no one but her
+father to look after her.
+
+And her mother had said:
+
+"Don't let him take her away, Michael."
+
+Michael believed that Marya Rouminof intended Sophie to choose for
+herself whether she would stay on the Ridge or not, when she was old
+enough. But now she was little more than a child, sixteen, nearly
+seventeen, young for her years in some ways and old in others. Michael
+knew her mother had wanted Sophie to grow up on the Ridge and to realise
+that all the potentialities of real and deep happiness were there.
+
+"They say there's got to be a scapegoat in every family, Michael," she
+had said once. "Someone has to pay for the happiness of the others. If
+all that led to my coming here will mean happiness for Sophie, it will
+not have been in vain."
+
+"That's where you're wrong," Michael had told her.
+
+"Looking for justice--poetic justice, isn't it, they call it?--in the
+working out of things. There isn't any of this poetic justice except by
+accident. The natural laws just go rolling on--laying us out under them.
+All we can do is set our lives as far as possible in accordance with
+them and stand by the consequences as well as we know how."
+
+"Of course, you're right," she had sighed, "but----"
+
+It was for that "but" Michael was fighting now. He knew what lay beyond
+it--a yearning for her child to fare a little better in the battle of
+life than she had. Striding almost unconsciously over the loose, shingly
+ground, Michael was not aware what direction his steps were taking until
+he saw glimmering white shapes above the grass and herbage of the
+plains, and realised that he had walked to the gates of the cemetery.
+
+With an uncomfortable sense of broken faith, he turned away from the
+gate, unable to go in and sit under the tree there, to smoke and think,
+as he sometimes did. He had used every argument with Paul to prevent his
+taking Sophie away, he knew; but for the first time since Michael and he
+had been acquainted with each other, Paul had shown a steady will. He
+made up his mind he was "going to shake the dust of the Ridge off his
+feet," he said. And that was the end of it. Michael almost wished the
+men had let Jun clear out with his stones. That would have settled the
+business. But, his instinct of an opal-miner asserting itself, he was
+unable to wish Paul the loss of his luck, and Jun what he would have to
+be to deprive Paul of it. He walked on chewing the cud of bitter and
+troubled reflections.
+
+"Don't let him take her away!" a voice seemed to cry suddenly after him.
+
+Michael stopped; he snatched the hat from his head.
+
+"No!" he said, "he shan't take her away!"
+
+Startled by the sound of his own voice, the intensity of thinking which
+had wrung it from him, dazed by the sudden strength of resolution which
+had come over him, he stood, his face turned to the sky. The stars
+rained their soft light over him. As he looked up to them, his soul went
+from him by force of will. How long he stood like that, he did not know;
+but when his eyes found the earth again he looked about him wonderingly.
+After a little while he put on his hat and turned away. All the pain and
+trouble were taken from his thinking; he was strangely soothed and
+comforted. He went back along the road to the town, and, skirting the
+trees and the houses on the far side, came again to the track below
+Newton's.
+
+Lights were still shining in the hotel although it was well after
+midnight. Michael could hear voices in the clear air. A man was singing
+one of Jun's choruses as he went down the road towards the Punti Rush.
+Michael kept on his way. He was still wondering what he could do to
+prevent Paul taking Sophie away; but he was no longer worried about
+it--his brain was calm and clear; his step lighter than it had been for
+a long time.
+
+He heard the voices laughing and calling to each other as he walked on.
+
+"Old Ted!" he commented to himself, recognising Ted Cross's voice. "He's
+blithered!"
+
+When he came to a fork in the tracks where one went off in the direction
+of his, Charley's, and Rouminof's huts, and the other towards the
+Crosses', Michael saw Ted Cross lumbering along in the direction of his
+own hut.
+
+"Must 've been saying good-night to Charley and Paul," he thought. A
+little farther along the path he saw Charley and Paul, unsteady shadows
+ahead of him in the moonlight, and Charley had his arm under Paul's,
+helping him home.
+
+"Good old Charley!" Michael thought, quickly appreciative of the man he
+loved.
+
+He could hear them talking, Rouminof's voice thick and expostulatory,
+Charley's even and clear.
+
+"Charley's all right. He's not showin', anyhow," Michael told himself.
+He wondered at that. Charley was not often more sober than his company,
+and he had been drinking a good deal, earlier in the evening.
+
+Michael was a few yards behind them and was just going to quicken his
+steps and hail Charley, when he saw the flash of white in Charley's
+hand--something small, rather longer than square, a cigarette box
+wrapped in newspaper, it might have been--and Michael saw Charley drop
+it into the pocket of his coat.
+
+Paul wandered on, talking stupidly, drowsily. He wanted to go to sleep
+there on the roadside; but Charley led him on.
+
+"You'll be better at home and in bed," he said. "You're nearly there
+now."
+
+Instinctively, with that flash of white, Michael had drawn into the
+shadow of the trees which fringed the track. Charley, glancing back
+along it, had not seen him. Several moments passed before Michael moved.
+He knew what had happened, but the revelation was such a shock that his
+brain would not react to it. Charley, his mate, Charley Heathfield had
+stolen Paul's opals. The thing no man on the Ridge had attempted,
+notwithstanding its easiness, Charley had done. Although he had seen,
+Michael could scarcely believe that what he had seen, had happened.
+
+The two men before him staggered and swayed together. Their huts stood
+only a few yards from each other, a little farther along the track.
+
+Charley took Paul to the door of his hut, opened it and pushed him in.
+He stood beside the door, listening and looking down the track for a
+second longer. Michael imagined he would want to know whether Paul would
+discover his loss or just pitch forward and sleep where he lay. Then
+Charley went on to his own hut and disappeared.
+
+When the light glowed in his window, Michael went on up the track,
+keeping well to the cover of the trees. Opposite the hut he took off his
+boots. He put his feet down carefully, pressing the loose pebbles
+beneath him, as he crossed the road. It seemed almost impossible to move
+on that shingly ground without making a sound, and yet when he stood
+beside the bark wall of Charley's room and could see through the smeared
+pane of its small window, Charley had not heard a pebble slip. He was
+sitting on the edge of his bed, the stub of a lighted candle in a saucer
+on the bed beside him, and the box containing the opals lying near it as
+if he were just going to cut the string and have a look at them. The
+wall creaked as Michael leaned against it.
+
+"Who's there?" Charley cried sharply.
+
+He threw a blanket over the box on the bed and started to the door.
+
+Michael moved round the corner of the house. He heard Potch call
+sleepily:
+
+"That you?"
+
+Charley growled;
+
+"Oh, go to sleep, can't you? Aren't you asleep yet?"
+
+Potch murmured, and there was silence again.
+
+Michael heard Charley go to the door, look out along the road, and turn
+back into the hut. Then Michael moved along the wall to the window.
+
+Charley was taking down some clothes hanging from nails along the inner
+wall. He changed from the clothes he had on into them, picked up his
+hat, lying where he had thrown it on the floor beside the bed when he
+came in, rolled it up, straightened the brim and dinged the crown to his
+liking. Then he picked up the packet of opal, put it in his coat pocket,
+and went into the other room. Michael followed to the window which gave
+on it. He saw Charley glance at the sofa as though he were contemplating
+a stretch, but, thinking better of it, he settled into an easy,
+bag-bottomed old chair by the table, pulled a newspaper to him, and
+began to read by the guttering light of his candle.
+
+Michael guessed why Charley had dressed, and why he had chosen to sit
+and read rather than go to sleep. It was nearly morning, the first chill
+of dawn in the air. The coach left at seven o'clock, and Charley meant
+to catch the coach. He had no intention of going to Warria. Michael
+began to get a bird's-eye view of the situation. He wondered whether
+Charley had ever intended going to Warria. He realised Charley would go
+off with the five pound note he had made him, Michael, get from Watty
+Frost, as well as with Paul's opals. He began, to see clearly what that
+would mean, too--Charley's getting away with Paul's opals. Paul would
+not be able to take Sophie away....
+
+In the branches of a shrub nearby, a white-tail was crying plaintively:
+"Sweet pretty creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael remembered how
+it had cried like that on the day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral.
+
+Whether to go into the hut, tell Charley he knew what he had done, and
+demand the return of the opals, or let him get away with them, Michael
+had not decided, when Charley's hand went to his pocket, and, as it
+closed over the package of opals, a smile of infantile satisfaction
+flitted across his face. That smile, criminal in its treachery, enraged
+Michael more than the deed itself. The candle Charley had been reading
+by guttered out. He stumbled about the room looking for another. After a
+while, as if he could not find one, he went back to his chair and
+settled into it. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the dim pane
+of the window by which Michael was standing.
+
+Michael's mind seethed with resentment and anger. The thing he had
+prayed for, that his brain had ached over, had been arranged. Rouminof
+would not be able to take Sophie away. But Michael was too good a Ridge
+man not to detest Charley's breach of the good faith of the Ridge.
+Charley had been accepted by men of the Ridge as one of themselves--at
+least, Michael believed he had.
+
+George, Watty, the Crosses, and most of the other men would have
+confessed to reservations where Charley Heathfield was concerned. But as
+long as he had lived as a mate among them, they had been mates to him.
+Michael did not want Rouminof to have his stones if having them meant
+taking Sophie away, but he did not want him to lose them. He could not
+allow Charley to get away with them, with that smile of infantile
+satisfaction. If the men knew what he had done there would be little of
+that smile left on his face when they had finished with him. Their
+methods of dealing with rats were short and severe. And although he
+deserved all he got from them, Michael was not able to decide to hand
+Charley over to the justice of the men of the Ridge.
+
+As he hesitated, wondering what to do, the sound of heavy, regular
+breathing came to him, and, looking through the window, he saw that
+Charley had done the last thing he intended to do--he had fallen asleep
+in his chair.
+
+In a vivid, circling flash, Michael's inspiration came to him. He went
+across to his hut, lighted a candle when he got indoors, and took the
+black pannikin he kept odd pieces of opal in, from the top of a
+bookshelf. There was nothing of any great value in the pannikin--a few
+pieces of coloured potch which would have made a packet for an
+opal-buyer when he came along, and a rather good piece of stone in the
+rough he had kept as a mascot for a number of years--that was all.
+Michael turned them over. He went to the corner shelf and returned to
+the table with a cigarette box the same size as the one Rouminof had
+kept his opals in. Michael took a piece of soiled wadding from a drawer
+in the table, rolled the stones in it, and fitted them into the box. He
+wrapped the tin in a piece of newspaper and tied it with string. Then he
+blew out his candle and went out of doors again.
+
+He made his way carefully over the shingles to Charley's hut. When he
+reached it, he leaned against the wall, listening to hear whether
+Charley was still asleep. The sound of heavy breathing came slowly and
+regularly. Michael went to the back of the hut. There was no door to it.
+He went in, and slowly approached the chair in which Charley was
+sleeping.
+
+He could never come to any clear understanding with himself as to how he
+had done what he did. He knew only a sick fear possessed him that
+Charley would wake and find him, Michael, barefooted, like a thief in
+his house. But he was not a thief, he assured himself. It was not
+thieving to take from a thief.
+
+Charley stirred uneasily. His arm went out; in the dim light Michael saw
+it go over the pocket which held the packet of opal; his hand clutch at
+it unconsciously. Sweating with fear and the nervous tension he was
+under, Michael remained standing in the darkness. He waited, wondering
+whether he would throw off Charley's hand and snatch the opal, or
+whether he would stand till morning, hesitating, and wondering what to
+do, and Charley would wake at last and find him there. He had decided to
+wrench Charley's arm from the pocket, when Charley himself flung it out
+with a sudden restless movement.
+
+In an instant, almost mechanically, Michael's hand went to the pocket.
+He lifted the packet there and put his own in its place.
+
+The blood was booming in his ears when he turned to the door. A sense of
+triumph unnerved him more than the execution of his inspiration. Charley
+muttered and called out in his sleep as Michael passed through the
+doorway.
+
+Then the stars were over him. Michael drew a deep breath of the night
+air and crossed to his own hut, the package of opal under his coat. Just
+as he was entering he drew back, vaguely alarmed. A movement light as
+thistledown seemed to have caught his ear. He thought he had detected a
+faint shifting of the shingle nearby. He glanced about with quick
+apprehension, went back to Charley's hut, listened, and looked around;
+but Charley was still sleeping. Michael walked back to his own hut.
+There was no sight or sound of a living thing in the wan, misty
+moonlight of the dawn, except the white-tail which was still crying from
+a wilga near Charley's hut.
+
+The package under his coat felt very heavy and alive when he returned to
+his own hut. Michael was disturbed by that faint sound he had heard, or
+thought he had heard. He persuaded himself he had imagined it, that in
+the overwrought state of his sensibilities the sound of his own breath,
+and his step on the stones, had surprised and alarmed him. The tin of
+opals burned against his body, seeming to scar the skin where it
+pressed. Michael sickened at the thought of how what he had done might
+look to anyone who had seen him. But he put the thought from him. It was
+absurd. He had looked; there was no one about--nothing. He was allowing
+his mind to play tricks with him. The success of what he had done made
+him seem like a thief. But he was not a thief. The stones were
+Rouminof's. He had taken them from Charley for him, and he would not
+even look at them. He would keep them for Paul.
+
+If Charley got away without discovering the change of the packets, as he
+probably would, in the early morning and in his excitement to catch the
+coach, he would be considered the thief. Rouminof would accuse him;
+Charley would know his own guilt. He would not dare to confess what he
+had done, even when he found that his package of opal had been changed.
+He would not know when it had been changed. He would not know whether it
+had been changed, perhaps, before he took it from Rouminof.
+
+Charley might recognise the stones in that packet he had done up,
+Michael realised; but he did not think so. Charley was not much of a
+judge of opal. Michael did not think he would remember the few scraps of
+sun-flash they had come on together, and Charley had never seen the
+mascot he had put into the packet, with a remnant of feeling for the
+memory of their working days together.
+
+Michael did not light the candle when he went into his hut again. He
+threw himself down on the bed in his clothes; he knew that he would not
+sleep as he lay there. His brain burned and whirled, turning over the
+happenings of the night and their consequences, likely and unlikely. The
+package of opal lay heavy in his pocket. He took it out and dropped it
+into a box of books at the end of the room.
+
+He did not like what he had done, and yet he was glad he had done it.
+When he could see more clearly, he was glad, too, that he had grasped
+this opportunity to control circumstances. A reader and dreamer all his
+days, he had begun to be doubtful of his own capacity for action. He
+could think and plan, but he doubted whether he had strength of will to
+carry out purposes he had dreamed a long time over. He was pleased, in
+an odd, fierce way, that he had been able to do what he thought should
+be done.
+
+"But I don't want them.... I don't want the cursed stones," he argued
+with himself. "I'll give them to him--to Paul, as soon as I know what
+ought to be done about Sophie. She's not old enough to go yet--to know
+her own mind--what she wants to do. When she's older she can decide for
+herself. That's what her mother meant. She didn't mean for always ...
+only while she's a little girl. By and by, when she's a woman, Sophie
+can decide for herself. Now, she's got to stay here ... that's what I
+promised."
+
+"And Charley," he brooded. "He deserves all that's coming to him ... but
+I couldn't give him away. The boys would half kill him if they got their
+hands on to him. When will he find out? In the train, perhaps--or not
+till he gets to Sydney.... He'll have my fiver, and the stones to go on
+with--though they won't bring much. Still, they'll do to go on with....
+Paul'll be a raving lunatic when he knows ... but he can't go--he can't
+take Sophie away."
+
+His brain surged over and over every phrase: his state of mind since he
+had seen Charley and Paul on the road together; every argument he had
+used with himself. He could not get away from the double sense of
+disquiet and satisfaction.
+
+An hour or two later he heard Charley moving about, then rush off down
+the track, sending the loose stones flying under his feet as he ran to
+catch the coach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Watty was winding dirt, standing by the windlass on the top of the dump
+over his and his mates' mine, when he saw Paul coming along the track
+from the New Town. Paul was breaking into a run at every few yards, and
+calling out. Watty threw the mullock from his hide bucket as it came up,
+and lowered it again. He wound up another bucket. The creak of the
+windlass, and the fall of the stone and earth as he threw them over the
+dump, drowned the sound of Rouminof's voice. As he came nearer, Watty
+saw that he was gibbering with rage, and crying like a child.
+
+While he was still some distance away, Watty heard him sobbing and
+calling out.
+
+He stopped work to listen as Paul came to the foot of Michael's dump.
+Ted Cross, who was winding dirt on the top of Crosses' mine, stopped to
+listen too. Old Olsen got up from where he lay noodling on Jun's and
+Paul's claim, and went across to Paul. Snow-Shoes, stretched across the
+slope near where Watty was standing, lifted his head, his turning of
+earth with a little blunt stick arrested for the moment.
+
+"They've took me stones!... Took me stones!" Watty heard Paul cry to
+Bill Olsen. And as he climbed the slope of Michael's dump he went on
+crying: "Took me stones! Took me stones! Charley and Jun! Gone by the
+coach! Michael!... They've gone by the coach and took me stones!"
+
+Over and over again he said the same thing in an incoherent wail and
+howl. He went down the shaft of Michael's mine, and Ted Cross came
+across from his dump to Watty.
+
+"Hear what he says, Watty?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Watty replied.
+
+"It gets y'r wind----"
+
+"If it's true," Watty ventured slowly.
+
+"Seems to me it's true all right," Ted said. "Charley took him home last
+night. I went along with them as far as the turn-off. Paul was a bit on
+... and Archie asked me to keep an eye on him.... I was a bit on meself,
+too ... but Charley came along with us--so I thought he'd be all
+right.... Charley went off by the coach this morning.... Bill Olsen told
+me.... And Michael was reck'ning on him goin' to Warria to-day, I know."
+
+"That's right!"
+
+"It'll be hard on Michael!"
+
+Watty's gesture, upward jerk of his chin, and gusty breath, denoted his
+agreement on that score.
+
+Ted went back to his own claim, and Watty slid down the rope with his
+next bucket to give his mates the news. It was nearly time to knock off
+for the midday meal, and before long men from all the claims were
+standing in groups hearing the story from Rouminof himself, or talking
+it over together.
+
+Michael had come up from his mine soon after Paul had gone down to him.
+The men had seen him go off down the track to the New Town, his head
+bent. They thought they knew why. Michael would feel his mate's
+dishonour as though it were his own. He would not be able to believe
+that what Paul said was true. He would want to know from Peter Newton
+himself if it was a fact that Charley had gone out on the coach with Jun
+and two girls who had been at the hotel.
+
+Women were scarce on the opal fields, and the two girls who had come a
+week before to help Mrs. Newton with the work of the hotel had been
+having the time of their lives. Charley, Jun Johnson, and two or three
+other men, had been shouting drinks for them from the time of their
+arrival, and Mrs. Newton had made up her mind to send the girls back to
+town by the next coach. Jun had appropriated the younger of the two, a
+bright-eyed girl, and the elder, a full-bosomed, florid woman with
+straw-coloured hair, had, as the boys said, "taken a fancy to Charley."
+
+Paul had already told his story once or twice when Cash Wilson, George,
+and Watty, went across to where he was standing, with half a dozen of
+the men about him. They were listening gravely and smoking over Paul's
+recital. There had been ratting epidemics on the Ridge; but robbery of a
+mate by a mate had never occurred before. It struck at the fundamental
+principle of their life in common. There was no mistaking the grave,
+rather than indignant view men of the Ridge took of what Charley had
+done. The Ridge code affirmed simply that "a mate stands by a mate." The
+men say: "You can't go back on a mate." By those two recognitions they
+had run their settlement. Far from all the ordinary institutions of law
+and order, they had lived and worked together without need of them, by
+appreciation of their relationship to each other as mates and as a
+fraternity of mates. No one, who had lived under and seemed to accept
+the principle of mateship, had ever before done as Charley had done.
+
+"But Charley Heathfield was never one of us really," Ted Cross said. "He
+was always an outsider."
+
+"That's right, Ted," George Woods replied. "We only stuck him on
+Michael's account."
+
+Paul told George, Watty, and Cash the story he had been going over all
+the morning--how he had gone home with Charley, how he remembered going
+along the road with him, and then how he had wakened on the floor of his
+own hut in the morning. Sophie was there. She was singing. He had
+thought it was her mother. He had called her ... but Sophie had come to
+him. And she had abused him. She had called him "a dirty, fat pig," and
+told him to get out of the way because she wanted to sweep the floor.
+
+He sobbed uncontrollably. The men sympathised with him. They knew the
+loss of opal came harder on Rouminof than it would have on the rest of
+them, because he was so mad about the stuff. They condoned the
+abandonment of his grief as natural enough in a foreigner, too; but
+after a while it irked them.
+
+"Take a pull at y'rself, Rummy, can't you?" George Woods said irritably.
+"What did Michael say?"
+
+"Michael?" Paul looked at him, his eyes streaming.
+
+George nodded.
+
+"He did not say," Paul replied. "He threw down his pick. He would not
+work any more ... and then he went down to Newton's to ask about
+Charley."
+
+Two or three of the men exchanged glances. That was the way they had
+expected Michael to take the news. He would not have believed Paul's
+story at first. They did not see Michael again that day. In the evening
+Peter Newton told them how Michael had come to him, asking if it was
+true Charley had gone on the coach with Jun Johnson and the girls. Peter
+told Michael, he said, that Charley had gone on the coach, and that he
+thought Rouminof's story looked black against Charley.
+
+"Michael didn't say much," Peter explained, "but I don't think he could
+help seeing what I said was true--however much he didn't want to."
+
+Everybody knew Michael believed in Charley Heathfield. He had thought
+the worst that could be said of Charley was that he was a good-natured,
+rather shiftless fellow. All the men had responded to an odd attractive
+faculty Charley exercised occasionally. He had played it like a woman
+for Michael, and Michael had taken him on as a mate and worked with him
+when no one else would. And now, the men guessed, that Michael, who had
+done more than any of them to make the life of the Ridge what it was,
+would feel more deeply and bitterly than any of them that Charley had
+gone back on him and on what the Ridge stood for.
+
+All they imagined Michael was suffering in the grief and bitterness of
+spirit which come of misplaced faith, he was suffering. But they could
+not imagine the other considerations which had overshadowed grief and
+bitterness, the realisation that Sophie's life had been saved from what
+looked like early wreckage, and the consciousness that the consequences
+of what Charley had done, had fallen, not on Charley, but on himself.
+Michael had lived like a child, with an open heart at the disposal of
+his mates always; and the sense of Charley's guilt descending on him,
+had created a subtle ostracism, a remote alienation from them.
+
+He could not go to Newton's in the evening and talk things over with the
+men as he ordinarily would have. He wandered over the dumps of deserted
+rushes at the Old Town, his eyes on the ground or on the distant
+horizons. He could still only believe he had done the best thing
+possible under the circumstances. If he had let Charlie go away with the
+stones, Sophie would have been saved, but Paul would have lost his
+stones. As it was, Sophie was saved, and Paul had not lost his stones.
+And Michael could not have given Charley away. Charley had been his
+mate; they had worked together. The men might suspect, but they could
+not convict him of being what he was unless they knew what Michael knew.
+Charley had played on the affection, the simplicity of Michael's belief
+in him. He had used them, but Michael had still a lingering tenderness
+and sympathy for him. It was that which had made him put the one decent
+piece of opal he possessed into the parcel he had made up for Charley to
+take instead of Paul's stones. It was the first piece of good stuff he
+had found on the Ridge, and he had kept it as a mascot--something of a
+nest egg.
+
+Michael wondered at the fate which had sent him along the track just
+when Charley had taken Paul's stones. He was perplexed and impatient of
+it. There would have been no complication, no conflict and turmoil if
+only he had gone along the track a little later, or a little earlier.
+But there was no altering what had happened. He had to bear the
+responsibility of it. He had to meet the men, encounter the eyes of his
+mates as he had never done before, with a reservation from them. If he
+could give the stones to Paul at once, Michael knew he would disembarass
+himself of any sense of guilt. But he could not do that. He was afraid
+if Paul got possession of the opals again he would want to go away and
+take Sophie with him.
+
+Michael thought of taking Watty and George into his confidence, but to
+do so would necessitate explanations--explanations which involved
+talking of the promise he had made Sophie's mother and all that lay
+behind their relationship. He shrank from allowing even the sympathetic
+eyes of George and Watty to rest on what for him was wrapped in mystery
+and inexplicable reverence. Besides, they both had wives, and Watty was
+not permitted to know anything Mrs. Watty did not worm out of him sooner
+or later. Michael decided that if he could not keep his own confidence
+he could not expect anyone else to keep it. He must take the
+responsibility of what he had done, and of maintaining his position in
+respect to the opals until Sophie was older--old enough to do as she
+wished with her life.
+
+As he walked, gazing ahead, a hut formed itself out of the distance
+before him, and then the dark shapes of bark huts huddled against the
+white cliff of dumps at the Three Mile, under a starry sky. A glow came
+from the interior of one or two of the houses. A chime of laughter, and
+shredded fragments of talking drifted along in the clear air. Michael
+felt strangely alone and outcast, hearing them and knowing that he could
+not respond to their invitation.
+
+In any one of those huts a place would be eagerly made for him if he
+went into it; eyes would lighten with a smile; warm, kindly greetings
+would go to his heart. But the talk would all be of the stealing of
+Rouminof's opal, and of Charley and Jun, Michael knew. The people at the
+Three Mile would have seen the coach pass. They would be talking about
+it, about himself, and the girls who had driven away with Charley and
+Jun.
+
+Turning back, Michael walked again across the flat country towards the
+Ridge. He sat for a while on a log near the tank paddock. A drugging
+weariness permeated his body and brain, though his brain ticked
+ceaselessly. Now and again one or other of Rouminof's opals flashed and
+scintillated before him in the darkness, or moved off in starry flight
+before his tired gaze. He was vaguely disturbed by the vision of them.
+
+When he rose and went back towards the town, his feet dragged wearily.
+There was a strange lightness at the back of his head, and he wondered
+whether he were walking in the fields of heaven, and smiled to think of
+that. At least one good thing would come of it all, he told himself over
+and over again--Paul could not take Sophie away.
+
+The houses and stores of the New Town were all in darkness when he
+passed along the main street. Newton's was closed. There were no lights
+in Rouminof's or Charley's huts as he went to his own door. Then a low
+cry caught his ear. He listened, and went to the back door of Charley's
+hut. The cry rose again with shuddering gasps for breath. Michael stood
+in the doorway, listening. The sound came from the window. He went
+towards it, and found Potch lying there on the bunk with his face to the
+wall.
+
+He had not heard Michael enter, and lay moaning brokenly. Michael had
+not thought of Potch since the people at Newton's told him that a few
+minutes, after the coach had gone Potch had come down to the hotel to
+cut wood and do odd jobs in the stable, as he usually did. Mrs. Newton
+said he stared at her, aghast, when she told him that his father had
+left on the coach. Then he had started off at a run, taking the short
+cut across country to the Three Mile.
+
+Michael put out his hand. He could not endure that crying.
+
+"Potch!" he said.
+
+At the sound of his voice, Potch was silent. After a second he struggled
+to his feet, and stood facing Michael.
+
+"He's gone, Michael!" he cried.
+
+"He might have taken you," Michael said.
+
+"Taken me!" Potch's exclamation did away with any idea Michael had that
+his son was grieving for Charley. "It wasn't that I minded----"
+
+Michael did not know what to say. Potch continued:
+
+"As soon as I knew, I went after him--thought I'd catch up the coach at
+the Three Mile, and I did. I told him he'd have to come back--or hand
+out that money. I saw you give it to him the other night and arrange
+about going to Warria.... Mr. Ventry pulled up. But _he_ ... set the
+horses going again. I tried to stop them, but the sandy bay let out a
+kick and they went on again.... The swine!"
+
+Michael had never imagined this stolid son of Charley's could show such
+fire. He was trembling with rage and indignation. Michael rarely lost
+his temper, but the blood rushed to his head in response to Potch's
+story. Restraint was second nature with him, though, and he waited until
+his own and Potch's fury had ebbed.
+
+Then he moved to leave the hut.
+
+"Come along," he said.
+
+"Michael!"
+
+There was such breaking unbelief and joy in the cry. Michael turned and
+caught the boy's expression.
+
+"You're coming along with me, Potch," he said.
+
+Potch still stood regarding him with a dazed expression of worshipful
+homage and gratitude. Michael put out his hand, and Potch clasped it.
+
+"You and me," he said, "we both seem to be in the same boat, Potch....
+Neither of us has got a mate. I'll be wanting someone to work with now.
+We'd better be mates."
+
+They went out of the hut together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Michael and Potch were at work next morning as soon as the first cuckoos
+were calling. Michael had been at the windlass for an hour or
+thereabouts, when Watty Frost, who was going along to his claim with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, saw Michael on the top of his
+dump, tossing mullock.
+
+"Who's Michael working with?" he asked.
+
+Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant considered, and shook their heads, smoking
+thoughtfully.
+
+Snow-Shoes, where he lay sprawled across the slope of Crosses' dump,
+glanced up at them, and the nickering wisp of a smile went through his
+bright eyes. The three were standing at the foot of the dump before
+separating.
+
+"Who's Michael got with him?" Pony-Fence inquired, looking at
+Snow-Shoes.
+
+But the old man had turned his eyes back to the dump and was raking the
+earth with his stick again, as if he had not heard what was said. No one
+was deafer than Snow-Shoes when he did not want to hear.
+
+Watty watched Michael as he bent over the windlass, his lean, slight
+figure cut against the clear azure of the morning sky.
+
+"It's to be hoped he's got a decent mate this time--that's all," he
+said.
+
+Pony-Fence and Bully were going off to their own claim when Potch came
+up on the rope and stood by the windlass while Michael went down into
+the mine.
+
+"Well!" Watty gasped, "if that don't beat cock-fighting!"
+
+Bully swore sympathetically, and watched Potch set to work. The three
+watched him winding and throwing mullock from the hide buckets over the
+dump with the jerky energy of a new chum, although Potch had done odd
+jobs on the mines for a good many years. He had often taken his father's
+turn of winding dirt, and had managed to keep himself by doing all
+manner of scavenging in the township since he was quite a little chap,
+but no one had taken him on as a mate till now. He was a big fellow,
+too, Potch, seventeen or eighteen; and as they looked at him Watty and
+Pony-Fence realised it was time someone gave Potch a chance on the
+mines, although after the way his father had behaved Michael was about
+the last person who might have been expected to give him that
+chance--much less take him on as mate. Like father, like son, was one of
+those superstitions Ridge folk had not quite got away from, and the men
+who saw Potch working on Michael's mine wondered that, having been let
+down by the father as badly as Charley had let Michael down, Michael
+could still work with Potch, and give him the confidence a mate was
+entitled to. But there was no piece of quixotism they did not think
+Michael capable of. The very forlornness of Potch's position on the
+Ridge, and because he would have to face out and live down the fact of
+being Charley Heathfield's son, were recognised as most likely Michael's
+reasons for taking Potch on to work with him.
+
+Watty and Pony-Fence appreciated Michael's move and the point of view it
+indicated. They knew men of the Ridge would endorse it and take Potch on
+his merits. But being Charley's son, Potch would have to prove those
+merits. They knew, too, that what Michael had done would help him to
+tide over the first days of shame and difficulty as nothing else could
+have, and it would start Potch on a better track in life than his father
+had ever given him.
+
+Bully had already gone off to his claim when Watty and Pony-Fence
+separated. Watty broke the news to his mates when he joined them
+underground.
+
+"Who do y' think's Michael's new mate?" he asked.
+
+George Woods rested on his pick.
+
+Cash looked up from the corner where he was crouched working a streak of
+green-fired stone from the red floor and lower wall of the mine.
+
+"Potch!" Watty threw out as George and Cash waited for the information.
+
+George swept the sweat from his forehead with a broad, steady gesture.
+"He was bound to do something nobody else'd 've thought of, Michael!" he
+said.
+
+"That's right," Watty replied. "Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant were
+saying," he went on, "he's had a pretty hard time, Potch, and it was
+about up to somebody to give him a leg-up ... some sort of a start in
+life. He may be all right ... on the other hand, there may not be much
+to him...."
+
+"That's right!" Cash muttered, beginning to work again.
+
+"But I reck'n he's all right, Potch." George swung his pick again. His
+blows echoed in the mine as they shattered the hard stone he was working
+on.
+
+Watty crawled off through a drive he was gouging in.
+
+At midday Michael and Charley had always eaten their lunches in the
+shelter where George Woods, Watty, and Cash Wilson ate theirs and
+noodled their opal. They wondered whether Michael would join them this
+day. He strolled over to the shelter with Potch beside him as Watty and
+Cash, with a billy of steaming tea on a stick between them, came from
+the open fire built round with stones, a few yards from the mine.
+
+"Potch and me's mates," Michael explained to George as he sat down and
+spread out his lunch, his smile whimsical and serene over the
+information. "But we're lookin' for a third to the company. I reck'n a
+lot of you chaps' luck is working on three. It's a lucky number, three,
+they say."
+
+Potch sat down beside him on the outer edge of the shelter's scrap of
+shade.
+
+"See you get one not afraid to do a bit of work, next time--that's all I
+say," Watty growled.
+
+The blood oozed slowly over Potch's heavy, quiet face. Nothing more was
+said of Charley, but the men who saw his face realised that Potch was
+not the insensible youth they had imagined.
+
+Michael had watched him when they were below ground, and was surprised
+at the way Potch set about his work. He had taken up his father's
+gouging pick and spider as if he had been used to take them every day,
+and he had set to work where Charley had left off. All the morning he
+hewed at a face of honeycombed sandstone, his face tense with
+concentration of energy, the sweat glistening on it as though it were
+oiled under the light of a candle in his spider, stuck in the red earth
+above him. Michael himself swung his pick in leisurely fashion, crumbled
+dirt, and knocked off for a smoke now and then.
+
+"Easy does it, Potch," he remarked, watching the boy's steady slogging.
+"We've got no reason to bust ourselves in this mine."
+
+At four o'clock they put their tools back against the wall and went
+above ground. Michael fell in with the Crosses, who were noodling two or
+three good-looking pieces of opal Archie had taken out during the
+afternoon, and Potch streaked away through the scrub in the direction of
+the Old Town.
+
+Michael wondered where he was going. There was a purposeful hunch about
+his shoulders as if he had a definite goal in view. Michael had intended
+asking his new mate to go down to the New Town and get the meat for
+their tea, but he went himself after he had yarned with Archie and Ted
+Cross for a while.
+
+When he returned to the hut, Potch was not there. Michael made a fire,
+unwrapped his steak, hung it on a hook over the fire, and spread out the
+pannikins, tin plates and knives and forks for his meal, putting a plate
+and pannikin for Potch. He was kneeling before the fire giving the steak
+a turn when Potch came in. Potch stood in the doorway, looking at
+Michael as doubtfully as a stray kitten which did not know whether it
+might enter.
+
+"That you, Potch?" Michael called.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+Michael got up from the fire and carried the grilled steak on a plate to
+the table.
+
+"Well, you were nearly late for dinner," he remarked, as he cut the
+steak in half and put a piece on the other plate for Potch. "You better
+come along and tuck in now ... there's a great old crowd down at
+Nancarrow's this evening. First time for nearly a month he's killed a
+beast, and everybody wants a bit of steak. Sam gave me this as a sort of
+treat; and it smells good."
+
+Potch came into the kitchen and sat on the box Michael had drawn up to
+the table for him.
+
+"Been bringing in the goats for Sophie," he jerked out, looking at
+Michael as if there were some need of explanation.
+
+"Oh, that was it, was it?" Michael replied, getting on with his meal.
+"Thought you'd flitted!"
+
+Potch met his smile with a shadowy one. A big, clumsy-looking fellow,
+with a dull, colourless face and dingy hair, he sat facing Michael, his
+eyes anxious, as though he would like to explain further, but was afraid
+to, or could not find words. His eyes were beautiful; but they were his
+father's eyes, and Michael recoiled to qualms of misgiving, a faint
+distrust, as he looked in them.
+
+It was Ed. Ventry, however, who gave Potch his first claim to the
+respect of men of the Ridge.
+
+"How's that boy of Charley Heathfield's?" was his first question when
+the coach came in from Budda, the following week.
+
+"All right," Newton said. "Why?"
+
+"He was near killed," Mr. Ventry replied. "Stopped us up at the Three
+Mile that morning I was taking Charley and Jun down. He was all for
+Charley stopping ... getting off the coach or something. I didn't get
+what it was all about--money Charley'd got from Michael, I think. That's
+the worst of bein' a bit hard of hearin' ... and bein' battered about by
+that yaller-bay horse I bought at Warria couple of months ago."
+
+"Potch tried to stop Charley getting away, did he?" Newton asked with
+interest.
+
+"He did," Ed. Ventry declared. "I pulled up, seein' something was wrong
+... but what does that god-damned blighter Charley do but give a lurch
+and grab me reins. Scared four months' growth out of the horses--and
+away they went. I'd a colt I was breakin' in on the off-side--and he
+landed Potch one--kicked him right out, I thought. As soon as I could, I
+pulled up, but I see Potch making off across the plain, and he didn't
+look like he was much hurt.... But it was a plucky thing he did, all
+right ... and it's the last time I'll drive Charley Heathfield. I told
+him straight. I'd as soon kill a man as not for putting a hand on me
+reins, like he done--on me own coach, too!"
+
+Snow-Shoes had drifted up to them as the coach stopped and Newton went
+out to it. He stood beside Peter Newton while Mr. Ventry talked, rolling
+tobacco. Snow-Shoes' eyes glimmered from one to the other of them when
+Ed. Ventry had given the reason for his inquiry.
+
+"Potch!" he murmured. "A little bit of potch!" And marched off down the
+road, a straight, stately white figure, on the bare track under the
+azure of the sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Give y' three," Watty said.
+
+"Take 'em." George Woods did not turn. He was carefully working round a
+brilliantly fired seam through black potch in the shin cracker he had
+been breaking through two or three days before.
+
+It was about lunch time, and Watty had crawled from his drive to the
+centre of the mine. Cash was still at work, crouched against a corner of
+the alley, a hundred yards or so from George; but he laid down his pick
+when he heard Watty's voice, and went towards him.
+
+"Who d'you think Michael's got as third man?"
+
+"Snow-Shoes?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Old Bill Olsen?"
+
+Watty could not contain himself to the third guess.
+
+"Rum-Enough!" he said.
+
+"He would." George chipped at the stone round his colour. "It was bound
+to be a lame dog, anyhow--and it might as well've been Rummy as
+anybody."
+
+"That's right," Cash conceded.
+
+"Bill Andrews told me," Watty said. "They've just broke through on the
+other side of that drive I'm in...."
+
+"It would be all right," he went on, "if Paul'd work for Michael like he
+did for Jun. But is Michael the man to make him? Not by long chalks.
+Potch is turning out all right, the boys say.... Michael says he works
+like a chow ... has to make him put in the peg ... but they'll both be
+havin' Rum-Enough on their hands before long--that's a sure thing."
+
+Watty's, George's, and Cash's mine was one of the best worked and best
+planned on the fields.
+
+Watty and Cash inspected the streak George was working, and speculated
+as to what it would yield. George leaned his pick against the wall,
+eager, too, about the chances of what the thread of fire glittering in
+the black potch would lead to. But he was proud of the mine as well as
+the stone it had produced. It represented the first attempt to work a
+claim systematically on the Ridge. George himself had planned and
+prospected every inch of it; and before he went above ground for the
+midday meal, he glanced about it as usual, affirming his pride and
+satisfaction; but his eyes fell on the broken white stone about his
+pitch.
+
+"As soon as we get her out, I'll shift that stuff," he said.
+
+When they went up for their meal, Michael did not join Watty, George,
+and Cash as usual. He spread out his lunch and sat with Paul and Potch
+in the shade of some wilgas beside his own mine. He knew that Rouminof
+would not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter, and that Paul and
+Potch would bring a certain reserve to the discussions of Ridge affairs
+which took place there.
+
+Potch saw Michael's eyes wander to where George was sitting yarning with
+his mates. He knew Michael would rather have been over there; and yet
+Michael seemed pleased to have got his own mine in working order again.
+He talked over ways of developing it with Paul, asking his opinion, and
+explaining why he believed the claim was good enough to stick to for a
+while longer, although very little valuable stone had come out of it.
+Potch wondered why his eyes rested on Paul with that faint smile of
+satisfaction.
+
+The Ridge discussed Michael and his new partnership backwards and forth,
+and back again. Michael knew that, and was as amused as the rest of the
+Ridge at the company he was keeping. Although he sat with his own mates
+at midday, he was as often as not with the crowd under Newton's veranda
+in the evening, discussing and settling the affairs of the Ridge and of
+the universe. After a while he was more like his old self than he had
+been for a long time--since Mrs. Rouminof's death--people said, when
+they saw him going about again with a quiet smile and whimsical twist to
+his mouth.
+
+The gossips had talked a good deal about Michael and Mrs. Rouminof, but
+neither she nor he had bothered their heads about the gossips.
+
+Michael and Mrs. Rouminof had often been seen standing and talking
+together when she was going home from the New Town with stores, or when
+Michael was coming in from his hut. He had usually walked back along the
+road with her, she for the most part, if it was in the evening, with no
+hat on; he smoking the stubby black pipe that was rarely out of his
+mouth. There was something in the way Mrs. Rouminof walked beside
+Michael, in the way her hair blew out in tiny strands curling in the
+wind and taking stray glints of light, in the way she smiled with a
+vague underlying sweetness when she looked at Michael; there was
+something in the way Michael slouched and smoked beside Mrs. Rouminof,
+too, which made their meeting look more than any mere ordinary talking
+and walking home together of two people. That was what Mrs. Watty Frost
+said.
+
+Mrs. Watty believed it was her duty in life to maintain the prejudices
+of respectable society in Fallen Star township. She had a constitutional
+respect for authority in whatever form it manifested itself. She stood
+for washing on Monday, spring-cleaning, keeping herself to herself, and
+uncompromising hostility to anything in the shape of a new idea which
+threatened the old order of domesticity on the Ridge. And she let
+everybody know it. She never went into the one street of the township
+even at night without a hat on, and wore gloves whenever she walked
+abroad. A little woman, with a mean, sour face, wrinkled like a walnut,
+and small, bead-bright eyes, Mrs. Watty was one of those women who are
+all energy and have no children to absorb their energies. She put all
+her energy into resentment of the Ridge and the conditions Watty had
+settled down to so comfortably and happily. She sighed for shops and a
+suburb of Sydney, and repeatedly told Watty how nice it would be to have
+a little milk shop near Sydney like her father and mother had had.
+
+But Watty would not hear of the milk shop. He loved the Ridge, and the
+milk shop was an evergreen bone of contention between him and his wife.
+The only peace he ever got was when Mrs. Watty went away to Sydney for a
+holiday, or he went with her, because she would rarely go away without
+him. She could not be happy without Watty, people said. She had no one
+to growl to and let off her irritation about things in general at, if he
+were not there. Watty grew fat, and was always whistling cheerily,
+nevertheless. Mrs. Watty cooked like an archangel, he said; and, to give
+her her due, the men admitted that although she had never pretended to
+approve of the life they led, Mrs. Watty had been a good wife to Watty.
+
+But everybody, even Mrs. Watty, was as pleased as if a little fortune
+had come to them, when, towards the end of their first week, Michael and
+his company came on a patch of good stone. Michael struck it, following
+the lead he had been working for some time, and, although not wonderful
+in colour or quality, the opal cut out at about ten ounces and brought
+£3 an ounce. Michael was able to wipe out some of his grocery score, so
+was Paul, and Potch had money to burn.
+
+Paul was very pleased with himself about it. The men began to call him a
+mascot and to say he had brought Michael luck, as he had Jun Johnson.
+There was no saying how the fortunes of the new partnership might
+flourish, if he stuck to it. Paul, responding to the expressions of
+goodwill and the inspiration of being on opal, put all his childish and
+bullocky energy into working with Michael and Potch.
+
+He still told everybody who would listen to him the story of the
+wonderful stones he had found when he was working with Jun, and how they
+had been stolen from him. They grew in number, value, and size every
+time he spoke of them. And he wailed over what he had been going to do,
+and what selling the stones would have meant to him and to Sophie. But
+the partnership was working better than anybody had expected, and people
+began to wonder whether, after all, Michael had done so badly for
+himself with his brace of dead-beat mates.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+In a few weeks thought of the robbery had ceased greatly to disturb
+anybody. Michael settled down to working with his new mates, and the
+Ridge accepted the new partnership as the most natural thing in the
+world.
+
+Life on the Ridge is usually as still as an inland lake. The settlement
+is just that, a lake of life, in the country of wide plains stretching
+westwards for hundreds on hundreds of miles, broken only by shingly
+ridges to the sea, and eastwards, through pastoral districts, to the
+coastal ranges, and the seaboard with its busy towns, ports, and cities.
+
+In summer the plains are dead and dry; in a drought, deserts. The great
+coolebahs standing with their feet in the river ways are green, and
+scatter tattered shade. Their small, round leaves flash like mirrors in
+the sun, and when the river water vanishes from about their feet, they
+hold themselves in the sandy shallow bed of the rivers as if waiting
+with imperturbable faith for the return of the waters. The surface of
+the dry earth cracks. There are huge fissures where the water lay in
+clayey hollows during the winter and spring. Along the stock routes and
+beside the empty water-holes, sheep and cattle lie rotting. Their
+carcasses, disembowelled by the crows, put an odour of putrefaction in
+the air. The sky burns iron-grey with heat. The dust rises in heavy
+reddish mist about stockmen or cattle on the roads.
+
+But after the rains, in the winter or spring of a good season, the seeds
+break sheath in a few hours; they sprout over-night, and a green mantle
+is flung over the old earth which a few days before was as dead and dry
+as a desert. In a little time the country is a flowering wilderness.
+Trefoil, crow's-foot, clover, mallow, and wild mustard riot, tangling
+and interweaving. The cattle browse through them lazily; stringing out
+across the flowering fields, they look in the distance no more than
+droves of mice; their red and black backs alone are visible above the
+herbage. In places, wild candytuft in blossom spreads a quilt of palest
+lavender in every direction on a wide circling horizon. Darling pea, the
+colour of violets and smelling like them, threads through the candytuft
+and lies in wedges, magenta and dark purple against the sky-line, a
+hundred miles farther on. The sky is a wash of pale, exquisite blue,
+which deepens as it rises to the zenith. The herbage glows beneath it,
+so clear and pure is the light.
+
+Farther inland, for miles, bachelor's buttons paint the earth raw gold.
+Not a hair's breadth of colour shows on the plains except the dull red
+of the road winding through them and the blue of the sky overhead. Paper
+daisies fringe the gold, and then they lie, white as snow, for miles,
+under the bare blue sky. Sometimes the magenta, purple, lavender, gold
+and white of the herbage and wild flowers merge and mingle, and a
+tapestry of incomparable beauty--a masterpiece of the Immortals--is
+wrought on the bare earth.
+
+During the spring and early summer of a good season, the air is filled
+with the wild, thymey odour of herbs, and the dry, musky fragrance of
+paper daisies. The crying of lambs, the baa-ing of ewes, and the piping
+of mud-larks--their thin, silvery notes--go through the clear air and
+are lost over the flowering land and against the blue sky.
+
+Winter is rarely more than a season of rains on the Ridge. Cold winds
+blow from the inland plains for a week or two. There are nights of frost
+and sparkling stars. People shiver and crouch over their fires; but the
+days have rarely more than a fresh tang in the air.
+
+The rains as often as not are followed by floods. After a few days'
+steady downpour, the shallow rivers and creeks on the plains overflow,
+and their waters stretch out over the plains for thirteen, fourteen, and
+sometimes twenty miles. Fords become impassable; bridges are washed
+away. Fallen Star Ridge is cut off from the rest of the world until the
+flood waters have soaked into the earth, as they do after a few days,
+and the coach can take to the road again.
+
+As spring passes into summer, the warmth of the sunshine loses its
+mildness, and settles to a heavy taciturnity. The light, losing its
+delicate brilliance, becomes a bared sword-blade striking the eyes.
+Everything shrinks from the full gaze and blaze of the sun. Eyes ache,
+the brain reels with the glare; mirages dance on the limitless horizons.
+The scorched herbage falls into dust; water is drawn off from rivers and
+water-holes. All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of
+iron.
+
+Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the
+glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the
+other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze
+of a dust storm.
+
+Ridge folk take the heat as primitive people do most acts of God, as a
+matter of course, with stiff-lipped hardihood, which makes complaint the
+manifestation of a poor spirit. They meet their difficulties with a
+native humour which gives zest to flagging energies. Their houses, with
+roofs whitened to throw off the heat, the dumps of crumbling white clay,
+and the iron roofs of the billiard parlour, the hotel, and Watty Frost's
+new house at the end of the town, shimmer in the intense light. At a
+little distance they seem all quivering and dancing together.
+
+Men like Michael, the Crosses, George Woods, Watty, and women like
+Maggie Grant and Martha M'Cready, who had been on the Ridge a long time,
+become inured to the heat. At least, they say that they "do not mind
+it." No one hears a growl out of them, even when water is scarce and
+flies and mosquitoes a plague. Their good spirits and grit keep the
+community going through a trying summer. But even they raise their faces
+to heaven when an unexpected shower comes, or autumn rains fall a little
+earlier than usual.
+
+In the early days, before stations were fenced, Bill M'Gaffy, a Warria
+shepherd, grazing flocks on the plains, declared he had seen a star fall
+on the Ridge. When he went into the station he showed the scraps of marl
+and dark metallic stone he had picked up near where the star had fallen,
+to James Henty, who had taken up Warria Station. The Ridge lay within
+its boundary. James Henty had turned them over curiously, and surmised
+that some meteoric stone had fallen on the Ridge. The place had always
+been called Fallen Star Ridge after that; but opal was not found there,
+and it did not begin to be known as the black opal field until several
+years later.
+
+In the first days of the rush to the Ridge, men of restless, reckless
+temperament had foregathered at the Old Town. There had been wild nights
+at the shanty. But the wilder spirits soon drifted away to Pigeon Creek
+and the sapphire mines, and the sober and more serious of the miners had
+settled to life on the new fields.
+
+The first gathering of huts on the clay pan below the Ridge was known as
+the Old Town; but it had been flooded so often, that, after people had
+been washed out of their homes, and had been forced to take to the Ridge
+for safety two or three times, it was decided to move the site of the
+township to the brow of the Ridge, above the range of the flood waters
+and near the new rush, where the most important mines on the field
+promised to be.
+
+A year or two ago, a score or so of bark and bag huts were ranged on
+either side of the wide, unmade road space overgrown with herbage, and a
+smithy, a weather-board hotel with roof of corrugated iron, a billiard
+parlour, and a couple of stores, comprised the New Town. A wild cherry
+tree, gnarled and ancient, which had been left in the middle of the road
+near the hotel, bore the news of the district and public notices, nailed
+to it on sheets of paper. A little below the hotel, on the same side,
+Chassy Robb's store served as post-office, and the nearest approach to a
+medicine shop in the township. Opposite was the Afghan's emporium. And
+behind the stores and the miners' huts, everywhere, were the dumps
+thrown up from mines and old rushes.
+
+There was no police station nearer than fifty miles, and although
+telegraph now links the New Town with Budda, the railway town,
+communication with it for a long time was only by coach once or twice a
+week; and even now all the fetching and carrying is done by a four or
+six horse-coach and bullock-wagons. The community to all intents and
+purposes governs itself according to popular custom and popular opinion,
+the seat of government being Newton's big, earthen-floored bar, or the
+brushwood shelters near the mines in which the men sit at midday to eat
+their lunches and noodle--, go over, snip, and examine--the opal they
+have taken out of the mines during the morning.
+
+They hold their blocks of land by miner's right, and their houses are
+their own. They formally recognise that they are citizens of the
+Commonwealth and of the State of New South Wales, by voting at elections
+and by accepting the Federal postal service. Some few of them, as well
+as Newton and the storekeepers, pay income tax as compensation for those
+privileges; but beyond that the Ridge lives its own life, and the
+enactments of external authority are respected or disregarded as best
+pleases it.
+
+A sober, easy-going crowd, the Ridge miners do not trouble themselves
+much about law. They have little need of it. They live in accord with
+certain fundamental instincts, on terms of good fellowship with each
+other.
+
+"To go back on a mate," is recognised as the major crime of the Ridge
+code.
+
+Sometimes, during a rush, the wilder spirits who roam from one mining
+camp to another in the back-country, drift back, and "hit things up" on
+the Ridge, as the men say. But they soon drift away again. Sometimes, if
+one of them strikes a good patch of opal and outstays his kind, as often
+as not he sinks into the Ridge life, absorbs Ridge ways and ideas, and
+is accepted into the fellowship of men of the Ridge. There is no
+formality about the acceptance. It just happens naturally, that if a man
+identifies himself with the Ridge principle of mateship, and will stand
+by it as it will stand by him, he is recognised by Ridge men as one of
+themselves. But if his ways and ideas savour of those the Ridge has
+broken from, he remains an outsider, whatever good terms he may seem to
+be on with everybody.
+
+Sometimes a rush leaves a shiftless ne'er-do-well or two for the Ridge
+to reckon with, but even these rarely disregard the Ridge code. If
+claims are ratted it is said there are strangers about, and the miners
+deal with rats according to their own ideas of justice. On the last
+occasion it was applied, this justice had proved so effectual that there
+had been no repetition of the offence.
+
+Ridge miners find happiness in the sense of being free men. They are
+satisfied in their own minds that it is not good for a man to work all
+day at any mechanical toil; to use himself or allow anyone else to use
+him like a working bullock. A man must have time to think, leisure to
+enjoy being alive, they say. Is he alive only to work? To sleep worn out
+with toil, and work again? It is not good enough, Ridge men say. They
+have agreed between themselves that it is a fair thing to begin work
+about 6.30 or 7 o'clock and knock off about four, with a couple of hours
+above ground at noon for lunch--a snack of bread and cheese and a cup of
+tea.
+
+At four o'clock they come up from the mines, noodle their opal, put on
+their coats, smoke and yarn, and saunter down to the town and their
+homes. And it is this leisure end of the day which has given life on the
+Ridge its tone of peace and quiet happiness, and has made Ridge miners
+the thoughtful, well-informed men most of them are.
+
+To a man they have decided against allowing any wealthy man or body of
+wealthy men forming themselves into a company to buy up the mines, put
+the men on a weekly wage, and work them, as the opal blocks at Chalk
+Cliffs had been worked. There might be more money in it, there would be
+a steadier means of livelihood; but the Ridge miners will not hear of
+it.
+
+"No," they say; "we'll put up with less money--and be our own masters."
+
+Most of them worked on Chalk Cliffs' opal blocks, and they realised in
+the early days of the new field the difference between the conditions
+they had lived and worked under on the Cliffs and were living and
+working under on the Ridge, where every man was the proprietor of his
+own energies, worked as long as he liked, and was entitled to the full
+benefit of his labour. They had yarned over these differences of
+conditions at midday in the shelters beside the mines, discussed them in
+the long evenings at Newton's, and without any committees, documents, or
+bond--except the common interest of the individual and of the
+fraternity--had come to the conclusion that at all costs they were going
+to remain masters of their own mines.
+
+Common thought and common experience were responsible for that
+recognition of economic independence as the first value of their new
+life together. Michael Brady had stood for it from the earliest days of
+the settlement. He had pointed out that the only things which could give
+joy in life, men might have on the Ridge, if they were satisfied to find
+their joy in these things, and not look for it in enjoyment of the
+superficial luxuries money could provide. Most of the real sources of
+joy were every man's inheritance, but conditions of work, which wrung
+him of energy and spirit, deprived him of leisure to enjoy them until he
+was too weary to do more than sleep or seek the stimulus of alcohol.
+Besides, these conditions recruited him with the merest subsistence for
+his pains, very often--did not even guarantee that--and denied him the
+capacity to appreciate the real sources of joy. But the beauty of the
+world, the sky, and the stars, spring, summer, the grass, and the birds,
+were for every man, Michael said. Any and every man could have immortal
+happiness by hearing a bird sing, by gazing into the blue-dark depths of
+the sky on a starry night. No man could sell his joy of these things. No
+man could buy them. Love is for all men: no man can buy or sell love.
+Pleasure in work, in jolly gatherings with friends, peace at the end of
+the day, and satisfaction of his natural hungers, a man might have all
+these things on the Ridge, if he were content with essentials.
+
+Ridge miners' live fearlessly, with the magic of adventure in their
+daily lives, the prospect of one day finding the great stone which is
+the grail of every opal-miner's quest. They are satisfied if they get
+enough opal to make a parcel for a buyer when he puts up for a night or
+two at Newton's. A young man who sells good stones usually goes off to
+Sydney to discover what life in other parts of the world is like, and to
+take a draught of the gay life of cities. A married man gives his wife
+and children a trip to the seaside or a holiday in town. But all drift
+back to the Ridge when the taste of city life has begun to cloy, or when
+all their money is spent. Once an opal miner, always an opal miner, the
+Ridge folk say.
+
+Among the men, only the shiftless and more worthless are not in sympathy
+with Ridge ideas, and talk of money and what money will buy as the
+things of first value in life. They describe the Fallen Star township as
+a God-forsaken hole, and promise each other, as soon as their luck has
+turned, they will leave it for ever, and have the time of their lives in
+Sydney.
+
+Women like Maggie Grant share their husband's minds. They read what the
+men read, have the men's vision, and hold it with jealous enthusiasm.
+Others, women used to the rough and simple existence of the
+back-country, are satisfied with the life which gives them a husband,
+home, and children. Those who sympathise with Mrs. Watty Frost regard
+the men's attitude as more than half cussedness, sheer selfishness or
+stick-in-the-mudness; and the more worthy and respectable they are, the
+more they fret and fume at the earthen floors and open hearths of the
+bark and bagging huts they live in, and pine for all the kick-shaws of
+suburban villas. The discontented women are a minority, nevertheless.
+Ridge folk as a whole have set their compass and steer the course of
+their lives with unconscious philosophy, and yet a profound conviction
+as to the rightness of what they are doing.
+
+And the Ridge, which bears them, stands serenely under blue skies the
+year long, rising like a backbone from the plains that stretch for
+hundreds of miles on either side. A wide, dusty road crosses the plains.
+The huts of the Three Mile and Fallen Star crouch beside it, and
+everywhere on the rusty, shingle-strewn slopes of the Ridge, are the
+holes and thrown-up heaps of white and raddled clay or broken
+sandstone--traces of the search for that "ecstasy in the heart of
+gloom," black opal, which the Fallen Star earth holds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Darling pea was lying in purple and magenta patches through the long
+grass on the tank paddock when Sophie went with Ella and Mirry Flail to
+gather wild flowers there.
+
+Wild flowers did not grow anywhere on Fallen Star as they did in the
+tank paddock. It was almost a place of faery to children of the Ridge.
+The little ones were not allowed to go there by themselves for fear they
+might fall into the waterhole which lay like a great square lake in the
+middle of it, its steep, well-set-up banks of yellow clay, ruled with
+the precision of a diagram in geometry. The water was almost as yellow
+as the banks, thick and muddy looking; but it was good water, nothing on
+earth the matter with it when you had boiled it and the sediment had
+been allowed to settle, everybody on Fallen Star Ridge was prepared to
+swear. It had to be drawn up by a pump which was worked by a donkey
+engine, Sam Nancarrow, and his old fat roan draught mare, and carted to
+the township when rain-water in the iron tanks beside the houses in
+Fallen Star gave out.
+
+During a dry season, or a very hot summer, all hands turned out to roof
+the paddock tank with tarpaulins to prevent evaporation as far as
+possible and so conserve the township's water supply. On a placard
+facing the roadway a "severe penalty" was promised to anyone using it
+without permission or making improper use of it.
+
+Ella and Mirry were gathering sago flower--"wild sweet Alice," as they
+called candytuft--yellow eye-bright, tiny pink starry flowers,
+bluebells, small lavender daisies, taller white ones, and yellow
+daisies, as well as Darling pea; but Sophie picked only long, trailing
+stalks of the pea. She had as many as she could hold when she sat down
+to arrange them into a tighter bunch.
+
+Mirry and Ella Flail had always been good friends of Sophie's. Potch and
+she had often gone on excursions with them, or to the swamp to cart
+water when it was scarce and very dear in the township. And since Potch
+had gone to work Sophie had no one to go about with but Mirry and Ella.
+She pleased their mother by trying to teach them to read and write, and
+they went noodling together, or gathering wild flowers. Sophie was three
+or four years older than Mirry, who was the elder of the two Flails; she
+felt much older since her mother's death nearly a year ago, and in the
+black dress she had worn since then. She was just seventeen, and had put
+her hair up into a knot at the back of her head. That made her feel
+older, too. But she still liked to go for walks and wanderings with Ella
+and Mirry. They knew so much about the birds and flowers, the trees, and
+the ways of all the wild creatures: they were such wild creatures
+themselves.
+
+They came running to her, crying excitedly, their hands filled with
+flowers, shedding them as they ran. Then, collapsing in the grass beside
+Sophie, Mirry rolled over on her back and gazed up into the sky. Ella,
+squatting on her thin, sunburnt little sticks of legs, was arranging her
+flowers and glancing every now and then at Sophie with shy, loving
+glances.
+
+Sophie wondered why she had nothing of her old joyous zest in their
+enterprises together. She used to be as wild and happy as Mirry and Ella
+on an afternoon like this. But there was something of the shy, wild
+spirit of a primitive people about Mirry and Ella, she remembered, some
+of their blood, too. One of their mother's people, it was said, had been
+a native of one of the river tribes.
+
+Mirry had her mother's beautiful dark eyes, almost green in the light,
+and freckled with hazel, and her pale, sallow skin. Ella, younger and
+shyer, was more like her father. Her skin was not any darker than
+Sophie's, and her eyes blue-grey, her features delicate, her hair
+golden-brown that glinted in the sun.
+
+"Sing to us, Sophie," Mirry said.
+
+Sophie often sang to them when she and Ella and Mirry were out like
+this. As she sat with them, dreaming in the sunshine, she sang almost
+without any conscious effort; she just put up her chin, and the melodies
+poured from her. Hearing her voice, as it ran in ripples and eddies
+through the clear, warm air, hung and quivered and danced again,
+delighted her.
+
+Ella and Mirry listened in a trance of awe, reverence, and admiration.
+Sophie had a dim vision of them, wide-eyed and still, against the tall
+grass and flowers.
+
+"My! You can sing, Sophie! Can't she, Ella?"
+
+Ella nodded, gazing at Sophie with eyes of worshipping love.
+
+"They say you're going away with your father ... and you're going to be
+a great singer, Sophie," Mirry said.
+
+"Yes," Sophie murmured tranquilly, "I am."
+
+A bevy of black and brown birds flashed past them, flew in a wide
+half-circle across the paddock, and alighted on a dead tree beyond the
+fence.
+
+"Look, look!" Mirry started to her feet. "A happy family! I wonder, are
+the whole twelve there?"
+
+She counted the birds, which were calling to each other with little
+shrill cries.
+
+"They're all there!" she announced. "Twelve of them. Mother says in some
+parts they call them the twelve apostles. Sing again, Sophie," she
+begged.
+
+Ella smiled at Sophie. Her lips parted as though she would like to have
+said that, too; but only her eyes entreated, and she went on putting her
+flowers together.
+
+As she sang, Sophie watched a pair of butterflies, white with black
+lines and splashes of yellow and scarlet on their wings, hovering over
+the flowered field of the paddock. She was so lost in her singing and
+watching the butterflies, and the children were so intent listening to
+her, that they did not hear a horseman coming slowly towards them along
+the track. As he came up to them, Sophie's rippling notes broke and fell
+to earth. Ella saw him first, and was on her feet in an instant. Mirry
+and she, their wild instinct asserting itself, darted away and took
+cover behind the trunks of the nearest trees.
+
+Sophie looked after them, wondering whether she would follow them as she
+used to; but she felt older and more staid now than she had a year ago.
+She stood her ground, as the man, who was leading his horse, came to a
+standstill before her.
+
+She knew him well enough, Arthur Henty, the only son of old Henty of
+Warria Station. She had seen him riding behind cattle or sheep on the
+roads across the plains for years. Sometimes when Potch and she had met
+him riding across the Ridge, or at the swamp, he had stopped to talk to
+them. He had been at her mother's funeral, too; but as he stood before
+her this afternoon, Sophie seemed to be seeing him for the first time.
+
+A tall, slightly-built young man, in riding breeches and leggings, a
+worn coat, and as weathered a felt hat as any man on the Ridge wore, his
+clothes the colour of dust on the roads, he stood before her, smiling
+slightly. His face was dark in the shadow of his hat, but the whole of
+him, cut against the sunshine, had gilded outlines. And he seemed to be
+seeing Sophie for the first time, too. She had jumped up and drawn back
+from the track when the Flails ran away. He could not believe that this
+tall girl in the black dress was the queer, elfish-like girl he had seen
+running about the Ridge, bare-legged, with feet in goat-skin sandals,
+and in the cemetery on the Warria road, not much more than a year ago.
+Her elfish gaiety had deserted her. It was the black dress gave her face
+the warm pallor of ivory, he thought, made her look staider, and as if
+the sadness of all it symbolised had not left her. But her eyes,
+strange, beautiful eyes, the green and blue of opal, with black rings on
+the irises and great black pupils, had still the clear, unconscious gaze
+of youth; her lips the sweet, sucking curves of a child's.
+
+They stood so, smiling and staring at each other, a spell of silence on
+each.
+
+Sophie had dropped half her flowers as she sprang up at the sound of
+someone approaching. She had clutched a few in one hand; the rest lay on
+the grass about her, her hat beside them. Henty's eyes went to the trees
+round which Mirry and Ella were peeping.
+
+"They're wild birds, aren't they?" he said.
+
+Sophie smiled. She liked the way his eyes narrowed to slits of sunshine
+as he smiled.
+
+"Are you going to sing, again?" he asked hesitatingly.
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+"My mother's awfully fond of that stuff," Henty said, looking at the
+Darling pea Sophie had in her hand. "We haven't got any near the
+homestead. I came into the paddock to get some for her."
+
+Sophie held out her bunch.
+
+"Not all of it," he said.
+
+"I can get more," she said.
+
+He took the flowers, and his vague smile changed to one of shy and
+subtle understanding. Ella and Mirry found courage to join Sophie.
+
+"Where's Potch?" Henty asked.
+
+"He's working with Michael," Sophie said.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, and stood before her awkwardly, not knowing what to
+talk about.
+
+He was still thinking how different she was to the little girl he had
+seen chasing goats on the Ridge no time before, and wondering what had
+changed her so quickly, when Sophie stooped to pick up her hat. Then he
+saw her short, dark hair twisted up into a knot at the back of her head.
+Feeling intuitively that he was looking at the knot she was so proud of,
+Sophie put on her hat quickly. A delicate colour moved on her neck and
+cheeks. Arthur Henty found himself looking into her suffused eyes and
+smiling at her smile of confusion.
+
+"Well, we must be going now," Sophie said, a little breathlessly.
+
+Henty said that he was going into the New Town and would walk along part
+of the way with her. He tucked the flowers Sophie had given him into his
+saddle-bag, and she and the children turned down the track. Ella, having
+found her tongue, chattered eagerly. Arthur Henty strolled beside them,
+smoking, his reins over his arm. Mirry wanted to ride his horse.
+
+"Nobody rides this horse but me," Henty said. "She'd throw you into the
+middle of next week."
+
+"I can ride," Mirry said; "ride like a flea, the boys say."
+
+She was used to straddling any pony or horse her brothers had in the
+yard, and they had a name as the best horse-breakers in the district.
+
+Henty laughed. "But you couldn't ride Beeswing," he said. "She doesn't
+let anybody but me ride her. You can sit on, if you like; she won't mind
+that so long as I've got hold of her."
+
+The stirrup was too high for Mirry to reach, so he picked her up and put
+her across the saddle. The mare shivered and shrank under the light
+shock of Mirry's landing upon her, but Arthur Henty talked to her and
+rubbed her head soothingly.
+
+"It's all right ... all right, old girl," he muttered. "Think it was one
+of those stinging flies? But it isn't, you see. It's only Mirry Flail.
+She says she's a flea of a rider. But you'd learn her, wouldn't you, if
+you got off with her by yourself?"
+
+Ella giggled softly, peering at Mirry and Henty and at the beautiful
+golden-red chestnut he was leading. Ed. Ventry had put Sophie on his
+coach horses sometimes. He had let her go for a scamper with Potch on an
+old horse or a likely colt now and then; but she knew she did not ride
+well--not as Mirry rode.
+
+They walked along the dusty road together when they had left the tank
+paddock, Mirry chattering from Beeswing's back, Sophie, with Ella
+clinging to one hand, on the other side of Henty. But Mirry soon tired
+of riding a led horse at a snail's pace. When a sulphur-coloured
+butterfly fluttered for a few minutes over a wild tobacco plant, she
+slid from the saddle, on the far side, and was off over the plains to
+have another look at the butterfly.
+
+Ella was too shy or too frightened to get on the chestnut, even with
+Henty holding her bridle.
+
+"How about you, Sophie?" Arthur Henty asked.
+
+Sophie nodded, but before he could help her she had put her foot into
+the stirrup and swung into the saddle herself. Beeswing shivered again
+to the new, strange weight on her back. Henty held her, muttering
+soothingly. They went on again.
+
+After a while, with a shy glance, and as if to please him, Sophie began
+to sing, softly at first, so as not to startle the mare, and then
+letting her voice out so that it rippled as easily and naturally as a
+bird's. Henty, walking with a hand on the horse's bridle beside her,
+heard again the song she had been singing in the tank paddock.
+
+Ella was supposed to be carrying Sophie's flowers. She did not know she
+had dropped nearly half of them, and that they were lying in a trail all
+along the dusty road.
+
+Henty did not speak when Sophie had finished. His pipe had gone out, and
+he put it in his pocket. The stillness of her audience of two was so
+intense that to escape it Sophie went on singing, and the chestnut did
+not flinch. She went quietly to the pace of the song, as though she,
+too, were enjoying its rapture and tenderness.
+
+Then through the clear air came a rattle of wheels and jingle of
+harness. Mirry, running towards them from the other side of the road,
+called eagerly:
+
+"It's the coach.... Mr. Ventry's got six horses in, and a man with him!"
+
+Six horses indicated that a person of some importance was on board the
+coach. Henty drew the chestnut to one side as the coach approached. Mr.
+Ventry jerked his head in Henty's direction when he passed and saw
+Arthur Henty with the Flail children and Sophie. The stranger beside him
+eyed, with a faint smile of amusement, the cavalcade, the girl in the
+black dress on the fine chestnut horse, the children with the flowers,
+and the young man standing beside them. The man on the coach was a
+clean-shaved, well-groomed, rather good-looking man of forty, or
+thereabouts, and his clothes and appearance proclaimed him a man of the
+world beyond the Ridge. His smile and stare annoyed Henty.
+
+"It's Mr. Armitage," Mirry said. "The young one. He's not as nice as the
+old man, my father says--and he doesn't know opal as well--but he gives
+a good price."
+
+They had reached the curve of the road where one arm turns to the town
+and the other goes over the plains to Warria. Sophie slipped from the
+horse.
+
+"We'll take the short cut here," she said.
+
+She stood looking at Arthur Henty for a moment, and in that moment Henty
+knew that she had sensed his thought. She had guessed he was afraid of
+having looked ridiculous trailing along the road with these children.
+Sophie turned away. The young Flails bounded after her. Henty could hear
+their laughter when he had ridden out some distance along the road.
+
+From the slope of a dump Sophie saw him--the chestnut and her rider
+loping into the sunset, and, looking after him, she finished her song.
+
+    "Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,
+     Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!
+     Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,
+     A fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"
+
+     Dear name forever nursed in my memory thou shalt be,
+     For my heart first stirred to the delight of love for thee!
+     My thoughts and my desire will always be, dear name, toward thee,
+     And my last breath will be for thee, dear name.
+
+The long, sweet notes and rippled melody followed Arthur Henty over the
+plains in the quiet air of late afternoon. But the afternoon had been
+spoilt for him. He was self-conscious and ill at ease about it all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Mr. Armitage is up at Newton's!" Paul yelled to Michael, when he saw
+him at his back-door a few minutes after Sophie had given him the news.
+
+"Not the old man?" Michael inquired.
+
+"No, the young 'un."
+
+Word was quickly bruited over the fields that the American, one of the
+best buyers who came to the Ridge, had arrived by the evening coach. He
+invariably had a good deal of money to spend, and gave a better price
+than most of the local buyers.
+
+Dawe P. Armitage had visited Fallen Star Ridge from the first year of
+its existence as an opal field, and every year for years after that. But
+when he began to complain about aches and pains in his bones, which he
+refused to allow anybody to call rheumatism, and was assured he was well
+over seventy and that the long rail and sea journey from New York City
+to Fallen Star township were getting too much for him, he let his son,
+whom he had made a partner in his business, make the journey for him.
+John Lincoln Armitage had been going to the Ridge for two or three
+years, and although the men liked him well enough, he was not as popular
+with them as his father had been. And the old man, John Armitage said,
+although he was nearly crippled with rheumatism, still grudged him his
+yearly visit to the Ridge, and hated like poison letting anyone else do
+his opal-buying.
+
+Dawe Armitage had bought some of the best black opal found on the Ridge.
+He had been a hard man to deal with, but the men had a grudging
+admiration for him, a sort of fellow feeling of affection because of his
+oneness with them in a passion for black opal. A grim, sturdy old
+beggar, there was a certain quality about him, a gruff humour, sheer
+doggedness, strength of purpose, and dead honesty within his point of
+view, which kept an appreciative and kindly feeling for him in their
+hearts. They knew he had preyed on them; but he had done it bluntly,
+broadly, and in such an off-with-the-gloves-lads-style, that, after a
+good fight over a stone and price, they had sometimes given in to him
+for sheer amusement, and to let him have the satisfaction of thinking he
+had gained his point.
+
+Usually he set his price on a stone and would not budge from it. The
+gougers knew this, and if their price on a stone was not Dawe
+Armitage's, they did not waste breath on argument, except to draw the
+old boy and get some diversion from his way of playing them. If a man
+had a good stone and did not think anyone else was likely to give him
+his figure, sometimes he sold ten minutes before the coach Armitage was
+going down to town by, left Newton's. But, three or four times, when a
+stone had taken his fancy and a miner was obdurate, the old man, with
+his mind's eye full of the stone and the fires in its dazzling jet, had
+suddenly sent for it and its owner, paid his price, and pocketed the
+stone. He had wrapped up the gem, chuckling in defeat, and rejoicing to
+have it at any price. As a rule he made three or four times as much as
+he had given for opals he bought on the Ridge, but to Dawe Armitage the
+satisfaction of making money on a transaction was nothing like the joy
+of putting a coveted treasure into his wallet and driving off from
+Fallen Star with it.
+
+A gem merchant of considerable standing in the United States, Dawe
+Armitage's collection of opals was world famous. He had put black opal
+on the market, and had been the first to extol the splendour of the
+stones found on Fallen Star Ridge. So different they were from the opal
+found on Chalk Cliffs, or in any other part of the world, with the fires
+in jetty potch rather than in the clear or milky medium people were
+accustomed to, that at first timid and conventional souls were disturbed
+and repelled by them. "They felt," they said, "that there was something
+occultly evil about black opal." They had a curious fear and dread of
+the stones as talismans of evil. Dawe Armitage scattered the quakers
+like chaff with his scorn. They could not, he said, accept the
+magnificent pessimism of black opal. They would not rejoice with pagan
+abandonment in the beauty of those fires in black opal, realising that,
+like the fires of life, they owed their brilliance, their transcendental
+glory, to the dark setting. But every day the opals made worshippers of
+sightseers. They mesmerised beholders who came to look at them.
+
+When the coach rattled to a standstill outside the hotel, Peter Newton
+went to the door of the bar. He knew John Armitage by the size and shape
+of his dust-covered overalls. Armitage dismounted and pulled off his
+gloves. Peter Newton went to meet him.
+
+Armitage gripped his hand.
+
+"Mighty glad to see you, Newton," he said, "and glad to see the Ridge
+again. How are you all?"
+
+Newton smiled, giving him greeting in downright Ridge style.
+
+"Fine," he said. "Glad to see you, Mr. Armitage."
+
+When he got indoors, Armitage threw off his coat. He and Peter had a
+drink together, and then he went to have a wash and brush up before
+dinner. Mrs. Newton came from the kitchen; she was pleased to see Mr.
+Armitage, she said, and he shook hands with her and made her feel that
+he was really quite delighted to see her. She spent a busy hour or so
+making the best of her preparations for the evening meal, so that he
+might repeat his usual little compliments about her cooking. Armitage
+had his dinner in a small private sitting-room, and strolled out
+afterwards to the veranda to smoke and yarn with the men.
+
+He spent the evening with them there, and in the bar, hearing the news
+of the Ridge and gossiping genially. He had come all the way from Sydney
+the day before, spent the night in the train, and had no head for
+business that night, he said. When he yarned with them, Fallen Star men
+had a downright sense of liking John Armitage. He was a good sort, they
+told each other; they appreciated his way of talking, and laughed over
+the stories he told and the rare and racy Americanisms with which he
+flavoured his speech for their benefit.
+
+When he exerted himself to entertain and amuse them, they were as
+pleased with him as a pack of women. And John Lincoln Armitage pleased
+women, men of the Ridge guessed, the women of his own kind as well as
+the women of Fallen Star who had talked to him now and then. His eyes
+had a mild caress when they rested on a woman; it was not in the least
+offensive, but carried challenge and appeal--a suggestion of sympathy.
+He had a thousand little courtesies for women, the deference which comes
+naturally to "a man of the world" for a member of "the fair sex." Mrs.
+Newton was always flattered and delighted after a talk with him. He
+asked her advice about opals he had bought or was going to buy, and,
+although he did not make use of it very often, she was always pleased by
+his manner of asking. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Archie Cross both
+confessed to a partiality for Mr. Armitage, and even Mrs. Watty agreed
+that he was "a real nice man"; and when he was in the township Mrs.
+Henty and one of the girls usually drove over from the station and took
+him back to Warria to stay a day or two before he went back to Sydney on
+his return journey to New York.
+
+Armitage was very keen to know whether there had been any sensational
+finds on the Ridge during the year, and all about them. He wanted to
+know who had been getting good stuff, and said that he had bought Jun's
+stones in Sydney. The men exclaimed at that.
+
+"I was surprised to hear," John Armitage said, "what happened to the
+other parcel. You don't mean to say you think Charley Heathfield----?"
+
+"We ain't tried him yet," Watty remarked cautiously, "but the evidence
+is all against him."
+
+Rouminof thrust himself forward, eager to tell his story. Realising the
+proud position he might have been in this night with the opal-buyer if
+he had had his opals, tears gathered in his eyes as he went over it all
+again.
+
+Armitage listened intently.
+
+"Well, of all the rotten luck!" he exclaimed, when Paul had finished.
+"Have another whisky, Rouminof? But what I can't make out," he added,
+"is why, if he had the stones, Charley didn't come to me with them.... I
+didn't buy anything but Jun's stuff before I came up here ... and he
+just said it was half the find he was showing me. Nice bit of pattern in
+that big black piece, eh? If Charley had the stones, you'd think he'd
+'ve come along to me, or got Jun, or somebody to come along for him...."
+
+"I don't know about that." George Woods felt for his reasons. "He
+wouldn't want you--or anybody else to know he'd got them."
+
+"That's right," Watty agreed.
+
+"He's got them all right," Ted Cross declared. "You see, I seen him
+taking Rummy home that night--and he cleared out next morning."
+
+"I guess you boys know best." John Armitage sipped his whisky
+thoughtfully. "But I'm mad to get the rest of the stones. Tell you the
+truth, the old man hasn't been too pleased with my buying lately ... and
+it would put him in no end of a good humour if I could take home with me
+another packet of gems like the one I got from Jun. Jun knew I was keen
+to get the stones ... and I can't help thinking ... if he knew they were
+about, he'd put me in the way of getting them ... or them in my
+way--somehow. You don't think ... anybody else could have been on the
+job, and ... put it over on Charley, say...."
+
+His eyes went over the faces of the men lounging against the bar, or
+standing in groups about him. Michael was lifting his glass to drink,
+and, for the fraction of a second the opal-buyer's glance wavered on his
+face before it passed on.
+
+"Not likely," George Woods said dryly.
+
+Recognising the disfavour his suggestion raised, Armitage brushed it
+aside.
+
+"I don't think so, of course," he said.
+
+And although he did not speak to him, or even look at him closely again,
+John Armitage was thinking all the evening of the quiver, slight as the
+tremor of a moth's wing, on Michael's face, when that inquiry had been
+thrown out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Armitage was busy going over parcels of stone and bargaining with the
+men for the greater part of the next day. He was beginning to have more
+of Dawe Armitage's zest for the business; and, every time they met,
+Ridge men found him shrewder, keener. His manner was genial and
+easy-going with them; but there was a steel band in him somewhere, they
+were sure.
+
+The old man had been bluff, and as hard as nails; but they understood
+him better than his son. John Armitage, they knew, was only
+perfunctorily interested opal-buying at first; he had gone into it to
+please the old man, but gradually the thing had taken hold of him. He
+was not yet, however, anything like as good a judge of opal, and his
+last buying on the Ridge had displeased his father considerably. John
+Armitage had bought several parcels of good-looking opal; but one stone,
+which had cost £50 in the rough, was not worth £5 when it was cut. A
+grain of sand, Dawe Armitage swore he could have seen a mile away, went
+through it, and it cracked on the wheel. A couple of parcels had brought
+double what had been paid for them; but several stones John had given a
+good price for were not worth half the amount, his father had said.
+
+George Woods and Watty took John Armitage a couple of fine knobbies
+during the morning, and the Crosses had shown him a parcel containing
+two good green and blue stones with rippled lights; but they had more on
+the parcel than Armitage felt inclined to pay, remembering the stormy
+scene there had been with the old man over that last stone from Crosses'
+mine which had cracked in the cutter's hands. Towards the end of the day
+Mr. Armitage came to the conclusion, having gone over the stones the men
+brought him, and having bought all he fancied, that there was very
+little black opal of first quality about. He was meditating the fact,
+leaning back in his chair in the sitting-room Newton had reserved for
+him to see the gougers in, some pieces of opal, his scales and
+microscope on the table before him, when Michael knocked.
+
+Absorbed in his reflections, realising there would be little to show for
+the trouble and pains of his long journey, and reviewing a slowly
+germinating scheme and dream for the better output of opal from Fallen
+Star, John Armitage did not at first pay any attention to the knock.
+
+He had been thinking a good deal of Michael in connection with that
+scheme. Michael, he knew, would be his chief opponent, if ever he tried
+putting it into effect. When he had outlined his idea and vaguely formed
+plans to his father, Dawe Armitage would have nothing to do with them.
+He swept them aside uncompromisingly.
+
+"You don't know what you're up against," he said. "There isn't a man on
+the Ridge wouldn't fight like a pole-cat if you tried it on 'em. Give
+'em a word of it--and we quit partnership, see? They wouldn't stand for
+it--not for a second--and there'd be no more black opal for Armitage and
+Son, if they got any idea on the Ridge you'd that sort of notion at the
+back of your head."
+
+But John Armitage refused to give up his idea. He went to it as a dog
+goes to a planted bone--gnawed and chewed over it, contemplatively.
+
+He had made this trip to Fallen Star with little result, and he was sure
+a system of working the mines on scientific, up-to-date lines would
+ensure the production of more stone. He wanted to talk organisation and
+efficiency to men of the Ridge, to point out to them that organisation
+and efficiency were of first value in production, not realising Ridge
+men considered their methods both organised and efficient within their
+means and for their purposes.
+
+Michael knocked again, and Armitage called:
+
+"Come in!" When he saw who had come into the room, he rose and greeted
+Michael warmly.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Michael!" he said, with a sense of guilt at the thoughts
+Michael had interrupted. "I wondered what on earth had become of you.
+The old man gave me no end of messages, and there are a couple of
+magazines for you in my grip."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," Michael replied.
+
+"Well, I hope you've got some good stuff," Armitage said.
+
+Michael took the chair opposite to him on the other side of the table.
+"I haven't got much," he said.
+
+"I remember Newton told me you've been having rotten luck."
+
+"It's looked up lately," Michael said, the flickering wisp of a smile in
+his eyes. "The boys say Rummy's a luck-bringer.... He's working with me
+now, and we've been getting some nice stone."
+
+He took a small packet of opal from his pocket and put it on the table.
+It was wrapped in newspaper. He unfastened the string, turned back the
+cotton-wool in which the pieces of opal were packed, and spread them out
+for Armitage to look at.
+
+Armitage went over the stones. He put them, one by one, under his
+microscope, and held them to and from the light.
+
+"That's a nice bit of colour, Michael," he said, admiring a small piece
+of grey potch with a black strain which flashed needling rays of green
+and gold. "A little bit more of that, and you'd be all right, eh?"
+
+Michael nodded. "We're on a streak now," he said. "It ought to work out
+all right."
+
+"I hope it will." Armitage held the piece of opal to the light and moved
+it slowly. "Rouminof's working with you now--and Potch, they tell me?"
+
+Michael nodded.
+
+"Pretty hard on him, Charley's getting away with his stones like that!"
+
+John Armitage probed the quiet eyes of the man before him with a swift
+glance.
+
+"You're right there, Mr. Armitage," Michael said. "Harder on Paul than
+it would have been on anybody else. He's got the fever pretty bad."
+
+Armitage laughed, handling a stone thoughtfully.
+
+"I gave Jun a hundred pounds for his big stone. I'd give the same for
+the other--if I could lay my hands on it, though the boys say it wasn't
+quite as big, but better pattern."
+
+"That's right," Michael said.
+
+Silence lay between them for a moment.
+
+"What have you got on the lot, Michael?" Armitage asked, picking up the
+stones before him and going over them absent-mindedly.
+
+"A tenner," Michael said.
+
+Usually a gouger asked several pounds more than he expected to get. John
+Armitage knew that; Michael knew he knew it. Armitage played with the
+stones, hesitated as though his mind were not made up. There was not
+much more than potch and colour in the bundle. He went over the stones
+with the glass again.
+
+"Oh well, Michael," he said, "we're old friends. I won't haggle with
+you. Ten pounds--your own valuation."
+
+He would get twice as much for the parcel, but the price was a good one.
+Michael was surprised he had conceded it so easily.
+
+Armitage pulled out his cheque-book and pushed a box of cigars across
+the table. Michael took out his pipe.
+
+"If you don't mind, Mr. Armitage," he said, "I'm more at home with
+this."
+
+"Please yourself, Michael," Armitage murmured, writing his cheque.
+
+When Michael had put the cheque in his pocket, Armitage took a cigar,
+nipped and lighted it, and leaned back in his chair again.
+
+"Not much big stuff about, Michael," he remarked, conversationally.
+
+"George Woods had some good stones," Michael said.
+
+Armitage was not enthusiastic. "Pretty fair. But the old man will be
+better pleased with the stuff I got from Jun Johnson than anything else
+this trip.... I'd give a good deal to get the almond-shaped stone in
+that other parcel."
+
+Michael realised Mr. Armitage had said the same thing to him before. He
+wondered why he had said it to him--what he was driving at.
+
+"There were several good stones in Paul's parcel," he said.
+
+His clear, quiet eyes met John Armitage's curious, inquiring gaze. He
+was vaguely discomfited by Armitage's gaze, although he did not flinch
+from it. He wondered what Mr. Armitage knew, that he should look like
+that.
+
+"It's been hard on Rouminof," Armitage murmured again.
+
+Michael agreed.
+
+"After the boys making Jun shell out, too! It doesn't seem to have been
+much use, does it?"
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"And they say he was going to take that girl of his down to Sydney to
+have her trained as a singer. She can sing, too. But her mother,
+Michael--I heard her in _Dinorah_ ... when I was a little chap."
+Enthusiasm lighted John Armitage's face. "She was wonderful.... The old
+man says people were mad about her when she was in New York.... It was
+said, you know, she belonged to some aristocratic Russian family, and
+ran away with a rascally violinist--Rouminof. Can you believe it? ...
+Went on the stage to keep him.... But she couldn't stand the life. Soon
+after she was lost sight of.... I've often wondered how she drifted to
+Fallen Star. But she liked being here, the old man says."
+
+Michael nodded. There was silence between them a moment; then Michael
+rose to go. The opal-buyer got up too, and flung out his arms,
+stretching with relief to be done with his day's work.
+
+"I've been cooped in here all day," he said. "I'll come along with you,
+Michael. I'd like to have a look at the Punti Rush. Can you walk over
+there with me?"
+
+"'Course I can, Mr. Armitage," Michael said heartily.
+
+They walked out of the hotel and through the town towards the rush,
+where half a dozen new claims had been pegged a few weeks before.
+
+Snow-Shoes passed then going out of the town to his hut, swinging along
+the track and gazing before him with the eyes of a seer, his fine old
+face set in a dream, serene dignity in every line of his erect and
+slowly-moving figure.
+
+Armitage looked after him.
+
+"What a great old chap he is, Michael," he exclaimed. "You don't know
+anything about him ... who he is, or where he comes from, do you?"
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"How does he live?"
+
+"Noodles."
+
+"He's never brought me any stone."
+
+"Trades it with the storekeepers--though the boys do say"--Michael
+looked with smiling eyes after Snow-Shoes--"he may be a bit of a miser,
+loves opal more than the money it brings."
+
+Armitage's interest deepened. "There are chaps like that. I've heard the
+old man talk about a stone getting hold of a man sometimes--mesmerising
+him. I believe the old man's a bit like that himself, you know. There
+are two or three pieces of opal he's got from Fallen Star nothing on
+earth will induce him to part with. We wanted a stone for an Indian
+nabob's show tiara--something of that sort--not long ago. I fancied that
+big knobby we got from George Woods; do you remember? But the old man
+wouldn't part with it; not he! Said he'd see all the nabobs in the world
+in--Hades, before they got that opal out of him!"
+
+Michael laughed. The thought of hard-shelled old Dawe Armitage hoarding
+opals tickled him immensely.
+
+"Fact," Armitage continued. "He's got a couple of stones he's like a kid
+over--takes them out, rubs them, and plays with them. And you should
+hear him if I try to get them from him.... A packet of crackers isn't in
+it with the old man."
+
+"The boys'd like to hear that," Michael said.
+
+"There's no doubt about the fascination the stuff exercises," John
+Armitage went on. "You people say, once an opal-miner, always an
+opal-miner; but I say, once an opal-buyer, always an opal-buyer. I
+wasn't keen about this business when I came into it ... but it's got me
+all right. I can't see myself coming to this God-forsaken part of the
+world of yours for anything but black opal...."
+
+That expression, whimsical and enigmatic, which was never very far from
+them, had grown in Michael's eyes. He began to sense a motive in
+Armitage's seemingly casual talk, and to understand why the opal-buyer
+was so friendly.
+
+"The old man tells a story," Armitage continued, "of that robbery up at
+Blue Pigeon. You know the yarn I mean ... about sticking up a coach when
+there was a good parcel of opal on board. Somebody did the bush-ranging
+trick and got away with the opal.... The thief was caught, and the stuff
+put for safety in an iron safe at the post office. And sight of the
+opals corrupted one of the men in the post office.... He was caught ...
+and then a mounted trooper took charge of them. And the stuff bewitched
+him, too.... He tried to get away with it...."
+
+"That's right," Michael murmured serenely.
+
+Armitage eyed him keenly. He could scarcely believe the story he had got
+from Jun, that the second parcel of stones had been exchanged after
+Charley got them, or that they had been changed on Paul before Charley
+got them from him.
+
+Michael guessed Armitage was sounding him by talking so much of
+Rouminof's stones and the robbery. He wondered what Armitage
+knew--whether he knew anything which would attach him, Michael, to
+knowledge of what had become of Paul's stones. There was always the
+chance that Charley had recognised some of the opal in the parcel
+substituted for Paul's, although none of the scraps were significant
+enough to be remembered, Michael thought, and Charley was never keen
+enough to have taken any notice of the sun-flash and fragments of
+coloured potch they had taken out of the mine during the year. The brown
+knobby, which Michael had kept for something of a sentimental reason,
+because it was the first stone he had found on Fallen Star, Charley had
+never seen.
+
+But, probably, he remarked to himself, Armitage was only trying to get
+information from him because he thought that Michael Brady was the most
+likely man on the Ridge to know what had become of the stones, or to
+guess what might have become of them.
+
+As they walked and talked, these thoughts were an undercurrent in
+Michael's mind. And the undercurrent of John Lincoln Armitage's mind,
+through all his amiable and seemingly inconsequential gossip, was not
+whether Michael had taken the stones, but why he had, and what had
+become of them.
+
+Armitage could not, at first, bring himself to credit the half-formed
+suspicion which that quiver of Michael's face, when he had spoken of
+what Jun said, had given him. Yet they were all more or less mad, people
+who dealt with opal, he believed. It might not be for the sake of profit
+Michael had taken the stones, if he had taken them--there was still a
+shadow of doubt in his mind. John Armitage knew that any man on the
+Ridge would have knocked him down for harbouring such a thought. Michael
+was the little father, the knight without fear and without a stain, of
+the Ridge. He reflected that Michael had never brought him much stone.
+His father had often talked of Michael Brady and the way he had stuck to
+gouging opal with precious little luck for many years. The parcel he had
+sold that day was perhaps the best Michael had traded with Armitage and
+Son for a long time. John Armitage wondered if any man could work so
+long without having found good stuff, without having realised the hopes
+which had materialised for so many other men of the Ridge.
+
+They went over the new rush, inspected "prospects," and yarned with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, who had pegged out a claim there.
+But as Armitage and he walked back to the town discussing the outlook of
+the new field and the colour and potch some of the men already had to
+show, Michael found himself in the undertow of an uneasy imagination. He
+protested to himself that he was unnecessarily apprehensive, that all
+Armitage was trying to get from him was any information which would
+throw light on the disappearance of Paul's stones. And Armitage was
+wondering whether Michael might not be an opal miser--whether the
+mysterious fires of black opal might not have eaten into his brain as
+they had into the brains of good men before him.
+
+If they had, and if he had found the flaw in Michael's armour, John
+Armitage realised that the way to fulfilment of his schemes for buying
+the mines and working them on up-to-date lines, was opened up. If
+Michael could be proved unfaithful to the law and ideals of Ridge, John
+Armitage believed the men's faith in the fabric of their common life
+would fall to pieces. He envisaged the eating of moths of doubt and
+disappointment into the philosophy of the Ridge, the disintegration of
+ideas which had held the men together, and made them stand together in
+matters of common interest and service, as one man. He had almost
+assured himself that if Michael was not the thief and hoarder of the
+lost opals, he at least knew something of them, when a ripple of
+laughter and gust of singing were flung into the air not far from them.
+
+To Armitage it was as though some blithe spirit was mocking the
+discovery he thought he had made, and the fruition it promised those
+secret hopes of his.
+
+"It's Sophie," Michael said.
+
+They had come across the Ridge to the back of the huts. The light was
+failing; the sky, from the earth upwards where the sunset had been, the
+frail, limpid green of a shallow lagoon, deepening to blue, darker than
+indigo. The crescent of a moon, faintly gilded, swung in the sky above
+the dark shapes of the huts which stood by the track to the old
+Flash-in-the-pan rush. The smoke of sandal-wood fires burning in the
+huts was in the air. A goat bell tinkled....
+
+Potch and Sophie were talking behind the hut somewhere; their
+exclamations, laughter, a phrase or two of the song Sophie was singing
+went through the quietness.
+
+And it was all this he wanted to change! John Armitage caught the
+revelation of the moment as he stood to listen to Sophie singing. He
+understood as he had never done what the Ridge stood for--association of
+people with the earth, their attachment to the primary needs of life,
+the joyous flight of youthful spirits, this quiet happiness and peace at
+evening when the work of the day was done.
+
+As he came from the dumps, having said good-night to Michael, he saw
+Sophie, a slight, girlish figure, on the track ahead of him. Her dress
+flickered and flashed through the trees beside the track; it was a
+wraithlike streak in the twilight. She was taking the milk down to
+Newton's, and singing to herself as she walked. John Armitage quickened
+his steps to overtake her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The visit of an opal-buyer ruffled ever so slightly the still surface of
+life on the Ridge. When Armitage had gone, he was talked of for a few
+days; the stones he had bought, the prices he had given for them, were
+discussed. Some of his sayings, and the stories he had told, were
+laughed over. Tricks of speech he had used, tried at first half in fun,
+were adopted and dropped into the vernacular of the mines.
+
+"Sure!" the men said as easily as an American; and sometimes, talking
+with each other: "You've got another think coming to you"; or, "See,
+you've got your nerve with you!"
+
+For a night or two Michael went over the books and papers John Armitage
+had brought him. At first he just glanced here and there through them,
+and then he began to read systematically, and light glimmered in his
+windows far into the night. He soaked the contents of two or three
+reviews and several newspapers before giving himself to a book on
+international finance in which old Armitage had written his name.
+
+Michael thrilled to the stimulus of the book, the intellectual
+excitement of the ideas it brought forth. He lived tumultuously within
+the four bare walls of his room, arguing with himself, the author, the
+world at large. Wrong and injustice enthroned, he saw in this book
+describing the complexities of national and international systems of
+finance, the subtle weaving and interweaving of webs of the
+money-makers.
+
+This was not the effect Dawe Armitage had expected his book to have; he
+had expected to overawe and daze Michael with its impressive arraignment
+of figures and its subtle and bewildering generalisations on credit and
+foreign exchange. Michael's mind had cut through the fog raised by the
+financier's jargon to the few small facts beneath it all. Neither dazed
+nor dazzled, his brain had swung true to the magnetic meridian of his
+faith. Far from the book having shown him the folly and futility of any
+attempt against the Money Power, as Dawe Armitage, in a moment of
+freakish humour had imagined it might, it had filled him with such an
+intensity of fury that for a moment he believed he alone could
+accomplish the regeneration of the world; that like St. Michael of old
+he would go forth and slay the dragon, this chimera which was ravaging
+the world, drawing the blood, beauty, and joy of youth, the peace and
+wisdom of age; breaking manhood and womanhood with its merciless claws.
+
+But falling back on a consciousness of self, as with broken wings he
+realised he was neither archangel, nor super-man, but Michael Brady, an
+ordinary, ill-educated man who read and dreamed a great deal, and gouged
+for black opal on Fallen Star Ridge. He was a little bitter, and more
+humble, for having entertained that radiant vision of himself.
+
+John Armitage had been gone from the Ridge some weeks when Michael went
+over in his mind every phase and phrase of the talk they had had. His
+lips took a slight smile; it crept into his eyes, as he reviewed what he
+had said and what John Armitage had said, smoking unconsciously.
+
+Absorbed in his reading, he had thought little of John Armitage and that
+walk to the new rush with him. Occasionally the memory of it had
+nickered and glanced through his mind; but he was so obsessed by the
+ideas this new reading had stirred, that he went about his everyday jobs
+in the mine and in the hut, absent-mindedly, automatically, because they
+were things he was in the habit of doing. Potch watched him anxiously;
+Rouminof growled to him; Sophie laughed and flitted and sang, before his
+eyes; but Michael had been only distantly conscious of what was going on
+about him. George Woods and Watty guessed what was the matter; they knew
+the symptoms of these reading and brooding bouts Michael was subject to.
+The moods wore off when they put questions likely to draw information
+and he began to talk out and discuss what he had been reading with them.
+
+He had talked this one off, when suddenly he remembered how John
+Armitage's eyes had dived into his during that walk to the new rush. He
+could see Armitage's eyes again, keen grey eyes they were. And his
+hands. Michael remembered how Armitage's hands had played over the opals
+he had taken to show him. John Lincoln Armitage had the shrewd eyes of
+any man who lives by his wits--lawyer, pickpocket, politician, or
+financier--he decided; and the fine white hands of a woman. Only Michael
+did not know any woman whose hands were as finely shaped and as white as
+John Armitage's. Images of his clean-shaven, hot-house face of a city
+dweller, slightly burned by his long journey on land and sea, recurred
+to him; expressions, gestures, inflections of voice.
+
+Michael smiled to himself in communion with his thoughts as he went over
+the substance of Armitage's conversation, dissecting and shredding it
+critically. The more he thought of what Armitage had said, the more he
+found himself believing John Armitage had some information which caused
+him to think that he, Michael, knew something of the whereabouts of the
+stones. He could not convince himself Armitage believed he actually held
+the stones, or that he had stolen them. Armitage had certainly given him
+an opportunity to sell on the quiet if he had the stones; but his manner
+was too tentative, mingled with a subtle respect, to carry the notion of
+an overt suggestion of the sort, or the possession of incriminating
+knowledge. Then there was the story of the old Cliffs robbery. Michael
+wondered why Mr. Armitage had gone over that. On general principles,
+doubting the truth of his long run of bad luck--or from curiosity
+merely, perhaps. But Michael did not deceive himself that Armitage might
+have told the story in order to discover whether there was something of
+the miser in him, and whether--if Michael had anything to do with the
+taking of Paul's opals--he might prefer to hold rather than sell them.
+
+Michael was amused at the thought of himself as a miser. He went into
+the matter as honestly as he could. He knew the power opal had with him,
+the fascination of the search for it, which had brought him from the
+Cliffs to the Ridge, and which had held him to the place, although the
+life and ideas it had come to represent meant more to him now than black
+opal. Still, he was an opal miner, and through all his lean years on the
+Ridge he had been upheld by the thought of the stone he would find some
+day.
+
+He had dreamed of that stone. It had haunted his idle thoughts for
+years. He had seen it in the dark of the mine, deep in the ruddy earth,
+a mirror of jet with fires swarming, red, green, and gold in it.
+
+Dreams of the great opal he would one day discover had comforted him
+when storekeepers were asking for settlement of long-standing accounts.
+He did not altogether believe he would find it, that wonderful piece of
+black opal; but he dreamed, like a child, of finding it.
+
+As he thought of it, and of John Armitage, the smile in his eyes
+broadened. If Armitage knew of that stone of his dreams, he would
+certainly think his surmise was correct and believe that Michael Brady
+was a miser. But he had held the dream in a dark and distant corner of
+his consciousness; had it out to mood and brood over only at rare and
+distant intervals; and no one was aware of its existence.
+
+Black opal had no more passionate lover than himself, Michael knew. He
+trembled with instinctive eagerness, reverence, and delight, when he saw
+a piece of beautiful stone; his eyes devoured it. But there was nothing
+personal in his love. He might have been high priest of some mysterious
+divinity; when she revealed herself he was consumed with adoration. In a
+vague, whimsical way Michael realised this of himself, and yet, too,
+that if ever he held the stone of his dreams in his hands, he would be
+filled with a glorious and flooding sense of accomplishment; an ecstasy
+would transport him. It would be beyond all value in money, that stone;
+but he would not want to keep it to gaze on alone, he would want to give
+it to the world as a thing of consummate beauty, for everybody to enjoy
+the sight of and adore.
+
+No, Michael assured himself, he was not a miser. And, he reflected, he
+had not even looked at Paul's stones. For all he knew, the stones Paul
+had been showing that night at Newton's might have been removed from the
+box before he left Newton's. Someone might have done to Paul what he,
+Michael, had done to Charley Heathfield, as Armitage had suggested.
+Paul's little tin box was well enough known. He had been opening and
+showing his stones at Newton's a long time before the night when Jun had
+been induced to divide spoils. It would be just as well, Michael
+decided, to see what the box did contain; and he promised himself that
+he would open it and look over the stones--some evening. But he was not
+inclined to hurry the engagement with himself to do so.
+
+He had been glad enough to forget that he had anything to do with that
+box of Paul's: it still lay among the books where he had thrown it. The
+memory of the night on which he had seen Charley taking Paul home, and
+of all that had happened afterwards, was blurred in an ugly vision for
+him. It had become like the memory of a nightmare. He could scarcely
+believe he had done what he had done; yet he knew he had. He drew a deep
+breath of relief when he realised everything had worked out well so far.
+
+Paul was working with him; they had won that little bit of luck to carry
+them on; Sophie was growing up healthily, happily, on the Ridge. She was
+growing so quickly, too. Within the last few months Michael had noticed
+a subtle change in her. There was an indefinable air of a flower
+approaching its bloom about her. People were beginning to talk of her
+looks. Michael had seen eyes following her admiringly. Sophie walked
+with a light, lithe grace; she was slight and straight, not tall really,
+but she looked tall in the black dress she still wore and which came to
+her ankles. There was less of the eager sprite about her, a suggestion
+of some sobering experience in her eyes--the shadow of her mother's
+death--which had banished her unthinking and careless childhood. But the
+eyes still had the purity and radiance of a child's. And she seemed
+happy--the happiest thing on the Ridge, Michael thought. The cadence of
+her laughter and a ripple of her singing were never long out of the air
+about her father's hut. Wherever she went, people said now: "Sing to us,
+Sophie!"
+
+And she sang, whenever she was asked, without the slightest
+self-consciousness, and always those songs from old operas, or some of
+the folk-songs her mother had taught her, which were the only songs she
+knew.
+
+Michael had seen a number of neighbours in the township and their wives
+and children sitting round in one or other of their homes while Sophie
+sang. He had seen a glow of pleasure transfuse people as they listened
+to her pure and ringing notes. Singing, Sophie seemed actually to
+diffuse happiness, her own joy in the melodies she flung into the air.
+Oh, yes, Sophie was happy singing, Michael could permit himself to
+believe now. She could make people happy by her singing. He had feared
+her singing as a will-o'-the-wisp which would lead her away from him and
+the Ridge. But when he heard her enthralling people in the huts with it,
+he was not afraid.
+
+Paul sometimes moaned about the chances she was missing, and that she
+could be singing in theatres to great audiences. Sophie herself laughed
+at him. She was quite content with the Ridge, it seemed, and to sing to
+people on their verandas in the summer evenings or round the fires in
+the winter. She might have had greater and finer audiences, the Ridge
+folk said, but she could not have had more appreciative ones.
+
+If she was singing in the town, Michael always went to bring her home,
+and he was as pleased as Sophie to hear people say:
+
+"You're not taking her away yet, Michael? The night's a pup!" or,
+"Another ... just one more song, Sophie!"
+
+And if she had been singing at Newton's, Michael liked to see the men
+come to the door of the bar, holding up their glasses, and to hear their
+call, as Sophie and he went down the road:
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+"Skin off y'r nose!"
+
+"All the luck!"
+
+"Best respecks, Sophie!"
+
+When Sophie did not know what to do with herself all the hours Michael
+and Potch and her father were away at the mines, Michael had showed her
+how to use her mother's cutting-wheel. He taught her all he knew of
+opals, and Sophie was delighted with the idea of learning to cut and
+polish gems as her mother had.
+
+Michael gave her rough stones to practise on, and in no time she learnt
+to handle them skilfully. George, Watty, and the Crosses brought her
+some gems to face and polish for them, and they were so pleased with her
+work that they promised to give her most of their stones to cut and
+polish. She had two or three accidents, and was very crestfallen about
+them; but Michael declared they were part of the education of an
+opal-cutter and would teach her more about her work than anyone could
+tell her.
+
+To Michael those days were of infinite blessedness. They proved again
+and again the right of what he had done. At first he was vaguely alarmed
+and uneasy when he saw younger men of the Ridge, Roy O'Mara or Bully
+Bryant, talking or walking with Sophie, or he saw her laughing and
+talking with them. There was something about Sophie's bearing with them
+which disturbed him--a subtle, unconscious witchery. Then he explained
+it to himself. He guessed that the woman in her was waking, or awake. On
+second thoughts he was not jealous or uneasy. It was natural enough the
+boys should like Sophie, that she should like them; he recognised the
+age-old call of sex in it all. And if Sophie loved and married a man of
+the Ridge, the future would be clear, Michael thought. He could give
+Paul the opals, and her husband could watch over Sophie and see no harm
+came to her if she left the Ridge.
+
+The uneasiness stirred again, though, one afternoon when he found her
+walking from the tank paddock with Arthur Henty beside her. There was a
+startled consciousness about them both when Michael joined them and
+walked along the road with them. He had seen Sophie talking to Henty in
+and about the township before, but it had not occurred to him there was
+anything unusual about that. Sophie had gone about as she liked and
+talked to whom she liked since she was a child. She was on good terms
+with everyone in the countryside. No one knew where she went or what she
+did in the long day while the men were at the mines. Because the
+carillon of her laughter flew through those quiet days, Michael
+instinctively had put up a prayer of thanksgiving. Sophie was happy, he
+thought. He did not ask himself why; he was grateful; but a vague
+disquiet made itself felt when he remembered how he had found her
+walking with Arthur Henty, and the number of times he had seen her
+talking to Arthur Henty at Chassy Robb's store, or on the tracks near
+the town.
+
+Fallen Star folk knew Arthur better than any of the Hentys. For years he
+had been coming through the township with cattle or sheep, and had put
+up at Newton's with stockmen on his way home, or when he was going to an
+out-station beyond the Ridge.
+
+His father, James Henty, had taken up land in the back-country long
+before opal was found on Fallen Star Ridge. He had worked half a million
+square acres on an arm of the Darling in the days before runs were
+fenced, with only a few black shepherds and one white man, old Bill
+M'Gaffy, to help him for the first year or two. But, after an era of
+extraordinary prosperity, a series of droughts and misfortunes had
+overwhelmed the station and thrown it on the tender mercies of the
+banks.
+
+The Hentys lived much as they had always done. They entertained as
+usual, and there was no hint of a wolf near the door in the hearty,
+good-natured, and liberal hospitality of the homestead. A constitutional
+optimism enabled James Henty to believe Warria would ultimately throw
+off its debts and the good old days return. Only at the end of a season,
+when year after year he found there was no likelihood of being able to
+meet even the yearly interest on mortgages, did he lose some of his
+sanguine belief in the station's ability to right itself, and become
+irritable beyond endurance, blaming any and everyone within hail for the
+unsatisfactory estimates.
+
+But usually Arthur bore the brunt of these outbursts. Arthur Henty had
+gone from school to work on the station at the beginning of Warria's
+decline from the years of plenty, and had borne the burden and not a
+little of the blame for heavy losses during the droughts, without ever
+attempting to shift or deny the responsibilities his father put upon
+him.
+
+"It does the old man good to have somebody to go off at," he explained
+indifferently to his sister, Elizabeth, when she called him all the
+fools under the sun for taking so much blackguarding sitting down.
+
+Although James Henty's only son and manager of the station under his
+father's autocratic rule, Arthur Henty lived and worked among Warria
+stockmen as though he were one of them. His clothes were as worn and
+heavy with dust as theirs; his hat was as weathered, his hands as
+hard--sunburnt and broken with sores when barcoo was in the air. A
+quiet, unassuming man, he never came the "Boss" over them. He passed on
+the old man's orders, and, for the rest, worked as hard as any man on
+the station.
+
+He had never done anything remarkable that anyone could remember; but
+the men he worked with liked him. Everybody rather liked Arthur Henty,
+although nobody enthused about him. He had done man's work ever since he
+was a boy, with no more than a couple of years' schooling; he had done
+it steadily and as well as any other young man in the back-country. But
+there was a curious, almost feminine weakness in him somewhere. The men
+did not understand it. They thought he was too supine with his father;
+that he ought to stand up to him more.
+
+Arthur Henty preferred being out on the plains with them rather than in
+at the home station, the men said. He looked happier when he was with
+them; he whistled to them as they lay yarning round the camp-fire before
+turning in. They had never heard anything like his whistling. He seemed
+to be playing some small, fine, invisible flute as he gave them
+old-fashioned airs, ragtime tunes, songs from the comic operas, and
+miscellaneous melodies he had heard his sisters singing. No one had
+heard him whistling like that at the station. Out on the plains, or in
+the bar at Newton's, he was a different man. Once or twice when he had
+been drinking, and a glass or two of beer or whisky had got to his head,
+he had shown more the spirit that it was thought he possessed--as if,
+when the conscious will was relaxed, a submerged self had leapt forth.
+
+Men who had known him a long time wondered whether time would not
+strengthen the fibres of that submerged self; but they had seen Arthur
+Henty lose the elastic, hopeful outlook of youth, and sink gradually
+into the place assigned him by his father, at first dutifully, then with
+an indifference which slowly became apathy.
+
+Mrs. Henty and the girls exclaimed with dismay and disgust when they
+returned to the station after two years in town, and saw how rough and
+unkempt-looking Arthur had become. They insisted on his having his hair
+and beard cut at once, and that he should manicure his finger-nails.
+After he had dressed for dinner and was clipped and shaved, they said he
+looked more as if he belonged to them; but he was a shy, awkward boor,
+and they did not know what to make of him. In his mother's hands, Arthur
+was still a child, though, and she brought him back to the fold of the
+family, drew his resistance--an odd, sullen resentment he had acquired
+for the niceties of what she called "civilised society"--and made him
+amenable to its discipline.
+
+Elizabeth was twice the man her brother was, James Henty was fond of
+declaring. She had all the vigour and dash he would have liked his son
+to possess. "My daughter Elizabeth," he said as frequently as possible,
+and was always talking of her feats with horses, and the clear-headed
+and clever way she went about doing things, and getting her own way on
+all and every occasion.
+
+When the men rounded buck-jumpers into the yards on a Sunday morning,
+Elizabeth would ride any Chris Este, the head stockman, let her near;
+but Arthur never attempted to ride any of the warrigals. He steered
+clear of horse-breaking and rough horses whenever he could, although he
+broke and handled his own horses. In a curious way he shared a secret
+feeling of his mother's for horses. She had never been able to overcome
+an indefinable apprehension of the raw, half-broken horses of the
+back-country, although her nerve had carried her through years of
+acquaintance with them, innumerable accidents and misadventures, and
+hundreds of miles of journeys at their mercy; and Arthur, although he
+had lived and worked among horses as long as he could remember, had not
+been able to lose something of the same feeling. His sister, suspecting
+it, was frankly contemptuous; so was his father. It was the reason of
+Henty's low estimate of his son's character generally. And the rumour
+that Arthur Henty was shy of tough propositions in horses--"afraid of
+horses"--had a good deal to do with the never more than luke-warm
+respect men of the station and countryside had for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Sophie often met Arthur Henty on the road just out of the town. Usually
+it was going to or coming from the tank paddock, or in the paddock, on
+Friday afternoons, when he had been into Budda for the sales or to truck
+sheep or cattle. They did not arrange to meet, but Sophie expected to
+see Arthur when she went to the tank paddock, and she knew he expected
+to find her there. She did not know why she liked being with Arthur
+Henty so much, or why they were such golden occasions when she met him.
+They did not talk much when they were together. Their eyes met; they
+knew each other through their eyes--a something remote from themselves
+was always working through their eyes. It drew them together.
+
+When she was with Arthur Henty, Sophie knew she was filled with an
+ineffable gaiety, a thing so delicate and ethereal that as she sang she
+seemed to be filling the air with it. And Henty looked at her sometimes
+as if he had discovered a new, strange, and beautiful creature, a
+butterfly, or gnat, with gauzy, resplendent wings, whose beauty he was
+bewildered and overcome by. The last time they had been together he had
+longed to draw her to him and kiss her so that the virgin innocence
+would leave her eyes; but fear or some conscientious scruple had
+restrained him. He had been reluctant to awaken her, to change the
+quality of her feeling towards him. He had let her go with a lingering
+handclasp. In all their tender intimacy there had been no more of the
+love-making of the flesh than the subtle interweavings of instincts and
+fibres which this handclasp gave. Ridge folk had seen them walking
+together. They had seen that subtle inclination of Sophie's and Arthur's
+figures towards each other as they walked--the magnetic, gentle,
+irresistible swaying towards each other--and the gossips began to
+whisper and nod smilingly when they came across Arthur and Sophie on the
+road. Sophie at first went her way unconscious of the whispers and
+smiles. Then words were dropped slyly--people teased her about Arthur.
+She realised they thought he was her sweetheart. Was he? She began to
+wonder and think about it. He must be; she came to the conclusion
+happily. Only sweethearts went for walks together as she and Arthur did.
+
+"My mother says," Mirry Flail remarked one day, "she wouldn't be a bit
+surprised to see you marrying Arthur Henty, Sophie, and going over to
+live at Warria."
+
+"Goodness!" Sophie exclaimed, surprised and delighted that anybody
+should think such a thing.
+
+"Marry Arthur Henty and go over and live at Warria." Her mind, like a
+delighted little beaver, began to build on the idea. It did not alter
+her bearing with Arthur. She was less shy and thoughtful with him,
+perhaps; but he did not notice it, and she was carelessly and childishly
+content to have found the meaning of why she and Arthur liked meeting
+and talking together. People only felt as she and Arthur felt about each
+other if they were going to marry and live "happy ever after," she
+supposed.
+
+When Michael was aware of what was being said, and of the foundation
+there was for gossip, he was considerably disturbed. He went to talk to
+Maggie Grant about it. She, he thought, would know more of what was in
+the wind than he did, and be better able to gauge what the consequences
+were likely to be to Sophie.
+
+"I've been bothered about it myself, Michael," she said. "But neither
+you nor me can live Sophie's life for her.... I don't see we can do
+anything. His crowd'll do all the interfering, if I know anything about
+them."
+
+"I suppose so," Michael agreed.
+
+"And, as far as I can see, it won't do any good our butting in," Mrs.
+Grant continued. "You know Sophie's got a will of her own ... and she's
+always had a good deal her own way. I've talked round the thing to her
+... and I think she understands."
+
+"You've always been real good to her, Maggie," Michael said gratefully.
+
+"As to that"--the lines of Maggie Grant's broad, plain face rucked to
+the strength of her feeling--"I've done what I could. But then, I'm fond
+of her--fond of her as you are, Michael. That's saying a lot. And you
+know what I thought of her mother. But it's no use us thinking we can
+buy Sophie's experience for her. She's got to live ... and she's got to
+suffer."
+
+Busy with her opal-cutting, and happy with her thoughts, Sophie had no
+idea of the misgiving Michael and Maggie Grant had on her account, or
+that anyone was disturbed and unhappy because of her happiness. She sang
+as she worked. The whirr of her wheel, the chirr of sandstone and potch
+as they sheared away, made a small, busy noise, like the drone of an
+insect, in her house all day; and every day some of the men brought her
+stones to face and fix up. She had acquired such a reputation for making
+the most of stones committed to her care that men came from the Three
+Mile and from the Punti with opals for her to rough-out and polish.
+
+Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara were often at Rouminof's in the evening, and
+they heard about it when they looked in at Newton's later on, now and
+then.
+
+"You must be striking it pretty good down at the Punti, Bull," Watty
+Frost ventured genially one night. "See you takin' stones for Sophie to
+fix up pretty near every evenin'."
+
+"There's some as sees too much," Bully remarked significantly.
+
+"What you say, you say y'rself, Bull." Watty pulled thoughtfully on his
+pipe, but his little blue eyes squinted over his fat, red-grained
+cheeks, not in the least abashed.
+
+"I do," Bull affirmed. "And them as sees too much ... won't see much ...
+when I'm through with 'em."
+
+"Mmm," Watty brooded. "That's a good thing to know, isn't it?"
+
+He and the rest of the men continued to "sling off," as they said, at
+Bully and Roy O'Mara as they saw fit, nevertheless.
+
+The summer had been a mild one; it passed almost without a ripple of
+excitement. There were several hot days, but cool changes blew over, and
+the rains came before people had given up dreading the heat. Several new
+prospects had been made, and there were expectations that holes sunk on
+claims to the north of the Punti Rush would mean the opening up of a new
+field.
+
+Michael and Potch worked on in their old claim with very little to show
+for their pains. Paul had slackened and lost interest as soon as the
+fitful gleams of opal they were on had cut out. Michael was not the man
+to manage Rummy, the men said.
+
+Potch and Michael, however, seemed satisfied enough to regard Paul more
+or less as a sleeping partner; to do the work of the mine and share with
+him for keeping out of the way.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if they wouldn't rather have his room than his
+company," Watty ventured, "and they just go shares with him so as
+things'll be all right for Sophie."
+
+"That's right!" Pony-Fence agreed.
+
+The year had made a great difference to Potch. Doing man's work, going
+about on equal terms with the men, the change of status from being a
+youth at anybody's beck and call to doing work which entitled him to the
+taken-for-granted dignity of being an independent individual, had made a
+man of him. His frame had thickened and hardened. He looked years older
+than he was really, and took being Michael's mate very seriously.
+
+Michael had put up a shelter for himself and his mates, thinking that
+Potch and Paul might not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter; but
+George and Watty were loth to lose Michael's word from their councils.
+They called him over nearly every day, on one pretext or another.
+Sometimes his mates followed Michael. But Rouminof soon wearied of a
+discussion on anything except opal, and wandered off to the other
+shelters to discover whether anybody had struck anything good that
+morning. Potch threw himself on the ground beside Michael when Michael
+had invited him to go across to George and Watty's shelter with him, and
+after a while the men did not notice him there any more than Michael's
+shadow. He lay beside Michael, quite still, throwing crumbs to the birds
+which came round the shelter, and did not seem to be listening to what
+was said. But always when a man was heatedly and with some difficulty
+trying to disentangle his mind on a subject of argument, he found
+Potch's eyes on him, steady and absorbing, and knew from their intent
+expression that Potch was following all he had to say with quick, grave
+interest.
+
+Some people were staying at Warria during the winter, and when there was
+going to be a dance at the station Mrs. Henty wrote to ask Rouminof to
+play for it. She could manage the piano music, she said, and if he would
+tune his violin for the occasion, they would have a splendid band for
+the young people. And, her letter had continued: "We should be so
+pleased if your daughter would come with you."
+
+Sophie was wildly excited at the invitation. She had been to Ridge race
+balls for the last two or three years, but she had never even seen
+Warria. Her father had played at a Warria ball once, years before, when
+she was little; but she and her mother had not gone with him to the
+station. She remembered quite well when he came home, how he had told
+them of all the wonderful things there had been to eat at the
+ball--stuffed chickens and crystallised fruit, iced cakes, and all
+manner of sweets.
+
+Sophie had heard of the Warria homestead since she was a child, of its
+orange garden and great, cool rooms. It had loomed like the enchanted
+castle of a legend through all her youthful imaginings. And now, as she
+remembered what Mirry Flail had said, she was filled with delight and
+excitement at the thought of seeing it.
+
+She wondered whether Arthur had asked his mother to invite her to the
+dance. She thought he must have; and with naïve conceit imagined happily
+that Arthur's mother must want to know her because she knew that Arthur
+liked her. And Arthur's sisters--it would be nice to know them and to
+talk to them. She went over and over in her mind the talks she would
+have with Polly and Nina, and perhaps Elizabeth Henty, some day.
+
+A few weeks before the ball she had seen Arthur riding through the
+township with his sisters and a girl who was staying at Warria. He had
+not seen her, and Sophie was glad, because suddenly she had felt shy and
+confused at the thought of talking to him before a lot of people.
+Besides, they all looked so jolly, and were having such a good time,
+that she would not have known what to say to Arthur, or to his sisters,
+just then.
+
+When she told Mrs. Woods and Martha M'Cready about the invitation, they
+smiled and teased her.
+
+"Oh, that tells a tale!" they said.
+
+Sophie laughed. She felt silly, and she was blushing, they said. But she
+was very happy at having been asked to the ball. For weeks before she
+found herself singing "Caro Nome" as she sat at work, went about the
+house, or with Potch after the goats in the late afternoon.
+
+Arthur liked that song better than any other, and its melody had become
+mingled and interwoven with all her thoughts of him.
+
+The twilight was deepening, on the evening a few days before the dance,
+when Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara came up to Rouminof's hut, calling
+Sophie. She was washing milk tins and tea dishes, and went to the door
+singing to herself, a candle throwing a fluttering light before her.
+
+"Your father sent us along for you, Sophie," Bully explained. "There's a
+bit of a celebration on at Newton's to-night, and the boys want you to
+sing for them."
+
+Sophie turned from them, going into the house to put down her candle.
+
+"All right," she said, pleased at the idea.
+
+Michael came into the hut through, the back door. From his own room he
+had heard Bully calling and then explaining why he and Roy O'Mara were
+there.
+
+"Don't go, Sophie," Michael said.
+
+"But why, Michael?" Disappointment clouded Sophie's first bright
+pleasure that the men had sent for her to sing to them, and her
+eagerness to do as they asked.
+
+"It's not right ... not good for you to sing down there when the boys
+'ve been drinking," Michael said, unable to express clearly his
+opposition to her singing at Newton's.
+
+"Don't be a spoil-sport, Michael," the boys at the door called when they
+saw he was trying to dissuade Sophie.
+
+"Come along, Sophie," Roy called.
+
+She looked from Bully and Roy to Michael, hesitating. Theirs was the
+call of youth to youth, of youth to gaiety and adventure. She turned
+away from Michael.
+
+"I'm going, Michael," she said quickly, and swung to the door. Michael
+heard her laughing as she went off along the track with Bully and Roy.
+
+"Did you know Mr. Armitage is up?" Roy stopped to call back.
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"Came up by the coach this evening," Roy said, and ran after Bully and
+Sophie.
+
+It was a rowdy night at Newton's. Shearing was just over at Warria
+sheds, and men with cheques to burn were crowding the bar and passages.
+Sophie was hailed with cheers as she neared the veranda. Her father
+staggered out towards her, waving his arms crazily. Sophie was surprised
+when she found the crowd waiting for her. There were so many strangers
+in it--rough men with heavy, inflamed faces--hardly one she knew among
+them. A murmur and boisterous clamour of voices came from the bar. The
+men on the veranda made way for her.
+
+Her heart quailed when she looked into the big earthen-floored bar, and
+saw its crowd of rough-haired, sun-red men, still wearing the clothes
+they had been working in, grey flannel shirts and dungarees,
+blood-splashed, grimy, and greasy with the "yolk" of fleeces they had
+been handling. The smell of sheep and the sweat of long days of shearing
+and struggling with restless beasts were in the air, with fumes of rank
+tobacco and the flat, stale smell of beer. The hanging lamp over the bar
+threw only a dim light through the fog of smoke the men had put up, and
+which from the doorway completely obscured Peter Newton where he stood
+behind the bar.
+
+Sophie hung back.
+
+"I'm not going in there," she said.
+
+"Did you know Mr. Armitage was up?" Roy asked.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+He explained how Mr. Armitage had come unexpectedly by the coach that
+evening. Sophie saw him among the men on the veranda.
+
+"I'll sing here," she told Bully and Roy, leaning against a veranda
+post.
+
+She was a little afraid. But she knew she had always pleased Ridge folk
+when she sang to them, so she put back her head and sang a song of youth
+and youthful happiness she had sung on the veranda at Newton's before.
+It did not matter that the words were in Italian, which nobody
+understood. The dancing joyousness and laughing music of her notes
+carried the men with them. The applause was noisy and enthusiastic.
+Sophie laughed, delighted, yet almost afraid of her success.
+
+Big and broad-shouldered, Bully Bryant stood at a little distance from
+her, in front of everybody. Arthur Henty, leaning against the wall near
+the door of the bar, smiled softly, foolishly, when she glanced at him.
+He had been drinking, too, and was watching, and listening to her, with
+the same look in his eyes as Bully.
+
+Sophie caught the excitement about her. An exhilaration of pleasure
+thrilled her. It was crude wine which went to her head, this admiration
+and applause of strangers and of the men she had known since she was a
+child. There was a wonderful elation in having them beg her to sing.
+They looked actually hungry to hear her. She found Arthur Henty's eyes
+resting on her with the expression she knew in them. An imp of
+recklessness entered her. Her father beat the air as if he were leading
+an orchestra, and she threw herself into the Shadow Song, singing with
+an abandonment that carried her beyond consciousness of her
+surroundings.
+
+She sang again and again, and always in response to an eager tumult of
+cheers, thudding of feet, joggling of glasses, chorus of broken cries:
+"En-core, encore, Sophie!" An instinct of mischief and coquetry urging,
+she glanced sometimes at Arthur, sometimes at Bully. Then with a glance
+at Arthur, and for a last number, she began "Caro Nome," and gave to her
+singing all the glamour and tenderness, the wild sweetness, the aria had
+come to have for her, because she had sung it so often to Arthur when
+they met and were walking along the road together. She was so carried
+away by her singing, she did not realise what had happened until
+afterwards.
+
+She only knew that suddenly, roughly, she was grasped and lifted. She
+saw Bully's face flaming before her own, gazed with terror and horror
+into his eyes. His face was thrown against hers--and obliterated.
+
+"Are you all right?" someone asked after a moment.
+
+Awaking from the daze and bewilderment, Sophie looked up.
+
+John Armitage was standing beside her; Potch nearby. They were on the
+outskirts of the crowd on the veranda.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+The men on the veranda had broken into two parties; one was surging
+towards the bar door, the other moving off down the road out of the
+town. Michael came towards her.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," he said.
+
+"Oh, Potch looked after her. I couldn't get near," John Armitage said.
+
+An extraordinary quiet took possession of Sophie. When she was going
+down the road with Potch and Michael, she said:
+
+"Did Bully kiss me, Michael?"
+
+"Yes," he replied.
+
+"I don't know what happened then?"
+
+"Arthur Henty knocked him down," Michael said.
+
+She looked at him with scared eyes.
+
+"They want to fight it out ... but they're both drunk. The boys are
+trying to stop it."
+
+"Oh, Michael!" Sophie cried on a little gasping breath; and looking into
+her eyes he read her contrition, asking forgiveness, understanding all
+that he had not been able to explain to her. She did not say, "I'll
+never sing there, like that, any more." Her feeling was too deep for
+words; but Michael knew she never would.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+"It's what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball,"
+Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin
+Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.
+
+Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods' mirror, a square of
+glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant
+sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new
+dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was
+also gazing at her and at it admiringly.
+
+When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria,
+Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.
+
+"Sophie's got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael," she
+said. "I'm not going to have people over there laughing at her, and
+she's had nothing but her mother's old dresses, cut down--for goodness
+knows how long."
+
+"Will you get it?" Michael inquired anxiously.
+
+Mrs. Grant nodded.
+
+"Bessie Woods and I were thinking it might be pinspot muslin, with a bit
+of lace on it," she said. "We could get the stuff at Chassy Robb's and
+make it up between us."
+
+"Right!" Michael replied, looking immensely relieved to have the
+difficulty disposed of. "Tell Chassy to put it on my book."
+
+So the pinspot muslin and some cheap creamy lace had been bought. Mrs.
+Woods and Sophie settled on a style they found illustrating an
+advertisement in a newspaper and which resembled a dress one of the
+Henty girls had worn at the race ball the year before. Maggie Grant had
+done all the plain sewing and Mrs. Woods the fixing and finishing
+touches. They had consulted over and over again about sleeves and the
+length of the skirt. The frock had been fitted at least a dozen times.
+They had wondered where they would put the lace as a bit of trimming,
+and had decided for frills at the elbows and a tucker in the V-shaped
+neck of the blouse. They marvelled at their audacity, but felt sure they
+had done the right thing when they cut the neck rather lower than they
+would have for a dress to be worn in the daytime.
+
+Martha M'Cready, insisting on having a finger in the pie, had pressed
+the dress when it was finished, and she had washed and ironed Mrs.
+George Woods' best embroidered petticoat for Sophie to wear with it.
+
+And now Sophie was dressing in Mrs. Woods' bedroom because it had a
+bigger mirror than her own room, and the three women were watching her,
+giving little tugs and pats to the dress now and then, measuring it with
+appraising glances of conscious pride in their workmanship, and joy at
+Sophie's appearance in it. Sophie, her face flushed, her eyes shining,
+turned to them every now and then, begging to know whether the skirt was
+not a little full here, or a little flat there; and they pinched and
+pulled, until it was thought nothing further could be done to improve
+it.
+
+Sophie was anxious about her hair. She had put it in plaits the night
+before, and had kept it in them all the morning. Her hair had never been
+in plaits before, and she had not liked the look of it when she saw it
+all crisp and frizzy, like Mirry Flail's. She had used a wet brush to
+get the crinkle out, but there was still a suggestion of it in the heavy
+dark wave of her hair when she had done it up as usual.
+
+"Your hair looks very nice--don't worry any more about it, Sophie,"
+Martha M'Cready had said.
+
+"My mother used to say there was nothing nicer for a young girl to wear
+than white muslin," Mrs. Woods remarked, "and that sash of your mother's
+looks real nice as a belt, Sophie."
+
+The sash, a broad piece of blue and green silk shot like a piece of poor
+opal, Sophie had found in a box of her mother's, and it was wound round
+her waist as a belt and tied in a bow at the side.
+
+"Turn round and let me see if the skirt's quite the same length all
+round, Sophie," Mrs. Grant commanded.
+
+"Yes, Maggie," Bessie Woods exclaimed complacently. "It's quite right."
+
+Sophie glanced at herself in the glass again. Mrs. Woods had lent her a
+pair of opal ear-rings, and Maggie Grant the one piece of finery she
+possessed--a round piece of very fine black opal set in a rim of gold,
+which Bill had given her when first she came to the Ridge.
+
+Sophie had on for the first time, too, a necklace she had made herself
+of stones the miners had given her at different times. There was a piece
+of opal for almost every man on the fields, and she had strung them
+together, with a beautiful knobby Potch had made her a present of for
+her eighteenth birthday, a few days before, in the centre.
+
+Just as she had finished dressing, Mrs. Watty Frost called in the
+doorway: "Anybody at home?"
+
+"Come in," Mrs. George Woods replied.
+
+Mrs. Watty walked into the bedroom. She had a long slender parcel
+wrapped in brown paper in her hand, but nobody noticed it at the time.
+
+"My!" she exclaimed, staring at Sophie; "we are fine, aren't we?"
+
+Sophie caught up her long, cotton gloves and pirouetted in happy
+excitement.
+
+"Aren't we?" she cried gaily. "Just look at my gloves! Did ever you see
+such lovely long gloves, Mrs. Watty? And don't my ear-rings look nice?
+But it does feel funny wearing ear-rings, doesn't it? I want to be
+shaking my head all the time to make them joggle!"
+
+She shook her head. The blue and green fires of the stones leapt and
+sparkled. Her eyes seemed to catch fire from them. The women exchanged
+admiring glances.
+
+"Where's my handkerchief?" Sophie cried. "Father's late, isn't he? I'm
+sure we'll be late! How long will it take to drive over to Warria?--An
+hour? Goodness! And it'll be almost time for the dance to begin then!
+Oh, don't my shoes look nice, Maggie?"
+
+She looked down at her feet in the white cotton stockings and white
+canvas shoes, with ankle straps, which Maggie Grant had sent into Budda
+for. The hem of her skirt came just to her ankles. She played the new
+shoes in and out from under it in little dancing steps, and the women
+laughed at her, happy in her happiness.
+
+"But you haven't got a fan, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said.
+
+"A fan?" Sophie's eyes widened.
+
+"You should oughter have a fan. In my young days it wasn't considered
+decent to go to a ball without a fan," Mrs. Watty remarked grimly.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie looked from one to the other of her advisers.
+
+Mrs. George Woods was just going to say that it was a long time since
+Mrs. Watty's young days, when Mrs. Watty took the brown paper from the
+long, thin parcel she was carrying.
+
+"I thought most likely you wouldn't have one," she said, "so I brought
+this over."
+
+She unfurled an old-fashioned, long-handled, sandal-wood fan, with birds
+and flowers painted on the brown satin screen, and a little row of
+feathers along the top. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Grant exchanged
+glances that Mrs. Watty should pander to the vanity of an occasion.
+
+"Mrs. Watty!" Sophie took the fan with a little cry of delight.
+
+"My, aren't you a grown-up young lady now, Sophie?" Mrs. Woods
+exclaimed, as Sophie unfurled the fan.
+
+"But mind you take care of it, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said, stiffening
+against the relaxing atmosphere of goodwill and excitement. "Watty got
+it for me last trip he made to sea, before we was married, and I set a
+good deal of store by it."
+
+"Oh, I'll be ever so careful!" Sophie declared. She opened the fan.
+"Isn't it pretty?"
+
+Dropping into a chair, she murmured: "May I--have this dance with you,
+Miss Rouminof?" And casting a shy upward glance over her fan, as if
+answering for herself, "I don't mind if I do!"
+
+Martha and Mrs. Woods laughed heartily, recognising Arthur Henty's way
+of talking in the voice Sophie had imitated.
+
+"That's the way to do it, Sophie," Mrs. Woods said; "only you shouldn't
+say, 'Don't mind if I do,' but, 'It's a pleasure, I'm sure.'"
+
+"It's a pleasure, I'm sure," Sophie mimed.
+
+"Is she going to wear the dress over?" Mrs. Watty asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes," Maggie Grant said. "Bessie's lending her a dust-coat. I don't
+think it'll get crushed very much. You see, they won't arrive until it's
+nearly time for the dance to begin, and we thought it'd be better for us
+to help her to get fixed up. Everybody'll be so busy over at Warria--and
+we thought she mightn't be able to get anybody to do up her dress for
+her."
+
+"That's right," Mrs. Watty said.
+
+There was a rattle of wheels on the rough shingle near the hut.
+
+"Here's your father, Sophie," Martha called.
+
+"And Michael and Potch are in the kitchen wanting to have a look at you
+before you go, Sophie," Maggie Grant said.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie took the coat Mrs. Woods was lending her, and went out to
+the kitchen with it on her arm.
+
+Michael and Potch were there. They stared at her. But her radiant face,
+the shining eyes, and the little smile which hovered on her mouth, held
+their gaze more than the new white dress standing out in slight, stiff
+folds all round her. The vision of her--incomparable youth and
+loveliness she was to Michael--gripped him so that a moisture of love
+and reverence dimmed his eyes.... And Potch just stared and stared at
+her.
+
+Paul was bawling from the buggy outside:
+
+"Are you ready, Sophie? Sophie, are you ready?"
+
+Mrs. Woods held the dust-coat. Very carefully Sophie edged herself into
+it, and wrapped its nondescript buff-coloured folds over her dress. Then
+she put the pink woollen scarf Martha had brought over her head, and
+went out to the buggy. Her father was sitting aloft on the front seat,
+driving Sam Nancarrow's old roan mare, and looking spruce and well
+turned out in a new baggy suit which Michael had arranged for him to get
+in order to look more of a credit to Sophie at the ball.
+
+"See you take good care of her, Paul," Mrs. Grant called after him as
+they drove off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The drive across the plains seemed interminable to Sophie.
+
+Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went
+along. He called to Sam Nancarrow's old nag, quite pleased to be having
+a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially
+about this and other balls he had been to.
+
+Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said,
+and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. "I do
+look nice! I do look nice!" she assured herself.
+
+It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought
+she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs.
+Woods' ear-rings, and that old sash of her mother's. She was a little
+anxious, but very happy and excited.
+
+She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road
+or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then.
+He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle
+recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her
+in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of
+happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The
+sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to
+indigo as it climbed to the zenith.
+
+When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue
+from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted
+Burton, the station book-keeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with
+light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sand-papered,
+came out to meet them.
+
+"There you are, Rouminof!" he said. "Glad to see you. We were beginning
+to be afraid you weren't coming!"
+
+Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables.
+Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men
+were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was
+standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did
+not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup.
+But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his
+forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having
+regained his feet, hit out blindly.
+
+Potch had told Sophie what happened--she had made him find out in order
+to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first
+exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they
+said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully
+came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.
+
+"If anybody'd 've told me I'd treat you like that, Sophie, I'd 've
+killed him," he said. "I'd 've killed him.... You know how I feel about
+you--you know how we all feel about you--and for me to have served you
+like that--me that'd do anything in the world for you.... But it's no
+good trying to say any more. It's no good tryin' to explain. It's got me
+down...."
+
+He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable,
+that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It
+was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to
+see Bully like this.
+
+"It's all right, Bully," she said. "I know ... you weren't yourself ...
+and you didn't mean it."
+
+He started to his feet and came to stand beside her. Sophie put her hand
+in his; he gripped it hard, unable to say anything. Then, when he could
+control his voice, he said:
+
+"I went over to see Mr. Henty this morning ... and told him if anybody
+else 'd done what I did, I'd 've done what he did."
+
+Potch had said the men expected Bully would want to fight the thing out
+when he was sober, and it was a big thing for him to have done what he
+had. The punishing power of Bully's fists was well known, and he had
+taken this way of punishing himself. Sophie understood that, She was
+grateful and reconciled to him.
+
+"I'm glad, Bully," she said. "Let's forget all about it."
+
+So the matter ended. But it all came back to her as she saw the broken
+red line on Arthur Henty's forehead.
+
+She did not know that because of it she was an object of interest to the
+crowd on the veranda. News of Arthur Henty's bout with Bully Bryant had
+been very soon noised over the whole countryside. Most of the men who
+came to the ball from Langi-Eumina and other stations had gleaned varied
+and highly-coloured versions, and Arthur had been chaffed and twitted
+until he was sore and ashamed of the whole incident. He could not
+understand himself--the rush of rage, instinctive and unreasoning, which
+had overwhelmed him when he hit out at Bully.
+
+His mother protested that it was a shame to give Arthur such a bad time
+for what was, after all, merely the chivalrous impulse of any decent
+young man when a girl was treated lightly in his presence; but the men
+and the girls who were staying at the station laughed and teased all the
+more for the explanation. They pretended he was a very heroic and
+quixotic young man, and asked about Sophie--whether she was pretty, and
+whether it was true she sang well. They redoubled their efforts, and
+goaded him to a state of sulky silence, when they knew she was coming to
+the ball.
+
+Arthur Henty had been conscious for some time of an undercurrent within
+him drawing him to Sophie. He was afraid of, and resented it. He had not
+thought of loving her, or marrying her. He had gone to the tank paddock
+in the afternoons he knew she would be there, or had looked for her on
+the Warria road when she had been to the cemetery, with a sensation of
+drifting pleasantly. He had never before felt as he did when he was with
+Sophie, that life was a clear and simple thing--pleasant, too; that
+nothing could be better than walking over the plains through the limpid
+twilight. He had liked to see the fires of opal run in her eyes when she
+looked at him; to note the black lines on the outer rim of their
+coloured orbs; the black lashes set in silken skin of purest ivory; the
+curve of her chin and neck; the lines of her mouth, and the way she
+walked; all these things he had loved. But he did not want to have the
+responsibility of loving Sophie: he could not contemplate what wanting
+to marry her would mean in tempests and turmoil with his family.
+
+He had thought sometimes of a mediæval knight wandering through
+flowering fields with the girl on a horse beside him, in connection with
+Sophie and himself. A reproduction of the well-known picture of the
+knight and the girl hung in his mother's sitting-room. She had cut it
+out of a magazine, and framed it, because it pleased her; and beneath
+the picture, in fine print, Arthur had often read:
+
+          "I met a lady in the meads,
+               Full beautiful--a fairy's child;
+           Her hair was long, her foot was light,
+               And her eyes were wild.
+
+          "I set her on my pacing steed,
+               And nothing else saw all day long;
+           For sideways would she lean, and sing
+               A faery's song."
+
+As a small boy Arthur had been attracted by the picture, and his mother
+had told him its story, and had read him Keats' poem. He had read it
+ever so many times since then himself, and after he met Sophie in the
+tank paddock that afternoon she had ridden home on his horse, some of
+the verses haunted him with the thought of her. One day when they were
+sitting by the track and she had been singing to him, he had made a
+daisy chain and thrown it over her, murmuring sheepishly, in a caprice
+of tenderness:
+
+          "I made a garland for her head,
+               And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
+           She looked at me as she did love
+               And made sweet moan."
+
+Sophie had asked about the poem. She had wanted to hear more, and he had
+repeated as many verses as he could remember. When he had finished, she
+had looked at him "as she did love" indeed, with eyes of sweet
+confidence, yet withdrawing from him a little in shy and happy confusion
+that he should think of her as anyone like the lady of the meads, who
+was "full beautiful--a fairy's child."
+
+But Arthur did not want to love her; he did not want to marry her. He
+did not want to have rows with his father, differences with his mother.
+The affair at Newton's had shown him where he was going.
+
+Sophie was "a fairy's child," he decided. "Her hair as long, her foot
+was light, and her eyes were wild"; but he did not want to be "a
+wretched wight, alone and palely loitering" on her account; he did not
+want to marry her. He would close her eyes with "kisses four," he told
+himself, smiling at the precision of the knight of the chronicle;
+"kisses four"--no more--and be done with the business.
+
+Meanwhile, he wished Sophie were not coming to the ball. He would have
+given anything to prevent her coming; but he could do nothing.
+
+He had thought of escaping from the ball by going to the out-station
+with the men; but his mother, foreseeing something of his intention, had
+given him so much to do at the homestead for her, that he could not go
+away. When the buggy with Sophie and her father drove up to the veranda,
+there was a chorus of suppressed exclamations among the assembled
+guests.
+
+"Here she is, Art!"
+
+"Buck up, old chap! None but the brave, etc."
+
+Sophie did not hear the undertone of laughter and raillery which greeted
+her arrival. She was quite unconscious that the people on the veranda
+were interested in her at all, as she walked across the courtyard
+listening to Mr. Burton's amiable commonplaces.
+
+When Mr. Burton left her in a small room with chintz-covered chairs and
+dressing-table, Sophie took off her old dust-coat and the pink scarf she
+had tied over her hair. The mirror was longer than Mrs. Woods'. Her
+dress looked very crushed when she saw it reflected. She tried to shake
+out the creases. Her hair, too, was flat, and had blown into stringy
+ends. A shade of disappointment dimmed the brightness of her mood as she
+realised she was not looking nearly as nice as she had when she left the
+Ridge.
+
+Someone said: "May I come in?" and Polly Henty and another girl entered
+the room.
+
+Polly Henty had just left school. She was a round-faced, jolly-looking
+girl of about Sophie's own age, and the girl with her was not much
+older, pretty and sprightly, an inch or so taller than Polly, and
+slight. She had grey eyes, and a fluff of dry-grass coloured hair about
+a small, sharp-featured, fresh-complexioned face, neatly powdered.
+
+Sophie knew something was wrong with her clothes the moment she
+encountered the girls' curious and patronising glances as they came into
+the room. Their appearance, too, took the skin from her vanity. Polly
+had on a frock of silky white crêpe, with no lace or decoration of any
+kind, except a small gold locket and chain which she was wearing. But
+her dress fell round her in graceful folds, showing her small,
+well-rounded bust and hips, and she had on silk stockings and white
+satin slippers. The other girl's frock was of pale pink, misty material,
+so thin that her shoulders and arms showed through it as though there
+were nothing on them. She had pinned a pink rose in her hair, too, so
+that its petals just lay against the nape of her neck. Sophie thought
+she had never seen anyone look so nice. She had never dreamed of such a
+dress.
+
+"Oh, Miss Rouminof," Polly said; "mother sent me to look for you. We're
+just ready to start, and your father wants you to turn over his music
+for him."
+
+Sophie stood up, conscious that her dress was nothing like as pretty as
+she had thought it. It stood out stiffly about her: the starched
+petticoat crackled as she moved. She knew the lace should not have been
+on her sleeves; that her shoes were of canvas, and creaked as she
+walked; that her cotton gloves, and even the heavy, old-fashioned fan
+she was carrying, were not what they ought to have been.
+
+"Miss Chelmsford--Miss Rouminof," Polly said, looking from Sophie to the
+girl in the pink dress.
+
+Sophie said: "How do you do?" gravely, and put out her hand.
+
+"Oh!... How do you do?" Miss Chelmsford responded hurriedly, and as if
+just remembering she, too, had a hand.
+
+Sophie went with Polly and her friend to the veranda, which was screened
+in on one side with hessian to form a ball-room. Behind the hessian the
+walls were draped with flags, sheaves of paper daisies, and bundles of
+Darling pea. Red paper lanterns swung from the roof, threw a rosy glare
+over the floor which had been polished until it shone like burnished
+metal.
+
+Polly Henty took Sophie to the piano where Mrs. Henty was playing the
+opening bars of a waltz. Paul beside her, his violin under his arm,
+stood looking with eager interest over the room where men and girls were
+chatting in little groups.
+
+Mrs. Henty nodded and smiled to Sophie. Her father signalled to her, and
+she went to a seat near him.
+
+Holding her hands over the piano, Mrs. Henty looked to Paul to see if he
+were ready. He lifted his violin, tucked it under his chin, drew his
+bow, and the piano and violin broke gaily, irregularly, uncertainly, at
+first, into a measure which set and kept the couples swaying round the
+edge of the ball-room.
+
+Sophie watched them at first, dazed and interested. Under the glow of
+the lanterns, the figures of the dancers looked strange and solemn. Some
+of the dancers were moving without any conscious effort, just skimming
+the floor like swallows; others were working hard as they danced. Tom
+Henderson held Elizabeth Henty as if he never intended to let go of her,
+and worked her arm up and down as if it were a semaphore.
+
+Sophie had always admired Arthur's eldest sister, and she thought
+Elizabeth the most beautiful-looking person she had ever seen this
+evening. And that pink dress--how pretty it was! What had Polly said her
+name was--the girl who wore it? Phyllis ... Phyllis Chelmsford....
+Sophie watched the dress flutter among the dancers some time before she
+noticed Miss Chelmsford was dancing with Arthur Henty.
+
+She watched the couples revolving, dazed, and thinking vaguely about
+them, noticing how pretty feet looked in satin slippers with high,
+curved heels, wondering why some men danced with stiff knees and others
+as if their knees had funny-bones like their elbows. The red light from
+the lanterns made the whole scene look unreal; she felt as if she were
+dreaming.
+
+"Sophie!" her father cried sharply.
+
+She turned his page. Her eyes wandered to Mrs. Henty, who sat with her
+back to her. Sophie contemplated the bow of her back in its black frock
+with Spanish lace scarf across it, the outline of the black lace on the
+wrinkled skin of Mrs. Henty's neck, the loose, upward wave of her crisp
+white hair, glinting silverly where the light caught it. Her face was
+cobwebbed with wrinkles, but her features remained delicate and fine as
+sculpturings in ancient ivory. Her eyes were bright: the sparkle of
+youth still leapt in them. Her eyes had a slight smile of secret
+sympathy and amusement as they flew over the roomful of people dancing.
+
+Sophie watched dance after dance, while the music jingled and jangled.
+
+Presently John Armitage appeared in the doorway with Nina Henty. Sophie
+heard him apologising to Mrs. Henty for being late, and explaining that
+he had stayed in the back-country a few days longer than usual for the
+express purpose of coming to the ball.
+
+Mrs. Henty replied that it was "better late than never," and a pleasure
+to see Mr. Armitage at any time; and then he and Nina joined the throng
+of the dancers.
+
+Sophie drew her chair further back so that the piano screened her. The
+disappointment and stillness which had descended upon her since she came
+into the room tightened and settled. She had thought Arthur would surely
+come to ask her for this dance; but when the waltz began she saw he was
+dancing again with Phyllis Chelmsford. She sat very still, holding
+herself so that she should not feel a pain which was hovering in the
+background of her consciousness and waiting to grip her.
+
+It was different, this sitting on a chair by herself and watching other
+people dance, to anything that had ever happened to her. She had always
+been the centre of Ridge balls, courted and made a lot of from the
+moment she came into the hall. Even Arthur Henty had had to shoulder his
+way if he wanted a waltz with her.
+
+As the crowd brushed and swirled round the room, it became all blurred
+to Sophie. The last rag of that mood of tremulous joyousness which had
+invested her as she drove over the plains to the ball with her father,
+left her. She sat very still; she could not see for a moment. The waltz
+broke because she did not hear her father when he called her to turn the
+page of his music; he knocked over his stand trying to turn the page
+himself, and exclaimed angrily when Sophie did not jump to pick it up
+for him.
+
+After that she watched his book of music with an odd calm. She scarcely
+looked at the dancers, praying for the time to come when the ball would
+end and she could go home. The hours were heavy and dead; she thought it
+would never be midnight or morning again. She was conscious of her
+crushed dress and cotton gloves, and Mrs. Watty's big, old-fashioned
+fan; but after the first shock of disappointment she was not ashamed of
+them. She sat very straight and still in the midst of her finery; but
+she put the fan on the chair behind her, and took off her gloves in
+order to turn over the pages of her father's music more expertly.
+
+She knew now she was not going to dance. She understood she had not been
+invited as a guest like everybody else; but as the fiddler's little girl
+to turn over his music for him. And when she was not watching the music,
+she sat down in her chair beyond the piano, hoping no one would see or
+speak to her.
+
+Mrs. Henty spoke to her occasionally. Once she called pleasantly:
+
+"Come here and let me look at your opals, child."
+
+Sophie went to her, and Mrs. Henty lifted the necklace.
+
+"What splendid stones!" she said.
+
+Sophie looked into those bright eyes, very like Arthur's, with the same
+shifting sands in them, but alien to her, she thought.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. She did not feel inclined to tell Mrs. Henty
+about the stones.
+
+Mrs. Henty admired the ear-rings, and looked appreciatively at the big
+flat stone in Mrs. Grant's brooch. Sophie coloured under her attention.
+She wished she had not worn the opals that did not belong to her.
+
+Looking into Sophie's face, Mrs. Henty became aware of its sensitive,
+unformed beauty, a beauty of expression rather than features, and of a
+something indefinable which cast a glamour over the girl. She had been
+considerably disturbed by Arthur's share in the brawl at Newton's. It
+was so unlike Arthur to show fight of any sort. If it had not happened
+after she had sent the invitation, Mrs. Henty would not have spoken of
+Sophie when she asked Rouminof to play at the ball. As it was, she was
+not sorry to see what manner of girl she was.
+
+But as Sophie held a small, quiet face before her, with chin slightly
+uplifted, and eyes steady and measuring, a little disdainful despite
+their pain and surprise, Mrs. Henty realised it was a shame to have
+brought this girl to the ball, in order to inspect her; to discover what
+Arthur thought of her, and not in order that she might have a good time
+like other girls. After all, she was young and used to having a good
+time. Mrs. Henty heard enough of Ridge gossip to know any man on the
+mines thought the world of Sophie Rouminof. She had seen them eager to
+dance with her at race balls. It was not fair to have side-tracked her
+about Arthur, Mrs. Henty confessed to herself. The fine, clear innocence
+which looked from Sophie's eyes accused her. It made her feel mean and
+cruel. She was disturbed by a sensation of guilt.
+
+Paul was fidgeting at the first bars of the next dance, and, knowing the
+long programme to go through, Mrs. Henty's hand fell from Sophie's
+necklace, and Sophie went back to her chair.
+
+But Mrs. Henty's thoughts wandered on the themes she had raised. She
+played absent-mindedly, her fingers skipping and skirling on the notes.
+She was realising what she had done. She had not meant to be cruel, she
+protested: she had just wished to know how Arthur felt about the girl.
+If he had wanted to dance with her, there was nothing to prevent him.
+
+Arthur was dancing again with Phyllis, she noticed. She was a little
+annoyed. He was overdoing the thing. And Phyllis was a minx! That was
+the fourth time she had slipped and Arthur had held her up, the rose in
+her hair brushing his cheek.
+
+"Mother!" Polly called. "For goodness' sake ... what are you dreaming
+of?"
+
+The music had gone to the pace of Mrs. Henty's reverie until Polly
+called. Then Mrs. Henty splashed out her chords and marked her rhythm
+more briskly.
+
+After all, Mrs. Henty concluded, if Arthur and Phyllis had taken a fancy
+to each, other--at last--and were getting on, she could not afford to
+espouse the other girl's cause. What good would it do? She wanted Arthur
+to marry Phyllis. His father did. Phyllis was the only daughter of old
+Chelmsford, of Yuina Yuina, whose cattle sales were the envy of
+pastoralists on both sides of the Queensland border. Phyllis's
+inheritance and the knowledge that the interests of Warria were allied
+to those of Andrew Chelmsford of Yuina, would ensure a new lease of hope
+and opportunity for Warria.... Whereas it would be worse than awful if
+Arthur contemplated anything like marriage with this girl from the
+Ridge.
+
+Mrs. Henty's conscience was uneasy all the same. When the dance was
+ended, she called Arthur to her.
+
+"For goodness' sake, dear, ask that child to dance with you," she said
+when he came to her. "She's been sitting here all the evening by
+herself."
+
+"I was just going to," Sophie heard Arthur say.
+
+He came towards her.
+
+"Will you have the next dance with me, Sophie?" he asked.
+
+She did not look at him.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Oh, I say----" He sat down beside her. "I've had to dance with these
+people who are staying with us," he added awkwardly.
+
+Her eyes turned to him, all the stormy fires of opal running in them.
+
+"You don't _have_ to dance with me," she said.
+
+He got up and stood indecisively a moment.
+
+"Of course not," he said, "but I want to."
+
+"I don't want to dance with you," Sophie said.
+
+He turned away from her, went down the ball-room, and out through the
+doorway in the hessian wall. Everyone had gone to supper. Mrs. Henty had
+left the piano. Paul himself had gone to have some refreshment which was
+being served in the dining-room across the courtyard. From the square,
+washed with the silver radiance of moonlight which she could see through
+the open space in the hessian, came a tinkle of glasses and spoons,
+fragments of talking and laughter. Sophie heard a clear, girlish voice
+cry: "Oh, Arthur!"
+
+She clenched her hands; she thought that she was going to cry; but
+stiffening against the inclination, she sat fighting down the pain which
+was gripping her, and longed for the time to come when she could go home
+and be out in the dark, alone.
+
+John Armitage entered the ball-room as if looking for someone. Glancing
+in the direction of the piano, he saw Sophie.
+
+"There you are, Sophie!" he exclaimed heartily. "And, would you believe
+it, I've only just discovered you were here."
+
+He sat down beside her, and talked lightly, kindly, for a moment. But
+Sophie was in no mood for talking. John Armitage had guessed something
+of her crisis when he came into the room and found her sitting by
+herself. He had seen the affair at Newton's, and knew enough of Fallen
+Star gossip to understand how Sophie would resent Arthur Henty's
+treatment of her. He could see she was a sorely hurt little creature,
+holding herself together, but throbbing with pain and anger. She could
+not talk; she could only think of Arthur Henty, whose voice they heard
+occasionally out of doors. He was more than jolly after supper. Armitage
+had seen him swallow nearly a glassful of raw whisky. His face had gone
+a ghastly white after it. Rouminof had been drinking too. He came into
+the room unsteadily when Mrs. Henty took her seat at the piano again;
+but he played better.
+
+Armitage's eyes went to her necklace.
+
+"What lovely stones, Sophie!" he said.
+
+Sophie looked up. "Yes, aren't they? The men gave them to me--there's a
+stone for every one. This is Michael's!"--she touched each stone as she
+named it--"Potch gave me that, and Bully Bryant that."
+
+Her eyes caught Armitage's with a little smile.
+
+"It's easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge," he said. "And here
+am I--come hundreds of miles ... can't get anything like that piece of
+stuff in your brooch."
+
+"That's Mrs. Grant's," Sophie confessed.
+
+"And your ear-rings, Sophie!" Armitage said. "'Clare to goodness,' as my
+old nurse used to say, I didn't think you could look such a witch. But I
+always have said black opal ear-rings would make a witch of a New
+England spinster."
+
+Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he
+looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and
+appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.
+
+Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was
+an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have,
+of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so
+extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in
+this out-of-the-way part of the world.
+
+John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world's contempt for churlish
+treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have
+permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying
+Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in
+distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her
+defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her
+disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.
+
+"May I have the next dance, Sophie?" he inquired.
+
+Sophie glanced up at him.
+
+"I'm not dancing," she said.
+
+Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his
+resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her ear-rings
+swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked
+more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the
+opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the
+room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.
+
+"Why aren't you dancing, Sophie?" John Armitage asked.
+
+His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.
+
+"No one asked me to, until the dance before supper--then I didn't want
+to," she said.
+
+The dance was already in motion.
+
+"You'll have this one with me, won't you?"
+
+John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. "Please!"
+he insisted.
+
+Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held
+her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will
+not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and
+when
+
+
+the music stopped, Mr. Armitage took her through the doorway into the
+moonlight with the other couples. They walked to the garden where, the
+orange trees were in blossom.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie breathed, her arm still on his, and a little giddy.
+
+The earth was steeped in purest radiance; the orange blossoms swam like
+stars on the dark bushes; their fragrance filled the air.
+
+Sophie held up her face as if to drink. "Isn't it lovely?" she murmured.
+
+A black butterfly with white etchings on his wings hovered over an
+orange bush they were standing near, as if bewildered by the moonlight
+and mistaking it for the light of a strange day.
+
+Armitage spread his handkerchief on a wooden seat.
+
+"I thought you'd like it," he said. "Let's sit here--I've put down my
+handkerchief because there's a dew, although the air seems so dry."
+
+When the music began again Sophie got up.
+
+"Don't let us go in yet," he begged.
+
+"But----" she demurred.
+
+"We'll stay here for this, and have the next dance," Armitage said.
+
+Sophie hesitated. She wondered why Mr. Armitage was being so nice to
+her, understanding a little. She smiled into his eyes, dallying with the
+temptation. John Armitage had seen women's eyes like that before; then
+fall to the appeal of his own. But in Sophie's eyes he found something
+he had not seen very often--a will-o'the-wisp of infinite wispishness
+which incited him to pursue and to insist, while it eluded and flew from
+him.
+
+When she danced with John Armitage again, Sophie looked up, laughed, and
+played her eyes and smiles for him as she had seen Phyllis Chelmsford do
+for Arthur. At first, shyly, she had exerted herself to please him, and
+Armitage had responded to her tentative efforts; but presently she found
+herself enjoying the game. And Armitage was so surprised at the charm
+she revealed as she exerted herself to please him, that he responded
+with an enthusiasm he had not contemplated. But their mutual success at
+this oldest diversion in the world, while it surprised and delighted
+them, did not delight their hosts. Mr. and Mrs. Henty were surprised;
+then frankly scandalised. Several young men asked Sophie to dance with
+them after she had danced with John Armitage. She thanked them, but
+refused, saying she did not wish to dance very much. She sat in her
+chair by the piano except when she was dancing with Mr. Armitage, or was
+in the garden with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+"See Ed. means to do you well with a six-horse team this evening, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said, while Armitage was having his early meal
+before starting on his all-night drive into Budda.
+
+Newton remembered afterwards that John Armitage did not seem as
+interested and jolly as usual. Ordinarily he was interested in
+everything, and cordial with everybody; but this evening he was quiet
+and preoccupied.
+
+"Hardly had a word to say for himself," Peter Newton said.
+
+Armitage had watched Ed. bring the old bone-shaking shandrydan he called
+a coach up to the hotel, and put a couple of young horses into it. He
+had a colt on the wheel he was breaking-in, and a sturdy old dark bay
+beside him, a pair of fine rusty bays ahead of them, and a sorrel, and
+chestnut youngster in the lead. He had got old Olsen and two men on the
+hotel veranda to help him harness-up, and it took them all their time to
+get the leaders into the traces. Bags had to be thrown over the heads of
+the young horses before anything could be done with them, and it took
+three men to hold on to the team until Ed. Ventry got into his seat and
+gathered up the reins. Armitage put his valise on the coach and shook
+hands all round. He got into his seat beside Ed. and wrapped a tarpaulin
+lined with possum skin over his knees.
+
+"Let her go, Olly," Ed. yelled.
+
+The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses' heads.
+The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the
+steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to
+throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders
+dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle
+and clash of gear, Ed. Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands,
+pulling on them, and yelling:
+
+"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders--yer! I'll warm yer....
+Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get
+alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"
+
+Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of
+the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at
+any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon
+took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and
+they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was
+reached.
+
+"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards.
+"Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that
+day he was dead quiet."
+
+"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.
+
+"'No, Ed,' he says.
+
+"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you
+got this trip?'
+
+"'No,' he says. But, by God--if I'd known what he got----"
+
+It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six
+o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning
+train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at
+the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train
+left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and
+scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding
+in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.
+
+"Could've swore I left Baldy at the Ridge," he said to the boy who
+looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.
+
+"Thought he was there meself," the lad replied, imitating Ed.'s
+perplexed head-scratching.
+
+At the Ridge, when he made his next trip, they were able to tell Mr.
+Ventry how the baldy-face happened to be at Budda when Ed. thought he
+was at Fallen Star, although Ed. heard some of the explanation from
+Potch and Michael a day or two later. Sophie had ridden the baldy-face
+into Budda the night he drove Mr. Armitage to catch the train for
+Sydney. No one discovered she had gone until the end of next day. Then
+Potch went to Michael.
+
+"Michael," he said; "she's gone."
+
+During the evening Paul had been heard calling Sophie. He asked Potch
+whether he had seen her. Potch said he had not. But it was nothing
+unusual for Sophie to wander off for a day on an excursion with Ella or
+Mirry Flail, so neither he nor Michael thought much of not having seen
+her all day, until Paul remarked querulously to Potch that he did not
+know where Sophie was. Looking into her room Potch saw her bed had not
+been slept in, although the room was disordered. He went up to the town,
+to Mrs. Newton and to the Flails', to ask whether they had seen anything
+of Sophie. Mirry Flail said she had seen her on one of the coach-stable
+horses, riding out towards the Three Mile the evening before. Potch knew
+instinctively that Sophie had gone away from the moment Paul had spoken
+to him. She had lived away from him during the last few months; but
+watching her with always anxious, devout eyes, he had known more of her
+than anyone else.
+
+Lying full stretch on his sofa, Michael was reading when Potch came into
+the hut. His stricken face communicated the seriousness of his news.
+Michael had no reason to ask who the "she" Potch spoke of was: there was
+only one woman for whom Potch would look like that. But Michael's mind
+was paralysed by the shock of the thing Potch had said. He could neither
+stir nor speak.
+
+"I'm riding into Budda, to find out if she went down by the train,"
+Potch said. "I think she did, Michael. She's been talking about going to
+Sydney ... a good deal lately.... She was asking me about it--day before
+yesterday ... but I never thought--I never thought she wanted to go so
+soon ... and that she'd go like this. But I think she has gone.... And
+she was afraid to tell us--to let you know.... She said you'd made up
+your mind you didn't want her to go ... she'd heard her mother tell you
+not to let her go, and if ever she was going she wouldn't tell you...."
+
+Potch's explanation, broken and incoherent as it was, gave Michael's
+thought and feeling time to reassert themselves.
+
+He said: "See if Chassy can lend me his pony, and I'll come with you,
+Potch."
+
+They rode into Budda that night, and inquiry from the station-master
+gave them the information they sought. A girl in a black frock had taken
+a second-class ticket for Sydney. He did not notice very much what she
+was like. She had come to the window by herself; she had no luggage; he
+had seen her later sitting in a corner of a second-class compartment by
+herself. The boy, a stranger to the district, who had clipped her
+ticket, said she was crying when he asked for her ticket. He had asked
+why she was crying. She had said she was going away, and she did not
+like going away from the back-country. She was going away--to study
+singing, she said, but would be coming back some day.
+
+Michael determined to go to Sydney by the morning train to try to find
+Sophie. He went to Ed. Ventry and borrowed five pounds from him.
+
+"That explains how the baldy-face got here," Ed. said.
+
+Michael nodded. He could not talk about Sophie. Potch explained why they
+wanted the money as well as he could.
+
+"It's no good trying to bring her back if she doesn't want to come,
+Michael," Potch had said before Michael left for Sydney.
+
+"No," Michael agreed.
+
+"If you could get her fixed up with somebody to stay with," Potch
+suggested; "and see she was all right for money ... it might be the best
+thing to do. I've got a bit of dough put by, Michael.... I'll send that
+down to you and go over to one of the stations for a while to keep us
+goin'--if we want more."
+
+Michael assented.
+
+"You might try round and see if you could find Mr. Armitage," Potch
+said, just before the train went. "He might have seen something of her."
+
+"Yes," Michael replied, drearily.
+
+Potch waited until the train left, and started back to Fallen Star in
+the evening.
+
+A week later a letter came for Michael. It was in Sophie's handwriting.
+Potch was beside himself with anxiety and excitement. He wrote to
+Michael, care of an opal-buyer they were on good terms with and who
+might know where Michael was staying. In the bewilderment of his going,
+Potch had not thought to ask Michael where he would live, or where a
+letter would find him.
+
+Michael came back to Fallen Star when he received the letter. He had not
+seen Sophie. No one he knew or had spoken to had seen anything of her
+after she left the train. Michael handed the letter to Potch as soon as
+he got back into the hut.
+
+Sophie wrote that she had gone away because she wanted to learn to be a
+singer, and that she would be on her way to America when they received
+it. She explained that she had made up her mind to go quite suddenly,
+and she had not wanted Michael to know because she remembered his
+promise to her mother. She knew he would not let her go away from the
+Ridge if he could help it. She had sold her necklace, she said, and had
+got £100 for it, so had plenty of money. Potch and Michael were not to
+worry about her. She would be all right, and when she had made a name
+for herself as a singer, she would come home to the Ridge to see them.
+"Don't be angry, Michael dear," the letter ended, "with your lovingest
+Sophie."
+
+Potch looked at Michael; he wondered whether the thought in his own mind
+had reached Michael's. But
+
+Michael was too dazed and overwhelmed to think at all.
+
+"There's one thing, Potch," he said; "if she's gone to America, we could
+write to Mr. Armitage and ask him to keep an eye on her. And," he added,
+"if she's gone to America ... it's just likely she may be on the same
+boat as Mr. Armitage, and he'd look after her."
+
+Potch watched his face. The thought in his mind had not occurred to
+Michael, then, he surmised.
+
+"He'd see she came to no harm."
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+But he had seen John Armitage talking to Sophie on the Ridge over near
+Snow-Shoes' hut the afternoon after the dance at Warria. He knew Mr.
+Armitage had driven Sophie home after the dance, too. Paul had been too
+drunk to stand, much less drive. Potch had knocked off early in the mine
+to go across to the Three Mile that afternoon. Then it had surprised
+Potch to see Sophie sitting and talking to Mr. Armitage as though they
+were very good friends; but, beyond a vague, jealous alarm, he had not
+attached any importance to it until he knew Sophie had gone down to
+Sydney by the same train as Mr. Armitage. She had said she was going to
+America, too, and he was going there. Potch had lived all his days on
+the Ridge; he knew nothing of the world outside, and its ways, except
+what he had learnt from books. But an instinct where Sophie was
+concerned had warned him of a link between her going away and John
+Armitage. That meeting of theirs came to have an extraordinary
+significance in his mind. He had thought out the chances of Sophie's
+having gone with Mr. Armitage as far as he could. But Michael had not
+associated her going with him, it was clear. It had never occurred to
+him that Mr. Armitage could have anything to do with Sophie's going
+away. It had not occurred to the rest of the Ridge folk either.
+
+Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as
+he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her
+as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having
+gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be
+able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.
+
+"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said,
+"then she'll send for you."
+
+"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time
+here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."
+
+Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then,
+for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing
+him through the delirium of sun-stroke.
+
+A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers--Jun Johnson
+and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him--and
+Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been
+down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.
+
+When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found
+Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.
+
+"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You
+think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well,
+you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof
+is--here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If
+I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face
+round here for a bit? Not much...."
+
+Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to
+his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage
+he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.
+
+"I know you chaps--I know how you feel about things; and quite right,
+too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that--why, he's not fit to wipe
+your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let
+run with the rest."
+
+He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business
+than any man-jack of you--no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is
+bygones--that's my motto. But I tell you--and that's the strength of
+it--I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man
+here. D'y' believe me?"
+
+It was said in good earnest enough, even Watty and George had to admit.
+It was either the best bit of bluff they had ever listened to, or else
+Jun, for once in a way, was enjoying the luxury of telling the truth.
+
+"We're all good triers here, Jun," George said, "but we're not as green
+as we're painted."
+
+Jun regarded his beer meditatively; then he said:
+
+"Look here, you chaps, suppose I put it to you straight: I ain't always
+been what you might call the clean potato ... but I ain't always been
+married, either. Well, I'm married now--married to the best little girl
+ever I struck...."
+
+The idea of Jun taking married life seriously amused two or three of the
+men. Smiles began to go round, and broadened as he talked. That they did
+not please Jun was evident.
+
+"Well, seein' I've taken on family responsibilities," he went on--"Was
+you smiling, Watty?"
+
+"Me? Oh, no, Jun," the offender replied, meekly; "it was only the
+stummick-ache took me. It does that way sometimes. You mightn't think
+so, but I always look as if I was smilin' when I've got the
+stummick-ache."
+
+George Woods, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and some of the others laughed,
+taking Watty's explanation for what it was worth. But Jun continued
+solemnly, playing the reformed blackguard to his own satisfaction.
+
+"Seein' I've taken on family responsibilities, I want to run straight. I
+don't want my kids to think there was anything crook about their dad."
+
+If he moved no one else, he contrived to feel deeply moved himself at
+the prospect of how his unborn children were going to regard him. The
+men who had always more or less believed in him managed to convince
+themselves that Jun meant what he said. George and Watty realised he had
+put up a good case, that he was getting at them in the only way
+possible.
+
+Michael moved out of the crowd round the door towards the bar. Peter
+Newton put his daily ration of beer on the bar.
+
+"'Lo, Michael," Jun said.
+
+"'Lo, Jun," Michael said.
+
+"Well," Jun concluded, tossing off his beer; "that's the way it is,
+boys. Believe me if y'r like, and if y'r don't like--lump it.
+
+"But there's one thing more I've got to tell you," he added; "and if you
+find what I've been saying hard to believe, you'll find this harder: I
+don't believe Charley got those stones of Rummy's."
+
+"What?"
+
+The query was like the crack of a whip-lash. There was a restive,
+restless movement among the men.
+
+"I don't believe Charley got those stones either," Jun declared. "'Got,'
+I said, not 'took.' All I know is, he was like a sick fish when he
+reached Sydney ... and sold all the opal he had with him. He was lively
+enough when we started out. I give you that. Maybe he took Rum-Enough's
+stones all right; but somebody put it over on him. I thought it might be
+Emmy--that yeller-haired tart, you remember, went down with us. She was
+a tart, and no mistake. My little girl, now--she was never ... like
+that! But Maud says she doesn't think so, because Emmy turned Charley
+out neck and crop when she found he'd got no cash. He got mighty little
+for the bit of stone he had with him ... I'll take my oath. He came
+round to borrow from me a day or two after we arrived. And he was ragin'
+mad about something.... If he shook the stones off Rum-Enough, it's my
+belief somebody shook them off of him, either in the train or here--or
+off of Rummy before he got them...."
+
+Several of the men muttered and grunted their protest. But Jun held to
+his point, and the talk became more general. Jun asked for news of the
+fields: what had been done, and who was getting the stuff. Somebody said
+John Armitage had been up and had bought a few nice stones from the
+Crosses, Pony-Fence, and Bully Bryant.
+
+"Armitage?" Jun said. "He's always a good man--gives a fair price. He
+bought my stones, that last lot ... gave me a hundred pounds for the big
+knobby. But it fair took my breath away to hear young Sophie Rouminof
+had gone off with him."
+
+Michael was standing beside him before the words were well out of his
+mouth.
+
+"What did you say?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm sorry, Michael," Jun replied, after a quick, scared glance at the
+faces of the men about him. "But I took it for granted you all knew, of
+course. We saw them a good bit together down in Sydney, Maud and me, and
+she said she saw Sophie on the _Zealanida_ the day the boat sailed. Maud
+was down seeing a friend off, and she saw Sophie and Mr. Armitage on
+board. She said--"
+
+Michael turned heavily, and swung out of the bar.
+
+Jun looked after him. In the faces of the men he read what a bomb his
+news had been among them.
+
+"I wouldn't have said that for a lot," he said, "if I'd 've thought
+Michael didn't know. But, Lord, I thought he knew ... I thought you all
+knew."
+
+In the days which followed, as he wandered over the plains in the late
+afternoon and evening, Michael tried to come to some understanding with
+himself of what had happened. At first he had been too overcast by the
+sense of loss to realise more than that Sophie had gone away. But now,
+beyond her going, he could see the failure of his own effort to control
+circumstances. He had failed; Sophie had gone; she had left the Ridge.
+
+"God," he groaned; "with the best intentions in the world, what an awful
+mess we make of things!"
+
+Michael wondered whether it would have been worse for Sophie if she had
+gone away with Paul when her mother died. At least, Sophie was older now
+and better able to take care of herself.
+
+He blamed himself because she had gone away as she had, all the same;
+the failure of the Ridge to hold her as well as his own failure beat him
+to the earth. He had hoped Sophie would care for the things her mother
+had cared for. He had tried to explain them to her. But Sophie, he
+thought now, had more the restless temperament of her father. He had not
+understood her young spirit, its craving for music, laughter,
+admiration, and the life that could give them to her. He had thought the
+Ridge would be enough for her, as it had been for her mother.
+
+Michael never thought of Mrs. Rouminof as dead. He thought of her as
+though she were living some distance from him, that was all. In the
+evening he looked up at the stars, and there was one in which she seemed
+to be. Always he felt as if she were looking at him when its mild
+radiance fell over him. And now he looked to that star as if trying to
+explain and beg forgiveness.
+
+His heart was sore because Sophie had left him without a word of
+affection or any explanation. His fear and anxiety for her gave him no
+peace. He sweated in agony with them for a long time, crying to her
+mother, praying her to believe he had not failed in his trust through
+lack of desire to serve her, but through a fault of understanding. If
+she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained
+that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with
+the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and
+sorrow for herself.
+
+Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by
+seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother's way. He had opposed
+the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it;
+and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise
+and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into
+channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas
+identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the
+hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.
+
+Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted
+Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from
+Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding
+Paul's opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would
+not do Sophie any harm.... His having them now could not injure
+Sophie.... Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he
+came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He
+tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always
+with him.... But Paul was delirious with sun-stroke, he remembered; it
+would be foolish to give him the stones just then.... As soon as that
+touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the
+opals and explain how he came to have them....
+
+
+
+
+_PART II_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes
+blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms
+continued until March.
+
+Through the heat came the baa-ing of sheep on the plains, moving in
+great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying
+of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from
+the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were
+marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the
+road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust
+from the plains.
+
+It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather.
+Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of
+it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was
+dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before
+the heat of the day began.
+
+In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump,
+handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone,
+shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of
+the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air.
+But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay,
+moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers
+stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up
+from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the
+busy underground world of the mines.
+
+As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul
+when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium
+of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it.
+Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning;
+he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with
+Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open
+sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once,
+in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti--the
+yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard
+near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the
+goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch
+saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or
+cheese for the two huts.
+
+People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they
+regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch
+Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of.
+And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of
+his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if
+he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so.
+He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself
+did.
+
+A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought
+much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little
+bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had
+rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff
+of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself
+was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of
+the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody
+who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find
+eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all
+the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house,
+thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.
+
+"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't
+anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael
+for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.
+
+George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for
+Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when
+Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder
+than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.
+
+At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the
+brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of
+the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying
+nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds
+with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there
+was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or
+knew something of.
+
+Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the
+old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real
+friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was
+that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a
+subtle, inexplicable fascination.
+
+As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had
+left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm
+comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it,
+there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."
+
+Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe
+Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would
+be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year.
+George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the
+Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to
+prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and
+rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be
+driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what
+his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and
+Son and men of the Ridge.
+
+When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George.
+
+"DEAR BRADY," it said, "I need hardly say your letter was a great shock
+to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he
+denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since
+found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her
+passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to
+leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy
+production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of
+this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power.
+Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment
+of my son's behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations
+between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I
+need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me
+personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my
+business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the
+best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady--whom I will regard as
+under my charge--you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps
+point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to
+visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to
+visit sins of the children upon the fathers.
+
+"Yours very truly,
+
+"DAWE P. ARMITAGE."
+
+"The old man seems fair broken up," Watty remarked.
+
+"Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with
+Armitage and Son--again," George replied. "If she's all right ... well
+... perhaps it'll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn't get on
+all right ... they won't neither."
+
+"That's right," Watty muttered.
+
+The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for
+hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had
+crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes
+of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains,
+and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in
+tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man
+and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light;
+the sky, dim, and smoking with heat.
+
+Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with
+sun-stroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to
+eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for
+some time, and a haze the sun-stroke had left hovered over his mind.
+Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping,
+Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle,
+and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or
+dozed the hot, still, midday hours away.
+
+When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which
+came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to
+make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put
+before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one
+day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched
+Potch with the birds.
+
+Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay
+on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until
+Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation
+of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or white-tail,
+to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was
+a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would
+be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to
+have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and
+entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not
+their common property.
+
+When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for
+granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had
+his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion
+which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and
+assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had
+at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived
+down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing
+for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had
+found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep,
+mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken
+from other loves.
+
+Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give
+to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him.
+He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to
+tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was
+holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance
+tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his
+mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.
+
+Paul's illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about
+the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his
+touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits
+again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let
+him know how he came to have them.
+
+All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the
+opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch's belief in him,
+and for not telling Potch how Paul's opals came into his possession.
+
+In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the
+troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed
+words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the
+stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton's bar. Suddenly it
+occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the
+package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of
+books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.
+
+He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul's
+cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his
+books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he
+found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the
+box--only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.
+
+Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none
+had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough
+handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again
+more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were
+all right while he was about it, he thought.
+
+He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table.
+Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin;
+and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted
+them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the
+candle-light. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in--a piece of
+opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its
+black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless
+night.
+
+One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle,
+letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in
+the stones--blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red--melted, sprayed, and
+scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.
+
+"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and
+emotion.
+
+With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of
+colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not
+only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a
+sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining
+depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.
+
+Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung
+unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.
+
+Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood
+up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that
+Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained
+how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay,
+instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing
+what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really
+guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a
+miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones
+as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at,
+tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and
+flashing.
+
+But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually
+sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement.
+He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was
+doing.
+
+"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.
+
+"No," Michael said. "Why?"
+
+He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the
+light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this
+way."
+
+The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between
+them. Michael lifted his head to listen.
+
+"Who's that?" he asked;
+
+Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars,
+was blank in the doorway.
+
+"May I come in?" a woman's voice called. Her figure wavered in the
+doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into
+the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the
+threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes,
+laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes
+went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.
+
+"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on
+the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see
+what you can do for her?"
+
+Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so
+ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to
+Maud.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of
+the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.
+
+"My," she cried eagerly, "that's a pretty stone, Michael!" She turned it
+back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks
+of red and gold.
+
+"Just been noodlin' over some old scraps ... and came across it,"
+Michael said awkwardly.
+
+It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He
+could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul's opals
+before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had.
+
+"Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle," Maud said. "Doin' a
+bit of dealin' myself. I'll give you a good price for it, Michael."
+
+"It's goin' into a parcel," he replied.
+
+"Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know," Maud said.
+"Comin', Potch?"
+
+She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael
+caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street
+urchin's, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies,
+fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely
+any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were
+clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden,
+flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond
+the Ridge.
+
+Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its
+wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed
+Sophie's singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the
+ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang.
+
+"You miss her these nights, don't you?" Michael said to Potch one very
+hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was
+drifting into the room about them.
+
+Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he
+looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him.
+
+"Yes," he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any
+more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out
+of doors.
+
+Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they
+found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of
+the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working;
+even the noodlers, Snow-Shoes and young Flail, were standing round with
+the miners.
+
+"Hullo," Michael said, "something's up!"
+
+Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only
+once before on the fields.
+
+"Ratting?" he said.
+
+"Looks like it," Michael agreed.
+
+"What's up, George?" he asked, as Potch and he joined the men.
+
+"Rats, Michael," George said, "that's what's up. They've been on our
+place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was
+working on. They've paid Archie a visit ... and Bully reck'ns his
+spider's been walking lately, too."
+
+Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour
+for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat's visit to
+their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men
+who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the
+rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy
+O'Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods' shelter to talk the
+situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the
+fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards
+them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out
+before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the
+shelter.
+
+George Woods, the best natured, soberest man on the Ridge, was
+smouldering with rage at the ratting.
+
+"I've a good mind to put a bit of dynamite at the bottom of the shaft,
+and then, when a rat strikes a match, up he'll go," he said.
+
+"But," Watty objected, "how'd you feel when you found a dead man in your
+claim, George?"
+
+"Feel?" George burst out. "I wouldn't feel--except he'd got no right to
+be there--and perlitely put him on one side."
+
+"Remember those chaps was up a couple of years ago, George?" Bill Grant
+asked, "and helped theirselves when Pony-Fence and me had a bit of luck
+up at Rhyll's hill."
+
+"Remember them?" George growled.
+
+"They'd go round selling stuff if there was anybody to buy--hang round
+the pub all day, and yet had stuff to sell," Watty murmured.
+
+The men smoked silently for a few minutes.
+
+"How much did they get, again?" Bully Bryant asked.
+
+"Couple of months," George said.
+
+"Police protect criminals--everybody knows that," Snow-Shoes said.
+
+Sitting on the dump just beyond the shade the shelter cast, he had been
+listening to what the men were saying, the sun full blaze on him, his
+blue eyes glittering in the shadow of his old felt hat. All eyes turned
+to him. The men always listened attentively when Snow-Shoes had anything
+to say.
+
+"If there's a policeman about, and a man starts ratting and is caught,
+he gets a couple of months. Well, what does he care? But if there's a
+chance of the miners getting hold of him and some rough handling ... he
+thinks twice before he rats ... knowing a broken arm or a pain in his
+head'll come of it."
+
+"That's true," George said. "I vote we get this bunch ourselves."
+
+"Right!" The Crosses and Bully agreed with him. Watty did not like the
+idea of the men taking the law into their own hands. He was all for law
+and order. His fat, comfortable soul disliked the idea of violence.
+
+"Seems to me," he said, "it 'd be a good thing to set a trap--catch the
+rats--then we'd know where we were."
+
+Michael nodded. "I'm with Watty," he said.
+
+"Then we could hand 'em over to the police," Watty said.
+
+Michael smiled. "Well, after the last batch getting two months, and the
+lot of us wasting near on two months gettin' 'em jailed, I reck'n it's
+easier to deal with 'em here--But we've got to be sure. They've got to
+be caught red-handed, as the sayin' is. It don't do to make mistakes
+when we're dealin' out our own justice."
+
+"That's right, Michael," the men agreed.
+
+"Well, I reck'n we'd ought to have in the police," Watty remarked
+obstinately.
+
+"The police!" Snow-Shoes stood up as if he had no further patience with
+the controversy. "It's like letting hornets build in your house to keep
+down flies--to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the
+flies."
+
+He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure,
+straighter than any man's on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet,
+wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the
+shingly earth.
+
+Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among
+themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they
+left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats.
+
+Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because
+the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But
+when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had "done a
+moonlight flit," it was generally agreed that these suspicions were
+confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal
+within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had
+come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself
+had bought from the gougers. Jun's and Maud's flight was taken not only
+as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men's
+resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring
+them away.
+
+When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went
+its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill
+after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to
+find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby.
+
+The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary
+summer months was Bully Bryant's marriage to Ella Flail, and, although
+it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be
+married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance
+and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple.
+
+"Roy O'Mara's got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael,"
+Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and
+Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had
+thought over what he was going to say.
+
+"Yes?" Michael replied.
+
+"How about tryin' our luck there?" Potch ventured.
+
+Michael took the suggestion meditatively. Potch and he had been working
+together for several years with very little luck. They had won only a
+few pieces of opal good enough to put into a parcel for an opal-buyer
+when he came to Fallen Star. But Michael was loth to give up the old
+shaft, not only because he believed in it, but because of the work he
+and his mates had put into it, and because when they did strike opal
+there, the mine would be easily worked. But this was the first time
+Potch had made a suggestion of the sort, and Michael felt bound to
+consider it.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush on, Snow-Shoes told me," Potch said. "Crosses
+have pegged, and I saw Bill Olsen measurin' out a claim."
+
+Michael's reluctance to move was evident.
+
+"I feel sure we'll strike it in the old shaft, sooner or later," he
+murmured.
+
+"Might be sooner by the coolebah," Potch said.
+
+Michael's eyes lifted to his, the gleam of a smile in them.
+
+"Very well, we'll pull pegs," he said.
+
+While stars were still in the high sky and the chill breath of dawn in
+the air, men were busy measuring and pegging claims on the hillside
+round about the old coolebah. Half a dozen blocks were marked one
+hundred feet square before the stars began to fade.
+
+All the morning men with pegs, picks, and shovels came straggling up the
+track from the township and from other workings scattered along the
+Ridge. The sound of picks on the hard ground and the cutting down of
+scrub broke the limpid stillness.
+
+Paul came out of his hut as Potch passed it on his way to the coolebah.
+Immediately he recognised the significance of the heavy pick Potch was
+carrying, and trotted over to him.
+
+"You goin' to break new ground, Potch?" he asked. Potch nodded.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah," he said. "Roy
+O'Mara's bottomed on opal there ... got some pretty good colours, and
+we're goin' to peg out."
+
+"A rush?" Paul's eyes brightened. "Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?"
+
+"Not bad."
+
+As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul
+chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.
+
+Roy O'Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of
+any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood
+over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great,
+bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound
+of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump--Roy had
+been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a
+fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day's find was spread
+on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but
+when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the
+pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.
+
+When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had
+marked in his mind's eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond
+Roy's claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at
+slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat
+beading and pouring down their faces.
+
+There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a
+new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk
+so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of
+matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a
+child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.
+
+Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after
+the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud
+and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the
+shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a
+fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal
+dirt beneath it. Roy O'Mara, working on his trace of promising black
+potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul.
+Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft;
+Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour
+of sinking again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from
+the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock
+from the drives, Potch said:
+
+"I'm going to sink another hole, Michael--higher up."
+
+Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that
+way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but
+he was not disturbed by his doing so.
+
+"Right," he said; "you sink another hole, Potch. I'll stick to this one
+for a bit."
+
+Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site
+carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the
+morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he
+was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had
+been three weeks on the job.
+
+"Ought to be near bottoming, Potch," Roy remarked one day towards the
+end of the three weeks.
+
+"Be there to-day," Potch said.
+
+Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his
+impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.
+
+Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a
+certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make
+considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well:
+they had cut out a pocket worth £400 as a result of their sinking, and
+it remained to be seen what Potch's new hole would bring. A good
+prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.
+
+Potch's prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value
+when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of
+promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the
+coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.
+
+They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains,
+for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal
+dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the
+mine, uttered a low cry.
+
+"Michael," he called.
+
+Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that
+joyous vibration in a man's voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went
+to Potch.
+
+Potch Was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had
+clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red,
+green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering
+together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he
+saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones
+which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some
+size was embedded in the wall of the mine.
+
+"Looks a beaut, doesn't she, Michael?" he gasped.
+
+Michael breathed hard.
+
+"By God----" he murmured.
+
+Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.
+
+He screamed when he saw the stone.
+
+"I knew!" he yelled. "I knew we'd strike it here."
+
+"Well, stand back while I get her out," Potch cried.
+
+Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth
+about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away
+with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with
+wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.
+
+When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be
+even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it
+had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped
+surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal.
+Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous
+and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with
+excitement.
+
+He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch's find to the men
+who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and
+Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They
+gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and
+admiration.
+
+"You've struck it this time, Potch!" Roy O'Mara said.
+
+Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped
+surface, and held it to the sun again.
+
+"It's the biggest knobby--ever I see," Archie Cross said.
+
+"Same here," Bill Grant muttered.
+
+"Wants polishin' up a bit," Michael said, "and then she'll show better."
+
+As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul's hut and faced the stone
+on Sophie's wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when
+he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied
+that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a
+hen's egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they
+agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever
+seen.
+
+Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and
+excitement in his voice as he talked.
+
+Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd
+jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought
+in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.
+
+When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their
+plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf
+where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He
+threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the
+light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of
+crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across
+the table to read.
+
+Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the
+magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's
+eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in
+his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before
+him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of
+the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby
+ever taken out of the fields.
+
+Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and
+rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered
+book.
+
+As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul's opals flashed before
+him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious
+of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud
+Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him
+again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or
+explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.
+
+Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like
+that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch's
+bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about
+the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his
+silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except
+that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion
+of unworthiness in the object of its belief.
+
+But since--since he had made up his mind to give the opals to
+Paul--since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her
+any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not
+given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had
+seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to
+himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer
+in the mysterious no-man's land of his subconsciousness.
+
+Paul's slow recovery from sun-stroke was a reason for deferring
+explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the
+first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals,
+Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his
+story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more
+difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of
+his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming
+on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul's opals.
+
+But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had
+only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this
+putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to
+face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals
+had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready
+to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with
+them.... He mocked his fears of himself.
+
+Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection
+with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own
+consciousness and to be honest with himself.
+
+As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision.
+He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray
+had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement
+seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could
+not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a
+dark corner of his mind.
+
+Had Paul's stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their
+witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were
+misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of
+the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul's
+stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want
+to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe
+he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was
+ready to steal--steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he
+assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do
+that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to
+do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring
+of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had
+done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them
+to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his
+dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put
+off going to Paul and to Watty and George.
+
+Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of,
+Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the
+packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty
+its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette
+tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them
+for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his
+project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few
+books.
+
+He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman's
+year-book and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it
+must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or
+another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked
+them over--but he could not find the tin with Paul's opals in.
+
+He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the
+candle-fight.
+
+"They're gone," he told himself.
+
+He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the
+box--if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absent-mindedly;
+but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there.
+
+Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea.
+
+Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on
+them--not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or
+suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able
+to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth
+speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value.
+His mind hovered indecisively. Maud?
+
+Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that
+gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself
+to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had
+come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to
+prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the
+day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat,
+Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man's hut
+either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one
+else who knew he had any stone worth having.
+
+If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By
+and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun
+told where those opals of Paul's had been found, as he would some
+day--Michael could not contemplate the prospect.
+
+He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it
+would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to
+restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men
+of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but
+knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession
+of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt
+that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the
+stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt.
+
+Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael
+sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him.
+He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul's had worked
+him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought
+him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of
+that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the
+loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty
+book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of
+the story Jun would tell--that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high
+faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of
+course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men's stones, and
+that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to
+be judged by it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Michael and Potch were finishing their tea when Watty burst in on them.
+His colour was up, his small, blue eyes winking and flashing over his
+fat, pink cheeks.
+
+"Who d'y' think's come be motor to-day, Michael?" he gasped.
+
+Michael's movement and the shade of apprehension which crossed his face
+were a question.
+
+"Old man Armitage!" Watty said. "And he's come all the way from New York
+to see the big opal, he says."
+
+There was a rumble of cart wheels, an exclamation and the reverberation
+of a broad, slow voice out-of-doors. Watty looked through Michael's
+window.
+
+"Here he is, Michael," he said. "George and Peter are helping him out of
+Newton's dog-cart. And Archie Cross and Bill Grant are coming along the
+road a bit behind."
+
+Michael pushed back his seat and pulled the fastenings from his front
+door. The front door was more of a decoration and matter of form in the
+face of the hut than intended to serve any useful purpose, and the
+fastening had never been moved before.
+
+Potch cleared away the litter of the meal while Michael went out to meet
+the old man. He was walking with the help of a stick, his heavy,
+colourless face screwed with pain.
+
+"Grr-rr!" he grunted. "What a fool I was to come to this God-damn place
+of yours, George! What? No fool like an old one? Don't know so much
+about that.... What else was I to do? Brrr! Oh, there you are, Michael!
+Came to see you. Came right away because, from what the boys tell me,
+you weren't likely to slip down and call on me."
+
+"I'd 've come all right if I'd known you wanted to see me, Mr.
+Armitage," Michael said.
+
+The old man went into the hut and, creaking and groaning as though all
+his springs needed oiling, seated himself on the sofa, whipped out a
+silk handkerchief and wiped his face and head with it.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "here I am at last--and mighty glad to get here.
+The journey from New York City, where I reside, to this spot on the
+globe, don't get any nearer as I grow older. No, sir! Who's that young
+man?"
+
+Mr. Armitage had fixed his eyes on Potch from the moment he came into
+the hut. Potch stood to his gaze.
+
+"That's Potch," Michael said.
+
+"Potch?"
+
+The small, round eyes, brown with black rims and centres, beginning to
+dull with age, winked over Potch, and in that moment Dawe Armitage was
+trying to discover what his chances of getting possession of the stone
+he had come to see, were with the man who had found it.
+
+"Con--gratulate you, young man," he said, holding out his hand. "I've
+come, Lord knows how many miles, to have a look at that stone of yours."
+
+Potch shook hands with him.
+
+"They tell me it's the finest piece of opal ever come out of Ridge
+earth," the old man continued. "Well, I couldn't rest out there at home
+without havin' a look at it. To think there was an opal like that about,
+and I couldn't get me fingers on it! And when I thought how it was I'd
+never even see it, perhaps, I danged 'em to Hades--doctors, family and
+all--took me passage out here. Ran away! That's what I did." He chuckled
+with reminiscent glee. "And here I am."
+
+"Cleared out, did y', Mr. Armitage?" Watty asked.
+
+"That's it, Watty," old Armitage answered, still chuckling. "Cleared
+out.... Family'll be scarrifyin' the States for me. Sent 'em a cable
+when I got here to say I'd arrived."
+
+Michael and George laughed with Watty, and the old man looked as pleased
+with himself as a schoolboy who has brought off some soul-satisfying
+piece of mischief.
+
+"Tell you, boys," he said, "I felt I couldn't die easy knowing there was
+a stone like that about and I'd never clap eyes on it.... Know you
+chaps'd pretty well turned me down--me and mine--and I wouldn't get more
+than a squint at the stone for my pains. You're such damned independent
+beggars! Eh, Michael? That's the old argument, isn't it? How did y' like
+those papers I sent you--and that book ... by the foreign devil--what's
+his name? Clever, but mad. Y'r all mad, you socialists, syndicalists, or
+whatever y'r call y'rselves nowadays.... But, for God's sake, let me
+have a look at the stone now, there's a good fellow."
+
+Michael looked at Potch.
+
+"You get her, Potch," he said.
+
+Potch put his hand to the top of the shelf where, in ah old tin, the
+great opal lay wrapped in wadding, with a few soft cloths about it. He
+put the tin on the table. Michael pushed the table toward the sofa on
+which Mr. Armitage was sitting. The old man leaned forward, his lips
+twitching, his eyes watering with eagerness. Potch's clumsy fingers
+fumbled with the wrappings; he spread the wadding on the table. The opal
+flashed black and shining between the rags and wadding as Potch put it
+on the table. Michael had lighted a candle and brought it alongside.
+
+Dawe Armitage gaped at the stone with wide, dazed eyes.
+
+"My!" he breathed; and again: "My!" Then: "She was worth it, Michael,"
+fell from him in an awed exclamation.
+
+He looked up, and the men saw tears of reverence and emotion in his
+eyes. He brushed them away and put out his hand to take the stone. He
+lifted the stone, gently and lovingly, as if it were alive and might be
+afraid at the approach of his wrinkled old hand. But it was not afraid,
+Potch's opal; it fluttered with delight in the hand of this old man, who
+was a devout lover, and rayed itself like a bird of paradise. Even to
+the men who had seen the stone before, it had a new and uncanny
+brilliance. It seemed to coquet with Dawe Armitage; to pour out its
+infinitesimal stars---red, blue, green, gold, and amethyst--blazing,
+splintering, and coruscating to dazzle and bewilder him.
+
+The men exclaimed as Mr. Armitage moved the opal. Then he put the stone
+down and mopped his forehead.
+
+"Well," he said, "I reckon she's the God-damnedest piece of opal I've
+ever seen."
+
+"She is that," Watty declared.
+
+"What have you got on her, Michael?" Dawe Armitage queried.
+
+A faint smile touched Michael's mouth.
+
+"I'm only asking," Armitage remarked apologetically. "I can tell you,
+boys, it's a pretty bitter thing for me to be out of the running for a
+stone like this. I ain't even bidding, you see--just inquiring, that's
+all."
+
+Michael looked at Potch.
+
+"Well," he said, "it's Potch's first bit of luck, and I reck'n he's got
+the say about it."
+
+The old man looked at Potch. He was a good judge of character. His
+chance of getting the stone from Michael was remote; from Potch--a
+steady, flat look in the eyes, a stolidity and inflexibility about the
+young man, did hot give Dawe Armitage much hope where he was concerned
+either.
+
+"They tell me," Mr. Armitage said, the twinkling of a smile in his eyes
+as he realised the metal of his adversary--"they tell me," he repeated,
+"you've refused three hundred pounds for her?"
+
+"That's right," Potch said.
+
+"How much do you reck'n she's worth?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How much have you got on her?"
+
+Potch looked at Michael.
+
+"We haven't fixed any price," he said.
+
+"Four hundred pounds?" Armitage asked.
+
+Potch's grey eyes lay on his for the fraction of a second.
+
+"You haven't got money enough to buy that stone, Mr. Armitage," he said,
+quietly.
+
+The old man was crestfallen. Although he pretended that he had no hope
+of buying the opal, everybody knew that, hoping against hope, he had not
+altogether despaired of being able to prevail against the Ridge
+resolution not to sell to Armitage and Son, in this instance. Potch
+remarked vaguely that he had to see Paul, and went out of the hut.
+
+"Oh, well," Dawe Armitage said, "I suppose that settles the matter.
+Daresay I was a durned old fool to try the boy--but there you are. Well,
+since I can't have her, Michael, see nobody else gets her for less than
+my bid."
+
+The men were sorry for the old man. What Potch had said was rather like
+striking a man when he was down, they thought; and they were not too
+pleased about it.
+
+"Potch doesn't seem to fancy sellin' at all for a bit," Michael said.
+
+"What!" Armitage exclaimed. "He's not a miser--at his age?"
+
+"It's not that," Michael replied.
+
+"Oh, well"--the old man's gesture disposed of the matter. He gazed at
+the stone entranced again. "But she's the koh-i-noor of opals, sure
+enough. But tell me"--he sat back on the sofa for a yarn--"what's the
+news of the field? Who's been getting the stuff?"
+
+The gossip of Jun and the ratting was still the latest news of the
+Ridge; but Mr. Armitage appeared to know as much of that as anybody. Ed.
+Ventry's boy, who had motored him over from Budda, had told him about
+it, he said. He had no opinion of Jun.
+
+"A bad egg," he said, and began to talk about bygone days on the Ridge.
+There was nothing in the world he liked better than smoking and yarning
+with men of the Ridge about black opal.
+
+He was fond of telling his family and their friends, who were too nice
+and precise in their manners for his taste, and who thought him a boor
+and mad on the subject of black opal, that the happiest times of his
+life had been spent on Fallen Star Ridge, "swoppin' lies with the
+gougers"; yarning with them about the wonderful stuff they had got, and
+other chaps had got, or looking over some of the opal he had bought, or
+was going to buy from them.
+
+"Oh, well," Mr. Armitage said after they had been talking for a long
+time, "it's great sitting here yarning with you chaps. Never thought ...
+I'd be sitting here like this again...."
+
+"It's fine to have a yarn with you, Mr. Armitage," Michael said.
+
+"Thank you, Michael," the old man replied. "But I suppose I must be
+putting my old bones to bed.... There's something else I want to talk to
+you about though, Michael."
+
+The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage's tone that what
+he had to say was for Michael alone.
+
+"I'll just have a look if that bally mare of mine's all right, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said.
+
+He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him.
+
+"Well, Michael," Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, "I guess
+you know what it is I want to talk to you about."
+
+Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment.
+
+"That little girl of yours."
+
+Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as
+if he and not Paul were Sophie's father.
+
+"She"--old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity
+crossed his face--"I've seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I've tried
+to keep an eye on her--but I don't mind admitting to you that a man
+needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what's coming to him
+where Sophie's concerned. But first of all ... she's well ... and
+happy--at least, she appears to be; and she's a great little lady."
+
+He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it
+were a page he were trying to read.
+
+"You know, she's singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they
+say she's doing well. She's sought after--made much of. She's got little
+old Manhattan at her feet, as they say.... I don't want to gloss over
+anything that son of mine may have done--but to put it in a nutshell,
+Michael, he's in love with her. He's really in love with her--wants to
+marry her, but Sophie won't have him."
+
+Michael did not speak, and he continued:
+
+"And there's this to be said for him. She says it. He isn't quite so
+much to blame as we first thought. Seems he'd been making love to her...
+and did a break before.... He didn't mean to be a blackguard, y' see.
+You know what I'm driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went--She
+says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then--well, you
+know, Michael ... you've been young ... you've been in love. And in
+Sydney ... summer-time ... with the harbour there at your feet....
+
+"They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the
+emigration authorities, I don't know. They make enough fuss about an old
+fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found
+her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made
+up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn't hear of getting married.
+Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin' married.
+Said her mother had been married--and look what it had brought her to.
+
+"She's fond of John, too," the old man continued. "But, at present, New
+York's a side-show, and she's enjoying it like a child on a holiday from
+the country. I've got her living with an old maid cousin of mine....
+Sophie says by and by perhaps she'll marry John, but not yet--not
+now--she's having too good a time. She's got all the money she wants ...
+all the gaiety and admiration. It's not the sort of life I like for a
+woman myself ... but I've done my best, Michael."
+
+There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face
+before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.
+
+"You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage," he said, "and I'm grateful to
+you.".
+
+"Tell you the truth, Michael," he said, "I'm fond of her. I feel about
+her as if she were a piece of live opal--the best bit that fool of a son
+of mine ever brought from the Ridge...."
+
+His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.
+
+"But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while
+ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that.
+Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It's a
+God-damned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones
+in me body."
+
+Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him
+his arm, and they went to Rouminof's hut.
+
+Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage's arrival; that he had come to
+the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael's hut. Paul had gone
+to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He
+was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers
+on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage
+came into the room.
+
+After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile,
+Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer
+pockets of his overcoat.
+
+"Thought you'd like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof," he said.
+"She's well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And
+I brought along this." He held out a photograph. "She wouldn't give me a
+photograph for you, Michael--said you'd never know her--so I prigged
+this from her sitting-room last time I was there."
+
+Michael glanced at the photographer's card of heavy grey paper, which
+Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he
+thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands,
+he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was
+so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the
+picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering
+through all his consciousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul's
+hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and
+start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the
+sun-stroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and
+Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him
+out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again.
+
+Since old Armitage's visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was
+getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used
+to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had
+been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage's visit he spent
+the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton's
+veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn
+with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies
+over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie's
+neglect of him--how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to
+do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling
+reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie's
+mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised Sometimes,
+talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York.
+
+He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of
+so much drinking on his never very steady brain.
+
+For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim
+and start work again; but Paul would not.
+
+"What's the good," he had said, "Sophie'll be sending for me soon, and
+I'll be going to live with her in New York, and she won't want people to
+be saying her father is an old miner."
+
+Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever
+to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge;
+he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer
+Paul back to more or less regular ways of living.
+
+This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work
+again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine
+the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that
+news.
+
+Potch had brought Paul home from Newton's the night before, Michael
+knew; but Paul was not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael
+went into the hut.
+
+As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door
+of the room which had been Sophie's was thrown back. Michael went
+towards it.
+
+"Paul!" he called.
+
+No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity
+had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway
+thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been
+like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but
+there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room
+about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the
+frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the
+window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael
+remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago.
+
+He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left
+the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when
+his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He
+gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the
+suggestion they conveyed.
+
+Sophie exclaimed behind him.
+
+When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against
+one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed
+into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill.
+
+"I've come home, Michael," she said.
+
+Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her
+eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the
+realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of
+his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to
+the Ridge again.
+
+They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what
+words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some
+commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection.
+
+"It's a sight for sore eyes--the sight of you, Sophie," he said.
+
+"Michael!"
+
+Her arms went out to him with the quick gesture he knew. Michael moved
+to her and caught her in his arms. No moment in all his life had been
+like this when he held Sophie in his arms as though she were his own
+child. His whole being swayed to her in an infinite compassion and
+tenderness. She lay against him, her body quivering. Then she cried,
+brokenly, with spent passion, almost without strength to cry at all.
+
+"There, there!" Michael muttered. "There, there!"
+
+He held her, patting and trying to comfort and soothe her, muttering
+tenderly, and with difficulty because of his trouble for her. The tears
+she had seen in his eyes when he said she was a sight for sore eyes came
+from him and fell on her. His hand went over her hair, clumsily,
+reverently.
+
+"There, there!" he muttered again and again.
+
+Weak with exhaustion, when her crying was over, Sophie moved away from
+him. She pushed back the hair which had fallen over her forehead; her
+eyes had a faint smile as she looked at him.
+
+"I am a silly, aren't I, Michael?" she said.
+
+Michael's mouth took its wry twist.
+
+"Are you, Sophie?" he said. "Well ... I don't think there's anyone else
+on the Ridge'd dare say so."
+
+"I've dreamt of that smile of yours, Michael," Sophie said. She swayed a
+little as she looked at him; her eyes closed.
+
+Michael put his arm round her and led her to the bed. He made her lie
+down and drew the coverlet over her.
+
+"You lay down while I make you a cup of tea, Sophie," he said.
+
+Sophie was lying so still, her face was so quiet and drained of colour
+when he returned with tea in a pannikin and a piece of thick bread and
+butter on the only china plate in the hut, that Michael thought she had
+fainted. But the lashes swept up, and her eyes smiled into his grave,
+anxious face as he gazed at her.
+
+"I'm all right, Michael," she said, "only a bit crocky and dead tired."
+She sat up, and Michael sat on the bed beside her while she drank the
+tea and ate the bread and butter.
+
+"Tea in a pannikin is much nicer than any other tea in the world,"
+Sophie said. "Don't you think so, Michael? I've often wondered whether
+it's the tea, or the taste of the tin pannikin, or the people who have
+tea in pannikins, that makes it so nice."
+
+After a while she said:
+
+"I came up on the coach this morning ... didn't get in till about
+half-past six.... And I came straight up from Sydney the day before.
+That's all night on the train ... and I didn't get a sleeper. Just sat
+and stared out of the window at the country. Oh! I can't tell you how
+badly I've wanted to come home, Michael. In the end I felt I'd die if I
+didn't come--so I came."
+
+Then she asked about Potch and her father.
+
+Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sun-stroke, but
+that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of
+putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down
+to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and
+Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the
+night before.
+
+"I'll send him up to you, if he's there," Michael said. "But you'd
+better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shut-eye
+you've been missing these last two or three days."
+
+"Months, Michael," Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her
+eyes again.
+
+They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed.
+
+"But I'll sleep all right here," she said. "I feel as if I'd sleep for
+years and years.... It's the smell of the paper daisies and the
+sandal-wood smoke, I suppose. The air's got such a nice taste,
+Michael.... It smells like peace, I think."
+
+"Well," Michael said, "you eat as much of it as you fancy. I don't mind
+if Paul doesn't find you till he comes back to tea.... It'd do you more
+good to have a sleep now, and then you'll be feelin' a bit fitter."
+
+"I think I could go to sleep now, Michael," Sophie murmured.
+
+Michael stood watching her for a moment as she seemed to go to sleep,
+thinking that the dry, northern air, with its drowsy fragrance, was
+already beginning to draw the ache from her body and brain. He went to
+the curtain of the doorway, dropped it, and turned out into the blank
+sunshine of the day again.
+
+He fit his pipe and smoked abstractedly as he walked down the track to
+the mine. He had already made up his mind that it would be better for
+Sophie to sleep for a while, and that he was not going to get anyone to
+look for Paul and send him to her.
+
+She had said nothing of the reason for her return, and Michael knew
+there must be a reason. He could not reconcile the Sophie Dawe Armitage
+had described as taking her life in America with such joyous zest, and
+the elegant young woman on the show-page of the illustrated magazine,
+with the weary and broken-looking girl he had been talking to. Whatever
+it was that had changed her outlook, had been like an earthquake,
+devastating all before it, Michael imagined. It had left her with no
+more than the instinct to go to those who loved and would shelter her.
+
+Potch was at work on a slab of shin-cracker when Michael went down into
+the mine. He straightened and looked up as Michael came to a standstill
+near him. His face was dripping, and his little white cap, stained with
+red earth, was wet with sweat. He had been slogging to get through the
+belt of hard, white stone near the new colours before Michael appeared.
+
+"Get him?" he asked.
+
+Michael had almost forgotten Paul.
+
+"No," he said, switching his thoughts from Sophie.
+
+"What's up?" Potch asked quickly, perceiving something unusual in
+Michael's expression.
+
+Michael wanted to tell him--this was a big thing for Potch, he knew--and
+yet he could not bring his news to expression. It caught him by the
+throat. He would have to wait until he could say the thing decently, he
+told himself. He knew what joy it would give Potch.
+
+"Nothing," he said, before he realised what he had said.
+
+But he promised himself that in a few minutes he would tell Potch. He
+would break the news to him. Michael felt as though he were the guardian
+of some sacred treasure which he was afraid to give a glimpse of for
+fear of dazzling the beholder.
+
+The concern went from Potch's face as quickly and vividly as it had
+come. He knew that Michael had reserves from him, and he was afraid of
+having trespassed on them by asking for information which Michael did
+not volunteer. He had been betrayed into the query by the stirred and
+happy look on Michael's face. Only rarely had he seen Michael look like
+that. Potch's thought flashed to Sophie--Michael must have some good
+news of her, he guessed, and knew Michael would pass it on to him in his
+own time.
+
+He turned to his work again, and Michael took up his pick. Potch's
+steady slinging at the shin-cracker began again. Michael reproached
+himself as the minutes went by for what he was keeping from Potch.
+
+He knew what his news would mean to Potch. He knew the solid flesh of
+the man would grow radiant. Michael had seen that subtle glow transfuse
+him when they talked of Sophie. He pulled himself together and
+determined to speak.
+
+Dropping his pick to take a spell, Michael pulled his pipe from the belt
+round his trousers, relighted the ashes in its bowl, and sat on the
+floor of the mine. Potch also stopped work. He leaned his pick against
+the rock beside him, and threw back his shoulders.
+
+"Where was he?" he asked.
+
+"Who--Paul?"
+
+Potch nodded, sweeping the drips from his head and neck.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Michael decided he would tell him now.
+
+"Don't know," he said. "He wasn't about when I came away."
+
+Potch wrung his cap, shook it out, and fitted it on his head again.
+
+"He was showin' all right at Newton's last night," he said. "I'd a bit
+of a business getting him home."
+
+"Go on," Michael replied absent-mindedly. "Potch ..." he he added, and
+stopped to listen.
+
+There was a muffled rumbling and sound of someone calling in the
+distance. It came from Roy O'Mara's drive, on the other side of the
+mine.
+
+"Hullo!" Michael called.
+
+"That you, Michael?" Roy replied. "I'm comin' through."
+
+His head appeared through the drive which he had tunnelled to meet
+Potch's and Michael's drive on the eastern side of the mine. He crawled
+out, shook himself, took out his pipe, and squatted on the floor beside
+Michael.
+
+"Where's Rummy?" Roy asked.
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"You didn't get him down, after all--the boys were taking bets about it
+last night."
+
+"We'll get him yet," Potch said. "The colour'll work like one thing."
+
+Michael stared ahead of him, smoking as though his thoughts absorbed
+him.
+
+"He was pretty full at Newton's last night," Roy said, "and
+talkin'--talkin' about Sophie singing in America, and the great lady she
+is now. And how she was goin' to send for him, and he'd be leavin' us
+soon, and how sorry we'd all be then."
+
+"Should've thought you'd about wore out that joke," Michael remarked,
+dryly.
+
+Roy's easy, good-natured voice faltered.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "he likes to show off a bit, and it don't hurt us,
+Michael."
+
+"That's right," Michael returned; "but Potch was out half the night
+bringing him home. You chaps might remember Paul's our proposition when
+you're having a bit of fun out of him."
+
+Potch turned back to his work.
+
+"Right, Michael," Roy said. And then, after a moment, having decided
+that both Michael's and Potch's demeanours were too calm for them to
+have heard what he had, as if savouring the effect of his news, he
+added:
+
+"But perhaps we won't have many more chances-seein' Rummy 'll be going
+to America before long, perhaps----"
+
+Michael, looking at Roy through his tobacco smoke, realised that he knew
+about Sophie's having come home. His glance travelled to Potch, who was
+slogging at the cement stone again.
+
+"Saw old Ventry on me way down to the mine," Roy said, "and he said he'd
+a passenger on the coach last night.... Who do you think it was?"
+
+Michael dared not look at Potch.
+
+"He said," Roy murmured slowly, "it was Sophie."
+
+They knew that Potch's pick had stopped. Michael had seen a tremor
+traverse the length of his bared back; but Potch did not turn. He stood
+with his face away from them, immobile. His body dripped with sweat and
+seemed to be oiled by the garish light of the candle which outlined his
+head, gilded his splendid arms and torso against the red earth of the
+mine, and threw long shadows into the darkness, shrouding the workings
+behind him. Then his pick smashed into the cement stone with a force
+which sent sharp, white chips flying in every direction.
+
+When Roy crawled away through the tunnel to his own quarters, Potch
+swung round from the face he was working on, his eyes blazing.
+
+"Is it true?" he gasped.
+
+"Yes," Michael said.
+
+After a moment he added: "I found her in the hut this morning just
+before I came away. I been tryin' all these blasted hours to tell you,
+Potch ... but every time I tried, it got me by the neck, and I had to
+wait until I found me voice."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The sunset was fading, a persimmon glow failing from behind the trees,
+its light merging with the blue of the sky, creating the faint, luminous
+green which holds the first stars with such brilliance, when Sophie went
+out of the hut to meet Potch.
+
+The smell of sandal-wood burning on the fireplace in the kitchen she had
+just left, was in the air. Such soothing its fragrance had for her! And
+on the shingly soil, between the old dumps cast up a little distance
+from the huts, in every direction, the paper daisies were lying, white
+as driven snow in the wan light. Sophie went to the goat-pen, strung
+round with a light, crooked fence, a few yards from the back of the
+house.
+
+As she leaned against the fence she could hear the tinkling of a
+goat-bell in the distance. The fragrances, the twilight, and the quiet
+were balm to her bruised senses. The note of a bell sounded nearer.
+Potch was bringing the goats in.
+
+Sophie went to the shed and stood near it, so that she might see him
+before he saw her. A kid in the shed bleated as the note of the bell
+became harsher and nearer. Sophie heard the answering cry of the nanny
+among the three or four goats coming down to the yard along a narrow
+track from a fringe of trees beyond the dumps. Then she saw Potch's
+figure emerge from the trees.
+
+He drove the goats into the yard where two sticks of the fence were
+down, put up the rails, and went to the shed for a milking bucket. He
+came back into the yard, pulled a little tan-and-white nanny beside a
+low box on which he sat to milk, and the squirt and song of milk in the
+pail began. Sophie wondered what Potch was thinking of as he sat there
+milking. She remembered the night--Potch had been sitting just like
+that--when she told him her mother was dead. As she remembered, she saw
+again every flicker and gesture of his, the play of light on his broad,
+heavy face and head, with its shock of fairish hair; how his face had
+puckered up and looked ugly and childish as he began to cry; how, after
+a while, he had wiped his eyes and nose on his shirt-sleeve, and gone on
+with the milking again, crying and sniffling in a subdued way.
+
+There was a deep note of loving them in his voice, rough and burred
+though it was, as Potch spoke to the goats. Two of them came when he
+called.
+
+When he had nearly finished milking, Sophie moved away from the screen
+of the shed. She went along to the fence and stood where he could see
+her when he looked up.
+
+The light had faded, and stars were glimmering in the luminous green of
+the sky when Potch, as he released the last goat, pushed back the box he
+had been sitting on, got up, took his bucket by the handle, and, looking
+towards the fence, saw Sophie standing there. At first he seemed to
+think she was a figure of his imagination, he stood so still gazing at
+her. He had often thought of her, leaning against the rails there,
+smiling at him like that. Then he remembered Sophie had come home; that
+it was really Sophie herself by the fence as he had dreamed of seeing
+her. But her face was wan and ethereal in the half-light; it floated
+before him as if it were a drowned face in the still, thin air.
+
+"She's very like my old white nanny, Potch," Sophie said, her eyes
+glancing from Potch to the goat he had just let go and which had
+followed him across the yard.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"She might almost be Annie Laurie's daughter," Sophie said.
+
+"She's her grand-daughter," Potch replied.
+
+He put the bucket down at the rails and stooped to get through them.
+Before he took up the bucket again he stood looking at her as though to
+assure himself that it was really Sophie in the flesh who was waiting
+for him by the fence. Then he took up the bucket, and they walked across
+to Michael's hut together.
+
+Potch dared scarcely glance at her when he realised that Sophie was
+really walking beside him--Sophie herself--although her eyes and her
+voice were not the eyes and voice of the Sophie he had known. And he had
+so often dreamed of her walking beside him that the dream seemed almost
+more real than the thing which had come to pass.
+
+Sophie went with him to the lean-to, where the milk-dishes stood on a
+bench under the window outside Michael's hut. She watched Potch while he
+strained the milk and poured it into big, flat dishes on a bench under
+the window.
+
+Paul came to the door of their own hut. He called her. Sophie could hear
+voices exclaiming and talking to Paul and Michael. She supposed that the
+people her father had said were coming from New Town to see her had
+arrived. She dreaded going into the room where they all were, although
+she knew that she must go.
+
+"Are you coming, Potch?" she asked.
+
+His eyes went from her to his hands.
+
+"I'll get cleaned up a bit first," he said, "then I'll come."
+
+The content in his eyes as they rested on her was transferred to Sophie.
+It completed what the fragrances, those first minutes in the quiet and
+twilight had done for her. It gave her a sense of having come to haven
+after a tempestuous journey on the high seas beyond the reef of the
+Ridge, and of having cast anchor in the lee of a kindly and sheltering
+land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Michael had lit the lamp in Rouminof's kitchen; innumerable tiny-winged
+insects, moths, mosquitoes, midges, and golden-winged flying ants hung
+in a cloud about it. Martha M'Cready, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and George
+Woods were there talking to Paul and Michael when Sophie went into the
+kitchen.
+
+"Here she is," Paul said.
+
+Martha rose from her place on the sofa and trundled cross to her.
+
+"Dearie!" she cried, as George and Pony-Fence called:
+
+"H'llo, Sophie!"
+
+And Sophie said: "Hullo, George! Hullo, Pony-Fence!"
+
+Martha's embrace cut short what else she may have had to say. Sophie
+warmed to her as she had when she was a child. Martha had been so plump
+and soft to rub against, and a sensation of sheer animal comfort and
+rejoicing ran through Sophie as she felt herself against Martha again.
+The slight briny smell of her skin was sweet to her with associations of
+so many old loving and impulsive hugs, so much loving kindness.
+
+"Oh, Mother M'Cready," she cried, a more joyous note in her voice than
+Michael had yet heard, "it is nice to see you again!"
+
+"Lord, lovey," Martha replied, disengaging her arms, "and they'd got me
+that scared of you--saying what a toff you were. I thought you'd be
+tellin' me my place if I tried this sort of thing. But when I saw you a
+minute ago, I clean forgot all about it. I saw you were just my own
+little Sophie back again ... and I couldn't 've helped throwing me arms
+round you--not for the life of me."
+
+She was winking and blinking her little blue eyes to keep the tears in
+them, and Sophie laughed the tears back from her eyes too.
+
+"There she is!" a great, hearty voice exclaimed in the doorway.
+
+And Bully Bryant, carrying the baby, with Ella beside him, came into the
+room.
+
+"Bully!" Sophie cried, as she went towards them, "And Ella!"
+
+Ella threw out her arms and clung to Sophie.
+
+"She's been that excited, Sophie," Bully said, "I couldn't hardly get
+her to wait till this evening to come along."
+
+"Oh, Bully!" Ella protested shyly.
+
+"And the baby?" Sophie cried, taking his son from Bull. "Just fancy you
+and Ella being married, Bully, and having a baby, and me not knowing a
+word about it!"
+
+The baby roared lustily, and Bully took him from Sophie as Watty Frost,
+the Crosses, and Roy O'Mara came through the door.
+
+"Hullo, Watty, Archie, Tom, Roy!" Sophie exclaimed with a little gasp of
+pleasure and excitement, shaking hands with each one of them as they
+came to her.
+
+She had not expected people to come to see her like this, and was
+surprised by the genial warmth and real affection of the greetings they
+had given her. Everybody was laughing and talking, the little room was
+full to brimming when Bill Grant appeared in the doorway, and beside him
+the tall, gaunt figure of the woman Sophie loved more than any other
+woman on the Ridge--Maggie Grant, looking not a day older, and wearing a
+blue print dress with a pin-spot washed almost out of it, as she had
+done as long as Sophie could remember.
+
+Sophie went to the long, straight glance of her eyes as to a call.
+Maggie kissed her. She did not speak; but her beautiful, deep-set eyes
+spoke for her. Sophie shook hands with Bill Grant.
+
+"Glad to see you back again, Sophie," he said simply.
+
+"Thank you, Bill," she replied.
+
+Then Potch came in; and behind him, slowly, from out of the night,
+Snow-Shoes. The Grants had moved from the door to give him passage; but
+he stood outside a moment, his tall, white figure and old sugar-loaf hat
+outlined against the blue-dark wall of the night sky, as though he did
+not know whether he would go into the room or not.
+
+Then he crossed the threshold, took off his hat, and stood in a stiff,
+gallant attitude until Sophie saw him. He had a fistful of yellow
+flowers in one hand. Everybody knew Sophie had been fond of punti. But
+there were only a few bushes scattered about the Ridge, and they had
+done flowering a month ago, so Snow-Shoes' bouquet was something of a
+triumph. He must have walked miles, to the swamp, perhaps, to find it,
+those who saw him knew.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Riley!" Sophie cried, as she went to shake hands with him.
+
+"They still call me Snow-Shoes, Sophie," the old man said.
+
+The men laughed, and Sophie joined them. She knew, as they all did, that
+although anyone of them was called by the name the Ridge gave him, no
+one ever addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley.
+
+He held the flowers out to her.
+
+"Punti!" she exclaimed delightedly, holding the yellow blossoms to her
+nose. "Isn't it lovely? ... No flower in the world's got such a
+perfume!"
+
+Michael had explained to the guests that Sophie was not to be asked to
+sing, and that nothing was to be said about her singing. Something had
+gone wrong with her voice, he told two or three of the men.
+
+He thought he had put the fear of God into Paul, and had managed to make
+him understand that it distressed Sophie to talk about her singing, and
+he must not bother her with questions about it. But in a lull of the
+talk Paul's voice was raised querulously:
+
+"What I can't make out, Sophie," he said, "is why you can't sing? What's
+happened to your voice? Have you been singing too much? Or have you
+caught cold? I always told you you'd have to be careful, or your voice'd
+go like your mother's did. If you'd listened to me, now, or I'd been
+with you...."
+
+Bully Bryant, catching Michael's eye, burst across Paul's drivelling
+with a hearty guffaw.
+
+"Well," he said, "Sophie's already had a sample of the fine lungs of
+this family, and I don't mind givin' her another, and then Ella and
+me'll have to be takin' Buffalo Bill home to bed. Now then, old son,
+just let 'em see what we can do." He raised his voice to singing pitch:
+
+"For-er she's a jolly good fellow, for-er-"
+
+All the men and women in the hut joined in Bully's roar, singing in a
+way which meant much more than the words--singing from their hearts,
+every man and woman of them.
+
+Then Bully put his baby under his arm as though it were a bundle of
+washing, Ella protesting anxiously, and the pair of them said good-night
+to Sophie. Snow-Shoes went out before them; and Martha said she would
+walk down to the town with Bully and Ella. Bill Grant and Maggie said
+good-night.
+
+"Sophie looks as if she'd sleep without rocking to-night," Maggie Grant
+said by way of indicating that everybody ought to go home soon and let
+Sophie get to bed early.
+
+"I will," Sophie replied.
+
+Pony-Fence and the Crosses were getting towards the door, Watty and
+George followed them.
+
+"It's about time you was back, that's what I say, Sophie," George Woods
+said, gripping her hand as he passed. "There's been no luck on this
+field since you went away."
+
+Sophie smiled into his kindly brown eyes.
+
+"That's right," Watty backed up his mate heartily.
+
+
+"But," Sophie said, "they tell me Potch has had all the luck."
+
+"So he has," George Woods agreed.
+
+"It's a great stone, isn't it, Sophie?" Watty said.
+
+"I haven't seen it yet," Sophie said. "Michael said he'd get Potch to
+show it to me to-night."
+
+"Not seen it?" George gasped. "Not seen the big opal! Say, boys"--he
+turned to Pony-Fence, and the Crosses--"I reck'n we'll have to stay for
+this. Sophie hasn't seen Potch's opal yet. Bring her along, Potch. Bring
+her along, and let's all have another squint at her. You can't get too
+much of a good thing."
+
+"Right," Potch replied.
+
+He went out of the hut to bring the opal from his own room.
+
+"Reck'n it's the finest stone ever found on this field," Watty said,
+"and the biggest. How much did you say Potch had turned down for it,
+Michael?"
+
+"Four hundred," Michael said.
+
+"What are you hangin' on to her for, Michael?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+Michael shook his head, that faint smile of his flickering.
+
+"Potch's had an idea he didn't want to part with her," he said. "But I
+daresay he'll be letting her go soon."
+
+He did not say "now." But the men understood that. They guessed that
+Potch had been waiting for this moment; that he wanted to show Sophie
+the stone before selling it.
+
+Potch came into the room again, his head back, an indefinable triumph
+and elation in his eyes as they sought Sophie's. He had a mustard tin,
+skinned of its gaudy paper covering, in his hand. A religious awe and
+emotion stirred the men as, standing beside Sophie, he put the tin on
+the table. They crowded about the table, muscles tightening in sun-red,
+weather-tanned faces, some of them as dark as the bronze of an old
+penny, the light in their eyes brightening, sharpening--a thirsting,
+eager expression in every face. Potch screwed off the lid of the tin,
+lifted the stone in its wrappings, and unrolled the dingy flannel which
+he had put round it. Then he took the opal from its bed of cotton wool.
+
+Sophie leaned forward, her eyes shining, her breath coming quickly. The
+emotion in the room made itself felt through her.
+
+"Put out the lamp, Michael, and let's have a candle," George said.
+
+Michael turned out the lamp, struck a match and set it to the candle in
+a bottle on the dresser behind him. He put the candle on the table.
+Potch held the great opal to the light, he moved it slowly behind the
+flame of the candle.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Sophie's cry of quivering ecstasy thrilled her hearers. She was one of
+them; she had been brought up among them. They had known she would feel
+opal as they did. But that cry of hers heightened their enthusiasm.
+
+The breaths of suppressed excitement and admiration, and their muttered
+exclamations went up:
+
+"Now, she's showin'!"
+
+"God, look at her now!"
+
+Sophie followed every movement of the opal in Potch's hand. It was a
+world in itself, with its thousand thousand suns and stars, shimmering
+and changing before her eyes as they melted mysteriously in the jetty
+pool of the stone.
+
+"Oh!" she breathed again, amazed, dazed, and rapturous.
+
+Potch came closer to her. They stood together, adoring the orb of
+miraculous and mysterious beauty.
+
+"Here," Potch said, "you hold her, Sophie."
+
+Sophie put out her hand, trembling, filled with child-like awe and
+emotion. She stretched her fingers. The stone weighed heavy and cold on
+them. Then there was a thin, silvery sound like the shivering of
+glass.... Her hand was light and empty. She stood staring at it for a
+moment; her eyes went to Potch's face, aghast. The blood seemed to have
+left her body. She stood so with her hand out, her lips parted, her eyes
+wide....
+
+After a while she knew Potch was holding her, and that he was saying:
+
+"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
+
+She could feel him, something to lean against, beside her. Michael
+lifted the candle. With strange intensity, as though she were dreaming,
+Sophie saw the men had fallen away from the table. All their faces were
+caricatures, distorted and ghastly; and they were looking at the floor
+near her. Sophie's eyes went to the floor, too. She could see shattered
+stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst--out across the earthen
+floor.
+
+Michael put the candle on the floor. He and George Woods gathered them
+up. When Sophie looked up, the dark of the room swam with galaxies of
+those stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst.
+
+She stood staring before her: she had lost the power to move or to
+think. After a while she knew that the men had gone from the room, and
+that Potch was still beside her, his eyes on her face. He had eyes only
+for her face: he had barely glanced at the floor, where infinitesimal
+specks of coloured light were still winking in the dust. He took her
+hands. Sophie heard him talking, although she did not know what he was
+saying.
+
+When she began to understand what Potch was saying, Sophie was sitting
+on the sofa under the window, and Potch was kneeling beside her. At
+first she heard him talking as if he were a long way away. She tried to
+listen; tried to understand what he was saying.
+
+"It's all right, Sophie," Potch kept saying, his voice breaking.
+
+Sight of her suffering overwhelmed him; and he trembled as he knelt
+beside her. Sophie heard him crying distantly:
+
+"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
+
+She shuddered. Her eyes went to him, consciousness in their blank gaze.
+Potch, realising that, murmured incoherently:
+
+"Don't think of it any more.... It was yours, Sophie. It was for you I
+was keeping it.... Michael knew that, too. He knew that was why I didn't
+want to sell.... It was your opal ... to do what you liked with, really.
+That was what I meant when I put it in your hand. But don't let us think
+of it any more. I don't want to think of it any more."
+
+"Oh!" Sophie cried, in a bitter wailing; "it's true, I believe ...
+somebody said once that I'm as unlucky as opal--that I bring people bad
+luck like opal...."
+
+"You know what we say on the Ridge?" Potch said; "The only bad luck you
+get through opal is when you can't get enough of it--so the only bad
+luck you're likely to bring to people is when they can't get enough of
+you."
+
+"Potch!"
+
+Sophie's hands went to him in a flutter of breaking grief. The
+forgiveness she could not ask, the gratitude for his gentleness, which
+she could not express any other way, were in the gesture and
+exclamation.
+
+On her hands, through his hot, clasped hands, the whole of Potch's being
+throbbed.
+
+"Don't think of it any more," he begged.
+
+"But it was your luck--your wonderful opal--and ... I broke it, Potch. I
+spoilt your luck."
+
+"No," Potch said, borne away from himself on the flood of his desire to
+assuage her distress. "You make everything beautiful for me, Sophie.
+Since you came back I haven't thought of the stone: I'd forgotten it....
+This hasn't been the same place. I'm so filled up with happiness because
+you're here that I can't think of anything else."
+
+Sophie looked into his face, her eyes swimming. She saw the deep passion
+of love in Potch's eyes; but she turned away from the light it poured
+over her, her face overcast again, bitterness and grief in it. She hung
+so for a moment; then her hands went over her face and she was crying
+abstractedly, wearily.
+
+There was something in her aloofness in that moment which chilled Potch.
+His instincts, sensitive as the antennæ of an insect, wavered over her,
+trying to discover the cause of it. Conscious of a mood which excluded
+him, he withdrew his hand from her. Sophie groped for it. Then the sense
+of sex and of barriers swept from him, by the passion of his desire to
+comfort and console her. Potch put his arm round her and drew Sophie to
+him, murmuring With an utter tenderness, "Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+Later she said:
+
+"I can't tell you ... what happened ... out there, Potch. Not yet ...
+not now.... Perhaps some day I will. It hurt so much that it took all
+the singing out of me. My heart wouldn't move ... so my voice died. I
+thought if I came home, you and Michael wouldn't mind ... my being like
+I am. But you've all been so good to me, Potch ... and it's so restful
+here, I was beginning to think that life might go on from where I left
+it; that it might be just a quiet living together and loving, like it
+was before...."
+
+"It can, Sophie!" Potch said, his eyes on her face, wistful and eager to
+read her thought.
+
+"But look what I've done," she said.
+
+Potch lifted her hand to his lips, a resurge of the virile male in him
+moving his restraint.
+
+"I've told you," he said, "what you've done. You've put joy into all our
+hearts--just to see you again. Michael's told you that, too, and George
+and the rest of them."
+
+"Yes, but, Potch ..." Sophie paused, and he saw the shadow of dark
+thoughts in her eyes again. "I'm not what you think I am. I'm not like
+any of you think."
+
+Potch's grip on her hand tightened.
+
+"You're you--and you're here. That's enough for us!" he said.
+
+Sophie sighed. "I never dreamt everybody would be so good. You and
+Michael I knew would--but the others ... I thought they'd remember ...
+and disapprove of me, Potch.... Mrs. Watty"--a smile showed faintly in
+her eyes--"I thought she'd see to that."
+
+"I daresay she's done her best" Potch said, with a memory of Watty's
+valiant bearing and angry, bright eyes when he came into the hut. "Watty
+was vexed ... she wouldn't come with him to-night."
+
+"Was he?"
+
+Potch nodded. "What you didn't reck'n on," he said, "was that all of us
+here ... we--we love you, Sophie, and we're glad you're back again."
+
+Her eyes met him in a straight, clear glance.
+
+"You and Michael," she said, "I knew you loved me, Potch...."
+
+"You know how it's always been with me," Potch said, grateful that he
+might talk of his love, although he had been afraid to since she had
+cried, fearing thought of it stirred that unknown source of distress.
+"But I won't get in your way here, Sophie, because of that. I won't
+bother you ... I want just to stand by--and help you all I know how."
+
+"I love you, too, Potch," Sophie said; "but there are so many ways of
+loving. I love you because you love me; because your love is the one
+sure thing in the world for me.... I've thought of it when I've been
+hurt and lonely.... I came back because it was here ... and you were
+here."
+
+Potch's eyes were illumined; his face blazed as though a fire had been
+engendered in the depths of his body. He remained so a moment, curbed
+and overcome with emotion. The shadow deepened in Sophie's eyes as she
+looked at him; her face was grave and still.
+
+"I do love you, Potch," she said again; "not as I loved someone else,
+once. That was different. But you're so good to me ... and I'm so
+tired."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The days which followed that night when Sophie had dropped the great
+opal were the happiest Potch had ever known. They were days in which
+Sophie turned to smile at him when he went into Rouminof's hut; when her
+eyes lay in his serenely; when he could go to her, and stand near her,
+inhaling her being, before he stooped to kiss her hair; when she would
+put back her head so that he might find her lips and take her breath
+from them in the lingering kiss she gave.
+
+When she had laid her head back on his shoulder sometimes, closing her
+eyes, an expression of infinite rest coming over her face, Potch had
+gazed at it, wondering what world of thought lay beneath that still,
+sleep-like mask as, it rested on his shoulder; what thought or emotion
+set a nerve quivering beneath her skin, as the water of some still pool
+quivers when an insect stirs beneath it.
+
+Sophie had no tricks of sex with Potch. She went to him sometimes when
+ghosts of her mind were driving her before them. She went to him because
+she was sure that she could go to him, whatever her reasons for going.
+With Potch there was no need for explanations.
+
+His quiet strength of body and mind had something to do with the rest
+and assurance which his very presence gave her. It was like being a baby
+and lying in a cradle again to have his arm about her; no harm or ill
+could reach her behind the barrier they raised, Sophie thought. She knew
+Potch loved her with all the passion of a virile man as well as with a
+love like the ocean into which all her misdeeds of commission and
+omission might be dropped. And she had as intimate and sympathetic a
+knowledge of Potch as he had of her. Sophie thought that nothing he
+might do could make her care less, or be less appreciative of him. She
+loved him, she said, with a love of the tenderest affection. If it
+lacked an irresistible impulse, she thought it was because she had lost
+the power to love in that way; but she hoped some day she would love
+Potch as he loved her--without reservations. For the time being she
+loved him gratefully; her gratitude was as immense as his love.
+
+Potch divined as much; Sophie had not tried to tell him how she felt
+about him, but he understood, perhaps better than she could tell him.
+His humility was equal to any demand she could make of him. He had not
+sufficient belief in himself or his worth to believe that Sophie could
+ever love him as he loved her: he did not expect it. The only way for
+him to take with his love was the way of faith and service. "To love is
+to be all made of faith and service." He had taken that for his text for
+life, and for Sophie. He could be happy holding to it.
+
+Sophie's need of him made Potch happier than he had ever hoped to be;
+but he could not help believing that the life with her which had etched
+itself on the horizon of his future would mist away, as the mirages
+which quiver on the long edges of the plains do, as you approach them.
+
+The days were blessed and peaceful to Sophie, too; but she, also, was
+afraid that something might happen to disturb them. She wanted to marry
+Potch in order to secure them, and to live and work with him on the
+Ridge. She wanted to live the life of any other woman on the Ridge with
+her mate. Life looked so straight and simple that way. She could see it
+stretching before her into the years. Her hands would be full of real
+things. She would be living a life of service and usefulness, in
+accordance with the ideal the Ridge had set itself, and which Michael
+had preached with the zeal of a latter-day saint. She believed her life
+would shape itself to this future; but sometimes a wraith in the
+back-country of her mind rose shrieking: "Never! Never!"
+
+It threw her into the outer darkness of despair, that cry, but she had
+learned to exorcise its influence by going to Potch and lifting her lips
+for him to kiss.
+
+"What is it?" he asked one day, vaguely aware of the meaning of the
+movement.
+
+Before the reverence and worship of his eyes the wraith fled. Sophie
+took his face between her hands.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she murmured, her eyes straining on his face, "I do love
+you ... and I will love you, more and more."
+
+"You don't have to worry about that," Potch said. "I love you enough for
+both of us.... Just think of me"--he lifted her hand and kissed the back
+of it gently--"like this--your hand--a sort of third hand."
+
+When he came back from the mine in the afternoon Potch went to see
+Sophie, cut wood for her, and do any odd jobs she might need done.
+Sometimes he had tea with her, and they read the reviews and books
+Michael passed on to them. In the evening they went for a walk, usually
+towards the Old Town, and sat on a long slope of the Ridge overlooking
+the Rouminofs' first home--near where they had played when they were
+children, and had watched the goats feeding on green patches between the
+dumps.
+
+They had awed talks there; and now and then the darkness, shutting off
+sight of each other, had made something like disembodied spirits of
+them, and their spirits communicated dumbly as well as on the frail wind
+of their voices.
+
+They yarned and gossiped sometimes, too, about the things that had
+happened, and what Potch had done while Sophie was away. She asked a
+good deal about the ratting, and about Jun and Maud. Potch tried to
+avoid talking of it and of them. He had evaded her questions, and Sophie
+returned to them, perplexed by his reticence.
+
+"I don't understand, Potch," she said on one occasion. "You found out
+that Maud and Jun had something to do with the ratting, and you went
+over to Jun's ... and told them you were going to tell the boys.... They
+must have known you would tell. Maud----"
+
+Potch's expression, a queer, sombre and shamed heaviness of his face,
+arrested her thought.
+
+"Maud----" she murmured again. "I see," she added, "it was just
+Maud----"
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"That explains a good deal." Sophie's eyes were on the distant horizon
+of the plains; her fingers played idly with quartz pebbles, pink-stained
+like rose coral, lying on the earth about her.
+
+"What does it explain?" Potch asked.
+
+"Why," Sophie said, "for one thing--how you grew up. You've changed
+since I went away, Potch, you know...."
+
+His smile showed a moment.
+
+"I'm older."
+
+"Older, graver, harder ... and kinder, though you always had a genius
+for kindness, Potch.... But Maud----"
+
+Potch turned his head from her. Sophie regarded his averted profile
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I understand," she said.
+
+Potch took her gaze steadily, but with troubled eyes.
+
+"I wish ... somehow ... I needn't 've done what I did," he said.
+
+"You'd have hated her, if you had gone back on the men--because of her."
+
+"That's right," Potch agreed.
+
+"And--you don't now?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I saw her--Maud--in New York ... before I came away," Sophie said
+slowly. "She was selling opal...."
+
+"Did she show you the stones?"
+
+"That's just what Michael asked me," Sophie said.
+
+"Michael?" Potch's face clouded.
+
+"She didn't show them to me, but I know who saw them all--he bought
+them--Mr. Armitage."
+
+"The old man?"
+
+"No, John."
+
+After a minute Sophie said:
+
+"Why are you so keen about those stones Maud had, Potch? Michael is,
+too.... Most of them were taken from the claims, I suppose--but was
+there anything more than that?"
+
+"It's hard to say." Potch spoke reluctantly. "There's nothing more than
+a bit of guesswork in my mind ... and I suppose it's the same with
+Michael. I haven't said anything to Michael about it, and he hasn't to
+me, so it's better not to mention it."
+
+"There's a good deal changed on the Ridge since I went away," Sophie
+remarked musingly.
+
+"The new rush, and the school, the Bush Brothers' church, and Mrs.
+Watty's veranda?"
+
+"I don't mean that," Sophie said. "It's the people and things ... you,
+for instance, and Michael----"
+
+"Michael?" Potch exclaimed. "He's wearing the same old clothes, the same
+old hat."
+
+Sophie was too much in earnest to respond to the whimsey.
+
+"He's different somehow ... I don't quite know how," she said. "There's
+a look about him--his eyes--a disappointed look, Potch.... It hurt him
+when I went away, I know. But now--it's not that...."
+
+As Potch did not reply, Sophie's eyes questioned him earnestly.
+
+"Has anything happened," she asked, "to make Michael look like that?"
+
+"I ... don't know," Potch replied.
+
+Answered by the slow and doubtful tone of his denial, Sophie exclaimed:
+
+"There is something, Potch! I don't want to know what it is if you can't
+tell me. I'm only worried about Michael.... I'd always thought he had
+the secret of that inside peace, and now he looks----Oh, I can't bear to
+see him look as he does.... And he seems to have lost interest in
+things--the life here--everything."
+
+"Yes," Potch admitted.
+
+"Only tell me," Sophie urged, "is this that's bothering Michael likely
+to clear, and has it been hanging over him for long?"
+
+Potch was silent so long that she wondered whether he was going to
+answer the question. Then he said slowly:
+
+"I ... don't know. I really don't know anything, Sophie. I happened to
+find out--by accident--that Michael's pretty worried about something. I
+don't rightly know what, or why. That's all."
+
+The even pace of those days gave Sophie the quiet mind she had come to
+the Ridge for. There was healing for her in the fragrant air, the
+sunshiny days, the blue-dark nights, with their unclouded, starry skies.
+She went into the shed one morning and threw the bags from the
+cutting-wheel which had been her mother's, cleared and cleaned up the
+room, rearranged the boxes, put out her working gear, and cut and
+polished one or two stones which were lying on a saucer beside the
+wheel, to discover whether her hand had still its old deftness. Michael
+was delighted with the work she showed him in the evening, and gave her
+several small stones to face and polish for him.
+
+Every day then Sophie worked at her wheel for a while. George and Watty,
+Bill Grant and the Crosses brought stuff for her to cut and polish, and
+in a little while her life was going in the even way it had done before
+she left the Ridge, but it was a long time before Sophie went about as
+she used to. After a while, however, she got into the way of walking
+over to see Maggie Grant or Martha M'Cready in the afternoon,
+occasionally; but she never talked to them of her life away from the
+Ridge; they never spoke of it to her.
+
+Only one thing had disturbed her slightly--seeing Arthur Henty one
+evening as she and Martha were coming from the Three Mile.
+
+He had come towards them, with a couple of stockmen, driving a mob of
+cattle. Dust rose at the heels of the cattle and horses; the cattle
+moved slowly; and the sun was setting in the faces of the men behind the
+cattle. Sophie did not know who they were until a man on a chestnut
+horse stared at her. His face was almost hidden by his beard; but after
+the first glance she recognised Arthur Henty. They passed as people do
+in a dream, Sophie and Martha back from the road, the men riding off the
+cattle, Arthur with the stockmen and cattle which a cloud of dust
+enveloped immediately. The dark trees by the roadside swayed, dipped in
+the gold of the sunset, when they had passed. The image of Arthur Henty
+riding like that in the dust behind the cattle, his face gilded by the
+light of the setting sun, came to Sophie again and again. She was a
+little disturbed by it; but it was only natural that she should be, she
+thought. She had not seen Arthur since the night of the ball, and so
+much had happened to both their lives since then.
+
+She saw him once or twice in the township afterwards. He had stared at
+her; Sophie had bowed and smiled, but they had not spoken. Later, she
+had seen him lounging on the veranda at Newton's, or hanging his bridle
+over the pegs outside Ezra Smith's billiard saloon, and neither her
+brain nor pulse had quickened at the sight of him. She was pleased and
+reassured. She did not think of him after that, and went on her way
+quietly, happily, more deeply content in her life with Michael and
+Potch.
+
+As her natural vigour returned, she grew to a fuller appreciation of
+that life; health and a normal poise of body and soul brought the faint
+light of happiness to her eyes. Michael heard her laughing as she teased
+Paul sometimes, and Potch thrilled to the rippled cadenza of Sophie's
+laughter.
+
+"It's good to hear that again," Michael said to him one day, hearing it
+fly from Rouminof's hut.
+
+Potch's glance, as his head moved in assent, was eloquent beyond words.
+
+Sophie had a sensation of hunger satisfied in the life she was leading.
+Some indefinable hunger of her soul was satisfied by breathing the pure,
+calm air of the Ridge again, and by feeling her life was going the way
+the lives of other women on the Ridge were going. She expected
+her life would go on like this, days and years fall behind her
+unnoticed; that she and Potch would work together, have children, be
+splendid friends always, live out their days in the simple, sturdy
+fashion of Ridge folk, and grow old together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Tenders had been called for, to clear the course for the annual race
+meeting. A notice posted on the old, wild cherry tree in the road
+opposite Newton's, brought men and boys from every rush on Fallen Star
+to Ezra Smith's billiard-room on the night appointed; and Ezra,
+constituted foreman by the meeting, detailed parties to clear and roll
+the track.
+
+A paddock at the back of the town, with several tall coolebahs at one
+side, was known as the race-course. A table placed a little out from the
+trees served for a judge's box; and because the station folk usually
+drew up their buggies and picnicked there, the shade of the coolebahs
+was called the grand-stand. Farther along a saddling-paddock had been
+fenced off, and in it, on race-days, were collected a miscellaneous
+muster of the show horses of the district--rough-haired nags, piebald
+and skewbald; rusty, dusty, big-boned old racers with famous
+reputations; wild-eyed, unbroken youngsters, green from the plains;
+Warria chestnuts, graceful as greyhounds, with quivering, scarlet
+nostrils; and the nuggety, deep-chested offspring of the Langi-Eumina
+stallion Black Harry.
+
+People came from far and near for the races, and for the ball which was
+held the same evening in the big, iron-roofed shed opposite Newton's.
+Newton's was filled to the brim with visitors, and there were not
+stables enough for the horses. But Ridge stables are never more than
+railed yards about the size of a room, with bark thatches, and as many
+of them as were needed were run up for the occasion.
+
+Horses and horsemen were heroes of the occasion The merits of every
+horse that was going to run were argued; histories, points, pedigrees,
+and performances discussed. Stories were told of the doings of strange
+horses brought from distant selections, the out-stations of Warria,
+Langi-Eumina, or Darrawingee; yarns swopped of almost mythical
+warrigals, and warrigal hunting, the breaking of buck-jumpers, the
+enterprises and exploits of famous horsemen. Ridge meetings, since the
+course had been made and the function had become a yearly fixture, were
+gone over; and the chances of every horse and rider entered for the next
+day debated, until anticipation and interest attained their highest
+pitch.
+
+Everybody in the township went to the races; everybody was expected to
+go. Race-day was the Ridge gala day; the day upon which men, women, and
+children gave themselves up to the whole-hearted, joyous excitement of
+an outing. The meeting brought a bookmaker or two from Sydney sometimes,
+and sometimes a man in the town made a book on the event. But nobody, it
+was rumoured, looked forward to, or enjoyed the races more than Mrs.
+Watty Frost, although she had begun by disapproving of them, and still
+maintained she did not "hold with betting." She put up with it, however,
+so long as the Sydney men did not get away with Ridge money.
+
+Potch was disappointed, and so was Michael, that Sophie would not go to
+the races, which were held during the year of her return. They went, and
+Rouminof trotted off by himself, quite early. Sophie did not want to see
+all the strangers who would be in Fallen Star for race-day, she
+said--people from the river selections, the stations, and country towns.
+Late in the afternoon, as she was going to see Ella Bryant, to offer to
+mind the baby while Ella and Bully went to the ball, she saw Martha was
+at home, a drift of smoke coming from the chimney of her hut.
+
+Sophie went to the back door of the hut and stood in the doorway.
+
+"Are you there, Martha?" she called.
+
+
+"That you, Sophie?" Martha queried. "Come in!"
+
+Sophie went into the kitchen. Martha had a big fire, and her room was
+full of its hot glare. She was ironing at a table against the wall, and
+freshly laundered, white clothes were hanging to a line stretched from
+above the window to a nail on the inner wall. She looked up happily as
+Sophie appeared, sweat streaming from her fat, jolly face.
+
+"I was just thinking of you, dearie," she exclaimed, putting the iron on
+an upturned tin, and straightening out the flounces of the dress she was
+at work on. "Lovely day it's been for the races, hasn't it? Sit down.
+I'll be done d'reckly, and am going to make a cup of tea before I go
+over to help Mrs. Newton a bit with dinner. My, she's got her hands full
+over there--with all the crowd up!... Don't think I ever did see such a
+crowd at the races, Sophie."
+
+Martha's iron flashed and swung backwards and forth. Sophie watched the
+brawny forearm which wielded the iron. Hard and as brown as the branch
+of a tree it was, from above the elbow where her sleeve was rolled back
+to the wrist; the hand fastened over the iron, red and dappled with
+great golden-brown freckles; the nails of its short, thick fingers,
+broken, dirt lying in thick, black wedges beneath them. As her other
+hand moved over the dress, preparing the way for the iron, Sophie saw
+its work-worn palm, the lines on it driven deep with scouring,
+scrubbing, and years of washing clothes, and cleaning other folks'
+houses. She thought of the work those hands of Martha's had done for
+Fallen Star; how Martha had looked after sick people, brought babies
+into the world, nursed the mothers, mended, washed, sewed, and darned,
+giving her help wherever it was needed. Always good-natured, hearty,
+healthy, and wholesome, what a wonderful woman she was, Mother M'Cready,
+Sophie exclaimed to herself.
+
+Martha was as excited as any girl on the Ridge, ironing her dress now,
+and getting ready for the ball. Sophie wondered how old she was. She did
+not look any older than when she first remembered her; but people said
+Martha must be sixty if she was a day. And she loved a dance, Sophie
+knew. She could dance, too, Mother M'Cready. The boys said she could
+dance like a two-year-old.
+
+"What are you going to wear to the ball, Sophie?" Martha asked. "I
+suppose you've got some real nice dresses you brought from America."
+
+"I'm not going," Sophie said,
+
+"Not going?" Martha's iron came down with a bang, her blue eyes flashed
+wide with astonishment. "The idea! Not goin' to the Ridge ball--the
+first since you came home? I never heard of such a thing.... 'Course
+you're going, Sophie!"
+
+Sophie's glance left Martha's big, busy figure. It went through the open
+doorway. The sunshine was garish on the plains, although the afternoon
+was nearly over.
+
+"Why aren't you goin'?" Martha pursued. "Why? What'll your father say?
+And Michael? And Potch? We'd all been looking forward to seein' you
+there like you used to be, Sophie. And ... here was me doin' up my dress
+extra special, thinkin' Sophie'll be that grand in the dresses she's
+brought from America ... we'll all have to smarten a bit to keep up with
+her...."
+
+Tears swam in Sophie's eyes at the naïve and genial admiration of what
+Martha had said.
+
+"It'll spoil the ball if you're not there," Martha insisted, her iron
+flashing vigorously. "It just won't be--the ball--and everything looking
+as if it were goin' to be the biggest ball ever was on the Ridge.
+Everybody'll be that disappointed----"
+
+"Do you think they will, Martha?" Sophie queried.
+
+"I don't think; I know."
+
+A little smile, sceptical yet wistful, hovered in Sophie's eyes.
+
+"And it don't seem fair to Potch neither."
+
+"Potch?"
+
+"Yes ... you hidin' yourself away as if you weren't happy--and going to
+marry the best lad in the country." The iron came down emphatically,
+Martha working it as vigorously and intently as she was thinking.
+
+"There's some says Potch isn't a match for you now, Sophie. Not since
+you went away and got manners and all.... They can't tell why you're
+goin' to marry Potch. But as I said to Mrs. Watty the other day, I said:
+'Sophie isn't like that. She isn't like that at all. It's the man she
+goes for, and Potch is good enough for a princess to take up with.'
+That's what I said; and I don't mind who knows it...."
+
+Sophie had got up and gone to the door while Martha was talking. She was
+amused at the idea of Mrs. Watty having forgiven her sufficiently to
+think that Potch was not a good enough match for her.
+
+"Besides ... I did want you to go, Sophie," Martha continued. "They're
+all coming over from Warria--Mr. and Mrs. Henty and the girls, and Mrs.
+Arthur. They've got a party staying with them, up from Sydney ... and
+most of them have put up at Newton's for the night...."
+
+She glanced at Sophie to see how she was taking this news. But no
+flicker of concern changed the thoughtful mask of Sophie's features as
+she leaned in the doorway looking out to the blue fall of the afternoon
+sky.
+
+"They're coming over to see how the natives of these parts amuse
+theirselves," Martha declared scornfully. "They'll have on all the fine
+dresses and things they buy down in Sydney ... and I was lookin' to you,
+Sophie, to keep up our end. I've been thinkin' to meself, 'They think
+they're the salt of the earth, don't they? Think they're that smart ...
+we dress so funny ... and dance so funny, over at Fallen Star. But
+Sophie'll show them; Sophie'll take the shine out of them when they see
+her in one of the dresses she's brought from America.'"
+
+As Martha talked, Sophie could see the ball-room at Warria as she had
+years before. She could see the people in it--figures swaying down the
+long veranda, the Henty girls, Mrs. Henty, Phyllis Chelmsford--their
+faces, the dresses they had worn; Arthur, John Armitage, James Henty,
+herself, as she had sat behind the piano, or turned the pages of her
+father's music. She could hear the music he and Mrs. Henty played; the
+rhythm of a waltz swayed her. A twinge of the old wrath, hurt
+indignation, and disappointment, vibrated through her.... She smiled to
+think of it, and of all the long time which lay between that night and
+now.
+
+"I'd give anything for you to be there--looking your best," Martha
+continued. "I can't bear that lot to think you've come home because you
+weren't a success, as they say over there, or because...."
+
+"Mr. Armitage wasn't as fond of me--as he used to be," Sophie murmured.
+
+Martha caught the mocking of a gleam in her eyes as she spoke. No one
+knew why Sophie had come home; but Mrs. Newton had given Martha an
+American newspaper with a paragraph in it about Sophie. Martha had read
+and re-read it, and given it to several other people to read. She put
+her iron on the hearth and disappeared into the bedroom which opened off
+her kitchen.
+
+"This is all I know about it, Sophie," she said, returning with the
+paper.
+
+She handed the paper to Sophie, and Sophie glanced at a marked paragraph
+on its page.
+
+"Of a truth, dark are the ways of women, and mysterious beyond human
+understanding," she read. "Probably no young artist for a long time has
+had as meteoric a career on Broadway as Sophie Rouminof. Leaping from
+comparative obscurity, she has scintillated before us in revue and
+musical comedy for the last three or four years, and now, at the zenith
+of her success, when popularity is hers to do what she likes with, she
+goes back to her native element, the obscurity from which she sprang.
+Some first-rate artists have got religion, philanthropy, or love, and
+have renounced the footlights for them; but Sophie is doing so for no
+better reason, it is said, than that she is _écœœuré_ of us and our
+life--the life of any and all great cities. A well-known impresario
+informs us that a week or two ago he asked her to name her own terms for
+a new contract; but she would have nothing to do with one on any terms.
+And now she has slipped back into the darkness of space and time, like
+one of her own magnificent opals, and the bill and boards of the little
+Opera House will know her name and fascinating personality no more."
+
+The faint smile deepened in Sophie's eyes.
+
+"It's true, isn't it, Sophie?" Martha asked, as Sophie did not speak
+when she had finished reading.
+
+"I suppose it is," Sophie said. "But your paper doesn't say what made me
+_écœœuré_--sick to the heart, that is--of the life over there,
+Martha. And that's the main thing.... It got me down so, I thought I'd
+never sing again. But there's one thing I'd like you to tell people for
+me, Martha: Mr. Armitage was always goodness itself to me. He didn't
+even ask me to go away with him. He did make love to me, and I was just
+a silly little girl. I didn't know then men go on like that without
+meaning much.... I wanted to be a singer, and I made up my mind to go
+away when he did.... Afterwards I lost my voice. My heart wouldn't sing
+any more. I wanted to come home.... That's all I knew.... I wanted to
+come home.... And I came."
+
+Martha went to her. Her arms went round Sophie's neck.
+
+"My lamb," she whispered.
+
+Sophie rested against her for a moment. Then she kissed one of the bare
+arms she had watched working the iron so vigorously.
+
+"We'd best not think of it, Mother M'Cready," she said.
+
+"All right, dearie!"
+
+Martha withdrew her arms and went back to the hearth. She lifted another
+iron, held it to her face to judge its heat, and returned to the table.
+She rubbed the iron on a piece of hessian on a box there, dusted it with
+a soft rag, and went on with the ironing of her dress.
+
+"I wish I was as young as you, Martha," Sophie said.
+
+"Lord, lovey, you will be when you're my age," Martha replied, with a
+swift, twinkling glance of her blue eyes. "But you're coming ... aren't
+you? I won't have the heart to wear my pink stockings if you don't,
+Sophie. Mrs. Newton gave them to me for a Christmas-box ... and I'm fair
+dying to wear them."
+
+Sophie smiled at the pair of bright pink stockings pinned on the line
+beside a newly-starched petticoat.
+
+"You will, won't you?"
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+"I don't think so, Martha."
+
+Sophie went out of the doorway. She was going home, and stood again a
+moment, looking through scattered trees to the waning afternoon sky. A
+couple of birds dashed across her line of vision with shrill, low,
+giggling cries.
+
+She heard people talking in the distance. Several men rode up to
+Newton's. She saw them swing from their horses, put the reins over the
+pegs before the bar, and go into the hotel. Two or three children ran
+down the street chattering eagerly, excitedly. Roy O'Mara went across to
+the hall with some flags under his arm. From all the huts drifted
+ejaculations, fragments of laughter and calling. Excitement about the
+ball was in the air.
+
+Sophie remembered how happy and excited she used to be about the Ridge
+balls. She thought of it all vaguely at first, that lost girlish joy of
+hers, the free, careless gaiety which had swept her along as she danced.
+She remembered her father's fiddling, Mrs. Newton's playing; how the
+music had had a magic in it which set everybody's feet flying and the
+boys singing to tunes they knew. The men polished the floor so that you
+could scarcely walk on it. One year they had spent hours working it up
+so that you slipped along like greased lightning as you danced.
+
+Sophie smiled at her reminiscences. The high tones of a man's voice,
+eager and exultant, shouting to someone across the twilight; the twitter
+of a girl's laughter--they were all in the air now as they had been
+then. Her listlessness stirred; everybody was preparing for the ball,
+and getting ready to go to it. Excitement and eager looking forward to a
+good time were in the air. They were infectious. Sophie trembled to
+them--they tempted her. Could she go to the ball, like everybody else?
+Could she drift again in the stream of easy and genial intercourse with
+all these people of the Ridge whom she loved and who loved her?
+
+Martha came to the door. Her eyes strained on the brooding young face,
+trying to read from the changing expressions which flitted across it
+what Sophie was thinking.
+
+"You're coming, aren't you, dearie?" she begged.
+
+Sophie's eyes surprised the old woman, the brilliance of tears and light
+in them, their childish playing of hope beyond hope and fear, amazed
+her.
+
+"Do you think I could, Martha?" she cried. "Do you think I could?"
+
+"Course you could, darling," Martha said.
+
+Sophie's arms went round her in an instant's quick pressure; then she
+stood off from her.
+
+"Won't it be lovely," she cried, "to dance and sing--and to be young
+again, Martha?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood
+along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall.
+At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against
+the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light
+came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing
+and talking.
+
+"It's like old times, isn't it, Potch"--Sophie's fingers closed over
+Potch's arm--"to be going to a Ridge dance?"
+
+There was a faint, sweet stirring which the wind makes in the trees
+within her, Sophie realised. It was strange and delightful to feel alive
+again, and alive with the first freshness, innocence, and vague
+happiness of a girl.
+
+Potch looked down on her, smiling. He was filled with pride to have her
+beside him like this, to think they would go into the hall together, and
+that people would say to each other when they saw them: "There's Sophie
+and Potch!"
+
+That using of their names side by side was a source of infinite content
+to Potch. He loved people to say: "When are you and Sophie coming over
+to see us, Potch?" or, "Would you mind telling Sophie, Potch?" and give
+him a message for Sophie. And this would be the first time they had
+appeared at an assembly of Ridge folk together.
+
+He walked with his head held straight and high, and his eyes shone when
+he went down the hall with Sophie. What did it matter if they called him
+Potch, the Ridge folk, "a little bit of potch," he thought, Sophie was
+going to be Mrs. Heathfield.
+
+"Here's Sophie and Potch," he heard people say, as he had thought they
+would, and his heart welled with happiness and pride.
+
+Nearly everybody had arrived when they went into the hall; the first
+dance was just beginning. Branches of budda, fleeced with creamy and
+lavender blossom, had been stuck through the supports of the hall. Flags
+and pennants of all the colours in the rainbow, strung on a line
+together, were stretched at the end of the platform. On the platform
+Mrs. Newton was sitting at the piano. Paul had his music-stand near her,
+and behind him an old man from the Three Mile was nervously fingering
+and blowing on a black and silver-mounted flute. Women and girls and a
+few of the older men were seated on forms against the walls. Several
+young mothers had babies in their arms, and children of all ages were
+standing about, or sitting beside their parents. By common consent,
+Ridge folk had taken one side of the hall, and station folk the upper
+end of the other side.
+
+Sophie's first glance found Martha, her white dress stiff and
+immaculate, her face with its plump, rosy cheeks turned towards her, her
+eyes smiling and expectant. Martha beamed at her; Sophie smiled back,
+and, her glance travelling on, found Maggie and Bill Grant, Mrs. George
+Woods and two of her little girls; Mrs. Watty, in a black dress, its
+high neck fastened by a brooch, with three opals in, Watty had given
+her; and Watty, genial and chirrupy as usual, but afraid to appear as if
+he were promising himself too much of a good time.
+
+Warria, Langi-Eumina, and Darrawingee folk had foregathered; the girls
+and men laughed and chattered in little groups; the older people talked,
+sitting against the wall or leaning towards each other. Mrs. Henty
+looked much as she had done five years before; James Henty not a day
+older; but Mrs. Tom Henderson, who had been Elizabeth Henty, had
+developed a sedate and matronly appearance. Polly was not as plump and
+jolly as she had been--a little puzzled and apprehensive expression
+flitted through her clear brown eyes, and there were lines of
+discouragement about her mouth. Sophie recognised Mrs. Arthur Henty in a
+slight, well-dressed woman, whose thin, unwrinkled features wore an
+expression of more or less matter-of-fact discontent.
+
+The floor was shining under the light of the one big hanging lamp. Paul
+scraped his violin with a preliminary flourish; Mrs. Newton threw a
+bunch of chords after him, and they cantered into a waltz time the Ridge
+loved. Roy O'Mara, M.C. for the occasion, shouted jubilantly: "Take y'r
+partners for a waltz!" Couples edged out from the wall, and in a moment
+were swirling and whirling up and down on the bared space of the hall.
+There were squeals and little screams as feet slipped and skidded on the
+polished floor; but people soon found their dancing feet, got under way
+of the music, and swung to its rhythms with more ease, security, and
+pleasure. Sophie watched the dance for a while. She saw Martha dancing
+with Michael. Every year at the Ridge ball Michael danced the first
+dance with Martha. And Martha, dancing with Michael--no one on the Ridge
+was happier, though they moved so solemnly, turning round and round with
+neat little steps, as if they were pledged to turn in the space of a
+threepenny piece!
+
+Sophie smiled at Martha's happy seriousness. Arthur Henty was dancing
+with his wife. Sophie had not seen him so clearly since her return to
+the Ridge. When she had passed him in the township, or at Newton's, he
+had been riding, and she had scarcely seen his face for the beard which
+had overgrown it and the shadow his hat cast. She studied him with
+unmoved curiosity. His beard had been clipped close, and she recognised
+the moulding of his head, the slope of his shoulders, a peculiar loose
+litheness in his gait. Her eyes followed him as he danced with his wife.
+Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Henty were waltzing in the perfunctory, mechanical
+fashion of people thoroughly bored with each other.
+
+Then Sophie swung with Potch into the eddying current of the dancers.
+Potch danced in as steady and methodical a fashion as he did everything.
+The music did not get him; at least, Sophie could not believe it did.
+
+His eyes were deep and shining as though it were a great and holy
+ceremony he were engaged in, but there was no melting to the delight of
+rhythmic movement in his sober gyrations. Sophie felt him a clog on the
+flow of her own action as he steered and steadily directed her through
+the crowd.
+
+"For goodness' sake, Potch, dance as if you meant it," she said.
+
+"But I do mean it, Sophie," he said.
+
+As he looked down at her, his flushed, happy face assured her that he
+did mean dancing, but he meant it as he meant everything--with a dead
+earnestness.
+
+After that dance all her old friends among men of the Ridge came round
+Sophie to ask her to dance with them. Bully and Roy sparred for dances
+as they did in the old days, and Michael and George and Watty threatened
+to knock their heads together and throw them out of the room if they
+didn't get out of the way and give some other chaps a chance to dance
+with Sophie. Between the dances, Sophie went over to talk to Maggie
+Grant, Mrs. Watty, Mrs. George Woods, and Martha. She had time to tell
+Martha how nice her dress and the pink stockings looked, and how the
+opals in her bracelet flashed as she was dancing.
+
+"You can see them from one end of the hall to the other," Sophie
+whispered.
+
+"And you, lovey," Martha said. "It's just lovely, the dress. You should
+have seen how they stared at you when you came in.... And Potch looking
+so nice, too. He wouldn't call the King his uncle to-night, Sophie!"
+
+Sophie laughed happily as she went off to dance with Bully, who was
+claiming her for a polka mazurka.
+
+The evening was half through when John Armitage appeared in the doorway.
+Sophie had just come from dancing the quadrilles with Potch when she saw
+Armitage standing in the doorway with Peter Newton. Potch saw him as
+Sophie did; their eyes met. Michael came towards them.
+
+"Mr. Armitage did come, I see," Sophie said quietly, as Potch and
+Michael were looking towards the door. "I had a letter from him a few
+weeks ago saying he thought he would be here for the ball," she added.
+
+"Why has he come?" Michael asked.
+
+"I don't know," she said. "To see me, I suppose ... and to find out
+whether the men will do business with him again."
+
+Michael's gesture implied it was useless to talk of that.
+
+Sophie continued: "But you know what I said, Michael. I can't be happy
+until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the
+men here.... You must do that for me, Michael. They know I'm going to
+marry Potch ... and if they see there's no ill feeling between John
+Armitage and me, they'll believe I was more to blame than he was--if
+it's a question of blame.... I want you and Potch to stand by me in
+this, Michael."
+
+Potch's eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and
+sure. But Michael showed no relenting.
+
+Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in
+the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had
+circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had
+created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and
+indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach
+to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie.
+
+She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had
+met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them
+than playing a game they had learned to play rather well.
+
+Sophie said: "It is you really?"
+
+He took the hand she held to him. "But you knew I was coming? You had my
+letter?"
+
+"Of course ... but----"
+
+"And my word is my bond."
+
+The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage's voice, and the
+perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised
+people who were near them.
+
+Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded
+Armitage with grave, quiet eyes.
+
+"Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!" Armitage said.
+
+Michael did not reply; but Potch said:
+
+"Evening, Mr. Armitage!" And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and
+Michael's silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had
+made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather.
+Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning.
+
+"Is this my dance, Sophie?" Armitage inquired.
+
+Sophie shook her head, smiling.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Which is my dance?" The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.
+
+Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly
+understanding.
+
+"The next one."
+
+She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve
+force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold
+to, or move as she wished.
+
+"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at
+him.
+
+"Sophie!"
+
+His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love
+and gratitude beyond words.
+
+While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys;
+he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz
+with Polly Henty.
+
+When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty
+leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an
+odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had
+heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was
+connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about
+all there had been between herself and John Armitage--even this dancing
+with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer
+anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her
+dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised
+that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting
+on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her
+dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel
+drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure
+blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.
+
+Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they
+danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their
+movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and
+about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this
+with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and love-making
+forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate
+sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage's eyes.
+It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing
+and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the
+wall spurred Sophie to further laughter--a reckless gaiety.
+
+"You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and ... trying its
+wings in the sun, Sophie," Armitage said.
+
+"I feel ... just like that," Sophie said.
+
+After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or
+three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of
+quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with
+George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of
+the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe
+of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had
+"gone the pace," in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay
+world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie
+guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But
+she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men
+like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she
+caught Potch's gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled
+to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the
+younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was
+talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and
+enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.
+
+As she was coming from a dance with Roy O'Mara she passed Arthur Henty
+where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie
+as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung
+over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M'Cready.
+
+"You're going to dance with me?" he asked, a husky uncertainty in his
+voice.
+
+"No," Sophie said, looking away from him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and
+sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The
+unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted,
+spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied.
+
+"There's going to be an extra after supper," he said.
+
+"Very well."
+
+What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she
+had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.
+
+How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as
+she had waited then? But there were all those long years between.
+Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was
+dancing with Arthur.
+
+He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few
+paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among
+the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier
+poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in
+sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an
+effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly,
+indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother
+to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing
+himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie's laughter failed. The
+inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had
+read long before in each other's eyes was still there, after all the
+years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.
+
+Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had
+walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was
+remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon
+he had recited:
+
+          "I met a lady in the meads
+             Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
+           Her hair was long, her foot was light,
+             And her eyes were wild."
+
+Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not
+danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not
+laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and
+wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like
+dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing
+on a grave.
+
+Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful,
+working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers
+comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other,
+every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests
+of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
+
+Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when
+they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie
+wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering--voices,
+shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy
+exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....
+
+Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared
+not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the
+surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated
+itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.
+
+As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was
+afraid of getting out of her depth ... but he held her carefully. His
+grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that
+hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up;
+she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and
+smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the
+smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp
+tightened. She was afraid of him--afraid of all the long, old dreams he
+might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those
+hungry, hungry eyes.... She could not see them; she would not.
+
+A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She
+could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices
+were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence
+them ... begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the
+implacable in him--the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face.
+She was helpless before them.
+
+Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a
+little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no
+hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean
+fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close
+embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought
+consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow
+of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came
+to them in far-away murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and
+laughter.
+
+Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.
+
+"No, no," she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.
+
+He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full
+draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last
+essence.
+
+A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie
+was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a
+moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark,
+she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle
+paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear
+nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged
+animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had
+stupefied her.
+
+She called Michael.
+
+Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were
+on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant's
+vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch's
+... she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the
+surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from
+where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through
+darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy,
+quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Sophie went into the shed where her cutting-wheel was soon after eight
+o'clock next morning. She took up a packet of small stones George Woods
+had left with her and set to work on them.
+
+The wheel was in a line with the window, and she sat on the wooden chair
+before it, so that the light fell over her left shoulder. On the bench
+which ran out from the wheel were a spirit lamp and the trays of rough
+opal; on the other side of the bench the polishing buffers were arranged
+one against the other. A hand-basin, the water in it raddled with rouge,
+stood on the table behind her, and a white china jug of fresh water
+beside it.
+
+Sophie lighted the spirit lamp, gathered up a handful of the slender
+sticks about the size of pen-holders which Potch had prepared for her,
+melted her sealing-wax over the flame of the lamp, drew the saucer of
+George's opals to her, and fastened a score of small stones to the
+heated wax on the ends of the sticks. She blew out the lamp.
+
+She was working in order not to think; she worked for awhile without
+thinking, details of the opal-cutting following each other in the
+routine they had made for themselves.
+
+The plague of her thoughts grew as she worked. From being nebulæ of a
+state of mind which she could not allow herself to contemplate, such
+darkness of despair there was in it, they evolved to tiny pictures which
+presented themselves singly and in panorama, flitting and flickering
+incoherently, incongruously.
+
+Sophie could see the hall as she had the night before. She seemed to be
+able to see everything at once and in detail--its polished floors,
+flowering boughs, and flags, the people sitting against the iron walls
+in their best clothes ... Mrs. Watty, Watty and George, Ella and Bully
+... Bully holding the baby ... the two little Woods' girls in their
+white embroidered muslin dresses, with pink ribbons tied round their
+heads.... Cash Wilson dancing solemnly in carpet slippers; Mrs. Newton
+at the piano ... the prim way her fat little hands pranced sedately up
+and down over the keys.... Paul enjoying his own music ... getting a
+little bit wild over it, and working his right leg and knee as though he
+had an orchestra to keep going somehow.... Mrs. Newton refusing to be
+coaxed into anything like enthusiasm, but trying to keep up with him,
+nevertheless.... Mrs. Henty, Polly, Elizabeth ... Mrs. Arthur ... the
+Langi-Eumina party ... the Moffats ... Potch, Michael ... John Armitage.
+
+Images of New York flashed across these pictures of the night before.
+Sophie visualised the city as she had first seen it. A fairy city it had
+seemed to her with its sky-flung lights, thronged thoroughfares, and
+jangling bells. She saw a square of tall, flat-faced buildings before a
+park of leafless trees; shimmering streets on a wet night, near the New
+Theatre and the Little Opera House; a supper-party after the theatre ...
+gilded walls, Byzantian hangings, women with bare shoulders flashing
+satin from slight, elegant limbs, or emerging with jewel-strung necks
+from swathings of mist-like tulle, the men beside them ... a haze of
+cigarette smoke over it all ... tinkle of laughter, a sweet, sleepy
+stirring of music somewhere ... light of golden wine in wide,
+shallow-bowled glasses, with tall, fragile stems ... lipping and sway of
+tides against the hull of a yacht on quiet water ... a man's face, heavy
+and swinish, peering into her own....
+
+Then again, Mrs. Watty against the wall of the Ridge ball-room, stiff
+and disapproving-looking in her high-necked black dress ... Michael
+dancing with Martha ... Martha's pink stockings ... and the way she had
+danced, lightly, delightedly, her feet encased in white canvas shoes.
+Sophie had worn white canvas shoes at the Warria ball, she remembered.
+Pictures of that night crowded on her, of Phyllis Chelmsford and Arthur
+... Arthur....
+
+Her thought stopped there. Arthur ... what did it all mean? She saw
+again the fixed, flat figures she had seen against the wall when she was
+dancing with Arthur--the corpse-like faces.... Why had everybody died
+when she was dancing with Arthur Henty? Sophie remembered that people
+had looked very much as usual when she went out to dance with Arthur;
+then when she looked at them again, they all seemed to be
+dead--drowned--and sitting round the hall in clear, still water, like
+the figures she had seen in mummy cases in foreign museums. Only she and
+Arthur were alive in that roomful of dead people. They had come from
+years before and were going to years beyond. It had been dark before she
+realised this; then they had been caught up into a light, transcending
+all consciousness of light; in which they had seemed no more than atoms
+of light adrift on the tide of the ages. Then the light had gone....
+
+They were out of doors when she recognised time and place again. Sophie
+had seen the hall crouched heavy and dark under a starry sky, its
+windows, yellow eyes.... She was conscious of trees about her ... the
+note of a goat-bell not far away ... and Arthur.... They had kissed, and
+then in the darkness that terror and fear--those struggling shapes ...
+figures of a nightmare ... light on Potch's hair.... She heard her own
+cry, winging eerie and shrill through the darkness.
+
+With a sudden desperate effort Sophie threw off the plague of these
+thoughts and small mind-pictures; she turned to the cutting-wheel again.
+It whirred as she bent over it.
+
+"Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!" the wheel purred. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+
+Her brain throbbed as she tried not to listen or hear that song of the
+wheel; "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur!" the blood murmured and droned in her
+head.
+
+Her hand holding an opal to the wheel trembled, the opal skidded and was
+scratched.
+
+"Oh, God," Sophie moaned, "don't let me think of him any more. Don't let
+me...."
+
+A mirror on the wall opposite reflected her face. Sophie wondered
+whether that was her face she saw in the mirror: the face in the mirror
+was strangely old, withered and wan. She closed her eyes on the sight of
+it. It confronted her again when she opened them. The eyes of the face
+in the mirror were heavy and dark with a darkness of mind she could not
+fathom.
+
+Sophie got up from her chair before the cutting-wheel. She went to the
+window and stood looking through its small open space at the bare earth
+beyond the hut. A few slight, sketchy trees, and the broken earth and
+scattered mounds of old dumps were thrown up under a fall of clear,
+exquisite sky, of a blue so pure, so fine, that there was balm just in
+looking at it. For a moment she plunged into it, the tragic chaos of her
+mind obliterated.
+
+With new courage from that moment's absorption of peaceful beauty, she
+went back to the wheel, the resolution which had taken her to it twice
+before that morning urging her. She sat down and began to work, took up
+the piece of opal she had scratched, examined it closely, wondering how
+the flaw could be rectified, if it could be rectified.
+
+The wheel, set going, raised its droning whirr. Sophie held her mind to
+the stone. She was pleased after a while. "That's all right," she told
+herself. "If only you don't think.... If only you keep working like this
+and don't think of Arthur."
+
+It was Arthur she did not want to think of. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+the wheel mocked. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+
+Her head went into her hands. She was moaning and crying again. "Don't
+let me think of him any more ... if only I needn't think of him any
+more...."
+
+She began to work again. There was nothing to do but persist in trying
+to work, she thought. If she kept to it, perhaps in the end the routine
+would take her; she would become absorbed in the mechanism of what she
+was doing.
+
+A shadow was thrown before her. In the mirror Sophie saw that John
+Armitage was standing in the doorway. Her feet ceased to work the
+treadles of the cutting-wheel; her hands fell to her lap; she waited for
+him to come into the room. He walked past her to the window, and stood
+with his back to it, facing her. Her eyes went to him. She let him take
+what impression he might from her face, her defences were down; vaguely,
+perhaps, she hoped he would read something of her mind in her face, that
+he would need no explanation of what she had no words to express.
+
+There had been a smile of faint cynicism in his eyes as he looked
+towards her; it evaporated as she surrendered to the inquisition of his
+gaze.
+
+"Well?" he inquired gravely.
+
+"Well?" she replied as gravely.
+
+They studied each other quietly.
+
+John Armitage had changed very little since she had first seen him. His
+clean-shaven face was harder, a little more firmly set perhaps; the
+indecision had gone from it; it had lost some of its amiable mobility.
+He looked much more a man of the world he was living in--a business man,
+whose intelligence and energies had been trained in its service--but his
+eyes still had their subtle knowledge and sympathy, his individuality
+the attraction it had first had for her.
+
+He was wearing the loose, well-cut tweeds he travelled in, and had taken
+off his hat. It lay on the window-sill beside him, and Sophie saw that
+there was more silver in his hair where it was brushed back from his
+ears than there used to be. His eyes surveyed her as if she were written
+in an argot or dialect which puzzled him; his hands drifted and moved
+before her as he smoked a cigarette. His hands emphasised the difference
+between John Lincoln Armitage and men of the Ridge. Sophie thought of
+Potch's hands, and of Michael's, and the smile Michael might have had
+for Armitage's hands curved her lips.
+
+Armitage, taking that smile for a lessening of the tension of her mood,
+said:
+
+"You'd much better put on your bonnet and shawl, and come home with me,
+Sophie. We can be married en route, or in Sydney if you like.... You
+know how pleased the old man'll be. And, as for me----"
+
+Sophie's gaze swept past him, fretted lines deepening on her forehead.
+
+Armitage threw away his cigarette, abandoning his assumption of familiar
+friendliness with the action, and went to her side. Sophie rose to meet
+him.
+
+"Look here, Sophie," he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking
+into her eyes, "let's have done with all this neurotic rot.... You're
+the only woman in the world for me. I don't know why you left me. I
+don't care.... Come home ... let's get married ... and see whether we
+can't make a better thing of it...."
+
+Sophie had turned her eyes from his.
+
+"When I've said that before, you wouldn't have anything to do with it,"
+he continued. "You had a notion I was saying it because I ought--thought
+I had to, or the old man had talked me into it.... It wasn't true even
+then. I came here to say it ... so that you would believe I--want it,
+and I want you--more than anything on earth, Sophie."
+
+There was no response, only an overshadowing of troubled thought in
+Sophie's face.
+
+"Is there anything love or money can give you, girl, that I'm not eager
+to give you?" Armitage demanded. "What is it you want?... Do you know
+what you want?"
+
+Sophie did not reply, and her silence exasperated him.
+
+Taking her face in his hands, Armitage scrutinised it as though he must
+read there what her silence held from him.
+
+He realised how wan and weary-looking it was. Shadows beneath her eyes
+fell far down her cheeks, her lips lay together with a new, strange
+sternness. But he could not think of that yet. His male egoism could
+only consider its own situation, fight imperiously in its own defence.
+
+"You want something I can't give you?"
+
+His eyes held her for the fraction of a second; then, the pain of
+knowledge gripping him, his hands fell from her face. He turned away.
+
+"Which is it ... Potch or--the other?" He spoke with cruel bitterness.
+"It's always a case of 'which' with you--isn't it?"
+
+"That's just it," Sophie said.
+
+He glanced at her, surprised to hear a note of the same bitterness in
+her voice.
+
+"I didn't mean that, Sophie," he said. "You know I didn't."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"It's true all the same."
+
+"Tell me"--he turned to her--"I wish you would. You never have--why you
+left New York ... and gave up singing ... everything there, and came
+here."
+
+Sophie dropped into her chair again.
+
+"But you know."
+
+"Who could know anything of you, Sophie?"
+
+She moved the stones on the bench absent-mindedly. At length she said:
+
+"You remember our big row about Adler, when I was going to the supper on
+his yacht?"
+
+Armitage exclaimed with a gesture of protest.
+
+"I know," Sophie said, "you were angry ... you didn't mean what you
+said. But you were right all the same. You said I had let the life I was
+leading go to my head--that I was utterly demoralised by it.... I was
+angry; but it was true. You know the people I was going about with...."
+
+"I did my best to get you away from them," Armitage said.
+
+Sophie nodded. "But I hadn't had enough then ... of the beautiful places
+and things I found myself in the midst of ... and of all the admiration
+that came my way. What a queer crowd they were--Kalin, that Greek boy
+who was singing with me in _Eurydice_, Ina Barres, the Countess, Mrs.
+Youille-Bailey, Adler, and the rest of them.... They seemed to have run
+the gamut of all natural experiences and to be interested only in what
+was unnatural, bizarre, macabre.... Adler in that crowd was almost a
+relief. I liked his--honest Rabelaisianism, if you like.... I hadn't the
+slightest intention of more than amusing myself with him ... but he,
+evidently, did not intend to be merely a source of amusement to me. The
+supper on the yacht.... I kept my head for a while, not long, and
+then----"
+
+"Then?" Armitage queried.
+
+"That's why I came home," Sophie said. "I was so sick with the shock and
+shame of it all ... so sick and ashamed I couldn't sing any more. I
+wouldn't. My voice died.... I deserved what happened. I'd been playing
+for it ... taking the wine, the music, Adler's love-making ... and
+expecting to escape the taint of it all.... Afterwards I saw where I was
+going ... what that life was making of me...."
+
+"I don't know how you came to have anything to do with such a rotten
+lot," Armitage cried, sweating under a white heat of rage.
+
+"Oh, they're just people of means and leisure who like to patronise
+successful young dancers and singers for their own amusement," Sophie
+said.
+
+"Because you fell in with a set of ultraæsthetics and degenerates, is no
+reason to suppose all our people of means and leisure are like them,"
+Armitage declared hotly.
+
+"I don't," Sophie said; "what I felt, when I began to think about it,
+was that they were just the natural consequences of all the easy,
+luxurious living I'd seen--the extreme of the pole if you like. I saw
+the other when I went to live in a slum settlement in Chicago."
+
+"You did?" Armitage exclaimed incredulously.
+
+"When I got over the shock of--my awakening," she went on slowly, "I
+began to remember things Michael had said. That's why I went to Chicago
+... and worked in a clothing factory for a while.... I saw there why
+Adler's a millionaire, and heard from girls in a Youille-Bailey-M'Gill
+factory why Connie Youille-Bailey has money to burn...."
+
+"Old Youille-Bailey had fingers in a dozen pies, and he left her all
+he'd got," Armitage said.
+
+"But people down in the district where most of their money is made are
+living like bugs under a rotten log," Sophie exclaimed wearily. "They're
+made to live like that ... in order that people like William P. Adler
+and Mrs. Youille-Bailey ... may live as they do."
+
+Armitage's expression of mild cynicism yielded to one of concerned
+attentiveness. But he was concerned with the bearing on Sophie of what
+she had to say, and not at all with its relation to conditions of
+existence.
+
+"After all, life only goes on by its interests," she went on musingly;
+"and Mrs. Youille-Bailey's not altogether to blame for what she is. When
+people are bored, they've got to get interest or die; and if faculties
+which ought to be spent in useful or creative work aren't spent in that
+work, they find outlet in the silly energies a selfish and artificial
+life breeds...."
+
+"I admit," Armitage said, trying to veer her thoughts from the abstract
+to the personal issue, "that you went the pace. I couldn't keep up with
+it--not with Adler and his mob! But there's no need to go back to that
+sort of life. We could live as quietly as you like."
+
+Sophie shook her head. "I want to live here," she said. "I want to work
+with my hands ... feel myself in the swim of the world's life ... going
+with the great stream; and I want to help Michael here."
+
+Armitage sat back against the window-sill regarding her steadily.
+
+"If I could help you to do a great deal for the Ridge," he said; "if I
+were to settle here and spend all the money I've got in developing this
+place.--There's nothing innately immoral about a water-supply or
+electric power, I suppose, or in giving people decent houses to live in.
+And it would mean that for Fallen Star, if the scheme I have in mind is
+put into action. And if it is ... and I build a house here and were to
+live here most of my time ... would you marry me then, Sophie?"
+
+Sophie gazed at him, her eyes widening to a scarcely believable vision.
+
+"Do you mean you'd give up all your money to do that for the Ridge?" she
+asked.
+
+"Not quite that," he replied. "But the scheme would work out like that.
+I mean, it would provide more comfort and convenience for everybody on
+the Ridge--a more assured means of livelihood."
+
+"You don't mean to buy up the mines?"
+
+"Just that," he said.
+
+"But the men wouldn't agree...."
+
+"I don't know so much about that. It would depend on a few----"
+
+"Michael would never consent."
+
+"As a matter of fact"--John Armitage returned Sophie's gaze
+tranquilly--"I know something about Michael--some information came into
+my hands recently, although I've always vaguely suspected it--which will
+make his consent much more likely than you would have imagined.... If it
+does not, giving the information I hold to men of the Ridge will so
+destroy their faith and confidence in Michael that what he may say or do
+will not matter."
+
+Sophie's bewilderment and dismay constrained him. Then he continued:
+
+"You see, quite apart from you, my dear, it has always been a sort of
+dream of mine--ambition, if you like--to make a going concern of this
+place--to do for Fallen Star what other men I know have done for
+no-count, out-of-the-way towns and countries where natural resources or
+possibilities of investment warranted it.... I've talked the thing over
+with the old man, and with Andy M'Intosh, an old friend of mine, who is
+one of the ablest engineers in the States.... He's willing to throw in
+his lot with me.... Roughly, we've drawn up plans for conservation of
+flood waters and winter rains, which will alter the whole character of
+this country.... The old man at first was opposed--said the miners would
+never stand it; but since we've been out with the Ridge men, he's
+changed his mind rather. I mean, that when he knew some of the men would
+be willing to stand by us--and I have means of knowing they would--he
+was ready to agree. And when I told him Michael might be reckoned a
+traitor to his own creed----"
+
+"It's not true," Sophie cried, her faith afire. "It couldn't be! ... If
+everybody in the world told me, I wouldn't believe it!"
+
+Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and
+selected a cigarette.
+
+"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm only explaining the
+position to you because you're concerned in it. And for God's sake don't
+let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I'm not a villain. I don't feel
+in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.... I see my
+way to a profitable investment--incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I've
+been working out for a good many years.
+
+"Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he's worth if it weren't for
+this trump card of mine," Armitage went on. "He's got a Utopian dream
+about the place.... I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the
+advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its
+resources. His dream against mine--that's what it amounts to.... Well,
+it's a fair thing, isn't it, if I know that Michael is false to the
+things he says he stands for--and he stands in the way of my scheme--to
+let the men know he's false? ... They will fall away from the ideas he
+stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas
+sans Michael ... but they will be in the minority.... The way will be
+clear for reorganisation then."
+
+Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to
+his own creed--false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage
+said,--although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage
+reason for thinking so.
+
+"I'll see Michael to-morrow, and have it out with him," John Armitage
+said. "I shall tell him what I know ... and also my plans. If he will
+work with me----"
+
+Sophie looked up, her smile glimmering.
+
+"If he will work with me," Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all
+that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, "nothing need be
+said which will undermine Michael's influence with men of the Ridge. I
+know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with
+them--by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition,
+suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it
+has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected....
+I'll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure--give it a
+profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won't look like the
+thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses...."
+
+"He will...."
+
+"I am going to ask the men to meet me in the hall, at the end of the
+month, to lay before them a proposition for the more effective working
+of the mines. I shall put my proposition before them, and if Michael
+refuses to work with me, I shall be forced to give them proofs of his
+unworthiness of their respect...."
+
+"They won't believe you."
+
+"There will be the proofs, and Michael will not--he cannot--deny them."
+
+"You'll tell him what you are going to do?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Sophie realised how far Armitage was from understanding the religious
+intensity and simplicity with which Ridge folk worked for the way of
+life they believed to be the right one, and what the break-up of that
+belief would mean to those who had served it in the unpretentious,
+unprotesting fashion of honest, downright people. To him the Ridge stood
+for messy sentimentalism, Utopian idealism. And there was money in the
+place: there was money to be made by putting money into it--by working
+the mines and prospecting the country as the men without capital could
+not.
+
+John Armitage was ready to admit--Sophie had heard him admitting in
+controversy--that the Fallen Star mines which the miners themselves
+controlled were as well worked and as well managed within their means as
+any he had ever come across; that the miners themselves were a sober and
+industrious crowd. What capital could do for them and for the Fallen
+Star community by way of increasing its output and furthering its
+activities was what he saw. And the only security he could have for
+putting his capital into working the mines was ownership of them.
+Ownership would give him the right to organise the workers, and to claim
+interest for his investment from their toil, or the product of their
+toil.
+
+The Ridge declaration of independence had made it clear that people of
+Fallen Star did not want increased output, the comforts and conveniences
+which capital could give them, unless they were provided from the common
+fund of the community. Ultimately, it was hoped the common fund would
+provide them, but until it did Ridge men had announced their willingness
+to do without improvements for the sake of being masters of their own
+mines. If it was a question of barter, they were for the pride and
+dignity of being free men and doing without the comforts and
+conveniences of modern life. Sophie felt sure Armitage underestimated
+the feeling of the majority of men of the Ridge toward the Ridge idea,
+and that most of them would stand by it, even if for some mysterious
+reason Michael lost status with them. But she was dismayed at the test
+the strength of that feeling was to be put to, and at the mysterious
+shame which threatened Michael. She could not believe Michael had ever
+done anything to merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to
+her--the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no
+reproach could be levelled.
+
+Armitage spoke again.
+
+"You see," he said, "you could still have all those things you spoke of,
+under my scheme--the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple;
+the hearth; home, children--all that sort of thing ... and even time for
+any of the little social reform schemes you fancied...."
+
+Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of
+their outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much
+to her and to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong
+children--whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of
+course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them.
+
+"The only little social reform I'd have any time for," she murmured,
+"would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines."
+
+John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to
+the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility
+of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to
+the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of
+destroying them.
+
+"Then"--he stood up suddenly--"whether I succeed or whether I
+don't--whether the scheme goes my way or not--won't make any difference
+to you--to us."
+
+"It will make this difference," Sophie said. "I'm heart and soul in the
+life here, I've told you. And if you do as you say you're going to ...
+instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I'll have to
+think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me."
+
+"You mean," John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and
+chagrin which rushed over him, "you mean you're going to take on
+Henty--that's what's at the back of all this."
+
+"I mean," Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his,
+"that I'm going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the
+men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we'll fight it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Are you there, Potch?" Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael's hut, a
+wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her.
+
+Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in
+his hands.
+
+"He's not here," he said.
+
+His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had
+been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with
+anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes
+had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any
+meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of
+her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about
+her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing
+her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised,
+confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that
+photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and
+sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening
+wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety.
+
+Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was
+rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against
+anyone--a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out
+of it; and Sophie's delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole
+being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had
+changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she
+were playing up to him.... She had been much more of his world than of
+the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and
+superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When
+she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping
+and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch
+should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from
+his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he
+had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together.
+
+Then Sophie's cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him.
+He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that
+such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch
+away from Henty.... Henty had fallen.... Potch would have killed him if
+they had not dragged him away.... Henty was carried in an unconscious
+condition to Newton's. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with
+Potch.
+
+Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only
+imagine.... Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the
+other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not
+understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which
+he was not responsible for what he did.
+
+Sophie was conscious of Michael's aloofness from her as she stood in the
+doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night
+before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress,
+which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her
+in her everyday white cotton frock--as she sat at work at her
+cutting-wheel, or went about the hut--and now that she stood before him
+in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and
+happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer
+in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at
+him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have
+quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain,
+but could not.
+
+Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying and muttering as though
+he were drunk. But he was not drunk, except with rage and grief, Michael
+knew. He had lain on his bunk like a log all night, muttering and
+groaning. Michael had sat in a chair in the next room, trying to
+understand the madness which had overwhelmed Potch.
+
+In the morning, he realised that work and the normal order of their
+working days were the only things to restore Potch's mental balance. He
+roused him earlier than usual.
+
+"We'd better get down and clear out some of the mullock," he said. "The
+gouges are fair choked up. There'll be no doing anything if we don't get
+a move on with it."
+
+Potch had stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got up, changed his
+clothes, and they had gone down to the mine together. His face was
+swollen and discoloured, his lip broken, one eye almost hidden beneath a
+purple and blue swelling which had risen on the upper part of his left
+cheek. He had dragged his hat over his face, and walked with his head
+down; they had not spoken all the morning. Potch had swung his pick
+stolidly. All day his eyes had not met Michael's as they usually did, in
+that glance of love and comradeship which united them whenever their
+eyes met.
+
+In the afternoon, when they stopped work and went to the top of the
+mine, Potch had said:
+
+"Think I'll clear out--go away somewhere for awhile, Michael."
+
+From his attitude, averted head and drooping shoulders, Michael got the
+unendurable agony of his mind, his pain and shame. He did not reply, and
+Potch had walked away from him striking out in a south-easterly
+direction across the Ridge. Michael had not seen him since then. And now
+it was early evening, the moon up and silvering the plains with the
+light of her young crescent.
+
+"He says--Potch says ... he's going away," Michael said to Sophie.
+
+Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew
+it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible.
+Their minds would not accept the idea.
+
+Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the
+moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground
+at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for
+Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He
+wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for
+him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he
+himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery.
+
+Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made
+on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town.
+
+She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so
+still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and
+knelt beside him.
+
+"Potch!" she said.
+
+He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had
+brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched
+beside him.
+
+"Potch," she cried. "Potch!"
+
+Potch did not move or reply.
+
+"I can't live ... if you won't forgive me, Potch," Sophie said.
+
+He stirred. "Don't talk like that," he muttered.
+
+After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light
+of-the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic
+mask of the tragedy which consumed him.
+
+"That's the sort of man I am," Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady.
+"I didn't know ... I didn't know I was like that. It came over me all of
+a sudden, when I saw you and--him. I didn't know any more until Michael
+was talking to me. I wouldn't've done it if I'd known, Sophie.... But I
+didn't know.... I just saw him--and you, and I had to put out the sight
+of it ... I had to get it out of my eyes... what I saw.... That's all I
+know. Michael says I didn't kill him ... but I meant to ... that's what
+I started to do."
+
+Sophie's face withered under her distress.
+
+"Don't say that, Potch," she begged.
+
+"But I do," he said. "I must.... I can't make out ... how it was ... I
+felt like that. I thought I'd see things like you saw them always, stand
+by you. Now I don't know.... I'm not to be trusted----"
+
+"I'd trust you always, and in anything, Potch," Sophie said.
+
+"You can't say that--now."
+
+"It's now ... I want to say it more than ever," she continued. "I can't
+explain ... what I did ... any more than you can what you did, Potch.
+But I'm to blame for what you did ... and yet ... I can't see that I'm
+altogether to blame. I didn't want what happened--to happen ... any more
+than you."
+
+She wanted to explain to Potch--to herself also. But she could not see
+clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had
+become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain.
+
+"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at
+last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love
+with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with
+me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that
+changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me
+to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with
+other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I
+wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls
+Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me....
+Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more....
+Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the
+Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the
+other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and,
+somehow, then--it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball
+at Warria...."
+
+A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.
+
+"Michael says you're going away?"
+
+"Yes," Potch replied.
+
+Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.
+
+"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I
+don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get
+married and settle down."
+
+Potch turned to her.
+
+"You don't mean that?"
+
+"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words.
+"I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."
+
+Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held
+her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.
+
+"But you love him!" he said.
+
+Sophie's eyes did not fail from his.
+
+"I do," she said, "but I don't want to. I wish I didn't."
+
+His hands fell from her. "Why," he asked, "why do you say you'll marry
+me, if you ... if----"
+
+Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.
+
+"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and
+there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with
+you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch
+dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful
+... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and----"
+
+Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a
+thousand tender associations--their home, the quiet course their lives
+might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself.
+
+His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods
+offered him, even for the moment. And yet--he could not turn from it.
+Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have
+together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by--he
+stirred to the afterthought of her "and"--she wanted the children who
+might come to them.... Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that
+she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest
+affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as
+Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the
+thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud's most passionate
+kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of
+Sophie's dress or fingers had.
+
+Sophie took his hand.
+
+"Potch," she said, "if you love me--if you want me to marry you, let us
+settle the thing this way.... I want to marry you.... I want to be your
+loving and faithful wife.... I'll try to be.... I don't want to think of
+anyone but you.... You may make me forget--if we are married, and get on
+well together. I hope you will----"
+
+Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his
+voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Potch had looked towards Michael's hut before he went into his own, next
+evening. There was no light in its window, and he supposed that Michael
+had gone to bed. In the morning, as they were walking to the mine, Potch
+said:
+
+"He's back; did you know?"
+
+Michael guessed whom Potch was speaking of. "Saw him ... as I was
+walking out along the Warria road yesterday afternoon," he said; "and
+then at Newton's.... He looks ill."
+
+Potch did not reply. They did not speak of Charley again, and yet as
+they worked they thought of no one else, and of nothing but the
+difficulties his coming would bring into their lives. For Potch, his
+father's return meant the revival of an old shame. He had been accepted
+on his merits by the Ridge; he had made people forget he was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and now Charley was back Potch had no hope of anything
+but the old situation where his father was concerned, the old drag and
+the old fear. The thought of it was more disconcerting than ever, now
+too, because Sophie would have to share the sort of atmosphere Charley
+would put about them.
+
+And Michael was dulled by the weight of the fate which threatened him.
+Every day the consciousness of it weighed more heavily. He wondered
+whether his mind would remain clear and steady enough to interpret his
+resolve. For him, Charley's coming, and the enmity he had gauged in his
+glance the night before, were last straws of misfortune.
+
+John Armitage had put the proposition he outlined for Sophie, to
+Michael, the night before he left for Sydney. He had told Michael what
+he knew, and what he suspected in connection with Rouminof's opals.
+Michael had neither defended himself nor denied Armitage's accusation.
+He had ignored any reference to Paul's opals, and had made his position
+of uncompromising hostility to Armitage's proposition clear from the
+outset. There had not been a shadow of hesitation in his decision to
+oppose the Armitages' scheme for buying up the mines. At whatever cost,
+he believed he had no choice but to stand by the ideas and ideals on
+which the life of the Ridge was established and had grown.
+
+John Armitage, because of his preconceived notion of the guilty
+conscience Michael was suffering from, was disappointed that the action
+of Michael's mind had been as direct to the poles of his faith as it had
+been. He realised Sophie was right: Michael would not go back on the
+Ridge or the Ridge code; but the Ridge might go back on him. Armitage
+assured himself he had a good hand to play, and he explained his
+position quite frankly to Michael. If Michael would not work with him,
+he, John Armitage, must work against Michael. He would prefer not to do
+so, he said. He described to several men, separately, what the proposals
+of the Armitage Syndicate amounted to, in order that they might think
+over, weigh, and discuss them. He was going down to Sydney for a few
+weeks, and when he came back he would call a meeting and lay his
+proposition before the men. He hoped by then Michael would have
+reconsidered his decision. If he had not, Armitage made it clear that,
+much as he would regret having to, he would nevertheless do all in his
+power to destroy any influence Michael might have with men of the Ridge
+which might militate against their acceptance of the scheme for
+reorganisation of the mines he had to lay before them. Michael
+understood what that meant. John Armitage would accuse him of having
+stolen Paul's opals, and he would have to answer the accusation before
+men of the Ridge.
+
+His mind hovered about the thought of Maud Johnson.
+
+He could not conceive how John Armitage had come to the knowledge he
+possessed, unless Maud, whom he was aware Armitage had bought stones
+from in America, had not showed or sold them to him. But Armitage
+believed Michael still had, and was hoarding the stones. That was the
+strange part of it all. How could Armitage declare he had one of the
+stones, and yet believe Michael was holding the rest? Unless Maud had
+taken that one stone from the table the night she came to see Potch?
+Michael could not remember having seen the stone after she went. He
+could not remember having put it back in the box. It only just occurred
+to him she might only have taken the stone that night. Jun had probably
+recognised the stone, and she had told Armitage what Jun had said about
+it. Jun might have gone to the hut for the rest of the stones, but then
+Maud would not have told Armitage they were still on the Ridge. Maud
+would be sure to know if Jun had got the stones on his own account,
+Michael thought.
+
+His brain went over and over again what John Armitage had said,
+querying, exclaiming, explaining, and enlarging on fragments of their
+talk. Armitage declared he had evidence to prove Michael Brady had
+stolen Rouminof's stones. He might have proof that he had had possession
+of them for a while, Michael believed. But if Armitage was under the
+impression he still had the opals, his information was incomplete at
+least, and Michael treasured a vague hope that the proof which he might
+adduce, would be as faulty.
+
+But more important than the bringing home to him of responsibility for
+the lost opals, and the "unmasking" to eyes of men of the Ridge which
+Armitage had promised him, was the bearing it would have on the
+proposition which was to be put before them. Michael realised that there
+was a good deal of truth in what Armitage had said. A section of the
+younger miners, men who had settled on the new rushes, and one or two of
+the older men who had grown away from the Ridge idea, would probably be
+willing enough to fall in with and work under Armitage's scheme. George,
+Watty, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Cash Wilson, and most of the
+older men were against it, and some of the younger ones, too; but Archie
+and Ted Cross were inclined to waver, although they had always been
+staunch for the Ridge principle, and with them was a substantial
+following from the Punti, Three Mile, and other rushes.
+
+A disintegrating influence was at work, Michael recognised. It had been
+active for some time. Since Potch's finding of the big stone, scarcely
+any stone worth speaking of had been unearthed on the fields, and that
+meant long store accounts, and anxious and hard times for most of the
+gougers.
+
+The settlement had weathered seasons of dearth, and had existed on the
+merest traces of precious opal before; but this one had lasted longer,
+and had tried everybody's patience and capacity for endurance to the
+last degree. Murmurs of the need for money to prospect the field and
+open up new workings were heard. Criticisms of the ideas which would
+keep out money and money-owners who might be persuaded to invest their
+money to prospect and open up new workings on Fallen Star, crept into
+the murmurings, and had been circulating for some months. Bat M'Ginnis,
+a tall, lean, herring-gutted Irishman, with big ears, pointed like a
+bat's, was generally considered author of the criticisms and abettor of
+the murmurings. He had sunk on the Coolebah and drifted to the Punti
+rush soon after. On the Punti, it was known, he had expatiated on the
+need for business men and business methods to run the mines and make the
+most of the resources of the Ridge.
+
+M'Ginnis was a good agent for Armitage, before Armitage's proposition
+was heard of. Michael wondered now whether he was perhaps an agent of
+Armitage's, and had been sent to the Ridge to prepare the way for John
+Armitage's scheme. When he came to think of it, Michael remembered he
+had heard men exclaim that Bat never seemed short of money himself,
+although if he had to live on what his claim produced he would have been
+as hard up as most of them. Michael wondered whether Charley's
+home-coming was a coincidence likewise, or whether Armitage had laid his
+plans more carefully than might have been imagined.
+
+Michael saw no way out for himself. He could not accept Armitage's bribe
+of silence as to his share in the disappearance of Paul's opals, in
+order to urge men of the Ridge to agree to the Armitages' proposition
+for buying up the mines. If he could have, he realised, he would carry
+perhaps a majority of men of the Ridge with him; and those he cared most
+for would stand by the Ridge idea whether he deserted it or not, he
+believed. He would only fall in their esteem; they would despise him;
+and he would despise himself if he betrayed the idea on which he had
+staked so much, and the realisation of which he would have died to
+preserve. But there was no question of betraying the Ridge idea, or of
+being false to the teaching of his whole life. He was not even tempted
+by the terms Armitage offered for his co-operation. He was glad to think
+no terms Armitage could offer would tempt him from his allegiance to the
+principle which was the corner-stone of life on the Ridge.
+
+But he asked himself what the men would think of him when they heard
+Armitage's story; what Sophie would think, and Potch. He turned in agony
+from the thought that Sophie and Potch would believe him guilty of the
+thing he seemed to be guilty of. Anything seemed easier to bear than the
+loss of their love and faith, and the faith of men of the Ridge he had
+worked with and been in close sympathy with for so long--Watty and
+George, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant and Cash Wilson. Would he have
+to leave the Ridge when they knew? Would they cold-shoulder him out of
+their lives? His imagination had centred for so long about the thing he
+had done that the guilt of it was magnified out of all proportion to the
+degree of his culpability. He did not accuse himself in the initial act.
+He had done what seemed to him the only thing to do, in good faith; the
+opals had nothing to do with it. He did not understand yet how they had
+got an ascendancy over him; how when he had intended just to look at
+them, to see they were well packed, he had been seduced into that trance
+of worshipful admiration.
+
+Why he had not returned the stones to Paul as soon as Sophie had left
+the Ridge, Michael could not entirely explain to himself. He went over
+and over the excuses he had made to himself, seeing in them evidence of
+the subtle witchery the stones had exercised over him. But as soon as he
+was aware of the danger of delay, he tried to assure himself, and the
+appearance it must have, he had determined to get rid of the stones.
+
+Would the men believe he had wanted to give the stones to Paul--even
+that he had done what he had done for the reasons he would put before
+them? George and Watty and some of the others would believe him--but the
+rest? Michael could not hope that the majority would believe his story.
+They would want to know if at first he had kept the stones to prevent
+Sophie leaving the Ridge, why he had not given them to Paul as soon as
+she had gone. Michael knew he could only explain to them as he had to
+himself. He had intended to; he had delayed doing so; and then, when he
+went to find the stones to give them to Paul, they were no longer where
+he had left them. It was a thin story--a poor explanation. But that was
+the truth of the situation as far as he knew it. There was nothing more
+to be said or thought on the subject. He put it away from him with an
+impulse of impatience, desperate and weary.
+
+When Potch returned from the mine that afternoon; he went into Michael's
+hut before going home. Michael himself he had seen strike out westwards
+in the direction of the swamp soon after he came above ground. Potch
+expected to see his father where he was; he had seen him so often before
+on Michael's sofa under the window. Charley glanced up from the
+newspaper he was reading as Potch came into the room.
+
+"Well, son," he said, "the prodigal father's returned, and quite ready
+for a fatted calf."
+
+Potch stood staring at him. Light from the window bathed the thin,
+yellow face on the faded cushions of Michael's couch, limning the sharp
+nose with its curiously scenting expression, all the hungry, shrewd
+femininity and weakness of the face, and the smile of triumphant malice
+which glided in and out of the eyes. Michael was right, Potch realised;
+Charley was ill; but he had no pity for the man who lay there and smiled
+like that.
+
+"You can't stay here," he said. "Michael's coming."
+
+Charley smiled imperturbably.
+
+"Can't I?" he said. "You see. Besides ... I want to see Michael. That's
+what I'm here for."
+
+Potch growled inarticulately. He went to the hearth, gathered the
+half-burnt sticks together to make a fire. He would have given anything
+to get Charley out of the hut before Michael returned; but he did not
+know how to manage it. If Charley thought he wanted him to go, nothing
+would move him, Potch knew.
+
+"What do you want to see Michael about?" he asked.
+
+"Nice, affectionate son you are," Charley murmured. "Suppose you know
+you are my son--and heir?"
+
+"Worse luck," Potch muttered, watching the flame he had kindled over the
+dry chips and sticks.
+
+"You might've done worse," Charley replied, watching his son with a
+slight, derisive smile. "I might've done worse myself in the way of a
+son to support me in my old age."
+
+"I'm not going to do that."
+
+Charley laughed. "Aren't you?" he queried. "You might be very glad
+to--on terms I could suggest. And you're a fine, husky chap to do it,
+Potch, my lad.... They tell me you've married Rouminof's girl, and she's
+chucked the singing racket. Rum go, that! She could sing, too.... People
+I know told me they'd seen her in America in some revue stunt there, and
+she was just the thing. Went the pace a bit, eh? Oh, well, there's
+nothing like matrimony to sober a woman down--take the devil out of
+her."
+
+Potch's resentment surged; but before he could utter it, his father's
+pleasantries were flipping lightly, cynically.
+
+"By the way, I saw a friend of yours in Sydney couple of months ago. Oh,
+well, several perhaps. Might have been a year.... Maud! There's a fine
+woman, Potch. And she told me she was awfully gone on you once. Eh,
+what?... And now you're a married man. And to think of my becoming a
+grandfather. Help!"
+
+Potch sprang to his feet, goaded to fury by the jeering, amiable voice.
+
+"Shut up," he yelled, "shut up, or----"
+
+The doorway darkened. Potch saw Charley's face light with an expression
+of curious satisfaction and triumph. He turned and discovered that
+Michael was standing in the doorway. Irresolute and flinching, he stood
+there gazing at Charley, a strange expression of fear and loathing in
+his eyes.
+
+"You can clear out now, son," Charley remarked, putting an emphasis on
+the "son" calculated to enrage Potch. "I want to talk to Michael."
+
+Potch looked at Michael. It was his intention to stand by Michael if,
+and for as long as, Michael needed him.
+
+"It's all right, Potch," Michael said; but his eyes did not go to
+Potch's as they usually did. There was a strange, grave quality of
+aloofness about Michael. Potch hesitated, studying his face; but Michael
+dismissed him with a glance, and Potch went out of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The sky was like a great shallow basin turned over the plains. No tree
+or rising ground broke the perfect circle of its fall over the earth;
+only in the distance, on the edge of the bowl, a fringe of trees drew a
+blurred line between earth and sky.
+
+Potch and Sophie lay out on the plains, on their backs in the dried
+herbage, watching the sunset--the play of light on the wide sweep of the
+sky--silently, as if they were listening to great music.
+
+They had been married some days before in Budda township, and were
+living in Potch's hut.
+
+Sophie and Potch had often wandered over the plains in the evening and
+watched the sunset; but never before had they come to the sense of
+understanding and completeness they attained this evening. The days had
+been long and peaceful since they were living together, an anodyne to
+Sophie, soothing all the restless turmoil of her soul and body. She had
+ceased to desire happiness; she was grateful for this lull of all her
+powers of sense and thought, and eager to love and to serve Potch as he
+did her. She believed her life had found its haven; that if she kept in
+tune with the fundamentals of love and service, she could maintain a
+consciousness of peace and rightness with the world which would make
+living something more than a weary longing for death.
+
+All the days were holy days to Potch since Sophie and he had been
+married. He looked at her as if she were Undine making toast and tea,
+cooking, washing dishes, or sweeping and tidying up his hut. He followed
+her every movement with a worshipful, reverent gaze.
+
+Soon after Sophie's return, Potch had gone to live in the hut which he
+and his father had occupied in the old days. He had put a veranda of
+boughs to the front of it, and had washed the roof and walls with
+carbide to lessen the heat in summer. He had turned out the rooms and
+put up shelves, trying to furnish the place a little for Sophie; but she
+had not wanted it altered at all. She had cleared the cupboard, put
+clean paper on the shelves, and had arranged Potch's books on them
+herself.
+
+Sophie loved the austerity of her home when she went to live in it--its
+earthen floor, bare walls, unvarnished furniture, the couch under the
+window, the curtains of unbleached linen she had hemstitched herself,
+the row of shining syrup-tins in which she kept tea, sugar, and coffee
+on shelves near the fireplace, the big earthenware jar for flowers, and
+a couple of jugs which Snow-Shoes had made for her and baked in an oven
+of his own contrivance. She had a quiet satisfaction in doing all the
+cleaning up and tidying to keep her house in the order she liked, so
+that her eyes could rest on any part of it and take pleasure from the
+sense of beauty in ordinary and commonplace things.
+
+But the hut was small and its arrangements so simple that an hour or two
+after Potch had gone to the mines Sophie went to the shed into which he
+had moved her cutting-wheel, and busied herself facing and polishing the
+stones which some of the men brought her as usual. She knew her work
+pleased them. She was as skilful at showing a stone to all its advantage
+as any cutter on the Ridge, and nothing delighted her more than when
+Watty or George or one of the Crosses exclaimed with satisfaction at a
+piece of work she had done.
+
+In the afternoon sometimes she went down to the New Town to talk with
+Maggie Grant, Mrs. Woods, or Martha. She was understudying Martha, too,
+when anyone was sick in the town, and needed nursing or a helping hand.
+Martha had her hands full when Mrs. Ted Cross's fourth baby was born.
+There were five babies in the township at the time, and Sophie went to
+Crosses' every morning to fix up the house and look after the children
+and Mrs. Ted before Martha arrived. When Martha found the Crosses'
+washing gaily flapping on the line one morning towards midday, she
+protested in her own vigorous fashion.
+
+"I ain't going to have you blackleggin' on me, Mrs. Heathfield," she
+said. "And what's more, if I find you doin' it again, I'll tell Potch.
+It's all right for me to be goin' round doing other people's odd jobs;
+but I don't hold with you doin' 'em--so there! If folks wants babies,
+well, it's their look-out--and mine. But I don't see what you've got to
+do with it, coming round makin' your hands look anyhow."
+
+"You just sit down, and I'll make you a cup of tea, Mother M'Cready,"
+Sophie said by way of reply, and gently pushed Martha into the most
+comfortable chair in the room. "You look done up ... and you're going on
+to see Ella and Mrs. Inglewood, I suppose."
+
+Martha nodded. She watched Sophie with troubled, loving eyes. She was
+really very tired, and glad to be able to sit and rest for a moment. It
+gave her a welling tenderness and gratitude to have Sophie concerned for
+her tiredness, and fuss about her like this. Martha was so accustomed to
+caring for everybody on the Ridge, and she was so strong, good-natured,
+and vigorous, very few people thought of her ever being weary or
+dispirited. But as she bustled into the kitchen, blocking out the light,
+Sophie saw that Martha's fat, jolly face under the shadow of her
+sun-hat, was not as happy-looking as usual. Sophie guessed the weariness
+which had overtaken her, and that she was "poorly" or "out-of-sorts," as
+Martha would have said herself, if she could have been made to admit
+such a thing.
+
+"It's all very well to give folks a helping hand," Martha continued,
+"but I'm not going to have you doin' their washin' while I'm about."
+
+Sophie put a cup of tea and slice of bread and syrup down beside her.
+
+"There! You drink that cup of tea, and tell me what you think of it,"
+she said.
+
+"But, Sophie," Martha protested. "It's stone silly for you to be doing
+things like Cross's washing. You're not strong enough, and I won't have
+it."
+
+"Won't you?"
+
+Sophie put her arms around Martha's neck from behind her chair. She
+pressed her face against the creases of Martha's sunburnt neck and
+kissed it.
+
+Martha gurgled happily under the pressure of Sophie's young arms, the
+childish impulse of that hugging. She turned her face back and kissed
+Sophie.
+
+"Oh, my lamb! My dearie lamb!" she murmured.
+
+She recognised Sophie's need for common and kindly service to the people
+of the Ridge. She knew what that service had meant to her at one time,
+and was willing to let Sophie share her ministry so long as her health
+was equal to it.
+
+Mrs. Watty, and the women who took their views from her, thought that
+Sophie was giving herself a great deal of unnecessary and laborious work
+as a sort of penance. They had withdrawn all countenance from her after
+the disaster of the ball, although they regarded her marriage to Potch
+as an endeavour to reinstate herself in their good graces. Mrs. Watty
+had been scandalised by the dress she had worn at the ball, by the way
+she had danced, and her behaviour generally. But Sophie was quite
+unconcerned as to what Mrs. Watty and her friends thought: she did not
+go out of her way either to avoid or placate them.
+
+When she went to the Crosses' to take charge of the children and look
+after the house while Mrs. Cross was ill, the gossips had exclaimed
+together. And when it was known that Sophie had taken on herself odds
+and ends of sewing for other women of the township who had large
+families and rather more to do than they knew how to get through, they
+declared that they did not know what to make of it, or of Sophie and her
+moods and misdemeanours.
+
+Potch heard of what Sophie was doing from the people she helped. When he
+came home in the evening she was nearly always in the kitchen getting
+tea for him; but if she was not, she came in soon after he got home, and
+he knew that one of these little tasks she had undertaken for people in
+the town had kept her longer than she expected. Usually he hung in the
+doorway, waiting for her to come and meet him, to hold up her face to be
+kissed, eyes sweet with affection and the tender familiarity of their
+association. Those offered kisses of hers were the treasure of these
+dream-like days to Potch.
+
+He had always loved Sophie. He had thought that his love had reached the
+limit of loving a long time before, but since they had been married and
+were living, day after day, together, he had become no more than a
+loving of her. He went about his work as usual, performed all the other
+functions of his life mechanically, scrupulously, but it was always with
+a subconscious knowledge of Sophie and of their life together.
+
+"You're tired," he said one night when Sophie lifted her face to his,
+his eyes strained on her with infinite concern.
+
+"Dear Potch," she said; and she had put back the hair from his forehead
+with a gesture tender and pitiful.
+
+Her glance and gesture were always tender and pitiful. Potch realised
+it. He knew that he worshipped and she accepted his worship. He was
+content--not quite content, perhaps--but he assured himself it was
+enough for him that it should be so.
+
+He had never taken Sophie in his arms without an overwhelming sense of
+reverence and worship. There was no passionate need, no spontaneity, no
+leaping flame in the caresses she had given him, in that kiss of the
+evening, and the slight, girlish gestures of affection and tenderness
+she gave as she passed him at meals, or when they were reading or
+walking together.
+
+As they lay on the plains this evening they had been thinking of their
+life together. They had talked of it in low, brooding murmurs. The
+immensity of the silence soaked into them. They had taken into
+themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the
+paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was
+time to go home, Sophie sat up.
+
+"I love to lie against the earth like this," she said.
+
+"We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more
+than specks of dust on the plains ... under the skies, Potch ... and yet
+the whole world is within us...."
+
+"Yes," Potch said, and the silence streamed between them again.
+
+"I'll never forget," Sophie continued dreamily, "hearing a negro talk
+once about what they call 'the negro problem' in America. He was an
+ordinary thick-set, curly-haired, coarse-featured negro to look
+at--Booker Washington--but he talked some of the clearest, straightest
+stuff I've ever heard.
+
+"One thing he said has always stayed in my mind: 'Keep close to the
+earth.' It was not good, he said, to walk on asphalted paths too
+long.... He was describing what Western civilisation had done for the
+negroes--a primitive people.... Anyone could see how they had
+degenerated under it. And it's always seemed to me that what was true
+for the negroes ... is true for us, too.... It's good to keep close to
+the earth."
+
+"Keep close to the earth?" Potch mused.
+
+"In tune with the fundamentals, all the great things of loving and
+working--our eyes on the stars."
+
+"The stars?"
+
+"The objects of our faith and service."
+
+They were silent again for a while. Then Sophie said:
+
+"You ..." she hesitated, remembering what she had told John
+Armitage--"you and I would fight for the Ridge principle, even if all
+the others accepted Mr. Armitage's offer, wouldn't we, Potch?"
+
+"Of course," Potch said.
+
+"And Michael?"
+
+"Michael?" His eyes questioned her in the dim light because of the
+hesitation in her question. "Why do you say that? Michael would be the
+last man on earth to have anything to do with Armitage's scheme."
+
+"He comes back to put the proposition to the men definitely in a few
+days, doesn't he?" Sophie asked.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"Have you talked to Michael about it?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, Sophie," Potch replied slowly,
+conscience-stricken that he had given the subject so little
+consideration, "I took it for granted there could only be one answer to
+the whole thing.... I haven't thought of it. I've only thought of you
+the last week or so. I haven't talked to Michael; I haven't even heard
+what the men were saying at midday.... But, of course, there's only one
+answer."
+
+"I've tried to talk to Michael, but he won't discuss it with me," Sophie
+said.
+
+Potch stared at her.
+
+"You don't mean," he said--"you can't think--"
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a gesture of desperation, "I know John Armitage is
+holding something over Michael ... and if it's true what he says, it'll
+break Michael, and it'll go very badly against the Ridge."
+
+"You can't tell me what it is?"
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+Potch got up; his face settled into grave and fighting lines. Sophie,
+too, rose from the ground. They went towards the track where the three
+huts stood facing the scattered dumps of the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
+
+"I want to see Michael," Potch said, when they approached the huts.
+"I'll be in, in a couple of minutes."
+
+Sophie went on to their own home, and Potch, swerving from her, walked
+across to the back door of Michael's hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Charley was sitting on the couch, leaning towards Michael, his shoulders
+hunched, his eyes gleaming, when Potch went into the hut.
+
+"You can't bluff me," Potch heard him say. "You may throw dust in the
+eyes of the men here, but you can't bluff me.... It was you did for
+me.... It was you put it over on me--took those stones."
+
+"Well, you tell the boys," Potch heard Michael say.
+
+His voice was as unconcerned as though it were not anything of
+importance they were discussing. Potch found relief in the sound of it,
+but its unconcern drove Charley to fury.
+
+"You know I took them from Paul," he shouted. "You know--I can see it in
+your eyes ... and you took them from me. When ... how ... I don't
+know.... You must 've sneaked into the house when I dozed off for a bit,
+and put a parcel of your own rotten stuff in their place.... How do I
+know? Well, I'll tell you...."
+
+He settled back on the sofa. "I hung on to the best stone in the
+lot--clear brown potch with good flame in it--hopin' it would give me a
+clue some day to the man who'd done that trick on me. But I couldn't
+place the stone; I'd never seen it on you, and Jun had never seen it
+either. I was dead stony when I sold it to Maud ... and I told her why
+I'd been keeping it, seeing she was in the show at the start off. She
+sold the stone to Armitage in America, and first thing the old man said
+when he saw it was: 'Why, that's Michael's mascot!'"
+
+"Remembered when you'd got it, he said," Charley continued, taking
+Michael's interest with gratified malice. "First stone you'd come on, on
+Fallen Star, and you wouldn't sell--kept her for luck.... Old Armitage
+wouldn't have anything to do with the stone then--didn't believe Maud's
+story.... But John Lincoln got it. He told me...."
+
+"I see," Michael murmured.
+
+"Don't mind telling you I'm here to play Armitage's game," Charley said.
+
+Michael nodded. "Well, what about it?"
+
+"This about it," Charley exclaimed irritably, his excitement and
+impatience rising under Michael's calmness. "You're done on the Ridge
+when this story gets around. What I've got to say is ... you took the
+opals. You've got 'em. You're done for here. But you could have a good
+life somewhere else. Clear out, and----"
+
+"We'll go halves, eh?" Michael queried.
+
+"That's it," Charley assented. "I'll clear out and say nothing--although
+I've told Rummy enough already to give him his suspicions. Still,
+suspicions are only suspicions--nothing more. When I came here I didn't
+even mean to give you this chance.... But 'Life is sweet, brother!'
+There's still a few pubs down in Sydney, and a woman or two. I wouldn't
+go out with such a grouch against things in general if I had a flash in
+the pan first.... And it'd suit you all right, Michael.... With this
+scheme of Armitage's in the wind----"
+
+"And suppose I haven't got the stones?" Michael inquired.
+
+Charley half rose from the sofa, his thin hands grasping the table.
+
+"It's a lie!" he shrieked, shivering with impotent fury. "You know it
+is.... What have you done with 'em then? What have you done with those
+stones--that's what I want to know!"
+
+"You haven't got much breath," Michael said; "you'd better save it."
+
+"I'll use all I've got to down you, if you don't come to light," Charley
+cried. "I'll do it, see if I don't."
+
+Potch walked across to his father. He had heard Charley abusing and
+threatening Michael before without being able to make out what it was
+all about. He had thought it bluff and something in the nature of a
+try-on; but he had determined to put a stop to it.
+
+"No, you won't!" he said.
+
+"Won't I?" Charley turned on his son.
+
+"No." Potch's tone was steady and decisive.
+
+Charley looked towards Michael again.
+
+"Well ... what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I've told you," Michael said. "Nothing."
+
+"Did y' hear what I've been calling your saint?" Charley cried, turning
+to Potch. "I'm calling him what everybody on the fields'd be calling him
+if they knew."
+
+Michael's gaze wavered as it went to Potch.
+
+"A thief," Charley continued, whipping himself into a frenzy. "That's
+what he is--a dirty, low-down thief! I'm the ordinary, decent sort ...
+get the credit for what I am ... and pay for it, by God! But he--he
+doesn't pay. I bag all the disgrace ... and he walks off with the
+goods--Rouminof's stones."
+
+Potch did not look at Michael. What Charley had said did not seem to
+shock or surprise him.
+
+"I've made a perfectly fair and reasonable proposition," Charley went on
+more quietly. "I've told him ... if he'll go halves----"
+
+"Guess again," Potch sneered.
+
+Charley swung to his feet, a volley of expletives swept from him.
+
+"I've told Rummy to get the law on his side," he cried shrilly, "and
+he's going to. There's one little bit of proof I've got that'll help
+him, and----"
+
+"You'll get jail yourself over it," Potch said.
+
+"Don't mind if I do," Charley shouted, and poured his rage and
+disappointment into a flood of such filthy abuse that Potch took him by
+the shoulders.
+
+"Shut your mouth," he said. "D'y' hear?... Shut your mouth!"
+
+Charley continued to rave, and Potch, gripping his shoulders, ran him
+out of the hut.
+
+Michael heard them talking in Potch's hut--Charley yelling, threatening,
+and cursing. A fit of coughing seized him. Then there was silence--a
+hurrying to and fro in the hut. Michael heard Sophie go to the tank, and
+carry water into the house, and guessed that Charley's paroxysm and
+coughing had brought on the hemorrhage he had had two or three times
+since his return to the Ridge.
+
+A little later Potch came to him.
+
+"He's had a bleeding, Michael," Potch said; "a pretty bad one, and he's
+weak as a kitten. But just before it came on I told him I'd let him have
+a pound a week, somehow, if he goes down to Sydney at once.... But if
+ever he shows his face in the Ridge again ... or says a word more about
+you ... I've promised he'll never get another penny out of me.... He can
+die where and how he likes ... I'm through with him...."
+
+Michael had been sitting beside his fire, staring into it. He had
+dropped into a chair and had not moved since Potch and Charley left the
+hut.
+
+"Do you believe what he said, Potch?" he asked.
+
+Michael felt Potch's eyes on his face; he raised his eyes to meet them.
+There was no lie in the clear depths of Potch's eyes.
+
+"I've known for a long time," Potch said.
+
+Michael's gaze held him--the swimming misery of it; then, as if
+overwhelmed by the knowledge of what Potch must be thinking of him, it
+fell. Michael rose from his chair before the fire and stood before
+Potch, his mind darkened as by shutting-off of the only light which had
+penetrated its gloom. He stood so for some time in utter abasement and
+desolation of spirit, believing that he had lost a thing which had come
+to be of inexpressible value to him, the love and homage Potch had given
+him while they had been mates.
+
+"I've always known, too," Potch said, "it was for a good enough reason."
+
+Michael's swift glance went to him, his soul irradiated by that
+unprotesting affirmation of Potch's faith.
+
+He dropped into his chair before the fire again. His head went into his
+hands. Potch knew that Michael was crying. He stood by silently--unable
+to touch him, unable to realise the whole of Michael's tragedy, and yet
+overcome with love and sympathy for him. He knew only as much of it as
+affected Sophie. His sympathy and instinct where Sophie was concerned
+enabled him to guess why Michael had done what he had.
+
+"It was for Sophie," he said.
+
+"I intended to give them back to Paul--when she was old enough to go
+away, Potch," Michael said after a while. "Then she went away; and I
+don't know why I didn't give them to him at once. The things got hold of
+me, somehow--for a while, at least. I couldn't make up my mind to give
+them back to him--kept makin' excuses.... Then, when I did make up my
+mind and went to get them, they were gone."
+
+Potch nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"You don't suspect anybody?" he asked.
+
+Michael shook his head. "How can I? Nobody knew I had them, and yet ...
+that night ... twice, I thought I had heard someone moving near me....
+The memory of it's stayed with me all these years. Sometimes I think it
+means something--that somebody must have been near and seen and heard.
+Then that seems absurd. It was a bright night; I looked, and there was
+no one in sight. There's only one person besides you ... saw ... I
+think--knew I had the stones...."
+
+"Maud?"
+
+Michael nodded. "She came into the room with you that night. You
+remember? ... And I've wondered since ... if she, perhaps, or Jun ... At
+any rate, Armitage knows, or suspects--I don't know which it is
+really.... He says he has proof. There's that stone I put in Charley's
+parcel--a silly thing to do when you come to think of it. But I didn't
+like the idea of leaving Charley nothing to sell when he got to Sydney;
+and that was the only decent bit of stone I'd got. Making up the parcel
+in a hurry, I didn't think what putting in that bit of stuff might lead
+to. But for that, I can't think how Armitage could have proof I had the
+stones except through Maud. And she's been in New York, and----"
+
+"She may have told him she saw you the night she came for me," Potch
+said.
+
+"That's what I think," Michael agreed.
+
+They brooded over the situation for a while.
+
+"Does Sophie know?" Michael's eyes went to Potch, a sharper light in
+them.
+
+"Only that some danger threatens you," Potch said slowly. "Armitage told
+her."
+
+"You tell her what I've told you, Potch," Michael said.
+
+They talked a little longer, then Potch moved to go away.
+
+"There's nothing to be done?" he asked.
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"Things have just got to take their course. There's nothing to be done,
+Potch," he said.
+
+They came to him together, Sophie and Potch, in a little while, and
+Sophie went straight to Michael. She put her arms round his neck and her
+face against his; her eyes were shining with tears and tenderness.
+
+"Michael, dear!" she whispered.
+
+Michael held her to him; she was indeed the child of his flesh as she
+was of his spirit, as he held her then.
+
+He did not speak; he could not. Looking up, he caught Potch's eyes on
+him, the same expression of faith and tenderness in them. The joy of the
+moment was beyond words.
+
+Potch's and Sophie's love and faith were beyond all value, precious to
+Michael in this time of trouble. When he had failed to believe in
+himself, Sophie and Potch believed in him; when his life-work seemed to
+be falling from his hands, they were ready to take it up. They had told
+him so. In his grief and realisation of failure, that thought was a
+star--a thing of miraculous joy and beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together
+before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his
+proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group
+formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction.
+M'Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were
+prepared to accept Armitage's scheme. The Crosses, while they would not
+go over to the M'Ginnis faction, had a following--and the group about
+them was by far the largest--which was asserting an open mind until it
+heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with
+them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than
+against, Armitage's outline of the new order of things for the Ridge
+since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared
+at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of
+Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old
+spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and
+Watty Frost.
+
+"Thing that's surprised me," Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, "is the
+numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say.
+I wouldn't 've thought there'd be so many."
+
+"I don't like it meself, Pony," George admitted. "That's why we're here.
+Want to know the strength of them--and him."
+
+"That's right," Watty muttered.
+
+"Crosses, for instance," Pony-Fence continued. "You wouldn't 've thought
+Archie and Ted'd 've even listened to guff about profit-sharin'--all
+that.... But they've swallowed it--swallowed it all down. They say----"
+
+George nodded gloomily. "This blasted talkin' about Michael's done more
+harm than anything."
+
+"That's right," Pony-Fence said. "What's the strength of it, George?"
+
+"Damned if I know!"
+
+"Where's Michael to-night?"
+
+Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was
+not among them.
+
+"Is he coming?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted,
+expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking
+of Michael.
+
+"Does he know what's being said?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+"He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know
+about it."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don't understand Michael over this
+business," George said. "He's been right off his nest the last week or
+two. It might have got him down what's being said--he might be so sore
+about anybody thinkin' that of him, or that it's just too mean and
+paltry to take any notice of.... But I'd rather he'd said something....
+It's played Armitage's game all right, the yarn that's been goin' round,
+about Michael's not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it
+is, you don't know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course--but
+it was here before him.... He's just stoked the gossip a bit. But it's
+done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could 've----"
+
+"To-night'll bring things to a head," Watty interrupted, as though they
+had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to
+say next. "I reck'n we'll see better how we stand--what's the game--and
+the men who are going to stand by us.... Michael's with us, I'll swear;
+and if we've got to put up a fight ... we'll have it out with him about
+those yarns.... And it'll be hell for any man who drops a word of them
+afterwards."
+
+When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form
+and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained
+somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the
+fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat
+near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American
+engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a
+little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but
+Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was.
+
+Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be
+chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he
+took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water
+bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M'Intosh,
+the American engineer, on the other.
+
+His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and
+chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be
+regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage's plan.
+
+John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of
+another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night.
+Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was
+filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred
+the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the
+benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or
+worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats.
+Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the
+weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid
+through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and
+intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.
+
+Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr.
+Andrew M'Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to
+report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the
+United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural
+resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date,
+flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the
+Armitage Syndicate.
+
+Andrew M'Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt
+features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up
+in response to Mr. Armitage's invitation. He was a man of deeds, not
+words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the
+substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and
+hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting
+against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business,
+although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had
+not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he
+would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to
+assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition
+Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He
+himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot
+with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage's proposition; and he gave
+them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of
+the reorganisation of the mines, he would work whole-heartedly for the
+success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might
+mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great
+deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for
+mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of
+the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the
+advantages that would entail.
+
+The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer's
+manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the
+situation, although he gave very little information they had not already
+possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and
+confronted the men again.
+
+He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward
+business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said;
+but one the success of which would depend on their co-operation. As
+their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the
+disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for
+both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he
+proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the
+resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an
+expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and
+prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw
+possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he
+promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had
+outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous
+township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity
+in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all
+manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of
+communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased
+production would ensure.
+
+In a nutshell Armitage's scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines
+for £30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage
+of 20 per cent. profit on all stones over a certain standard and size.
+The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected
+to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but
+otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr.
+Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general
+manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union
+rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining
+companies throughout the country.
+
+When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone's mind that
+John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on
+the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage
+Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been
+driven to consider Armitage's offer from their first hearing of it,
+because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost
+persuaded by his final exposition.
+
+George Woods stood up.
+
+George's strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty
+and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed
+situations and men.
+
+He realised the impression Armitage's statement of his scheme, and its
+bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own
+position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering
+between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen
+Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star
+had stood for so long, would lie.
+
+"Well," he said, "we've got to thank you for puttin' the thing to us as
+clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a
+chance to see just what you're drivin' at. But I might say here and now
+... I've got no time for it ... neither me nor my mates.... It'll save
+time and finish the business of this meeting if there's no beatin' about
+the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all
+right--your scheme--nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to
+get out of it than to lose by it.... I don't say it wouldn't mean easier
+times ... more money ... all that sort of thing. We haven't had the
+easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes ... just
+when we're in the worst that's ever knocked us. But speakin' for myself,
+and"--his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the
+Ridge stood for-"the most of my mates, we'd rather have the hard times
+and be our own masters. That's what we've always said on the Ridge....
+Your scheme 'd be all right if we didn't feel like that; I suppose. But
+we do ... and as far as I'm concerned, we won't touch it. It's no go.
+
+"We're obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you
+could have gone another way about getting control here. You may---buy up
+a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not
+that I think the boys'd stand for the experiment."
+
+"They wouldn't," Bill Grant called.
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," George said. He tried to point out that if
+Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage's offer they would be shouldering
+conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest
+that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He
+asked whether a weekly Wage to tide them over years of misfortune would
+compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know
+how they'd feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth £400 or £500 and
+got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big
+stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George
+said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr.
+Armitage's argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could
+see in Mr. Armitage's scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their
+own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for
+them under Mr. Armitage's system was three or four pounds a week--and
+not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.
+
+"We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine," George said; "that's
+worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties....
+Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and
+there's money about again.... For the present we'll hang on to what
+we've got, thank you, Mr. Armitage."
+
+He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.
+
+"Anybody else got anything to say?" Peter Newton inquired.
+
+M'Ginnis stood up.
+
+He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he
+said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as
+he could see. He didn't see that the men's ownership of the mines meant
+much more than that--the freedom to starve. It was all very well for
+them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool
+could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish
+heap. But as far as he was concerned, M'Ginnis declared, he didn't see
+the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had
+volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms....
+
+It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on
+the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to
+it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas
+had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very
+well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance
+of being a millionaire at a minute's notice; but how many of them were
+millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to
+bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down
+this offer of Mr. Armitage's. For his part he was for it, and, what was
+more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.
+
+"If it's put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr.
+Armitage's scheme, we'll soon see which way the cat's jumping," M'Ginnis
+said. "People'd have the nause to see which side their bread's buttered
+on--not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I
+don't see why----"
+
+"You're not paid to," a voice called from the back of the hall.
+
+"I don't see why," M'Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the
+interruption, "the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule
+the roost. What's wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense----"
+
+Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near
+M'Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting
+were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round.
+Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to
+restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood
+were heard howling over the din:
+
+"Let him alone."
+
+"Let's hear what he's got to say."
+
+Then M'Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained
+by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage's offer.
+
+"And," he wound up, "there's the women and children to think of." At the
+back of the hall somebody laughed. "Laugh if you like"--M'Ginnis worked
+himself into a passion of virtuous indignation--"but I don't see there's
+anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin' to
+mean to the women and children of this town--what a few of the
+advantages of civilisation----"
+
+"Disadvantages!" the same voice called.
+
+"--Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin' to mean to the
+women and children of this God-forsaken hole," M'Ginnis cried furiously.
+"If I had a wife and kids, d'ye think I'd have any time for this
+high-falutin' flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The
+best in the country wouldn't be too good for them--and it's not good
+enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That's what I've got
+to say--and that's what any decent man would say if he could see
+straight. I'm an ordinary, plain, practical man myself ... and I ask you
+chaps who've been lettin' your legs be pulled pretty freely---and
+starvin' to be masters of your own dumps--to look at this business like
+ordinary, plain, practical men, who've got their heads screwed on the
+right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen
+Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there's some men here want
+to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let 'em, I say: it's a free
+country. But there's no need for the rest of us to starve with 'em."
+
+He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour
+of Armitage and his Scheme.
+
+"What's Michael got to say about it?" a man from the Three Mile asked.
+And several voices called: "Yes; what's Michael got to say?"
+
+For a moment there was silence--a silence of apprehension. George Woods
+and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had
+heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised
+in that moment the power of Michael's influence; that what Michael was
+going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done,
+either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which
+they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet
+there was fear in the waiting silence.
+
+Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited
+anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield
+waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see
+him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there
+was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed
+on the place where Michael sat--Charley's eager and cruel as a cat's on
+its victim, Rouminof's alight with the fires of his consuming
+excitement.
+
+Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance,
+those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and
+faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile.
+
+"All I've got to say," he said, "George Woods has said. There's nothing
+in Mr. Armitage's scheme for Fallen Star.... It looks all right, but it
+isn't; it's all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership
+of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage 'll give us anything
+but that--he offers us every inducement but that ... and you know how
+the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to
+him, they're worth as much, or more, to us.
+
+"Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the
+mines--at a 'fair valuation'--put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All
+the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen
+Star, might or mightn't come true. P'raps it would. I can't say. All I
+say is, it's being used to gild the pill we're asked to swallow--buyin'
+up of the mines. There's nothing sure about all this talk of electricity
+and water laid on; it's just gilding. And supposing the new conditions
+did put more money about--did bring the comforts and conveniences of
+civilisation to Fallen Star--like M'Ginnis says--what good would they be
+to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like
+a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn't matter to them any
+more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they'd have their
+wages--like bullocks have their hay. It's because our work's had
+interest; it's because we've been our own bosses, life's been as good as
+it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn't got interest in
+his work he's got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs
+when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling ... and how did
+that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of
+M'Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old
+hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in
+by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a
+strike in the mines, he'd be saying that to you: 'Remember the women and
+children.'"
+
+Colour flamed in Michael's face, and he continued with more heat than
+there had yet been in his voice.
+
+"The time's coming when the man who talks 'women and children' to defeat
+their own interests will be treated like the skunk--the low-down,
+thieving swine he is. Do we say anything's too good for our women and
+children? Not much. But we want to give them real things--the real
+things of life and happiness--not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we
+give our women and children the mines as we've held them, and the record
+of a clean fight for them, we'll be giving them something very much
+bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The
+things we've stood for are better than anything he's got to offer. We've
+got here what they're fighting for all over the world ... it's bigger
+than ourselves.
+
+"M'Ginnis says he's heard a lot of 'the freedom to starve on the
+Ridge'--it's more than I have, it's a sure thing if he wants to starve,
+nobody'd stop him...."
+
+A wave of laughter passed over the hall.
+
+"But most of us here haven't any fancy for starving, and what's more,
+nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don't say that we haven't had
+hard times, that we haven't gone on short commons--we have; but we
+haven't starved, and we're not going to....
+
+"This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have
+been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we're
+down, in a way; but the slump'll pass. There've been slumps before, and
+they've passed.... Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn't be so keen on
+getting hold of the mines.
+
+"And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to
+me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or
+syndicate ever made could. Didn't old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once
+that he didn't know a better conducted or more industrious mining
+community than this one. 'Why d'y' think that is?' I asked him. He said
+he didn't know. I said, 'You don't think the way the men feel about
+their work's got anything to do with it?' 'Damn it, Michael,' he said,
+'I don't want to think so.'
+
+"And I happen to know"--Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage,
+who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and
+crossed under his chin--"that the old man is opposed even now to this
+scheme because he thinks he won't get as much black opal out of us as he
+does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and
+what taking over of the mines did for opal--and the men--there. This
+scheme is Mr. John Armitage's idea....
+
+"He's put it to you. You've heard what it is. All I've got to say now
+is, don't touch it. Don't have anything to do with it.... It'll break us
+... the spirit of the men here ... and it'll break what we've been
+working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don't let us
+see which side our bread's buttered on, as Mr. M'Ginnis says. Let us say
+like we always have--like we've been proud to say: 'We'll eat bread and
+fat, but we'll be our own masters!'"
+
+"We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!" the men who
+were with Michael roared.
+
+He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam
+at him, filled with rejoicing.
+
+Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not
+quite decided what he intended to say.
+
+"I'm not going to ask this meeting for a decision," he began.
+
+"You can have it!" Bully Bryant yelled.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I'm going on up
+there," John Armitage continued. "I'm due in Sydney at the end of the
+month--that is, a month from this date--and I'll run up then for your
+answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said
+all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything
+which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your
+gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the
+best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I
+think, however, you ought to know----"
+
+"That Michael Brady's a liar and a thief!" Charley cried, springing from
+his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. "If you believe him,
+you're believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows ... I know ...
+and Paul knows----"
+
+"Throw him out."
+
+"He's mad!"
+
+The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their
+height M'Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.
+
+"Let him say what he's got to!" he shouted. "You chaps know as well as I
+do what's been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now.
+If it's not true, Michael'd rather have the strength of it, and give you
+his answer ... and if there is anything in it, we've got a right to
+know."
+
+"That's right!" some of the men near him chorused.
+
+Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.
+
+"Might as well have it," Michael said.
+
+Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully
+Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could
+see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice,
+told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside
+him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of
+corroboration.
+
+When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted,
+Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say
+when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way
+through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken
+everybody, said uncertainly:
+
+"Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that
+Charley Heathfield's story, as far as I know it, is substantially
+correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw
+it, my father said, 'Why, that's Michael's mascot.' I asked him if he
+were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the
+stone....
+
+"I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you.
+That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof's
+opals--the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck
+together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof's opals, and had been
+exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley
+were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My
+father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the
+business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man
+who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the
+altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that
+stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney ... and also that
+Michael had possession of Rouminof's opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she
+saw Rouminof's stones on the table of Michael Brady's hut one evening
+nearly two years ago.
+
+"I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He
+denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it
+seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account
+of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael
+Brady of having stolen Rouminof's opals. If he has anything to say, now
+is the time to say it."
+
+What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was
+heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody
+spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not
+looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place
+where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first
+sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when
+Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes
+on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance
+swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and
+humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement,
+the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still
+Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
+
+"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.
+
+Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he
+strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close
+together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds
+under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear
+what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he
+turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in
+newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still
+hovering near the edge of the platform.
+
+"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured
+fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
+
+Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no
+hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed
+round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When
+order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform
+going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was
+laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but
+his joy in fingering his lost gems.
+
+When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause,
+Armitage spoke.
+
+"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most
+contritely.... I don't yet understand--but the facts are, the opals are
+here, and Mr. Riley has said--"
+
+Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to
+speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as
+if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
+
+"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ...
+but from Charley."
+
+His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his
+suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul
+going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of
+opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.
+
+"I didn't want the stones," Michael cried, "I didn't ever want them for
+myself.... It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn't want him to
+have them just then...."
+
+Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he
+had made to Sophie's mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the
+stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had
+gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained
+why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare
+himself.
+
+Paul had had sun-stroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night
+he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been
+reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning
+them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the
+thing to himself even.... He had not looked at the opals except once
+again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly
+the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then
+Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was
+drifting--how the stones were getting hold of him--and in a panic,
+knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it
+to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to
+do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.
+
+Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but
+now it was clear. Probably Snow-Shoes had known all the time he had the
+stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must
+have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he
+came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It
+was just that slight sound Snow-Shoes' moccasins made on the shingle.
+Exclamations and odd queries Snow-Shoes had launched from time to time
+came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken
+the stones to do just what he had done--and because he feared the
+influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they
+should have been returned to Paul long ago.
+
+"That's the truth, as far as I know it," Michael said. "There's been
+attempts made to injure ... the Ridge, our way of doing things here,
+because of me, and because of those stones.... What happened to me
+doesn't matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I
+done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I'd give anything
+now if I--if I'd given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn't
+... and I'll stand by anything the men who've been my mates care to say
+or do about that. Only don't let the Ridge, and our way of doing things
+here, get hurt through me. That's bigger--it means more than any man.
+Don't let it! ... I'd ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to
+say what they think about all this--and where I stand."
+
+Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of
+the hall.
+
+When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden
+floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned
+and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created
+such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of
+forms. With the exception of M'Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had
+the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who
+a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as
+blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted
+shapes and unlighted countenances.
+
+"Well," George said, "it's been a bit of a shock what we've just heard.
+It wasn't easy what Michael's just done ... and Snow-Shoes, if he'd
+wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn't have it....
+At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to
+stand by the Ridge ... he'd stand by it at any cost.... If there's a
+doubt in anyone's mind as to what he is, what he's just done proves
+Michael. I don't say, as he says himself, that it wouldn't have been
+better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away
+... but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael's
+concerned? We've got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does
+anybody know a mean or selfish thing he's ever done, Michael?"
+
+No one spoke, and George went on:
+
+"Michael's asked for trial by his mates--and we've got to give it to
+him, if it's only to clear up the whole of this business and be done
+with it.... I move we meet here to-morrow night to settle the thing."
+
+There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in
+back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his
+proposals were forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Michael got back to his hut he found Martha there.
+
+"Oh, Michael," she said, "a dreadful thing has happened."
+
+Michael stared at her, unable to understand what she said. It seemed to
+him all the terrible things that could happen had happened that evening.
+
+"While you were away Arthur Henty came here to see Sophie," Martha said.
+"She hasn't been feeling well ... and I came up to have a look at her.
+She's been doing too much lately. Things haven't been too right between
+her and Potch, either, and that's her way of taking it out of herself.
+Arthur was here when I got here, Michael, and--you never heard anything
+like the way he went on...."
+
+Michael had fallen wearily into his chair while she was talking.
+
+Martha continued, knowing that the sooner she got rid of her story the
+better it would be for both of them.
+
+"It's an old story, of course, this about Arthur Henty and Sophie....
+When he was ill after the ball he talked a good bit about her.... He
+always has ... to me. I was with his mother when he was born ... and
+he's always called me Mother M'Cready like the rest of you. He told me
+long ago he'd always been fond of Sophie.... He didn't know at first, he
+said. He was a fool; he didn't like being teased about her.... Then she
+went away.... He doesn't seem to know why he got married except that his
+people wanted him to.
+
+"After the ball he'd made up his mind they were going away together,
+Sophie and he. But while he was ill ... before he was able to get around
+again, Sophie married Potch. Then he went mad, stark, starin' mad, and
+started drinking. He's been drinking hard ever since.... And to-night
+when he came, he just went over to Sophie.... She was lying on the couch
+under the window, Michael.... He said, I've got a horse for you outside.
+Sophie didn't seem to realise what he meant at first. Then she did. I
+don't know how he guessed she wouldn't go ... but the next minute he was
+on his knees beside her ... and you never heard anything like it,
+Michael--the way he went on, sobbing and crying out--I never want to
+hear anything like it again.... I couldn't 've stood it meself.... I'd
+'ve done anything in the world if a man'd gone on to me like that. And
+Sophie ... she put her arms round him, and mothered him like.... Then
+she began to cry too.... And there they were, both crying and sayin' how
+much they loved each other ... how much they'd always loved each
+other....
+
+"It fair broke me up, Michael.... I didn't know what to do. They didn't
+seem to notice me.... Then he said again they'd go away together, and
+begin life all over again. Sophie tried to tell him it was too late to
+think of that.... They both had responsibilities they'd ought to stand
+by.... Hers was the Ridge and the Ridge life, she said.... He didn't
+understand.... He only understood he wanted her to go away with him, and
+she wouldn't go...."
+
+Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did
+not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling
+him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time
+ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation
+that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him.
+
+"He tried to make her," Martha was saying when he began to listen
+intently. "He said he'd been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn't
+any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to
+have it.... Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever
+make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it.... And Sophie
+hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and
+dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate.
+
+"She said 'Yes.'
+
+"'Then you've got to come with me,' he said.
+
+"But she wouldn't go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the
+Ridge--what the Ridge stood for--she must stay to work for. She'd sworn
+to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that
+he wouldn't let her go on living with Potch--be his wife. That he'd kill
+her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her.... I never heard a man
+go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was
+raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite
+quietly:
+
+"'Will you come with me, Sophie?'
+
+"And she said, quiet like that, too, 'No.'
+
+"He went out of the hut.... I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after
+him. She put out her arms ... but she couldn't speak. And if you had
+seen her face, Michael----She just stood there against the wall,
+listening to the hoof-beats.... When we couldn't hear them any more, she
+stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to--to
+waken her--she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance,
+Michael.... After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she
+didn't know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table,
+and then she went out as though she were goin' for a walk. I told her
+not to go far ... not to be long ... but I don't think she heard me....
+I watched her walking out towards the old rush.... And she isn't back
+yet...."
+
+"It's too much," Michael muttered.
+
+He sat with his head buried in his hands.
+
+"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.
+
+Martha shook her head.
+
+"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her
+mother did."
+
+Michael's face quivered.
+
+"He's such an outsider," he groaned. "Sophie'd never give up the things
+we stand for here, now she understands them."
+
+"That's just it," Martha said. "She doesn't want to--but there's
+something stronger than herself draggin' at her ... it's something
+that's been in all the women she's come of--the feeling a woman's got
+for the man who's her mate. Sophie married Potch, it's my belief, to get
+away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here.
+She wants to stay with us.... She was kept up at first by ideas of duty
+and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But
+love's like murder, Michael--it must out, and it's a good thing it
+must...."
+
+"And what about Potch?" Michael asked.
+
+"Potch?" Martha smiled. "The dear lad ... he'll stand up to things.
+There are people like that--and there're people like Arthur Henty who
+can't stand up to things. It's not their fault they're made that way ...
+and they go under when they have too much to bear."
+
+"Curse him," Michael groaned. "I wish he'd kept out of our lives."
+
+"So do I," Martha said; "but he hasn't."
+
+Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.
+
+"Where's Sophie?" he asked.
+
+"She ... went out for a walk, a while ago," Martha said.
+
+At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there
+was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael,
+and held them dumb.
+
+"Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock," he said at length.
+
+Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear
+further.
+
+"Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went
+over," Potch said. "I wanted to tell Sophie myself.... They were looking
+for you in the town, Martha."
+
+"Oh!" Martha got up and went to the door.
+
+"He's at Newton's," Potch said. "Which way did Sophie go?"
+
+"She went towards the Old Town, Potch," Martha said.
+
+The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with
+reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door
+of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse
+was there--a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled
+abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how
+the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She
+went off down the track to Newton's, and he struck out towards the Old
+Town.
+
+Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of
+her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering
+what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. Prom
+the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur
+Henty.
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!" he called.
+
+The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He
+wandered, calling still. Desolation overwhelmed him because he could not
+find Sophie; because she was in none of the places they had spent so
+much time in together. It was significant that she should not be in any
+of them, he felt. He could not bear to think she was eluding him, and
+yet that was what she had done all her life. She had been with him,
+smiling, elfish and tender one moment, and gone the next. She had always
+been elusive. For a long time a presentiment of desolation and disaster
+had overshadowed him. Again and again he had been able to draw breath of
+relief and assure himself that the indefinable dread which was always
+with him was a chimera of his too absorbing, too anxious love. But the
+fear, instinctive, prophetic, begotten by consciousness of the slight
+grasp he had of her, had remained.
+
+That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his
+face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in
+her eyes.
+
+"Dear Potch," she had said, and kissed him.
+
+She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and
+the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was
+wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.... He had done
+so before.... Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes
+he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she
+had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time
+after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long
+gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had
+deprived her of some earthliness.
+
+He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge,
+looking for her, his soul in that cry:
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael
+coming out to meet him.
+
+"She knows, Potch," Michael said.
+
+Potch waited for him to continue.
+
+"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael
+said.
+
+Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had
+come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She
+had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He
+had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at
+all, Michael said.
+
+She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from
+her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the
+sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He
+knelt beside her.
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and
+anguish in those words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was
+informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it.
+The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the the night before,
+but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit,
+the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wave-like
+vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty's death had left
+everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a
+life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on
+everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air.
+
+George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O'Mara deputed to
+take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman,
+sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the
+platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had
+asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge
+were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have
+seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as
+soon as the men were in their places.
+
+"This isn't like any other inquiry we've had on the Ridge," George Woods
+said. "You chaps know how I feel about it--I told you last night. But
+Michael was for it, and I take it he's come here to answer any questions
+... and to clear this thing up once and for all.... He's put his case to
+you. He says he'll stand by what you say--the judgment of his mates."
+
+Anxious to spare Michael another recital of what had happened, he went
+on:
+
+"There's no need for Michael to repeat what he said last night. If
+there's any man here wasn't in the hall, these are the facts."
+
+He repeated the story Michael had told, steadily, clearly, and
+impartially.
+
+"If there's any man wants to ask a question on those facts, he can do it
+now."
+
+George sat down, and M'Ginnis was on his feet the same instant; his
+bat-like ears twitching, his shoulders hunched, his whole tall, thin
+frame strung to the pitch of nervous animosity.
+
+"I want to know," he said, "what reason there is for believing a word of
+it. Michael Brady's as good as admitted he's been fooling you for
+goodness knows how long, and I don't see----"
+
+"Y' soon will, y'r bleedin', blasted, fly-blown fool," Bully Bryant
+roared, rising and pushing back his sleeves.
+
+"Sit down, Bull," George Woods called.
+
+"The question is," he added, "what reason is there for believing what
+Michael says?"
+
+"His word's enough," somebody called.
+
+"Some of us think so," George said. "But there's some don't. Is there
+anyone else can say, Michael?"
+
+Michael shook his head. He thought of Snow-Shoes, but the old man had
+refused to be present at the inquiry or to have anything to do with it.
+He had pretended to be deaf when he was asked anything about Paul's
+opals. And Michael, who could only surmise that Snow-Shoes' reasons for
+having taken the stones in a measure resembled his own when he took them
+from Paul, would not have him put to the torture of questioning.
+
+George had said: "It might make a lot of difference to Michael if you'd
+come along, Mr. Riley."
+
+But Snow-Shoes had marched off from him as if he had not heard anyone
+speak, his blue eyes fixed on that invisible goal he was always gazing
+at and going towards.
+
+George had not seen him come into the hall; but when he was needed, his
+tall figure, white clad and straight as a dead tree, rose at the back of
+the hall.
+
+"It's true," he said. "I wanted to be sure of Michael; I shadowed him. I
+saw him with the stones when he says. I did not see him with them any
+other time."
+
+He sat down again; his eyes, which had flashed, resumed their steady,
+distant stare; his features relapsed into their mask of impassivity.
+
+M'Ginnis sprang to his feet again.
+
+"That's all very well," he cried, sticking to his question. "But it's
+not my idea of evidence. It wouldn't stand in any law court in the
+country. Snow-Shoes----"
+
+"Shut up!"
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+Half a dozen voices growled.
+
+Because of the respect and affection they had for him, and because of a
+certain aloof dignity he had with them, no man on the Ridge ever
+addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley. They resented M'Ginnis
+calling him "Snow-Shoes" to his face, and guessed that he had been going
+to say something which would reflect on Snow-Shoes' reliability as a
+witness. They admitted his eccentricity; but they would not admit that
+his mental peculiarities amounted to more than that. Above all, they
+were not going to have his feelings hurt by this outsider from the Punti
+rush.
+
+Broad-shouldered, square and solid, Bill Grant towered above the men
+about him. "This doesn't pretend to be a court of law, Mister M'Ginnis,"
+he remarked, with an irony and emphasis which never failed of their mark
+when he used them, although he rarely did, and only once or twice had
+been heard to speak, at any gathering. "It's an inquiry by men of the
+Ridge into the doings of one of their mates. What they want to know is
+the rights of this business ... and what you consider evidence doesn't
+matter. It's what the men in this hall consider evidence matters. And,
+what's more, I don't see why you're butting into our affairs so much:
+you're not one of us--you're a newcomer. You've only been a year or so
+in the place ... and this concerns only men of the Ridge, who stand
+by the Ridge ways of doing things.... Michael's here to be judged
+by his mates ... not by you and your sort.... If you'd the brain
+of a louse, you'd understand--this isn't a question of law, but of
+principle--honour, if you like to call it that."
+
+"Does the meeting consider the question answered?" George Woods inquired
+when Bill Grant sat down.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+A chorus of voices intoned the answer.
+
+"If you believe Michael's story, there's nothing more to be said,"
+George continued. "Does any man want to ask Michael a question?"
+
+No one replied for a moment. Then M'Ginnis exclaimed incoherently.
+
+"Shut up!"
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+Men cried out all over the hall.
+
+"That's all, I think, Michael," George said, looking down to where
+Michael sat before the platform; and Michael, pulling his hat further
+over his eyes, went out of the hall.
+
+It was the custom for men of the Ridge to talk over the subject of their
+inquiry together after the man or men with whom the meeting was
+concerned had left the hall, before giving their verdict.
+
+When Michael had gone, George Woods said:
+
+"The boys would like to hear what you've got to say, I think, Archie."
+
+He looked at Archie Cross. "You and Michael haven't been seein' eye to
+eye lately, and if there's any other side in this business, it's the
+side that lost confidence in Michael when we were fed-up with all that
+whispering. You know Michael, and you're a good Ridge man, though you
+were ready to take on Armitage's scheme. The boys'd like to hear what
+you've got to say, I'm sure."
+
+Archie Cross stood up; he rolled his hat in his hands. His face, hacked
+out of a piece of dull flesh, sun-reddened, moved convulsively; his hair
+was roughed-up from it; his small, sombre eyes went with straight
+lightnings to the men in the hall about him.
+
+"It's true--what George says," he said after a pause, as if it were
+difficult for him to express his thought. "I haven't been seein' eye to
+eye with Michael lately ... and I listened to all the dirty gossip that
+mob"--he glanced towards M'Ginnis and the men with him--"put round about
+him. It was part that ... and part listening to their talk about money
+invested here making all the difference to Fallen Star ... and the
+children growing up ... and gettin' scared and worried about seein' them
+through ... made me go agin you boys lately, and let that lot get hold
+of me.... But this business about Michael's shown me where I am.
+Michael's stood for one thing all through--the Ridge and the hanging on
+to the mines for us.... He's been a better Ridge man than I have.... And
+I want to say ... as far as I'm concerned, Michael's proved himself....
+I don't reck'n hanging on to opals was anything ... no more does Ted.
+It's the sort of thing a chap like Michael'd do absent-minded ... not
+noticin' what he was doin'; but when he did notice--and got scared
+thinkin' where he was gettin' to, and what it might look like, he
+couldn't get rid of 'em quick, enough. That's what I think, and that's
+what Ted thinks, too. He hasn't got the gift of the gab, Ted, or he'd
+say so himself.... If there's goin' to be opposition to Michael, it's
+not comin' from us.... And we've made up our minds we stand by the
+Ridge."
+
+"Good old Archie!" somebody shouted.
+
+"What have you got to say, Roy?" George Woods faced his secretary who
+had been scratching diligently throughout the meeting. "You've been more
+with the M'Ginnis lot, too, than with us, lately."
+
+Roy flushed and sprang to his feet.
+
+"I'm in the same boat with Archie and Ted," he said. "Except about the
+family ... mine isn't so big yet as it might be. But it's a fact, I
+funked, not having had much luck lately.... But if ever I go back on the
+Ridge again ... may the lot of you go back on me."
+
+Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided
+into his chair again.
+
+"That's all there is to be said on the subject, I think," George Woods
+remarked.
+
+"Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done--and why he had done
+it. He's asked for judgment from his mates.... If he'd wanted to go back
+on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage
+would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could
+have been bought. Michael need never 've faced all this as far as I can
+see ... but he decided to face it rather than give up all we've been
+fightin' for here. He'd rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him
+than anything they could give him ... and that's why M'Ginnis has been
+up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of
+us have a notion that M'Ginnis has been here to do Armitage's work ...
+work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and
+he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn't 've stood by us, like he's
+always done, we'd have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now."
+
+"To tell you the truth, boys," George went on, after a moment's
+hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were
+too strong for him, "I've always thought Michael was too good. And if
+those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says,
+all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn't any plaster
+saint, but a man like the rest of us."
+
+"That's right!" Watty called, and several men shouted after him.
+
+Pony-Fence moved out from the crowd he was sitting with.
+
+"I vote this meeting records a motion of confidence in Michael Brady,"
+he said. "And when we call Michael in again we'd ought to make it clear
+to him ... that so far from its being a question of not having as much
+confidence in him as we had before--we've got more. Michael's stood by
+his mates if ever a man did.... He's come to us ... he's given himself
+up to us. He'll stand by what we say or do about him. And what are we
+goin' to do? Are we goin' to turn him down ... read him a bit of a
+lecture and tell him to go home and be a good boy and not do it another
+time ... or are we going to let him know once and for all what we think
+of him?"
+
+Exclamations of agreement went up in a rabble of voices.
+
+Bully Bryant rose from one of the back forms with a grin which
+illuminated the building.
+
+"I'll second that motion," he said, pushing back the sleeve on his left
+arm. "And his own mother won't know the man who says a word against
+it--when I've done with him."
+
+Watty was sent to bring Michael back to the meeting. They walked to the
+end of the hall together; and George Woods told Michael as quietly as he
+could for his own agitation, and the joy which, welling in him, impeded
+his speech, that men of the Ridge found nothing to censure in what he
+had done. His mates believed in him; they stood by him. They were
+prepared to stand by him as he had stood by the Ridge always. The
+meeting wished to record a vote of confidence....
+
+Cheers roared to the roof. Michael, shaken by the storm of his emotion
+and gratitude, stood before the crowd in the hall with bowed head. When
+the storm was quieter in him, he lifted his head and looked out to the
+men, his eyes shining with tears.
+
+He could not speak; old mates closed round to shake hands with him
+before the meeting broke up. Every man grasped and wrung his hand,
+saying:
+
+"Good luck! Good luck to you, Michael!" Or just grasped his hand and
+smiled with that assurance of fellowship and goodwill which meant more
+to Michael than anything else in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+It was one of those clear days of late spring, the sky exquisitely blue,
+the cuckoos calling, the paper daisies in blossom, their fragrance in
+the air; they lay across the plains, through the herbage, white to the
+dim, circling horizon.
+
+Horses and vehicles were tied up outside the grey palings of the
+cemetery on the Warria road. All the horses and shabby, or new and
+brightly-painted carts, sulkies, and buggies of Fallen Star and the
+Three Mile were there; and buggies from Warria, Langi-Eumina, and the
+river stations as well. Saddle horses, ranged along one side of the
+fence, reins over the stakes, whinnied and snapped at each other.
+
+The crowd of people standing in the tall grass and herbage on the other
+side of the fence was just breaking up when Sophie and Potch appeared,
+coming over the plains from the direction of the tank paddock, Sophie
+riding the chestnut Arthur Henty had left behind her house, and Potch
+walking beside the horse's head. Sophie had been gathering Darling pea,
+and had a great sheaf in one hand. Potch was carrying some, too: he had
+picked up the flowers Sophie let fall, and had a little bunch of them.
+She was riding astride and gazing before her, her eyes wide with a
+vision beyond the distant horizon. The wind, a light breeze breathing
+now and then, blew her hair out in wisps from her bare head.
+
+All the men of Warria were in the sombre crowd in the cemetery. Old
+Henty, red-eyed and broken by the end of his only son, whom he found he
+had cared for now that he was dead; the stockmen, boundary-riders,
+servants, fencers, shearers from Darrawingee sheds who, a few weeks
+before had been on the Warria board, and men from other stations near
+enough to have heard of Arthur Henty's death. None of the Henty women
+were there; but women of the Ridge, who were accustomed to pay last
+respects as their menfolk did, were with their husbands as usual. They
+would have thought it unnatural and unkind not to follow Arthur Henty to
+his resting-place; not to go as friends would to say good-bye to a
+friend who is making a long journey. And there was more than the
+ordinary reason for being present at Arthur Henty's funeral. He was
+leaving them under a cloud, circumstances which might be interpreted
+unkindly, and it was necessary to be present to express sympathy with
+him and sorrow at his going. That was the way they regarded it.
+
+Martha had driven with Sam Nancarrow, as she always did to functions of
+the sort. No one remembered having seen Martha take a thing so to heart
+as she did Arthur Henty's death. She was utterly shaken by it, and could
+not restrain her tears. They coursed down her cheeks all the time she
+was in that quiet place on the plains; her great, motherly bosom rose
+and fell with the tide of her grief. She tried to subdue it, but every
+now and then the sound of her crying could be heard, and in the end Sam
+took her, sobbing uncontrollably, back to his buggy.
+
+People knew she had seen further into the cause of Arthur Henty's death
+than they had, and they understood that was why she Was so upset.
+Besides, Martha had always confessed to a soft corner for Arthur Henty:
+she had been with his mother when he was born, had nursed him during a
+hot summer and through several slight illnesses since then. And Arthur
+had been fond of her too. He had always called her Mother M'Cready as
+the Ridge folk did. Old Mr. Henty had driven over to see Martha the
+night before, to hear all she knew of what had happened, and Ridge folk
+had gathered something of the story from her broken exclamations and the
+reproaches with which she covered herself.
+
+She cried out over and over again that she could not have believed
+Arthur would shoot himself--that he was the sort of man to do such a
+thing--and blamed herself for not having foreseen what had occurred. She
+had never seen him like he was that night--so strong, so much a man, so
+full of life and love for Sophie. He had begged Sophie to go with him as
+though his life depended on it--and it had.
+
+If she had been a woman, and Sophie, and had loved him, Martha said, she
+would have had to go with him. She could never have withstood his
+pleading.... But Sophie had been good to him; she had been gentle--only
+she wouldn't go. Neither Sophie nor she believed, of course, he would do
+as he said--but he had.
+
+Martha could not forgive herself that she had done nothing to soothe or
+pacify Arthur; that she had said nothing, given him neither kindly word
+nor gesture. But she had been so upset, so carried away. She had not
+known what to do or say. She abused and blackguarded herself; but she
+had sensed enough of the utter loneliness and darkness of Henty's mind
+to realise that most likely she could have done nothing against it. He
+would have brushed her aside had she attempted to influence him; he
+would not have heard what, she said. She would have been as helpless as
+any other human consideration against the blinding, irresistibly
+engulfing forces of despair which had impelled him to put himself out of
+pain as he had put many a suffering animal. It was an act of
+self-defence, as Mother M'Cready saw it, Arthur Henty's end, and that
+was all there was to it.
+
+As Sophie and Potch approached the cemetery, people exclaimed together
+in wonderment, awe--almost fear.
+
+James Henty, when he saw them, turned away from the men he was talking
+to and walked to his buggy; Tom Henderson, his son-in-law, followed him.
+Although he would have been the last to forgive Sophie if she had done
+as Arthur wished, even to save his life, old Henty had to have a
+whipping-post, and he eased his own sense of responsibility for what had
+blighted his son's life, by blaming Sophie for it. He assured himself,
+his family and friends, that she, and she alone, was responsible for
+Arthur's death. She had played with Arthur; she had always played with
+him, old Henty said. She had driven him to distraction with her
+wiles--and this was the end of it all.
+
+Sophie rode into the cemetery: she rode to where the broken earth was;
+but she did not dismount. The horse came to a standstill beside it, and
+she sat on him, her eyes closed. Potch stood bare-headed and bowed
+beside her. He put the flowers he had picked up as Sophie let them fall,
+on the grave. Sophie thrust the long, purple trails she was carrying
+into the saddle-bag where Arthur had put the flowers she gave him that
+first day their eyes met and drank the love potion of each others'
+being.
+
+People were already on the road, horses and buggies, dark, ant-like
+trains on the flowering plains, moving slowly in the direction of Warria
+and of Fallen Star, when Sophie and Potch turned away from the cemetery.
+
+The shadow of what had happened was heavy over everybody as they drove
+home. Arthur Henty had been well enough liked, and he had had much more
+to do with Fallen Star than most of the station people. He had gone
+about so much with his men they had almost ceased to think of him as not
+one of themselves. He was less the "Boss" than any man in the
+back-country. They recognised that, and yet he was the "Boss." He had
+lived like a half-caste, drifting between two races and belonging to
+neither. The people he had been born among cold-shouldered him because
+he had acquired the manners and habits of thought of men he lived and
+worked with; the men he had lived and worked with distrusted and
+disliked in him just those tag-ends of refinement, and odd graces which
+belonged to the crowd he had come to them from.
+
+The station hands, his work-mates--if he had any--had had a slightly
+contemptuous feeling for him. They liked him--they were always saying
+they liked him--but it was clear they never had any great opinion of
+him. As a boy, when he began to work with them, to cover his shyness and
+nervousness, he had been silent and boorish; and he had never had the
+courage of his opinions--courage for anything, it was suspected. It had
+always been hinted that he shirked any jobs where danger was to be
+expected.
+
+The stockmen told each other they would miss him, all the same. They
+would miss that wonderful whistling of his from the camp fires; and they
+were appalled at what he had done to himself. "The last man," Charley
+Este said, "the last man you'd ever 've thought would 've come to that!"
+Most of them believed they had misjudged Arthur Henty--that, after, all,
+he had had courage of a sort. A man must have courage to blow out his
+light, they said. And they were sorry. Every man in the crowd was heavy
+with sorrow.
+
+Ridge people gossiped pitifully, sentimentally, to each other as they
+drove home. Most of the women believed in the strength and fidelity of
+the old love between Sophie and Arthur Henty. But straight-dealing and
+honest themselves, they had no conception of the tricks complex
+personalities play each other; they did not understand how two people
+who had really cared for each other could have gone so astray from the
+natural impulse of their lives.
+
+They recalled the dance at Warria, and how they had teased Sophie when
+they thought she was going to marry Arthur Henty, and how happy and
+pleased she had looked about it. How different both their lives would
+have been if Sophie and Arthur had been true to that instinct of the
+mate for the mate, they reflected; and sighed at the futility of the
+thought. They realised in Arthur Henty's drinking and rough ways of
+late, all his unhappiness. They imagined that they knew why he had
+become the uncouth-looking man he had. They remembered him a slight, shy
+youth, with sun-bright, freckled eyes; then a man, lithe, graceful, and
+good to look at, with his face a clear, fine bronze, his hair taking a
+glint of copper in the sun. When he danced with them at the Ridge balls,
+that occasionally flashing, delightful way of his had made them realise
+why Sophie was in love with him. They remembered how he had looked at
+Sophie; how his eyes had followed her. They had heard of the Warria
+dance, and knew Arthur Henty had not behaved well to Sophie at it. They
+had been angry at the time. Then Sophie had gone away ... and a little
+later he had married.
+
+His marriage had not been a success. Mrs. Arthur Henty had spent most of
+her time in Sydney; she was rarely seen on the Ridge now. So women of
+the Ridge, who had known Arthur Henty, went over all they knew of him
+until that night at the race ball when he and Sophie had met again. And
+then his end in the tank paddock brought them back to exclamations of
+dismay and grief at the mystery of it all.
+
+As she left the cemetery, Sophie began to sing, listlessly, dreamily at
+first. No one had heard her sing since her return to the Ridge. But her
+voice flew out over the plains, through the wide, clear air now, with
+the pure melody it had when she was a girl:
+
+         "Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,
+          Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!
+          Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,
+          E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"
+
+Ella Bryant, driving home beside Bully, knew Sophie was singing as she
+had sung to Arthur Henty years before, when they were coming home from
+the tank paddock together. She wondered why Sophie was riding the horse
+Arthur had brought for her; why she had ridden him to the funeral; and
+why she was singing that song.
+
+Sophie sang on:
+
+         "Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,
+          E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"
+
+Looking back, people saw Potch walking beside her as Joseph walked
+beside Mary when they went down to Nazareth.
+
+"It's hard on Potch," somebody said.
+
+"Yes," it was agreed; "it's hard on Potch."
+
+The buggies, carts, sulkies, and horsemen moving in opposite directions
+on the long, curving road over the plains grew dim in the distance.
+
+The notes of Sophie's singing, with its undying tenderness triumphing
+over life and death, flowed fainter and fainter.
+
+When she and Potch came to the town again, the light was fading. Through
+the green, limpid veil of the sky, stars were glittering; huts of the
+township were darkening under the gathering shadow of night. A breath of
+sandal-wood burning on kitchen hearths came to Sophie and Potch like a
+greeting. The notes of a goat-bell clanking dully sounded from beyond
+the dumps. There were lights in a few of the huts; a warm, friendly
+murmur of voices went up from them. For weeks troubled and disturbed
+thinking, arguments, and conflicting ideas, had created a depressed and
+unrestful atmosphere in every home in Fallen Star. But to-night it was
+different. The temptations, allurements and debris of Armitage's scheme
+had been swept from the minds--even of those who had been ready to
+accept it. Hope and pride in the purpose of the Ridge had been restored
+by Michael's vindication and by reaffirmation of the principle he and
+all staunch men of the Ridge stood for as the mainstay of their life in
+common. Thought of Arthur Henty's death, which had oppressed people
+during the day, seemed to have been put aside now that they had seen him
+laid to rest, and had returned to their homes again.
+
+Voices were heard exclaiming with the light cadence and rhythm of joy.
+The crisis which had come near to shattering the Ridge scheme of things,
+and all that it stood for, had ended by drawing dissenting factions of
+the community into closer sympathy and more intimate relationship. In
+everybody's mind were the hope and enthusiasm of a new endeavour. As
+they went through the town again, neither Sophie nor Potch were
+conscious of them for the sorrow which had soaked into their lives. But
+these things were in the air they breathed, and sooner or later would
+claim them from all personal suffering; faith and loving service fill
+all their future--the long twilight of their days.
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Black Opal, by Katharine Susannah Prichard
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Black Opal
+
+
+Author: Katharine Susannah Prichard
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011  [eBook #36710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK OPAL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Amy Sisson & Marc D'Hooghe
+(http://www.freeliterature.org)
+
+
+
+THE BLACK OPAL
+
+by
+
+KATHARINE SUSANNAH PRICHARD
+
+Author of "The Pioneers," "Windlestraws," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: William Heinemann
+1921
+
+
+
+
+_PART I_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A string of vehicles moved slowly out of the New Town, taking the road
+over the long, low slope of the Ridge to the plains.
+
+Nothing was moving on the wide stretch of the plains or under the fine,
+clear blue sky of early spring, except this train of shabby,
+dust-covered vehicles. The road, no more than a track of wheels on
+shingly earth, wound lazily through paper daisies growing in drifts
+beside it, and throwing a white coverlet to the dim, circling horizon.
+The faint, dry fragrance of paper daisies was in the air; a native
+cuckoo calling.
+
+The little girl sitting beside Michael Brady in Newton's buggy glanced
+behind her now and then. Michael was driving the old black horse from
+the coach stables and Newton's bay mare, and Sophie and her father were
+sitting beside him on the front seat. In the open back of the buggy
+behind them lay a long box with wreaths and bunches of paper daisies and
+budda blossoms over it.
+
+Sophie knew all the people on the road, and to whom the horses and
+buggies they had borrowed belonged. Jun Johnson and Charley Heathfield
+were riding together in the Afghan storekeeper's sulky with his fat
+white pony before them. Anwah Kaked and Mrs. Kaked had the store cart
+themselves. Watty and Mrs. Frost were on the coach. Ed. Ventry was
+driving them and had put up the second seat for George and Mrs. Woods
+and Maggie Grant. Peter Newton and Cash Wilson followed in Newton's
+newly varnished black sulky. Sam Nancarrow had given Martha M'Cready a
+lift, and Pony-Fence Inglewood was driving Mrs. Archie and Mrs. Ted
+Cross in Robb's old heavy buggy, with the shaggy draught mare used for
+carting water in the township during the summer, in the shafts. The
+Flails' home-made jinker, whose body was painted a dull yellow, came
+last of the vehicles on the road. Sophie could just see Arthur Henty and
+two or three stockmen from Warria riding through a thin haze of red
+dust. But she knew men were walking two abreast behind the vehicles and
+horsemen--Bill Grant, Archie and Ted Cross, and a score of miners from
+the Three Mile and the Punti rush. At a curve of the road she had seen
+Snow-Shoes and Potch straggling along behind the others, the old man
+stooping to pick wild flowers by the roadside, and Potch plodding on,
+looking straight in front of him.
+
+Buggies, horses, and people, they had come all the way from her home at
+the Old Town. Almost everybody who lived on Fallen Star Ridge was there,
+driving, riding, or walking on the road across the plains behind
+Michael, her father, and herself. It was all so strange to Sophie; she
+felt so strange in the black dress she had on and which Mrs. Grant had
+cut down from one of her own. There was a black ribbon on her old yellow
+straw hat too, and she had on a pair of black cotton gloves.
+
+Sophie could not believe her mother was what they called "dead"; that it
+was her mother in the box with flowers on just behind her. They had
+walked along this very road, singing and gathering wild flowers, and had
+waited to watch the sun set, or the moon rise, so often.
+
+She glanced at her father. He was sitting beside her, a piece of black
+stuff on his arm and a strip of the same material round his old felt
+hat. The tears poured down his cheeks, and he shook out the large, new,
+white handkerchief he had bought at Chassy Robb's store that morning,
+and blew his nose every few minutes. He spoke sometimes to Michael; but
+Michael did not seem to hear him. Michael sat staring ahead, his face as
+though cut in wood.
+
+Sophie remembered Michael had been with her when Mrs. Grant said.... Her
+mind went back over that.
+
+"She's dead, Michael," Mrs. Grant had said.
+
+And she had leaned against the window beside her mother's bed, crying.
+Michael was on his knees by the bed. Sophie had thought Michael looked
+so funny, kneeling like that, with his head in his hands, his great
+heavy boots jutting up from the floor. The light, coming in through the
+window near the head of the bed, shone on the nails in the soles of his
+boots. It was so strange to see these two people whom she knew quite
+well, and whom she had only seen doing quite ordinary, everyday things,
+behaving like this. Sophie had gazed at her mother who seemed to be
+sleeping. Then Mrs. Grant had come to her, her face working, tears
+streaming down her cheeks. She had taken her hand and they had gone out
+of the room together. Sophie could not remember what Mrs. Grant had said
+to her then.... After a little while Mrs. Grant had gone back to the
+room where her mother was, and Sophie went out to the lean-to where
+Potch was milking the goats.
+
+She told him what Mrs. Grant had said about her mother, and he stopped
+milking. They had gazed at each other with inquiry and bewilderment in
+their eyes; then Potch turned his face away as he sat on the
+milking-stool, and Sophie knew he was crying. She wondered why other
+people had cried so much and she had not cried at all.
+
+When Potch was taking the bucket of milk across the yard, her father had
+come round the corner of the house. His heavy figure with its broad,
+stooping shoulders was outlined against the twilight sky. He made for
+the door, shouting incoherently. Sophie and Potch stood still as they
+saw him.
+
+Catching sight of them, he had turned and come towards them.
+
+"We're on opal," he cried; "on opal!"
+
+There was a feverish light in his eyes; he was trembling with
+excitement.
+
+He had pulled a small, washed oatmeal bag from his pocket, untied the
+string, tumbled some stones on to the outstretched palm of his hand, and
+held them for Potch to look at.
+
+"Not a bad bit in the lot.... Look at the fire, there in the black
+potch!... And there's green and gold for you. A lovely bit of pattern!
+And look at this ... and this!" he cried eagerly, going over the two or
+three small knobbies in his hand.
+
+Potch looked at him dazedly.
+
+"Didn't they tell you--?" he began.
+
+Her father had closed his hands over the stones and opal dirt.
+
+"I'm going in now," he said, thrusting the opals into the bag.
+
+He had gone towards the house again, shouting: "We're on opal! On opal!"
+
+Sophie followed him indoors. Mrs. Grant had met her father on the
+threshold of the room where her mother was.
+
+"Why didn't you come when I sent for you?" she asked.
+
+"I didn't think it could be as bad as you made out--that she was really
+dying," Sophie could hear her father saying again. "And we'd just struck
+opal, me and Jun, struck it rich. Got two or three stones already--great
+stuff, lovely pattern, green and orange, and fire all through the black
+potch. And there's more of it! Heaps more where it came from, Jun says.
+We're next Watty and George Woods--and no end of good stuff's come out
+of that claim."
+
+Mrs. Grant stared at him as Potch had done. Then she stood back from the
+doorway of the room behind her.
+
+Every gesture of her father's, of Mrs. Grant's, and of Michael's, was
+photographed on Sophie's brain. She could see that room again--the quiet
+figure on the bed, light golden-brown hair, threaded with silver, lying
+in thin plaits beside the face of yellow ivory; bare, thin arms and
+hands lying over grey blankets and a counter-pane of faded red twill;
+the window still framing a square of twilight sky on which stars were
+glittering. Mrs. Grant had brought a candle and put it on the box near
+the bed, and the candle light had flared on Mrs. Grant's figure, showing
+it, gaunt and accusing, against the shadows of the room. It had showed
+Sophie her father, also, between Michael and Mrs. Grant, looking from
+one to the other of them, and to the still figure on the bed, with a
+dazed, penitent expression....
+
+The horses jogged slowly on the long, winding road. Sophie was conscious
+of the sunshine, warm and bright, over the plains, the fragrance of
+paper daisies in the air; the cuckoos calling in the distance. Her
+father snuffled and wiped his eyes and nose with his new handkerchief as
+he sat beside her.
+
+"She was so good, Michael," he said, "too good for this world."
+
+Michael did not reply.
+
+"Too good for this world!" Paul murmured again.
+
+He had said that at least a score of times this morning. Sophie had
+heard him say it to people down at the house before they started. She
+had never heard him talk of her mother like that before. She looked at
+him, sensing vaguely, and resenting the banality. She thought of him as
+he had always been with her mother and with her, querulous and
+complaining, or noisy and rough when he had been drinking. They had
+spent the night in a shed at the back of the house sometimes when he was
+like that....
+
+And her mother had said:
+
+"You'll take care of Sophie, Michael?"
+
+Sophie remembered how she had stood in the doorway of her mother's room,
+that afternoon--How long ago was it? Not only a day surely? She had
+stood there until her mother had seen her, awed without knowing why,
+reluctant to move, afraid almost. Michael had nodded without speaking.
+
+"As though she were your own child?"
+
+"So help me, God," Michael said.
+
+Her-mother's eyes had rested on Michael's face. She had smiled at him.
+Sophie did not think she had ever seen her smile like that before,
+although her smile had always been like a light on her face.
+
+"Don't let him take her away," her mother had said after a moment. "I
+want her to grow up in this place ... in the quiet ... never to know the
+treacherous ... whirlpool ... of life beyond the Ridge."
+
+Then her mother had seen and called to her.
+
+Sophie glanced back at the slowly-moving train of vehicles. They had a
+dreary, dream-like aspect. She felt as if she were moving in a dream.
+Everything she saw, and heard, and did, was invested with unreality; she
+had a vague, unfeeling curiosity about everything.
+
+"You see, Michael," her father was saying when she heard him talking
+again, "we'd just got out that big bit when Potch came and said that
+Marya ... that Marya.... I couldn't believe it was true ... and there
+was the opal! And when I got home in the evening she was gone. My poor
+Marya! And I'd brought some of the stones to show her."
+
+He broke down and wept. "Do you think she knows about the opal,
+Michael?"
+
+Michael did not reply. Sophie looked up at him. The pain of his face, a
+sudden passionate grieving that wrung it, translated to her what this
+dying of her mother meant. She huddled against Michael; in all her
+trouble and bewilderment there seemed nothing to do but to keep close to
+Michael.
+
+And so they came to the gate of a fenced plot which was like a quiet
+garden on the plains. Several young coolebahs, and two or three older
+trees standing in it, scattered light shade; and a few head-stones and
+wooden crosses, painted white or bleached by the weather, showed above
+the waving grass and wild flowers.
+
+Sophie held the reins when Michael got down to open the gate. Then he
+took his seat again and they drove in through the gateway. Other people
+tied their horses and buggies to the fence outside.
+
+When all the people who had been driving, riding, or walking on the road
+went towards an old coolebah under which the earth had been thrown up
+and a grave had been dug, Michael told Sophie to go with her father and
+stand beside them. She did so, and dull, grieving eyes were turned to
+her; glances of pitiful sympathy. But Snow-Shoes came towards the little
+crowd beside the tree, singing.
+
+He was the last person to come into the cemetery, and everybody stared
+at him. An old man in worn white moleskins and cotton shirt, an old
+white felt hat on his head, the wrappings of bag and leather, which gave
+him his name, on his feet--although snow never fell on the Ridge--he
+swung towards them. The flowers he had gathered as he came along, not
+otilypaper daisies, but the blue flowers of crowsfoot, gold buttons, and
+creamy and lavender, sweet-scented budda blossoms, were done up in a
+tight little bunch in his hand. He drew nearer still singing under his
+breath, and Sophie realised he was going over and over the fragment of a
+song that her mother had loved and used often to sing herself.
+
+There was a curious smile in his eyes as he came to a standstill beside
+her. The leaves of the coolebah were bronze and gold in the sunshine, a
+white-tail in its branches reiterating plaintively: "Sweet pretty
+creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael, George Woods, Archie Cross,
+and Cash Wilson, came towards the tree, their shoulders bowed beneath
+the burden they were carrying; but Snow-Shoes smiled at everybody as
+though this were really a joyous occasion, and they did not understand.
+Only he understood, and smiled because of his secret knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+In a week or two Mrs. Rouminof's name had dropped out of Ridge life
+almost as if she had never been part of it.
+
+At first people talked of her, of Paul, of Sophie, and of Michael. They
+gossiped of her looks and manner, of her strange air of serenity and
+content, although her life on the Ridge was, they surmised, a hard one,
+and different from the life she had come from. But her death caused no
+more disturbance than a stone thrown into quiet water, falling to the
+bottom, does. No one was surprised, when it was known Paul and Sophie
+had gone to live with Michael. Everyone expected Michael would try to
+look after them for a while, although they could not imagine where he
+was going to find room for them in his small house filled with books.
+
+It was natural enough that Michael should have taken charge of Sophie
+and Rouminof, and that he should have made all arrangements for Mrs.
+Rouminof's funeral. If it had been left to Paul to bury his wife, people
+agreed, she would not have been buried at all; or, at least, not until
+the community insisted. And Michael would have done as much for any
+shiftless man. He was next-of-kin to all lonely and helpless men and
+women on the Ridge, Michael Brady.
+
+Every man, woman, or child on the Ridge knew Michael. His lean figure in
+shabby blue dungarees, faded shirt, and weathered felt hat, with no more
+than a few threads of its band left, was as familiar as any tree, shed,
+or dump on the fields. He walked with a slight stoop, a pipe in his
+mouth always, his head bent as though he were thinking hard; but there
+was no hard thought in his eyes, only meditativeness, and a faint smile
+if he were stopped and spoken to unexpectedly.
+
+"You're a regular 'cyclopædia, Michael," the men said sometimes when he,
+had given information on a subject they were discussing.
+
+"Not me," Michael would reply as often as not. "I just came across that
+in a book I was reading the other day."
+
+Ridge folk were proud of Michael's books, and strangers who saw his
+miscellaneous collection--mostly of cheap editions, old school books,
+and shilling, sixpenny, and penny publications of literary masterpieces,
+poetry, and works on industrial and religious subjects--did not wonder
+that it impressed Ridge folk, or that Michael's knowledge of the world
+and affairs was what it was. He had tracts, leaflets, and small books on
+almost every subject under the sun. Books were regarded as his Weakness,
+and, remembering it, some of the men, when they had struck opal and left
+the town, occasionally sent a box of any old books they happened to come
+across to Michael, knowing that a printed page was a printed page to him
+in the long evenings when he lay on the sofa under his window. Michael
+himself had spent all the money he could, after satisfying the needs of
+his everyday life, on those tracts, pamphlets, and cheap books he
+hoarded in his hut on shelves made from wooden boxes and old
+fruit-cases.
+
+But there was nothing of the schoolmaster about him. He rarely gave
+information unless he was asked for it. The men appreciated that,
+although they were proud of his erudition and books. They knew dimly but
+surely that Michael used his books for, not against, themselves; and he
+was attached to books and learning, chiefly for what they could do for
+them, his mates. In all community discussions his opinion carried
+considerable weight. A matter was often talked over with more or less
+heat, differences of opinion thrashed out while Michael smoked and
+listened, weighing the arguments. He rarely spoke until his view was
+asked for. Then in a couple of minutes he would straighten out the
+subject of controversy, show what was to be said for and against a
+proposition, sum up, and give his conclusions, for or against it.
+
+Michael Brady, however, was much more the general utility man than
+encyclopædia of Fallen Star Ridge. If a traveller--swagman--died on the
+road, it was Michael who saw he got a decent burial; Michael who was
+sent for if a man had his head smashed in a brawl, or a wife died
+unexpectedly. He was the court of final appeal in quarrels and
+disagreements between mates; and once when Martha M'Cready was away in
+Sydney, he had even brought a baby into the world. He was something of a
+dentist, too, honorary dentist to anyone on the Ridge who wanted a tooth
+pulled out; and the friend of any man, woman, or child in distress.
+
+And he did things so quietly, so much as a matter of course, that people
+did not notice what he did for them, or for the rest of the Ridge. They
+took it for granted he liked doing what he did; that he liked helping
+them. It was his sympathy, the sense of his oneness with all their
+lives, and his shy, whimsical humour and innate refusal to be anything
+more than they were, despite his books and the wisdom with which they
+were quite willing to credit him, that gained for Michael the regard of
+the people of the Ridge, and made him the unconscious power he was in
+the community.
+
+Of about middle height, and sparely built, Michael was forty-five, or
+thereabouts, when Mrs. Rouminof died. He looked older, yet had the
+vigour and energy of a much younger man. Crowsfeet had gathered at the
+corners of his eyes, and there were the fines beneath them which all
+back-country men have from screwing their sight against the brilliant
+sunshine of the north-west. But the white of his eyes was as clear as
+the shell of a bird's egg, the irises grey, flecked with hazel and
+green, luminous, and ringed with fine black lines. When he pushed back
+his hat, half a dozen lines from frowning against the glare were on his
+forehead too. His thin, black hair, streaked with grey, lay flat across
+and close to his head. He had a well-shaped nose and the sensitive
+nostrils of a thoroughbred, although Michael himself said he was no
+breed to speak of, but plain Australian--and proud of it. His father was
+born in the country, and so was his mother. His father had been a
+teemster, and his mother a storekeeper's daughter. Michael had wandered
+from one mining field to another in his young days. He had worked in
+Bendigo and Gippsland; later in Silver Town; and from the Barrier Ranges
+had migrated to Chalk Cliffs, and from the Cliffs to Fallen Star Ridge.
+He had been one of the first comers to the Ridge when opal was
+discovered there.
+
+The Rouminofs had been on Chalk Cliffs too, and had come to the Ridge in
+the early days of the rush. Paul had set up at the Cliffs as an opal
+buyer, it was said; but he knew very little about opal. Anybody could
+sell him a stone for twice as much as it was worth, and he could never
+get a price from other buyers for the stones he bought. He soon lost any
+money he possessed, and had drifted and swung with the careless life of
+the place. He had worked as a gouger for a while when the blocks were
+bought up. Then when the rush to the Ridge started, and most of the men
+tramped north to try their luck on the new fields, he went with them;
+and Mrs. Rouminof and Sophie followed a little later on Ed. Ventry's
+bullock wagon, when Ed. was taking stores to the rush.
+
+Mrs. Rouminof had lived in a hut at the Old Town even after the township
+was moved to the eastern slope of the Ridge. She had learnt a good deal
+about opal on the Cliffs, and soon after she came to the Ridge set up a
+cutting-wheel, and started cutting and polishing stones. Several of the
+men brought her their stones, and after a while she was so good at her
+work that she often added a couple of pounds to the value of a stone.
+She kept a few goats too, to assure a means of livelihood when there was
+no opal about, and she sold goats' milk and butter in the township. She
+had never depended on Rouminof to earn a living, which was just as well,
+Fallen Star folk agreed, since, as long as they had known him, he had
+never done so. For a long time he had drifted between the mines and
+Newton's, cadging drinks or borrowing money from anybody who would lend
+to him. Sometimes he did odd jobs at Newton's or the mail stables for
+the price of a few drinks; but no man who knew him would take up a
+claim, or try working a mine with him.
+
+His first mate on the Ridge had been Pony-Fence Inglewood. They sank a
+hole on a likely spot behind the Old Town; but Paul soon got tired of
+it. When they had not seen anything but bony potch for a while, Paul
+made up his mind there was nothing in the place. Pony-Fence rather liked
+it. He was for working a little longer, but to oblige his mate he agreed
+to sink again. Soon after they had started, Paul began to appear at the
+dump when the morning was half through, or not at all. Or, as often as
+not, when he did decide to sling a pick, or dig a bit, he groaned so
+about the pains in his back or his head that as often as not Pony-Fence
+told him to go home and get the missus to give him something for it.
+
+The mildest man on the fields, Pony-Fence Inglewood did not discover for
+some time what the boys said was correct. There was nothing the matter
+with Rum-Enough but a dislike of shifting mullock if he could get anyone
+to shift it for him. When he did discover he was doing the work of the
+firm, Pony-Fence and Paul had it out with each other, and parted
+company. Pony-Fence took a new mate, Bully Bryant, a youngster from
+Budda, who was anxious to put any amount of elbow grease into his search
+for a fortune, and Paul drifted. He had several mates afterwards,
+newcomers to the fields, who wanted someone to work with them, but they
+were all of the same opinion about him.
+
+"Tell Rum-Enough there's a bit of colour about, and he'll work like a
+chow," they said; "but if y' don't see anything for a day or two, he
+goes as flat as the day before yesterday."
+
+If he had been working, and happened on a knobby, or a bit of black
+potch with a light or two in it, Paul was like a child, crazy with
+happiness. He could talk of nothing else. He thought of nothing else. He
+slung his pick and shovelled dirt as long as you would let him, with a
+devouring impatience, in a frenzy of eagerness. The smallest piece of
+stone with no more than sun-flash was sufficient to put him in a state
+of frantic excitement.
+
+Strangers to the Ridge sometimes wanted to know whether Rouminof had
+ever had a touch of the sun. But Ridge folk knew he was not mad. He had
+the opal fever all right, they said, but he was not mad.
+
+When Jun Johnson blew along at the end of one summer and could not get
+anyone to work with him, he took Paul on. The two chummed up and started
+to sink a hole together, and the men made bets as to the chance of their
+ever getting ten or a dozen feet below ground; but before long they were
+astounded to see the old saw of setting a thief to catch a thief working
+true in this instance. If anybody was loafing on the new claim, it was
+not Rouminof. He did every bit of his share of the first day's hard pick
+work and shovelling. If anybody was slacking, it was Jun rather than
+Paul. Jun kept his mate's nose to the grindstone, and worked more
+successfully with him than anyone else had ever done. He knew it, too,
+and was proud of his achievement. Joking over it at Newton's in the
+evening, he would say:
+
+"Great mate I've got now! Work? Never saw a chow work like him! Work his
+fingers to the bone, he would, if I'd let him. It's a great life, a
+gouger's, if only you've got the right sort of mate!"
+
+Ordinarily, of course, mates shared their finds. There was no question
+of what partners would get out of the luck of one or the other. But
+Jun--he had his own little way of doing business, everybody knew. He had
+been on the Ridge before. He and his mate did not have any sensational
+luck, but they had saved up two or three packets of opal and taken them
+down to Sydney to sell. Old Bill Olsen was his mate then, and, although
+Bill had said nothing of the business, the men guessed there had been
+something shady about it. Jun had his own story of what happened. He
+said the old chap had "got on his ear" in Sydney, and that "a couple of
+spielers had rooked him of his stones." But Bill no longer noticed Jun
+if they passed each other on the same track on the Ridge, and Jun
+pretended to be sore about it.
+
+"It's dirt," he said, "the old boy treating me as if I had anything to
+do with his bad luck losin' those stones!"
+
+"Why don't you speak to him about it?" somebody asked.
+
+"Oh, we had it out in Sydney," Jun replied, "and it's no good raking the
+whole thing up again. Begones is bygones--that's my motto. But if any
+man wants to have a grudge against me, well, let him. It's a free
+country. That's all I've got to say. Besides, the poor old cuss isn't
+all there, perhaps."
+
+"Don't you fret," Michael had said, "he's all right. He's got as much
+there as you or me, or any of us for that matter."
+
+"Oh well, you know, Michael," Jun declared. He was not going to quarrel
+with Michael Brady. "What you say goes, anyhow!"
+
+That was how Jun established himself anywhere. He had an easy,
+plausible, good-natured way. All the men laughed and drank with him and
+gave him grudging admiration, notwithstanding the threads and shreds of
+resentments and distrusts which old stories of his dealings, even with
+mates, had put in their minds. None of those stories had been proved
+against him, his friends said, Charley Heathfield among them. That was a
+fact. But there were too many of them to be good for any man's soul,
+Ridge men, who took Jun with a grain of salt, thought--Michael Brady,
+George Woods, Archie Cross, and Watty Frost among them; but Charley
+Heathfield, Michael's mate, had struck up a friendship with Jun since
+his return to the Ridge.
+
+George Woods and the Crosses said it was a case of birds of a feather,
+but they did not say that to Michael. They knew Michael had the sort of
+affection for Charley that a man has for a dog he has saved from
+drowning.
+
+Charley Heathfield had been down on his luck when he went to the Ridge,
+his wife and a small boy with him; and the rush which he had expected to
+bring him a couple of hundred pounds' worth of opal at least, if it did
+not make his fortune, had left him worse off than it found him--a piece
+of debris in its wake. He and Rouminof had put down a shaft together,
+and as neither of them, after the first few weeks, did any more work
+than they could help, and were drunk or quarrelling half of their time,
+nothing came of their efforts.
+
+Charley, when his wife died, was ill himself, and living in a hut a few
+yards from Michael's. She had been a waitress in a city restaurant, and
+he had married her, he said, because she could carry ten dishes of hot
+soup on one arm and four trays on the other. A tall, stolid, pale-faced
+woman, she had hated the back-country and her husband's sense of humour,
+and had fretted herself to death rather than endure them. Charley had no
+particular opinion of himself or of her. He called his youngster
+Potch--"a little bit of Potch," he said, because the kid would never be
+anything better than poor opal at the best of times.
+
+Michael had nursed Charley while he was ill during that winter, and had
+taken him in hand when he was well enough to get about again. Charley
+was supposed to have weak lungs; but better food, steady habits, and the
+fine, dry air of a mild summer set him up wonderfully. Snow-Shoes had
+worked with Michael for a long time; he said that he was getting too old
+for the everyday toil of the mine, though, when Michael talked of taking
+on Charley to work with them. It would suit him all right if Michael
+found another mate. Michael and Charley Heathfield had worked together
+ever since, and Snow-Shoes had made his living as far as anybody knew by
+noodling on the dumps.
+
+But Charley and Michael had not come on a glimmer of opal worth speaking
+of for nearly twelve months. They were hanging on to their claim, hoping
+each day they would strike something good. There is a superstition among
+the miners that luck often changes when it seems at its worst. Both
+Charley and Michael had storekeeper's accounts as long as their arms,
+and the men knew if their luck did not change soon, one or the other of
+them would have to go over to Warria, or to one of the other stations,
+and earn enough money there to keep the other going on the claim.
+
+They had no doubt it would be Michael who would have to go. Charley was
+not fond of work, and would be able to loaf away his time very
+pleasantly on the mine, making only a pretence of doing anything, until
+Michael returned. They wondered why Michael did not go and get a move
+into his affairs at once. Paul and Sophie might have-something to do
+with his putting off going, they told each other; Michael was anxious
+how Paul and his luck would fare when it was a question of squaring up
+with Jun, and as to how the squaring up, when it came, would affect
+Sophie.
+
+Some of them had been concerning themselves on Paul's account also. They
+did not like a good deal they had seen of the way Jun was using Paul,
+and they had resolved to see he got fair play when it was time for a
+settlement of his and Jun's account. George Woods, Watty Frost, and Bill
+Grant went along to talk the matter over with Michael one evening, and
+found him fixing a shed at the back of the hut which he and Potch had
+put up for Sophie and her father, a few yards from Charley Heathfield's,
+and in line with Michael's own hut at the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
+
+"Paul says he's going away if he gets a good thing out of his and Jun's
+find," George Woods said.
+
+"It'll be a good thing--if he gets a fair deal," Michael replied.
+
+"He'll get that--if we can fix it," Watty Frost said.
+
+"Yes," Michael agreed.
+
+"Can't think why you're taking so much trouble with this place if Paul
+and Sophie are going away soon, Michael," George Woods remarked at the
+end of their talk.
+
+"They're not gone yet," Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling
+across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.
+
+The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no
+betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did
+not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be
+done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it
+would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away.
+But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father
+would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for
+them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would
+be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be
+prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they
+found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all
+that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was
+the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should
+hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was
+like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish
+up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a
+packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better
+tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most
+of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to
+deal squarely by him.
+
+Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about
+like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for
+everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times
+they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell
+their opal.
+
+Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at
+Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them
+up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's
+package knew that he had kept the best stones.
+
+For a couple of weeks after they had come on their nest of knobbies, Jun
+and Paul had gouged and shovelled dirt enthusiastically; but the wisp
+fires, mysteriously and suddenly as they had come, had died out of the
+stone they moved. Paul searched frantically. He and Jun worked like
+bullocks; but the luck which had flashed on them was withdrawn. Although
+they broke new tunnels, went through tons of opal dirt with their hands,
+and tracked every trace of black potch through a reef of cement stone in
+the mine, not a spark of blue or green light had they seen for over a
+week. That was the way of black opal, everybody knew, and knew, too,
+that the men who had been on a good patch of fired stone would not work
+on a claim, shovelling dirt, long after it disappeared. They would be
+off down to Sydney, if no buyer was due to visit the fields, eager to
+make the most of the good time their luck and the opal would bring them.
+"Opal only brings you bad luck when you don't get enough of it," Ridge
+folk say.
+
+George and Watty had a notion Jun would not stick to the claim much
+longer, when they arranged the night at Newton's to settle his and
+Paul's account with each other. Michael, the Crosses, Cash Wilson,
+Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Bully Bryant, old Bill Olsen, and most
+of the staunch Ridge men were in the bar, Charley Heathfield drinking
+with Jun, when George Woods strolled over to the table where Rouminof
+was showing Sam Nancarrow his stones. Sam was blacksmith, undertaker,
+and electoral registrar in Fallen Star, and occasionally did odd
+butchering jobs when there was no butcher in the township. He had the
+reputation, too, of being one of the best judges of black opal on the
+fields.
+
+Paul was holding up a good-looking knobby so that red, green, and gold
+lights glittered through its shining potch as he moved it.
+
+"That's a nice bit of stone you've got, Rummy!" George exclaimed.
+
+Paul agreed. "But you should see her by candle light, George!" he said
+eagerly.
+
+He held up the stone again so that it caught the light of a lamp hanging
+over the bar where Peter Newton was standing. The eyes of two or three
+of the men followed the stone as Paul moved it, and its internal fires
+broke in showers of sparks.
+
+"Look, look!" Paul cried, "now she's showin'!"
+
+"How much have you got on her?" Sam Nancarrow asked.
+
+"Jun thinks she'll bring £50 or £60 at least."
+
+Sam's and George Woods' eyes met: £50 was a liberal estimate of the
+stone's value. If Paul got £10 or £15 for it he would be doing well,
+they knew.
+
+"They're nice stones, aren't they?" Paul demanded, sorting over the
+opals he had spread out on the table. He held up a piece of green potch
+with a sun-flash through it.
+
+"My oath!" George Woods exclaimed.
+
+"But where's the big beaut.?" Archie Cross asked, looking over the
+stones with George.
+
+"Oh, Jun's got her," Paul replied. "Jun!" he called, "the boys want to
+see the big stone."
+
+"Right!" Jun swung across to the table. Several of the men by the bar
+followed him. "She's all right," he said.
+
+He sat down, pulled a shabby leather wallet from his pocket, opened it,
+and took out a roll of dirty flannel; he undid the flannel carefully,
+and spread the stones on the table. There were several pieces of opal in
+the packet. The men, who had seen them before separately, uttered soft
+oaths of admiration and surprise when they saw all the opals together.
+Two knobbies were as big as almonds, and looked like black almonds,
+fossilised, with red fire glinting through their green and gold; a large
+flat stone had stars of red, green, amethyst, blue and gold shifting
+over and melting into each other; and several smaller stones, all good
+stuff, showed smouldering fire in depths of green and blue and gold-lit
+darkness.
+
+Jun held the biggest of the opals at arm's length from the light of the
+hanging lamp. The men followed his movement, the light washing their
+faces as it did the stone.
+
+"There she goes!" Paul breathed.
+
+"What have you got on her?"
+
+"A hundred pounds, or thereabouts."
+
+"You'll get it easy!"
+
+Jun put the stone down. He took up another, a smaller piece of opal, of
+even finer quality. The stars were strewn over and over each other in
+its limpid black pool.
+
+"Nice pattern," he said.
+
+"Yes," Watty Frost murmured.
+
+"She's not as big as the other ... but better pattern," Archie Cross
+said.
+
+"Reckon you'll get £100 for her too, Jun?"
+
+"Yup!" Jun put down the stone.
+
+Then he held up each stone in turn, and the men gave it the same level,
+appraising glance. There was no envy in their admiration. In every man's
+eyes was the same worshipful appreciation of black opal.
+
+Jun was drunk with his luck. His luck, as much as Newton's beer, was in
+his head this night. He had shown his stones before, but never like
+this, the strength of his luck.
+
+"How much do you think there is in your packet, Jun?" Archie Cross
+asked.
+
+Jun stretched his legs under the table.
+
+"A thou' if there's a penny."
+
+Archie whistled.
+
+"And how much do you reckon there is in Rum-Enough's?" George Woods put
+the question.
+
+"Four or five hundred," Jun said; "but we're evens, of course."
+
+He leaned across the table and winked at George.
+
+"Oh, I say," Archie protested, "what's the game?"
+
+They knew Jun wanted them to believe he was joking, humouring Paul. But
+that was not what they had arranged this party for.
+
+"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones, Jun?"
+
+"What?"
+
+Jun started and stared about him. It was so unusual for one man to
+suggest to another what he ought to do, or that there was anything like
+bad faith in his dealings with his mates, that his blood rose.
+
+"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones?" George repeated,
+mildly eyeing him over the bowl of his pipe.
+
+"Yes," Watty butted in, "Rummy ought to hold a few of the good stones,
+Jun. Y' see, you might be run into by rats ... or get knocked out--and
+have them shook off you, like Oily did down in Sydney--and it'd be hard
+on Rummy, that--"
+
+"When I want your advice about how me and my mate's going to work
+things, I'll ask you," Jun snarled.
+
+"We don't mind giving it before we're asked, Jun," Watty explained
+amiably.
+
+Archie Cross leaned across the table. "How about giving Paul a couple of
+those bits of decent pattern--if you stick to the big stone?" he said.
+
+"What's the game?" Jun demanded, sitting up angrily. His hand went over
+his stones.
+
+"Wait on, Jun!" Michael said. "We're not thieves here. You don't have to
+grab y'r stones."
+
+Jun looked about him. He saw that men of the Ridge, in the bar, were all
+standing round the table. Only Peter Newton was left beside the bar,
+although Charley Heathfield, on the outer edge of the crowd, regarded
+him with a smile of faint sympathy and cynicism. Paul leaned over the
+table before him, and looked from Jun to the men who had fallen in round
+the table, a dazed expression broadening on his face.
+
+"What the hell's the matter?" Jun cried, starting to his feet. "What are
+you chaps after? Can't I manage me own affairs and me mate's?"
+
+The crowd moved a little, closer to him. There was no chance of making a
+break for it.
+
+George Woods laughed.
+
+"Course you can't, Jun!" he said. "Not on the Ridge, you can't manage
+your affairs and your mate's ... your way ... Not without a little
+helpful advice from the rest of us.... Sit down!"
+
+Jun glanced about him again; then, realising the intention on every
+face, and something of the purpose at the back of it, he sat down again.
+
+"Well, I'm jiggered!" he exclaimed. "I see--you believe old Olsen's
+story. That's about the strength of it. Never thought ... a kid, or a
+chicken, 'd believe that bloody yarn. Well, what's the advice ... boys?
+Let's have it, and be done with it!"
+
+"We'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. We won't say anything about ...
+why," George remarked. "But the boys and I was just thinking it might be
+as well if you and Rum-Enough sort of shared up the goods now, and then
+... if he doesn't want to go to Sydney same time as you, Jun, he can
+deal his goods here, or when he does go."
+
+No one knew better than Jun the insult which all this seemingly
+good-natured talking covered. He knew that neither he, nor any other
+man, would have dared to suggest that Watty, or George, or Michael, were
+not to be trusted to deal for their mates, to the death even. But then
+he knew, too, they were to be trusted; that there was not money enough
+in the world to buy their loyalty to each other and to their mates, and
+that he could measure their suspicion of his good faith by his knowledge
+of himself. To play their game as they would have played it was the only
+thing for him to do, he recognised.
+
+"Right!" he said, "I'm more than willing. In fact, I wouldn't have the
+thing on me mind--seein' the way you chaps 've taken it. But 'd like to
+know which one of you wouldn't 've done what I've done if Rum-Enough was
+your mate?"
+
+Every man was uneasily conscious that Jun was right. Any one of them, if
+he had Paul for a mate, would have taken charge of the most valuable
+stones, in Paul's interest as well as his own. At the same time, every
+man felt pretty sure the thing was a horse of another colour where Jun
+was concerned.
+
+"Which one of us," George Woods inquired, "if a mate'd been set on by a
+spieler in Sydney, would've let him stump his way to Brinarra and foot
+it out here ... like you let old Olsen?"
+
+Jun's expression changed; his features blenched, then a flame of blood
+rushed over his face.
+
+"It's a lie," he yelled. "He cleared out--I never saw him afterwards!"
+
+"Oh well," George said, "we'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. Let's have a
+look at that flat stone."
+
+Jun handed him the stone.
+
+George held it to the light.
+
+"Nice bit of opal," he said, letting the light play over it a moment,
+then passed it on to Michael and Watty.
+
+"You keep the big stone, and Paul'll have this," Archie Cross said.
+
+He put the stone beside Paul's' little heap of gems.
+
+Jun sat back in his chair: his eyes smouldering as the men went over his
+opals, appraising and allotting each one, putting some before Rouminof,
+and some back before him. They dealt as judicially with the stones as
+though they were a jury of experts, on the case--as they really were.
+When their decisions were made, Jun had still rather the better of the
+stones, although the division had been as nearly fair as possible.
+
+Paul was too dazed and amazed to speak. He glanced dubiously from his
+stones to Jun, who rolled his opals back in the strip of dirty flannel,
+folded it into his leather wallet, and dropped that into his coat
+pocket. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.
+
+Big and swarthy, with eyes which took a deeper colour from the new blue
+shirt he had on, Jun stood an inch or so above the other men.
+
+"Well," he said, "you boys have put it across me to-night. You've made a
+mistake ... but I'm not one to bear malice. You done right if you
+thought I wasn't going to deal square by Rum-Enough ... but I'll lay you
+any money you like I'd 've made more money for him by selling his stones
+than he'll make himself--Still, that's your business ... if you want it
+that way. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm just where I was--in luck.
+And you chaps owe me something.... Come and have a drink."
+
+Most of the men, who believed Jun was behaving with better grace than
+they had expected him to, moved off to have a drink with him. They were
+less sure than they had been earlier in the evening that they had done
+Rouminof a good turn by giving him possession of his share of the opals.
+It was just on the cards, they realised as Jun said, that instead of
+doing Rouminof a good turn, if Jun had been going to deal squarely by
+him, they had done him a rather bad one. Paul was pretty certain to make
+a mess of trading his own stones, and to get about half their value from
+an opal-buyer if he insisted on taking them down to Sydney to sell
+himself.
+
+"What'll you do now your fortune's fixed up, Rummy?" George Woods asked,
+jokingly, when he and two or three men were left with Paul by the table.
+
+"I'll get out of this," Paul said. "We'll go down to Sydney--me and
+Sophie--and we'll say good-bye to the Ridge for good."
+
+The men laughed. It was the old song of an outsider who cared nothing
+for the life of the Ridge, when he got a couple of hundred pounds' worth
+of opal. He thought he was made for life and would never come back to
+the Ridge; but he always did when his money was spent. Only Michael,
+standing a little behind George Woods, did not smile.
+
+"But you can't live for ever on three or four hundred quid," Watty Frost
+said.
+
+"No," Paul replied eagerly, "but I can always make a bit playing at
+dances, and Sophie's going to be a singer. You wait till people hear her
+sing.... Her mother was a singer. She had a beautiful voice. When it
+went we came here.... But Sophie can sing as well as her mother. And
+she's young. She ought to make a name for herself."
+
+He wrapped the stones before him in a piece of wadding, touching them
+reverently, and folded them into the tin cigarette box Michael had given
+him to carry about the first stones Jun had let him have. He was still
+mystified over the business of the evening, and why the boys had made
+Jun give him the other stones. He had been quite satisfied for Jun to
+hold most of the stones, and the best ones, as any man on the Ridge
+would be for his mate to take care of their common property. There was a
+newspaper lying on the table. He took it, wrapped it carefully about his
+precious box, tied a piece of strong string round it, and let the box
+down carefully into the big, loose pocket of his shabby coat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Watty and George were well satisfied with their night's work when they
+went out of the bar into the street. Michael was with them. He said
+nothing, but they took it for granted he was as pleased as they were at
+what had been done and the way in which it had been done. Michael was
+always chary of words, and all night they had noticed that what they
+called his "considering cap" had been well drawn over his brows. He
+stood smoking beside them and listening abstractedly to what they were
+saying.
+
+"Well, that's fixed him," Watty remarked, glancing back into the room
+they had just left.
+
+Jun was leaning over the bar talking to Newton, the light from the lamp
+above, on his red, handsome face, and cutting the bulk of his head and
+shoulders from the gloom of the room and the rest of the men about him.
+Peter Newton was serving drinks, and Jun laughing and joking
+boisterously as he handed them on to the men.
+
+"He's a clever devil!" George exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," Michael said.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if he didn't clear out by the coach to-morrow," George
+said.
+
+"Nor me," Watty grunted.
+
+"Well, he won't be taking Paul with him."
+
+"Not to-morrow."
+
+"No."
+
+"But Rummy's going down to town soon as he can get, he says."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Say, Michael, why don't you try scarin' him about losing his stones
+like Bill Olsen did?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Says," Michael smiled, "the sharks won't get any of his money or opal."
+
+Watty snuffed contemptuously by way of exclamation.
+
+"Well, I'll be getting along," Michael added, and talked away in the
+direction of his hut.
+
+George and Watty watched his spare figure sway down the road between the
+rows of huts which formed the Fallen Star township. It was a misty
+moonlight night, and the huts stood dark against the sheening screen of
+sky, with here and there a glow of light through open doorways, or
+small, square window panes.
+
+"It's on Michael's mind, Rum-Enough's going and taking Sophie with him,"
+George, said.
+
+"I don't wonder," Watty replied. "He'll come a cropper, sure as eggs....
+And what's to become of her? Michael 'd go to town with them if he had a
+bean--but he hasn't. He's stony, I know."
+
+Even to his mate he did not say why he knew, and George did not ask,
+understanding Watty's silence. It was not very long since George himself
+had given Michael a couple of pounds; but he had a very good idea
+Michael had little to do with the use of that money. He guessed that he
+would have less to do with whatever he got from Watty.
+
+"Charley's going over to Warria to-morrow, isn't he?" he asked.
+
+Watty grunted. "About time he did something. Michael's been grafting for
+him for a couple of years ... and he'd have gone to the station
+himself--only he didn't want to go away till he knew what Paul was going
+to do. Been trying pretty hard to persuade him to leave Sophie--till
+he's fixed up down town--but you wouldn't believe how obstinate the
+idiot is. Thinks he can make a singer of her in no time ... then she'll
+keep her old dad till kingdom come."
+
+Michael's figure was lost to sight between the trees which encroached on
+the track beyond the town. Jun was singing in the hotel. His great
+rollicking voice came to George and Watty with shouts of laughter.
+George, looking back through the open door, saw Rouminof had joined the
+crowd round the bar.
+
+He was drinking as George's glance fell on him.
+
+"Think he's all right?" Watty asked.
+
+George did not reply.
+
+"You don't suppose Jun 'd try to take the stones off of him, do you,
+George?" Watty inquired again. "You don't think----?"
+
+"I don't suppose he'd dare, seein' we've ... let him know how we feel."
+
+George spoke slowly, as if he were not quite sure of what he was saying.
+
+"He knows his hide'd suffer if he tried."
+
+"That's right."
+
+Archie Cross came from the bar and joined them.
+
+"He's trying to make up to the boys--he likes people to think he's
+Christmas, Jun," he said, "and he just wants 'em to forget that
+anything's been said--detrimental to his character like."
+
+George was inclined to agree with Archie. They went to the form against
+the wall of the hotel and sat there smoking for a while; then all three
+got up to go home.
+
+"You don't think we ought to see Rummy home?" Watty inquired
+hesitatingly.
+
+He was ashamed to suggest that Rouminof, drunk, and with four or five
+hundred pounds' worth of opal in his pockets, was not as safe as if his
+pockets were empty. But Jun had brought a curious unrest into the
+community. Watty, or Archie, or George, themselves would have walked
+about with the same stuff in their pockets without ever thinking anybody
+might try to put a finger on it.
+
+None of the three looked at each other as they thought over the
+proposition. Then Archie spoke:
+
+"I told Ted," he murmured apologetically, "to keep an eye on Rummy, as
+he's coming home. If there's rats about, you never can tell what may
+happen. We ain't discovered yet who put it over on Rummy and Jun on the
+day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral. So I just worded Ted to keep an eye on
+the old fool. He comes our track most of the way ... And if he's tight,
+he might start sheddin' his stones out along the road--you never can
+tell."
+
+George Woods laughed. The big, genial soul of the man looked out of his
+eyes.
+
+"That's true," he said heartily.
+
+Archie and he smiled into each other's eyes. They understood very well
+what lay behind Archie's words; They could not bring themselves to admit
+there was any danger to the sacred principle of Ridge life, that a mate
+stands by a mate, in letting Rouminof wander home by himself. He might
+be in danger if there were rats about; they would admit that. But rats,
+the men who sneaked into other men's mines when they were on good stuff,
+and took out their opal during the night, were never Ridge men. They
+were new-comers, outsiders, strangers on the rushes, who had not learnt
+or assimilated Ridge ideas.
+
+After a few minutes George turned away. "Well, good-night, Archie," he
+said.
+
+Watty moved after him.
+
+"'Night!" Archie replied.
+
+George and Watty went along the road together, and Archie walked off in
+the direction Michael had taken.
+
+But Michael had not gone home. When the trees screened him from sight,
+he had struck out across the Ridge, then, turning back on his tracks
+behind the town, had made towards the Warria road. He walked, thinking
+hard, without noticing where he was going, his mind full of Paul, of
+Sophie, and of his promise.
+
+Now that Paul had his opal, it was clear he would be able to do as he
+wished--leave the Ridge and take Sophie with him. For the time being at
+least he was out of Jun Johnson's hands--but Michael was sure he would
+not stay out of them if he went to Sydney. How to prevent his
+going--how, rather, to prevent Sophie going with him---that was
+Michael's problem. He did not know what he was going to do.
+
+He had asked Sophie not to go with her father. He had told her what her
+mother had said, and tried to explain to her why her mother had not
+wanted her to go away from the Ridge, or to become a public singer. But
+Sophie was as excited about her future as her father was. It was natural
+she should be, Michael assured himself. She was young, and had heard
+wonderful stories of Sydney and the world beyond the Ridge. Sydney was
+like the town in a fairy tale to her.
+
+It was not to be expected, Michael confessed to himself, that Sophie
+would choose to stay on Fallen Star Ridge. If she could only be
+prevailed upon to put off her departure until she was older and better
+able to take care of herself, he would be satisfied. If the worst came
+to the worst, and she went to Sydney with her father soon, Michael had
+decided to go with them. Peter Newton would give him a couple of pounds
+for his books, he believed, and he would find something to do down in
+Sydney. His roots were in the Ridge. Michael did not know how he was
+going to live away from the mines; but anything seemed better than that
+Sophie should be committed to what her mother had called "the
+treacherous whirlpool" of life in a great city, with no one but her
+father to look after her.
+
+And her mother had said:
+
+"Don't let him take her away, Michael."
+
+Michael believed that Marya Rouminof intended Sophie to choose for
+herself whether she would stay on the Ridge or not, when she was old
+enough. But now she was little more than a child, sixteen, nearly
+seventeen, young for her years in some ways and old in others. Michael
+knew her mother had wanted Sophie to grow up on the Ridge and to realise
+that all the potentialities of real and deep happiness were there.
+
+"They say there's got to be a scapegoat in every family, Michael," she
+had said once. "Someone has to pay for the happiness of the others. If
+all that led to my coming here will mean happiness for Sophie, it will
+not have been in vain."
+
+"That's where you're wrong," Michael had told her.
+
+"Looking for justice--poetic justice, isn't it, they call it?--in the
+working out of things. There isn't any of this poetic justice except by
+accident. The natural laws just go rolling on--laying us out under them.
+All we can do is set our lives as far as possible in accordance with
+them and stand by the consequences as well as we know how."
+
+"Of course, you're right," she had sighed, "but----"
+
+It was for that "but" Michael was fighting now. He knew what lay beyond
+it--a yearning for her child to fare a little better in the battle of
+life than she had. Striding almost unconsciously over the loose, shingly
+ground, Michael was not aware what direction his steps were taking until
+he saw glimmering white shapes above the grass and herbage of the
+plains, and realised that he had walked to the gates of the cemetery.
+
+With an uncomfortable sense of broken faith, he turned away from the
+gate, unable to go in and sit under the tree there, to smoke and think,
+as he sometimes did. He had used every argument with Paul to prevent his
+taking Sophie away, he knew; but for the first time since Michael and he
+had been acquainted with each other, Paul had shown a steady will. He
+made up his mind he was "going to shake the dust of the Ridge off his
+feet," he said. And that was the end of it. Michael almost wished the
+men had let Jun clear out with his stones. That would have settled the
+business. But, his instinct of an opal-miner asserting itself, he was
+unable to wish Paul the loss of his luck, and Jun what he would have to
+be to deprive Paul of it. He walked on chewing the cud of bitter and
+troubled reflections.
+
+"Don't let him take her away!" a voice seemed to cry suddenly after him.
+
+Michael stopped; he snatched the hat from his head.
+
+"No!" he said, "he shan't take her away!"
+
+Startled by the sound of his own voice, the intensity of thinking which
+had wrung it from him, dazed by the sudden strength of resolution which
+had come over him, he stood, his face turned to the sky. The stars
+rained their soft light over him. As he looked up to them, his soul went
+from him by force of will. How long he stood like that, he did not know;
+but when his eyes found the earth again he looked about him wonderingly.
+After a little while he put on his hat and turned away. All the pain and
+trouble were taken from his thinking; he was strangely soothed and
+comforted. He went back along the road to the town, and, skirting the
+trees and the houses on the far side, came again to the track below
+Newton's.
+
+Lights were still shining in the hotel although it was well after
+midnight. Michael could hear voices in the clear air. A man was singing
+one of Jun's choruses as he went down the road towards the Punti Rush.
+Michael kept on his way. He was still wondering what he could do to
+prevent Paul taking Sophie away; but he was no longer worried about
+it--his brain was calm and clear; his step lighter than it had been for
+a long time.
+
+He heard the voices laughing and calling to each other as he walked on.
+
+"Old Ted!" he commented to himself, recognising Ted Cross's voice. "He's
+blithered!"
+
+When he came to a fork in the tracks where one went off in the direction
+of his, Charley's, and Rouminof's huts, and the other towards the
+Crosses', Michael saw Ted Cross lumbering along in the direction of his
+own hut.
+
+"Must 've been saying good-night to Charley and Paul," he thought. A
+little farther along the path he saw Charley and Paul, unsteady shadows
+ahead of him in the moonlight, and Charley had his arm under Paul's,
+helping him home.
+
+"Good old Charley!" Michael thought, quickly appreciative of the man he
+loved.
+
+He could hear them talking, Rouminof's voice thick and expostulatory,
+Charley's even and clear.
+
+"Charley's all right. He's not showin', anyhow," Michael told himself.
+He wondered at that. Charley was not often more sober than his company,
+and he had been drinking a good deal, earlier in the evening.
+
+Michael was a few yards behind them and was just going to quicken his
+steps and hail Charley, when he saw the flash of white in Charley's
+hand--something small, rather longer than square, a cigarette box
+wrapped in newspaper, it might have been--and Michael saw Charley drop
+it into the pocket of his coat.
+
+Paul wandered on, talking stupidly, drowsily. He wanted to go to sleep
+there on the roadside; but Charley led him on.
+
+"You'll be better at home and in bed," he said. "You're nearly there
+now."
+
+Instinctively, with that flash of white, Michael had drawn into the
+shadow of the trees which fringed the track. Charley, glancing back
+along it, had not seen him. Several moments passed before Michael moved.
+He knew what had happened, but the revelation was such a shock that his
+brain would not react to it. Charley, his mate, Charley Heathfield had
+stolen Paul's opals. The thing no man on the Ridge had attempted,
+notwithstanding its easiness, Charley had done. Although he had seen,
+Michael could scarcely believe that what he had seen, had happened.
+
+The two men before him staggered and swayed together. Their huts stood
+only a few yards from each other, a little farther along the track.
+
+Charley took Paul to the door of his hut, opened it and pushed him in.
+He stood beside the door, listening and looking down the track for a
+second longer. Michael imagined he would want to know whether Paul would
+discover his loss or just pitch forward and sleep where he lay. Then
+Charley went on to his own hut and disappeared.
+
+When the light glowed in his window, Michael went on up the track,
+keeping well to the cover of the trees. Opposite the hut he took off his
+boots. He put his feet down carefully, pressing the loose pebbles
+beneath him, as he crossed the road. It seemed almost impossible to move
+on that shingly ground without making a sound, and yet when he stood
+beside the bark wall of Charley's room and could see through the smeared
+pane of its small window, Charley had not heard a pebble slip. He was
+sitting on the edge of his bed, the stub of a lighted candle in a saucer
+on the bed beside him, and the box containing the opals lying near it as
+if he were just going to cut the string and have a look at them. The
+wall creaked as Michael leaned against it.
+
+"Who's there?" Charley cried sharply.
+
+He threw a blanket over the box on the bed and started to the door.
+
+Michael moved round the corner of the house. He heard Potch call
+sleepily:
+
+"That you?"
+
+Charley growled;
+
+"Oh, go to sleep, can't you? Aren't you asleep yet?"
+
+Potch murmured, and there was silence again.
+
+Michael heard Charley go to the door, look out along the road, and turn
+back into the hut. Then Michael moved along the wall to the window.
+
+Charley was taking down some clothes hanging from nails along the inner
+wall. He changed from the clothes he had on into them, picked up his
+hat, lying where he had thrown it on the floor beside the bed when he
+came in, rolled it up, straightened the brim and dinged the crown to his
+liking. Then he picked up the packet of opal, put it in his coat pocket,
+and went into the other room. Michael followed to the window which gave
+on it. He saw Charley glance at the sofa as though he were contemplating
+a stretch, but, thinking better of it, he settled into an easy,
+bag-bottomed old chair by the table, pulled a newspaper to him, and
+began to read by the guttering light of his candle.
+
+Michael guessed why Charley had dressed, and why he had chosen to sit
+and read rather than go to sleep. It was nearly morning, the first chill
+of dawn in the air. The coach left at seven o'clock, and Charley meant
+to catch the coach. He had no intention of going to Warria. Michael
+began to get a bird's-eye view of the situation. He wondered whether
+Charley had ever intended going to Warria. He realised Charley would go
+off with the five pound note he had made him, Michael, get from Watty
+Frost, as well as with Paul's opals. He began, to see clearly what that
+would mean, too--Charley's getting away with Paul's opals. Paul would
+not be able to take Sophie away....
+
+In the branches of a shrub nearby, a white-tail was crying plaintively:
+"Sweet pretty creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael remembered how
+it had cried like that on the day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral.
+
+Whether to go into the hut, tell Charley he knew what he had done, and
+demand the return of the opals, or let him get away with them, Michael
+had not decided, when Charley's hand went to his pocket, and, as it
+closed over the package of opals, a smile of infantile satisfaction
+flitted across his face. That smile, criminal in its treachery, enraged
+Michael more than the deed itself. The candle Charley had been reading
+by guttered out. He stumbled about the room looking for another. After a
+while, as if he could not find one, he went back to his chair and
+settled into it. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the dim pane
+of the window by which Michael was standing.
+
+Michael's mind seethed with resentment and anger. The thing he had
+prayed for, that his brain had ached over, had been arranged. Rouminof
+would not be able to take Sophie away. But Michael was too good a Ridge
+man not to detest Charley's breach of the good faith of the Ridge.
+Charley had been accepted by men of the Ridge as one of themselves--at
+least, Michael believed he had.
+
+George, Watty, the Crosses, and most of the other men would have
+confessed to reservations where Charley Heathfield was concerned. But as
+long as he had lived as a mate among them, they had been mates to him.
+Michael did not want Rouminof to have his stones if having them meant
+taking Sophie away, but he did not want him to lose them. He could not
+allow Charley to get away with them, with that smile of infantile
+satisfaction. If the men knew what he had done there would be little of
+that smile left on his face when they had finished with him. Their
+methods of dealing with rats were short and severe. And although he
+deserved all he got from them, Michael was not able to decide to hand
+Charley over to the justice of the men of the Ridge.
+
+As he hesitated, wondering what to do, the sound of heavy, regular
+breathing came to him, and, looking through the window, he saw that
+Charley had done the last thing he intended to do--he had fallen asleep
+in his chair.
+
+In a vivid, circling flash, Michael's inspiration came to him. He went
+across to his hut, lighted a candle when he got indoors, and took the
+black pannikin he kept odd pieces of opal in, from the top of a
+bookshelf. There was nothing of any great value in the pannikin--a few
+pieces of coloured potch which would have made a packet for an
+opal-buyer when he came along, and a rather good piece of stone in the
+rough he had kept as a mascot for a number of years--that was all.
+Michael turned them over. He went to the corner shelf and returned to
+the table with a cigarette box the same size as the one Rouminof had
+kept his opals in. Michael took a piece of soiled wadding from a drawer
+in the table, rolled the stones in it, and fitted them into the box. He
+wrapped the tin in a piece of newspaper and tied it with string. Then he
+blew out his candle and went out of doors again.
+
+He made his way carefully over the shingles to Charley's hut. When he
+reached it, he leaned against the wall, listening to hear whether
+Charley was still asleep. The sound of heavy breathing came slowly and
+regularly. Michael went to the back of the hut. There was no door to it.
+He went in, and slowly approached the chair in which Charley was
+sleeping.
+
+He could never come to any clear understanding with himself as to how he
+had done what he did. He knew only a sick fear possessed him that
+Charley would wake and find him, Michael, barefooted, like a thief in
+his house. But he was not a thief, he assured himself. It was not
+thieving to take from a thief.
+
+Charley stirred uneasily. His arm went out; in the dim light Michael saw
+it go over the pocket which held the packet of opal; his hand clutch at
+it unconsciously. Sweating with fear and the nervous tension he was
+under, Michael remained standing in the darkness. He waited, wondering
+whether he would throw off Charley's hand and snatch the opal, or
+whether he would stand till morning, hesitating, and wondering what to
+do, and Charley would wake at last and find him there. He had decided to
+wrench Charley's arm from the pocket, when Charley himself flung it out
+with a sudden restless movement.
+
+In an instant, almost mechanically, Michael's hand went to the pocket.
+He lifted the packet there and put his own in its place.
+
+The blood was booming in his ears when he turned to the door. A sense of
+triumph unnerved him more than the execution of his inspiration. Charley
+muttered and called out in his sleep as Michael passed through the
+doorway.
+
+Then the stars were over him. Michael drew a deep breath of the night
+air and crossed to his own hut, the package of opal under his coat. Just
+as he was entering he drew back, vaguely alarmed. A movement light as
+thistledown seemed to have caught his ear. He thought he had detected a
+faint shifting of the shingle nearby. He glanced about with quick
+apprehension, went back to Charley's hut, listened, and looked around;
+but Charley was still sleeping. Michael walked back to his own hut.
+There was no sight or sound of a living thing in the wan, misty
+moonlight of the dawn, except the white-tail which was still crying from
+a wilga near Charley's hut.
+
+The package under his coat felt very heavy and alive when he returned to
+his own hut. Michael was disturbed by that faint sound he had heard, or
+thought he had heard. He persuaded himself he had imagined it, that in
+the overwrought state of his sensibilities the sound of his own breath,
+and his step on the stones, had surprised and alarmed him. The tin of
+opals burned against his body, seeming to scar the skin where it
+pressed. Michael sickened at the thought of how what he had done might
+look to anyone who had seen him. But he put the thought from him. It was
+absurd. He had looked; there was no one about--nothing. He was allowing
+his mind to play tricks with him. The success of what he had done made
+him seem like a thief. But he was not a thief. The stones were
+Rouminof's. He had taken them from Charley for him, and he would not
+even look at them. He would keep them for Paul.
+
+If Charley got away without discovering the change of the packets, as he
+probably would, in the early morning and in his excitement to catch the
+coach, he would be considered the thief. Rouminof would accuse him;
+Charley would know his own guilt. He would not dare to confess what he
+had done, even when he found that his package of opal had been changed.
+He would not know when it had been changed. He would not know whether it
+had been changed, perhaps, before he took it from Rouminof.
+
+Charley might recognise the stones in that packet he had done up,
+Michael realised; but he did not think so. Charley was not much of a
+judge of opal. Michael did not think he would remember the few scraps of
+sun-flash they had come on together, and Charley had never seen the
+mascot he had put into the packet, with a remnant of feeling for the
+memory of their working days together.
+
+Michael did not light the candle when he went into his hut again. He
+threw himself down on the bed in his clothes; he knew that he would not
+sleep as he lay there. His brain burned and whirled, turning over the
+happenings of the night and their consequences, likely and unlikely. The
+package of opal lay heavy in his pocket. He took it out and dropped it
+into a box of books at the end of the room.
+
+He did not like what he had done, and yet he was glad he had done it.
+When he could see more clearly, he was glad, too, that he had grasped
+this opportunity to control circumstances. A reader and dreamer all his
+days, he had begun to be doubtful of his own capacity for action. He
+could think and plan, but he doubted whether he had strength of will to
+carry out purposes he had dreamed a long time over. He was pleased, in
+an odd, fierce way, that he had been able to do what he thought should
+be done.
+
+"But I don't want them.... I don't want the cursed stones," he argued
+with himself. "I'll give them to him--to Paul, as soon as I know what
+ought to be done about Sophie. She's not old enough to go yet--to know
+her own mind--what she wants to do. When she's older she can decide for
+herself. That's what her mother meant. She didn't mean for always ...
+only while she's a little girl. By and by, when she's a woman, Sophie
+can decide for herself. Now, she's got to stay here ... that's what I
+promised."
+
+"And Charley," he brooded. "He deserves all that's coming to him ... but
+I couldn't give him away. The boys would half kill him if they got their
+hands on to him. When will he find out? In the train, perhaps--or not
+till he gets to Sydney.... He'll have my fiver, and the stones to go on
+with--though they won't bring much. Still, they'll do to go on with....
+Paul'll be a raving lunatic when he knows ... but he can't go--he can't
+take Sophie away."
+
+His brain surged over and over every phrase: his state of mind since he
+had seen Charley and Paul on the road together; every argument he had
+used with himself. He could not get away from the double sense of
+disquiet and satisfaction.
+
+An hour or two later he heard Charley moving about, then rush off down
+the track, sending the loose stones flying under his feet as he ran to
+catch the coach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Watty was winding dirt, standing by the windlass on the top of the dump
+over his and his mates' mine, when he saw Paul coming along the track
+from the New Town. Paul was breaking into a run at every few yards, and
+calling out. Watty threw the mullock from his hide bucket as it came up,
+and lowered it again. He wound up another bucket. The creak of the
+windlass, and the fall of the stone and earth as he threw them over the
+dump, drowned the sound of Rouminof's voice. As he came nearer, Watty
+saw that he was gibbering with rage, and crying like a child.
+
+While he was still some distance away, Watty heard him sobbing and
+calling out.
+
+He stopped work to listen as Paul came to the foot of Michael's dump.
+Ted Cross, who was winding dirt on the top of Crosses' mine, stopped to
+listen too. Old Olsen got up from where he lay noodling on Jun's and
+Paul's claim, and went across to Paul. Snow-Shoes, stretched across the
+slope near where Watty was standing, lifted his head, his turning of
+earth with a little blunt stick arrested for the moment.
+
+"They've took me stones!... Took me stones!" Watty heard Paul cry to
+Bill Olsen. And as he climbed the slope of Michael's dump he went on
+crying: "Took me stones! Took me stones! Charley and Jun! Gone by the
+coach! Michael!... They've gone by the coach and took me stones!"
+
+Over and over again he said the same thing in an incoherent wail and
+howl. He went down the shaft of Michael's mine, and Ted Cross came
+across from his dump to Watty.
+
+"Hear what he says, Watty?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Watty replied.
+
+"It gets y'r wind----"
+
+"If it's true," Watty ventured slowly.
+
+"Seems to me it's true all right," Ted said. "Charley took him home last
+night. I went along with them as far as the turn-off. Paul was a bit on
+... and Archie asked me to keep an eye on him.... I was a bit on meself,
+too ... but Charley came along with us--so I thought he'd be all
+right.... Charley went off by the coach this morning.... Bill Olsen told
+me.... And Michael was reck'ning on him goin' to Warria to-day, I know."
+
+"That's right!"
+
+"It'll be hard on Michael!"
+
+Watty's gesture, upward jerk of his chin, and gusty breath, denoted his
+agreement on that score.
+
+Ted went back to his own claim, and Watty slid down the rope with his
+next bucket to give his mates the news. It was nearly time to knock off
+for the midday meal, and before long men from all the claims were
+standing in groups hearing the story from Rouminof himself, or talking
+it over together.
+
+Michael had come up from his mine soon after Paul had gone down to him.
+The men had seen him go off down the track to the New Town, his head
+bent. They thought they knew why. Michael would feel his mate's
+dishonour as though it were his own. He would not be able to believe
+that what Paul said was true. He would want to know from Peter Newton
+himself if it was a fact that Charley had gone out on the coach with Jun
+and two girls who had been at the hotel.
+
+Women were scarce on the opal fields, and the two girls who had come a
+week before to help Mrs. Newton with the work of the hotel had been
+having the time of their lives. Charley, Jun Johnson, and two or three
+other men, had been shouting drinks for them from the time of their
+arrival, and Mrs. Newton had made up her mind to send the girls back to
+town by the next coach. Jun had appropriated the younger of the two, a
+bright-eyed girl, and the elder, a full-bosomed, florid woman with
+straw-coloured hair, had, as the boys said, "taken a fancy to Charley."
+
+Paul had already told his story once or twice when Cash Wilson, George,
+and Watty, went across to where he was standing, with half a dozen of
+the men about him. They were listening gravely and smoking over Paul's
+recital. There had been ratting epidemics on the Ridge; but robbery of a
+mate by a mate had never occurred before. It struck at the fundamental
+principle of their life in common. There was no mistaking the grave,
+rather than indignant view men of the Ridge took of what Charley had
+done. The Ridge code affirmed simply that "a mate stands by a mate." The
+men say: "You can't go back on a mate." By those two recognitions they
+had run their settlement. Far from all the ordinary institutions of law
+and order, they had lived and worked together without need of them, by
+appreciation of their relationship to each other as mates and as a
+fraternity of mates. No one, who had lived under and seemed to accept
+the principle of mateship, had ever before done as Charley had done.
+
+"But Charley Heathfield was never one of us really," Ted Cross said. "He
+was always an outsider."
+
+"That's right, Ted," George Woods replied. "We only stuck him on
+Michael's account."
+
+Paul told George, Watty, and Cash the story he had been going over all
+the morning--how he had gone home with Charley, how he remembered going
+along the road with him, and then how he had wakened on the floor of his
+own hut in the morning. Sophie was there. She was singing. He had
+thought it was her mother. He had called her ... but Sophie had come to
+him. And she had abused him. She had called him "a dirty, fat pig," and
+told him to get out of the way because she wanted to sweep the floor.
+
+He sobbed uncontrollably. The men sympathised with him. They knew the
+loss of opal came harder on Rouminof than it would have on the rest of
+them, because he was so mad about the stuff. They condoned the
+abandonment of his grief as natural enough in a foreigner, too; but
+after a while it irked them.
+
+"Take a pull at y'rself, Rummy, can't you?" George Woods said irritably.
+"What did Michael say?"
+
+"Michael?" Paul looked at him, his eyes streaming.
+
+George nodded.
+
+"He did not say," Paul replied. "He threw down his pick. He would not
+work any more ... and then he went down to Newton's to ask about
+Charley."
+
+Two or three of the men exchanged glances. That was the way they had
+expected Michael to take the news. He would not have believed Paul's
+story at first. They did not see Michael again that day. In the evening
+Peter Newton told them how Michael had come to him, asking if it was
+true Charley had gone on the coach with Jun Johnson and the girls. Peter
+told Michael, he said, that Charley had gone on the coach, and that he
+thought Rouminof's story looked black against Charley.
+
+"Michael didn't say much," Peter explained, "but I don't think he could
+help seeing what I said was true--however much he didn't want to."
+
+Everybody knew Michael believed in Charley Heathfield. He had thought
+the worst that could be said of Charley was that he was a good-natured,
+rather shiftless fellow. All the men had responded to an odd attractive
+faculty Charley exercised occasionally. He had played it like a woman
+for Michael, and Michael had taken him on as a mate and worked with him
+when no one else would. And now, the men guessed, that Michael, who had
+done more than any of them to make the life of the Ridge what it was,
+would feel more deeply and bitterly than any of them that Charley had
+gone back on him and on what the Ridge stood for.
+
+All they imagined Michael was suffering in the grief and bitterness of
+spirit which come of misplaced faith, he was suffering. But they could
+not imagine the other considerations which had overshadowed grief and
+bitterness, the realisation that Sophie's life had been saved from what
+looked like early wreckage, and the consciousness that the consequences
+of what Charley had done, had fallen, not on Charley, but on himself.
+Michael had lived like a child, with an open heart at the disposal of
+his mates always; and the sense of Charley's guilt descending on him,
+had created a subtle ostracism, a remote alienation from them.
+
+He could not go to Newton's in the evening and talk things over with the
+men as he ordinarily would have. He wandered over the dumps of deserted
+rushes at the Old Town, his eyes on the ground or on the distant
+horizons. He could still only believe he had done the best thing
+possible under the circumstances. If he had let Charlie go away with the
+stones, Sophie would have been saved, but Paul would have lost his
+stones. As it was, Sophie was saved, and Paul had not lost his stones.
+And Michael could not have given Charley away. Charley had been his
+mate; they had worked together. The men might suspect, but they could
+not convict him of being what he was unless they knew what Michael knew.
+Charley had played on the affection, the simplicity of Michael's belief
+in him. He had used them, but Michael had still a lingering tenderness
+and sympathy for him. It was that which had made him put the one decent
+piece of opal he possessed into the parcel he had made up for Charley to
+take instead of Paul's stones. It was the first piece of good stuff he
+had found on the Ridge, and he had kept it as a mascot--something of a
+nest egg.
+
+Michael wondered at the fate which had sent him along the track just
+when Charley had taken Paul's stones. He was perplexed and impatient of
+it. There would have been no complication, no conflict and turmoil if
+only he had gone along the track a little later, or a little earlier.
+But there was no altering what had happened. He had to bear the
+responsibility of it. He had to meet the men, encounter the eyes of his
+mates as he had never done before, with a reservation from them. If he
+could give the stones to Paul at once, Michael knew he would disembarass
+himself of any sense of guilt. But he could not do that. He was afraid
+if Paul got possession of the opals again he would want to go away and
+take Sophie with him.
+
+Michael thought of taking Watty and George into his confidence, but to
+do so would necessitate explanations--explanations which involved
+talking of the promise he had made Sophie's mother and all that lay
+behind their relationship. He shrank from allowing even the sympathetic
+eyes of George and Watty to rest on what for him was wrapped in mystery
+and inexplicable reverence. Besides, they both had wives, and Watty was
+not permitted to know anything Mrs. Watty did not worm out of him sooner
+or later. Michael decided that if he could not keep his own confidence
+he could not expect anyone else to keep it. He must take the
+responsibility of what he had done, and of maintaining his position in
+respect to the opals until Sophie was older--old enough to do as she
+wished with her life.
+
+As he walked, gazing ahead, a hut formed itself out of the distance
+before him, and then the dark shapes of bark huts huddled against the
+white cliff of dumps at the Three Mile, under a starry sky. A glow came
+from the interior of one or two of the houses. A chime of laughter, and
+shredded fragments of talking drifted along in the clear air. Michael
+felt strangely alone and outcast, hearing them and knowing that he could
+not respond to their invitation.
+
+In any one of those huts a place would be eagerly made for him if he
+went into it; eyes would lighten with a smile; warm, kindly greetings
+would go to his heart. But the talk would all be of the stealing of
+Rouminof's opal, and of Charley and Jun, Michael knew. The people at the
+Three Mile would have seen the coach pass. They would be talking about
+it, about himself, and the girls who had driven away with Charley and
+Jun.
+
+Turning back, Michael walked again across the flat country towards the
+Ridge. He sat for a while on a log near the tank paddock. A drugging
+weariness permeated his body and brain, though his brain ticked
+ceaselessly. Now and again one or other of Rouminof's opals flashed and
+scintillated before him in the darkness, or moved off in starry flight
+before his tired gaze. He was vaguely disturbed by the vision of them.
+
+When he rose and went back towards the town, his feet dragged wearily.
+There was a strange lightness at the back of his head, and he wondered
+whether he were walking in the fields of heaven, and smiled to think of
+that. At least one good thing would come of it all, he told himself over
+and over again--Paul could not take Sophie away.
+
+The houses and stores of the New Town were all in darkness when he
+passed along the main street. Newton's was closed. There were no lights
+in Rouminof's or Charley's huts as he went to his own door. Then a low
+cry caught his ear. He listened, and went to the back door of Charley's
+hut. The cry rose again with shuddering gasps for breath. Michael stood
+in the doorway, listening. The sound came from the window. He went
+towards it, and found Potch lying there on the bunk with his face to the
+wall.
+
+He had not heard Michael enter, and lay moaning brokenly. Michael had
+not thought of Potch since the people at Newton's told him that a few
+minutes, after the coach had gone Potch had come down to the hotel to
+cut wood and do odd jobs in the stable, as he usually did. Mrs. Newton
+said he stared at her, aghast, when she told him that his father had
+left on the coach. Then he had started off at a run, taking the short
+cut across country to the Three Mile.
+
+Michael put out his hand. He could not endure that crying.
+
+"Potch!" he said.
+
+At the sound of his voice, Potch was silent. After a second he struggled
+to his feet, and stood facing Michael.
+
+"He's gone, Michael!" he cried.
+
+"He might have taken you," Michael said.
+
+"Taken me!" Potch's exclamation did away with any idea Michael had that
+his son was grieving for Charley. "It wasn't that I minded----"
+
+Michael did not know what to say. Potch continued:
+
+"As soon as I knew, I went after him--thought I'd catch up the coach at
+the Three Mile, and I did. I told him he'd have to come back--or hand
+out that money. I saw you give it to him the other night and arrange
+about going to Warria.... Mr. Ventry pulled up. But _he_ ... set the
+horses going again. I tried to stop them, but the sandy bay let out a
+kick and they went on again.... The swine!"
+
+Michael had never imagined this stolid son of Charley's could show such
+fire. He was trembling with rage and indignation. Michael rarely lost
+his temper, but the blood rushed to his head in response to Potch's
+story. Restraint was second nature with him, though, and he waited until
+his own and Potch's fury had ebbed.
+
+Then he moved to leave the hut.
+
+"Come along," he said.
+
+"Michael!"
+
+There was such breaking unbelief and joy in the cry. Michael turned and
+caught the boy's expression.
+
+"You're coming along with me, Potch," he said.
+
+Potch still stood regarding him with a dazed expression of worshipful
+homage and gratitude. Michael put out his hand, and Potch clasped it.
+
+"You and me," he said, "we both seem to be in the same boat, Potch....
+Neither of us has got a mate. I'll be wanting someone to work with now.
+We'd better be mates."
+
+They went out of the hut together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Michael and Potch were at work next morning as soon as the first cuckoos
+were calling. Michael had been at the windlass for an hour or
+thereabouts, when Watty Frost, who was going along to his claim with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, saw Michael on the top of his
+dump, tossing mullock.
+
+"Who's Michael working with?" he asked.
+
+Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant considered, and shook their heads, smoking
+thoughtfully.
+
+Snow-Shoes, where he lay sprawled across the slope of Crosses' dump,
+glanced up at them, and the nickering wisp of a smile went through his
+bright eyes. The three were standing at the foot of the dump before
+separating.
+
+"Who's Michael got with him?" Pony-Fence inquired, looking at
+Snow-Shoes.
+
+But the old man had turned his eyes back to the dump and was raking the
+earth with his stick again, as if he had not heard what was said. No one
+was deafer than Snow-Shoes when he did not want to hear.
+
+Watty watched Michael as he bent over the windlass, his lean, slight
+figure cut against the clear azure of the morning sky.
+
+"It's to be hoped he's got a decent mate this time--that's all," he
+said.
+
+Pony-Fence and Bully were going off to their own claim when Potch came
+up on the rope and stood by the windlass while Michael went down into
+the mine.
+
+"Well!" Watty gasped, "if that don't beat cock-fighting!"
+
+Bully swore sympathetically, and watched Potch set to work. The three
+watched him winding and throwing mullock from the hide buckets over the
+dump with the jerky energy of a new chum, although Potch had done odd
+jobs on the mines for a good many years. He had often taken his father's
+turn of winding dirt, and had managed to keep himself by doing all
+manner of scavenging in the township since he was quite a little chap,
+but no one had taken him on as a mate till now. He was a big fellow,
+too, Potch, seventeen or eighteen; and as they looked at him Watty and
+Pony-Fence realised it was time someone gave Potch a chance on the
+mines, although after the way his father had behaved Michael was about
+the last person who might have been expected to give him that
+chance--much less take him on as mate. Like father, like son, was one of
+those superstitions Ridge folk had not quite got away from, and the men
+who saw Potch working on Michael's mine wondered that, having been let
+down by the father as badly as Charley had let Michael down, Michael
+could still work with Potch, and give him the confidence a mate was
+entitled to. But there was no piece of quixotism they did not think
+Michael capable of. The very forlornness of Potch's position on the
+Ridge, and because he would have to face out and live down the fact of
+being Charley Heathfield's son, were recognised as most likely Michael's
+reasons for taking Potch on to work with him.
+
+Watty and Pony-Fence appreciated Michael's move and the point of view it
+indicated. They knew men of the Ridge would endorse it and take Potch on
+his merits. But being Charley's son, Potch would have to prove those
+merits. They knew, too, that what Michael had done would help him to
+tide over the first days of shame and difficulty as nothing else could
+have, and it would start Potch on a better track in life than his father
+had ever given him.
+
+Bully had already gone off to his claim when Watty and Pony-Fence
+separated. Watty broke the news to his mates when he joined them
+underground.
+
+"Who do y' think's Michael's new mate?" he asked.
+
+George Woods rested on his pick.
+
+Cash looked up from the corner where he was crouched working a streak of
+green-fired stone from the red floor and lower wall of the mine.
+
+"Potch!" Watty threw out as George and Cash waited for the information.
+
+George swept the sweat from his forehead with a broad, steady gesture.
+"He was bound to do something nobody else'd 've thought of, Michael!" he
+said.
+
+"That's right," Watty replied. "Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant were
+saying," he went on, "he's had a pretty hard time, Potch, and it was
+about up to somebody to give him a leg-up ... some sort of a start in
+life. He may be all right ... on the other hand, there may not be much
+to him...."
+
+"That's right!" Cash muttered, beginning to work again.
+
+"But I reck'n he's all right, Potch." George swung his pick again. His
+blows echoed in the mine as they shattered the hard stone he was working
+on.
+
+Watty crawled off through a drive he was gouging in.
+
+At midday Michael and Charley had always eaten their lunches in the
+shelter where George Woods, Watty, and Cash Wilson ate theirs and
+noodled their opal. They wondered whether Michael would join them this
+day. He strolled over to the shelter with Potch beside him as Watty and
+Cash, with a billy of steaming tea on a stick between them, came from
+the open fire built round with stones, a few yards from the mine.
+
+"Potch and me's mates," Michael explained to George as he sat down and
+spread out his lunch, his smile whimsical and serene over the
+information. "But we're lookin' for a third to the company. I reck'n a
+lot of you chaps' luck is working on three. It's a lucky number, three,
+they say."
+
+Potch sat down beside him on the outer edge of the shelter's scrap of
+shade.
+
+"See you get one not afraid to do a bit of work, next time--that's all I
+say," Watty growled.
+
+The blood oozed slowly over Potch's heavy, quiet face. Nothing more was
+said of Charley, but the men who saw his face realised that Potch was
+not the insensible youth they had imagined.
+
+Michael had watched him when they were below ground, and was surprised
+at the way Potch set about his work. He had taken up his father's
+gouging pick and spider as if he had been used to take them every day,
+and he had set to work where Charley had left off. All the morning he
+hewed at a face of honeycombed sandstone, his face tense with
+concentration of energy, the sweat glistening on it as though it were
+oiled under the light of a candle in his spider, stuck in the red earth
+above him. Michael himself swung his pick in leisurely fashion, crumbled
+dirt, and knocked off for a smoke now and then.
+
+"Easy does it, Potch," he remarked, watching the boy's steady slogging.
+"We've got no reason to bust ourselves in this mine."
+
+At four o'clock they put their tools back against the wall and went
+above ground. Michael fell in with the Crosses, who were noodling two or
+three good-looking pieces of opal Archie had taken out during the
+afternoon, and Potch streaked away through the scrub in the direction of
+the Old Town.
+
+Michael wondered where he was going. There was a purposeful hunch about
+his shoulders as if he had a definite goal in view. Michael had intended
+asking his new mate to go down to the New Town and get the meat for
+their tea, but he went himself after he had yarned with Archie and Ted
+Cross for a while.
+
+When he returned to the hut, Potch was not there. Michael made a fire,
+unwrapped his steak, hung it on a hook over the fire, and spread out the
+pannikins, tin plates and knives and forks for his meal, putting a plate
+and pannikin for Potch. He was kneeling before the fire giving the steak
+a turn when Potch came in. Potch stood in the doorway, looking at
+Michael as doubtfully as a stray kitten which did not know whether it
+might enter.
+
+"That you, Potch?" Michael called.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+Michael got up from the fire and carried the grilled steak on a plate to
+the table.
+
+"Well, you were nearly late for dinner," he remarked, as he cut the
+steak in half and put a piece on the other plate for Potch. "You better
+come along and tuck in now ... there's a great old crowd down at
+Nancarrow's this evening. First time for nearly a month he's killed a
+beast, and everybody wants a bit of steak. Sam gave me this as a sort of
+treat; and it smells good."
+
+Potch came into the kitchen and sat on the box Michael had drawn up to
+the table for him.
+
+"Been bringing in the goats for Sophie," he jerked out, looking at
+Michael as if there were some need of explanation.
+
+"Oh, that was it, was it?" Michael replied, getting on with his meal.
+"Thought you'd flitted!"
+
+Potch met his smile with a shadowy one. A big, clumsy-looking fellow,
+with a dull, colourless face and dingy hair, he sat facing Michael, his
+eyes anxious, as though he would like to explain further, but was afraid
+to, or could not find words. His eyes were beautiful; but they were his
+father's eyes, and Michael recoiled to qualms of misgiving, a faint
+distrust, as he looked in them.
+
+It was Ed. Ventry, however, who gave Potch his first claim to the
+respect of men of the Ridge.
+
+"How's that boy of Charley Heathfield's?" was his first question when
+the coach came in from Budda, the following week.
+
+"All right," Newton said. "Why?"
+
+"He was near killed," Mr. Ventry replied. "Stopped us up at the Three
+Mile that morning I was taking Charley and Jun down. He was all for
+Charley stopping ... getting off the coach or something. I didn't get
+what it was all about--money Charley'd got from Michael, I think. That's
+the worst of bein' a bit hard of hearin' ... and bein' battered about by
+that yaller-bay horse I bought at Warria couple of months ago."
+
+"Potch tried to stop Charley getting away, did he?" Newton asked with
+interest.
+
+"He did," Ed. Ventry declared. "I pulled up, seein' something was wrong
+... but what does that god-damned blighter Charley do but give a lurch
+and grab me reins. Scared four months' growth out of the horses--and
+away they went. I'd a colt I was breakin' in on the off-side--and he
+landed Potch one--kicked him right out, I thought. As soon as I could, I
+pulled up, but I see Potch making off across the plain, and he didn't
+look like he was much hurt.... But it was a plucky thing he did, all
+right ... and it's the last time I'll drive Charley Heathfield. I told
+him straight. I'd as soon kill a man as not for putting a hand on me
+reins, like he done--on me own coach, too!"
+
+Snow-Shoes had drifted up to them as the coach stopped and Newton went
+out to it. He stood beside Peter Newton while Mr. Ventry talked, rolling
+tobacco. Snow-Shoes' eyes glimmered from one to the other of them when
+Ed. Ventry had given the reason for his inquiry.
+
+"Potch!" he murmured. "A little bit of potch!" And marched off down the
+road, a straight, stately white figure, on the bare track under the
+azure of the sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Give y' three," Watty said.
+
+"Take 'em." George Woods did not turn. He was carefully working round a
+brilliantly fired seam through black potch in the shin cracker he had
+been breaking through two or three days before.
+
+It was about lunch time, and Watty had crawled from his drive to the
+centre of the mine. Cash was still at work, crouched against a corner of
+the alley, a hundred yards or so from George; but he laid down his pick
+when he heard Watty's voice, and went towards him.
+
+"Who d'you think Michael's got as third man?"
+
+"Snow-Shoes?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Old Bill Olsen?"
+
+Watty could not contain himself to the third guess.
+
+"Rum-Enough!" he said.
+
+"He would." George chipped at the stone round his colour. "It was bound
+to be a lame dog, anyhow--and it might as well've been Rummy as
+anybody."
+
+"That's right," Cash conceded.
+
+"Bill Andrews told me," Watty said. "They've just broke through on the
+other side of that drive I'm in...."
+
+"It would be all right," he went on, "if Paul'd work for Michael like he
+did for Jun. But is Michael the man to make him? Not by long chalks.
+Potch is turning out all right, the boys say.... Michael says he works
+like a chow ... has to make him put in the peg ... but they'll both be
+havin' Rum-Enough on their hands before long--that's a sure thing."
+
+Watty's, George's, and Cash's mine was one of the best worked and best
+planned on the fields.
+
+Watty and Cash inspected the streak George was working, and speculated
+as to what it would yield. George leaned his pick against the wall,
+eager, too, about the chances of what the thread of fire glittering in
+the black potch would lead to. But he was proud of the mine as well as
+the stone it had produced. It represented the first attempt to work a
+claim systematically on the Ridge. George himself had planned and
+prospected every inch of it; and before he went above ground for the
+midday meal, he glanced about it as usual, affirming his pride and
+satisfaction; but his eyes fell on the broken white stone about his
+pitch.
+
+"As soon as we get her out, I'll shift that stuff," he said.
+
+When they went up for their meal, Michael did not join Watty, George,
+and Cash as usual. He spread out his lunch and sat with Paul and Potch
+in the shade of some wilgas beside his own mine. He knew that Rouminof
+would not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter, and that Paul and
+Potch would bring a certain reserve to the discussions of Ridge affairs
+which took place there.
+
+Potch saw Michael's eyes wander to where George was sitting yarning with
+his mates. He knew Michael would rather have been over there; and yet
+Michael seemed pleased to have got his own mine in working order again.
+He talked over ways of developing it with Paul, asking his opinion, and
+explaining why he believed the claim was good enough to stick to for a
+while longer, although very little valuable stone had come out of it.
+Potch wondered why his eyes rested on Paul with that faint smile of
+satisfaction.
+
+The Ridge discussed Michael and his new partnership backwards and forth,
+and back again. Michael knew that, and was as amused as the rest of the
+Ridge at the company he was keeping. Although he sat with his own mates
+at midday, he was as often as not with the crowd under Newton's veranda
+in the evening, discussing and settling the affairs of the Ridge and of
+the universe. After a while he was more like his old self than he had
+been for a long time--since Mrs. Rouminof's death--people said, when
+they saw him going about again with a quiet smile and whimsical twist to
+his mouth.
+
+The gossips had talked a good deal about Michael and Mrs. Rouminof, but
+neither she nor he had bothered their heads about the gossips.
+
+Michael and Mrs. Rouminof had often been seen standing and talking
+together when she was going home from the New Town with stores, or when
+Michael was coming in from his hut. He had usually walked back along the
+road with her, she for the most part, if it was in the evening, with no
+hat on; he smoking the stubby black pipe that was rarely out of his
+mouth. There was something in the way Mrs. Rouminof walked beside
+Michael, in the way her hair blew out in tiny strands curling in the
+wind and taking stray glints of light, in the way she smiled with a
+vague underlying sweetness when she looked at Michael; there was
+something in the way Michael slouched and smoked beside Mrs. Rouminof,
+too, which made their meeting look more than any mere ordinary talking
+and walking home together of two people. That was what Mrs. Watty Frost
+said.
+
+Mrs. Watty believed it was her duty in life to maintain the prejudices
+of respectable society in Fallen Star township. She had a constitutional
+respect for authority in whatever form it manifested itself. She stood
+for washing on Monday, spring-cleaning, keeping herself to herself, and
+uncompromising hostility to anything in the shape of a new idea which
+threatened the old order of domesticity on the Ridge. And she let
+everybody know it. She never went into the one street of the township
+even at night without a hat on, and wore gloves whenever she walked
+abroad. A little woman, with a mean, sour face, wrinkled like a walnut,
+and small, bead-bright eyes, Mrs. Watty was one of those women who are
+all energy and have no children to absorb their energies. She put all
+her energy into resentment of the Ridge and the conditions Watty had
+settled down to so comfortably and happily. She sighed for shops and a
+suburb of Sydney, and repeatedly told Watty how nice it would be to have
+a little milk shop near Sydney like her father and mother had had.
+
+But Watty would not hear of the milk shop. He loved the Ridge, and the
+milk shop was an evergreen bone of contention between him and his wife.
+The only peace he ever got was when Mrs. Watty went away to Sydney for a
+holiday, or he went with her, because she would rarely go away without
+him. She could not be happy without Watty, people said. She had no one
+to growl to and let off her irritation about things in general at, if he
+were not there. Watty grew fat, and was always whistling cheerily,
+nevertheless. Mrs. Watty cooked like an archangel, he said; and, to give
+her her due, the men admitted that although she had never pretended to
+approve of the life they led, Mrs. Watty had been a good wife to Watty.
+
+But everybody, even Mrs. Watty, was as pleased as if a little fortune
+had come to them, when, towards the end of their first week, Michael and
+his company came on a patch of good stone. Michael struck it, following
+the lead he had been working for some time, and, although not wonderful
+in colour or quality, the opal cut out at about ten ounces and brought
+£3 an ounce. Michael was able to wipe out some of his grocery score, so
+was Paul, and Potch had money to burn.
+
+Paul was very pleased with himself about it. The men began to call him a
+mascot and to say he had brought Michael luck, as he had Jun Johnson.
+There was no saying how the fortunes of the new partnership might
+flourish, if he stuck to it. Paul, responding to the expressions of
+goodwill and the inspiration of being on opal, put all his childish and
+bullocky energy into working with Michael and Potch.
+
+He still told everybody who would listen to him the story of the
+wonderful stones he had found when he was working with Jun, and how they
+had been stolen from him. They grew in number, value, and size every
+time he spoke of them. And he wailed over what he had been going to do,
+and what selling the stones would have meant to him and to Sophie. But
+the partnership was working better than anybody had expected, and people
+began to wonder whether, after all, Michael had done so badly for
+himself with his brace of dead-beat mates.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+In a few weeks thought of the robbery had ceased greatly to disturb
+anybody. Michael settled down to working with his new mates, and the
+Ridge accepted the new partnership as the most natural thing in the
+world.
+
+Life on the Ridge is usually as still as an inland lake. The settlement
+is just that, a lake of life, in the country of wide plains stretching
+westwards for hundreds on hundreds of miles, broken only by shingly
+ridges to the sea, and eastwards, through pastoral districts, to the
+coastal ranges, and the seaboard with its busy towns, ports, and cities.
+
+In summer the plains are dead and dry; in a drought, deserts. The great
+coolebahs standing with their feet in the river ways are green, and
+scatter tattered shade. Their small, round leaves flash like mirrors in
+the sun, and when the river water vanishes from about their feet, they
+hold themselves in the sandy shallow bed of the rivers as if waiting
+with imperturbable faith for the return of the waters. The surface of
+the dry earth cracks. There are huge fissures where the water lay in
+clayey hollows during the winter and spring. Along the stock routes and
+beside the empty water-holes, sheep and cattle lie rotting. Their
+carcasses, disembowelled by the crows, put an odour of putrefaction in
+the air. The sky burns iron-grey with heat. The dust rises in heavy
+reddish mist about stockmen or cattle on the roads.
+
+But after the rains, in the winter or spring of a good season, the seeds
+break sheath in a few hours; they sprout over-night, and a green mantle
+is flung over the old earth which a few days before was as dead and dry
+as a desert. In a little time the country is a flowering wilderness.
+Trefoil, crow's-foot, clover, mallow, and wild mustard riot, tangling
+and interweaving. The cattle browse through them lazily; stringing out
+across the flowering fields, they look in the distance no more than
+droves of mice; their red and black backs alone are visible above the
+herbage. In places, wild candytuft in blossom spreads a quilt of palest
+lavender in every direction on a wide circling horizon. Darling pea, the
+colour of violets and smelling like them, threads through the candytuft
+and lies in wedges, magenta and dark purple against the sky-line, a
+hundred miles farther on. The sky is a wash of pale, exquisite blue,
+which deepens as it rises to the zenith. The herbage glows beneath it,
+so clear and pure is the light.
+
+Farther inland, for miles, bachelor's buttons paint the earth raw gold.
+Not a hair's breadth of colour shows on the plains except the dull red
+of the road winding through them and the blue of the sky overhead. Paper
+daisies fringe the gold, and then they lie, white as snow, for miles,
+under the bare blue sky. Sometimes the magenta, purple, lavender, gold
+and white of the herbage and wild flowers merge and mingle, and a
+tapestry of incomparable beauty--a masterpiece of the Immortals--is
+wrought on the bare earth.
+
+During the spring and early summer of a good season, the air is filled
+with the wild, thymey odour of herbs, and the dry, musky fragrance of
+paper daisies. The crying of lambs, the baa-ing of ewes, and the piping
+of mud-larks--their thin, silvery notes--go through the clear air and
+are lost over the flowering land and against the blue sky.
+
+Winter is rarely more than a season of rains on the Ridge. Cold winds
+blow from the inland plains for a week or two. There are nights of frost
+and sparkling stars. People shiver and crouch over their fires; but the
+days have rarely more than a fresh tang in the air.
+
+The rains as often as not are followed by floods. After a few days'
+steady downpour, the shallow rivers and creeks on the plains overflow,
+and their waters stretch out over the plains for thirteen, fourteen, and
+sometimes twenty miles. Fords become impassable; bridges are washed
+away. Fallen Star Ridge is cut off from the rest of the world until the
+flood waters have soaked into the earth, as they do after a few days,
+and the coach can take to the road again.
+
+As spring passes into summer, the warmth of the sunshine loses its
+mildness, and settles to a heavy taciturnity. The light, losing its
+delicate brilliance, becomes a bared sword-blade striking the eyes.
+Everything shrinks from the full gaze and blaze of the sun. Eyes ache,
+the brain reels with the glare; mirages dance on the limitless horizons.
+The scorched herbage falls into dust; water is drawn off from rivers and
+water-holes. All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of
+iron.
+
+Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the
+glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the
+other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze
+of a dust storm.
+
+Ridge folk take the heat as primitive people do most acts of God, as a
+matter of course, with stiff-lipped hardihood, which makes complaint the
+manifestation of a poor spirit. They meet their difficulties with a
+native humour which gives zest to flagging energies. Their houses, with
+roofs whitened to throw off the heat, the dumps of crumbling white clay,
+and the iron roofs of the billiard parlour, the hotel, and Watty Frost's
+new house at the end of the town, shimmer in the intense light. At a
+little distance they seem all quivering and dancing together.
+
+Men like Michael, the Crosses, George Woods, Watty, and women like
+Maggie Grant and Martha M'Cready, who had been on the Ridge a long time,
+become inured to the heat. At least, they say that they "do not mind
+it." No one hears a growl out of them, even when water is scarce and
+flies and mosquitoes a plague. Their good spirits and grit keep the
+community going through a trying summer. But even they raise their faces
+to heaven when an unexpected shower comes, or autumn rains fall a little
+earlier than usual.
+
+In the early days, before stations were fenced, Bill M'Gaffy, a Warria
+shepherd, grazing flocks on the plains, declared he had seen a star fall
+on the Ridge. When he went into the station he showed the scraps of marl
+and dark metallic stone he had picked up near where the star had fallen,
+to James Henty, who had taken up Warria Station. The Ridge lay within
+its boundary. James Henty had turned them over curiously, and surmised
+that some meteoric stone had fallen on the Ridge. The place had always
+been called Fallen Star Ridge after that; but opal was not found there,
+and it did not begin to be known as the black opal field until several
+years later.
+
+In the first days of the rush to the Ridge, men of restless, reckless
+temperament had foregathered at the Old Town. There had been wild nights
+at the shanty. But the wilder spirits soon drifted away to Pigeon Creek
+and the sapphire mines, and the sober and more serious of the miners had
+settled to life on the new fields.
+
+The first gathering of huts on the clay pan below the Ridge was known as
+the Old Town; but it had been flooded so often, that, after people had
+been washed out of their homes, and had been forced to take to the Ridge
+for safety two or three times, it was decided to move the site of the
+township to the brow of the Ridge, above the range of the flood waters
+and near the new rush, where the most important mines on the field
+promised to be.
+
+A year or two ago, a score or so of bark and bag huts were ranged on
+either side of the wide, unmade road space overgrown with herbage, and a
+smithy, a weather-board hotel with roof of corrugated iron, a billiard
+parlour, and a couple of stores, comprised the New Town. A wild cherry
+tree, gnarled and ancient, which had been left in the middle of the road
+near the hotel, bore the news of the district and public notices, nailed
+to it on sheets of paper. A little below the hotel, on the same side,
+Chassy Robb's store served as post-office, and the nearest approach to a
+medicine shop in the township. Opposite was the Afghan's emporium. And
+behind the stores and the miners' huts, everywhere, were the dumps
+thrown up from mines and old rushes.
+
+There was no police station nearer than fifty miles, and although
+telegraph now links the New Town with Budda, the railway town,
+communication with it for a long time was only by coach once or twice a
+week; and even now all the fetching and carrying is done by a four or
+six horse-coach and bullock-wagons. The community to all intents and
+purposes governs itself according to popular custom and popular opinion,
+the seat of government being Newton's big, earthen-floored bar, or the
+brushwood shelters near the mines in which the men sit at midday to eat
+their lunches and noodle--, go over, snip, and examine--the opal they
+have taken out of the mines during the morning.
+
+They hold their blocks of land by miner's right, and their houses are
+their own. They formally recognise that they are citizens of the
+Commonwealth and of the State of New South Wales, by voting at elections
+and by accepting the Federal postal service. Some few of them, as well
+as Newton and the storekeepers, pay income tax as compensation for those
+privileges; but beyond that the Ridge lives its own life, and the
+enactments of external authority are respected or disregarded as best
+pleases it.
+
+A sober, easy-going crowd, the Ridge miners do not trouble themselves
+much about law. They have little need of it. They live in accord with
+certain fundamental instincts, on terms of good fellowship with each
+other.
+
+"To go back on a mate," is recognised as the major crime of the Ridge
+code.
+
+Sometimes, during a rush, the wilder spirits who roam from one mining
+camp to another in the back-country, drift back, and "hit things up" on
+the Ridge, as the men say. But they soon drift away again. Sometimes, if
+one of them strikes a good patch of opal and outstays his kind, as often
+as not he sinks into the Ridge life, absorbs Ridge ways and ideas, and
+is accepted into the fellowship of men of the Ridge. There is no
+formality about the acceptance. It just happens naturally, that if a man
+identifies himself with the Ridge principle of mateship, and will stand
+by it as it will stand by him, he is recognised by Ridge men as one of
+themselves. But if his ways and ideas savour of those the Ridge has
+broken from, he remains an outsider, whatever good terms he may seem to
+be on with everybody.
+
+Sometimes a rush leaves a shiftless ne'er-do-well or two for the Ridge
+to reckon with, but even these rarely disregard the Ridge code. If
+claims are ratted it is said there are strangers about, and the miners
+deal with rats according to their own ideas of justice. On the last
+occasion it was applied, this justice had proved so effectual that there
+had been no repetition of the offence.
+
+Ridge miners find happiness in the sense of being free men. They are
+satisfied in their own minds that it is not good for a man to work all
+day at any mechanical toil; to use himself or allow anyone else to use
+him like a working bullock. A man must have time to think, leisure to
+enjoy being alive, they say. Is he alive only to work? To sleep worn out
+with toil, and work again? It is not good enough, Ridge men say. They
+have agreed between themselves that it is a fair thing to begin work
+about 6.30 or 7 o'clock and knock off about four, with a couple of hours
+above ground at noon for lunch--a snack of bread and cheese and a cup of
+tea.
+
+At four o'clock they come up from the mines, noodle their opal, put on
+their coats, smoke and yarn, and saunter down to the town and their
+homes. And it is this leisure end of the day which has given life on the
+Ridge its tone of peace and quiet happiness, and has made Ridge miners
+the thoughtful, well-informed men most of them are.
+
+To a man they have decided against allowing any wealthy man or body of
+wealthy men forming themselves into a company to buy up the mines, put
+the men on a weekly wage, and work them, as the opal blocks at Chalk
+Cliffs had been worked. There might be more money in it, there would be
+a steadier means of livelihood; but the Ridge miners will not hear of
+it.
+
+"No," they say; "we'll put up with less money--and be our own masters."
+
+Most of them worked on Chalk Cliffs' opal blocks, and they realised in
+the early days of the new field the difference between the conditions
+they had lived and worked under on the Cliffs and were living and
+working under on the Ridge, where every man was the proprietor of his
+own energies, worked as long as he liked, and was entitled to the full
+benefit of his labour. They had yarned over these differences of
+conditions at midday in the shelters beside the mines, discussed them in
+the long evenings at Newton's, and without any committees, documents, or
+bond--except the common interest of the individual and of the
+fraternity--had come to the conclusion that at all costs they were going
+to remain masters of their own mines.
+
+Common thought and common experience were responsible for that
+recognition of economic independence as the first value of their new
+life together. Michael Brady had stood for it from the earliest days of
+the settlement. He had pointed out that the only things which could give
+joy in life, men might have on the Ridge, if they were satisfied to find
+their joy in these things, and not look for it in enjoyment of the
+superficial luxuries money could provide. Most of the real sources of
+joy were every man's inheritance, but conditions of work, which wrung
+him of energy and spirit, deprived him of leisure to enjoy them until he
+was too weary to do more than sleep or seek the stimulus of alcohol.
+Besides, these conditions recruited him with the merest subsistence for
+his pains, very often--did not even guarantee that--and denied him the
+capacity to appreciate the real sources of joy. But the beauty of the
+world, the sky, and the stars, spring, summer, the grass, and the birds,
+were for every man, Michael said. Any and every man could have immortal
+happiness by hearing a bird sing, by gazing into the blue-dark depths of
+the sky on a starry night. No man could sell his joy of these things. No
+man could buy them. Love is for all men: no man can buy or sell love.
+Pleasure in work, in jolly gatherings with friends, peace at the end of
+the day, and satisfaction of his natural hungers, a man might have all
+these things on the Ridge, if he were content with essentials.
+
+Ridge miners' live fearlessly, with the magic of adventure in their
+daily lives, the prospect of one day finding the great stone which is
+the grail of every opal-miner's quest. They are satisfied if they get
+enough opal to make a parcel for a buyer when he puts up for a night or
+two at Newton's. A young man who sells good stones usually goes off to
+Sydney to discover what life in other parts of the world is like, and to
+take a draught of the gay life of cities. A married man gives his wife
+and children a trip to the seaside or a holiday in town. But all drift
+back to the Ridge when the taste of city life has begun to cloy, or when
+all their money is spent. Once an opal miner, always an opal miner, the
+Ridge folk say.
+
+Among the men, only the shiftless and more worthless are not in sympathy
+with Ridge ideas, and talk of money and what money will buy as the
+things of first value in life. They describe the Fallen Star township as
+a God-forsaken hole, and promise each other, as soon as their luck has
+turned, they will leave it for ever, and have the time of their lives in
+Sydney.
+
+Women like Maggie Grant share their husband's minds. They read what the
+men read, have the men's vision, and hold it with jealous enthusiasm.
+Others, women used to the rough and simple existence of the
+back-country, are satisfied with the life which gives them a husband,
+home, and children. Those who sympathise with Mrs. Watty Frost regard
+the men's attitude as more than half cussedness, sheer selfishness or
+stick-in-the-mudness; and the more worthy and respectable they are, the
+more they fret and fume at the earthen floors and open hearths of the
+bark and bagging huts they live in, and pine for all the kick-shaws of
+suburban villas. The discontented women are a minority, nevertheless.
+Ridge folk as a whole have set their compass and steer the course of
+their lives with unconscious philosophy, and yet a profound conviction
+as to the rightness of what they are doing.
+
+And the Ridge, which bears them, stands serenely under blue skies the
+year long, rising like a backbone from the plains that stretch for
+hundreds of miles on either side. A wide, dusty road crosses the plains.
+The huts of the Three Mile and Fallen Star crouch beside it, and
+everywhere on the rusty, shingle-strewn slopes of the Ridge, are the
+holes and thrown-up heaps of white and raddled clay or broken
+sandstone--traces of the search for that "ecstasy in the heart of
+gloom," black opal, which the Fallen Star earth holds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Darling pea was lying in purple and magenta patches through the long
+grass on the tank paddock when Sophie went with Ella and Mirry Flail to
+gather wild flowers there.
+
+Wild flowers did not grow anywhere on Fallen Star as they did in the
+tank paddock. It was almost a place of faery to children of the Ridge.
+The little ones were not allowed to go there by themselves for fear they
+might fall into the waterhole which lay like a great square lake in the
+middle of it, its steep, well-set-up banks of yellow clay, ruled with
+the precision of a diagram in geometry. The water was almost as yellow
+as the banks, thick and muddy looking; but it was good water, nothing on
+earth the matter with it when you had boiled it and the sediment had
+been allowed to settle, everybody on Fallen Star Ridge was prepared to
+swear. It had to be drawn up by a pump which was worked by a donkey
+engine, Sam Nancarrow, and his old fat roan draught mare, and carted to
+the township when rain-water in the iron tanks beside the houses in
+Fallen Star gave out.
+
+During a dry season, or a very hot summer, all hands turned out to roof
+the paddock tank with tarpaulins to prevent evaporation as far as
+possible and so conserve the township's water supply. On a placard
+facing the roadway a "severe penalty" was promised to anyone using it
+without permission or making improper use of it.
+
+Ella and Mirry were gathering sago flower--"wild sweet Alice," as they
+called candytuft--yellow eye-bright, tiny pink starry flowers,
+bluebells, small lavender daisies, taller white ones, and yellow
+daisies, as well as Darling pea; but Sophie picked only long, trailing
+stalks of the pea. She had as many as she could hold when she sat down
+to arrange them into a tighter bunch.
+
+Mirry and Ella Flail had always been good friends of Sophie's. Potch and
+she had often gone on excursions with them, or to the swamp to cart
+water when it was scarce and very dear in the township. And since Potch
+had gone to work Sophie had no one to go about with but Mirry and Ella.
+She pleased their mother by trying to teach them to read and write, and
+they went noodling together, or gathering wild flowers. Sophie was three
+or four years older than Mirry, who was the elder of the two Flails; she
+felt much older since her mother's death nearly a year ago, and in the
+black dress she had worn since then. She was just seventeen, and had put
+her hair up into a knot at the back of her head. That made her feel
+older, too. But she still liked to go for walks and wanderings with Ella
+and Mirry. They knew so much about the birds and flowers, the trees, and
+the ways of all the wild creatures: they were such wild creatures
+themselves.
+
+They came running to her, crying excitedly, their hands filled with
+flowers, shedding them as they ran. Then, collapsing in the grass beside
+Sophie, Mirry rolled over on her back and gazed up into the sky. Ella,
+squatting on her thin, sunburnt little sticks of legs, was arranging her
+flowers and glancing every now and then at Sophie with shy, loving
+glances.
+
+Sophie wondered why she had nothing of her old joyous zest in their
+enterprises together. She used to be as wild and happy as Mirry and Ella
+on an afternoon like this. But there was something of the shy, wild
+spirit of a primitive people about Mirry and Ella, she remembered, some
+of their blood, too. One of their mother's people, it was said, had been
+a native of one of the river tribes.
+
+Mirry had her mother's beautiful dark eyes, almost green in the light,
+and freckled with hazel, and her pale, sallow skin. Ella, younger and
+shyer, was more like her father. Her skin was not any darker than
+Sophie's, and her eyes blue-grey, her features delicate, her hair
+golden-brown that glinted in the sun.
+
+"Sing to us, Sophie," Mirry said.
+
+Sophie often sang to them when she and Ella and Mirry were out like
+this. As she sat with them, dreaming in the sunshine, she sang almost
+without any conscious effort; she just put up her chin, and the melodies
+poured from her. Hearing her voice, as it ran in ripples and eddies
+through the clear, warm air, hung and quivered and danced again,
+delighted her.
+
+Ella and Mirry listened in a trance of awe, reverence, and admiration.
+Sophie had a dim vision of them, wide-eyed and still, against the tall
+grass and flowers.
+
+"My! You can sing, Sophie! Can't she, Ella?"
+
+Ella nodded, gazing at Sophie with eyes of worshipping love.
+
+"They say you're going away with your father ... and you're going to be
+a great singer, Sophie," Mirry said.
+
+"Yes," Sophie murmured tranquilly, "I am."
+
+A bevy of black and brown birds flashed past them, flew in a wide
+half-circle across the paddock, and alighted on a dead tree beyond the
+fence.
+
+"Look, look!" Mirry started to her feet. "A happy family! I wonder, are
+the whole twelve there?"
+
+She counted the birds, which were calling to each other with little
+shrill cries.
+
+"They're all there!" she announced. "Twelve of them. Mother says in some
+parts they call them the twelve apostles. Sing again, Sophie," she
+begged.
+
+Ella smiled at Sophie. Her lips parted as though she would like to have
+said that, too; but only her eyes entreated, and she went on putting her
+flowers together.
+
+As she sang, Sophie watched a pair of butterflies, white with black
+lines and splashes of yellow and scarlet on their wings, hovering over
+the flowered field of the paddock. She was so lost in her singing and
+watching the butterflies, and the children were so intent listening to
+her, that they did not hear a horseman coming slowly towards them along
+the track. As he came up to them, Sophie's rippling notes broke and fell
+to earth. Ella saw him first, and was on her feet in an instant. Mirry
+and she, their wild instinct asserting itself, darted away and took
+cover behind the trunks of the nearest trees.
+
+Sophie looked after them, wondering whether she would follow them as she
+used to; but she felt older and more staid now than she had a year ago.
+She stood her ground, as the man, who was leading his horse, came to a
+standstill before her.
+
+She knew him well enough, Arthur Henty, the only son of old Henty of
+Warria Station. She had seen him riding behind cattle or sheep on the
+roads across the plains for years. Sometimes when Potch and she had met
+him riding across the Ridge, or at the swamp, he had stopped to talk to
+them. He had been at her mother's funeral, too; but as he stood before
+her this afternoon, Sophie seemed to be seeing him for the first time.
+
+A tall, slightly-built young man, in riding breeches and leggings, a
+worn coat, and as weathered a felt hat as any man on the Ridge wore, his
+clothes the colour of dust on the roads, he stood before her, smiling
+slightly. His face was dark in the shadow of his hat, but the whole of
+him, cut against the sunshine, had gilded outlines. And he seemed to be
+seeing Sophie for the first time, too. She had jumped up and drawn back
+from the track when the Flails ran away. He could not believe that this
+tall girl in the black dress was the queer, elfish-like girl he had seen
+running about the Ridge, bare-legged, with feet in goat-skin sandals,
+and in the cemetery on the Warria road, not much more than a year ago.
+Her elfish gaiety had deserted her. It was the black dress gave her face
+the warm pallor of ivory, he thought, made her look staider, and as if
+the sadness of all it symbolised had not left her. But her eyes,
+strange, beautiful eyes, the green and blue of opal, with black rings on
+the irises and great black pupils, had still the clear, unconscious gaze
+of youth; her lips the sweet, sucking curves of a child's.
+
+They stood so, smiling and staring at each other, a spell of silence on
+each.
+
+Sophie had dropped half her flowers as she sprang up at the sound of
+someone approaching. She had clutched a few in one hand; the rest lay on
+the grass about her, her hat beside them. Henty's eyes went to the trees
+round which Mirry and Ella were peeping.
+
+"They're wild birds, aren't they?" he said.
+
+Sophie smiled. She liked the way his eyes narrowed to slits of sunshine
+as he smiled.
+
+"Are you going to sing, again?" he asked hesitatingly.
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+"My mother's awfully fond of that stuff," Henty said, looking at the
+Darling pea Sophie had in her hand. "We haven't got any near the
+homestead. I came into the paddock to get some for her."
+
+Sophie held out her bunch.
+
+"Not all of it," he said.
+
+"I can get more," she said.
+
+He took the flowers, and his vague smile changed to one of shy and
+subtle understanding. Ella and Mirry found courage to join Sophie.
+
+"Where's Potch?" Henty asked.
+
+"He's working with Michael," Sophie said.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, and stood before her awkwardly, not knowing what to
+talk about.
+
+He was still thinking how different she was to the little girl he had
+seen chasing goats on the Ridge no time before, and wondering what had
+changed her so quickly, when Sophie stooped to pick up her hat. Then he
+saw her short, dark hair twisted up into a knot at the back of her head.
+Feeling intuitively that he was looking at the knot she was so proud of,
+Sophie put on her hat quickly. A delicate colour moved on her neck and
+cheeks. Arthur Henty found himself looking into her suffused eyes and
+smiling at her smile of confusion.
+
+"Well, we must be going now," Sophie said, a little breathlessly.
+
+Henty said that he was going into the New Town and would walk along part
+of the way with her. He tucked the flowers Sophie had given him into his
+saddle-bag, and she and the children turned down the track. Ella, having
+found her tongue, chattered eagerly. Arthur Henty strolled beside them,
+smoking, his reins over his arm. Mirry wanted to ride his horse.
+
+"Nobody rides this horse but me," Henty said. "She'd throw you into the
+middle of next week."
+
+"I can ride," Mirry said; "ride like a flea, the boys say."
+
+She was used to straddling any pony or horse her brothers had in the
+yard, and they had a name as the best horse-breakers in the district.
+
+Henty laughed. "But you couldn't ride Beeswing," he said. "She doesn't
+let anybody but me ride her. You can sit on, if you like; she won't mind
+that so long as I've got hold of her."
+
+The stirrup was too high for Mirry to reach, so he picked her up and put
+her across the saddle. The mare shivered and shrank under the light
+shock of Mirry's landing upon her, but Arthur Henty talked to her and
+rubbed her head soothingly.
+
+"It's all right ... all right, old girl," he muttered. "Think it was one
+of those stinging flies? But it isn't, you see. It's only Mirry Flail.
+She says she's a flea of a rider. But you'd learn her, wouldn't you, if
+you got off with her by yourself?"
+
+Ella giggled softly, peering at Mirry and Henty and at the beautiful
+golden-red chestnut he was leading. Ed. Ventry had put Sophie on his
+coach horses sometimes. He had let her go for a scamper with Potch on an
+old horse or a likely colt now and then; but she knew she did not ride
+well--not as Mirry rode.
+
+They walked along the dusty road together when they had left the tank
+paddock, Mirry chattering from Beeswing's back, Sophie, with Ella
+clinging to one hand, on the other side of Henty. But Mirry soon tired
+of riding a led horse at a snail's pace. When a sulphur-coloured
+butterfly fluttered for a few minutes over a wild tobacco plant, she
+slid from the saddle, on the far side, and was off over the plains to
+have another look at the butterfly.
+
+Ella was too shy or too frightened to get on the chestnut, even with
+Henty holding her bridle.
+
+"How about you, Sophie?" Arthur Henty asked.
+
+Sophie nodded, but before he could help her she had put her foot into
+the stirrup and swung into the saddle herself. Beeswing shivered again
+to the new, strange weight on her back. Henty held her, muttering
+soothingly. They went on again.
+
+After a while, with a shy glance, and as if to please him, Sophie began
+to sing, softly at first, so as not to startle the mare, and then
+letting her voice out so that it rippled as easily and naturally as a
+bird's. Henty, walking with a hand on the horse's bridle beside her,
+heard again the song she had been singing in the tank paddock.
+
+Ella was supposed to be carrying Sophie's flowers. She did not know she
+had dropped nearly half of them, and that they were lying in a trail all
+along the dusty road.
+
+Henty did not speak when Sophie had finished. His pipe had gone out, and
+he put it in his pocket. The stillness of her audience of two was so
+intense that to escape it Sophie went on singing, and the chestnut did
+not flinch. She went quietly to the pace of the song, as though she,
+too, were enjoying its rapture and tenderness.
+
+Then through the clear air came a rattle of wheels and jingle of
+harness. Mirry, running towards them from the other side of the road,
+called eagerly:
+
+"It's the coach.... Mr. Ventry's got six horses in, and a man with him!"
+
+Six horses indicated that a person of some importance was on board the
+coach. Henty drew the chestnut to one side as the coach approached. Mr.
+Ventry jerked his head in Henty's direction when he passed and saw
+Arthur Henty with the Flail children and Sophie. The stranger beside him
+eyed, with a faint smile of amusement, the cavalcade, the girl in the
+black dress on the fine chestnut horse, the children with the flowers,
+and the young man standing beside them. The man on the coach was a
+clean-shaved, well-groomed, rather good-looking man of forty, or
+thereabouts, and his clothes and appearance proclaimed him a man of the
+world beyond the Ridge. His smile and stare annoyed Henty.
+
+"It's Mr. Armitage," Mirry said. "The young one. He's not as nice as the
+old man, my father says--and he doesn't know opal as well--but he gives
+a good price."
+
+They had reached the curve of the road where one arm turns to the town
+and the other goes over the plains to Warria. Sophie slipped from the
+horse.
+
+"We'll take the short cut here," she said.
+
+She stood looking at Arthur Henty for a moment, and in that moment Henty
+knew that she had sensed his thought. She had guessed he was afraid of
+having looked ridiculous trailing along the road with these children.
+Sophie turned away. The young Flails bounded after her. Henty could hear
+their laughter when he had ridden out some distance along the road.
+
+From the slope of a dump Sophie saw him--the chestnut and her rider
+loping into the sunset, and, looking after him, she finished her song.
+
+    "Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,
+     Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!
+     Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,
+     A fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"
+
+     Dear name forever nursed in my memory thou shalt be,
+     For my heart first stirred to the delight of love for thee!
+     My thoughts and my desire will always be, dear name, toward thee,
+     And my last breath will be for thee, dear name.
+
+The long, sweet notes and rippled melody followed Arthur Henty over the
+plains in the quiet air of late afternoon. But the afternoon had been
+spoilt for him. He was self-conscious and ill at ease about it all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Mr. Armitage is up at Newton's!" Paul yelled to Michael, when he saw
+him at his back-door a few minutes after Sophie had given him the news.
+
+"Not the old man?" Michael inquired.
+
+"No, the young 'un."
+
+Word was quickly bruited over the fields that the American, one of the
+best buyers who came to the Ridge, had arrived by the evening coach. He
+invariably had a good deal of money to spend, and gave a better price
+than most of the local buyers.
+
+Dawe P. Armitage had visited Fallen Star Ridge from the first year of
+its existence as an opal field, and every year for years after that. But
+when he began to complain about aches and pains in his bones, which he
+refused to allow anybody to call rheumatism, and was assured he was well
+over seventy and that the long rail and sea journey from New York City
+to Fallen Star township were getting too much for him, he let his son,
+whom he had made a partner in his business, make the journey for him.
+John Lincoln Armitage had been going to the Ridge for two or three
+years, and although the men liked him well enough, he was not as popular
+with them as his father had been. And the old man, John Armitage said,
+although he was nearly crippled with rheumatism, still grudged him his
+yearly visit to the Ridge, and hated like poison letting anyone else do
+his opal-buying.
+
+Dawe Armitage had bought some of the best black opal found on the Ridge.
+He had been a hard man to deal with, but the men had a grudging
+admiration for him, a sort of fellow feeling of affection because of his
+oneness with them in a passion for black opal. A grim, sturdy old
+beggar, there was a certain quality about him, a gruff humour, sheer
+doggedness, strength of purpose, and dead honesty within his point of
+view, which kept an appreciative and kindly feeling for him in their
+hearts. They knew he had preyed on them; but he had done it bluntly,
+broadly, and in such an off-with-the-gloves-lads-style, that, after a
+good fight over a stone and price, they had sometimes given in to him
+for sheer amusement, and to let him have the satisfaction of thinking he
+had gained his point.
+
+Usually he set his price on a stone and would not budge from it. The
+gougers knew this, and if their price on a stone was not Dawe
+Armitage's, they did not waste breath on argument, except to draw the
+old boy and get some diversion from his way of playing them. If a man
+had a good stone and did not think anyone else was likely to give him
+his figure, sometimes he sold ten minutes before the coach Armitage was
+going down to town by, left Newton's. But, three or four times, when a
+stone had taken his fancy and a miner was obdurate, the old man, with
+his mind's eye full of the stone and the fires in its dazzling jet, had
+suddenly sent for it and its owner, paid his price, and pocketed the
+stone. He had wrapped up the gem, chuckling in defeat, and rejoicing to
+have it at any price. As a rule he made three or four times as much as
+he had given for opals he bought on the Ridge, but to Dawe Armitage the
+satisfaction of making money on a transaction was nothing like the joy
+of putting a coveted treasure into his wallet and driving off from
+Fallen Star with it.
+
+A gem merchant of considerable standing in the United States, Dawe
+Armitage's collection of opals was world famous. He had put black opal
+on the market, and had been the first to extol the splendour of the
+stones found on Fallen Star Ridge. So different they were from the opal
+found on Chalk Cliffs, or in any other part of the world, with the fires
+in jetty potch rather than in the clear or milky medium people were
+accustomed to, that at first timid and conventional souls were disturbed
+and repelled by them. "They felt," they said, "that there was something
+occultly evil about black opal." They had a curious fear and dread of
+the stones as talismans of evil. Dawe Armitage scattered the quakers
+like chaff with his scorn. They could not, he said, accept the
+magnificent pessimism of black opal. They would not rejoice with pagan
+abandonment in the beauty of those fires in black opal, realising that,
+like the fires of life, they owed their brilliance, their transcendental
+glory, to the dark setting. But every day the opals made worshippers of
+sightseers. They mesmerised beholders who came to look at them.
+
+When the coach rattled to a standstill outside the hotel, Peter Newton
+went to the door of the bar. He knew John Armitage by the size and shape
+of his dust-covered overalls. Armitage dismounted and pulled off his
+gloves. Peter Newton went to meet him.
+
+Armitage gripped his hand.
+
+"Mighty glad to see you, Newton," he said, "and glad to see the Ridge
+again. How are you all?"
+
+Newton smiled, giving him greeting in downright Ridge style.
+
+"Fine," he said. "Glad to see you, Mr. Armitage."
+
+When he got indoors, Armitage threw off his coat. He and Peter had a
+drink together, and then he went to have a wash and brush up before
+dinner. Mrs. Newton came from the kitchen; she was pleased to see Mr.
+Armitage, she said, and he shook hands with her and made her feel that
+he was really quite delighted to see her. She spent a busy hour or so
+making the best of her preparations for the evening meal, so that he
+might repeat his usual little compliments about her cooking. Armitage
+had his dinner in a small private sitting-room, and strolled out
+afterwards to the veranda to smoke and yarn with the men.
+
+He spent the evening with them there, and in the bar, hearing the news
+of the Ridge and gossiping genially. He had come all the way from Sydney
+the day before, spent the night in the train, and had no head for
+business that night, he said. When he yarned with them, Fallen Star men
+had a downright sense of liking John Armitage. He was a good sort, they
+told each other; they appreciated his way of talking, and laughed over
+the stories he told and the rare and racy Americanisms with which he
+flavoured his speech for their benefit.
+
+When he exerted himself to entertain and amuse them, they were as
+pleased with him as a pack of women. And John Lincoln Armitage pleased
+women, men of the Ridge guessed, the women of his own kind as well as
+the women of Fallen Star who had talked to him now and then. His eyes
+had a mild caress when they rested on a woman; it was not in the least
+offensive, but carried challenge and appeal--a suggestion of sympathy.
+He had a thousand little courtesies for women, the deference which comes
+naturally to "a man of the world" for a member of "the fair sex." Mrs.
+Newton was always flattered and delighted after a talk with him. He
+asked her advice about opals he had bought or was going to buy, and,
+although he did not make use of it very often, she was always pleased by
+his manner of asking. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Archie Cross both
+confessed to a partiality for Mr. Armitage, and even Mrs. Watty agreed
+that he was "a real nice man"; and when he was in the township Mrs.
+Henty and one of the girls usually drove over from the station and took
+him back to Warria to stay a day or two before he went back to Sydney on
+his return journey to New York.
+
+Armitage was very keen to know whether there had been any sensational
+finds on the Ridge during the year, and all about them. He wanted to
+know who had been getting good stuff, and said that he had bought Jun's
+stones in Sydney. The men exclaimed at that.
+
+"I was surprised to hear," John Armitage said, "what happened to the
+other parcel. You don't mean to say you think Charley Heathfield----?"
+
+"We ain't tried him yet," Watty remarked cautiously, "but the evidence
+is all against him."
+
+Rouminof thrust himself forward, eager to tell his story. Realising the
+proud position he might have been in this night with the opal-buyer if
+he had had his opals, tears gathered in his eyes as he went over it all
+again.
+
+Armitage listened intently.
+
+"Well, of all the rotten luck!" he exclaimed, when Paul had finished.
+"Have another whisky, Rouminof? But what I can't make out," he added,
+"is why, if he had the stones, Charley didn't come to me with them.... I
+didn't buy anything but Jun's stuff before I came up here ... and he
+just said it was half the find he was showing me. Nice bit of pattern in
+that big black piece, eh? If Charley had the stones, you'd think he'd
+'ve come along to me, or got Jun, or somebody to come along for him...."
+
+"I don't know about that." George Woods felt for his reasons. "He
+wouldn't want you--or anybody else to know he'd got them."
+
+"That's right," Watty agreed.
+
+"He's got them all right," Ted Cross declared. "You see, I seen him
+taking Rummy home that night--and he cleared out next morning."
+
+"I guess you boys know best." John Armitage sipped his whisky
+thoughtfully. "But I'm mad to get the rest of the stones. Tell you the
+truth, the old man hasn't been too pleased with my buying lately ... and
+it would put him in no end of a good humour if I could take home with me
+another packet of gems like the one I got from Jun. Jun knew I was keen
+to get the stones ... and I can't help thinking ... if he knew they were
+about, he'd put me in the way of getting them ... or them in my
+way--somehow. You don't think ... anybody else could have been on the
+job, and ... put it over on Charley, say...."
+
+His eyes went over the faces of the men lounging against the bar, or
+standing in groups about him. Michael was lifting his glass to drink,
+and, for the fraction of a second the opal-buyer's glance wavered on his
+face before it passed on.
+
+"Not likely," George Woods said dryly.
+
+Recognising the disfavour his suggestion raised, Armitage brushed it
+aside.
+
+"I don't think so, of course," he said.
+
+And although he did not speak to him, or even look at him closely again,
+John Armitage was thinking all the evening of the quiver, slight as the
+tremor of a moth's wing, on Michael's face, when that inquiry had been
+thrown out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Armitage was busy going over parcels of stone and bargaining with the
+men for the greater part of the next day. He was beginning to have more
+of Dawe Armitage's zest for the business; and, every time they met,
+Ridge men found him shrewder, keener. His manner was genial and
+easy-going with them; but there was a steel band in him somewhere, they
+were sure.
+
+The old man had been bluff, and as hard as nails; but they understood
+him better than his son. John Armitage, they knew, was only
+perfunctorily interested opal-buying at first; he had gone into it to
+please the old man, but gradually the thing had taken hold of him. He
+was not yet, however, anything like as good a judge of opal, and his
+last buying on the Ridge had displeased his father considerably. John
+Armitage had bought several parcels of good-looking opal; but one stone,
+which had cost £50 in the rough, was not worth £5 when it was cut. A
+grain of sand, Dawe Armitage swore he could have seen a mile away, went
+through it, and it cracked on the wheel. A couple of parcels had brought
+double what had been paid for them; but several stones John had given a
+good price for were not worth half the amount, his father had said.
+
+George Woods and Watty took John Armitage a couple of fine knobbies
+during the morning, and the Crosses had shown him a parcel containing
+two good green and blue stones with rippled lights; but they had more on
+the parcel than Armitage felt inclined to pay, remembering the stormy
+scene there had been with the old man over that last stone from Crosses'
+mine which had cracked in the cutter's hands. Towards the end of the day
+Mr. Armitage came to the conclusion, having gone over the stones the men
+brought him, and having bought all he fancied, that there was very
+little black opal of first quality about. He was meditating the fact,
+leaning back in his chair in the sitting-room Newton had reserved for
+him to see the gougers in, some pieces of opal, his scales and
+microscope on the table before him, when Michael knocked.
+
+Absorbed in his reflections, realising there would be little to show for
+the trouble and pains of his long journey, and reviewing a slowly
+germinating scheme and dream for the better output of opal from Fallen
+Star, John Armitage did not at first pay any attention to the knock.
+
+He had been thinking a good deal of Michael in connection with that
+scheme. Michael, he knew, would be his chief opponent, if ever he tried
+putting it into effect. When he had outlined his idea and vaguely formed
+plans to his father, Dawe Armitage would have nothing to do with them.
+He swept them aside uncompromisingly.
+
+"You don't know what you're up against," he said. "There isn't a man on
+the Ridge wouldn't fight like a pole-cat if you tried it on 'em. Give
+'em a word of it--and we quit partnership, see? They wouldn't stand for
+it--not for a second--and there'd be no more black opal for Armitage and
+Son, if they got any idea on the Ridge you'd that sort of notion at the
+back of your head."
+
+But John Armitage refused to give up his idea. He went to it as a dog
+goes to a planted bone--gnawed and chewed over it, contemplatively.
+
+He had made this trip to Fallen Star with little result, and he was sure
+a system of working the mines on scientific, up-to-date lines would
+ensure the production of more stone. He wanted to talk organisation and
+efficiency to men of the Ridge, to point out to them that organisation
+and efficiency were of first value in production, not realising Ridge
+men considered their methods both organised and efficient within their
+means and for their purposes.
+
+Michael knocked again, and Armitage called:
+
+"Come in!" When he saw who had come into the room, he rose and greeted
+Michael warmly.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Michael!" he said, with a sense of guilt at the thoughts
+Michael had interrupted. "I wondered what on earth had become of you.
+The old man gave me no end of messages, and there are a couple of
+magazines for you in my grip."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," Michael replied.
+
+"Well, I hope you've got some good stuff," Armitage said.
+
+Michael took the chair opposite to him on the other side of the table.
+"I haven't got much," he said.
+
+"I remember Newton told me you've been having rotten luck."
+
+"It's looked up lately," Michael said, the flickering wisp of a smile in
+his eyes. "The boys say Rummy's a luck-bringer.... He's working with me
+now, and we've been getting some nice stone."
+
+He took a small packet of opal from his pocket and put it on the table.
+It was wrapped in newspaper. He unfastened the string, turned back the
+cotton-wool in which the pieces of opal were packed, and spread them out
+for Armitage to look at.
+
+Armitage went over the stones. He put them, one by one, under his
+microscope, and held them to and from the light.
+
+"That's a nice bit of colour, Michael," he said, admiring a small piece
+of grey potch with a black strain which flashed needling rays of green
+and gold. "A little bit more of that, and you'd be all right, eh?"
+
+Michael nodded. "We're on a streak now," he said. "It ought to work out
+all right."
+
+"I hope it will." Armitage held the piece of opal to the light and moved
+it slowly. "Rouminof's working with you now--and Potch, they tell me?"
+
+Michael nodded.
+
+"Pretty hard on him, Charley's getting away with his stones like that!"
+
+John Armitage probed the quiet eyes of the man before him with a swift
+glance.
+
+"You're right there, Mr. Armitage," Michael said. "Harder on Paul than
+it would have been on anybody else. He's got the fever pretty bad."
+
+Armitage laughed, handling a stone thoughtfully.
+
+"I gave Jun a hundred pounds for his big stone. I'd give the same for
+the other--if I could lay my hands on it, though the boys say it wasn't
+quite as big, but better pattern."
+
+"That's right," Michael said.
+
+Silence lay between them for a moment.
+
+"What have you got on the lot, Michael?" Armitage asked, picking up the
+stones before him and going over them absent-mindedly.
+
+"A tenner," Michael said.
+
+Usually a gouger asked several pounds more than he expected to get. John
+Armitage knew that; Michael knew he knew it. Armitage played with the
+stones, hesitated as though his mind were not made up. There was not
+much more than potch and colour in the bundle. He went over the stones
+with the glass again.
+
+"Oh well, Michael," he said, "we're old friends. I won't haggle with
+you. Ten pounds--your own valuation."
+
+He would get twice as much for the parcel, but the price was a good one.
+Michael was surprised he had conceded it so easily.
+
+Armitage pulled out his cheque-book and pushed a box of cigars across
+the table. Michael took out his pipe.
+
+"If you don't mind, Mr. Armitage," he said, "I'm more at home with
+this."
+
+"Please yourself, Michael," Armitage murmured, writing his cheque.
+
+When Michael had put the cheque in his pocket, Armitage took a cigar,
+nipped and lighted it, and leaned back in his chair again.
+
+"Not much big stuff about, Michael," he remarked, conversationally.
+
+"George Woods had some good stones," Michael said.
+
+Armitage was not enthusiastic. "Pretty fair. But the old man will be
+better pleased with the stuff I got from Jun Johnson than anything else
+this trip.... I'd give a good deal to get the almond-shaped stone in
+that other parcel."
+
+Michael realised Mr. Armitage had said the same thing to him before. He
+wondered why he had said it to him--what he was driving at.
+
+"There were several good stones in Paul's parcel," he said.
+
+His clear, quiet eyes met John Armitage's curious, inquiring gaze. He
+was vaguely discomfited by Armitage's gaze, although he did not flinch
+from it. He wondered what Mr. Armitage knew, that he should look like
+that.
+
+"It's been hard on Rouminof," Armitage murmured again.
+
+Michael agreed.
+
+"After the boys making Jun shell out, too! It doesn't seem to have been
+much use, does it?"
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"And they say he was going to take that girl of his down to Sydney to
+have her trained as a singer. She can sing, too. But her mother,
+Michael--I heard her in _Dinorah_ ... when I was a little chap."
+Enthusiasm lighted John Armitage's face. "She was wonderful.... The old
+man says people were mad about her when she was in New York.... It was
+said, you know, she belonged to some aristocratic Russian family, and
+ran away with a rascally violinist--Rouminof. Can you believe it? ...
+Went on the stage to keep him.... But she couldn't stand the life. Soon
+after she was lost sight of.... I've often wondered how she drifted to
+Fallen Star. But she liked being here, the old man says."
+
+Michael nodded. There was silence between them a moment; then Michael
+rose to go. The opal-buyer got up too, and flung out his arms,
+stretching with relief to be done with his day's work.
+
+"I've been cooped in here all day," he said. "I'll come along with you,
+Michael. I'd like to have a look at the Punti Rush. Can you walk over
+there with me?"
+
+"'Course I can, Mr. Armitage," Michael said heartily.
+
+They walked out of the hotel and through the town towards the rush,
+where half a dozen new claims had been pegged a few weeks before.
+
+Snow-Shoes passed then going out of the town to his hut, swinging along
+the track and gazing before him with the eyes of a seer, his fine old
+face set in a dream, serene dignity in every line of his erect and
+slowly-moving figure.
+
+Armitage looked after him.
+
+"What a great old chap he is, Michael," he exclaimed. "You don't know
+anything about him ... who he is, or where he comes from, do you?"
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"How does he live?"
+
+"Noodles."
+
+"He's never brought me any stone."
+
+"Trades it with the storekeepers--though the boys do say"--Michael
+looked with smiling eyes after Snow-Shoes--"he may be a bit of a miser,
+loves opal more than the money it brings."
+
+Armitage's interest deepened. "There are chaps like that. I've heard the
+old man talk about a stone getting hold of a man sometimes--mesmerising
+him. I believe the old man's a bit like that himself, you know. There
+are two or three pieces of opal he's got from Fallen Star nothing on
+earth will induce him to part with. We wanted a stone for an Indian
+nabob's show tiara--something of that sort--not long ago. I fancied that
+big knobby we got from George Woods; do you remember? But the old man
+wouldn't part with it; not he! Said he'd see all the nabobs in the world
+in--Hades, before they got that opal out of him!"
+
+Michael laughed. The thought of hard-shelled old Dawe Armitage hoarding
+opals tickled him immensely.
+
+"Fact," Armitage continued. "He's got a couple of stones he's like a kid
+over--takes them out, rubs them, and plays with them. And you should
+hear him if I try to get them from him.... A packet of crackers isn't in
+it with the old man."
+
+"The boys'd like to hear that," Michael said.
+
+"There's no doubt about the fascination the stuff exercises," John
+Armitage went on. "You people say, once an opal-miner, always an
+opal-miner; but I say, once an opal-buyer, always an opal-buyer. I
+wasn't keen about this business when I came into it ... but it's got me
+all right. I can't see myself coming to this God-forsaken part of the
+world of yours for anything but black opal...."
+
+That expression, whimsical and enigmatic, which was never very far from
+them, had grown in Michael's eyes. He began to sense a motive in
+Armitage's seemingly casual talk, and to understand why the opal-buyer
+was so friendly.
+
+"The old man tells a story," Armitage continued, "of that robbery up at
+Blue Pigeon. You know the yarn I mean ... about sticking up a coach when
+there was a good parcel of opal on board. Somebody did the bush-ranging
+trick and got away with the opal.... The thief was caught, and the stuff
+put for safety in an iron safe at the post office. And sight of the
+opals corrupted one of the men in the post office.... He was caught ...
+and then a mounted trooper took charge of them. And the stuff bewitched
+him, too.... He tried to get away with it...."
+
+"That's right," Michael murmured serenely.
+
+Armitage eyed him keenly. He could scarcely believe the story he had got
+from Jun, that the second parcel of stones had been exchanged after
+Charley got them, or that they had been changed on Paul before Charley
+got them from him.
+
+Michael guessed Armitage was sounding him by talking so much of
+Rouminof's stones and the robbery. He wondered what Armitage
+knew--whether he knew anything which would attach him, Michael, to
+knowledge of what had become of Paul's stones. There was always the
+chance that Charley had recognised some of the opal in the parcel
+substituted for Paul's, although none of the scraps were significant
+enough to be remembered, Michael thought, and Charley was never keen
+enough to have taken any notice of the sun-flash and fragments of
+coloured potch they had taken out of the mine during the year. The brown
+knobby, which Michael had kept for something of a sentimental reason,
+because it was the first stone he had found on Fallen Star, Charley had
+never seen.
+
+But, probably, he remarked to himself, Armitage was only trying to get
+information from him because he thought that Michael Brady was the most
+likely man on the Ridge to know what had become of the stones, or to
+guess what might have become of them.
+
+As they walked and talked, these thoughts were an undercurrent in
+Michael's mind. And the undercurrent of John Lincoln Armitage's mind,
+through all his amiable and seemingly inconsequential gossip, was not
+whether Michael had taken the stones, but why he had, and what had
+become of them.
+
+Armitage could not, at first, bring himself to credit the half-formed
+suspicion which that quiver of Michael's face, when he had spoken of
+what Jun said, had given him. Yet they were all more or less mad, people
+who dealt with opal, he believed. It might not be for the sake of profit
+Michael had taken the stones, if he had taken them--there was still a
+shadow of doubt in his mind. John Armitage knew that any man on the
+Ridge would have knocked him down for harbouring such a thought. Michael
+was the little father, the knight without fear and without a stain, of
+the Ridge. He reflected that Michael had never brought him much stone.
+His father had often talked of Michael Brady and the way he had stuck to
+gouging opal with precious little luck for many years. The parcel he had
+sold that day was perhaps the best Michael had traded with Armitage and
+Son for a long time. John Armitage wondered if any man could work so
+long without having found good stuff, without having realised the hopes
+which had materialised for so many other men of the Ridge.
+
+They went over the new rush, inspected "prospects," and yarned with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, who had pegged out a claim there.
+But as Armitage and he walked back to the town discussing the outlook of
+the new field and the colour and potch some of the men already had to
+show, Michael found himself in the undertow of an uneasy imagination. He
+protested to himself that he was unnecessarily apprehensive, that all
+Armitage was trying to get from him was any information which would
+throw light on the disappearance of Paul's stones. And Armitage was
+wondering whether Michael might not be an opal miser--whether the
+mysterious fires of black opal might not have eaten into his brain as
+they had into the brains of good men before him.
+
+If they had, and if he had found the flaw in Michael's armour, John
+Armitage realised that the way to fulfilment of his schemes for buying
+the mines and working them on up-to-date lines, was opened up. If
+Michael could be proved unfaithful to the law and ideals of Ridge, John
+Armitage believed the men's faith in the fabric of their common life
+would fall to pieces. He envisaged the eating of moths of doubt and
+disappointment into the philosophy of the Ridge, the disintegration of
+ideas which had held the men together, and made them stand together in
+matters of common interest and service, as one man. He had almost
+assured himself that if Michael was not the thief and hoarder of the
+lost opals, he at least knew something of them, when a ripple of
+laughter and gust of singing were flung into the air not far from them.
+
+To Armitage it was as though some blithe spirit was mocking the
+discovery he thought he had made, and the fruition it promised those
+secret hopes of his.
+
+"It's Sophie," Michael said.
+
+They had come across the Ridge to the back of the huts. The light was
+failing; the sky, from the earth upwards where the sunset had been, the
+frail, limpid green of a shallow lagoon, deepening to blue, darker than
+indigo. The crescent of a moon, faintly gilded, swung in the sky above
+the dark shapes of the huts which stood by the track to the old
+Flash-in-the-pan rush. The smoke of sandal-wood fires burning in the
+huts was in the air. A goat bell tinkled....
+
+Potch and Sophie were talking behind the hut somewhere; their
+exclamations, laughter, a phrase or two of the song Sophie was singing
+went through the quietness.
+
+And it was all this he wanted to change! John Armitage caught the
+revelation of the moment as he stood to listen to Sophie singing. He
+understood as he had never done what the Ridge stood for--association of
+people with the earth, their attachment to the primary needs of life,
+the joyous flight of youthful spirits, this quiet happiness and peace at
+evening when the work of the day was done.
+
+As he came from the dumps, having said good-night to Michael, he saw
+Sophie, a slight, girlish figure, on the track ahead of him. Her dress
+flickered and flashed through the trees beside the track; it was a
+wraithlike streak in the twilight. She was taking the milk down to
+Newton's, and singing to herself as she walked. John Armitage quickened
+his steps to overtake her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The visit of an opal-buyer ruffled ever so slightly the still surface of
+life on the Ridge. When Armitage had gone, he was talked of for a few
+days; the stones he had bought, the prices he had given for them, were
+discussed. Some of his sayings, and the stories he had told, were
+laughed over. Tricks of speech he had used, tried at first half in fun,
+were adopted and dropped into the vernacular of the mines.
+
+"Sure!" the men said as easily as an American; and sometimes, talking
+with each other: "You've got another think coming to you"; or, "See,
+you've got your nerve with you!"
+
+For a night or two Michael went over the books and papers John Armitage
+had brought him. At first he just glanced here and there through them,
+and then he began to read systematically, and light glimmered in his
+windows far into the night. He soaked the contents of two or three
+reviews and several newspapers before giving himself to a book on
+international finance in which old Armitage had written his name.
+
+Michael thrilled to the stimulus of the book, the intellectual
+excitement of the ideas it brought forth. He lived tumultuously within
+the four bare walls of his room, arguing with himself, the author, the
+world at large. Wrong and injustice enthroned, he saw in this book
+describing the complexities of national and international systems of
+finance, the subtle weaving and interweaving of webs of the
+money-makers.
+
+This was not the effect Dawe Armitage had expected his book to have; he
+had expected to overawe and daze Michael with its impressive arraignment
+of figures and its subtle and bewildering generalisations on credit and
+foreign exchange. Michael's mind had cut through the fog raised by the
+financier's jargon to the few small facts beneath it all. Neither dazed
+nor dazzled, his brain had swung true to the magnetic meridian of his
+faith. Far from the book having shown him the folly and futility of any
+attempt against the Money Power, as Dawe Armitage, in a moment of
+freakish humour had imagined it might, it had filled him with such an
+intensity of fury that for a moment he believed he alone could
+accomplish the regeneration of the world; that like St. Michael of old
+he would go forth and slay the dragon, this chimera which was ravaging
+the world, drawing the blood, beauty, and joy of youth, the peace and
+wisdom of age; breaking manhood and womanhood with its merciless claws.
+
+But falling back on a consciousness of self, as with broken wings he
+realised he was neither archangel, nor super-man, but Michael Brady, an
+ordinary, ill-educated man who read and dreamed a great deal, and gouged
+for black opal on Fallen Star Ridge. He was a little bitter, and more
+humble, for having entertained that radiant vision of himself.
+
+John Armitage had been gone from the Ridge some weeks when Michael went
+over in his mind every phase and phrase of the talk they had had. His
+lips took a slight smile; it crept into his eyes, as he reviewed what he
+had said and what John Armitage had said, smoking unconsciously.
+
+Absorbed in his reading, he had thought little of John Armitage and that
+walk to the new rush with him. Occasionally the memory of it had
+nickered and glanced through his mind; but he was so obsessed by the
+ideas this new reading had stirred, that he went about his everyday jobs
+in the mine and in the hut, absent-mindedly, automatically, because they
+were things he was in the habit of doing. Potch watched him anxiously;
+Rouminof growled to him; Sophie laughed and flitted and sang, before his
+eyes; but Michael had been only distantly conscious of what was going on
+about him. George Woods and Watty guessed what was the matter; they knew
+the symptoms of these reading and brooding bouts Michael was subject to.
+The moods wore off when they put questions likely to draw information
+and he began to talk out and discuss what he had been reading with them.
+
+He had talked this one off, when suddenly he remembered how John
+Armitage's eyes had dived into his during that walk to the new rush. He
+could see Armitage's eyes again, keen grey eyes they were. And his
+hands. Michael remembered how Armitage's hands had played over the opals
+he had taken to show him. John Lincoln Armitage had the shrewd eyes of
+any man who lives by his wits--lawyer, pickpocket, politician, or
+financier--he decided; and the fine white hands of a woman. Only Michael
+did not know any woman whose hands were as finely shaped and as white as
+John Armitage's. Images of his clean-shaven, hot-house face of a city
+dweller, slightly burned by his long journey on land and sea, recurred
+to him; expressions, gestures, inflections of voice.
+
+Michael smiled to himself in communion with his thoughts as he went over
+the substance of Armitage's conversation, dissecting and shredding it
+critically. The more he thought of what Armitage had said, the more he
+found himself believing John Armitage had some information which caused
+him to think that he, Michael, knew something of the whereabouts of the
+stones. He could not convince himself Armitage believed he actually held
+the stones, or that he had stolen them. Armitage had certainly given him
+an opportunity to sell on the quiet if he had the stones; but his manner
+was too tentative, mingled with a subtle respect, to carry the notion of
+an overt suggestion of the sort, or the possession of incriminating
+knowledge. Then there was the story of the old Cliffs robbery. Michael
+wondered why Mr. Armitage had gone over that. On general principles,
+doubting the truth of his long run of bad luck--or from curiosity
+merely, perhaps. But Michael did not deceive himself that Armitage might
+have told the story in order to discover whether there was something of
+the miser in him, and whether--if Michael had anything to do with the
+taking of Paul's opals--he might prefer to hold rather than sell them.
+
+Michael was amused at the thought of himself as a miser. He went into
+the matter as honestly as he could. He knew the power opal had with him,
+the fascination of the search for it, which had brought him from the
+Cliffs to the Ridge, and which had held him to the place, although the
+life and ideas it had come to represent meant more to him now than black
+opal. Still, he was an opal miner, and through all his lean years on the
+Ridge he had been upheld by the thought of the stone he would find some
+day.
+
+He had dreamed of that stone. It had haunted his idle thoughts for
+years. He had seen it in the dark of the mine, deep in the ruddy earth,
+a mirror of jet with fires swarming, red, green, and gold in it.
+
+Dreams of the great opal he would one day discover had comforted him
+when storekeepers were asking for settlement of long-standing accounts.
+He did not altogether believe he would find it, that wonderful piece of
+black opal; but he dreamed, like a child, of finding it.
+
+As he thought of it, and of John Armitage, the smile in his eyes
+broadened. If Armitage knew of that stone of his dreams, he would
+certainly think his surmise was correct and believe that Michael Brady
+was a miser. But he had held the dream in a dark and distant corner of
+his consciousness; had it out to mood and brood over only at rare and
+distant intervals; and no one was aware of its existence.
+
+Black opal had no more passionate lover than himself, Michael knew. He
+trembled with instinctive eagerness, reverence, and delight, when he saw
+a piece of beautiful stone; his eyes devoured it. But there was nothing
+personal in his love. He might have been high priest of some mysterious
+divinity; when she revealed herself he was consumed with adoration. In a
+vague, whimsical way Michael realised this of himself, and yet, too,
+that if ever he held the stone of his dreams in his hands, he would be
+filled with a glorious and flooding sense of accomplishment; an ecstasy
+would transport him. It would be beyond all value in money, that stone;
+but he would not want to keep it to gaze on alone, he would want to give
+it to the world as a thing of consummate beauty, for everybody to enjoy
+the sight of and adore.
+
+No, Michael assured himself, he was not a miser. And, he reflected, he
+had not even looked at Paul's stones. For all he knew, the stones Paul
+had been showing that night at Newton's might have been removed from the
+box before he left Newton's. Someone might have done to Paul what he,
+Michael, had done to Charley Heathfield, as Armitage had suggested.
+Paul's little tin box was well enough known. He had been opening and
+showing his stones at Newton's a long time before the night when Jun had
+been induced to divide spoils. It would be just as well, Michael
+decided, to see what the box did contain; and he promised himself that
+he would open it and look over the stones--some evening. But he was not
+inclined to hurry the engagement with himself to do so.
+
+He had been glad enough to forget that he had anything to do with that
+box of Paul's: it still lay among the books where he had thrown it. The
+memory of the night on which he had seen Charley taking Paul home, and
+of all that had happened afterwards, was blurred in an ugly vision for
+him. It had become like the memory of a nightmare. He could scarcely
+believe he had done what he had done; yet he knew he had. He drew a deep
+breath of relief when he realised everything had worked out well so far.
+
+Paul was working with him; they had won that little bit of luck to carry
+them on; Sophie was growing up healthily, happily, on the Ridge. She was
+growing so quickly, too. Within the last few months Michael had noticed
+a subtle change in her. There was an indefinable air of a flower
+approaching its bloom about her. People were beginning to talk of her
+looks. Michael had seen eyes following her admiringly. Sophie walked
+with a light, lithe grace; she was slight and straight, not tall really,
+but she looked tall in the black dress she still wore and which came to
+her ankles. There was less of the eager sprite about her, a suggestion
+of some sobering experience in her eyes--the shadow of her mother's
+death--which had banished her unthinking and careless childhood. But the
+eyes still had the purity and radiance of a child's. And she seemed
+happy--the happiest thing on the Ridge, Michael thought. The cadence of
+her laughter and a ripple of her singing were never long out of the air
+about her father's hut. Wherever she went, people said now: "Sing to us,
+Sophie!"
+
+And she sang, whenever she was asked, without the slightest
+self-consciousness, and always those songs from old operas, or some of
+the folk-songs her mother had taught her, which were the only songs she
+knew.
+
+Michael had seen a number of neighbours in the township and their wives
+and children sitting round in one or other of their homes while Sophie
+sang. He had seen a glow of pleasure transfuse people as they listened
+to her pure and ringing notes. Singing, Sophie seemed actually to
+diffuse happiness, her own joy in the melodies she flung into the air.
+Oh, yes, Sophie was happy singing, Michael could permit himself to
+believe now. She could make people happy by her singing. He had feared
+her singing as a will-o'-the-wisp which would lead her away from him and
+the Ridge. But when he heard her enthralling people in the huts with it,
+he was not afraid.
+
+Paul sometimes moaned about the chances she was missing, and that she
+could be singing in theatres to great audiences. Sophie herself laughed
+at him. She was quite content with the Ridge, it seemed, and to sing to
+people on their verandas in the summer evenings or round the fires in
+the winter. She might have had greater and finer audiences, the Ridge
+folk said, but she could not have had more appreciative ones.
+
+If she was singing in the town, Michael always went to bring her home,
+and he was as pleased as Sophie to hear people say:
+
+"You're not taking her away yet, Michael? The night's a pup!" or,
+"Another ... just one more song, Sophie!"
+
+And if she had been singing at Newton's, Michael liked to see the men
+come to the door of the bar, holding up their glasses, and to hear their
+call, as Sophie and he went down the road:
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+"Skin off y'r nose!"
+
+"All the luck!"
+
+"Best respecks, Sophie!"
+
+When Sophie did not know what to do with herself all the hours Michael
+and Potch and her father were away at the mines, Michael had showed her
+how to use her mother's cutting-wheel. He taught her all he knew of
+opals, and Sophie was delighted with the idea of learning to cut and
+polish gems as her mother had.
+
+Michael gave her rough stones to practise on, and in no time she learnt
+to handle them skilfully. George, Watty, and the Crosses brought her
+some gems to face and polish for them, and they were so pleased with her
+work that they promised to give her most of their stones to cut and
+polish. She had two or three accidents, and was very crestfallen about
+them; but Michael declared they were part of the education of an
+opal-cutter and would teach her more about her work than anyone could
+tell her.
+
+To Michael those days were of infinite blessedness. They proved again
+and again the right of what he had done. At first he was vaguely alarmed
+and uneasy when he saw younger men of the Ridge, Roy O'Mara or Bully
+Bryant, talking or walking with Sophie, or he saw her laughing and
+talking with them. There was something about Sophie's bearing with them
+which disturbed him--a subtle, unconscious witchery. Then he explained
+it to himself. He guessed that the woman in her was waking, or awake. On
+second thoughts he was not jealous or uneasy. It was natural enough the
+boys should like Sophie, that she should like them; he recognised the
+age-old call of sex in it all. And if Sophie loved and married a man of
+the Ridge, the future would be clear, Michael thought. He could give
+Paul the opals, and her husband could watch over Sophie and see no harm
+came to her if she left the Ridge.
+
+The uneasiness stirred again, though, one afternoon when he found her
+walking from the tank paddock with Arthur Henty beside her. There was a
+startled consciousness about them both when Michael joined them and
+walked along the road with them. He had seen Sophie talking to Henty in
+and about the township before, but it had not occurred to him there was
+anything unusual about that. Sophie had gone about as she liked and
+talked to whom she liked since she was a child. She was on good terms
+with everyone in the countryside. No one knew where she went or what she
+did in the long day while the men were at the mines. Because the
+carillon of her laughter flew through those quiet days, Michael
+instinctively had put up a prayer of thanksgiving. Sophie was happy, he
+thought. He did not ask himself why; he was grateful; but a vague
+disquiet made itself felt when he remembered how he had found her
+walking with Arthur Henty, and the number of times he had seen her
+talking to Arthur Henty at Chassy Robb's store, or on the tracks near
+the town.
+
+Fallen Star folk knew Arthur better than any of the Hentys. For years he
+had been coming through the township with cattle or sheep, and had put
+up at Newton's with stockmen on his way home, or when he was going to an
+out-station beyond the Ridge.
+
+His father, James Henty, had taken up land in the back-country long
+before opal was found on Fallen Star Ridge. He had worked half a million
+square acres on an arm of the Darling in the days before runs were
+fenced, with only a few black shepherds and one white man, old Bill
+M'Gaffy, to help him for the first year or two. But, after an era of
+extraordinary prosperity, a series of droughts and misfortunes had
+overwhelmed the station and thrown it on the tender mercies of the
+banks.
+
+The Hentys lived much as they had always done. They entertained as
+usual, and there was no hint of a wolf near the door in the hearty,
+good-natured, and liberal hospitality of the homestead. A constitutional
+optimism enabled James Henty to believe Warria would ultimately throw
+off its debts and the good old days return. Only at the end of a season,
+when year after year he found there was no likelihood of being able to
+meet even the yearly interest on mortgages, did he lose some of his
+sanguine belief in the station's ability to right itself, and become
+irritable beyond endurance, blaming any and everyone within hail for the
+unsatisfactory estimates.
+
+But usually Arthur bore the brunt of these outbursts. Arthur Henty had
+gone from school to work on the station at the beginning of Warria's
+decline from the years of plenty, and had borne the burden and not a
+little of the blame for heavy losses during the droughts, without ever
+attempting to shift or deny the responsibilities his father put upon
+him.
+
+"It does the old man good to have somebody to go off at," he explained
+indifferently to his sister, Elizabeth, when she called him all the
+fools under the sun for taking so much blackguarding sitting down.
+
+Although James Henty's only son and manager of the station under his
+father's autocratic rule, Arthur Henty lived and worked among Warria
+stockmen as though he were one of them. His clothes were as worn and
+heavy with dust as theirs; his hat was as weathered, his hands as
+hard--sunburnt and broken with sores when barcoo was in the air. A
+quiet, unassuming man, he never came the "Boss" over them. He passed on
+the old man's orders, and, for the rest, worked as hard as any man on
+the station.
+
+He had never done anything remarkable that anyone could remember; but
+the men he worked with liked him. Everybody rather liked Arthur Henty,
+although nobody enthused about him. He had done man's work ever since he
+was a boy, with no more than a couple of years' schooling; he had done
+it steadily and as well as any other young man in the back-country. But
+there was a curious, almost feminine weakness in him somewhere. The men
+did not understand it. They thought he was too supine with his father;
+that he ought to stand up to him more.
+
+Arthur Henty preferred being out on the plains with them rather than in
+at the home station, the men said. He looked happier when he was with
+them; he whistled to them as they lay yarning round the camp-fire before
+turning in. They had never heard anything like his whistling. He seemed
+to be playing some small, fine, invisible flute as he gave them
+old-fashioned airs, ragtime tunes, songs from the comic operas, and
+miscellaneous melodies he had heard his sisters singing. No one had
+heard him whistling like that at the station. Out on the plains, or in
+the bar at Newton's, he was a different man. Once or twice when he had
+been drinking, and a glass or two of beer or whisky had got to his head,
+he had shown more the spirit that it was thought he possessed--as if,
+when the conscious will was relaxed, a submerged self had leapt forth.
+
+Men who had known him a long time wondered whether time would not
+strengthen the fibres of that submerged self; but they had seen Arthur
+Henty lose the elastic, hopeful outlook of youth, and sink gradually
+into the place assigned him by his father, at first dutifully, then with
+an indifference which slowly became apathy.
+
+Mrs. Henty and the girls exclaimed with dismay and disgust when they
+returned to the station after two years in town, and saw how rough and
+unkempt-looking Arthur had become. They insisted on his having his hair
+and beard cut at once, and that he should manicure his finger-nails.
+After he had dressed for dinner and was clipped and shaved, they said he
+looked more as if he belonged to them; but he was a shy, awkward boor,
+and they did not know what to make of him. In his mother's hands, Arthur
+was still a child, though, and she brought him back to the fold of the
+family, drew his resistance--an odd, sullen resentment he had acquired
+for the niceties of what she called "civilised society"--and made him
+amenable to its discipline.
+
+Elizabeth was twice the man her brother was, James Henty was fond of
+declaring. She had all the vigour and dash he would have liked his son
+to possess. "My daughter Elizabeth," he said as frequently as possible,
+and was always talking of her feats with horses, and the clear-headed
+and clever way she went about doing things, and getting her own way on
+all and every occasion.
+
+When the men rounded buck-jumpers into the yards on a Sunday morning,
+Elizabeth would ride any Chris Este, the head stockman, let her near;
+but Arthur never attempted to ride any of the warrigals. He steered
+clear of horse-breaking and rough horses whenever he could, although he
+broke and handled his own horses. In a curious way he shared a secret
+feeling of his mother's for horses. She had never been able to overcome
+an indefinable apprehension of the raw, half-broken horses of the
+back-country, although her nerve had carried her through years of
+acquaintance with them, innumerable accidents and misadventures, and
+hundreds of miles of journeys at their mercy; and Arthur, although he
+had lived and worked among horses as long as he could remember, had not
+been able to lose something of the same feeling. His sister, suspecting
+it, was frankly contemptuous; so was his father. It was the reason of
+Henty's low estimate of his son's character generally. And the rumour
+that Arthur Henty was shy of tough propositions in horses--"afraid of
+horses"--had a good deal to do with the never more than luke-warm
+respect men of the station and countryside had for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Sophie often met Arthur Henty on the road just out of the town. Usually
+it was going to or coming from the tank paddock, or in the paddock, on
+Friday afternoons, when he had been into Budda for the sales or to truck
+sheep or cattle. They did not arrange to meet, but Sophie expected to
+see Arthur when she went to the tank paddock, and she knew he expected
+to find her there. She did not know why she liked being with Arthur
+Henty so much, or why they were such golden occasions when she met him.
+They did not talk much when they were together. Their eyes met; they
+knew each other through their eyes--a something remote from themselves
+was always working through their eyes. It drew them together.
+
+When she was with Arthur Henty, Sophie knew she was filled with an
+ineffable gaiety, a thing so delicate and ethereal that as she sang she
+seemed to be filling the air with it. And Henty looked at her sometimes
+as if he had discovered a new, strange, and beautiful creature, a
+butterfly, or gnat, with gauzy, resplendent wings, whose beauty he was
+bewildered and overcome by. The last time they had been together he had
+longed to draw her to him and kiss her so that the virgin innocence
+would leave her eyes; but fear or some conscientious scruple had
+restrained him. He had been reluctant to awaken her, to change the
+quality of her feeling towards him. He had let her go with a lingering
+handclasp. In all their tender intimacy there had been no more of the
+love-making of the flesh than the subtle interweavings of instincts and
+fibres which this handclasp gave. Ridge folk had seen them walking
+together. They had seen that subtle inclination of Sophie's and Arthur's
+figures towards each other as they walked--the magnetic, gentle,
+irresistible swaying towards each other--and the gossips began to
+whisper and nod smilingly when they came across Arthur and Sophie on the
+road. Sophie at first went her way unconscious of the whispers and
+smiles. Then words were dropped slyly--people teased her about Arthur.
+She realised they thought he was her sweetheart. Was he? She began to
+wonder and think about it. He must be; she came to the conclusion
+happily. Only sweethearts went for walks together as she and Arthur did.
+
+"My mother says," Mirry Flail remarked one day, "she wouldn't be a bit
+surprised to see you marrying Arthur Henty, Sophie, and going over to
+live at Warria."
+
+"Goodness!" Sophie exclaimed, surprised and delighted that anybody
+should think such a thing.
+
+"Marry Arthur Henty and go over and live at Warria." Her mind, like a
+delighted little beaver, began to build on the idea. It did not alter
+her bearing with Arthur. She was less shy and thoughtful with him,
+perhaps; but he did not notice it, and she was carelessly and childishly
+content to have found the meaning of why she and Arthur liked meeting
+and talking together. People only felt as she and Arthur felt about each
+other if they were going to marry and live "happy ever after," she
+supposed.
+
+When Michael was aware of what was being said, and of the foundation
+there was for gossip, he was considerably disturbed. He went to talk to
+Maggie Grant about it. She, he thought, would know more of what was in
+the wind than he did, and be better able to gauge what the consequences
+were likely to be to Sophie.
+
+"I've been bothered about it myself, Michael," she said. "But neither
+you nor me can live Sophie's life for her.... I don't see we can do
+anything. His crowd'll do all the interfering, if I know anything about
+them."
+
+"I suppose so," Michael agreed.
+
+"And, as far as I can see, it won't do any good our butting in," Mrs.
+Grant continued. "You know Sophie's got a will of her own ... and she's
+always had a good deal her own way. I've talked round the thing to her
+... and I think she understands."
+
+"You've always been real good to her, Maggie," Michael said gratefully.
+
+"As to that"--the lines of Maggie Grant's broad, plain face rucked to
+the strength of her feeling--"I've done what I could. But then, I'm fond
+of her--fond of her as you are, Michael. That's saying a lot. And you
+know what I thought of her mother. But it's no use us thinking we can
+buy Sophie's experience for her. She's got to live ... and she's got to
+suffer."
+
+Busy with her opal-cutting, and happy with her thoughts, Sophie had no
+idea of the misgiving Michael and Maggie Grant had on her account, or
+that anyone was disturbed and unhappy because of her happiness. She sang
+as she worked. The whirr of her wheel, the chirr of sandstone and potch
+as they sheared away, made a small, busy noise, like the drone of an
+insect, in her house all day; and every day some of the men brought her
+stones to face and fix up. She had acquired such a reputation for making
+the most of stones committed to her care that men came from the Three
+Mile and from the Punti with opals for her to rough-out and polish.
+
+Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara were often at Rouminof's in the evening, and
+they heard about it when they looked in at Newton's later on, now and
+then.
+
+"You must be striking it pretty good down at the Punti, Bull," Watty
+Frost ventured genially one night. "See you takin' stones for Sophie to
+fix up pretty near every evenin'."
+
+"There's some as sees too much," Bully remarked significantly.
+
+"What you say, you say y'rself, Bull." Watty pulled thoughtfully on his
+pipe, but his little blue eyes squinted over his fat, red-grained
+cheeks, not in the least abashed.
+
+"I do," Bull affirmed. "And them as sees too much ... won't see much ...
+when I'm through with 'em."
+
+"Mmm," Watty brooded. "That's a good thing to know, isn't it?"
+
+He and the rest of the men continued to "sling off," as they said, at
+Bully and Roy O'Mara as they saw fit, nevertheless.
+
+The summer had been a mild one; it passed almost without a ripple of
+excitement. There were several hot days, but cool changes blew over, and
+the rains came before people had given up dreading the heat. Several new
+prospects had been made, and there were expectations that holes sunk on
+claims to the north of the Punti Rush would mean the opening up of a new
+field.
+
+Michael and Potch worked on in their old claim with very little to show
+for their pains. Paul had slackened and lost interest as soon as the
+fitful gleams of opal they were on had cut out. Michael was not the man
+to manage Rummy, the men said.
+
+Potch and Michael, however, seemed satisfied enough to regard Paul more
+or less as a sleeping partner; to do the work of the mine and share with
+him for keeping out of the way.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if they wouldn't rather have his room than his
+company," Watty ventured, "and they just go shares with him so as
+things'll be all right for Sophie."
+
+"That's right!" Pony-Fence agreed.
+
+The year had made a great difference to Potch. Doing man's work, going
+about on equal terms with the men, the change of status from being a
+youth at anybody's beck and call to doing work which entitled him to the
+taken-for-granted dignity of being an independent individual, had made a
+man of him. His frame had thickened and hardened. He looked years older
+than he was really, and took being Michael's mate very seriously.
+
+Michael had put up a shelter for himself and his mates, thinking that
+Potch and Paul might not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter; but
+George and Watty were loth to lose Michael's word from their councils.
+They called him over nearly every day, on one pretext or another.
+Sometimes his mates followed Michael. But Rouminof soon wearied of a
+discussion on anything except opal, and wandered off to the other
+shelters to discover whether anybody had struck anything good that
+morning. Potch threw himself on the ground beside Michael when Michael
+had invited him to go across to George and Watty's shelter with him, and
+after a while the men did not notice him there any more than Michael's
+shadow. He lay beside Michael, quite still, throwing crumbs to the birds
+which came round the shelter, and did not seem to be listening to what
+was said. But always when a man was heatedly and with some difficulty
+trying to disentangle his mind on a subject of argument, he found
+Potch's eyes on him, steady and absorbing, and knew from their intent
+expression that Potch was following all he had to say with quick, grave
+interest.
+
+Some people were staying at Warria during the winter, and when there was
+going to be a dance at the station Mrs. Henty wrote to ask Rouminof to
+play for it. She could manage the piano music, she said, and if he would
+tune his violin for the occasion, they would have a splendid band for
+the young people. And, her letter had continued: "We should be so
+pleased if your daughter would come with you."
+
+Sophie was wildly excited at the invitation. She had been to Ridge race
+balls for the last two or three years, but she had never even seen
+Warria. Her father had played at a Warria ball once, years before, when
+she was little; but she and her mother had not gone with him to the
+station. She remembered quite well when he came home, how he had told
+them of all the wonderful things there had been to eat at the
+ball--stuffed chickens and crystallised fruit, iced cakes, and all
+manner of sweets.
+
+Sophie had heard of the Warria homestead since she was a child, of its
+orange garden and great, cool rooms. It had loomed like the enchanted
+castle of a legend through all her youthful imaginings. And now, as she
+remembered what Mirry Flail had said, she was filled with delight and
+excitement at the thought of seeing it.
+
+She wondered whether Arthur had asked his mother to invite her to the
+dance. She thought he must have; and with naïve conceit imagined happily
+that Arthur's mother must want to know her because she knew that Arthur
+liked her. And Arthur's sisters--it would be nice to know them and to
+talk to them. She went over and over in her mind the talks she would
+have with Polly and Nina, and perhaps Elizabeth Henty, some day.
+
+A few weeks before the ball she had seen Arthur riding through the
+township with his sisters and a girl who was staying at Warria. He had
+not seen her, and Sophie was glad, because suddenly she had felt shy and
+confused at the thought of talking to him before a lot of people.
+Besides, they all looked so jolly, and were having such a good time,
+that she would not have known what to say to Arthur, or to his sisters,
+just then.
+
+When she told Mrs. Woods and Martha M'Cready about the invitation, they
+smiled and teased her.
+
+"Oh, that tells a tale!" they said.
+
+Sophie laughed. She felt silly, and she was blushing, they said. But she
+was very happy at having been asked to the ball. For weeks before she
+found herself singing "Caro Nome" as she sat at work, went about the
+house, or with Potch after the goats in the late afternoon.
+
+Arthur liked that song better than any other, and its melody had become
+mingled and interwoven with all her thoughts of him.
+
+The twilight was deepening, on the evening a few days before the dance,
+when Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara came up to Rouminof's hut, calling
+Sophie. She was washing milk tins and tea dishes, and went to the door
+singing to herself, a candle throwing a fluttering light before her.
+
+"Your father sent us along for you, Sophie," Bully explained. "There's a
+bit of a celebration on at Newton's to-night, and the boys want you to
+sing for them."
+
+Sophie turned from them, going into the house to put down her candle.
+
+"All right," she said, pleased at the idea.
+
+Michael came into the hut through, the back door. From his own room he
+had heard Bully calling and then explaining why he and Roy O'Mara were
+there.
+
+"Don't go, Sophie," Michael said.
+
+"But why, Michael?" Disappointment clouded Sophie's first bright
+pleasure that the men had sent for her to sing to them, and her
+eagerness to do as they asked.
+
+"It's not right ... not good for you to sing down there when the boys
+'ve been drinking," Michael said, unable to express clearly his
+opposition to her singing at Newton's.
+
+"Don't be a spoil-sport, Michael," the boys at the door called when they
+saw he was trying to dissuade Sophie.
+
+"Come along, Sophie," Roy called.
+
+She looked from Bully and Roy to Michael, hesitating. Theirs was the
+call of youth to youth, of youth to gaiety and adventure. She turned
+away from Michael.
+
+"I'm going, Michael," she said quickly, and swung to the door. Michael
+heard her laughing as she went off along the track with Bully and Roy.
+
+"Did you know Mr. Armitage is up?" Roy stopped to call back.
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"Came up by the coach this evening," Roy said, and ran after Bully and
+Sophie.
+
+It was a rowdy night at Newton's. Shearing was just over at Warria
+sheds, and men with cheques to burn were crowding the bar and passages.
+Sophie was hailed with cheers as she neared the veranda. Her father
+staggered out towards her, waving his arms crazily. Sophie was surprised
+when she found the crowd waiting for her. There were so many strangers
+in it--rough men with heavy, inflamed faces--hardly one she knew among
+them. A murmur and boisterous clamour of voices came from the bar. The
+men on the veranda made way for her.
+
+Her heart quailed when she looked into the big earthen-floored bar, and
+saw its crowd of rough-haired, sun-red men, still wearing the clothes
+they had been working in, grey flannel shirts and dungarees,
+blood-splashed, grimy, and greasy with the "yolk" of fleeces they had
+been handling. The smell of sheep and the sweat of long days of shearing
+and struggling with restless beasts were in the air, with fumes of rank
+tobacco and the flat, stale smell of beer. The hanging lamp over the bar
+threw only a dim light through the fog of smoke the men had put up, and
+which from the doorway completely obscured Peter Newton where he stood
+behind the bar.
+
+Sophie hung back.
+
+"I'm not going in there," she said.
+
+"Did you know Mr. Armitage was up?" Roy asked.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+He explained how Mr. Armitage had come unexpectedly by the coach that
+evening. Sophie saw him among the men on the veranda.
+
+"I'll sing here," she told Bully and Roy, leaning against a veranda
+post.
+
+She was a little afraid. But she knew she had always pleased Ridge folk
+when she sang to them, so she put back her head and sang a song of youth
+and youthful happiness she had sung on the veranda at Newton's before.
+It did not matter that the words were in Italian, which nobody
+understood. The dancing joyousness and laughing music of her notes
+carried the men with them. The applause was noisy and enthusiastic.
+Sophie laughed, delighted, yet almost afraid of her success.
+
+Big and broad-shouldered, Bully Bryant stood at a little distance from
+her, in front of everybody. Arthur Henty, leaning against the wall near
+the door of the bar, smiled softly, foolishly, when she glanced at him.
+He had been drinking, too, and was watching, and listening to her, with
+the same look in his eyes as Bully.
+
+Sophie caught the excitement about her. An exhilaration of pleasure
+thrilled her. It was crude wine which went to her head, this admiration
+and applause of strangers and of the men she had known since she was a
+child. There was a wonderful elation in having them beg her to sing.
+They looked actually hungry to hear her. She found Arthur Henty's eyes
+resting on her with the expression she knew in them. An imp of
+recklessness entered her. Her father beat the air as if he were leading
+an orchestra, and she threw herself into the Shadow Song, singing with
+an abandonment that carried her beyond consciousness of her
+surroundings.
+
+She sang again and again, and always in response to an eager tumult of
+cheers, thudding of feet, joggling of glasses, chorus of broken cries:
+"En-core, encore, Sophie!" An instinct of mischief and coquetry urging,
+she glanced sometimes at Arthur, sometimes at Bully. Then with a glance
+at Arthur, and for a last number, she began "Caro Nome," and gave to her
+singing all the glamour and tenderness, the wild sweetness, the aria had
+come to have for her, because she had sung it so often to Arthur when
+they met and were walking along the road together. She was so carried
+away by her singing, she did not realise what had happened until
+afterwards.
+
+She only knew that suddenly, roughly, she was grasped and lifted. She
+saw Bully's face flaming before her own, gazed with terror and horror
+into his eyes. His face was thrown against hers--and obliterated.
+
+"Are you all right?" someone asked after a moment.
+
+Awaking from the daze and bewilderment, Sophie looked up.
+
+John Armitage was standing beside her; Potch nearby. They were on the
+outskirts of the crowd on the veranda.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+The men on the veranda had broken into two parties; one was surging
+towards the bar door, the other moving off down the road out of the
+town. Michael came towards her.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," he said.
+
+"Oh, Potch looked after her. I couldn't get near," John Armitage said.
+
+An extraordinary quiet took possession of Sophie. When she was going
+down the road with Potch and Michael, she said:
+
+"Did Bully kiss me, Michael?"
+
+"Yes," he replied.
+
+"I don't know what happened then?"
+
+"Arthur Henty knocked him down," Michael said.
+
+She looked at him with scared eyes.
+
+"They want to fight it out ... but they're both drunk. The boys are
+trying to stop it."
+
+"Oh, Michael!" Sophie cried on a little gasping breath; and looking into
+her eyes he read her contrition, asking forgiveness, understanding all
+that he had not been able to explain to her. She did not say, "I'll
+never sing there, like that, any more." Her feeling was too deep for
+words; but Michael knew she never would.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+"It's what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball,"
+Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin
+Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.
+
+Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods' mirror, a square of
+glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant
+sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new
+dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was
+also gazing at her and at it admiringly.
+
+When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria,
+Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.
+
+"Sophie's got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael," she
+said. "I'm not going to have people over there laughing at her, and
+she's had nothing but her mother's old dresses, cut down--for goodness
+knows how long."
+
+"Will you get it?" Michael inquired anxiously.
+
+Mrs. Grant nodded.
+
+"Bessie Woods and I were thinking it might be pinspot muslin, with a bit
+of lace on it," she said. "We could get the stuff at Chassy Robb's and
+make it up between us."
+
+"Right!" Michael replied, looking immensely relieved to have the
+difficulty disposed of. "Tell Chassy to put it on my book."
+
+So the pinspot muslin and some cheap creamy lace had been bought. Mrs.
+Woods and Sophie settled on a style they found illustrating an
+advertisement in a newspaper and which resembled a dress one of the
+Henty girls had worn at the race ball the year before. Maggie Grant had
+done all the plain sewing and Mrs. Woods the fixing and finishing
+touches. They had consulted over and over again about sleeves and the
+length of the skirt. The frock had been fitted at least a dozen times.
+They had wondered where they would put the lace as a bit of trimming,
+and had decided for frills at the elbows and a tucker in the V-shaped
+neck of the blouse. They marvelled at their audacity, but felt sure they
+had done the right thing when they cut the neck rather lower than they
+would have for a dress to be worn in the daytime.
+
+Martha M'Cready, insisting on having a finger in the pie, had pressed
+the dress when it was finished, and she had washed and ironed Mrs.
+George Woods' best embroidered petticoat for Sophie to wear with it.
+
+And now Sophie was dressing in Mrs. Woods' bedroom because it had a
+bigger mirror than her own room, and the three women were watching her,
+giving little tugs and pats to the dress now and then, measuring it with
+appraising glances of conscious pride in their workmanship, and joy at
+Sophie's appearance in it. Sophie, her face flushed, her eyes shining,
+turned to them every now and then, begging to know whether the skirt was
+not a little full here, or a little flat there; and they pinched and
+pulled, until it was thought nothing further could be done to improve
+it.
+
+Sophie was anxious about her hair. She had put it in plaits the night
+before, and had kept it in them all the morning. Her hair had never been
+in plaits before, and she had not liked the look of it when she saw it
+all crisp and frizzy, like Mirry Flail's. She had used a wet brush to
+get the crinkle out, but there was still a suggestion of it in the heavy
+dark wave of her hair when she had done it up as usual.
+
+"Your hair looks very nice--don't worry any more about it, Sophie,"
+Martha M'Cready had said.
+
+"My mother used to say there was nothing nicer for a young girl to wear
+than white muslin," Mrs. Woods remarked, "and that sash of your mother's
+looks real nice as a belt, Sophie."
+
+The sash, a broad piece of blue and green silk shot like a piece of poor
+opal, Sophie had found in a box of her mother's, and it was wound round
+her waist as a belt and tied in a bow at the side.
+
+"Turn round and let me see if the skirt's quite the same length all
+round, Sophie," Mrs. Grant commanded.
+
+"Yes, Maggie," Bessie Woods exclaimed complacently. "It's quite right."
+
+Sophie glanced at herself in the glass again. Mrs. Woods had lent her a
+pair of opal ear-rings, and Maggie Grant the one piece of finery she
+possessed--a round piece of very fine black opal set in a rim of gold,
+which Bill had given her when first she came to the Ridge.
+
+Sophie had on for the first time, too, a necklace she had made herself
+of stones the miners had given her at different times. There was a piece
+of opal for almost every man on the fields, and she had strung them
+together, with a beautiful knobby Potch had made her a present of for
+her eighteenth birthday, a few days before, in the centre.
+
+Just as she had finished dressing, Mrs. Watty Frost called in the
+doorway: "Anybody at home?"
+
+"Come in," Mrs. George Woods replied.
+
+Mrs. Watty walked into the bedroom. She had a long slender parcel
+wrapped in brown paper in her hand, but nobody noticed it at the time.
+
+"My!" she exclaimed, staring at Sophie; "we are fine, aren't we?"
+
+Sophie caught up her long, cotton gloves and pirouetted in happy
+excitement.
+
+"Aren't we?" she cried gaily. "Just look at my gloves! Did ever you see
+such lovely long gloves, Mrs. Watty? And don't my ear-rings look nice?
+But it does feel funny wearing ear-rings, doesn't it? I want to be
+shaking my head all the time to make them joggle!"
+
+She shook her head. The blue and green fires of the stones leapt and
+sparkled. Her eyes seemed to catch fire from them. The women exchanged
+admiring glances.
+
+"Where's my handkerchief?" Sophie cried. "Father's late, isn't he? I'm
+sure we'll be late! How long will it take to drive over to Warria?--An
+hour? Goodness! And it'll be almost time for the dance to begin then!
+Oh, don't my shoes look nice, Maggie?"
+
+She looked down at her feet in the white cotton stockings and white
+canvas shoes, with ankle straps, which Maggie Grant had sent into Budda
+for. The hem of her skirt came just to her ankles. She played the new
+shoes in and out from under it in little dancing steps, and the women
+laughed at her, happy in her happiness.
+
+"But you haven't got a fan, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said.
+
+"A fan?" Sophie's eyes widened.
+
+"You should oughter have a fan. In my young days it wasn't considered
+decent to go to a ball without a fan," Mrs. Watty remarked grimly.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie looked from one to the other of her advisers.
+
+Mrs. George Woods was just going to say that it was a long time since
+Mrs. Watty's young days, when Mrs. Watty took the brown paper from the
+long, thin parcel she was carrying.
+
+"I thought most likely you wouldn't have one," she said, "so I brought
+this over."
+
+She unfurled an old-fashioned, long-handled, sandal-wood fan, with birds
+and flowers painted on the brown satin screen, and a little row of
+feathers along the top. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Grant exchanged
+glances that Mrs. Watty should pander to the vanity of an occasion.
+
+"Mrs. Watty!" Sophie took the fan with a little cry of delight.
+
+"My, aren't you a grown-up young lady now, Sophie?" Mrs. Woods
+exclaimed, as Sophie unfurled the fan.
+
+"But mind you take care of it, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said, stiffening
+against the relaxing atmosphere of goodwill and excitement. "Watty got
+it for me last trip he made to sea, before we was married, and I set a
+good deal of store by it."
+
+"Oh, I'll be ever so careful!" Sophie declared. She opened the fan.
+"Isn't it pretty?"
+
+Dropping into a chair, she murmured: "May I--have this dance with you,
+Miss Rouminof?" And casting a shy upward glance over her fan, as if
+answering for herself, "I don't mind if I do!"
+
+Martha and Mrs. Woods laughed heartily, recognising Arthur Henty's way
+of talking in the voice Sophie had imitated.
+
+"That's the way to do it, Sophie," Mrs. Woods said; "only you shouldn't
+say, 'Don't mind if I do,' but, 'It's a pleasure, I'm sure.'"
+
+"It's a pleasure, I'm sure," Sophie mimed.
+
+"Is she going to wear the dress over?" Mrs. Watty asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes," Maggie Grant said. "Bessie's lending her a dust-coat. I don't
+think it'll get crushed very much. You see, they won't arrive until it's
+nearly time for the dance to begin, and we thought it'd be better for us
+to help her to get fixed up. Everybody'll be so busy over at Warria--and
+we thought she mightn't be able to get anybody to do up her dress for
+her."
+
+"That's right," Mrs. Watty said.
+
+There was a rattle of wheels on the rough shingle near the hut.
+
+"Here's your father, Sophie," Martha called.
+
+"And Michael and Potch are in the kitchen wanting to have a look at you
+before you go, Sophie," Maggie Grant said.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie took the coat Mrs. Woods was lending her, and went out to
+the kitchen with it on her arm.
+
+Michael and Potch were there. They stared at her. But her radiant face,
+the shining eyes, and the little smile which hovered on her mouth, held
+their gaze more than the new white dress standing out in slight, stiff
+folds all round her. The vision of her--incomparable youth and
+loveliness she was to Michael--gripped him so that a moisture of love
+and reverence dimmed his eyes.... And Potch just stared and stared at
+her.
+
+Paul was bawling from the buggy outside:
+
+"Are you ready, Sophie? Sophie, are you ready?"
+
+Mrs. Woods held the dust-coat. Very carefully Sophie edged herself into
+it, and wrapped its nondescript buff-coloured folds over her dress. Then
+she put the pink woollen scarf Martha had brought over her head, and
+went out to the buggy. Her father was sitting aloft on the front seat,
+driving Sam Nancarrow's old roan mare, and looking spruce and well
+turned out in a new baggy suit which Michael had arranged for him to get
+in order to look more of a credit to Sophie at the ball.
+
+"See you take good care of her, Paul," Mrs. Grant called after him as
+they drove off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The drive across the plains seemed interminable to Sophie.
+
+Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went
+along. He called to Sam Nancarrow's old nag, quite pleased to be having
+a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially
+about this and other balls he had been to.
+
+Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said,
+and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. "I do
+look nice! I do look nice!" she assured herself.
+
+It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought
+she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs.
+Woods' ear-rings, and that old sash of her mother's. She was a little
+anxious, but very happy and excited.
+
+She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road
+or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then.
+He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle
+recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her
+in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of
+happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The
+sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to
+indigo as it climbed to the zenith.
+
+When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue
+from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted
+Burton, the station book-keeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with
+light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sand-papered,
+came out to meet them.
+
+"There you are, Rouminof!" he said. "Glad to see you. We were beginning
+to be afraid you weren't coming!"
+
+Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables.
+Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men
+were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was
+standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did
+not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup.
+But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his
+forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having
+regained his feet, hit out blindly.
+
+Potch had told Sophie what happened--she had made him find out in order
+to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first
+exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they
+said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully
+came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.
+
+"If anybody'd 've told me I'd treat you like that, Sophie, I'd 've
+killed him," he said. "I'd 've killed him.... You know how I feel about
+you--you know how we all feel about you--and for me to have served you
+like that--me that'd do anything in the world for you.... But it's no
+good trying to say any more. It's no good tryin' to explain. It's got me
+down...."
+
+He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable,
+that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It
+was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to
+see Bully like this.
+
+"It's all right, Bully," she said. "I know ... you weren't yourself ...
+and you didn't mean it."
+
+He started to his feet and came to stand beside her. Sophie put her hand
+in his; he gripped it hard, unable to say anything. Then, when he could
+control his voice, he said:
+
+"I went over to see Mr. Henty this morning ... and told him if anybody
+else 'd done what I did, I'd 've done what he did."
+
+Potch had said the men expected Bully would want to fight the thing out
+when he was sober, and it was a big thing for him to have done what he
+had. The punishing power of Bully's fists was well known, and he had
+taken this way of punishing himself. Sophie understood that, She was
+grateful and reconciled to him.
+
+"I'm glad, Bully," she said. "Let's forget all about it."
+
+So the matter ended. But it all came back to her as she saw the broken
+red line on Arthur Henty's forehead.
+
+She did not know that because of it she was an object of interest to the
+crowd on the veranda. News of Arthur Henty's bout with Bully Bryant had
+been very soon noised over the whole countryside. Most of the men who
+came to the ball from Langi-Eumina and other stations had gleaned varied
+and highly-coloured versions, and Arthur had been chaffed and twitted
+until he was sore and ashamed of the whole incident. He could not
+understand himself--the rush of rage, instinctive and unreasoning, which
+had overwhelmed him when he hit out at Bully.
+
+His mother protested that it was a shame to give Arthur such a bad time
+for what was, after all, merely the chivalrous impulse of any decent
+young man when a girl was treated lightly in his presence; but the men
+and the girls who were staying at the station laughed and teased all the
+more for the explanation. They pretended he was a very heroic and
+quixotic young man, and asked about Sophie--whether she was pretty, and
+whether it was true she sang well. They redoubled their efforts, and
+goaded him to a state of sulky silence, when they knew she was coming to
+the ball.
+
+Arthur Henty had been conscious for some time of an undercurrent within
+him drawing him to Sophie. He was afraid of, and resented it. He had not
+thought of loving her, or marrying her. He had gone to the tank paddock
+in the afternoons he knew she would be there, or had looked for her on
+the Warria road when she had been to the cemetery, with a sensation of
+drifting pleasantly. He had never before felt as he did when he was with
+Sophie, that life was a clear and simple thing--pleasant, too; that
+nothing could be better than walking over the plains through the limpid
+twilight. He had liked to see the fires of opal run in her eyes when she
+looked at him; to note the black lines on the outer rim of their
+coloured orbs; the black lashes set in silken skin of purest ivory; the
+curve of her chin and neck; the lines of her mouth, and the way she
+walked; all these things he had loved. But he did not want to have the
+responsibility of loving Sophie: he could not contemplate what wanting
+to marry her would mean in tempests and turmoil with his family.
+
+He had thought sometimes of a mediæval knight wandering through
+flowering fields with the girl on a horse beside him, in connection with
+Sophie and himself. A reproduction of the well-known picture of the
+knight and the girl hung in his mother's sitting-room. She had cut it
+out of a magazine, and framed it, because it pleased her; and beneath
+the picture, in fine print, Arthur had often read:
+
+          "I met a lady in the meads,
+               Full beautiful--a fairy's child;
+           Her hair was long, her foot was light,
+               And her eyes were wild.
+
+          "I set her on my pacing steed,
+               And nothing else saw all day long;
+           For sideways would she lean, and sing
+               A faery's song."
+
+As a small boy Arthur had been attracted by the picture, and his mother
+had told him its story, and had read him Keats' poem. He had read it
+ever so many times since then himself, and after he met Sophie in the
+tank paddock that afternoon she had ridden home on his horse, some of
+the verses haunted him with the thought of her. One day when they were
+sitting by the track and she had been singing to him, he had made a
+daisy chain and thrown it over her, murmuring sheepishly, in a caprice
+of tenderness:
+
+          "I made a garland for her head,
+               And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
+           She looked at me as she did love
+               And made sweet moan."
+
+Sophie had asked about the poem. She had wanted to hear more, and he had
+repeated as many verses as he could remember. When he had finished, she
+had looked at him "as she did love" indeed, with eyes of sweet
+confidence, yet withdrawing from him a little in shy and happy confusion
+that he should think of her as anyone like the lady of the meads, who
+was "full beautiful--a fairy's child."
+
+But Arthur did not want to love her; he did not want to marry her. He
+did not want to have rows with his father, differences with his mother.
+The affair at Newton's had shown him where he was going.
+
+Sophie was "a fairy's child," he decided. "Her hair as long, her foot
+was light, and her eyes were wild"; but he did not want to be "a
+wretched wight, alone and palely loitering" on her account; he did not
+want to marry her. He would close her eyes with "kisses four," he told
+himself, smiling at the precision of the knight of the chronicle;
+"kisses four"--no more--and be done with the business.
+
+Meanwhile, he wished Sophie were not coming to the ball. He would have
+given anything to prevent her coming; but he could do nothing.
+
+He had thought of escaping from the ball by going to the out-station
+with the men; but his mother, foreseeing something of his intention, had
+given him so much to do at the homestead for her, that he could not go
+away. When the buggy with Sophie and her father drove up to the veranda,
+there was a chorus of suppressed exclamations among the assembled
+guests.
+
+"Here she is, Art!"
+
+"Buck up, old chap! None but the brave, etc."
+
+Sophie did not hear the undertone of laughter and raillery which greeted
+her arrival. She was quite unconscious that the people on the veranda
+were interested in her at all, as she walked across the courtyard
+listening to Mr. Burton's amiable commonplaces.
+
+When Mr. Burton left her in a small room with chintz-covered chairs and
+dressing-table, Sophie took off her old dust-coat and the pink scarf she
+had tied over her hair. The mirror was longer than Mrs. Woods'. Her
+dress looked very crushed when she saw it reflected. She tried to shake
+out the creases. Her hair, too, was flat, and had blown into stringy
+ends. A shade of disappointment dimmed the brightness of her mood as she
+realised she was not looking nearly as nice as she had when she left the
+Ridge.
+
+Someone said: "May I come in?" and Polly Henty and another girl entered
+the room.
+
+Polly Henty had just left school. She was a round-faced, jolly-looking
+girl of about Sophie's own age, and the girl with her was not much
+older, pretty and sprightly, an inch or so taller than Polly, and
+slight. She had grey eyes, and a fluff of dry-grass coloured hair about
+a small, sharp-featured, fresh-complexioned face, neatly powdered.
+
+Sophie knew something was wrong with her clothes the moment she
+encountered the girls' curious and patronising glances as they came into
+the room. Their appearance, too, took the skin from her vanity. Polly
+had on a frock of silky white crêpe, with no lace or decoration of any
+kind, except a small gold locket and chain which she was wearing. But
+her dress fell round her in graceful folds, showing her small,
+well-rounded bust and hips, and she had on silk stockings and white
+satin slippers. The other girl's frock was of pale pink, misty material,
+so thin that her shoulders and arms showed through it as though there
+were nothing on them. She had pinned a pink rose in her hair, too, so
+that its petals just lay against the nape of her neck. Sophie thought
+she had never seen anyone look so nice. She had never dreamed of such a
+dress.
+
+"Oh, Miss Rouminof," Polly said; "mother sent me to look for you. We're
+just ready to start, and your father wants you to turn over his music
+for him."
+
+Sophie stood up, conscious that her dress was nothing like as pretty as
+she had thought it. It stood out stiffly about her: the starched
+petticoat crackled as she moved. She knew the lace should not have been
+on her sleeves; that her shoes were of canvas, and creaked as she
+walked; that her cotton gloves, and even the heavy, old-fashioned fan
+she was carrying, were not what they ought to have been.
+
+"Miss Chelmsford--Miss Rouminof," Polly said, looking from Sophie to the
+girl in the pink dress.
+
+Sophie said: "How do you do?" gravely, and put out her hand.
+
+"Oh!... How do you do?" Miss Chelmsford responded hurriedly, and as if
+just remembering she, too, had a hand.
+
+Sophie went with Polly and her friend to the veranda, which was screened
+in on one side with hessian to form a ball-room. Behind the hessian the
+walls were draped with flags, sheaves of paper daisies, and bundles of
+Darling pea. Red paper lanterns swung from the roof, threw a rosy glare
+over the floor which had been polished until it shone like burnished
+metal.
+
+Polly Henty took Sophie to the piano where Mrs. Henty was playing the
+opening bars of a waltz. Paul beside her, his violin under his arm,
+stood looking with eager interest over the room where men and girls were
+chatting in little groups.
+
+Mrs. Henty nodded and smiled to Sophie. Her father signalled to her, and
+she went to a seat near him.
+
+Holding her hands over the piano, Mrs. Henty looked to Paul to see if he
+were ready. He lifted his violin, tucked it under his chin, drew his
+bow, and the piano and violin broke gaily, irregularly, uncertainly, at
+first, into a measure which set and kept the couples swaying round the
+edge of the ball-room.
+
+Sophie watched them at first, dazed and interested. Under the glow of
+the lanterns, the figures of the dancers looked strange and solemn. Some
+of the dancers were moving without any conscious effort, just skimming
+the floor like swallows; others were working hard as they danced. Tom
+Henderson held Elizabeth Henty as if he never intended to let go of her,
+and worked her arm up and down as if it were a semaphore.
+
+Sophie had always admired Arthur's eldest sister, and she thought
+Elizabeth the most beautiful-looking person she had ever seen this
+evening. And that pink dress--how pretty it was! What had Polly said her
+name was--the girl who wore it? Phyllis ... Phyllis Chelmsford....
+Sophie watched the dress flutter among the dancers some time before she
+noticed Miss Chelmsford was dancing with Arthur Henty.
+
+She watched the couples revolving, dazed, and thinking vaguely about
+them, noticing how pretty feet looked in satin slippers with high,
+curved heels, wondering why some men danced with stiff knees and others
+as if their knees had funny-bones like their elbows. The red light from
+the lanterns made the whole scene look unreal; she felt as if she were
+dreaming.
+
+"Sophie!" her father cried sharply.
+
+She turned his page. Her eyes wandered to Mrs. Henty, who sat with her
+back to her. Sophie contemplated the bow of her back in its black frock
+with Spanish lace scarf across it, the outline of the black lace on the
+wrinkled skin of Mrs. Henty's neck, the loose, upward wave of her crisp
+white hair, glinting silverly where the light caught it. Her face was
+cobwebbed with wrinkles, but her features remained delicate and fine as
+sculpturings in ancient ivory. Her eyes were bright: the sparkle of
+youth still leapt in them. Her eyes had a slight smile of secret
+sympathy and amusement as they flew over the roomful of people dancing.
+
+Sophie watched dance after dance, while the music jingled and jangled.
+
+Presently John Armitage appeared in the doorway with Nina Henty. Sophie
+heard him apologising to Mrs. Henty for being late, and explaining that
+he had stayed in the back-country a few days longer than usual for the
+express purpose of coming to the ball.
+
+Mrs. Henty replied that it was "better late than never," and a pleasure
+to see Mr. Armitage at any time; and then he and Nina joined the throng
+of the dancers.
+
+Sophie drew her chair further back so that the piano screened her. The
+disappointment and stillness which had descended upon her since she came
+into the room tightened and settled. She had thought Arthur would surely
+come to ask her for this dance; but when the waltz began she saw he was
+dancing again with Phyllis Chelmsford. She sat very still, holding
+herself so that she should not feel a pain which was hovering in the
+background of her consciousness and waiting to grip her.
+
+It was different, this sitting on a chair by herself and watching other
+people dance, to anything that had ever happened to her. She had always
+been the centre of Ridge balls, courted and made a lot of from the
+moment she came into the hall. Even Arthur Henty had had to shoulder his
+way if he wanted a waltz with her.
+
+As the crowd brushed and swirled round the room, it became all blurred
+to Sophie. The last rag of that mood of tremulous joyousness which had
+invested her as she drove over the plains to the ball with her father,
+left her. She sat very still; she could not see for a moment. The waltz
+broke because she did not hear her father when he called her to turn the
+page of his music; he knocked over his stand trying to turn the page
+himself, and exclaimed angrily when Sophie did not jump to pick it up
+for him.
+
+After that she watched his book of music with an odd calm. She scarcely
+looked at the dancers, praying for the time to come when the ball would
+end and she could go home. The hours were heavy and dead; she thought it
+would never be midnight or morning again. She was conscious of her
+crushed dress and cotton gloves, and Mrs. Watty's big, old-fashioned
+fan; but after the first shock of disappointment she was not ashamed of
+them. She sat very straight and still in the midst of her finery; but
+she put the fan on the chair behind her, and took off her gloves in
+order to turn over the pages of her father's music more expertly.
+
+She knew now she was not going to dance. She understood she had not been
+invited as a guest like everybody else; but as the fiddler's little girl
+to turn over his music for him. And when she was not watching the music,
+she sat down in her chair beyond the piano, hoping no one would see or
+speak to her.
+
+Mrs. Henty spoke to her occasionally. Once she called pleasantly:
+
+"Come here and let me look at your opals, child."
+
+Sophie went to her, and Mrs. Henty lifted the necklace.
+
+"What splendid stones!" she said.
+
+Sophie looked into those bright eyes, very like Arthur's, with the same
+shifting sands in them, but alien to her, she thought.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. She did not feel inclined to tell Mrs. Henty
+about the stones.
+
+Mrs. Henty admired the ear-rings, and looked appreciatively at the big
+flat stone in Mrs. Grant's brooch. Sophie coloured under her attention.
+She wished she had not worn the opals that did not belong to her.
+
+Looking into Sophie's face, Mrs. Henty became aware of its sensitive,
+unformed beauty, a beauty of expression rather than features, and of a
+something indefinable which cast a glamour over the girl. She had been
+considerably disturbed by Arthur's share in the brawl at Newton's. It
+was so unlike Arthur to show fight of any sort. If it had not happened
+after she had sent the invitation, Mrs. Henty would not have spoken of
+Sophie when she asked Rouminof to play at the ball. As it was, she was
+not sorry to see what manner of girl she was.
+
+But as Sophie held a small, quiet face before her, with chin slightly
+uplifted, and eyes steady and measuring, a little disdainful despite
+their pain and surprise, Mrs. Henty realised it was a shame to have
+brought this girl to the ball, in order to inspect her; to discover what
+Arthur thought of her, and not in order that she might have a good time
+like other girls. After all, she was young and used to having a good
+time. Mrs. Henty heard enough of Ridge gossip to know any man on the
+mines thought the world of Sophie Rouminof. She had seen them eager to
+dance with her at race balls. It was not fair to have side-tracked her
+about Arthur, Mrs. Henty confessed to herself. The fine, clear innocence
+which looked from Sophie's eyes accused her. It made her feel mean and
+cruel. She was disturbed by a sensation of guilt.
+
+Paul was fidgeting at the first bars of the next dance, and, knowing the
+long programme to go through, Mrs. Henty's hand fell from Sophie's
+necklace, and Sophie went back to her chair.
+
+But Mrs. Henty's thoughts wandered on the themes she had raised. She
+played absent-mindedly, her fingers skipping and skirling on the notes.
+She was realising what she had done. She had not meant to be cruel, she
+protested: she had just wished to know how Arthur felt about the girl.
+If he had wanted to dance with her, there was nothing to prevent him.
+
+Arthur was dancing again with Phyllis, she noticed. She was a little
+annoyed. He was overdoing the thing. And Phyllis was a minx! That was
+the fourth time she had slipped and Arthur had held her up, the rose in
+her hair brushing his cheek.
+
+"Mother!" Polly called. "For goodness' sake ... what are you dreaming
+of?"
+
+The music had gone to the pace of Mrs. Henty's reverie until Polly
+called. Then Mrs. Henty splashed out her chords and marked her rhythm
+more briskly.
+
+After all, Mrs. Henty concluded, if Arthur and Phyllis had taken a fancy
+to each, other--at last--and were getting on, she could not afford to
+espouse the other girl's cause. What good would it do? She wanted Arthur
+to marry Phyllis. His father did. Phyllis was the only daughter of old
+Chelmsford, of Yuina Yuina, whose cattle sales were the envy of
+pastoralists on both sides of the Queensland border. Phyllis's
+inheritance and the knowledge that the interests of Warria were allied
+to those of Andrew Chelmsford of Yuina, would ensure a new lease of hope
+and opportunity for Warria.... Whereas it would be worse than awful if
+Arthur contemplated anything like marriage with this girl from the
+Ridge.
+
+Mrs. Henty's conscience was uneasy all the same. When the dance was
+ended, she called Arthur to her.
+
+"For goodness' sake, dear, ask that child to dance with you," she said
+when he came to her. "She's been sitting here all the evening by
+herself."
+
+"I was just going to," Sophie heard Arthur say.
+
+He came towards her.
+
+"Will you have the next dance with me, Sophie?" he asked.
+
+She did not look at him.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Oh, I say----" He sat down beside her. "I've had to dance with these
+people who are staying with us," he added awkwardly.
+
+Her eyes turned to him, all the stormy fires of opal running in them.
+
+"You don't _have_ to dance with me," she said.
+
+He got up and stood indecisively a moment.
+
+"Of course not," he said, "but I want to."
+
+"I don't want to dance with you," Sophie said.
+
+He turned away from her, went down the ball-room, and out through the
+doorway in the hessian wall. Everyone had gone to supper. Mrs. Henty had
+left the piano. Paul himself had gone to have some refreshment which was
+being served in the dining-room across the courtyard. From the square,
+washed with the silver radiance of moonlight which she could see through
+the open space in the hessian, came a tinkle of glasses and spoons,
+fragments of talking and laughter. Sophie heard a clear, girlish voice
+cry: "Oh, Arthur!"
+
+She clenched her hands; she thought that she was going to cry; but
+stiffening against the inclination, she sat fighting down the pain which
+was gripping her, and longed for the time to come when she could go home
+and be out in the dark, alone.
+
+John Armitage entered the ball-room as if looking for someone. Glancing
+in the direction of the piano, he saw Sophie.
+
+"There you are, Sophie!" he exclaimed heartily. "And, would you believe
+it, I've only just discovered you were here."
+
+He sat down beside her, and talked lightly, kindly, for a moment. But
+Sophie was in no mood for talking. John Armitage had guessed something
+of her crisis when he came into the room and found her sitting by
+herself. He had seen the affair at Newton's, and knew enough of Fallen
+Star gossip to understand how Sophie would resent Arthur Henty's
+treatment of her. He could see she was a sorely hurt little creature,
+holding herself together, but throbbing with pain and anger. She could
+not talk; she could only think of Arthur Henty, whose voice they heard
+occasionally out of doors. He was more than jolly after supper. Armitage
+had seen him swallow nearly a glassful of raw whisky. His face had gone
+a ghastly white after it. Rouminof had been drinking too. He came into
+the room unsteadily when Mrs. Henty took her seat at the piano again;
+but he played better.
+
+Armitage's eyes went to her necklace.
+
+"What lovely stones, Sophie!" he said.
+
+Sophie looked up. "Yes, aren't they? The men gave them to me--there's a
+stone for every one. This is Michael's!"--she touched each stone as she
+named it--"Potch gave me that, and Bully Bryant that."
+
+Her eyes caught Armitage's with a little smile.
+
+"It's easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge," he said. "And here
+am I--come hundreds of miles ... can't get anything like that piece of
+stuff in your brooch."
+
+"That's Mrs. Grant's," Sophie confessed.
+
+"And your ear-rings, Sophie!" Armitage said. "'Clare to goodness,' as my
+old nurse used to say, I didn't think you could look such a witch. But I
+always have said black opal ear-rings would make a witch of a New
+England spinster."
+
+Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he
+looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and
+appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.
+
+Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was
+an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have,
+of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so
+extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in
+this out-of-the-way part of the world.
+
+John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world's contempt for churlish
+treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have
+permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying
+Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in
+distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her
+defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her
+disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.
+
+"May I have the next dance, Sophie?" he inquired.
+
+Sophie glanced up at him.
+
+"I'm not dancing," she said.
+
+Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his
+resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her ear-rings
+swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked
+more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the
+opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the
+room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.
+
+"Why aren't you dancing, Sophie?" John Armitage asked.
+
+His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.
+
+"No one asked me to, until the dance before supper--then I didn't want
+to," she said.
+
+The dance was already in motion.
+
+"You'll have this one with me, won't you?"
+
+John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. "Please!"
+he insisted.
+
+Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held
+her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will
+not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and
+when
+
+
+the music stopped, Mr. Armitage took her through the doorway into the
+moonlight with the other couples. They walked to the garden where, the
+orange trees were in blossom.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie breathed, her arm still on his, and a little giddy.
+
+The earth was steeped in purest radiance; the orange blossoms swam like
+stars on the dark bushes; their fragrance filled the air.
+
+Sophie held up her face as if to drink. "Isn't it lovely?" she murmured.
+
+A black butterfly with white etchings on his wings hovered over an
+orange bush they were standing near, as if bewildered by the moonlight
+and mistaking it for the light of a strange day.
+
+Armitage spread his handkerchief on a wooden seat.
+
+"I thought you'd like it," he said. "Let's sit here--I've put down my
+handkerchief because there's a dew, although the air seems so dry."
+
+When the music began again Sophie got up.
+
+"Don't let us go in yet," he begged.
+
+"But----" she demurred.
+
+"We'll stay here for this, and have the next dance," Armitage said.
+
+Sophie hesitated. She wondered why Mr. Armitage was being so nice to
+her, understanding a little. She smiled into his eyes, dallying with the
+temptation. John Armitage had seen women's eyes like that before; then
+fall to the appeal of his own. But in Sophie's eyes he found something
+he had not seen very often--a will-o'the-wisp of infinite wispishness
+which incited him to pursue and to insist, while it eluded and flew from
+him.
+
+When she danced with John Armitage again, Sophie looked up, laughed, and
+played her eyes and smiles for him as she had seen Phyllis Chelmsford do
+for Arthur. At first, shyly, she had exerted herself to please him, and
+Armitage had responded to her tentative efforts; but presently she found
+herself enjoying the game. And Armitage was so surprised at the charm
+she revealed as she exerted herself to please him, that he responded
+with an enthusiasm he had not contemplated. But their mutual success at
+this oldest diversion in the world, while it surprised and delighted
+them, did not delight their hosts. Mr. and Mrs. Henty were surprised;
+then frankly scandalised. Several young men asked Sophie to dance with
+them after she had danced with John Armitage. She thanked them, but
+refused, saying she did not wish to dance very much. She sat in her
+chair by the piano except when she was dancing with Mr. Armitage, or was
+in the garden with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+"See Ed. means to do you well with a six-horse team this evening, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said, while Armitage was having his early meal
+before starting on his all-night drive into Budda.
+
+Newton remembered afterwards that John Armitage did not seem as
+interested and jolly as usual. Ordinarily he was interested in
+everything, and cordial with everybody; but this evening he was quiet
+and preoccupied.
+
+"Hardly had a word to say for himself," Peter Newton said.
+
+Armitage had watched Ed. bring the old bone-shaking shandrydan he called
+a coach up to the hotel, and put a couple of young horses into it. He
+had a colt on the wheel he was breaking-in, and a sturdy old dark bay
+beside him, a pair of fine rusty bays ahead of them, and a sorrel, and
+chestnut youngster in the lead. He had got old Olsen and two men on the
+hotel veranda to help him harness-up, and it took them all their time to
+get the leaders into the traces. Bags had to be thrown over the heads of
+the young horses before anything could be done with them, and it took
+three men to hold on to the team until Ed. Ventry got into his seat and
+gathered up the reins. Armitage put his valise on the coach and shook
+hands all round. He got into his seat beside Ed. and wrapped a tarpaulin
+lined with possum skin over his knees.
+
+"Let her go, Olly," Ed. yelled.
+
+The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses' heads.
+The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the
+steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to
+throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders
+dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle
+and clash of gear, Ed. Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands,
+pulling on them, and yelling:
+
+"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders--yer! I'll warm yer....
+Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get
+alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"
+
+Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of
+the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at
+any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon
+took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and
+they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was
+reached.
+
+"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards.
+"Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that
+day he was dead quiet."
+
+"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.
+
+"'No, Ed,' he says.
+
+"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you
+got this trip?'
+
+"'No,' he says. But, by God--if I'd known what he got----"
+
+It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six
+o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning
+train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at
+the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train
+left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and
+scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding
+in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.
+
+"Could've swore I left Baldy at the Ridge," he said to the boy who
+looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.
+
+"Thought he was there meself," the lad replied, imitating Ed.'s
+perplexed head-scratching.
+
+At the Ridge, when he made his next trip, they were able to tell Mr.
+Ventry how the baldy-face happened to be at Budda when Ed. thought he
+was at Fallen Star, although Ed. heard some of the explanation from
+Potch and Michael a day or two later. Sophie had ridden the baldy-face
+into Budda the night he drove Mr. Armitage to catch the train for
+Sydney. No one discovered she had gone until the end of next day. Then
+Potch went to Michael.
+
+"Michael," he said; "she's gone."
+
+During the evening Paul had been heard calling Sophie. He asked Potch
+whether he had seen her. Potch said he had not. But it was nothing
+unusual for Sophie to wander off for a day on an excursion with Ella or
+Mirry Flail, so neither he nor Michael thought much of not having seen
+her all day, until Paul remarked querulously to Potch that he did not
+know where Sophie was. Looking into her room Potch saw her bed had not
+been slept in, although the room was disordered. He went up to the town,
+to Mrs. Newton and to the Flails', to ask whether they had seen anything
+of Sophie. Mirry Flail said she had seen her on one of the coach-stable
+horses, riding out towards the Three Mile the evening before. Potch knew
+instinctively that Sophie had gone away from the moment Paul had spoken
+to him. She had lived away from him during the last few months; but
+watching her with always anxious, devout eyes, he had known more of her
+than anyone else.
+
+Lying full stretch on his sofa, Michael was reading when Potch came into
+the hut. His stricken face communicated the seriousness of his news.
+Michael had no reason to ask who the "she" Potch spoke of was: there was
+only one woman for whom Potch would look like that. But Michael's mind
+was paralysed by the shock of the thing Potch had said. He could neither
+stir nor speak.
+
+"I'm riding into Budda, to find out if she went down by the train,"
+Potch said. "I think she did, Michael. She's been talking about going to
+Sydney ... a good deal lately.... She was asking me about it--day before
+yesterday ... but I never thought--I never thought she wanted to go so
+soon ... and that she'd go like this. But I think she has gone.... And
+she was afraid to tell us--to let you know.... She said you'd made up
+your mind you didn't want her to go ... she'd heard her mother tell you
+not to let her go, and if ever she was going she wouldn't tell you...."
+
+Potch's explanation, broken and incoherent as it was, gave Michael's
+thought and feeling time to reassert themselves.
+
+He said: "See if Chassy can lend me his pony, and I'll come with you,
+Potch."
+
+They rode into Budda that night, and inquiry from the station-master
+gave them the information they sought. A girl in a black frock had taken
+a second-class ticket for Sydney. He did not notice very much what she
+was like. She had come to the window by herself; she had no luggage; he
+had seen her later sitting in a corner of a second-class compartment by
+herself. The boy, a stranger to the district, who had clipped her
+ticket, said she was crying when he asked for her ticket. He had asked
+why she was crying. She had said she was going away, and she did not
+like going away from the back-country. She was going away--to study
+singing, she said, but would be coming back some day.
+
+Michael determined to go to Sydney by the morning train to try to find
+Sophie. He went to Ed. Ventry and borrowed five pounds from him.
+
+"That explains how the baldy-face got here," Ed. said.
+
+Michael nodded. He could not talk about Sophie. Potch explained why they
+wanted the money as well as he could.
+
+"It's no good trying to bring her back if she doesn't want to come,
+Michael," Potch had said before Michael left for Sydney.
+
+"No," Michael agreed.
+
+"If you could get her fixed up with somebody to stay with," Potch
+suggested; "and see she was all right for money ... it might be the best
+thing to do. I've got a bit of dough put by, Michael.... I'll send that
+down to you and go over to one of the stations for a while to keep us
+goin'--if we want more."
+
+Michael assented.
+
+"You might try round and see if you could find Mr. Armitage," Potch
+said, just before the train went. "He might have seen something of her."
+
+"Yes," Michael replied, drearily.
+
+Potch waited until the train left, and started back to Fallen Star in
+the evening.
+
+A week later a letter came for Michael. It was in Sophie's handwriting.
+Potch was beside himself with anxiety and excitement. He wrote to
+Michael, care of an opal-buyer they were on good terms with and who
+might know where Michael was staying. In the bewilderment of his going,
+Potch had not thought to ask Michael where he would live, or where a
+letter would find him.
+
+Michael came back to Fallen Star when he received the letter. He had not
+seen Sophie. No one he knew or had spoken to had seen anything of her
+after she left the train. Michael handed the letter to Potch as soon as
+he got back into the hut.
+
+Sophie wrote that she had gone away because she wanted to learn to be a
+singer, and that she would be on her way to America when they received
+it. She explained that she had made up her mind to go quite suddenly,
+and she had not wanted Michael to know because she remembered his
+promise to her mother. She knew he would not let her go away from the
+Ridge if he could help it. She had sold her necklace, she said, and had
+got £100 for it, so had plenty of money. Potch and Michael were not to
+worry about her. She would be all right, and when she had made a name
+for herself as a singer, she would come home to the Ridge to see them.
+"Don't be angry, Michael dear," the letter ended, "with your lovingest
+Sophie."
+
+Potch looked at Michael; he wondered whether the thought in his own mind
+had reached Michael's. But
+
+Michael was too dazed and overwhelmed to think at all.
+
+"There's one thing, Potch," he said; "if she's gone to America, we could
+write to Mr. Armitage and ask him to keep an eye on her. And," he added,
+"if she's gone to America ... it's just likely she may be on the same
+boat as Mr. Armitage, and he'd look after her."
+
+Potch watched his face. The thought in his mind had not occurred to
+Michael, then, he surmised.
+
+"He'd see she came to no harm."
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+But he had seen John Armitage talking to Sophie on the Ridge over near
+Snow-Shoes' hut the afternoon after the dance at Warria. He knew Mr.
+Armitage had driven Sophie home after the dance, too. Paul had been too
+drunk to stand, much less drive. Potch had knocked off early in the mine
+to go across to the Three Mile that afternoon. Then it had surprised
+Potch to see Sophie sitting and talking to Mr. Armitage as though they
+were very good friends; but, beyond a vague, jealous alarm, he had not
+attached any importance to it until he knew Sophie had gone down to
+Sydney by the same train as Mr. Armitage. She had said she was going to
+America, too, and he was going there. Potch had lived all his days on
+the Ridge; he knew nothing of the world outside, and its ways, except
+what he had learnt from books. But an instinct where Sophie was
+concerned had warned him of a link between her going away and John
+Armitage. That meeting of theirs came to have an extraordinary
+significance in his mind. He had thought out the chances of Sophie's
+having gone with Mr. Armitage as far as he could. But Michael had not
+associated her going with him, it was clear. It had never occurred to
+him that Mr. Armitage could have anything to do with Sophie's going
+away. It had not occurred to the rest of the Ridge folk either.
+
+Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as
+he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her
+as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having
+gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be
+able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.
+
+"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said,
+"then she'll send for you."
+
+"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time
+here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."
+
+Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then,
+for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing
+him through the delirium of sun-stroke.
+
+A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers--Jun Johnson
+and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him--and
+Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been
+down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.
+
+When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found
+Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.
+
+"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You
+think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well,
+you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof
+is--here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If
+I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face
+round here for a bit? Not much...."
+
+Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to
+his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage
+he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.
+
+"I know you chaps--I know how you feel about things; and quite right,
+too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that--why, he's not fit to wipe
+your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let
+run with the rest."
+
+He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business
+than any man-jack of you--no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is
+bygones--that's my motto. But I tell you--and that's the strength of
+it--I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man
+here. D'y' believe me?"
+
+It was said in good earnest enough, even Watty and George had to admit.
+It was either the best bit of bluff they had ever listened to, or else
+Jun, for once in a way, was enjoying the luxury of telling the truth.
+
+"We're all good triers here, Jun," George said, "but we're not as green
+as we're painted."
+
+Jun regarded his beer meditatively; then he said:
+
+"Look here, you chaps, suppose I put it to you straight: I ain't always
+been what you might call the clean potato ... but I ain't always been
+married, either. Well, I'm married now--married to the best little girl
+ever I struck...."
+
+The idea of Jun taking married life seriously amused two or three of the
+men. Smiles began to go round, and broadened as he talked. That they did
+not please Jun was evident.
+
+"Well, seein' I've taken on family responsibilities," he went on--"Was
+you smiling, Watty?"
+
+"Me? Oh, no, Jun," the offender replied, meekly; "it was only the
+stummick-ache took me. It does that way sometimes. You mightn't think
+so, but I always look as if I was smilin' when I've got the
+stummick-ache."
+
+George Woods, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and some of the others laughed,
+taking Watty's explanation for what it was worth. But Jun continued
+solemnly, playing the reformed blackguard to his own satisfaction.
+
+"Seein' I've taken on family responsibilities, I want to run straight. I
+don't want my kids to think there was anything crook about their dad."
+
+If he moved no one else, he contrived to feel deeply moved himself at
+the prospect of how his unborn children were going to regard him. The
+men who had always more or less believed in him managed to convince
+themselves that Jun meant what he said. George and Watty realised he had
+put up a good case, that he was getting at them in the only way
+possible.
+
+Michael moved out of the crowd round the door towards the bar. Peter
+Newton put his daily ration of beer on the bar.
+
+"'Lo, Michael," Jun said.
+
+"'Lo, Jun," Michael said.
+
+"Well," Jun concluded, tossing off his beer; "that's the way it is,
+boys. Believe me if y'r like, and if y'r don't like--lump it.
+
+"But there's one thing more I've got to tell you," he added; "and if you
+find what I've been saying hard to believe, you'll find this harder: I
+don't believe Charley got those stones of Rummy's."
+
+"What?"
+
+The query was like the crack of a whip-lash. There was a restive,
+restless movement among the men.
+
+"I don't believe Charley got those stones either," Jun declared. "'Got,'
+I said, not 'took.' All I know is, he was like a sick fish when he
+reached Sydney ... and sold all the opal he had with him. He was lively
+enough when we started out. I give you that. Maybe he took Rum-Enough's
+stones all right; but somebody put it over on him. I thought it might be
+Emmy--that yeller-haired tart, you remember, went down with us. She was
+a tart, and no mistake. My little girl, now--she was never ... like
+that! But Maud says she doesn't think so, because Emmy turned Charley
+out neck and crop when she found he'd got no cash. He got mighty little
+for the bit of stone he had with him ... I'll take my oath. He came
+round to borrow from me a day or two after we arrived. And he was ragin'
+mad about something.... If he shook the stones off Rum-Enough, it's my
+belief somebody shook them off of him, either in the train or here--or
+off of Rummy before he got them...."
+
+Several of the men muttered and grunted their protest. But Jun held to
+his point, and the talk became more general. Jun asked for news of the
+fields: what had been done, and who was getting the stuff. Somebody said
+John Armitage had been up and had bought a few nice stones from the
+Crosses, Pony-Fence, and Bully Bryant.
+
+"Armitage?" Jun said. "He's always a good man--gives a fair price. He
+bought my stones, that last lot ... gave me a hundred pounds for the big
+knobby. But it fair took my breath away to hear young Sophie Rouminof
+had gone off with him."
+
+Michael was standing beside him before the words were well out of his
+mouth.
+
+"What did you say?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm sorry, Michael," Jun replied, after a quick, scared glance at the
+faces of the men about him. "But I took it for granted you all knew, of
+course. We saw them a good bit together down in Sydney, Maud and me, and
+she said she saw Sophie on the _Zealanida_ the day the boat sailed. Maud
+was down seeing a friend off, and she saw Sophie and Mr. Armitage on
+board. She said--"
+
+Michael turned heavily, and swung out of the bar.
+
+Jun looked after him. In the faces of the men he read what a bomb his
+news had been among them.
+
+"I wouldn't have said that for a lot," he said, "if I'd 've thought
+Michael didn't know. But, Lord, I thought he knew ... I thought you all
+knew."
+
+In the days which followed, as he wandered over the plains in the late
+afternoon and evening, Michael tried to come to some understanding with
+himself of what had happened. At first he had been too overcast by the
+sense of loss to realise more than that Sophie had gone away. But now,
+beyond her going, he could see the failure of his own effort to control
+circumstances. He had failed; Sophie had gone; she had left the Ridge.
+
+"God," he groaned; "with the best intentions in the world, what an awful
+mess we make of things!"
+
+Michael wondered whether it would have been worse for Sophie if she had
+gone away with Paul when her mother died. At least, Sophie was older now
+and better able to take care of herself.
+
+He blamed himself because she had gone away as she had, all the same;
+the failure of the Ridge to hold her as well as his own failure beat him
+to the earth. He had hoped Sophie would care for the things her mother
+had cared for. He had tried to explain them to her. But Sophie, he
+thought now, had more the restless temperament of her father. He had not
+understood her young spirit, its craving for music, laughter,
+admiration, and the life that could give them to her. He had thought the
+Ridge would be enough for her, as it had been for her mother.
+
+Michael never thought of Mrs. Rouminof as dead. He thought of her as
+though she were living some distance from him, that was all. In the
+evening he looked up at the stars, and there was one in which she seemed
+to be. Always he felt as if she were looking at him when its mild
+radiance fell over him. And now he looked to that star as if trying to
+explain and beg forgiveness.
+
+His heart was sore because Sophie had left him without a word of
+affection or any explanation. His fear and anxiety for her gave him no
+peace. He sweated in agony with them for a long time, crying to her
+mother, praying her to believe he had not failed in his trust through
+lack of desire to serve her, but through a fault of understanding. If
+she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained
+that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with
+the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and
+sorrow for herself.
+
+Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by
+seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother's way. He had opposed
+the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it;
+and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise
+and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into
+channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas
+identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the
+hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.
+
+Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted
+Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from
+Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding
+Paul's opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would
+not do Sophie any harm.... His having them now could not injure
+Sophie.... Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he
+came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He
+tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always
+with him.... But Paul was delirious with sun-stroke, he remembered; it
+would be foolish to give him the stones just then.... As soon as that
+touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the
+opals and explain how he came to have them....
+
+
+
+
+_PART II_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes
+blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms
+continued until March.
+
+Through the heat came the baa-ing of sheep on the plains, moving in
+great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying
+of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from
+the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were
+marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the
+road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust
+from the plains.
+
+It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather.
+Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of
+it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was
+dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before
+the heat of the day began.
+
+In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump,
+handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone,
+shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of
+the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air.
+But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay,
+moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers
+stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up
+from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the
+busy underground world of the mines.
+
+As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul
+when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium
+of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it.
+Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning;
+he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with
+Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open
+sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once,
+in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti--the
+yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard
+near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the
+goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch
+saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or
+cheese for the two huts.
+
+People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they
+regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch
+Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of.
+And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of
+his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if
+he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so.
+He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself
+did.
+
+A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought
+much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little
+bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had
+rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff
+of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself
+was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of
+the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody
+who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find
+eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all
+the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house,
+thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.
+
+"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't
+anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael
+for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.
+
+George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for
+Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when
+Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder
+than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.
+
+At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the
+brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of
+the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying
+nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds
+with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there
+was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or
+knew something of.
+
+Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the
+old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real
+friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was
+that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a
+subtle, inexplicable fascination.
+
+As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had
+left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm
+comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it,
+there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."
+
+Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe
+Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would
+be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year.
+George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the
+Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to
+prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and
+rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be
+driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what
+his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and
+Son and men of the Ridge.
+
+When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George.
+
+"DEAR BRADY," it said, "I need hardly say your letter was a great shock
+to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he
+denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since
+found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her
+passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to
+leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy
+production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of
+this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power.
+Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment
+of my son's behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations
+between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I
+need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me
+personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my
+business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the
+best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady--whom I will regard as
+under my charge--you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps
+point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to
+visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to
+visit sins of the children upon the fathers.
+
+"Yours very truly,
+
+"DAWE P. ARMITAGE."
+
+"The old man seems fair broken up," Watty remarked.
+
+"Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with
+Armitage and Son--again," George replied. "If she's all right ... well
+... perhaps it'll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn't get on
+all right ... they won't neither."
+
+"That's right," Watty muttered.
+
+The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for
+hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had
+crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes
+of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains,
+and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in
+tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man
+and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light;
+the sky, dim, and smoking with heat.
+
+Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with
+sun-stroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to
+eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for
+some time, and a haze the sun-stroke had left hovered over his mind.
+Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping,
+Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle,
+and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or
+dozed the hot, still, midday hours away.
+
+When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which
+came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to
+make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put
+before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one
+day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched
+Potch with the birds.
+
+Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay
+on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until
+Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation
+of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or white-tail,
+to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was
+a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would
+be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to
+have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and
+entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not
+their common property.
+
+When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for
+granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had
+his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion
+which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and
+assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had
+at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived
+down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing
+for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had
+found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep,
+mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken
+from other loves.
+
+Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give
+to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him.
+He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to
+tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was
+holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance
+tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his
+mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.
+
+Paul's illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about
+the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his
+touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits
+again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let
+him know how he came to have them.
+
+All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the
+opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch's belief in him,
+and for not telling Potch how Paul's opals came into his possession.
+
+In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the
+troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed
+words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the
+stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton's bar. Suddenly it
+occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the
+package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of
+books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.
+
+He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul's
+cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his
+books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he
+found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the
+box--only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.
+
+Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none
+had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough
+handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again
+more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were
+all right while he was about it, he thought.
+
+He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table.
+Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin;
+and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted
+them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the
+candle-light. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in--a piece of
+opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its
+black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless
+night.
+
+One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle,
+letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in
+the stones--blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red--melted, sprayed, and
+scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.
+
+"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and
+emotion.
+
+With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of
+colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not
+only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a
+sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining
+depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.
+
+Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung
+unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.
+
+Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood
+up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that
+Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained
+how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay,
+instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing
+what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really
+guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a
+miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones
+as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at,
+tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and
+flashing.
+
+But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually
+sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement.
+He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was
+doing.
+
+"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.
+
+"No," Michael said. "Why?"
+
+He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the
+light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this
+way."
+
+The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between
+them. Michael lifted his head to listen.
+
+"Who's that?" he asked;
+
+Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars,
+was blank in the doorway.
+
+"May I come in?" a woman's voice called. Her figure wavered in the
+doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into
+the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the
+threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes,
+laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes
+went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.
+
+"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on
+the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see
+what you can do for her?"
+
+Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so
+ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to
+Maud.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of
+the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.
+
+"My," she cried eagerly, "that's a pretty stone, Michael!" She turned it
+back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks
+of red and gold.
+
+"Just been noodlin' over some old scraps ... and came across it,"
+Michael said awkwardly.
+
+It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He
+could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul's opals
+before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had.
+
+"Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle," Maud said. "Doin' a
+bit of dealin' myself. I'll give you a good price for it, Michael."
+
+"It's goin' into a parcel," he replied.
+
+"Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know," Maud said.
+"Comin', Potch?"
+
+She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael
+caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street
+urchin's, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies,
+fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely
+any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were
+clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden,
+flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond
+the Ridge.
+
+Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its
+wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed
+Sophie's singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the
+ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang.
+
+"You miss her these nights, don't you?" Michael said to Potch one very
+hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was
+drifting into the room about them.
+
+Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he
+looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him.
+
+"Yes," he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any
+more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out
+of doors.
+
+Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they
+found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of
+the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working;
+even the noodlers, Snow-Shoes and young Flail, were standing round with
+the miners.
+
+"Hullo," Michael said, "something's up!"
+
+Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only
+once before on the fields.
+
+"Ratting?" he said.
+
+"Looks like it," Michael agreed.
+
+"What's up, George?" he asked, as Potch and he joined the men.
+
+"Rats, Michael," George said, "that's what's up. They've been on our
+place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was
+working on. They've paid Archie a visit ... and Bully reck'ns his
+spider's been walking lately, too."
+
+Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour
+for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat's visit to
+their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men
+who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the
+rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy
+O'Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods' shelter to talk the
+situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the
+fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards
+them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out
+before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the
+shelter.
+
+George Woods, the best natured, soberest man on the Ridge, was
+smouldering with rage at the ratting.
+
+"I've a good mind to put a bit of dynamite at the bottom of the shaft,
+and then, when a rat strikes a match, up he'll go," he said.
+
+"But," Watty objected, "how'd you feel when you found a dead man in your
+claim, George?"
+
+"Feel?" George burst out. "I wouldn't feel--except he'd got no right to
+be there--and perlitely put him on one side."
+
+"Remember those chaps was up a couple of years ago, George?" Bill Grant
+asked, "and helped theirselves when Pony-Fence and me had a bit of luck
+up at Rhyll's hill."
+
+"Remember them?" George growled.
+
+"They'd go round selling stuff if there was anybody to buy--hang round
+the pub all day, and yet had stuff to sell," Watty murmured.
+
+The men smoked silently for a few minutes.
+
+"How much did they get, again?" Bully Bryant asked.
+
+"Couple of months," George said.
+
+"Police protect criminals--everybody knows that," Snow-Shoes said.
+
+Sitting on the dump just beyond the shade the shelter cast, he had been
+listening to what the men were saying, the sun full blaze on him, his
+blue eyes glittering in the shadow of his old felt hat. All eyes turned
+to him. The men always listened attentively when Snow-Shoes had anything
+to say.
+
+"If there's a policeman about, and a man starts ratting and is caught,
+he gets a couple of months. Well, what does he care? But if there's a
+chance of the miners getting hold of him and some rough handling ... he
+thinks twice before he rats ... knowing a broken arm or a pain in his
+head'll come of it."
+
+"That's true," George said. "I vote we get this bunch ourselves."
+
+"Right!" The Crosses and Bully agreed with him. Watty did not like the
+idea of the men taking the law into their own hands. He was all for law
+and order. His fat, comfortable soul disliked the idea of violence.
+
+"Seems to me," he said, "it 'd be a good thing to set a trap--catch the
+rats--then we'd know where we were."
+
+Michael nodded. "I'm with Watty," he said.
+
+"Then we could hand 'em over to the police," Watty said.
+
+Michael smiled. "Well, after the last batch getting two months, and the
+lot of us wasting near on two months gettin' 'em jailed, I reck'n it's
+easier to deal with 'em here--But we've got to be sure. They've got to
+be caught red-handed, as the sayin' is. It don't do to make mistakes
+when we're dealin' out our own justice."
+
+"That's right, Michael," the men agreed.
+
+"Well, I reck'n we'd ought to have in the police," Watty remarked
+obstinately.
+
+"The police!" Snow-Shoes stood up as if he had no further patience with
+the controversy. "It's like letting hornets build in your house to keep
+down flies--to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the
+flies."
+
+He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure,
+straighter than any man's on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet,
+wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the
+shingly earth.
+
+Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among
+themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they
+left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats.
+
+Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because
+the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But
+when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had "done a
+moonlight flit," it was generally agreed that these suspicions were
+confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal
+within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had
+come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself
+had bought from the gougers. Jun's and Maud's flight was taken not only
+as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men's
+resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring
+them away.
+
+When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went
+its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill
+after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to
+find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby.
+
+The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary
+summer months was Bully Bryant's marriage to Ella Flail, and, although
+it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be
+married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance
+and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple.
+
+"Roy O'Mara's got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael,"
+Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and
+Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had
+thought over what he was going to say.
+
+"Yes?" Michael replied.
+
+"How about tryin' our luck there?" Potch ventured.
+
+Michael took the suggestion meditatively. Potch and he had been working
+together for several years with very little luck. They had won only a
+few pieces of opal good enough to put into a parcel for an opal-buyer
+when he came to Fallen Star. But Michael was loth to give up the old
+shaft, not only because he believed in it, but because of the work he
+and his mates had put into it, and because when they did strike opal
+there, the mine would be easily worked. But this was the first time
+Potch had made a suggestion of the sort, and Michael felt bound to
+consider it.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush on, Snow-Shoes told me," Potch said. "Crosses
+have pegged, and I saw Bill Olsen measurin' out a claim."
+
+Michael's reluctance to move was evident.
+
+"I feel sure we'll strike it in the old shaft, sooner or later," he
+murmured.
+
+"Might be sooner by the coolebah," Potch said.
+
+Michael's eyes lifted to his, the gleam of a smile in them.
+
+"Very well, we'll pull pegs," he said.
+
+While stars were still in the high sky and the chill breath of dawn in
+the air, men were busy measuring and pegging claims on the hillside
+round about the old coolebah. Half a dozen blocks were marked one
+hundred feet square before the stars began to fade.
+
+All the morning men with pegs, picks, and shovels came straggling up the
+track from the township and from other workings scattered along the
+Ridge. The sound of picks on the hard ground and the cutting down of
+scrub broke the limpid stillness.
+
+Paul came out of his hut as Potch passed it on his way to the coolebah.
+Immediately he recognised the significance of the heavy pick Potch was
+carrying, and trotted over to him.
+
+"You goin' to break new ground, Potch?" he asked. Potch nodded.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah," he said. "Roy
+O'Mara's bottomed on opal there ... got some pretty good colours, and
+we're goin' to peg out."
+
+"A rush?" Paul's eyes brightened. "Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?"
+
+"Not bad."
+
+As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul
+chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.
+
+Roy O'Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of
+any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood
+over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great,
+bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound
+of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump--Roy had
+been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a
+fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day's find was spread
+on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but
+when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the
+pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.
+
+When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had
+marked in his mind's eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond
+Roy's claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at
+slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat
+beading and pouring down their faces.
+
+There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a
+new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk
+so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of
+matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a
+child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.
+
+Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after
+the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud
+and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the
+shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a
+fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal
+dirt beneath it. Roy O'Mara, working on his trace of promising black
+potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul.
+Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft;
+Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour
+of sinking again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from
+the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock
+from the drives, Potch said:
+
+"I'm going to sink another hole, Michael--higher up."
+
+Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that
+way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but
+he was not disturbed by his doing so.
+
+"Right," he said; "you sink another hole, Potch. I'll stick to this one
+for a bit."
+
+Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site
+carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the
+morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he
+was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had
+been three weeks on the job.
+
+"Ought to be near bottoming, Potch," Roy remarked one day towards the
+end of the three weeks.
+
+"Be there to-day," Potch said.
+
+Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his
+impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.
+
+Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a
+certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make
+considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well:
+they had cut out a pocket worth £400 as a result of their sinking, and
+it remained to be seen what Potch's new hole would bring. A good
+prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.
+
+Potch's prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value
+when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of
+promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the
+coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.
+
+They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains,
+for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal
+dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the
+mine, uttered a low cry.
+
+"Michael," he called.
+
+Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that
+joyous vibration in a man's voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went
+to Potch.
+
+Potch Was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had
+clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red,
+green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering
+together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he
+saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones
+which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some
+size was embedded in the wall of the mine.
+
+"Looks a beaut, doesn't she, Michael?" he gasped.
+
+Michael breathed hard.
+
+"By God----" he murmured.
+
+Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.
+
+He screamed when he saw the stone.
+
+"I knew!" he yelled. "I knew we'd strike it here."
+
+"Well, stand back while I get her out," Potch cried.
+
+Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth
+about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away
+with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with
+wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.
+
+When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be
+even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it
+had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped
+surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal.
+Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous
+and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with
+excitement.
+
+He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch's find to the men
+who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and
+Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They
+gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and
+admiration.
+
+"You've struck it this time, Potch!" Roy O'Mara said.
+
+Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped
+surface, and held it to the sun again.
+
+"It's the biggest knobby--ever I see," Archie Cross said.
+
+"Same here," Bill Grant muttered.
+
+"Wants polishin' up a bit," Michael said, "and then she'll show better."
+
+As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul's hut and faced the stone
+on Sophie's wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when
+he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied
+that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a
+hen's egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they
+agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever
+seen.
+
+Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and
+excitement in his voice as he talked.
+
+Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd
+jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought
+in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.
+
+When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their
+plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf
+where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He
+threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the
+light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of
+crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across
+the table to read.
+
+Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the
+magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's
+eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in
+his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before
+him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of
+the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby
+ever taken out of the fields.
+
+Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and
+rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered
+book.
+
+As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul's opals flashed before
+him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious
+of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud
+Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him
+again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or
+explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.
+
+Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like
+that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch's
+bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about
+the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his
+silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except
+that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion
+of unworthiness in the object of its belief.
+
+But since--since he had made up his mind to give the opals to
+Paul--since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her
+any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not
+given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had
+seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to
+himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer
+in the mysterious no-man's land of his subconsciousness.
+
+Paul's slow recovery from sun-stroke was a reason for deferring
+explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the
+first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals,
+Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his
+story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more
+difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of
+his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming
+on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul's opals.
+
+But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had
+only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this
+putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to
+face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals
+had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready
+to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with
+them.... He mocked his fears of himself.
+
+Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection
+with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own
+consciousness and to be honest with himself.
+
+As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision.
+He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray
+had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement
+seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could
+not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a
+dark corner of his mind.
+
+Had Paul's stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their
+witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were
+misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of
+the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul's
+stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want
+to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe
+he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was
+ready to steal--steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he
+assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do
+that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to
+do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring
+of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had
+done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them
+to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his
+dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put
+off going to Paul and to Watty and George.
+
+Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of,
+Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the
+packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty
+its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette
+tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them
+for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his
+project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few
+books.
+
+He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman's
+year-book and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it
+must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or
+another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked
+them over--but he could not find the tin with Paul's opals in.
+
+He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the
+candle-fight.
+
+"They're gone," he told himself.
+
+He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the
+box--if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absent-mindedly;
+but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there.
+
+Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea.
+
+Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on
+them--not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or
+suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able
+to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth
+speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value.
+His mind hovered indecisively. Maud?
+
+Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that
+gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself
+to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had
+come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to
+prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the
+day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat,
+Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man's hut
+either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one
+else who knew he had any stone worth having.
+
+If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By
+and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun
+told where those opals of Paul's had been found, as he would some
+day--Michael could not contemplate the prospect.
+
+He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it
+would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to
+restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men
+of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but
+knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession
+of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt
+that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the
+stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt.
+
+Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael
+sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him.
+He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul's had worked
+him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought
+him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of
+that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the
+loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty
+book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of
+the story Jun would tell--that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high
+faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of
+course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men's stones, and
+that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to
+be judged by it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Michael and Potch were finishing their tea when Watty burst in on them.
+His colour was up, his small, blue eyes winking and flashing over his
+fat, pink cheeks.
+
+"Who d'y' think's come be motor to-day, Michael?" he gasped.
+
+Michael's movement and the shade of apprehension which crossed his face
+were a question.
+
+"Old man Armitage!" Watty said. "And he's come all the way from New York
+to see the big opal, he says."
+
+There was a rumble of cart wheels, an exclamation and the reverberation
+of a broad, slow voice out-of-doors. Watty looked through Michael's
+window.
+
+"Here he is, Michael," he said. "George and Peter are helping him out of
+Newton's dog-cart. And Archie Cross and Bill Grant are coming along the
+road a bit behind."
+
+Michael pushed back his seat and pulled the fastenings from his front
+door. The front door was more of a decoration and matter of form in the
+face of the hut than intended to serve any useful purpose, and the
+fastening had never been moved before.
+
+Potch cleared away the litter of the meal while Michael went out to meet
+the old man. He was walking with the help of a stick, his heavy,
+colourless face screwed with pain.
+
+"Grr-rr!" he grunted. "What a fool I was to come to this God-damn place
+of yours, George! What? No fool like an old one? Don't know so much
+about that.... What else was I to do? Brrr! Oh, there you are, Michael!
+Came to see you. Came right away because, from what the boys tell me,
+you weren't likely to slip down and call on me."
+
+"I'd 've come all right if I'd known you wanted to see me, Mr.
+Armitage," Michael said.
+
+The old man went into the hut and, creaking and groaning as though all
+his springs needed oiling, seated himself on the sofa, whipped out a
+silk handkerchief and wiped his face and head with it.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "here I am at last--and mighty glad to get here.
+The journey from New York City, where I reside, to this spot on the
+globe, don't get any nearer as I grow older. No, sir! Who's that young
+man?"
+
+Mr. Armitage had fixed his eyes on Potch from the moment he came into
+the hut. Potch stood to his gaze.
+
+"That's Potch," Michael said.
+
+"Potch?"
+
+The small, round eyes, brown with black rims and centres, beginning to
+dull with age, winked over Potch, and in that moment Dawe Armitage was
+trying to discover what his chances of getting possession of the stone
+he had come to see, were with the man who had found it.
+
+"Con--gratulate you, young man," he said, holding out his hand. "I've
+come, Lord knows how many miles, to have a look at that stone of yours."
+
+Potch shook hands with him.
+
+"They tell me it's the finest piece of opal ever come out of Ridge
+earth," the old man continued. "Well, I couldn't rest out there at home
+without havin' a look at it. To think there was an opal like that about,
+and I couldn't get me fingers on it! And when I thought how it was I'd
+never even see it, perhaps, I danged 'em to Hades--doctors, family and
+all--took me passage out here. Ran away! That's what I did." He chuckled
+with reminiscent glee. "And here I am."
+
+"Cleared out, did y', Mr. Armitage?" Watty asked.
+
+"That's it, Watty," old Armitage answered, still chuckling. "Cleared
+out.... Family'll be scarrifyin' the States for me. Sent 'em a cable
+when I got here to say I'd arrived."
+
+Michael and George laughed with Watty, and the old man looked as pleased
+with himself as a schoolboy who has brought off some soul-satisfying
+piece of mischief.
+
+"Tell you, boys," he said, "I felt I couldn't die easy knowing there was
+a stone like that about and I'd never clap eyes on it.... Know you
+chaps'd pretty well turned me down--me and mine--and I wouldn't get more
+than a squint at the stone for my pains. You're such damned independent
+beggars! Eh, Michael? That's the old argument, isn't it? How did y' like
+those papers I sent you--and that book ... by the foreign devil--what's
+his name? Clever, but mad. Y'r all mad, you socialists, syndicalists, or
+whatever y'r call y'rselves nowadays.... But, for God's sake, let me
+have a look at the stone now, there's a good fellow."
+
+Michael looked at Potch.
+
+"You get her, Potch," he said.
+
+Potch put his hand to the top of the shelf where, in ah old tin, the
+great opal lay wrapped in wadding, with a few soft cloths about it. He
+put the tin on the table. Michael pushed the table toward the sofa on
+which Mr. Armitage was sitting. The old man leaned forward, his lips
+twitching, his eyes watering with eagerness. Potch's clumsy fingers
+fumbled with the wrappings; he spread the wadding on the table. The opal
+flashed black and shining between the rags and wadding as Potch put it
+on the table. Michael had lighted a candle and brought it alongside.
+
+Dawe Armitage gaped at the stone with wide, dazed eyes.
+
+"My!" he breathed; and again: "My!" Then: "She was worth it, Michael,"
+fell from him in an awed exclamation.
+
+He looked up, and the men saw tears of reverence and emotion in his
+eyes. He brushed them away and put out his hand to take the stone. He
+lifted the stone, gently and lovingly, as if it were alive and might be
+afraid at the approach of his wrinkled old hand. But it was not afraid,
+Potch's opal; it fluttered with delight in the hand of this old man, who
+was a devout lover, and rayed itself like a bird of paradise. Even to
+the men who had seen the stone before, it had a new and uncanny
+brilliance. It seemed to coquet with Dawe Armitage; to pour out its
+infinitesimal stars---red, blue, green, gold, and amethyst--blazing,
+splintering, and coruscating to dazzle and bewilder him.
+
+The men exclaimed as Mr. Armitage moved the opal. Then he put the stone
+down and mopped his forehead.
+
+"Well," he said, "I reckon she's the God-damnedest piece of opal I've
+ever seen."
+
+"She is that," Watty declared.
+
+"What have you got on her, Michael?" Dawe Armitage queried.
+
+A faint smile touched Michael's mouth.
+
+"I'm only asking," Armitage remarked apologetically. "I can tell you,
+boys, it's a pretty bitter thing for me to be out of the running for a
+stone like this. I ain't even bidding, you see--just inquiring, that's
+all."
+
+Michael looked at Potch.
+
+"Well," he said, "it's Potch's first bit of luck, and I reck'n he's got
+the say about it."
+
+The old man looked at Potch. He was a good judge of character. His
+chance of getting the stone from Michael was remote; from Potch--a
+steady, flat look in the eyes, a stolidity and inflexibility about the
+young man, did hot give Dawe Armitage much hope where he was concerned
+either.
+
+"They tell me," Mr. Armitage said, the twinkling of a smile in his eyes
+as he realised the metal of his adversary--"they tell me," he repeated,
+"you've refused three hundred pounds for her?"
+
+"That's right," Potch said.
+
+"How much do you reck'n she's worth?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How much have you got on her?"
+
+Potch looked at Michael.
+
+"We haven't fixed any price," he said.
+
+"Four hundred pounds?" Armitage asked.
+
+Potch's grey eyes lay on his for the fraction of a second.
+
+"You haven't got money enough to buy that stone, Mr. Armitage," he said,
+quietly.
+
+The old man was crestfallen. Although he pretended that he had no hope
+of buying the opal, everybody knew that, hoping against hope, he had not
+altogether despaired of being able to prevail against the Ridge
+resolution not to sell to Armitage and Son, in this instance. Potch
+remarked vaguely that he had to see Paul, and went out of the hut.
+
+"Oh, well," Dawe Armitage said, "I suppose that settles the matter.
+Daresay I was a durned old fool to try the boy--but there you are. Well,
+since I can't have her, Michael, see nobody else gets her for less than
+my bid."
+
+The men were sorry for the old man. What Potch had said was rather like
+striking a man when he was down, they thought; and they were not too
+pleased about it.
+
+"Potch doesn't seem to fancy sellin' at all for a bit," Michael said.
+
+"What!" Armitage exclaimed. "He's not a miser--at his age?"
+
+"It's not that," Michael replied.
+
+"Oh, well"--the old man's gesture disposed of the matter. He gazed at
+the stone entranced again. "But she's the koh-i-noor of opals, sure
+enough. But tell me"--he sat back on the sofa for a yarn--"what's the
+news of the field? Who's been getting the stuff?"
+
+The gossip of Jun and the ratting was still the latest news of the
+Ridge; but Mr. Armitage appeared to know as much of that as anybody. Ed.
+Ventry's boy, who had motored him over from Budda, had told him about
+it, he said. He had no opinion of Jun.
+
+"A bad egg," he said, and began to talk about bygone days on the Ridge.
+There was nothing in the world he liked better than smoking and yarning
+with men of the Ridge about black opal.
+
+He was fond of telling his family and their friends, who were too nice
+and precise in their manners for his taste, and who thought him a boor
+and mad on the subject of black opal, that the happiest times of his
+life had been spent on Fallen Star Ridge, "swoppin' lies with the
+gougers"; yarning with them about the wonderful stuff they had got, and
+other chaps had got, or looking over some of the opal he had bought, or
+was going to buy from them.
+
+"Oh, well," Mr. Armitage said after they had been talking for a long
+time, "it's great sitting here yarning with you chaps. Never thought ...
+I'd be sitting here like this again...."
+
+"It's fine to have a yarn with you, Mr. Armitage," Michael said.
+
+"Thank you, Michael," the old man replied. "But I suppose I must be
+putting my old bones to bed.... There's something else I want to talk to
+you about though, Michael."
+
+The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage's tone that what
+he had to say was for Michael alone.
+
+"I'll just have a look if that bally mare of mine's all right, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said.
+
+He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him.
+
+"Well, Michael," Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, "I guess
+you know what it is I want to talk to you about."
+
+Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment.
+
+"That little girl of yours."
+
+Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as
+if he and not Paul were Sophie's father.
+
+"She"--old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity
+crossed his face--"I've seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I've tried
+to keep an eye on her--but I don't mind admitting to you that a man
+needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what's coming to him
+where Sophie's concerned. But first of all ... she's well ... and
+happy--at least, she appears to be; and she's a great little lady."
+
+He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it
+were a page he were trying to read.
+
+"You know, she's singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they
+say she's doing well. She's sought after--made much of. She's got little
+old Manhattan at her feet, as they say.... I don't want to gloss over
+anything that son of mine may have done--but to put it in a nutshell,
+Michael, he's in love with her. He's really in love with her--wants to
+marry her, but Sophie won't have him."
+
+Michael did not speak, and he continued:
+
+"And there's this to be said for him. She says it. He isn't quite so
+much to blame as we first thought. Seems he'd been making love to her...
+and did a break before.... He didn't mean to be a blackguard, y' see.
+You know what I'm driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went--She
+says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then--well, you
+know, Michael ... you've been young ... you've been in love. And in
+Sydney ... summer-time ... with the harbour there at your feet....
+
+"They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the
+emigration authorities, I don't know. They make enough fuss about an old
+fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found
+her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made
+up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn't hear of getting married.
+Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin' married.
+Said her mother had been married--and look what it had brought her to.
+
+"She's fond of John, too," the old man continued. "But, at present, New
+York's a side-show, and she's enjoying it like a child on a holiday from
+the country. I've got her living with an old maid cousin of mine....
+Sophie says by and by perhaps she'll marry John, but not yet--not
+now--she's having too good a time. She's got all the money she wants ...
+all the gaiety and admiration. It's not the sort of life I like for a
+woman myself ... but I've done my best, Michael."
+
+There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face
+before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.
+
+"You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage," he said, "and I'm grateful to
+you.".
+
+"Tell you the truth, Michael," he said, "I'm fond of her. I feel about
+her as if she were a piece of live opal--the best bit that fool of a son
+of mine ever brought from the Ridge...."
+
+His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.
+
+"But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while
+ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that.
+Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It's a
+God-damned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones
+in me body."
+
+Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him
+his arm, and they went to Rouminof's hut.
+
+Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage's arrival; that he had come to
+the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael's hut. Paul had gone
+to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He
+was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers
+on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage
+came into the room.
+
+After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile,
+Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer
+pockets of his overcoat.
+
+"Thought you'd like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof," he said.
+"She's well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And
+I brought along this." He held out a photograph. "She wouldn't give me a
+photograph for you, Michael--said you'd never know her--so I prigged
+this from her sitting-room last time I was there."
+
+Michael glanced at the photographer's card of heavy grey paper, which
+Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he
+thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands,
+he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was
+so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the
+picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering
+through all his consciousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul's
+hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and
+start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the
+sun-stroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and
+Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him
+out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again.
+
+Since old Armitage's visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was
+getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used
+to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had
+been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage's visit he spent
+the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton's
+veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn
+with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies
+over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie's
+neglect of him--how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to
+do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling
+reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie's
+mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised Sometimes,
+talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York.
+
+He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of
+so much drinking on his never very steady brain.
+
+For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim
+and start work again; but Paul would not.
+
+"What's the good," he had said, "Sophie'll be sending for me soon, and
+I'll be going to live with her in New York, and she won't want people to
+be saying her father is an old miner."
+
+Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever
+to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge;
+he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer
+Paul back to more or less regular ways of living.
+
+This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work
+again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine
+the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that
+news.
+
+Potch had brought Paul home from Newton's the night before, Michael
+knew; but Paul was not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael
+went into the hut.
+
+As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door
+of the room which had been Sophie's was thrown back. Michael went
+towards it.
+
+"Paul!" he called.
+
+No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity
+had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway
+thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been
+like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but
+there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room
+about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the
+frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the
+window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael
+remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago.
+
+He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left
+the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when
+his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He
+gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the
+suggestion they conveyed.
+
+Sophie exclaimed behind him.
+
+When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against
+one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed
+into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill.
+
+"I've come home, Michael," she said.
+
+Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her
+eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the
+realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of
+his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to
+the Ridge again.
+
+They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what
+words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some
+commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection.
+
+"It's a sight for sore eyes--the sight of you, Sophie," he said.
+
+"Michael!"
+
+Her arms went out to him with the quick gesture he knew. Michael moved
+to her and caught her in his arms. No moment in all his life had been
+like this when he held Sophie in his arms as though she were his own
+child. His whole being swayed to her in an infinite compassion and
+tenderness. She lay against him, her body quivering. Then she cried,
+brokenly, with spent passion, almost without strength to cry at all.
+
+"There, there!" Michael muttered. "There, there!"
+
+He held her, patting and trying to comfort and soothe her, muttering
+tenderly, and with difficulty because of his trouble for her. The tears
+she had seen in his eyes when he said she was a sight for sore eyes came
+from him and fell on her. His hand went over her hair, clumsily,
+reverently.
+
+"There, there!" he muttered again and again.
+
+Weak with exhaustion, when her crying was over, Sophie moved away from
+him. She pushed back the hair which had fallen over her forehead; her
+eyes had a faint smile as she looked at him.
+
+"I am a silly, aren't I, Michael?" she said.
+
+Michael's mouth took its wry twist.
+
+"Are you, Sophie?" he said. "Well ... I don't think there's anyone else
+on the Ridge'd dare say so."
+
+"I've dreamt of that smile of yours, Michael," Sophie said. She swayed a
+little as she looked at him; her eyes closed.
+
+Michael put his arm round her and led her to the bed. He made her lie
+down and drew the coverlet over her.
+
+"You lay down while I make you a cup of tea, Sophie," he said.
+
+Sophie was lying so still, her face was so quiet and drained of colour
+when he returned with tea in a pannikin and a piece of thick bread and
+butter on the only china plate in the hut, that Michael thought she had
+fainted. But the lashes swept up, and her eyes smiled into his grave,
+anxious face as he gazed at her.
+
+"I'm all right, Michael," she said, "only a bit crocky and dead tired."
+She sat up, and Michael sat on the bed beside her while she drank the
+tea and ate the bread and butter.
+
+"Tea in a pannikin is much nicer than any other tea in the world,"
+Sophie said. "Don't you think so, Michael? I've often wondered whether
+it's the tea, or the taste of the tin pannikin, or the people who have
+tea in pannikins, that makes it so nice."
+
+After a while she said:
+
+"I came up on the coach this morning ... didn't get in till about
+half-past six.... And I came straight up from Sydney the day before.
+That's all night on the train ... and I didn't get a sleeper. Just sat
+and stared out of the window at the country. Oh! I can't tell you how
+badly I've wanted to come home, Michael. In the end I felt I'd die if I
+didn't come--so I came."
+
+Then she asked about Potch and her father.
+
+Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sun-stroke, but
+that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of
+putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down
+to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and
+Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the
+night before.
+
+"I'll send him up to you, if he's there," Michael said. "But you'd
+better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shut-eye
+you've been missing these last two or three days."
+
+"Months, Michael," Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her
+eyes again.
+
+They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed.
+
+"But I'll sleep all right here," she said. "I feel as if I'd sleep for
+years and years.... It's the smell of the paper daisies and the
+sandal-wood smoke, I suppose. The air's got such a nice taste,
+Michael.... It smells like peace, I think."
+
+"Well," Michael said, "you eat as much of it as you fancy. I don't mind
+if Paul doesn't find you till he comes back to tea.... It'd do you more
+good to have a sleep now, and then you'll be feelin' a bit fitter."
+
+"I think I could go to sleep now, Michael," Sophie murmured.
+
+Michael stood watching her for a moment as she seemed to go to sleep,
+thinking that the dry, northern air, with its drowsy fragrance, was
+already beginning to draw the ache from her body and brain. He went to
+the curtain of the doorway, dropped it, and turned out into the blank
+sunshine of the day again.
+
+He fit his pipe and smoked abstractedly as he walked down the track to
+the mine. He had already made up his mind that it would be better for
+Sophie to sleep for a while, and that he was not going to get anyone to
+look for Paul and send him to her.
+
+She had said nothing of the reason for her return, and Michael knew
+there must be a reason. He could not reconcile the Sophie Dawe Armitage
+had described as taking her life in America with such joyous zest, and
+the elegant young woman on the show-page of the illustrated magazine,
+with the weary and broken-looking girl he had been talking to. Whatever
+it was that had changed her outlook, had been like an earthquake,
+devastating all before it, Michael imagined. It had left her with no
+more than the instinct to go to those who loved and would shelter her.
+
+Potch was at work on a slab of shin-cracker when Michael went down into
+the mine. He straightened and looked up as Michael came to a standstill
+near him. His face was dripping, and his little white cap, stained with
+red earth, was wet with sweat. He had been slogging to get through the
+belt of hard, white stone near the new colours before Michael appeared.
+
+"Get him?" he asked.
+
+Michael had almost forgotten Paul.
+
+"No," he said, switching his thoughts from Sophie.
+
+"What's up?" Potch asked quickly, perceiving something unusual in
+Michael's expression.
+
+Michael wanted to tell him--this was a big thing for Potch, he knew--and
+yet he could not bring his news to expression. It caught him by the
+throat. He would have to wait until he could say the thing decently, he
+told himself. He knew what joy it would give Potch.
+
+"Nothing," he said, before he realised what he had said.
+
+But he promised himself that in a few minutes he would tell Potch. He
+would break the news to him. Michael felt as though he were the guardian
+of some sacred treasure which he was afraid to give a glimpse of for
+fear of dazzling the beholder.
+
+The concern went from Potch's face as quickly and vividly as it had
+come. He knew that Michael had reserves from him, and he was afraid of
+having trespassed on them by asking for information which Michael did
+not volunteer. He had been betrayed into the query by the stirred and
+happy look on Michael's face. Only rarely had he seen Michael look like
+that. Potch's thought flashed to Sophie--Michael must have some good
+news of her, he guessed, and knew Michael would pass it on to him in his
+own time.
+
+He turned to his work again, and Michael took up his pick. Potch's
+steady slinging at the shin-cracker began again. Michael reproached
+himself as the minutes went by for what he was keeping from Potch.
+
+He knew what his news would mean to Potch. He knew the solid flesh of
+the man would grow radiant. Michael had seen that subtle glow transfuse
+him when they talked of Sophie. He pulled himself together and
+determined to speak.
+
+Dropping his pick to take a spell, Michael pulled his pipe from the belt
+round his trousers, relighted the ashes in its bowl, and sat on the
+floor of the mine. Potch also stopped work. He leaned his pick against
+the rock beside him, and threw back his shoulders.
+
+"Where was he?" he asked.
+
+"Who--Paul?"
+
+Potch nodded, sweeping the drips from his head and neck.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Michael decided he would tell him now.
+
+"Don't know," he said. "He wasn't about when I came away."
+
+Potch wrung his cap, shook it out, and fitted it on his head again.
+
+"He was showin' all right at Newton's last night," he said. "I'd a bit
+of a business getting him home."
+
+"Go on," Michael replied absent-mindedly. "Potch ..." he he added, and
+stopped to listen.
+
+There was a muffled rumbling and sound of someone calling in the
+distance. It came from Roy O'Mara's drive, on the other side of the
+mine.
+
+"Hullo!" Michael called.
+
+"That you, Michael?" Roy replied. "I'm comin' through."
+
+His head appeared through the drive which he had tunnelled to meet
+Potch's and Michael's drive on the eastern side of the mine. He crawled
+out, shook himself, took out his pipe, and squatted on the floor beside
+Michael.
+
+"Where's Rummy?" Roy asked.
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"You didn't get him down, after all--the boys were taking bets about it
+last night."
+
+"We'll get him yet," Potch said. "The colour'll work like one thing."
+
+Michael stared ahead of him, smoking as though his thoughts absorbed
+him.
+
+"He was pretty full at Newton's last night," Roy said, "and
+talkin'--talkin' about Sophie singing in America, and the great lady she
+is now. And how she was goin' to send for him, and he'd be leavin' us
+soon, and how sorry we'd all be then."
+
+"Should've thought you'd about wore out that joke," Michael remarked,
+dryly.
+
+Roy's easy, good-natured voice faltered.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "he likes to show off a bit, and it don't hurt us,
+Michael."
+
+"That's right," Michael returned; "but Potch was out half the night
+bringing him home. You chaps might remember Paul's our proposition when
+you're having a bit of fun out of him."
+
+Potch turned back to his work.
+
+"Right, Michael," Roy said. And then, after a moment, having decided
+that both Michael's and Potch's demeanours were too calm for them to
+have heard what he had, as if savouring the effect of his news, he
+added:
+
+"But perhaps we won't have many more chances-seein' Rummy 'll be going
+to America before long, perhaps----"
+
+Michael, looking at Roy through his tobacco smoke, realised that he knew
+about Sophie's having come home. His glance travelled to Potch, who was
+slogging at the cement stone again.
+
+"Saw old Ventry on me way down to the mine," Roy said, "and he said he'd
+a passenger on the coach last night.... Who do you think it was?"
+
+Michael dared not look at Potch.
+
+"He said," Roy murmured slowly, "it was Sophie."
+
+They knew that Potch's pick had stopped. Michael had seen a tremor
+traverse the length of his bared back; but Potch did not turn. He stood
+with his face away from them, immobile. His body dripped with sweat and
+seemed to be oiled by the garish light of the candle which outlined his
+head, gilded his splendid arms and torso against the red earth of the
+mine, and threw long shadows into the darkness, shrouding the workings
+behind him. Then his pick smashed into the cement stone with a force
+which sent sharp, white chips flying in every direction.
+
+When Roy crawled away through the tunnel to his own quarters, Potch
+swung round from the face he was working on, his eyes blazing.
+
+"Is it true?" he gasped.
+
+"Yes," Michael said.
+
+After a moment he added: "I found her in the hut this morning just
+before I came away. I been tryin' all these blasted hours to tell you,
+Potch ... but every time I tried, it got me by the neck, and I had to
+wait until I found me voice."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The sunset was fading, a persimmon glow failing from behind the trees,
+its light merging with the blue of the sky, creating the faint, luminous
+green which holds the first stars with such brilliance, when Sophie went
+out of the hut to meet Potch.
+
+The smell of sandal-wood burning on the fireplace in the kitchen she had
+just left, was in the air. Such soothing its fragrance had for her! And
+on the shingly soil, between the old dumps cast up a little distance
+from the huts, in every direction, the paper daisies were lying, white
+as driven snow in the wan light. Sophie went to the goat-pen, strung
+round with a light, crooked fence, a few yards from the back of the
+house.
+
+As she leaned against the fence she could hear the tinkling of a
+goat-bell in the distance. The fragrances, the twilight, and the quiet
+were balm to her bruised senses. The note of a bell sounded nearer.
+Potch was bringing the goats in.
+
+Sophie went to the shed and stood near it, so that she might see him
+before he saw her. A kid in the shed bleated as the note of the bell
+became harsher and nearer. Sophie heard the answering cry of the nanny
+among the three or four goats coming down to the yard along a narrow
+track from a fringe of trees beyond the dumps. Then she saw Potch's
+figure emerge from the trees.
+
+He drove the goats into the yard where two sticks of the fence were
+down, put up the rails, and went to the shed for a milking bucket. He
+came back into the yard, pulled a little tan-and-white nanny beside a
+low box on which he sat to milk, and the squirt and song of milk in the
+pail began. Sophie wondered what Potch was thinking of as he sat there
+milking. She remembered the night--Potch had been sitting just like
+that--when she told him her mother was dead. As she remembered, she saw
+again every flicker and gesture of his, the play of light on his broad,
+heavy face and head, with its shock of fairish hair; how his face had
+puckered up and looked ugly and childish as he began to cry; how, after
+a while, he had wiped his eyes and nose on his shirt-sleeve, and gone on
+with the milking again, crying and sniffling in a subdued way.
+
+There was a deep note of loving them in his voice, rough and burred
+though it was, as Potch spoke to the goats. Two of them came when he
+called.
+
+When he had nearly finished milking, Sophie moved away from the screen
+of the shed. She went along to the fence and stood where he could see
+her when he looked up.
+
+The light had faded, and stars were glimmering in the luminous green of
+the sky when Potch, as he released the last goat, pushed back the box he
+had been sitting on, got up, took his bucket by the handle, and, looking
+towards the fence, saw Sophie standing there. At first he seemed to
+think she was a figure of his imagination, he stood so still gazing at
+her. He had often thought of her, leaning against the rails there,
+smiling at him like that. Then he remembered Sophie had come home; that
+it was really Sophie herself by the fence as he had dreamed of seeing
+her. But her face was wan and ethereal in the half-light; it floated
+before him as if it were a drowned face in the still, thin air.
+
+"She's very like my old white nanny, Potch," Sophie said, her eyes
+glancing from Potch to the goat he had just let go and which had
+followed him across the yard.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"She might almost be Annie Laurie's daughter," Sophie said.
+
+"She's her grand-daughter," Potch replied.
+
+He put the bucket down at the rails and stooped to get through them.
+Before he took up the bucket again he stood looking at her as though to
+assure himself that it was really Sophie in the flesh who was waiting
+for him by the fence. Then he took up the bucket, and they walked across
+to Michael's hut together.
+
+Potch dared scarcely glance at her when he realised that Sophie was
+really walking beside him--Sophie herself--although her eyes and her
+voice were not the eyes and voice of the Sophie he had known. And he had
+so often dreamed of her walking beside him that the dream seemed almost
+more real than the thing which had come to pass.
+
+Sophie went with him to the lean-to, where the milk-dishes stood on a
+bench under the window outside Michael's hut. She watched Potch while he
+strained the milk and poured it into big, flat dishes on a bench under
+the window.
+
+Paul came to the door of their own hut. He called her. Sophie could hear
+voices exclaiming and talking to Paul and Michael. She supposed that the
+people her father had said were coming from New Town to see her had
+arrived. She dreaded going into the room where they all were, although
+she knew that she must go.
+
+"Are you coming, Potch?" she asked.
+
+His eyes went from her to his hands.
+
+"I'll get cleaned up a bit first," he said, "then I'll come."
+
+The content in his eyes as they rested on her was transferred to Sophie.
+It completed what the fragrances, those first minutes in the quiet and
+twilight had done for her. It gave her a sense of having come to haven
+after a tempestuous journey on the high seas beyond the reef of the
+Ridge, and of having cast anchor in the lee of a kindly and sheltering
+land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Michael had lit the lamp in Rouminof's kitchen; innumerable tiny-winged
+insects, moths, mosquitoes, midges, and golden-winged flying ants hung
+in a cloud about it. Martha M'Cready, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and George
+Woods were there talking to Paul and Michael when Sophie went into the
+kitchen.
+
+"Here she is," Paul said.
+
+Martha rose from her place on the sofa and trundled cross to her.
+
+"Dearie!" she cried, as George and Pony-Fence called:
+
+"H'llo, Sophie!"
+
+And Sophie said: "Hullo, George! Hullo, Pony-Fence!"
+
+Martha's embrace cut short what else she may have had to say. Sophie
+warmed to her as she had when she was a child. Martha had been so plump
+and soft to rub against, and a sensation of sheer animal comfort and
+rejoicing ran through Sophie as she felt herself against Martha again.
+The slight briny smell of her skin was sweet to her with associations of
+so many old loving and impulsive hugs, so much loving kindness.
+
+"Oh, Mother M'Cready," she cried, a more joyous note in her voice than
+Michael had yet heard, "it is nice to see you again!"
+
+"Lord, lovey," Martha replied, disengaging her arms, "and they'd got me
+that scared of you--saying what a toff you were. I thought you'd be
+tellin' me my place if I tried this sort of thing. But when I saw you a
+minute ago, I clean forgot all about it. I saw you were just my own
+little Sophie back again ... and I couldn't 've helped throwing me arms
+round you--not for the life of me."
+
+She was winking and blinking her little blue eyes to keep the tears in
+them, and Sophie laughed the tears back from her eyes too.
+
+"There she is!" a great, hearty voice exclaimed in the doorway.
+
+And Bully Bryant, carrying the baby, with Ella beside him, came into the
+room.
+
+"Bully!" Sophie cried, as she went towards them, "And Ella!"
+
+Ella threw out her arms and clung to Sophie.
+
+"She's been that excited, Sophie," Bully said, "I couldn't hardly get
+her to wait till this evening to come along."
+
+"Oh, Bully!" Ella protested shyly.
+
+"And the baby?" Sophie cried, taking his son from Bull. "Just fancy you
+and Ella being married, Bully, and having a baby, and me not knowing a
+word about it!"
+
+The baby roared lustily, and Bully took him from Sophie as Watty Frost,
+the Crosses, and Roy O'Mara came through the door.
+
+"Hullo, Watty, Archie, Tom, Roy!" Sophie exclaimed with a little gasp of
+pleasure and excitement, shaking hands with each one of them as they
+came to her.
+
+She had not expected people to come to see her like this, and was
+surprised by the genial warmth and real affection of the greetings they
+had given her. Everybody was laughing and talking, the little room was
+full to brimming when Bill Grant appeared in the doorway, and beside him
+the tall, gaunt figure of the woman Sophie loved more than any other
+woman on the Ridge--Maggie Grant, looking not a day older, and wearing a
+blue print dress with a pin-spot washed almost out of it, as she had
+done as long as Sophie could remember.
+
+Sophie went to the long, straight glance of her eyes as to a call.
+Maggie kissed her. She did not speak; but her beautiful, deep-set eyes
+spoke for her. Sophie shook hands with Bill Grant.
+
+"Glad to see you back again, Sophie," he said simply.
+
+"Thank you, Bill," she replied.
+
+Then Potch came in; and behind him, slowly, from out of the night,
+Snow-Shoes. The Grants had moved from the door to give him passage; but
+he stood outside a moment, his tall, white figure and old sugar-loaf hat
+outlined against the blue-dark wall of the night sky, as though he did
+not know whether he would go into the room or not.
+
+Then he crossed the threshold, took off his hat, and stood in a stiff,
+gallant attitude until Sophie saw him. He had a fistful of yellow
+flowers in one hand. Everybody knew Sophie had been fond of punti. But
+there were only a few bushes scattered about the Ridge, and they had
+done flowering a month ago, so Snow-Shoes' bouquet was something of a
+triumph. He must have walked miles, to the swamp, perhaps, to find it,
+those who saw him knew.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Riley!" Sophie cried, as she went to shake hands with him.
+
+"They still call me Snow-Shoes, Sophie," the old man said.
+
+The men laughed, and Sophie joined them. She knew, as they all did, that
+although anyone of them was called by the name the Ridge gave him, no
+one ever addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley.
+
+He held the flowers out to her.
+
+"Punti!" she exclaimed delightedly, holding the yellow blossoms to her
+nose. "Isn't it lovely? ... No flower in the world's got such a
+perfume!"
+
+Michael had explained to the guests that Sophie was not to be asked to
+sing, and that nothing was to be said about her singing. Something had
+gone wrong with her voice, he told two or three of the men.
+
+He thought he had put the fear of God into Paul, and had managed to make
+him understand that it distressed Sophie to talk about her singing, and
+he must not bother her with questions about it. But in a lull of the
+talk Paul's voice was raised querulously:
+
+"What I can't make out, Sophie," he said, "is why you can't sing? What's
+happened to your voice? Have you been singing too much? Or have you
+caught cold? I always told you you'd have to be careful, or your voice'd
+go like your mother's did. If you'd listened to me, now, or I'd been
+with you...."
+
+Bully Bryant, catching Michael's eye, burst across Paul's drivelling
+with a hearty guffaw.
+
+"Well," he said, "Sophie's already had a sample of the fine lungs of
+this family, and I don't mind givin' her another, and then Ella and
+me'll have to be takin' Buffalo Bill home to bed. Now then, old son,
+just let 'em see what we can do." He raised his voice to singing pitch:
+
+"For-er she's a jolly good fellow, for-er-"
+
+All the men and women in the hut joined in Bully's roar, singing in a
+way which meant much more than the words--singing from their hearts,
+every man and woman of them.
+
+Then Bully put his baby under his arm as though it were a bundle of
+washing, Ella protesting anxiously, and the pair of them said good-night
+to Sophie. Snow-Shoes went out before them; and Martha said she would
+walk down to the town with Bully and Ella. Bill Grant and Maggie said
+good-night.
+
+"Sophie looks as if she'd sleep without rocking to-night," Maggie Grant
+said by way of indicating that everybody ought to go home soon and let
+Sophie get to bed early.
+
+"I will," Sophie replied.
+
+Pony-Fence and the Crosses were getting towards the door, Watty and
+George followed them.
+
+"It's about time you was back, that's what I say, Sophie," George Woods
+said, gripping her hand as he passed. "There's been no luck on this
+field since you went away."
+
+Sophie smiled into his kindly brown eyes.
+
+"That's right," Watty backed up his mate heartily.
+
+
+"But," Sophie said, "they tell me Potch has had all the luck."
+
+"So he has," George Woods agreed.
+
+"It's a great stone, isn't it, Sophie?" Watty said.
+
+"I haven't seen it yet," Sophie said. "Michael said he'd get Potch to
+show it to me to-night."
+
+"Not seen it?" George gasped. "Not seen the big opal! Say, boys"--he
+turned to Pony-Fence, and the Crosses--"I reck'n we'll have to stay for
+this. Sophie hasn't seen Potch's opal yet. Bring her along, Potch. Bring
+her along, and let's all have another squint at her. You can't get too
+much of a good thing."
+
+"Right," Potch replied.
+
+He went out of the hut to bring the opal from his own room.
+
+"Reck'n it's the finest stone ever found on this field," Watty said,
+"and the biggest. How much did you say Potch had turned down for it,
+Michael?"
+
+"Four hundred," Michael said.
+
+"What are you hangin' on to her for, Michael?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+Michael shook his head, that faint smile of his flickering.
+
+"Potch's had an idea he didn't want to part with her," he said. "But I
+daresay he'll be letting her go soon."
+
+He did not say "now." But the men understood that. They guessed that
+Potch had been waiting for this moment; that he wanted to show Sophie
+the stone before selling it.
+
+Potch came into the room again, his head back, an indefinable triumph
+and elation in his eyes as they sought Sophie's. He had a mustard tin,
+skinned of its gaudy paper covering, in his hand. A religious awe and
+emotion stirred the men as, standing beside Sophie, he put the tin on
+the table. They crowded about the table, muscles tightening in sun-red,
+weather-tanned faces, some of them as dark as the bronze of an old
+penny, the light in their eyes brightening, sharpening--a thirsting,
+eager expression in every face. Potch screwed off the lid of the tin,
+lifted the stone in its wrappings, and unrolled the dingy flannel which
+he had put round it. Then he took the opal from its bed of cotton wool.
+
+Sophie leaned forward, her eyes shining, her breath coming quickly. The
+emotion in the room made itself felt through her.
+
+"Put out the lamp, Michael, and let's have a candle," George said.
+
+Michael turned out the lamp, struck a match and set it to the candle in
+a bottle on the dresser behind him. He put the candle on the table.
+Potch held the great opal to the light, he moved it slowly behind the
+flame of the candle.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Sophie's cry of quivering ecstasy thrilled her hearers. She was one of
+them; she had been brought up among them. They had known she would feel
+opal as they did. But that cry of hers heightened their enthusiasm.
+
+The breaths of suppressed excitement and admiration, and their muttered
+exclamations went up:
+
+"Now, she's showin'!"
+
+"God, look at her now!"
+
+Sophie followed every movement of the opal in Potch's hand. It was a
+world in itself, with its thousand thousand suns and stars, shimmering
+and changing before her eyes as they melted mysteriously in the jetty
+pool of the stone.
+
+"Oh!" she breathed again, amazed, dazed, and rapturous.
+
+Potch came closer to her. They stood together, adoring the orb of
+miraculous and mysterious beauty.
+
+"Here," Potch said, "you hold her, Sophie."
+
+Sophie put out her hand, trembling, filled with child-like awe and
+emotion. She stretched her fingers. The stone weighed heavy and cold on
+them. Then there was a thin, silvery sound like the shivering of
+glass.... Her hand was light and empty. She stood staring at it for a
+moment; her eyes went to Potch's face, aghast. The blood seemed to have
+left her body. She stood so with her hand out, her lips parted, her eyes
+wide....
+
+After a while she knew Potch was holding her, and that he was saying:
+
+"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
+
+She could feel him, something to lean against, beside her. Michael
+lifted the candle. With strange intensity, as though she were dreaming,
+Sophie saw the men had fallen away from the table. All their faces were
+caricatures, distorted and ghastly; and they were looking at the floor
+near her. Sophie's eyes went to the floor, too. She could see shattered
+stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst--out across the earthen
+floor.
+
+Michael put the candle on the floor. He and George Woods gathered them
+up. When Sophie looked up, the dark of the room swam with galaxies of
+those stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst.
+
+She stood staring before her: she had lost the power to move or to
+think. After a while she knew that the men had gone from the room, and
+that Potch was still beside her, his eyes on her face. He had eyes only
+for her face: he had barely glanced at the floor, where infinitesimal
+specks of coloured light were still winking in the dust. He took her
+hands. Sophie heard him talking, although she did not know what he was
+saying.
+
+When she began to understand what Potch was saying, Sophie was sitting
+on the sofa under the window, and Potch was kneeling beside her. At
+first she heard him talking as if he were a long way away. She tried to
+listen; tried to understand what he was saying.
+
+"It's all right, Sophie," Potch kept saying, his voice breaking.
+
+Sight of her suffering overwhelmed him; and he trembled as he knelt
+beside her. Sophie heard him crying distantly:
+
+"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
+
+She shuddered. Her eyes went to him, consciousness in their blank gaze.
+Potch, realising that, murmured incoherently:
+
+"Don't think of it any more.... It was yours, Sophie. It was for you I
+was keeping it.... Michael knew that, too. He knew that was why I didn't
+want to sell.... It was your opal ... to do what you liked with, really.
+That was what I meant when I put it in your hand. But don't let us think
+of it any more. I don't want to think of it any more."
+
+"Oh!" Sophie cried, in a bitter wailing; "it's true, I believe ...
+somebody said once that I'm as unlucky as opal--that I bring people bad
+luck like opal...."
+
+"You know what we say on the Ridge?" Potch said; "The only bad luck you
+get through opal is when you can't get enough of it--so the only bad
+luck you're likely to bring to people is when they can't get enough of
+you."
+
+"Potch!"
+
+Sophie's hands went to him in a flutter of breaking grief. The
+forgiveness she could not ask, the gratitude for his gentleness, which
+she could not express any other way, were in the gesture and
+exclamation.
+
+On her hands, through his hot, clasped hands, the whole of Potch's being
+throbbed.
+
+"Don't think of it any more," he begged.
+
+"But it was your luck--your wonderful opal--and ... I broke it, Potch. I
+spoilt your luck."
+
+"No," Potch said, borne away from himself on the flood of his desire to
+assuage her distress. "You make everything beautiful for me, Sophie.
+Since you came back I haven't thought of the stone: I'd forgotten it....
+This hasn't been the same place. I'm so filled up with happiness because
+you're here that I can't think of anything else."
+
+Sophie looked into his face, her eyes swimming. She saw the deep passion
+of love in Potch's eyes; but she turned away from the light it poured
+over her, her face overcast again, bitterness and grief in it. She hung
+so for a moment; then her hands went over her face and she was crying
+abstractedly, wearily.
+
+There was something in her aloofness in that moment which chilled Potch.
+His instincts, sensitive as the antennæ of an insect, wavered over her,
+trying to discover the cause of it. Conscious of a mood which excluded
+him, he withdrew his hand from her. Sophie groped for it. Then the sense
+of sex and of barriers swept from him, by the passion of his desire to
+comfort and console her. Potch put his arm round her and drew Sophie to
+him, murmuring With an utter tenderness, "Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+Later she said:
+
+"I can't tell you ... what happened ... out there, Potch. Not yet ...
+not now.... Perhaps some day I will. It hurt so much that it took all
+the singing out of me. My heart wouldn't move ... so my voice died. I
+thought if I came home, you and Michael wouldn't mind ... my being like
+I am. But you've all been so good to me, Potch ... and it's so restful
+here, I was beginning to think that life might go on from where I left
+it; that it might be just a quiet living together and loving, like it
+was before...."
+
+"It can, Sophie!" Potch said, his eyes on her face, wistful and eager to
+read her thought.
+
+"But look what I've done," she said.
+
+Potch lifted her hand to his lips, a resurge of the virile male in him
+moving his restraint.
+
+"I've told you," he said, "what you've done. You've put joy into all our
+hearts--just to see you again. Michael's told you that, too, and George
+and the rest of them."
+
+"Yes, but, Potch ..." Sophie paused, and he saw the shadow of dark
+thoughts in her eyes again. "I'm not what you think I am. I'm not like
+any of you think."
+
+Potch's grip on her hand tightened.
+
+"You're you--and you're here. That's enough for us!" he said.
+
+Sophie sighed. "I never dreamt everybody would be so good. You and
+Michael I knew would--but the others ... I thought they'd remember ...
+and disapprove of me, Potch.... Mrs. Watty"--a smile showed faintly in
+her eyes--"I thought she'd see to that."
+
+"I daresay she's done her best" Potch said, with a memory of Watty's
+valiant bearing and angry, bright eyes when he came into the hut. "Watty
+was vexed ... she wouldn't come with him to-night."
+
+"Was he?"
+
+Potch nodded. "What you didn't reck'n on," he said, "was that all of us
+here ... we--we love you, Sophie, and we're glad you're back again."
+
+Her eyes met him in a straight, clear glance.
+
+"You and Michael," she said, "I knew you loved me, Potch...."
+
+"You know how it's always been with me," Potch said, grateful that he
+might talk of his love, although he had been afraid to since she had
+cried, fearing thought of it stirred that unknown source of distress.
+"But I won't get in your way here, Sophie, because of that. I won't
+bother you ... I want just to stand by--and help you all I know how."
+
+"I love you, too, Potch," Sophie said; "but there are so many ways of
+loving. I love you because you love me; because your love is the one
+sure thing in the world for me.... I've thought of it when I've been
+hurt and lonely.... I came back because it was here ... and you were
+here."
+
+Potch's eyes were illumined; his face blazed as though a fire had been
+engendered in the depths of his body. He remained so a moment, curbed
+and overcome with emotion. The shadow deepened in Sophie's eyes as she
+looked at him; her face was grave and still.
+
+"I do love you, Potch," she said again; "not as I loved someone else,
+once. That was different. But you're so good to me ... and I'm so
+tired."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The days which followed that night when Sophie had dropped the great
+opal were the happiest Potch had ever known. They were days in which
+Sophie turned to smile at him when he went into Rouminof's hut; when her
+eyes lay in his serenely; when he could go to her, and stand near her,
+inhaling her being, before he stooped to kiss her hair; when she would
+put back her head so that he might find her lips and take her breath
+from them in the lingering kiss she gave.
+
+When she had laid her head back on his shoulder sometimes, closing her
+eyes, an expression of infinite rest coming over her face, Potch had
+gazed at it, wondering what world of thought lay beneath that still,
+sleep-like mask as, it rested on his shoulder; what thought or emotion
+set a nerve quivering beneath her skin, as the water of some still pool
+quivers when an insect stirs beneath it.
+
+Sophie had no tricks of sex with Potch. She went to him sometimes when
+ghosts of her mind were driving her before them. She went to him because
+she was sure that she could go to him, whatever her reasons for going.
+With Potch there was no need for explanations.
+
+His quiet strength of body and mind had something to do with the rest
+and assurance which his very presence gave her. It was like being a baby
+and lying in a cradle again to have his arm about her; no harm or ill
+could reach her behind the barrier they raised, Sophie thought. She knew
+Potch loved her with all the passion of a virile man as well as with a
+love like the ocean into which all her misdeeds of commission and
+omission might be dropped. And she had as intimate and sympathetic a
+knowledge of Potch as he had of her. Sophie thought that nothing he
+might do could make her care less, or be less appreciative of him. She
+loved him, she said, with a love of the tenderest affection. If it
+lacked an irresistible impulse, she thought it was because she had lost
+the power to love in that way; but she hoped some day she would love
+Potch as he loved her--without reservations. For the time being she
+loved him gratefully; her gratitude was as immense as his love.
+
+Potch divined as much; Sophie had not tried to tell him how she felt
+about him, but he understood, perhaps better than she could tell him.
+His humility was equal to any demand she could make of him. He had not
+sufficient belief in himself or his worth to believe that Sophie could
+ever love him as he loved her: he did not expect it. The only way for
+him to take with his love was the way of faith and service. "To love is
+to be all made of faith and service." He had taken that for his text for
+life, and for Sophie. He could be happy holding to it.
+
+Sophie's need of him made Potch happier than he had ever hoped to be;
+but he could not help believing that the life with her which had etched
+itself on the horizon of his future would mist away, as the mirages
+which quiver on the long edges of the plains do, as you approach them.
+
+The days were blessed and peaceful to Sophie, too; but she, also, was
+afraid that something might happen to disturb them. She wanted to marry
+Potch in order to secure them, and to live and work with him on the
+Ridge. She wanted to live the life of any other woman on the Ridge with
+her mate. Life looked so straight and simple that way. She could see it
+stretching before her into the years. Her hands would be full of real
+things. She would be living a life of service and usefulness, in
+accordance with the ideal the Ridge had set itself, and which Michael
+had preached with the zeal of a latter-day saint. She believed her life
+would shape itself to this future; but sometimes a wraith in the
+back-country of her mind rose shrieking: "Never! Never!"
+
+It threw her into the outer darkness of despair, that cry, but she had
+learned to exorcise its influence by going to Potch and lifting her lips
+for him to kiss.
+
+"What is it?" he asked one day, vaguely aware of the meaning of the
+movement.
+
+Before the reverence and worship of his eyes the wraith fled. Sophie
+took his face between her hands.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she murmured, her eyes straining on his face, "I do love
+you ... and I will love you, more and more."
+
+"You don't have to worry about that," Potch said. "I love you enough for
+both of us.... Just think of me"--he lifted her hand and kissed the back
+of it gently--"like this--your hand--a sort of third hand."
+
+When he came back from the mine in the afternoon Potch went to see
+Sophie, cut wood for her, and do any odd jobs she might need done.
+Sometimes he had tea with her, and they read the reviews and books
+Michael passed on to them. In the evening they went for a walk, usually
+towards the Old Town, and sat on a long slope of the Ridge overlooking
+the Rouminofs' first home--near where they had played when they were
+children, and had watched the goats feeding on green patches between the
+dumps.
+
+They had awed talks there; and now and then the darkness, shutting off
+sight of each other, had made something like disembodied spirits of
+them, and their spirits communicated dumbly as well as on the frail wind
+of their voices.
+
+They yarned and gossiped sometimes, too, about the things that had
+happened, and what Potch had done while Sophie was away. She asked a
+good deal about the ratting, and about Jun and Maud. Potch tried to
+avoid talking of it and of them. He had evaded her questions, and Sophie
+returned to them, perplexed by his reticence.
+
+"I don't understand, Potch," she said on one occasion. "You found out
+that Maud and Jun had something to do with the ratting, and you went
+over to Jun's ... and told them you were going to tell the boys.... They
+must have known you would tell. Maud----"
+
+Potch's expression, a queer, sombre and shamed heaviness of his face,
+arrested her thought.
+
+"Maud----" she murmured again. "I see," she added, "it was just
+Maud----"
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"That explains a good deal." Sophie's eyes were on the distant horizon
+of the plains; her fingers played idly with quartz pebbles, pink-stained
+like rose coral, lying on the earth about her.
+
+"What does it explain?" Potch asked.
+
+"Why," Sophie said, "for one thing--how you grew up. You've changed
+since I went away, Potch, you know...."
+
+His smile showed a moment.
+
+"I'm older."
+
+"Older, graver, harder ... and kinder, though you always had a genius
+for kindness, Potch.... But Maud----"
+
+Potch turned his head from her. Sophie regarded his averted profile
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I understand," she said.
+
+Potch took her gaze steadily, but with troubled eyes.
+
+"I wish ... somehow ... I needn't 've done what I did," he said.
+
+"You'd have hated her, if you had gone back on the men--because of her."
+
+"That's right," Potch agreed.
+
+"And--you don't now?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I saw her--Maud--in New York ... before I came away," Sophie said
+slowly. "She was selling opal...."
+
+"Did she show you the stones?"
+
+"That's just what Michael asked me," Sophie said.
+
+"Michael?" Potch's face clouded.
+
+"She didn't show them to me, but I know who saw them all--he bought
+them--Mr. Armitage."
+
+"The old man?"
+
+"No, John."
+
+After a minute Sophie said:
+
+"Why are you so keen about those stones Maud had, Potch? Michael is,
+too.... Most of them were taken from the claims, I suppose--but was
+there anything more than that?"
+
+"It's hard to say." Potch spoke reluctantly. "There's nothing more than
+a bit of guesswork in my mind ... and I suppose it's the same with
+Michael. I haven't said anything to Michael about it, and he hasn't to
+me, so it's better not to mention it."
+
+"There's a good deal changed on the Ridge since I went away," Sophie
+remarked musingly.
+
+"The new rush, and the school, the Bush Brothers' church, and Mrs.
+Watty's veranda?"
+
+"I don't mean that," Sophie said. "It's the people and things ... you,
+for instance, and Michael----"
+
+"Michael?" Potch exclaimed. "He's wearing the same old clothes, the same
+old hat."
+
+Sophie was too much in earnest to respond to the whimsey.
+
+"He's different somehow ... I don't quite know how," she said. "There's
+a look about him--his eyes--a disappointed look, Potch.... It hurt him
+when I went away, I know. But now--it's not that...."
+
+As Potch did not reply, Sophie's eyes questioned him earnestly.
+
+"Has anything happened," she asked, "to make Michael look like that?"
+
+"I ... don't know," Potch replied.
+
+Answered by the slow and doubtful tone of his denial, Sophie exclaimed:
+
+"There is something, Potch! I don't want to know what it is if you can't
+tell me. I'm only worried about Michael.... I'd always thought he had
+the secret of that inside peace, and now he looks----Oh, I can't bear to
+see him look as he does.... And he seems to have lost interest in
+things--the life here--everything."
+
+"Yes," Potch admitted.
+
+"Only tell me," Sophie urged, "is this that's bothering Michael likely
+to clear, and has it been hanging over him for long?"
+
+Potch was silent so long that she wondered whether he was going to
+answer the question. Then he said slowly:
+
+"I ... don't know. I really don't know anything, Sophie. I happened to
+find out--by accident--that Michael's pretty worried about something. I
+don't rightly know what, or why. That's all."
+
+The even pace of those days gave Sophie the quiet mind she had come to
+the Ridge for. There was healing for her in the fragrant air, the
+sunshiny days, the blue-dark nights, with their unclouded, starry skies.
+She went into the shed one morning and threw the bags from the
+cutting-wheel which had been her mother's, cleared and cleaned up the
+room, rearranged the boxes, put out her working gear, and cut and
+polished one or two stones which were lying on a saucer beside the
+wheel, to discover whether her hand had still its old deftness. Michael
+was delighted with the work she showed him in the evening, and gave her
+several small stones to face and polish for him.
+
+Every day then Sophie worked at her wheel for a while. George and Watty,
+Bill Grant and the Crosses brought stuff for her to cut and polish, and
+in a little while her life was going in the even way it had done before
+she left the Ridge, but it was a long time before Sophie went about as
+she used to. After a while, however, she got into the way of walking
+over to see Maggie Grant or Martha M'Cready in the afternoon,
+occasionally; but she never talked to them of her life away from the
+Ridge; they never spoke of it to her.
+
+Only one thing had disturbed her slightly--seeing Arthur Henty one
+evening as she and Martha were coming from the Three Mile.
+
+He had come towards them, with a couple of stockmen, driving a mob of
+cattle. Dust rose at the heels of the cattle and horses; the cattle
+moved slowly; and the sun was setting in the faces of the men behind the
+cattle. Sophie did not know who they were until a man on a chestnut
+horse stared at her. His face was almost hidden by his beard; but after
+the first glance she recognised Arthur Henty. They passed as people do
+in a dream, Sophie and Martha back from the road, the men riding off the
+cattle, Arthur with the stockmen and cattle which a cloud of dust
+enveloped immediately. The dark trees by the roadside swayed, dipped in
+the gold of the sunset, when they had passed. The image of Arthur Henty
+riding like that in the dust behind the cattle, his face gilded by the
+light of the setting sun, came to Sophie again and again. She was a
+little disturbed by it; but it was only natural that she should be, she
+thought. She had not seen Arthur since the night of the ball, and so
+much had happened to both their lives since then.
+
+She saw him once or twice in the township afterwards. He had stared at
+her; Sophie had bowed and smiled, but they had not spoken. Later, she
+had seen him lounging on the veranda at Newton's, or hanging his bridle
+over the pegs outside Ezra Smith's billiard saloon, and neither her
+brain nor pulse had quickened at the sight of him. She was pleased and
+reassured. She did not think of him after that, and went on her way
+quietly, happily, more deeply content in her life with Michael and
+Potch.
+
+As her natural vigour returned, she grew to a fuller appreciation of
+that life; health and a normal poise of body and soul brought the faint
+light of happiness to her eyes. Michael heard her laughing as she teased
+Paul sometimes, and Potch thrilled to the rippled cadenza of Sophie's
+laughter.
+
+"It's good to hear that again," Michael said to him one day, hearing it
+fly from Rouminof's hut.
+
+Potch's glance, as his head moved in assent, was eloquent beyond words.
+
+Sophie had a sensation of hunger satisfied in the life she was leading.
+Some indefinable hunger of her soul was satisfied by breathing the pure,
+calm air of the Ridge again, and by feeling her life was going the way
+the lives of other women on the Ridge were going. She expected
+her life would go on like this, days and years fall behind her
+unnoticed; that she and Potch would work together, have children, be
+splendid friends always, live out their days in the simple, sturdy
+fashion of Ridge folk, and grow old together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Tenders had been called for, to clear the course for the annual race
+meeting. A notice posted on the old, wild cherry tree in the road
+opposite Newton's, brought men and boys from every rush on Fallen Star
+to Ezra Smith's billiard-room on the night appointed; and Ezra,
+constituted foreman by the meeting, detailed parties to clear and roll
+the track.
+
+A paddock at the back of the town, with several tall coolebahs at one
+side, was known as the race-course. A table placed a little out from the
+trees served for a judge's box; and because the station folk usually
+drew up their buggies and picnicked there, the shade of the coolebahs
+was called the grand-stand. Farther along a saddling-paddock had been
+fenced off, and in it, on race-days, were collected a miscellaneous
+muster of the show horses of the district--rough-haired nags, piebald
+and skewbald; rusty, dusty, big-boned old racers with famous
+reputations; wild-eyed, unbroken youngsters, green from the plains;
+Warria chestnuts, graceful as greyhounds, with quivering, scarlet
+nostrils; and the nuggety, deep-chested offspring of the Langi-Eumina
+stallion Black Harry.
+
+People came from far and near for the races, and for the ball which was
+held the same evening in the big, iron-roofed shed opposite Newton's.
+Newton's was filled to the brim with visitors, and there were not
+stables enough for the horses. But Ridge stables are never more than
+railed yards about the size of a room, with bark thatches, and as many
+of them as were needed were run up for the occasion.
+
+Horses and horsemen were heroes of the occasion The merits of every
+horse that was going to run were argued; histories, points, pedigrees,
+and performances discussed. Stories were told of the doings of strange
+horses brought from distant selections, the out-stations of Warria,
+Langi-Eumina, or Darrawingee; yarns swopped of almost mythical
+warrigals, and warrigal hunting, the breaking of buck-jumpers, the
+enterprises and exploits of famous horsemen. Ridge meetings, since the
+course had been made and the function had become a yearly fixture, were
+gone over; and the chances of every horse and rider entered for the next
+day debated, until anticipation and interest attained their highest
+pitch.
+
+Everybody in the township went to the races; everybody was expected to
+go. Race-day was the Ridge gala day; the day upon which men, women, and
+children gave themselves up to the whole-hearted, joyous excitement of
+an outing. The meeting brought a bookmaker or two from Sydney sometimes,
+and sometimes a man in the town made a book on the event. But nobody, it
+was rumoured, looked forward to, or enjoyed the races more than Mrs.
+Watty Frost, although she had begun by disapproving of them, and still
+maintained she did not "hold with betting." She put up with it, however,
+so long as the Sydney men did not get away with Ridge money.
+
+Potch was disappointed, and so was Michael, that Sophie would not go to
+the races, which were held during the year of her return. They went, and
+Rouminof trotted off by himself, quite early. Sophie did not want to see
+all the strangers who would be in Fallen Star for race-day, she
+said--people from the river selections, the stations, and country towns.
+Late in the afternoon, as she was going to see Ella Bryant, to offer to
+mind the baby while Ella and Bully went to the ball, she saw Martha was
+at home, a drift of smoke coming from the chimney of her hut.
+
+Sophie went to the back door of the hut and stood in the doorway.
+
+"Are you there, Martha?" she called.
+
+
+"That you, Sophie?" Martha queried. "Come in!"
+
+Sophie went into the kitchen. Martha had a big fire, and her room was
+full of its hot glare. She was ironing at a table against the wall, and
+freshly laundered, white clothes were hanging to a line stretched from
+above the window to a nail on the inner wall. She looked up happily as
+Sophie appeared, sweat streaming from her fat, jolly face.
+
+"I was just thinking of you, dearie," she exclaimed, putting the iron on
+an upturned tin, and straightening out the flounces of the dress she was
+at work on. "Lovely day it's been for the races, hasn't it? Sit down.
+I'll be done d'reckly, and am going to make a cup of tea before I go
+over to help Mrs. Newton a bit with dinner. My, she's got her hands full
+over there--with all the crowd up!... Don't think I ever did see such a
+crowd at the races, Sophie."
+
+Martha's iron flashed and swung backwards and forth. Sophie watched the
+brawny forearm which wielded the iron. Hard and as brown as the branch
+of a tree it was, from above the elbow where her sleeve was rolled back
+to the wrist; the hand fastened over the iron, red and dappled with
+great golden-brown freckles; the nails of its short, thick fingers,
+broken, dirt lying in thick, black wedges beneath them. As her other
+hand moved over the dress, preparing the way for the iron, Sophie saw
+its work-worn palm, the lines on it driven deep with scouring,
+scrubbing, and years of washing clothes, and cleaning other folks'
+houses. She thought of the work those hands of Martha's had done for
+Fallen Star; how Martha had looked after sick people, brought babies
+into the world, nursed the mothers, mended, washed, sewed, and darned,
+giving her help wherever it was needed. Always good-natured, hearty,
+healthy, and wholesome, what a wonderful woman she was, Mother M'Cready,
+Sophie exclaimed to herself.
+
+Martha was as excited as any girl on the Ridge, ironing her dress now,
+and getting ready for the ball. Sophie wondered how old she was. She did
+not look any older than when she first remembered her; but people said
+Martha must be sixty if she was a day. And she loved a dance, Sophie
+knew. She could dance, too, Mother M'Cready. The boys said she could
+dance like a two-year-old.
+
+"What are you going to wear to the ball, Sophie?" Martha asked. "I
+suppose you've got some real nice dresses you brought from America."
+
+"I'm not going," Sophie said,
+
+"Not going?" Martha's iron came down with a bang, her blue eyes flashed
+wide with astonishment. "The idea! Not goin' to the Ridge ball--the
+first since you came home? I never heard of such a thing.... 'Course
+you're going, Sophie!"
+
+Sophie's glance left Martha's big, busy figure. It went through the open
+doorway. The sunshine was garish on the plains, although the afternoon
+was nearly over.
+
+"Why aren't you goin'?" Martha pursued. "Why? What'll your father say?
+And Michael? And Potch? We'd all been looking forward to seein' you
+there like you used to be, Sophie. And ... here was me doin' up my dress
+extra special, thinkin' Sophie'll be that grand in the dresses she's
+brought from America ... we'll all have to smarten a bit to keep up with
+her...."
+
+Tears swam in Sophie's eyes at the naïve and genial admiration of what
+Martha had said.
+
+"It'll spoil the ball if you're not there," Martha insisted, her iron
+flashing vigorously. "It just won't be--the ball--and everything looking
+as if it were goin' to be the biggest ball ever was on the Ridge.
+Everybody'll be that disappointed----"
+
+"Do you think they will, Martha?" Sophie queried.
+
+"I don't think; I know."
+
+A little smile, sceptical yet wistful, hovered in Sophie's eyes.
+
+"And it don't seem fair to Potch neither."
+
+"Potch?"
+
+"Yes ... you hidin' yourself away as if you weren't happy--and going to
+marry the best lad in the country." The iron came down emphatically,
+Martha working it as vigorously and intently as she was thinking.
+
+"There's some says Potch isn't a match for you now, Sophie. Not since
+you went away and got manners and all.... They can't tell why you're
+goin' to marry Potch. But as I said to Mrs. Watty the other day, I said:
+'Sophie isn't like that. She isn't like that at all. It's the man she
+goes for, and Potch is good enough for a princess to take up with.'
+That's what I said; and I don't mind who knows it...."
+
+Sophie had got up and gone to the door while Martha was talking. She was
+amused at the idea of Mrs. Watty having forgiven her sufficiently to
+think that Potch was not a good enough match for her.
+
+"Besides ... I did want you to go, Sophie," Martha continued. "They're
+all coming over from Warria--Mr. and Mrs. Henty and the girls, and Mrs.
+Arthur. They've got a party staying with them, up from Sydney ... and
+most of them have put up at Newton's for the night...."
+
+She glanced at Sophie to see how she was taking this news. But no
+flicker of concern changed the thoughtful mask of Sophie's features as
+she leaned in the doorway looking out to the blue fall of the afternoon
+sky.
+
+"They're coming over to see how the natives of these parts amuse
+theirselves," Martha declared scornfully. "They'll have on all the fine
+dresses and things they buy down in Sydney ... and I was lookin' to you,
+Sophie, to keep up our end. I've been thinkin' to meself, 'They think
+they're the salt of the earth, don't they? Think they're that smart ...
+we dress so funny ... and dance so funny, over at Fallen Star. But
+Sophie'll show them; Sophie'll take the shine out of them when they see
+her in one of the dresses she's brought from America.'"
+
+As Martha talked, Sophie could see the ball-room at Warria as she had
+years before. She could see the people in it--figures swaying down the
+long veranda, the Henty girls, Mrs. Henty, Phyllis Chelmsford--their
+faces, the dresses they had worn; Arthur, John Armitage, James Henty,
+herself, as she had sat behind the piano, or turned the pages of her
+father's music. She could hear the music he and Mrs. Henty played; the
+rhythm of a waltz swayed her. A twinge of the old wrath, hurt
+indignation, and disappointment, vibrated through her.... She smiled to
+think of it, and of all the long time which lay between that night and
+now.
+
+"I'd give anything for you to be there--looking your best," Martha
+continued. "I can't bear that lot to think you've come home because you
+weren't a success, as they say over there, or because...."
+
+"Mr. Armitage wasn't as fond of me--as he used to be," Sophie murmured.
+
+Martha caught the mocking of a gleam in her eyes as she spoke. No one
+knew why Sophie had come home; but Mrs. Newton had given Martha an
+American newspaper with a paragraph in it about Sophie. Martha had read
+and re-read it, and given it to several other people to read. She put
+her iron on the hearth and disappeared into the bedroom which opened off
+her kitchen.
+
+"This is all I know about it, Sophie," she said, returning with the
+paper.
+
+She handed the paper to Sophie, and Sophie glanced at a marked paragraph
+on its page.
+
+"Of a truth, dark are the ways of women, and mysterious beyond human
+understanding," she read. "Probably no young artist for a long time has
+had as meteoric a career on Broadway as Sophie Rouminof. Leaping from
+comparative obscurity, she has scintillated before us in revue and
+musical comedy for the last three or four years, and now, at the zenith
+of her success, when popularity is hers to do what she likes with, she
+goes back to her native element, the obscurity from which she sprang.
+Some first-rate artists have got religion, philanthropy, or love, and
+have renounced the footlights for them; but Sophie is doing so for no
+better reason, it is said, than that she is _écoeoeuré_ of us and our
+life--the life of any and all great cities. A well-known impresario
+informs us that a week or two ago he asked her to name her own terms for
+a new contract; but she would have nothing to do with one on any terms.
+And now she has slipped back into the darkness of space and time, like
+one of her own magnificent opals, and the bill and boards of the little
+Opera House will know her name and fascinating personality no more."
+
+The faint smile deepened in Sophie's eyes.
+
+"It's true, isn't it, Sophie?" Martha asked, as Sophie did not speak
+when she had finished reading.
+
+"I suppose it is," Sophie said. "But your paper doesn't say what made me
+_écoeoeuré_--sick to the heart, that is--of the life over there,
+Martha. And that's the main thing.... It got me down so, I thought I'd
+never sing again. But there's one thing I'd like you to tell people for
+me, Martha: Mr. Armitage was always goodness itself to me. He didn't
+even ask me to go away with him. He did make love to me, and I was just
+a silly little girl. I didn't know then men go on like that without
+meaning much.... I wanted to be a singer, and I made up my mind to go
+away when he did.... Afterwards I lost my voice. My heart wouldn't sing
+any more. I wanted to come home.... That's all I knew.... I wanted to
+come home.... And I came."
+
+Martha went to her. Her arms went round Sophie's neck.
+
+"My lamb," she whispered.
+
+Sophie rested against her for a moment. Then she kissed one of the bare
+arms she had watched working the iron so vigorously.
+
+"We'd best not think of it, Mother M'Cready," she said.
+
+"All right, dearie!"
+
+Martha withdrew her arms and went back to the hearth. She lifted another
+iron, held it to her face to judge its heat, and returned to the table.
+She rubbed the iron on a piece of hessian on a box there, dusted it with
+a soft rag, and went on with the ironing of her dress.
+
+"I wish I was as young as you, Martha," Sophie said.
+
+"Lord, lovey, you will be when you're my age," Martha replied, with a
+swift, twinkling glance of her blue eyes. "But you're coming ... aren't
+you? I won't have the heart to wear my pink stockings if you don't,
+Sophie. Mrs. Newton gave them to me for a Christmas-box ... and I'm fair
+dying to wear them."
+
+Sophie smiled at the pair of bright pink stockings pinned on the line
+beside a newly-starched petticoat.
+
+"You will, won't you?"
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+"I don't think so, Martha."
+
+Sophie went out of the doorway. She was going home, and stood again a
+moment, looking through scattered trees to the waning afternoon sky. A
+couple of birds dashed across her line of vision with shrill, low,
+giggling cries.
+
+She heard people talking in the distance. Several men rode up to
+Newton's. She saw them swing from their horses, put the reins over the
+pegs before the bar, and go into the hotel. Two or three children ran
+down the street chattering eagerly, excitedly. Roy O'Mara went across to
+the hall with some flags under his arm. From all the huts drifted
+ejaculations, fragments of laughter and calling. Excitement about the
+ball was in the air.
+
+Sophie remembered how happy and excited she used to be about the Ridge
+balls. She thought of it all vaguely at first, that lost girlish joy of
+hers, the free, careless gaiety which had swept her along as she danced.
+She remembered her father's fiddling, Mrs. Newton's playing; how the
+music had had a magic in it which set everybody's feet flying and the
+boys singing to tunes they knew. The men polished the floor so that you
+could scarcely walk on it. One year they had spent hours working it up
+so that you slipped along like greased lightning as you danced.
+
+Sophie smiled at her reminiscences. The high tones of a man's voice,
+eager and exultant, shouting to someone across the twilight; the twitter
+of a girl's laughter--they were all in the air now as they had been
+then. Her listlessness stirred; everybody was preparing for the ball,
+and getting ready to go to it. Excitement and eager looking forward to a
+good time were in the air. They were infectious. Sophie trembled to
+them--they tempted her. Could she go to the ball, like everybody else?
+Could she drift again in the stream of easy and genial intercourse with
+all these people of the Ridge whom she loved and who loved her?
+
+Martha came to the door. Her eyes strained on the brooding young face,
+trying to read from the changing expressions which flitted across it
+what Sophie was thinking.
+
+"You're coming, aren't you, dearie?" she begged.
+
+Sophie's eyes surprised the old woman, the brilliance of tears and light
+in them, their childish playing of hope beyond hope and fear, amazed
+her.
+
+"Do you think I could, Martha?" she cried. "Do you think I could?"
+
+"Course you could, darling," Martha said.
+
+Sophie's arms went round her in an instant's quick pressure; then she
+stood off from her.
+
+"Won't it be lovely," she cried, "to dance and sing--and to be young
+again, Martha?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood
+along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall.
+At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against
+the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light
+came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing
+and talking.
+
+"It's like old times, isn't it, Potch"--Sophie's fingers closed over
+Potch's arm--"to be going to a Ridge dance?"
+
+There was a faint, sweet stirring which the wind makes in the trees
+within her, Sophie realised. It was strange and delightful to feel alive
+again, and alive with the first freshness, innocence, and vague
+happiness of a girl.
+
+Potch looked down on her, smiling. He was filled with pride to have her
+beside him like this, to think they would go into the hall together, and
+that people would say to each other when they saw them: "There's Sophie
+and Potch!"
+
+That using of their names side by side was a source of infinite content
+to Potch. He loved people to say: "When are you and Sophie coming over
+to see us, Potch?" or, "Would you mind telling Sophie, Potch?" and give
+him a message for Sophie. And this would be the first time they had
+appeared at an assembly of Ridge folk together.
+
+He walked with his head held straight and high, and his eyes shone when
+he went down the hall with Sophie. What did it matter if they called him
+Potch, the Ridge folk, "a little bit of potch," he thought, Sophie was
+going to be Mrs. Heathfield.
+
+"Here's Sophie and Potch," he heard people say, as he had thought they
+would, and his heart welled with happiness and pride.
+
+Nearly everybody had arrived when they went into the hall; the first
+dance was just beginning. Branches of budda, fleeced with creamy and
+lavender blossom, had been stuck through the supports of the hall. Flags
+and pennants of all the colours in the rainbow, strung on a line
+together, were stretched at the end of the platform. On the platform
+Mrs. Newton was sitting at the piano. Paul had his music-stand near her,
+and behind him an old man from the Three Mile was nervously fingering
+and blowing on a black and silver-mounted flute. Women and girls and a
+few of the older men were seated on forms against the walls. Several
+young mothers had babies in their arms, and children of all ages were
+standing about, or sitting beside their parents. By common consent,
+Ridge folk had taken one side of the hall, and station folk the upper
+end of the other side.
+
+Sophie's first glance found Martha, her white dress stiff and
+immaculate, her face with its plump, rosy cheeks turned towards her, her
+eyes smiling and expectant. Martha beamed at her; Sophie smiled back,
+and, her glance travelling on, found Maggie and Bill Grant, Mrs. George
+Woods and two of her little girls; Mrs. Watty, in a black dress, its
+high neck fastened by a brooch, with three opals in, Watty had given
+her; and Watty, genial and chirrupy as usual, but afraid to appear as if
+he were promising himself too much of a good time.
+
+Warria, Langi-Eumina, and Darrawingee folk had foregathered; the girls
+and men laughed and chattered in little groups; the older people talked,
+sitting against the wall or leaning towards each other. Mrs. Henty
+looked much as she had done five years before; James Henty not a day
+older; but Mrs. Tom Henderson, who had been Elizabeth Henty, had
+developed a sedate and matronly appearance. Polly was not as plump and
+jolly as she had been--a little puzzled and apprehensive expression
+flitted through her clear brown eyes, and there were lines of
+discouragement about her mouth. Sophie recognised Mrs. Arthur Henty in a
+slight, well-dressed woman, whose thin, unwrinkled features wore an
+expression of more or less matter-of-fact discontent.
+
+The floor was shining under the light of the one big hanging lamp. Paul
+scraped his violin with a preliminary flourish; Mrs. Newton threw a
+bunch of chords after him, and they cantered into a waltz time the Ridge
+loved. Roy O'Mara, M.C. for the occasion, shouted jubilantly: "Take y'r
+partners for a waltz!" Couples edged out from the wall, and in a moment
+were swirling and whirling up and down on the bared space of the hall.
+There were squeals and little screams as feet slipped and skidded on the
+polished floor; but people soon found their dancing feet, got under way
+of the music, and swung to its rhythms with more ease, security, and
+pleasure. Sophie watched the dance for a while. She saw Martha dancing
+with Michael. Every year at the Ridge ball Michael danced the first
+dance with Martha. And Martha, dancing with Michael--no one on the Ridge
+was happier, though they moved so solemnly, turning round and round with
+neat little steps, as if they were pledged to turn in the space of a
+threepenny piece!
+
+Sophie smiled at Martha's happy seriousness. Arthur Henty was dancing
+with his wife. Sophie had not seen him so clearly since her return to
+the Ridge. When she had passed him in the township, or at Newton's, he
+had been riding, and she had scarcely seen his face for the beard which
+had overgrown it and the shadow his hat cast. She studied him with
+unmoved curiosity. His beard had been clipped close, and she recognised
+the moulding of his head, the slope of his shoulders, a peculiar loose
+litheness in his gait. Her eyes followed him as he danced with his wife.
+Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Henty were waltzing in the perfunctory, mechanical
+fashion of people thoroughly bored with each other.
+
+Then Sophie swung with Potch into the eddying current of the dancers.
+Potch danced in as steady and methodical a fashion as he did everything.
+The music did not get him; at least, Sophie could not believe it did.
+
+His eyes were deep and shining as though it were a great and holy
+ceremony he were engaged in, but there was no melting to the delight of
+rhythmic movement in his sober gyrations. Sophie felt him a clog on the
+flow of her own action as he steered and steadily directed her through
+the crowd.
+
+"For goodness' sake, Potch, dance as if you meant it," she said.
+
+"But I do mean it, Sophie," he said.
+
+As he looked down at her, his flushed, happy face assured her that he
+did mean dancing, but he meant it as he meant everything--with a dead
+earnestness.
+
+After that dance all her old friends among men of the Ridge came round
+Sophie to ask her to dance with them. Bully and Roy sparred for dances
+as they did in the old days, and Michael and George and Watty threatened
+to knock their heads together and throw them out of the room if they
+didn't get out of the way and give some other chaps a chance to dance
+with Sophie. Between the dances, Sophie went over to talk to Maggie
+Grant, Mrs. Watty, Mrs. George Woods, and Martha. She had time to tell
+Martha how nice her dress and the pink stockings looked, and how the
+opals in her bracelet flashed as she was dancing.
+
+"You can see them from one end of the hall to the other," Sophie
+whispered.
+
+"And you, lovey," Martha said. "It's just lovely, the dress. You should
+have seen how they stared at you when you came in.... And Potch looking
+so nice, too. He wouldn't call the King his uncle to-night, Sophie!"
+
+Sophie laughed happily as she went off to dance with Bully, who was
+claiming her for a polka mazurka.
+
+The evening was half through when John Armitage appeared in the doorway.
+Sophie had just come from dancing the quadrilles with Potch when she saw
+Armitage standing in the doorway with Peter Newton. Potch saw him as
+Sophie did; their eyes met. Michael came towards them.
+
+"Mr. Armitage did come, I see," Sophie said quietly, as Potch and
+Michael were looking towards the door. "I had a letter from him a few
+weeks ago saying he thought he would be here for the ball," she added.
+
+"Why has he come?" Michael asked.
+
+"I don't know," she said. "To see me, I suppose ... and to find out
+whether the men will do business with him again."
+
+Michael's gesture implied it was useless to talk of that.
+
+Sophie continued: "But you know what I said, Michael. I can't be happy
+until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the
+men here.... You must do that for me, Michael. They know I'm going to
+marry Potch ... and if they see there's no ill feeling between John
+Armitage and me, they'll believe I was more to blame than he was--if
+it's a question of blame.... I want you and Potch to stand by me in
+this, Michael."
+
+Potch's eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and
+sure. But Michael showed no relenting.
+
+Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in
+the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had
+circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had
+created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and
+indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach
+to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie.
+
+She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had
+met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them
+than playing a game they had learned to play rather well.
+
+Sophie said: "It is you really?"
+
+He took the hand she held to him. "But you knew I was coming? You had my
+letter?"
+
+"Of course ... but----"
+
+"And my word is my bond."
+
+The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage's voice, and the
+perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised
+people who were near them.
+
+Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded
+Armitage with grave, quiet eyes.
+
+"Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!" Armitage said.
+
+Michael did not reply; but Potch said:
+
+"Evening, Mr. Armitage!" And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and
+Michael's silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had
+made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather.
+Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning.
+
+"Is this my dance, Sophie?" Armitage inquired.
+
+Sophie shook her head, smiling.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Which is my dance?" The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.
+
+Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly
+understanding.
+
+"The next one."
+
+She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve
+force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold
+to, or move as she wished.
+
+"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at
+him.
+
+"Sophie!"
+
+His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love
+and gratitude beyond words.
+
+While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys;
+he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz
+with Polly Henty.
+
+When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty
+leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an
+odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had
+heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was
+connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about
+all there had been between herself and John Armitage--even this dancing
+with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer
+anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her
+dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised
+that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting
+on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her
+dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel
+drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure
+blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.
+
+Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they
+danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their
+movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and
+about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this
+with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and love-making
+forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate
+sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage's eyes.
+It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing
+and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the
+wall spurred Sophie to further laughter--a reckless gaiety.
+
+"You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and ... trying its
+wings in the sun, Sophie," Armitage said.
+
+"I feel ... just like that," Sophie said.
+
+After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or
+three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of
+quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with
+George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of
+the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe
+of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had
+"gone the pace," in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay
+world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie
+guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But
+she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men
+like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she
+caught Potch's gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled
+to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the
+younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was
+talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and
+enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.
+
+As she was coming from a dance with Roy O'Mara she passed Arthur Henty
+where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie
+as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung
+over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M'Cready.
+
+"You're going to dance with me?" he asked, a husky uncertainty in his
+voice.
+
+"No," Sophie said, looking away from him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and
+sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The
+unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted,
+spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied.
+
+"There's going to be an extra after supper," he said.
+
+"Very well."
+
+What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she
+had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.
+
+How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as
+she had waited then? But there were all those long years between.
+Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was
+dancing with Arthur.
+
+He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few
+paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among
+the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier
+poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in
+sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an
+effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly,
+indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother
+to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing
+himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie's laughter failed. The
+inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had
+read long before in each other's eyes was still there, after all the
+years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.
+
+Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had
+walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was
+remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon
+he had recited:
+
+          "I met a lady in the meads
+             Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
+           Her hair was long, her foot was light,
+             And her eyes were wild."
+
+Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not
+danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not
+laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and
+wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like
+dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing
+on a grave.
+
+Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful,
+working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers
+comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other,
+every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests
+of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
+
+Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when
+they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie
+wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering--voices,
+shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy
+exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....
+
+Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared
+not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the
+surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated
+itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.
+
+As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was
+afraid of getting out of her depth ... but he held her carefully. His
+grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that
+hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up;
+she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and
+smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the
+smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp
+tightened. She was afraid of him--afraid of all the long, old dreams he
+might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those
+hungry, hungry eyes.... She could not see them; she would not.
+
+A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She
+could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices
+were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence
+them ... begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the
+implacable in him--the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face.
+She was helpless before them.
+
+Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a
+little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no
+hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean
+fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close
+embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought
+consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow
+of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came
+to them in far-away murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and
+laughter.
+
+Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.
+
+"No, no," she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.
+
+He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full
+draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last
+essence.
+
+A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie
+was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a
+moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark,
+she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle
+paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear
+nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged
+animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had
+stupefied her.
+
+She called Michael.
+
+Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were
+on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant's
+vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch's
+... she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the
+surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from
+where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through
+darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy,
+quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Sophie went into the shed where her cutting-wheel was soon after eight
+o'clock next morning. She took up a packet of small stones George Woods
+had left with her and set to work on them.
+
+The wheel was in a line with the window, and she sat on the wooden chair
+before it, so that the light fell over her left shoulder. On the bench
+which ran out from the wheel were a spirit lamp and the trays of rough
+opal; on the other side of the bench the polishing buffers were arranged
+one against the other. A hand-basin, the water in it raddled with rouge,
+stood on the table behind her, and a white china jug of fresh water
+beside it.
+
+Sophie lighted the spirit lamp, gathered up a handful of the slender
+sticks about the size of pen-holders which Potch had prepared for her,
+melted her sealing-wax over the flame of the lamp, drew the saucer of
+George's opals to her, and fastened a score of small stones to the
+heated wax on the ends of the sticks. She blew out the lamp.
+
+She was working in order not to think; she worked for awhile without
+thinking, details of the opal-cutting following each other in the
+routine they had made for themselves.
+
+The plague of her thoughts grew as she worked. From being nebulæ of a
+state of mind which she could not allow herself to contemplate, such
+darkness of despair there was in it, they evolved to tiny pictures which
+presented themselves singly and in panorama, flitting and flickering
+incoherently, incongruously.
+
+Sophie could see the hall as she had the night before. She seemed to be
+able to see everything at once and in detail--its polished floors,
+flowering boughs, and flags, the people sitting against the iron walls
+in their best clothes ... Mrs. Watty, Watty and George, Ella and Bully
+... Bully holding the baby ... the two little Woods' girls in their
+white embroidered muslin dresses, with pink ribbons tied round their
+heads.... Cash Wilson dancing solemnly in carpet slippers; Mrs. Newton
+at the piano ... the prim way her fat little hands pranced sedately up
+and down over the keys.... Paul enjoying his own music ... getting a
+little bit wild over it, and working his right leg and knee as though he
+had an orchestra to keep going somehow.... Mrs. Newton refusing to be
+coaxed into anything like enthusiasm, but trying to keep up with him,
+nevertheless.... Mrs. Henty, Polly, Elizabeth ... Mrs. Arthur ... the
+Langi-Eumina party ... the Moffats ... Potch, Michael ... John Armitage.
+
+Images of New York flashed across these pictures of the night before.
+Sophie visualised the city as she had first seen it. A fairy city it had
+seemed to her with its sky-flung lights, thronged thoroughfares, and
+jangling bells. She saw a square of tall, flat-faced buildings before a
+park of leafless trees; shimmering streets on a wet night, near the New
+Theatre and the Little Opera House; a supper-party after the theatre ...
+gilded walls, Byzantian hangings, women with bare shoulders flashing
+satin from slight, elegant limbs, or emerging with jewel-strung necks
+from swathings of mist-like tulle, the men beside them ... a haze of
+cigarette smoke over it all ... tinkle of laughter, a sweet, sleepy
+stirring of music somewhere ... light of golden wine in wide,
+shallow-bowled glasses, with tall, fragile stems ... lipping and sway of
+tides against the hull of a yacht on quiet water ... a man's face, heavy
+and swinish, peering into her own....
+
+Then again, Mrs. Watty against the wall of the Ridge ball-room, stiff
+and disapproving-looking in her high-necked black dress ... Michael
+dancing with Martha ... Martha's pink stockings ... and the way she had
+danced, lightly, delightedly, her feet encased in white canvas shoes.
+Sophie had worn white canvas shoes at the Warria ball, she remembered.
+Pictures of that night crowded on her, of Phyllis Chelmsford and Arthur
+... Arthur....
+
+Her thought stopped there. Arthur ... what did it all mean? She saw
+again the fixed, flat figures she had seen against the wall when she was
+dancing with Arthur--the corpse-like faces.... Why had everybody died
+when she was dancing with Arthur Henty? Sophie remembered that people
+had looked very much as usual when she went out to dance with Arthur;
+then when she looked at them again, they all seemed to be
+dead--drowned--and sitting round the hall in clear, still water, like
+the figures she had seen in mummy cases in foreign museums. Only she and
+Arthur were alive in that roomful of dead people. They had come from
+years before and were going to years beyond. It had been dark before she
+realised this; then they had been caught up into a light, transcending
+all consciousness of light; in which they had seemed no more than atoms
+of light adrift on the tide of the ages. Then the light had gone....
+
+They were out of doors when she recognised time and place again. Sophie
+had seen the hall crouched heavy and dark under a starry sky, its
+windows, yellow eyes.... She was conscious of trees about her ... the
+note of a goat-bell not far away ... and Arthur.... They had kissed, and
+then in the darkness that terror and fear--those struggling shapes ...
+figures of a nightmare ... light on Potch's hair.... She heard her own
+cry, winging eerie and shrill through the darkness.
+
+With a sudden desperate effort Sophie threw off the plague of these
+thoughts and small mind-pictures; she turned to the cutting-wheel again.
+It whirred as she bent over it.
+
+"Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!" the wheel purred. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+
+Her brain throbbed as she tried not to listen or hear that song of the
+wheel; "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur!" the blood murmured and droned in her
+head.
+
+Her hand holding an opal to the wheel trembled, the opal skidded and was
+scratched.
+
+"Oh, God," Sophie moaned, "don't let me think of him any more. Don't let
+me...."
+
+A mirror on the wall opposite reflected her face. Sophie wondered
+whether that was her face she saw in the mirror: the face in the mirror
+was strangely old, withered and wan. She closed her eyes on the sight of
+it. It confronted her again when she opened them. The eyes of the face
+in the mirror were heavy and dark with a darkness of mind she could not
+fathom.
+
+Sophie got up from her chair before the cutting-wheel. She went to the
+window and stood looking through its small open space at the bare earth
+beyond the hut. A few slight, sketchy trees, and the broken earth and
+scattered mounds of old dumps were thrown up under a fall of clear,
+exquisite sky, of a blue so pure, so fine, that there was balm just in
+looking at it. For a moment she plunged into it, the tragic chaos of her
+mind obliterated.
+
+With new courage from that moment's absorption of peaceful beauty, she
+went back to the wheel, the resolution which had taken her to it twice
+before that morning urging her. She sat down and began to work, took up
+the piece of opal she had scratched, examined it closely, wondering how
+the flaw could be rectified, if it could be rectified.
+
+The wheel, set going, raised its droning whirr. Sophie held her mind to
+the stone. She was pleased after a while. "That's all right," she told
+herself. "If only you don't think.... If only you keep working like this
+and don't think of Arthur."
+
+It was Arthur she did not want to think of. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+the wheel mocked. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+
+Her head went into her hands. She was moaning and crying again. "Don't
+let me think of him any more ... if only I needn't think of him any
+more...."
+
+She began to work again. There was nothing to do but persist in trying
+to work, she thought. If she kept to it, perhaps in the end the routine
+would take her; she would become absorbed in the mechanism of what she
+was doing.
+
+A shadow was thrown before her. In the mirror Sophie saw that John
+Armitage was standing in the doorway. Her feet ceased to work the
+treadles of the cutting-wheel; her hands fell to her lap; she waited for
+him to come into the room. He walked past her to the window, and stood
+with his back to it, facing her. Her eyes went to him. She let him take
+what impression he might from her face, her defences were down; vaguely,
+perhaps, she hoped he would read something of her mind in her face, that
+he would need no explanation of what she had no words to express.
+
+There had been a smile of faint cynicism in his eyes as he looked
+towards her; it evaporated as she surrendered to the inquisition of his
+gaze.
+
+"Well?" he inquired gravely.
+
+"Well?" she replied as gravely.
+
+They studied each other quietly.
+
+John Armitage had changed very little since she had first seen him. His
+clean-shaven face was harder, a little more firmly set perhaps; the
+indecision had gone from it; it had lost some of its amiable mobility.
+He looked much more a man of the world he was living in--a business man,
+whose intelligence and energies had been trained in its service--but his
+eyes still had their subtle knowledge and sympathy, his individuality
+the attraction it had first had for her.
+
+He was wearing the loose, well-cut tweeds he travelled in, and had taken
+off his hat. It lay on the window-sill beside him, and Sophie saw that
+there was more silver in his hair where it was brushed back from his
+ears than there used to be. His eyes surveyed her as if she were written
+in an argot or dialect which puzzled him; his hands drifted and moved
+before her as he smoked a cigarette. His hands emphasised the difference
+between John Lincoln Armitage and men of the Ridge. Sophie thought of
+Potch's hands, and of Michael's, and the smile Michael might have had
+for Armitage's hands curved her lips.
+
+Armitage, taking that smile for a lessening of the tension of her mood,
+said:
+
+"You'd much better put on your bonnet and shawl, and come home with me,
+Sophie. We can be married en route, or in Sydney if you like.... You
+know how pleased the old man'll be. And, as for me----"
+
+Sophie's gaze swept past him, fretted lines deepening on her forehead.
+
+Armitage threw away his cigarette, abandoning his assumption of familiar
+friendliness with the action, and went to her side. Sophie rose to meet
+him.
+
+"Look here, Sophie," he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking
+into her eyes, "let's have done with all this neurotic rot.... You're
+the only woman in the world for me. I don't know why you left me. I
+don't care.... Come home ... let's get married ... and see whether we
+can't make a better thing of it...."
+
+Sophie had turned her eyes from his.
+
+"When I've said that before, you wouldn't have anything to do with it,"
+he continued. "You had a notion I was saying it because I ought--thought
+I had to, or the old man had talked me into it.... It wasn't true even
+then. I came here to say it ... so that you would believe I--want it,
+and I want you--more than anything on earth, Sophie."
+
+There was no response, only an overshadowing of troubled thought in
+Sophie's face.
+
+"Is there anything love or money can give you, girl, that I'm not eager
+to give you?" Armitage demanded. "What is it you want?... Do you know
+what you want?"
+
+Sophie did not reply, and her silence exasperated him.
+
+Taking her face in his hands, Armitage scrutinised it as though he must
+read there what her silence held from him.
+
+He realised how wan and weary-looking it was. Shadows beneath her eyes
+fell far down her cheeks, her lips lay together with a new, strange
+sternness. But he could not think of that yet. His male egoism could
+only consider its own situation, fight imperiously in its own defence.
+
+"You want something I can't give you?"
+
+His eyes held her for the fraction of a second; then, the pain of
+knowledge gripping him, his hands fell from her face. He turned away.
+
+"Which is it ... Potch or--the other?" He spoke with cruel bitterness.
+"It's always a case of 'which' with you--isn't it?"
+
+"That's just it," Sophie said.
+
+He glanced at her, surprised to hear a note of the same bitterness in
+her voice.
+
+"I didn't mean that, Sophie," he said. "You know I didn't."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"It's true all the same."
+
+"Tell me"--he turned to her--"I wish you would. You never have--why you
+left New York ... and gave up singing ... everything there, and came
+here."
+
+Sophie dropped into her chair again.
+
+"But you know."
+
+"Who could know anything of you, Sophie?"
+
+She moved the stones on the bench absent-mindedly. At length she said:
+
+"You remember our big row about Adler, when I was going to the supper on
+his yacht?"
+
+Armitage exclaimed with a gesture of protest.
+
+"I know," Sophie said, "you were angry ... you didn't mean what you
+said. But you were right all the same. You said I had let the life I was
+leading go to my head--that I was utterly demoralised by it.... I was
+angry; but it was true. You know the people I was going about with...."
+
+"I did my best to get you away from them," Armitage said.
+
+Sophie nodded. "But I hadn't had enough then ... of the beautiful places
+and things I found myself in the midst of ... and of all the admiration
+that came my way. What a queer crowd they were--Kalin, that Greek boy
+who was singing with me in _Eurydice_, Ina Barres, the Countess, Mrs.
+Youille-Bailey, Adler, and the rest of them.... They seemed to have run
+the gamut of all natural experiences and to be interested only in what
+was unnatural, bizarre, macabre.... Adler in that crowd was almost a
+relief. I liked his--honest Rabelaisianism, if you like.... I hadn't the
+slightest intention of more than amusing myself with him ... but he,
+evidently, did not intend to be merely a source of amusement to me. The
+supper on the yacht.... I kept my head for a while, not long, and
+then----"
+
+"Then?" Armitage queried.
+
+"That's why I came home," Sophie said. "I was so sick with the shock and
+shame of it all ... so sick and ashamed I couldn't sing any more. I
+wouldn't. My voice died.... I deserved what happened. I'd been playing
+for it ... taking the wine, the music, Adler's love-making ... and
+expecting to escape the taint of it all.... Afterwards I saw where I was
+going ... what that life was making of me...."
+
+"I don't know how you came to have anything to do with such a rotten
+lot," Armitage cried, sweating under a white heat of rage.
+
+"Oh, they're just people of means and leisure who like to patronise
+successful young dancers and singers for their own amusement," Sophie
+said.
+
+"Because you fell in with a set of ultraæsthetics and degenerates, is no
+reason to suppose all our people of means and leisure are like them,"
+Armitage declared hotly.
+
+"I don't," Sophie said; "what I felt, when I began to think about it,
+was that they were just the natural consequences of all the easy,
+luxurious living I'd seen--the extreme of the pole if you like. I saw
+the other when I went to live in a slum settlement in Chicago."
+
+"You did?" Armitage exclaimed incredulously.
+
+"When I got over the shock of--my awakening," she went on slowly, "I
+began to remember things Michael had said. That's why I went to Chicago
+... and worked in a clothing factory for a while.... I saw there why
+Adler's a millionaire, and heard from girls in a Youille-Bailey-M'Gill
+factory why Connie Youille-Bailey has money to burn...."
+
+"Old Youille-Bailey had fingers in a dozen pies, and he left her all
+he'd got," Armitage said.
+
+"But people down in the district where most of their money is made are
+living like bugs under a rotten log," Sophie exclaimed wearily. "They're
+made to live like that ... in order that people like William P. Adler
+and Mrs. Youille-Bailey ... may live as they do."
+
+Armitage's expression of mild cynicism yielded to one of concerned
+attentiveness. But he was concerned with the bearing on Sophie of what
+she had to say, and not at all with its relation to conditions of
+existence.
+
+"After all, life only goes on by its interests," she went on musingly;
+"and Mrs. Youille-Bailey's not altogether to blame for what she is. When
+people are bored, they've got to get interest or die; and if faculties
+which ought to be spent in useful or creative work aren't spent in that
+work, they find outlet in the silly energies a selfish and artificial
+life breeds...."
+
+"I admit," Armitage said, trying to veer her thoughts from the abstract
+to the personal issue, "that you went the pace. I couldn't keep up with
+it--not with Adler and his mob! But there's no need to go back to that
+sort of life. We could live as quietly as you like."
+
+Sophie shook her head. "I want to live here," she said. "I want to work
+with my hands ... feel myself in the swim of the world's life ... going
+with the great stream; and I want to help Michael here."
+
+Armitage sat back against the window-sill regarding her steadily.
+
+"If I could help you to do a great deal for the Ridge," he said; "if I
+were to settle here and spend all the money I've got in developing this
+place.--There's nothing innately immoral about a water-supply or
+electric power, I suppose, or in giving people decent houses to live in.
+And it would mean that for Fallen Star, if the scheme I have in mind is
+put into action. And if it is ... and I build a house here and were to
+live here most of my time ... would you marry me then, Sophie?"
+
+Sophie gazed at him, her eyes widening to a scarcely believable vision.
+
+"Do you mean you'd give up all your money to do that for the Ridge?" she
+asked.
+
+"Not quite that," he replied. "But the scheme would work out like that.
+I mean, it would provide more comfort and convenience for everybody on
+the Ridge--a more assured means of livelihood."
+
+"You don't mean to buy up the mines?"
+
+"Just that," he said.
+
+"But the men wouldn't agree...."
+
+"I don't know so much about that. It would depend on a few----"
+
+"Michael would never consent."
+
+"As a matter of fact"--John Armitage returned Sophie's gaze
+tranquilly--"I know something about Michael--some information came into
+my hands recently, although I've always vaguely suspected it--which will
+make his consent much more likely than you would have imagined.... If it
+does not, giving the information I hold to men of the Ridge will so
+destroy their faith and confidence in Michael that what he may say or do
+will not matter."
+
+Sophie's bewilderment and dismay constrained him. Then he continued:
+
+"You see, quite apart from you, my dear, it has always been a sort of
+dream of mine--ambition, if you like--to make a going concern of this
+place--to do for Fallen Star what other men I know have done for
+no-count, out-of-the-way towns and countries where natural resources or
+possibilities of investment warranted it.... I've talked the thing over
+with the old man, and with Andy M'Intosh, an old friend of mine, who is
+one of the ablest engineers in the States.... He's willing to throw in
+his lot with me.... Roughly, we've drawn up plans for conservation of
+flood waters and winter rains, which will alter the whole character of
+this country.... The old man at first was opposed--said the miners would
+never stand it; but since we've been out with the Ridge men, he's
+changed his mind rather. I mean, that when he knew some of the men would
+be willing to stand by us--and I have means of knowing they would--he
+was ready to agree. And when I told him Michael might be reckoned a
+traitor to his own creed----"
+
+"It's not true," Sophie cried, her faith afire. "It couldn't be! ... If
+everybody in the world told me, I wouldn't believe it!"
+
+Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and
+selected a cigarette.
+
+"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm only explaining the
+position to you because you're concerned in it. And for God's sake don't
+let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I'm not a villain. I don't feel
+in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.... I see my
+way to a profitable investment--incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I've
+been working out for a good many years.
+
+"Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he's worth if it weren't for
+this trump card of mine," Armitage went on. "He's got a Utopian dream
+about the place.... I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the
+advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its
+resources. His dream against mine--that's what it amounts to.... Well,
+it's a fair thing, isn't it, if I know that Michael is false to the
+things he says he stands for--and he stands in the way of my scheme--to
+let the men know he's false? ... They will fall away from the ideas he
+stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas
+sans Michael ... but they will be in the minority.... The way will be
+clear for reorganisation then."
+
+Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to
+his own creed--false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage
+said,--although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage
+reason for thinking so.
+
+"I'll see Michael to-morrow, and have it out with him," John Armitage
+said. "I shall tell him what I know ... and also my plans. If he will
+work with me----"
+
+Sophie looked up, her smile glimmering.
+
+"If he will work with me," Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all
+that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, "nothing need be
+said which will undermine Michael's influence with men of the Ridge. I
+know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with
+them--by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition,
+suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it
+has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected....
+I'll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure--give it a
+profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won't look like the
+thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses...."
+
+"He will...."
+
+"I am going to ask the men to meet me in the hall, at the end of the
+month, to lay before them a proposition for the more effective working
+of the mines. I shall put my proposition before them, and if Michael
+refuses to work with me, I shall be forced to give them proofs of his
+unworthiness of their respect...."
+
+"They won't believe you."
+
+"There will be the proofs, and Michael will not--he cannot--deny them."
+
+"You'll tell him what you are going to do?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Sophie realised how far Armitage was from understanding the religious
+intensity and simplicity with which Ridge folk worked for the way of
+life they believed to be the right one, and what the break-up of that
+belief would mean to those who had served it in the unpretentious,
+unprotesting fashion of honest, downright people. To him the Ridge stood
+for messy sentimentalism, Utopian idealism. And there was money in the
+place: there was money to be made by putting money into it--by working
+the mines and prospecting the country as the men without capital could
+not.
+
+John Armitage was ready to admit--Sophie had heard him admitting in
+controversy--that the Fallen Star mines which the miners themselves
+controlled were as well worked and as well managed within their means as
+any he had ever come across; that the miners themselves were a sober and
+industrious crowd. What capital could do for them and for the Fallen
+Star community by way of increasing its output and furthering its
+activities was what he saw. And the only security he could have for
+putting his capital into working the mines was ownership of them.
+Ownership would give him the right to organise the workers, and to claim
+interest for his investment from their toil, or the product of their
+toil.
+
+The Ridge declaration of independence had made it clear that people of
+Fallen Star did not want increased output, the comforts and conveniences
+which capital could give them, unless they were provided from the common
+fund of the community. Ultimately, it was hoped the common fund would
+provide them, but until it did Ridge men had announced their willingness
+to do without improvements for the sake of being masters of their own
+mines. If it was a question of barter, they were for the pride and
+dignity of being free men and doing without the comforts and
+conveniences of modern life. Sophie felt sure Armitage underestimated
+the feeling of the majority of men of the Ridge toward the Ridge idea,
+and that most of them would stand by it, even if for some mysterious
+reason Michael lost status with them. But she was dismayed at the test
+the strength of that feeling was to be put to, and at the mysterious
+shame which threatened Michael. She could not believe Michael had ever
+done anything to merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to
+her--the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no
+reproach could be levelled.
+
+Armitage spoke again.
+
+"You see," he said, "you could still have all those things you spoke of,
+under my scheme--the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple;
+the hearth; home, children--all that sort of thing ... and even time for
+any of the little social reform schemes you fancied...."
+
+Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of
+their outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much
+to her and to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong
+children--whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of
+course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them.
+
+"The only little social reform I'd have any time for," she murmured,
+"would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines."
+
+John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to
+the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility
+of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to
+the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of
+destroying them.
+
+"Then"--he stood up suddenly--"whether I succeed or whether I
+don't--whether the scheme goes my way or not--won't make any difference
+to you--to us."
+
+"It will make this difference," Sophie said. "I'm heart and soul in the
+life here, I've told you. And if you do as you say you're going to ...
+instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I'll have to
+think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me."
+
+"You mean," John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and
+chagrin which rushed over him, "you mean you're going to take on
+Henty--that's what's at the back of all this."
+
+"I mean," Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his,
+"that I'm going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the
+men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we'll fight it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Are you there, Potch?" Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael's hut, a
+wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her.
+
+Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in
+his hands.
+
+"He's not here," he said.
+
+His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had
+been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with
+anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes
+had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any
+meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of
+her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about
+her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing
+her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised,
+confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that
+photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and
+sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening
+wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety.
+
+Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was
+rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against
+anyone--a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out
+of it; and Sophie's delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole
+being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had
+changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she
+were playing up to him.... She had been much more of his world than of
+the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and
+superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When
+she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping
+and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch
+should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from
+his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he
+had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together.
+
+Then Sophie's cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him.
+He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that
+such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch
+away from Henty.... Henty had fallen.... Potch would have killed him if
+they had not dragged him away.... Henty was carried in an unconscious
+condition to Newton's. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with
+Potch.
+
+Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only
+imagine.... Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the
+other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not
+understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which
+he was not responsible for what he did.
+
+Sophie was conscious of Michael's aloofness from her as she stood in the
+doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night
+before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress,
+which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her
+in her everyday white cotton frock--as she sat at work at her
+cutting-wheel, or went about the hut--and now that she stood before him
+in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and
+happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer
+in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at
+him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have
+quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain,
+but could not.
+
+Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying and muttering as though
+he were drunk. But he was not drunk, except with rage and grief, Michael
+knew. He had lain on his bunk like a log all night, muttering and
+groaning. Michael had sat in a chair in the next room, trying to
+understand the madness which had overwhelmed Potch.
+
+In the morning, he realised that work and the normal order of their
+working days were the only things to restore Potch's mental balance. He
+roused him earlier than usual.
+
+"We'd better get down and clear out some of the mullock," he said. "The
+gouges are fair choked up. There'll be no doing anything if we don't get
+a move on with it."
+
+Potch had stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got up, changed his
+clothes, and they had gone down to the mine together. His face was
+swollen and discoloured, his lip broken, one eye almost hidden beneath a
+purple and blue swelling which had risen on the upper part of his left
+cheek. He had dragged his hat over his face, and walked with his head
+down; they had not spoken all the morning. Potch had swung his pick
+stolidly. All day his eyes had not met Michael's as they usually did, in
+that glance of love and comradeship which united them whenever their
+eyes met.
+
+In the afternoon, when they stopped work and went to the top of the
+mine, Potch had said:
+
+"Think I'll clear out--go away somewhere for awhile, Michael."
+
+From his attitude, averted head and drooping shoulders, Michael got the
+unendurable agony of his mind, his pain and shame. He did not reply, and
+Potch had walked away from him striking out in a south-easterly
+direction across the Ridge. Michael had not seen him since then. And now
+it was early evening, the moon up and silvering the plains with the
+light of her young crescent.
+
+"He says--Potch says ... he's going away," Michael said to Sophie.
+
+Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew
+it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible.
+Their minds would not accept the idea.
+
+Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the
+moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground
+at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for
+Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He
+wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for
+him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he
+himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery.
+
+Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made
+on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town.
+
+She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so
+still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and
+knelt beside him.
+
+"Potch!" she said.
+
+He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had
+brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched
+beside him.
+
+"Potch," she cried. "Potch!"
+
+Potch did not move or reply.
+
+"I can't live ... if you won't forgive me, Potch," Sophie said.
+
+He stirred. "Don't talk like that," he muttered.
+
+After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light
+of-the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic
+mask of the tragedy which consumed him.
+
+"That's the sort of man I am," Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady.
+"I didn't know ... I didn't know I was like that. It came over me all of
+a sudden, when I saw you and--him. I didn't know any more until Michael
+was talking to me. I wouldn't've done it if I'd known, Sophie.... But I
+didn't know.... I just saw him--and you, and I had to put out the sight
+of it ... I had to get it out of my eyes... what I saw.... That's all I
+know. Michael says I didn't kill him ... but I meant to ... that's what
+I started to do."
+
+Sophie's face withered under her distress.
+
+"Don't say that, Potch," she begged.
+
+"But I do," he said. "I must.... I can't make out ... how it was ... I
+felt like that. I thought I'd see things like you saw them always, stand
+by you. Now I don't know.... I'm not to be trusted----"
+
+"I'd trust you always, and in anything, Potch," Sophie said.
+
+"You can't say that--now."
+
+"It's now ... I want to say it more than ever," she continued. "I can't
+explain ... what I did ... any more than you can what you did, Potch.
+But I'm to blame for what you did ... and yet ... I can't see that I'm
+altogether to blame. I didn't want what happened--to happen ... any more
+than you."
+
+She wanted to explain to Potch--to herself also. But she could not see
+clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had
+become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain.
+
+"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at
+last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love
+with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with
+me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that
+changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me
+to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with
+other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I
+wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls
+Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me....
+Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more....
+Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the
+Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the
+other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and,
+somehow, then--it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball
+at Warria...."
+
+A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.
+
+"Michael says you're going away?"
+
+"Yes," Potch replied.
+
+Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.
+
+"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I
+don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get
+married and settle down."
+
+Potch turned to her.
+
+"You don't mean that?"
+
+"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words.
+"I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."
+
+Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held
+her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.
+
+"But you love him!" he said.
+
+Sophie's eyes did not fail from his.
+
+"I do," she said, "but I don't want to. I wish I didn't."
+
+His hands fell from her. "Why," he asked, "why do you say you'll marry
+me, if you ... if----"
+
+Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.
+
+"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and
+there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with
+you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch
+dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful
+... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and----"
+
+Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a
+thousand tender associations--their home, the quiet course their lives
+might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself.
+
+His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods
+offered him, even for the moment. And yet--he could not turn from it.
+Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have
+together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by--he
+stirred to the afterthought of her "and"--she wanted the children who
+might come to them.... Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that
+she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest
+affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as
+Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the
+thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud's most passionate
+kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of
+Sophie's dress or fingers had.
+
+Sophie took his hand.
+
+"Potch," she said, "if you love me--if you want me to marry you, let us
+settle the thing this way.... I want to marry you.... I want to be your
+loving and faithful wife.... I'll try to be.... I don't want to think of
+anyone but you.... You may make me forget--if we are married, and get on
+well together. I hope you will----"
+
+Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his
+voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Potch had looked towards Michael's hut before he went into his own, next
+evening. There was no light in its window, and he supposed that Michael
+had gone to bed. In the morning, as they were walking to the mine, Potch
+said:
+
+"He's back; did you know?"
+
+Michael guessed whom Potch was speaking of. "Saw him ... as I was
+walking out along the Warria road yesterday afternoon," he said; "and
+then at Newton's.... He looks ill."
+
+Potch did not reply. They did not speak of Charley again, and yet as
+they worked they thought of no one else, and of nothing but the
+difficulties his coming would bring into their lives. For Potch, his
+father's return meant the revival of an old shame. He had been accepted
+on his merits by the Ridge; he had made people forget he was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and now Charley was back Potch had no hope of anything
+but the old situation where his father was concerned, the old drag and
+the old fear. The thought of it was more disconcerting than ever, now
+too, because Sophie would have to share the sort of atmosphere Charley
+would put about them.
+
+And Michael was dulled by the weight of the fate which threatened him.
+Every day the consciousness of it weighed more heavily. He wondered
+whether his mind would remain clear and steady enough to interpret his
+resolve. For him, Charley's coming, and the enmity he had gauged in his
+glance the night before, were last straws of misfortune.
+
+John Armitage had put the proposition he outlined for Sophie, to
+Michael, the night before he left for Sydney. He had told Michael what
+he knew, and what he suspected in connection with Rouminof's opals.
+Michael had neither defended himself nor denied Armitage's accusation.
+He had ignored any reference to Paul's opals, and had made his position
+of uncompromising hostility to Armitage's proposition clear from the
+outset. There had not been a shadow of hesitation in his decision to
+oppose the Armitages' scheme for buying up the mines. At whatever cost,
+he believed he had no choice but to stand by the ideas and ideals on
+which the life of the Ridge was established and had grown.
+
+John Armitage, because of his preconceived notion of the guilty
+conscience Michael was suffering from, was disappointed that the action
+of Michael's mind had been as direct to the poles of his faith as it had
+been. He realised Sophie was right: Michael would not go back on the
+Ridge or the Ridge code; but the Ridge might go back on him. Armitage
+assured himself he had a good hand to play, and he explained his
+position quite frankly to Michael. If Michael would not work with him,
+he, John Armitage, must work against Michael. He would prefer not to do
+so, he said. He described to several men, separately, what the proposals
+of the Armitage Syndicate amounted to, in order that they might think
+over, weigh, and discuss them. He was going down to Sydney for a few
+weeks, and when he came back he would call a meeting and lay his
+proposition before the men. He hoped by then Michael would have
+reconsidered his decision. If he had not, Armitage made it clear that,
+much as he would regret having to, he would nevertheless do all in his
+power to destroy any influence Michael might have with men of the Ridge
+which might militate against their acceptance of the scheme for
+reorganisation of the mines he had to lay before them. Michael
+understood what that meant. John Armitage would accuse him of having
+stolen Paul's opals, and he would have to answer the accusation before
+men of the Ridge.
+
+His mind hovered about the thought of Maud Johnson.
+
+He could not conceive how John Armitage had come to the knowledge he
+possessed, unless Maud, whom he was aware Armitage had bought stones
+from in America, had not showed or sold them to him. But Armitage
+believed Michael still had, and was hoarding the stones. That was the
+strange part of it all. How could Armitage declare he had one of the
+stones, and yet believe Michael was holding the rest? Unless Maud had
+taken that one stone from the table the night she came to see Potch?
+Michael could not remember having seen the stone after she went. He
+could not remember having put it back in the box. It only just occurred
+to him she might only have taken the stone that night. Jun had probably
+recognised the stone, and she had told Armitage what Jun had said about
+it. Jun might have gone to the hut for the rest of the stones, but then
+Maud would not have told Armitage they were still on the Ridge. Maud
+would be sure to know if Jun had got the stones on his own account,
+Michael thought.
+
+His brain went over and over again what John Armitage had said,
+querying, exclaiming, explaining, and enlarging on fragments of their
+talk. Armitage declared he had evidence to prove Michael Brady had
+stolen Rouminof's stones. He might have proof that he had had possession
+of them for a while, Michael believed. But if Armitage was under the
+impression he still had the opals, his information was incomplete at
+least, and Michael treasured a vague hope that the proof which he might
+adduce, would be as faulty.
+
+But more important than the bringing home to him of responsibility for
+the lost opals, and the "unmasking" to eyes of men of the Ridge which
+Armitage had promised him, was the bearing it would have on the
+proposition which was to be put before them. Michael realised that there
+was a good deal of truth in what Armitage had said. A section of the
+younger miners, men who had settled on the new rushes, and one or two of
+the older men who had grown away from the Ridge idea, would probably be
+willing enough to fall in with and work under Armitage's scheme. George,
+Watty, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Cash Wilson, and most of the
+older men were against it, and some of the younger ones, too; but Archie
+and Ted Cross were inclined to waver, although they had always been
+staunch for the Ridge principle, and with them was a substantial
+following from the Punti, Three Mile, and other rushes.
+
+A disintegrating influence was at work, Michael recognised. It had been
+active for some time. Since Potch's finding of the big stone, scarcely
+any stone worth speaking of had been unearthed on the fields, and that
+meant long store accounts, and anxious and hard times for most of the
+gougers.
+
+The settlement had weathered seasons of dearth, and had existed on the
+merest traces of precious opal before; but this one had lasted longer,
+and had tried everybody's patience and capacity for endurance to the
+last degree. Murmurs of the need for money to prospect the field and
+open up new workings were heard. Criticisms of the ideas which would
+keep out money and money-owners who might be persuaded to invest their
+money to prospect and open up new workings on Fallen Star, crept into
+the murmurings, and had been circulating for some months. Bat M'Ginnis,
+a tall, lean, herring-gutted Irishman, with big ears, pointed like a
+bat's, was generally considered author of the criticisms and abettor of
+the murmurings. He had sunk on the Coolebah and drifted to the Punti
+rush soon after. On the Punti, it was known, he had expatiated on the
+need for business men and business methods to run the mines and make the
+most of the resources of the Ridge.
+
+M'Ginnis was a good agent for Armitage, before Armitage's proposition
+was heard of. Michael wondered now whether he was perhaps an agent of
+Armitage's, and had been sent to the Ridge to prepare the way for John
+Armitage's scheme. When he came to think of it, Michael remembered he
+had heard men exclaim that Bat never seemed short of money himself,
+although if he had to live on what his claim produced he would have been
+as hard up as most of them. Michael wondered whether Charley's
+home-coming was a coincidence likewise, or whether Armitage had laid his
+plans more carefully than might have been imagined.
+
+Michael saw no way out for himself. He could not accept Armitage's bribe
+of silence as to his share in the disappearance of Paul's opals, in
+order to urge men of the Ridge to agree to the Armitages' proposition
+for buying up the mines. If he could have, he realised, he would carry
+perhaps a majority of men of the Ridge with him; and those he cared most
+for would stand by the Ridge idea whether he deserted it or not, he
+believed. He would only fall in their esteem; they would despise him;
+and he would despise himself if he betrayed the idea on which he had
+staked so much, and the realisation of which he would have died to
+preserve. But there was no question of betraying the Ridge idea, or of
+being false to the teaching of his whole life. He was not even tempted
+by the terms Armitage offered for his co-operation. He was glad to think
+no terms Armitage could offer would tempt him from his allegiance to the
+principle which was the corner-stone of life on the Ridge.
+
+But he asked himself what the men would think of him when they heard
+Armitage's story; what Sophie would think, and Potch. He turned in agony
+from the thought that Sophie and Potch would believe him guilty of the
+thing he seemed to be guilty of. Anything seemed easier to bear than the
+loss of their love and faith, and the faith of men of the Ridge he had
+worked with and been in close sympathy with for so long--Watty and
+George, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant and Cash Wilson. Would he have
+to leave the Ridge when they knew? Would they cold-shoulder him out of
+their lives? His imagination had centred for so long about the thing he
+had done that the guilt of it was magnified out of all proportion to the
+degree of his culpability. He did not accuse himself in the initial act.
+He had done what seemed to him the only thing to do, in good faith; the
+opals had nothing to do with it. He did not understand yet how they had
+got an ascendancy over him; how when he had intended just to look at
+them, to see they were well packed, he had been seduced into that trance
+of worshipful admiration.
+
+Why he had not returned the stones to Paul as soon as Sophie had left
+the Ridge, Michael could not entirely explain to himself. He went over
+and over the excuses he had made to himself, seeing in them evidence of
+the subtle witchery the stones had exercised over him. But as soon as he
+was aware of the danger of delay, he tried to assure himself, and the
+appearance it must have, he had determined to get rid of the stones.
+
+Would the men believe he had wanted to give the stones to Paul--even
+that he had done what he had done for the reasons he would put before
+them? George and Watty and some of the others would believe him--but the
+rest? Michael could not hope that the majority would believe his story.
+They would want to know if at first he had kept the stones to prevent
+Sophie leaving the Ridge, why he had not given them to Paul as soon as
+she had gone. Michael knew he could only explain to them as he had to
+himself. He had intended to; he had delayed doing so; and then, when he
+went to find the stones to give them to Paul, they were no longer where
+he had left them. It was a thin story--a poor explanation. But that was
+the truth of the situation as far as he knew it. There was nothing more
+to be said or thought on the subject. He put it away from him with an
+impulse of impatience, desperate and weary.
+
+When Potch returned from the mine that afternoon; he went into Michael's
+hut before going home. Michael himself he had seen strike out westwards
+in the direction of the swamp soon after he came above ground. Potch
+expected to see his father where he was; he had seen him so often before
+on Michael's sofa under the window. Charley glanced up from the
+newspaper he was reading as Potch came into the room.
+
+"Well, son," he said, "the prodigal father's returned, and quite ready
+for a fatted calf."
+
+Potch stood staring at him. Light from the window bathed the thin,
+yellow face on the faded cushions of Michael's couch, limning the sharp
+nose with its curiously scenting expression, all the hungry, shrewd
+femininity and weakness of the face, and the smile of triumphant malice
+which glided in and out of the eyes. Michael was right, Potch realised;
+Charley was ill; but he had no pity for the man who lay there and smiled
+like that.
+
+"You can't stay here," he said. "Michael's coming."
+
+Charley smiled imperturbably.
+
+"Can't I?" he said. "You see. Besides ... I want to see Michael. That's
+what I'm here for."
+
+Potch growled inarticulately. He went to the hearth, gathered the
+half-burnt sticks together to make a fire. He would have given anything
+to get Charley out of the hut before Michael returned; but he did not
+know how to manage it. If Charley thought he wanted him to go, nothing
+would move him, Potch knew.
+
+"What do you want to see Michael about?" he asked.
+
+"Nice, affectionate son you are," Charley murmured. "Suppose you know
+you are my son--and heir?"
+
+"Worse luck," Potch muttered, watching the flame he had kindled over the
+dry chips and sticks.
+
+"You might've done worse," Charley replied, watching his son with a
+slight, derisive smile. "I might've done worse myself in the way of a
+son to support me in my old age."
+
+"I'm not going to do that."
+
+Charley laughed. "Aren't you?" he queried. "You might be very glad
+to--on terms I could suggest. And you're a fine, husky chap to do it,
+Potch, my lad.... They tell me you've married Rouminof's girl, and she's
+chucked the singing racket. Rum go, that! She could sing, too.... People
+I know told me they'd seen her in America in some revue stunt there, and
+she was just the thing. Went the pace a bit, eh? Oh, well, there's
+nothing like matrimony to sober a woman down--take the devil out of
+her."
+
+Potch's resentment surged; but before he could utter it, his father's
+pleasantries were flipping lightly, cynically.
+
+"By the way, I saw a friend of yours in Sydney couple of months ago. Oh,
+well, several perhaps. Might have been a year.... Maud! There's a fine
+woman, Potch. And she told me she was awfully gone on you once. Eh,
+what?... And now you're a married man. And to think of my becoming a
+grandfather. Help!"
+
+Potch sprang to his feet, goaded to fury by the jeering, amiable voice.
+
+"Shut up," he yelled, "shut up, or----"
+
+The doorway darkened. Potch saw Charley's face light with an expression
+of curious satisfaction and triumph. He turned and discovered that
+Michael was standing in the doorway. Irresolute and flinching, he stood
+there gazing at Charley, a strange expression of fear and loathing in
+his eyes.
+
+"You can clear out now, son," Charley remarked, putting an emphasis on
+the "son" calculated to enrage Potch. "I want to talk to Michael."
+
+Potch looked at Michael. It was his intention to stand by Michael if,
+and for as long as, Michael needed him.
+
+"It's all right, Potch," Michael said; but his eyes did not go to
+Potch's as they usually did. There was a strange, grave quality of
+aloofness about Michael. Potch hesitated, studying his face; but Michael
+dismissed him with a glance, and Potch went out of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The sky was like a great shallow basin turned over the plains. No tree
+or rising ground broke the perfect circle of its fall over the earth;
+only in the distance, on the edge of the bowl, a fringe of trees drew a
+blurred line between earth and sky.
+
+Potch and Sophie lay out on the plains, on their backs in the dried
+herbage, watching the sunset--the play of light on the wide sweep of the
+sky--silently, as if they were listening to great music.
+
+They had been married some days before in Budda township, and were
+living in Potch's hut.
+
+Sophie and Potch had often wandered over the plains in the evening and
+watched the sunset; but never before had they come to the sense of
+understanding and completeness they attained this evening. The days had
+been long and peaceful since they were living together, an anodyne to
+Sophie, soothing all the restless turmoil of her soul and body. She had
+ceased to desire happiness; she was grateful for this lull of all her
+powers of sense and thought, and eager to love and to serve Potch as he
+did her. She believed her life had found its haven; that if she kept in
+tune with the fundamentals of love and service, she could maintain a
+consciousness of peace and rightness with the world which would make
+living something more than a weary longing for death.
+
+All the days were holy days to Potch since Sophie and he had been
+married. He looked at her as if she were Undine making toast and tea,
+cooking, washing dishes, or sweeping and tidying up his hut. He followed
+her every movement with a worshipful, reverent gaze.
+
+Soon after Sophie's return, Potch had gone to live in the hut which he
+and his father had occupied in the old days. He had put a veranda of
+boughs to the front of it, and had washed the roof and walls with
+carbide to lessen the heat in summer. He had turned out the rooms and
+put up shelves, trying to furnish the place a little for Sophie; but she
+had not wanted it altered at all. She had cleared the cupboard, put
+clean paper on the shelves, and had arranged Potch's books on them
+herself.
+
+Sophie loved the austerity of her home when she went to live in it--its
+earthen floor, bare walls, unvarnished furniture, the couch under the
+window, the curtains of unbleached linen she had hemstitched herself,
+the row of shining syrup-tins in which she kept tea, sugar, and coffee
+on shelves near the fireplace, the big earthenware jar for flowers, and
+a couple of jugs which Snow-Shoes had made for her and baked in an oven
+of his own contrivance. She had a quiet satisfaction in doing all the
+cleaning up and tidying to keep her house in the order she liked, so
+that her eyes could rest on any part of it and take pleasure from the
+sense of beauty in ordinary and commonplace things.
+
+But the hut was small and its arrangements so simple that an hour or two
+after Potch had gone to the mines Sophie went to the shed into which he
+had moved her cutting-wheel, and busied herself facing and polishing the
+stones which some of the men brought her as usual. She knew her work
+pleased them. She was as skilful at showing a stone to all its advantage
+as any cutter on the Ridge, and nothing delighted her more than when
+Watty or George or one of the Crosses exclaimed with satisfaction at a
+piece of work she had done.
+
+In the afternoon sometimes she went down to the New Town to talk with
+Maggie Grant, Mrs. Woods, or Martha. She was understudying Martha, too,
+when anyone was sick in the town, and needed nursing or a helping hand.
+Martha had her hands full when Mrs. Ted Cross's fourth baby was born.
+There were five babies in the township at the time, and Sophie went to
+Crosses' every morning to fix up the house and look after the children
+and Mrs. Ted before Martha arrived. When Martha found the Crosses'
+washing gaily flapping on the line one morning towards midday, she
+protested in her own vigorous fashion.
+
+"I ain't going to have you blackleggin' on me, Mrs. Heathfield," she
+said. "And what's more, if I find you doin' it again, I'll tell Potch.
+It's all right for me to be goin' round doing other people's odd jobs;
+but I don't hold with you doin' 'em--so there! If folks wants babies,
+well, it's their look-out--and mine. But I don't see what you've got to
+do with it, coming round makin' your hands look anyhow."
+
+"You just sit down, and I'll make you a cup of tea, Mother M'Cready,"
+Sophie said by way of reply, and gently pushed Martha into the most
+comfortable chair in the room. "You look done up ... and you're going on
+to see Ella and Mrs. Inglewood, I suppose."
+
+Martha nodded. She watched Sophie with troubled, loving eyes. She was
+really very tired, and glad to be able to sit and rest for a moment. It
+gave her a welling tenderness and gratitude to have Sophie concerned for
+her tiredness, and fuss about her like this. Martha was so accustomed to
+caring for everybody on the Ridge, and she was so strong, good-natured,
+and vigorous, very few people thought of her ever being weary or
+dispirited. But as she bustled into the kitchen, blocking out the light,
+Sophie saw that Martha's fat, jolly face under the shadow of her
+sun-hat, was not as happy-looking as usual. Sophie guessed the weariness
+which had overtaken her, and that she was "poorly" or "out-of-sorts," as
+Martha would have said herself, if she could have been made to admit
+such a thing.
+
+"It's all very well to give folks a helping hand," Martha continued,
+"but I'm not going to have you doin' their washin' while I'm about."
+
+Sophie put a cup of tea and slice of bread and syrup down beside her.
+
+"There! You drink that cup of tea, and tell me what you think of it,"
+she said.
+
+"But, Sophie," Martha protested. "It's stone silly for you to be doing
+things like Cross's washing. You're not strong enough, and I won't have
+it."
+
+"Won't you?"
+
+Sophie put her arms around Martha's neck from behind her chair. She
+pressed her face against the creases of Martha's sunburnt neck and
+kissed it.
+
+Martha gurgled happily under the pressure of Sophie's young arms, the
+childish impulse of that hugging. She turned her face back and kissed
+Sophie.
+
+"Oh, my lamb! My dearie lamb!" she murmured.
+
+She recognised Sophie's need for common and kindly service to the people
+of the Ridge. She knew what that service had meant to her at one time,
+and was willing to let Sophie share her ministry so long as her health
+was equal to it.
+
+Mrs. Watty, and the women who took their views from her, thought that
+Sophie was giving herself a great deal of unnecessary and laborious work
+as a sort of penance. They had withdrawn all countenance from her after
+the disaster of the ball, although they regarded her marriage to Potch
+as an endeavour to reinstate herself in their good graces. Mrs. Watty
+had been scandalised by the dress she had worn at the ball, by the way
+she had danced, and her behaviour generally. But Sophie was quite
+unconcerned as to what Mrs. Watty and her friends thought: she did not
+go out of her way either to avoid or placate them.
+
+When she went to the Crosses' to take charge of the children and look
+after the house while Mrs. Cross was ill, the gossips had exclaimed
+together. And when it was known that Sophie had taken on herself odds
+and ends of sewing for other women of the township who had large
+families and rather more to do than they knew how to get through, they
+declared that they did not know what to make of it, or of Sophie and her
+moods and misdemeanours.
+
+Potch heard of what Sophie was doing from the people she helped. When he
+came home in the evening she was nearly always in the kitchen getting
+tea for him; but if she was not, she came in soon after he got home, and
+he knew that one of these little tasks she had undertaken for people in
+the town had kept her longer than she expected. Usually he hung in the
+doorway, waiting for her to come and meet him, to hold up her face to be
+kissed, eyes sweet with affection and the tender familiarity of their
+association. Those offered kisses of hers were the treasure of these
+dream-like days to Potch.
+
+He had always loved Sophie. He had thought that his love had reached the
+limit of loving a long time before, but since they had been married and
+were living, day after day, together, he had become no more than a
+loving of her. He went about his work as usual, performed all the other
+functions of his life mechanically, scrupulously, but it was always with
+a subconscious knowledge of Sophie and of their life together.
+
+"You're tired," he said one night when Sophie lifted her face to his,
+his eyes strained on her with infinite concern.
+
+"Dear Potch," she said; and she had put back the hair from his forehead
+with a gesture tender and pitiful.
+
+Her glance and gesture were always tender and pitiful. Potch realised
+it. He knew that he worshipped and she accepted his worship. He was
+content--not quite content, perhaps--but he assured himself it was
+enough for him that it should be so.
+
+He had never taken Sophie in his arms without an overwhelming sense of
+reverence and worship. There was no passionate need, no spontaneity, no
+leaping flame in the caresses she had given him, in that kiss of the
+evening, and the slight, girlish gestures of affection and tenderness
+she gave as she passed him at meals, or when they were reading or
+walking together.
+
+As they lay on the plains this evening they had been thinking of their
+life together. They had talked of it in low, brooding murmurs. The
+immensity of the silence soaked into them. They had taken into
+themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the
+paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was
+time to go home, Sophie sat up.
+
+"I love to lie against the earth like this," she said.
+
+"We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more
+than specks of dust on the plains ... under the skies, Potch ... and yet
+the whole world is within us...."
+
+"Yes," Potch said, and the silence streamed between them again.
+
+"I'll never forget," Sophie continued dreamily, "hearing a negro talk
+once about what they call 'the negro problem' in America. He was an
+ordinary thick-set, curly-haired, coarse-featured negro to look
+at--Booker Washington--but he talked some of the clearest, straightest
+stuff I've ever heard.
+
+"One thing he said has always stayed in my mind: 'Keep close to the
+earth.' It was not good, he said, to walk on asphalted paths too
+long.... He was describing what Western civilisation had done for the
+negroes--a primitive people.... Anyone could see how they had
+degenerated under it. And it's always seemed to me that what was true
+for the negroes ... is true for us, too.... It's good to keep close to
+the earth."
+
+"Keep close to the earth?" Potch mused.
+
+"In tune with the fundamentals, all the great things of loving and
+working--our eyes on the stars."
+
+"The stars?"
+
+"The objects of our faith and service."
+
+They were silent again for a while. Then Sophie said:
+
+"You ..." she hesitated, remembering what she had told John
+Armitage--"you and I would fight for the Ridge principle, even if all
+the others accepted Mr. Armitage's offer, wouldn't we, Potch?"
+
+"Of course," Potch said.
+
+"And Michael?"
+
+"Michael?" His eyes questioned her in the dim light because of the
+hesitation in her question. "Why do you say that? Michael would be the
+last man on earth to have anything to do with Armitage's scheme."
+
+"He comes back to put the proposition to the men definitely in a few
+days, doesn't he?" Sophie asked.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"Have you talked to Michael about it?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, Sophie," Potch replied slowly,
+conscience-stricken that he had given the subject so little
+consideration, "I took it for granted there could only be one answer to
+the whole thing.... I haven't thought of it. I've only thought of you
+the last week or so. I haven't talked to Michael; I haven't even heard
+what the men were saying at midday.... But, of course, there's only one
+answer."
+
+"I've tried to talk to Michael, but he won't discuss it with me," Sophie
+said.
+
+Potch stared at her.
+
+"You don't mean," he said--"you can't think--"
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a gesture of desperation, "I know John Armitage is
+holding something over Michael ... and if it's true what he says, it'll
+break Michael, and it'll go very badly against the Ridge."
+
+"You can't tell me what it is?"
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+Potch got up; his face settled into grave and fighting lines. Sophie,
+too, rose from the ground. They went towards the track where the three
+huts stood facing the scattered dumps of the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
+
+"I want to see Michael," Potch said, when they approached the huts.
+"I'll be in, in a couple of minutes."
+
+Sophie went on to their own home, and Potch, swerving from her, walked
+across to the back door of Michael's hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Charley was sitting on the couch, leaning towards Michael, his shoulders
+hunched, his eyes gleaming, when Potch went into the hut.
+
+"You can't bluff me," Potch heard him say. "You may throw dust in the
+eyes of the men here, but you can't bluff me.... It was you did for
+me.... It was you put it over on me--took those stones."
+
+"Well, you tell the boys," Potch heard Michael say.
+
+His voice was as unconcerned as though it were not anything of
+importance they were discussing. Potch found relief in the sound of it,
+but its unconcern drove Charley to fury.
+
+"You know I took them from Paul," he shouted. "You know--I can see it in
+your eyes ... and you took them from me. When ... how ... I don't
+know.... You must 've sneaked into the house when I dozed off for a bit,
+and put a parcel of your own rotten stuff in their place.... How do I
+know? Well, I'll tell you...."
+
+He settled back on the sofa. "I hung on to the best stone in the
+lot--clear brown potch with good flame in it--hopin' it would give me a
+clue some day to the man who'd done that trick on me. But I couldn't
+place the stone; I'd never seen it on you, and Jun had never seen it
+either. I was dead stony when I sold it to Maud ... and I told her why
+I'd been keeping it, seeing she was in the show at the start off. She
+sold the stone to Armitage in America, and first thing the old man said
+when he saw it was: 'Why, that's Michael's mascot!'"
+
+"Remembered when you'd got it, he said," Charley continued, taking
+Michael's interest with gratified malice. "First stone you'd come on, on
+Fallen Star, and you wouldn't sell--kept her for luck.... Old Armitage
+wouldn't have anything to do with the stone then--didn't believe Maud's
+story.... But John Lincoln got it. He told me...."
+
+"I see," Michael murmured.
+
+"Don't mind telling you I'm here to play Armitage's game," Charley said.
+
+Michael nodded. "Well, what about it?"
+
+"This about it," Charley exclaimed irritably, his excitement and
+impatience rising under Michael's calmness. "You're done on the Ridge
+when this story gets around. What I've got to say is ... you took the
+opals. You've got 'em. You're done for here. But you could have a good
+life somewhere else. Clear out, and----"
+
+"We'll go halves, eh?" Michael queried.
+
+"That's it," Charley assented. "I'll clear out and say nothing--although
+I've told Rummy enough already to give him his suspicions. Still,
+suspicions are only suspicions--nothing more. When I came here I didn't
+even mean to give you this chance.... But 'Life is sweet, brother!'
+There's still a few pubs down in Sydney, and a woman or two. I wouldn't
+go out with such a grouch against things in general if I had a flash in
+the pan first.... And it'd suit you all right, Michael.... With this
+scheme of Armitage's in the wind----"
+
+"And suppose I haven't got the stones?" Michael inquired.
+
+Charley half rose from the sofa, his thin hands grasping the table.
+
+"It's a lie!" he shrieked, shivering with impotent fury. "You know it
+is.... What have you done with 'em then? What have you done with those
+stones--that's what I want to know!"
+
+"You haven't got much breath," Michael said; "you'd better save it."
+
+"I'll use all I've got to down you, if you don't come to light," Charley
+cried. "I'll do it, see if I don't."
+
+Potch walked across to his father. He had heard Charley abusing and
+threatening Michael before without being able to make out what it was
+all about. He had thought it bluff and something in the nature of a
+try-on; but he had determined to put a stop to it.
+
+"No, you won't!" he said.
+
+"Won't I?" Charley turned on his son.
+
+"No." Potch's tone was steady and decisive.
+
+Charley looked towards Michael again.
+
+"Well ... what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I've told you," Michael said. "Nothing."
+
+"Did y' hear what I've been calling your saint?" Charley cried, turning
+to Potch. "I'm calling him what everybody on the fields'd be calling him
+if they knew."
+
+Michael's gaze wavered as it went to Potch.
+
+"A thief," Charley continued, whipping himself into a frenzy. "That's
+what he is--a dirty, low-down thief! I'm the ordinary, decent sort ...
+get the credit for what I am ... and pay for it, by God! But he--he
+doesn't pay. I bag all the disgrace ... and he walks off with the
+goods--Rouminof's stones."
+
+Potch did not look at Michael. What Charley had said did not seem to
+shock or surprise him.
+
+"I've made a perfectly fair and reasonable proposition," Charley went on
+more quietly. "I've told him ... if he'll go halves----"
+
+"Guess again," Potch sneered.
+
+Charley swung to his feet, a volley of expletives swept from him.
+
+"I've told Rummy to get the law on his side," he cried shrilly, "and
+he's going to. There's one little bit of proof I've got that'll help
+him, and----"
+
+"You'll get jail yourself over it," Potch said.
+
+"Don't mind if I do," Charley shouted, and poured his rage and
+disappointment into a flood of such filthy abuse that Potch took him by
+the shoulders.
+
+"Shut your mouth," he said. "D'y' hear?... Shut your mouth!"
+
+Charley continued to rave, and Potch, gripping his shoulders, ran him
+out of the hut.
+
+Michael heard them talking in Potch's hut--Charley yelling, threatening,
+and cursing. A fit of coughing seized him. Then there was silence--a
+hurrying to and fro in the hut. Michael heard Sophie go to the tank, and
+carry water into the house, and guessed that Charley's paroxysm and
+coughing had brought on the hemorrhage he had had two or three times
+since his return to the Ridge.
+
+A little later Potch came to him.
+
+"He's had a bleeding, Michael," Potch said; "a pretty bad one, and he's
+weak as a kitten. But just before it came on I told him I'd let him have
+a pound a week, somehow, if he goes down to Sydney at once.... But if
+ever he shows his face in the Ridge again ... or says a word more about
+you ... I've promised he'll never get another penny out of me.... He can
+die where and how he likes ... I'm through with him...."
+
+Michael had been sitting beside his fire, staring into it. He had
+dropped into a chair and had not moved since Potch and Charley left the
+hut.
+
+"Do you believe what he said, Potch?" he asked.
+
+Michael felt Potch's eyes on his face; he raised his eyes to meet them.
+There was no lie in the clear depths of Potch's eyes.
+
+"I've known for a long time," Potch said.
+
+Michael's gaze held him--the swimming misery of it; then, as if
+overwhelmed by the knowledge of what Potch must be thinking of him, it
+fell. Michael rose from his chair before the fire and stood before
+Potch, his mind darkened as by shutting-off of the only light which had
+penetrated its gloom. He stood so for some time in utter abasement and
+desolation of spirit, believing that he had lost a thing which had come
+to be of inexpressible value to him, the love and homage Potch had given
+him while they had been mates.
+
+"I've always known, too," Potch said, "it was for a good enough reason."
+
+Michael's swift glance went to him, his soul irradiated by that
+unprotesting affirmation of Potch's faith.
+
+He dropped into his chair before the fire again. His head went into his
+hands. Potch knew that Michael was crying. He stood by silently--unable
+to touch him, unable to realise the whole of Michael's tragedy, and yet
+overcome with love and sympathy for him. He knew only as much of it as
+affected Sophie. His sympathy and instinct where Sophie was concerned
+enabled him to guess why Michael had done what he had.
+
+"It was for Sophie," he said.
+
+"I intended to give them back to Paul--when she was old enough to go
+away, Potch," Michael said after a while. "Then she went away; and I
+don't know why I didn't give them to him at once. The things got hold of
+me, somehow--for a while, at least. I couldn't make up my mind to give
+them back to him--kept makin' excuses.... Then, when I did make up my
+mind and went to get them, they were gone."
+
+Potch nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"You don't suspect anybody?" he asked.
+
+Michael shook his head. "How can I? Nobody knew I had them, and yet ...
+that night ... twice, I thought I had heard someone moving near me....
+The memory of it's stayed with me all these years. Sometimes I think it
+means something--that somebody must have been near and seen and heard.
+Then that seems absurd. It was a bright night; I looked, and there was
+no one in sight. There's only one person besides you ... saw ... I
+think--knew I had the stones...."
+
+"Maud?"
+
+Michael nodded. "She came into the room with you that night. You
+remember? ... And I've wondered since ... if she, perhaps, or Jun ... At
+any rate, Armitage knows, or suspects--I don't know which it is
+really.... He says he has proof. There's that stone I put in Charley's
+parcel--a silly thing to do when you come to think of it. But I didn't
+like the idea of leaving Charley nothing to sell when he got to Sydney;
+and that was the only decent bit of stone I'd got. Making up the parcel
+in a hurry, I didn't think what putting in that bit of stuff might lead
+to. But for that, I can't think how Armitage could have proof I had the
+stones except through Maud. And she's been in New York, and----"
+
+"She may have told him she saw you the night she came for me," Potch
+said.
+
+"That's what I think," Michael agreed.
+
+They brooded over the situation for a while.
+
+"Does Sophie know?" Michael's eyes went to Potch, a sharper light in
+them.
+
+"Only that some danger threatens you," Potch said slowly. "Armitage told
+her."
+
+"You tell her what I've told you, Potch," Michael said.
+
+They talked a little longer, then Potch moved to go away.
+
+"There's nothing to be done?" he asked.
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"Things have just got to take their course. There's nothing to be done,
+Potch," he said.
+
+They came to him together, Sophie and Potch, in a little while, and
+Sophie went straight to Michael. She put her arms round his neck and her
+face against his; her eyes were shining with tears and tenderness.
+
+"Michael, dear!" she whispered.
+
+Michael held her to him; she was indeed the child of his flesh as she
+was of his spirit, as he held her then.
+
+He did not speak; he could not. Looking up, he caught Potch's eyes on
+him, the same expression of faith and tenderness in them. The joy of the
+moment was beyond words.
+
+Potch's and Sophie's love and faith were beyond all value, precious to
+Michael in this time of trouble. When he had failed to believe in
+himself, Sophie and Potch believed in him; when his life-work seemed to
+be falling from his hands, they were ready to take it up. They had told
+him so. In his grief and realisation of failure, that thought was a
+star--a thing of miraculous joy and beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together
+before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his
+proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group
+formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction.
+M'Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were
+prepared to accept Armitage's scheme. The Crosses, while they would not
+go over to the M'Ginnis faction, had a following--and the group about
+them was by far the largest--which was asserting an open mind until it
+heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with
+them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than
+against, Armitage's outline of the new order of things for the Ridge
+since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared
+at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of
+Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old
+spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and
+Watty Frost.
+
+"Thing that's surprised me," Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, "is the
+numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say.
+I wouldn't 've thought there'd be so many."
+
+"I don't like it meself, Pony," George admitted. "That's why we're here.
+Want to know the strength of them--and him."
+
+"That's right," Watty muttered.
+
+"Crosses, for instance," Pony-Fence continued. "You wouldn't 've thought
+Archie and Ted'd 've even listened to guff about profit-sharin'--all
+that.... But they've swallowed it--swallowed it all down. They say----"
+
+George nodded gloomily. "This blasted talkin' about Michael's done more
+harm than anything."
+
+"That's right," Pony-Fence said. "What's the strength of it, George?"
+
+"Damned if I know!"
+
+"Where's Michael to-night?"
+
+Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was
+not among them.
+
+"Is he coming?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted,
+expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking
+of Michael.
+
+"Does he know what's being said?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+"He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know
+about it."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don't understand Michael over this
+business," George said. "He's been right off his nest the last week or
+two. It might have got him down what's being said--he might be so sore
+about anybody thinkin' that of him, or that it's just too mean and
+paltry to take any notice of.... But I'd rather he'd said something....
+It's played Armitage's game all right, the yarn that's been goin' round,
+about Michael's not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it
+is, you don't know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course--but
+it was here before him.... He's just stoked the gossip a bit. But it's
+done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could 've----"
+
+"To-night'll bring things to a head," Watty interrupted, as though they
+had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to
+say next. "I reck'n we'll see better how we stand--what's the game--and
+the men who are going to stand by us.... Michael's with us, I'll swear;
+and if we've got to put up a fight ... we'll have it out with him about
+those yarns.... And it'll be hell for any man who drops a word of them
+afterwards."
+
+When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form
+and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained
+somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the
+fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat
+near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American
+engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a
+little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but
+Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was.
+
+Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be
+chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he
+took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water
+bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M'Intosh,
+the American engineer, on the other.
+
+His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and
+chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be
+regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage's plan.
+
+John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of
+another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night.
+Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was
+filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred
+the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the
+benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or
+worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats.
+Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the
+weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid
+through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and
+intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.
+
+Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr.
+Andrew M'Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to
+report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the
+United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural
+resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date,
+flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the
+Armitage Syndicate.
+
+Andrew M'Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt
+features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up
+in response to Mr. Armitage's invitation. He was a man of deeds, not
+words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the
+substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and
+hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting
+against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business,
+although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had
+not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he
+would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to
+assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition
+Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He
+himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot
+with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage's proposition; and he gave
+them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of
+the reorganisation of the mines, he would work whole-heartedly for the
+success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might
+mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great
+deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for
+mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of
+the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the
+advantages that would entail.
+
+The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer's
+manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the
+situation, although he gave very little information they had not already
+possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and
+confronted the men again.
+
+He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward
+business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said;
+but one the success of which would depend on their co-operation. As
+their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the
+disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for
+both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he
+proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the
+resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an
+expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and
+prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw
+possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he
+promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had
+outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous
+township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity
+in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all
+manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of
+communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased
+production would ensure.
+
+In a nutshell Armitage's scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines
+for £30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage
+of 20 per cent. profit on all stones over a certain standard and size.
+The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected
+to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but
+otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr.
+Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general
+manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union
+rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining
+companies throughout the country.
+
+When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone's mind that
+John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on
+the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage
+Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been
+driven to consider Armitage's offer from their first hearing of it,
+because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost
+persuaded by his final exposition.
+
+George Woods stood up.
+
+George's strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty
+and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed
+situations and men.
+
+He realised the impression Armitage's statement of his scheme, and its
+bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own
+position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering
+between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen
+Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star
+had stood for so long, would lie.
+
+"Well," he said, "we've got to thank you for puttin' the thing to us as
+clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a
+chance to see just what you're drivin' at. But I might say here and now
+... I've got no time for it ... neither me nor my mates.... It'll save
+time and finish the business of this meeting if there's no beatin' about
+the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all
+right--your scheme--nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to
+get out of it than to lose by it.... I don't say it wouldn't mean easier
+times ... more money ... all that sort of thing. We haven't had the
+easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes ... just
+when we're in the worst that's ever knocked us. But speakin' for myself,
+and"--his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the
+Ridge stood for-"the most of my mates, we'd rather have the hard times
+and be our own masters. That's what we've always said on the Ridge....
+Your scheme 'd be all right if we didn't feel like that; I suppose. But
+we do ... and as far as I'm concerned, we won't touch it. It's no go.
+
+"We're obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you
+could have gone another way about getting control here. You may---buy up
+a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not
+that I think the boys'd stand for the experiment."
+
+"They wouldn't," Bill Grant called.
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," George said. He tried to point out that if
+Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage's offer they would be shouldering
+conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest
+that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He
+asked whether a weekly Wage to tide them over years of misfortune would
+compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know
+how they'd feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth £400 or £500 and
+got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big
+stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George
+said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr.
+Armitage's argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could
+see in Mr. Armitage's scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their
+own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for
+them under Mr. Armitage's system was three or four pounds a week--and
+not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.
+
+"We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine," George said; "that's
+worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties....
+Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and
+there's money about again.... For the present we'll hang on to what
+we've got, thank you, Mr. Armitage."
+
+He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.
+
+"Anybody else got anything to say?" Peter Newton inquired.
+
+M'Ginnis stood up.
+
+He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he
+said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as
+he could see. He didn't see that the men's ownership of the mines meant
+much more than that--the freedom to starve. It was all very well for
+them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool
+could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish
+heap. But as far as he was concerned, M'Ginnis declared, he didn't see
+the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had
+volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms....
+
+It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on
+the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to
+it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas
+had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very
+well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance
+of being a millionaire at a minute's notice; but how many of them were
+millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to
+bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down
+this offer of Mr. Armitage's. For his part he was for it, and, what was
+more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.
+
+"If it's put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr.
+Armitage's scheme, we'll soon see which way the cat's jumping," M'Ginnis
+said. "People'd have the nause to see which side their bread's buttered
+on--not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I
+don't see why----"
+
+"You're not paid to," a voice called from the back of the hall.
+
+"I don't see why," M'Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the
+interruption, "the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule
+the roost. What's wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense----"
+
+Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near
+M'Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting
+were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round.
+Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to
+restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood
+were heard howling over the din:
+
+"Let him alone."
+
+"Let's hear what he's got to say."
+
+Then M'Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained
+by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage's offer.
+
+"And," he wound up, "there's the women and children to think of." At the
+back of the hall somebody laughed. "Laugh if you like"--M'Ginnis worked
+himself into a passion of virtuous indignation--"but I don't see there's
+anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin' to
+mean to the women and children of this town--what a few of the
+advantages of civilisation----"
+
+"Disadvantages!" the same voice called.
+
+"--Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin' to mean to the
+women and children of this God-forsaken hole," M'Ginnis cried furiously.
+"If I had a wife and kids, d'ye think I'd have any time for this
+high-falutin' flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The
+best in the country wouldn't be too good for them--and it's not good
+enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That's what I've got
+to say--and that's what any decent man would say if he could see
+straight. I'm an ordinary, plain, practical man myself ... and I ask you
+chaps who've been lettin' your legs be pulled pretty freely---and
+starvin' to be masters of your own dumps--to look at this business like
+ordinary, plain, practical men, who've got their heads screwed on the
+right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen
+Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there's some men here want
+to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let 'em, I say: it's a free
+country. But there's no need for the rest of us to starve with 'em."
+
+He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour
+of Armitage and his Scheme.
+
+"What's Michael got to say about it?" a man from the Three Mile asked.
+And several voices called: "Yes; what's Michael got to say?"
+
+For a moment there was silence--a silence of apprehension. George Woods
+and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had
+heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised
+in that moment the power of Michael's influence; that what Michael was
+going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done,
+either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which
+they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet
+there was fear in the waiting silence.
+
+Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited
+anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield
+waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see
+him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there
+was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed
+on the place where Michael sat--Charley's eager and cruel as a cat's on
+its victim, Rouminof's alight with the fires of his consuming
+excitement.
+
+Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance,
+those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and
+faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile.
+
+"All I've got to say," he said, "George Woods has said. There's nothing
+in Mr. Armitage's scheme for Fallen Star.... It looks all right, but it
+isn't; it's all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership
+of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage 'll give us anything
+but that--he offers us every inducement but that ... and you know how
+the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to
+him, they're worth as much, or more, to us.
+
+"Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the
+mines--at a 'fair valuation'--put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All
+the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen
+Star, might or mightn't come true. P'raps it would. I can't say. All I
+say is, it's being used to gild the pill we're asked to swallow--buyin'
+up of the mines. There's nothing sure about all this talk of electricity
+and water laid on; it's just gilding. And supposing the new conditions
+did put more money about--did bring the comforts and conveniences of
+civilisation to Fallen Star--like M'Ginnis says--what good would they be
+to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like
+a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn't matter to them any
+more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they'd have their
+wages--like bullocks have their hay. It's because our work's had
+interest; it's because we've been our own bosses, life's been as good as
+it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn't got interest in
+his work he's got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs
+when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling ... and how did
+that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of
+M'Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old
+hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in
+by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a
+strike in the mines, he'd be saying that to you: 'Remember the women and
+children.'"
+
+Colour flamed in Michael's face, and he continued with more heat than
+there had yet been in his voice.
+
+"The time's coming when the man who talks 'women and children' to defeat
+their own interests will be treated like the skunk--the low-down,
+thieving swine he is. Do we say anything's too good for our women and
+children? Not much. But we want to give them real things--the real
+things of life and happiness--not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we
+give our women and children the mines as we've held them, and the record
+of a clean fight for them, we'll be giving them something very much
+bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The
+things we've stood for are better than anything he's got to offer. We've
+got here what they're fighting for all over the world ... it's bigger
+than ourselves.
+
+"M'Ginnis says he's heard a lot of 'the freedom to starve on the
+Ridge'--it's more than I have, it's a sure thing if he wants to starve,
+nobody'd stop him...."
+
+A wave of laughter passed over the hall.
+
+"But most of us here haven't any fancy for starving, and what's more,
+nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don't say that we haven't had
+hard times, that we haven't gone on short commons--we have; but we
+haven't starved, and we're not going to....
+
+"This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have
+been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we're
+down, in a way; but the slump'll pass. There've been slumps before, and
+they've passed.... Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn't be so keen on
+getting hold of the mines.
+
+"And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to
+me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or
+syndicate ever made could. Didn't old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once
+that he didn't know a better conducted or more industrious mining
+community than this one. 'Why d'y' think that is?' I asked him. He said
+he didn't know. I said, 'You don't think the way the men feel about
+their work's got anything to do with it?' 'Damn it, Michael,' he said,
+'I don't want to think so.'
+
+"And I happen to know"--Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage,
+who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and
+crossed under his chin--"that the old man is opposed even now to this
+scheme because he thinks he won't get as much black opal out of us as he
+does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and
+what taking over of the mines did for opal--and the men--there. This
+scheme is Mr. John Armitage's idea....
+
+"He's put it to you. You've heard what it is. All I've got to say now
+is, don't touch it. Don't have anything to do with it.... It'll break us
+... the spirit of the men here ... and it'll break what we've been
+working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don't let us
+see which side our bread's buttered on, as Mr. M'Ginnis says. Let us say
+like we always have--like we've been proud to say: 'We'll eat bread and
+fat, but we'll be our own masters!'"
+
+"We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!" the men who
+were with Michael roared.
+
+He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam
+at him, filled with rejoicing.
+
+Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not
+quite decided what he intended to say.
+
+"I'm not going to ask this meeting for a decision," he began.
+
+"You can have it!" Bully Bryant yelled.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I'm going on up
+there," John Armitage continued. "I'm due in Sydney at the end of the
+month--that is, a month from this date--and I'll run up then for your
+answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said
+all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything
+which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your
+gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the
+best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I
+think, however, you ought to know----"
+
+"That Michael Brady's a liar and a thief!" Charley cried, springing from
+his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. "If you believe him,
+you're believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows ... I know ...
+and Paul knows----"
+
+"Throw him out."
+
+"He's mad!"
+
+The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their
+height M'Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.
+
+"Let him say what he's got to!" he shouted. "You chaps know as well as I
+do what's been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now.
+If it's not true, Michael'd rather have the strength of it, and give you
+his answer ... and if there is anything in it, we've got a right to
+know."
+
+"That's right!" some of the men near him chorused.
+
+Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.
+
+"Might as well have it," Michael said.
+
+Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully
+Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could
+see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice,
+told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside
+him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of
+corroboration.
+
+When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted,
+Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say
+when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way
+through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken
+everybody, said uncertainly:
+
+"Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that
+Charley Heathfield's story, as far as I know it, is substantially
+correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw
+it, my father said, 'Why, that's Michael's mascot.' I asked him if he
+were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the
+stone....
+
+"I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you.
+That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof's
+opals--the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck
+together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof's opals, and had been
+exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley
+were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My
+father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the
+business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man
+who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the
+altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that
+stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney ... and also that
+Michael had possession of Rouminof's opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she
+saw Rouminof's stones on the table of Michael Brady's hut one evening
+nearly two years ago.
+
+"I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He
+denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it
+seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account
+of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael
+Brady of having stolen Rouminof's opals. If he has anything to say, now
+is the time to say it."
+
+What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was
+heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody
+spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not
+looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place
+where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first
+sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when
+Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes
+on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance
+swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and
+humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement,
+the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still
+Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
+
+"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.
+
+Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he
+strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close
+together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds
+under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear
+what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he
+turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in
+newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still
+hovering near the edge of the platform.
+
+"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured
+fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
+
+Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no
+hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed
+round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When
+order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform
+going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was
+laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but
+his joy in fingering his lost gems.
+
+When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause,
+Armitage spoke.
+
+"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most
+contritely.... I don't yet understand--but the facts are, the opals are
+here, and Mr. Riley has said--"
+
+Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to
+speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as
+if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
+
+"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ...
+but from Charley."
+
+His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his
+suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul
+going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of
+opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.
+
+"I didn't want the stones," Michael cried, "I didn't ever want them for
+myself.... It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn't want him to
+have them just then...."
+
+Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he
+had made to Sophie's mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the
+stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had
+gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained
+why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare
+himself.
+
+Paul had had sun-stroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night
+he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been
+reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning
+them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the
+thing to himself even.... He had not looked at the opals except once
+again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly
+the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then
+Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was
+drifting--how the stones were getting hold of him--and in a panic,
+knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it
+to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to
+do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.
+
+Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but
+now it was clear. Probably Snow-Shoes had known all the time he had the
+stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must
+have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he
+came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It
+was just that slight sound Snow-Shoes' moccasins made on the shingle.
+Exclamations and odd queries Snow-Shoes had launched from time to time
+came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken
+the stones to do just what he had done--and because he feared the
+influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they
+should have been returned to Paul long ago.
+
+"That's the truth, as far as I know it," Michael said. "There's been
+attempts made to injure ... the Ridge, our way of doing things here,
+because of me, and because of those stones.... What happened to me
+doesn't matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I
+done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I'd give anything
+now if I--if I'd given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn't
+... and I'll stand by anything the men who've been my mates care to say
+or do about that. Only don't let the Ridge, and our way of doing things
+here, get hurt through me. That's bigger--it means more than any man.
+Don't let it! ... I'd ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to
+say what they think about all this--and where I stand."
+
+Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of
+the hall.
+
+When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden
+floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned
+and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created
+such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of
+forms. With the exception of M'Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had
+the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who
+a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as
+blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted
+shapes and unlighted countenances.
+
+"Well," George said, "it's been a bit of a shock what we've just heard.
+It wasn't easy what Michael's just done ... and Snow-Shoes, if he'd
+wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn't have it....
+At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to
+stand by the Ridge ... he'd stand by it at any cost.... If there's a
+doubt in anyone's mind as to what he is, what he's just done proves
+Michael. I don't say, as he says himself, that it wouldn't have been
+better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away
+... but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael's
+concerned? We've got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does
+anybody know a mean or selfish thing he's ever done, Michael?"
+
+No one spoke, and George went on:
+
+"Michael's asked for trial by his mates--and we've got to give it to
+him, if it's only to clear up the whole of this business and be done
+with it.... I move we meet here to-morrow night to settle the thing."
+
+There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in
+back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his
+proposals were forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Michael got back to his hut he found Martha there.
+
+"Oh, Michael," she said, "a dreadful thing has happened."
+
+Michael stared at her, unable to understand what she said. It seemed to
+him all the terrible things that could happen had happened that evening.
+
+"While you were away Arthur Henty came here to see Sophie," Martha said.
+"She hasn't been feeling well ... and I came up to have a look at her.
+She's been doing too much lately. Things haven't been too right between
+her and Potch, either, and that's her way of taking it out of herself.
+Arthur was here when I got here, Michael, and--you never heard anything
+like the way he went on...."
+
+Michael had fallen wearily into his chair while she was talking.
+
+Martha continued, knowing that the sooner she got rid of her story the
+better it would be for both of them.
+
+"It's an old story, of course, this about Arthur Henty and Sophie....
+When he was ill after the ball he talked a good bit about her.... He
+always has ... to me. I was with his mother when he was born ... and
+he's always called me Mother M'Cready like the rest of you. He told me
+long ago he'd always been fond of Sophie.... He didn't know at first, he
+said. He was a fool; he didn't like being teased about her.... Then she
+went away.... He doesn't seem to know why he got married except that his
+people wanted him to.
+
+"After the ball he'd made up his mind they were going away together,
+Sophie and he. But while he was ill ... before he was able to get around
+again, Sophie married Potch. Then he went mad, stark, starin' mad, and
+started drinking. He's been drinking hard ever since.... And to-night
+when he came, he just went over to Sophie.... She was lying on the couch
+under the window, Michael.... He said, I've got a horse for you outside.
+Sophie didn't seem to realise what he meant at first. Then she did. I
+don't know how he guessed she wouldn't go ... but the next minute he was
+on his knees beside her ... and you never heard anything like it,
+Michael--the way he went on, sobbing and crying out--I never want to
+hear anything like it again.... I couldn't 've stood it meself.... I'd
+'ve done anything in the world if a man'd gone on to me like that. And
+Sophie ... she put her arms round him, and mothered him like.... Then
+she began to cry too.... And there they were, both crying and sayin' how
+much they loved each other ... how much they'd always loved each
+other....
+
+"It fair broke me up, Michael.... I didn't know what to do. They didn't
+seem to notice me.... Then he said again they'd go away together, and
+begin life all over again. Sophie tried to tell him it was too late to
+think of that.... They both had responsibilities they'd ought to stand
+by.... Hers was the Ridge and the Ridge life, she said.... He didn't
+understand.... He only understood he wanted her to go away with him, and
+she wouldn't go...."
+
+Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did
+not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling
+him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time
+ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation
+that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him.
+
+"He tried to make her," Martha was saying when he began to listen
+intently. "He said he'd been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn't
+any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to
+have it.... Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever
+make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it.... And Sophie
+hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and
+dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate.
+
+"She said 'Yes.'
+
+"'Then you've got to come with me,' he said.
+
+"But she wouldn't go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the
+Ridge--what the Ridge stood for--she must stay to work for. She'd sworn
+to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that
+he wouldn't let her go on living with Potch--be his wife. That he'd kill
+her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her.... I never heard a man
+go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was
+raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite
+quietly:
+
+"'Will you come with me, Sophie?'
+
+"And she said, quiet like that, too, 'No.'
+
+"He went out of the hut.... I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after
+him. She put out her arms ... but she couldn't speak. And if you had
+seen her face, Michael----She just stood there against the wall,
+listening to the hoof-beats.... When we couldn't hear them any more, she
+stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to--to
+waken her--she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance,
+Michael.... After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she
+didn't know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table,
+and then she went out as though she were goin' for a walk. I told her
+not to go far ... not to be long ... but I don't think she heard me....
+I watched her walking out towards the old rush.... And she isn't back
+yet...."
+
+"It's too much," Michael muttered.
+
+He sat with his head buried in his hands.
+
+"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.
+
+Martha shook her head.
+
+"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her
+mother did."
+
+Michael's face quivered.
+
+"He's such an outsider," he groaned. "Sophie'd never give up the things
+we stand for here, now she understands them."
+
+"That's just it," Martha said. "She doesn't want to--but there's
+something stronger than herself draggin' at her ... it's something
+that's been in all the women she's come of--the feeling a woman's got
+for the man who's her mate. Sophie married Potch, it's my belief, to get
+away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here.
+She wants to stay with us.... She was kept up at first by ideas of duty
+and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But
+love's like murder, Michael--it must out, and it's a good thing it
+must...."
+
+"And what about Potch?" Michael asked.
+
+"Potch?" Martha smiled. "The dear lad ... he'll stand up to things.
+There are people like that--and there're people like Arthur Henty who
+can't stand up to things. It's not their fault they're made that way ...
+and they go under when they have too much to bear."
+
+"Curse him," Michael groaned. "I wish he'd kept out of our lives."
+
+"So do I," Martha said; "but he hasn't."
+
+Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.
+
+"Where's Sophie?" he asked.
+
+"She ... went out for a walk, a while ago," Martha said.
+
+At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there
+was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael,
+and held them dumb.
+
+"Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock," he said at length.
+
+Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear
+further.
+
+"Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went
+over," Potch said. "I wanted to tell Sophie myself.... They were looking
+for you in the town, Martha."
+
+"Oh!" Martha got up and went to the door.
+
+"He's at Newton's," Potch said. "Which way did Sophie go?"
+
+"She went towards the Old Town, Potch," Martha said.
+
+The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with
+reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door
+of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse
+was there--a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled
+abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how
+the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She
+went off down the track to Newton's, and he struck out towards the Old
+Town.
+
+Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of
+her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering
+what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. Prom
+the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur
+Henty.
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!" he called.
+
+The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He
+wandered, calling still. Desolation overwhelmed him because he could not
+find Sophie; because she was in none of the places they had spent so
+much time in together. It was significant that she should not be in any
+of them, he felt. He could not bear to think she was eluding him, and
+yet that was what she had done all her life. She had been with him,
+smiling, elfish and tender one moment, and gone the next. She had always
+been elusive. For a long time a presentiment of desolation and disaster
+had overshadowed him. Again and again he had been able to draw breath of
+relief and assure himself that the indefinable dread which was always
+with him was a chimera of his too absorbing, too anxious love. But the
+fear, instinctive, prophetic, begotten by consciousness of the slight
+grasp he had of her, had remained.
+
+That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his
+face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in
+her eyes.
+
+"Dear Potch," she had said, and kissed him.
+
+She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and
+the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was
+wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.... He had done
+so before.... Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes
+he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she
+had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time
+after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long
+gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had
+deprived her of some earthliness.
+
+He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge,
+looking for her, his soul in that cry:
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael
+coming out to meet him.
+
+"She knows, Potch," Michael said.
+
+Potch waited for him to continue.
+
+"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael
+said.
+
+Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had
+come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She
+had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He
+had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at
+all, Michael said.
+
+She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from
+her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the
+sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He
+knelt beside her.
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and
+anguish in those words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was
+informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it.
+The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the the night before,
+but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit,
+the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wave-like
+vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty's death had left
+everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a
+life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on
+everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air.
+
+George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O'Mara deputed to
+take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman,
+sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the
+platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had
+asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge
+were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have
+seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as
+soon as the men were in their places.
+
+"This isn't like any other inquiry we've had on the Ridge," George Woods
+said. "You chaps know how I feel about it--I told you last night. But
+Michael was for it, and I take it he's come here to answer any questions
+... and to clear this thing up once and for all.... He's put his case to
+you. He says he'll stand by what you say--the judgment of his mates."
+
+Anxious to spare Michael another recital of what had happened, he went
+on:
+
+"There's no need for Michael to repeat what he said last night. If
+there's any man here wasn't in the hall, these are the facts."
+
+He repeated the story Michael had told, steadily, clearly, and
+impartially.
+
+"If there's any man wants to ask a question on those facts, he can do it
+now."
+
+George sat down, and M'Ginnis was on his feet the same instant; his
+bat-like ears twitching, his shoulders hunched, his whole tall, thin
+frame strung to the pitch of nervous animosity.
+
+"I want to know," he said, "what reason there is for believing a word of
+it. Michael Brady's as good as admitted he's been fooling you for
+goodness knows how long, and I don't see----"
+
+"Y' soon will, y'r bleedin', blasted, fly-blown fool," Bully Bryant
+roared, rising and pushing back his sleeves.
+
+"Sit down, Bull," George Woods called.
+
+"The question is," he added, "what reason is there for believing what
+Michael says?"
+
+"His word's enough," somebody called.
+
+"Some of us think so," George said. "But there's some don't. Is there
+anyone else can say, Michael?"
+
+Michael shook his head. He thought of Snow-Shoes, but the old man had
+refused to be present at the inquiry or to have anything to do with it.
+He had pretended to be deaf when he was asked anything about Paul's
+opals. And Michael, who could only surmise that Snow-Shoes' reasons for
+having taken the stones in a measure resembled his own when he took them
+from Paul, would not have him put to the torture of questioning.
+
+George had said: "It might make a lot of difference to Michael if you'd
+come along, Mr. Riley."
+
+But Snow-Shoes had marched off from him as if he had not heard anyone
+speak, his blue eyes fixed on that invisible goal he was always gazing
+at and going towards.
+
+George had not seen him come into the hall; but when he was needed, his
+tall figure, white clad and straight as a dead tree, rose at the back of
+the hall.
+
+"It's true," he said. "I wanted to be sure of Michael; I shadowed him. I
+saw him with the stones when he says. I did not see him with them any
+other time."
+
+He sat down again; his eyes, which had flashed, resumed their steady,
+distant stare; his features relapsed into their mask of impassivity.
+
+M'Ginnis sprang to his feet again.
+
+"That's all very well," he cried, sticking to his question. "But it's
+not my idea of evidence. It wouldn't stand in any law court in the
+country. Snow-Shoes----"
+
+"Shut up!"
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+Half a dozen voices growled.
+
+Because of the respect and affection they had for him, and because of a
+certain aloof dignity he had with them, no man on the Ridge ever
+addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley. They resented M'Ginnis
+calling him "Snow-Shoes" to his face, and guessed that he had been going
+to say something which would reflect on Snow-Shoes' reliability as a
+witness. They admitted his eccentricity; but they would not admit that
+his mental peculiarities amounted to more than that. Above all, they
+were not going to have his feelings hurt by this outsider from the Punti
+rush.
+
+Broad-shouldered, square and solid, Bill Grant towered above the men
+about him. "This doesn't pretend to be a court of law, Mister M'Ginnis,"
+he remarked, with an irony and emphasis which never failed of their mark
+when he used them, although he rarely did, and only once or twice had
+been heard to speak, at any gathering. "It's an inquiry by men of the
+Ridge into the doings of one of their mates. What they want to know is
+the rights of this business ... and what you consider evidence doesn't
+matter. It's what the men in this hall consider evidence matters. And,
+what's more, I don't see why you're butting into our affairs so much:
+you're not one of us--you're a newcomer. You've only been a year or so
+in the place ... and this concerns only men of the Ridge, who stand
+by the Ridge ways of doing things.... Michael's here to be judged
+by his mates ... not by you and your sort.... If you'd the brain
+of a louse, you'd understand--this isn't a question of law, but of
+principle--honour, if you like to call it that."
+
+"Does the meeting consider the question answered?" George Woods inquired
+when Bill Grant sat down.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+A chorus of voices intoned the answer.
+
+"If you believe Michael's story, there's nothing more to be said,"
+George continued. "Does any man want to ask Michael a question?"
+
+No one replied for a moment. Then M'Ginnis exclaimed incoherently.
+
+"Shut up!"
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+Men cried out all over the hall.
+
+"That's all, I think, Michael," George said, looking down to where
+Michael sat before the platform; and Michael, pulling his hat further
+over his eyes, went out of the hall.
+
+It was the custom for men of the Ridge to talk over the subject of their
+inquiry together after the man or men with whom the meeting was
+concerned had left the hall, before giving their verdict.
+
+When Michael had gone, George Woods said:
+
+"The boys would like to hear what you've got to say, I think, Archie."
+
+He looked at Archie Cross. "You and Michael haven't been seein' eye to
+eye lately, and if there's any other side in this business, it's the
+side that lost confidence in Michael when we were fed-up with all that
+whispering. You know Michael, and you're a good Ridge man, though you
+were ready to take on Armitage's scheme. The boys'd like to hear what
+you've got to say, I'm sure."
+
+Archie Cross stood up; he rolled his hat in his hands. His face, hacked
+out of a piece of dull flesh, sun-reddened, moved convulsively; his hair
+was roughed-up from it; his small, sombre eyes went with straight
+lightnings to the men in the hall about him.
+
+"It's true--what George says," he said after a pause, as if it were
+difficult for him to express his thought. "I haven't been seein' eye to
+eye with Michael lately ... and I listened to all the dirty gossip that
+mob"--he glanced towards M'Ginnis and the men with him--"put round about
+him. It was part that ... and part listening to their talk about money
+invested here making all the difference to Fallen Star ... and the
+children growing up ... and gettin' scared and worried about seein' them
+through ... made me go agin you boys lately, and let that lot get hold
+of me.... But this business about Michael's shown me where I am.
+Michael's stood for one thing all through--the Ridge and the hanging on
+to the mines for us.... He's been a better Ridge man than I have.... And
+I want to say ... as far as I'm concerned, Michael's proved himself....
+I don't reck'n hanging on to opals was anything ... no more does Ted.
+It's the sort of thing a chap like Michael'd do absent-minded ... not
+noticin' what he was doin'; but when he did notice--and got scared
+thinkin' where he was gettin' to, and what it might look like, he
+couldn't get rid of 'em quick, enough. That's what I think, and that's
+what Ted thinks, too. He hasn't got the gift of the gab, Ted, or he'd
+say so himself.... If there's goin' to be opposition to Michael, it's
+not comin' from us.... And we've made up our minds we stand by the
+Ridge."
+
+"Good old Archie!" somebody shouted.
+
+"What have you got to say, Roy?" George Woods faced his secretary who
+had been scratching diligently throughout the meeting. "You've been more
+with the M'Ginnis lot, too, than with us, lately."
+
+Roy flushed and sprang to his feet.
+
+"I'm in the same boat with Archie and Ted," he said. "Except about the
+family ... mine isn't so big yet as it might be. But it's a fact, I
+funked, not having had much luck lately.... But if ever I go back on the
+Ridge again ... may the lot of you go back on me."
+
+Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided
+into his chair again.
+
+"That's all there is to be said on the subject, I think," George Woods
+remarked.
+
+"Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done--and why he had done
+it. He's asked for judgment from his mates.... If he'd wanted to go back
+on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage
+would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could
+have been bought. Michael need never 've faced all this as far as I can
+see ... but he decided to face it rather than give up all we've been
+fightin' for here. He'd rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him
+than anything they could give him ... and that's why M'Ginnis has been
+up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of
+us have a notion that M'Ginnis has been here to do Armitage's work ...
+work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and
+he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn't 've stood by us, like he's
+always done, we'd have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now."
+
+"To tell you the truth, boys," George went on, after a moment's
+hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were
+too strong for him, "I've always thought Michael was too good. And if
+those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says,
+all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn't any plaster
+saint, but a man like the rest of us."
+
+"That's right!" Watty called, and several men shouted after him.
+
+Pony-Fence moved out from the crowd he was sitting with.
+
+"I vote this meeting records a motion of confidence in Michael Brady,"
+he said. "And when we call Michael in again we'd ought to make it clear
+to him ... that so far from its being a question of not having as much
+confidence in him as we had before--we've got more. Michael's stood by
+his mates if ever a man did.... He's come to us ... he's given himself
+up to us. He'll stand by what we say or do about him. And what are we
+goin' to do? Are we goin' to turn him down ... read him a bit of a
+lecture and tell him to go home and be a good boy and not do it another
+time ... or are we going to let him know once and for all what we think
+of him?"
+
+Exclamations of agreement went up in a rabble of voices.
+
+Bully Bryant rose from one of the back forms with a grin which
+illuminated the building.
+
+"I'll second that motion," he said, pushing back the sleeve on his left
+arm. "And his own mother won't know the man who says a word against
+it--when I've done with him."
+
+Watty was sent to bring Michael back to the meeting. They walked to the
+end of the hall together; and George Woods told Michael as quietly as he
+could for his own agitation, and the joy which, welling in him, impeded
+his speech, that men of the Ridge found nothing to censure in what he
+had done. His mates believed in him; they stood by him. They were
+prepared to stand by him as he had stood by the Ridge always. The
+meeting wished to record a vote of confidence....
+
+Cheers roared to the roof. Michael, shaken by the storm of his emotion
+and gratitude, stood before the crowd in the hall with bowed head. When
+the storm was quieter in him, he lifted his head and looked out to the
+men, his eyes shining with tears.
+
+He could not speak; old mates closed round to shake hands with him
+before the meeting broke up. Every man grasped and wrung his hand,
+saying:
+
+"Good luck! Good luck to you, Michael!" Or just grasped his hand and
+smiled with that assurance of fellowship and goodwill which meant more
+to Michael than anything else in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+It was one of those clear days of late spring, the sky exquisitely blue,
+the cuckoos calling, the paper daisies in blossom, their fragrance in
+the air; they lay across the plains, through the herbage, white to the
+dim, circling horizon.
+
+Horses and vehicles were tied up outside the grey palings of the
+cemetery on the Warria road. All the horses and shabby, or new and
+brightly-painted carts, sulkies, and buggies of Fallen Star and the
+Three Mile were there; and buggies from Warria, Langi-Eumina, and the
+river stations as well. Saddle horses, ranged along one side of the
+fence, reins over the stakes, whinnied and snapped at each other.
+
+The crowd of people standing in the tall grass and herbage on the other
+side of the fence was just breaking up when Sophie and Potch appeared,
+coming over the plains from the direction of the tank paddock, Sophie
+riding the chestnut Arthur Henty had left behind her house, and Potch
+walking beside the horse's head. Sophie had been gathering Darling pea,
+and had a great sheaf in one hand. Potch was carrying some, too: he had
+picked up the flowers Sophie let fall, and had a little bunch of them.
+She was riding astride and gazing before her, her eyes wide with a
+vision beyond the distant horizon. The wind, a light breeze breathing
+now and then, blew her hair out in wisps from her bare head.
+
+All the men of Warria were in the sombre crowd in the cemetery. Old
+Henty, red-eyed and broken by the end of his only son, whom he found he
+had cared for now that he was dead; the stockmen, boundary-riders,
+servants, fencers, shearers from Darrawingee sheds who, a few weeks
+before had been on the Warria board, and men from other stations near
+enough to have heard of Arthur Henty's death. None of the Henty women
+were there; but women of the Ridge, who were accustomed to pay last
+respects as their menfolk did, were with their husbands as usual. They
+would have thought it unnatural and unkind not to follow Arthur Henty to
+his resting-place; not to go as friends would to say good-bye to a
+friend who is making a long journey. And there was more than the
+ordinary reason for being present at Arthur Henty's funeral. He was
+leaving them under a cloud, circumstances which might be interpreted
+unkindly, and it was necessary to be present to express sympathy with
+him and sorrow at his going. That was the way they regarded it.
+
+Martha had driven with Sam Nancarrow, as she always did to functions of
+the sort. No one remembered having seen Martha take a thing so to heart
+as she did Arthur Henty's death. She was utterly shaken by it, and could
+not restrain her tears. They coursed down her cheeks all the time she
+was in that quiet place on the plains; her great, motherly bosom rose
+and fell with the tide of her grief. She tried to subdue it, but every
+now and then the sound of her crying could be heard, and in the end Sam
+took her, sobbing uncontrollably, back to his buggy.
+
+People knew she had seen further into the cause of Arthur Henty's death
+than they had, and they understood that was why she Was so upset.
+Besides, Martha had always confessed to a soft corner for Arthur Henty:
+she had been with his mother when he was born, had nursed him during a
+hot summer and through several slight illnesses since then. And Arthur
+had been fond of her too. He had always called her Mother M'Cready as
+the Ridge folk did. Old Mr. Henty had driven over to see Martha the
+night before, to hear all she knew of what had happened, and Ridge folk
+had gathered something of the story from her broken exclamations and the
+reproaches with which she covered herself.
+
+She cried out over and over again that she could not have believed
+Arthur would shoot himself--that he was the sort of man to do such a
+thing--and blamed herself for not having foreseen what had occurred. She
+had never seen him like he was that night--so strong, so much a man, so
+full of life and love for Sophie. He had begged Sophie to go with him as
+though his life depended on it--and it had.
+
+If she had been a woman, and Sophie, and had loved him, Martha said, she
+would have had to go with him. She could never have withstood his
+pleading.... But Sophie had been good to him; she had been gentle--only
+she wouldn't go. Neither Sophie nor she believed, of course, he would do
+as he said--but he had.
+
+Martha could not forgive herself that she had done nothing to soothe or
+pacify Arthur; that she had said nothing, given him neither kindly word
+nor gesture. But she had been so upset, so carried away. She had not
+known what to do or say. She abused and blackguarded herself; but she
+had sensed enough of the utter loneliness and darkness of Henty's mind
+to realise that most likely she could have done nothing against it. He
+would have brushed her aside had she attempted to influence him; he
+would not have heard what, she said. She would have been as helpless as
+any other human consideration against the blinding, irresistibly
+engulfing forces of despair which had impelled him to put himself out of
+pain as he had put many a suffering animal. It was an act of
+self-defence, as Mother M'Cready saw it, Arthur Henty's end, and that
+was all there was to it.
+
+As Sophie and Potch approached the cemetery, people exclaimed together
+in wonderment, awe--almost fear.
+
+James Henty, when he saw them, turned away from the men he was talking
+to and walked to his buggy; Tom Henderson, his son-in-law, followed him.
+Although he would have been the last to forgive Sophie if she had done
+as Arthur wished, even to save his life, old Henty had to have a
+whipping-post, and he eased his own sense of responsibility for what had
+blighted his son's life, by blaming Sophie for it. He assured himself,
+his family and friends, that she, and she alone, was responsible for
+Arthur's death. She had played with Arthur; she had always played with
+him, old Henty said. She had driven him to distraction with her
+wiles--and this was the end of it all.
+
+Sophie rode into the cemetery: she rode to where the broken earth was;
+but she did not dismount. The horse came to a standstill beside it, and
+she sat on him, her eyes closed. Potch stood bare-headed and bowed
+beside her. He put the flowers he had picked up as Sophie let them fall,
+on the grave. Sophie thrust the long, purple trails she was carrying
+into the saddle-bag where Arthur had put the flowers she gave him that
+first day their eyes met and drank the love potion of each others'
+being.
+
+People were already on the road, horses and buggies, dark, ant-like
+trains on the flowering plains, moving slowly in the direction of Warria
+and of Fallen Star, when Sophie and Potch turned away from the cemetery.
+
+The shadow of what had happened was heavy over everybody as they drove
+home. Arthur Henty had been well enough liked, and he had had much more
+to do with Fallen Star than most of the station people. He had gone
+about so much with his men they had almost ceased to think of him as not
+one of themselves. He was less the "Boss" than any man in the
+back-country. They recognised that, and yet he was the "Boss." He had
+lived like a half-caste, drifting between two races and belonging to
+neither. The people he had been born among cold-shouldered him because
+he had acquired the manners and habits of thought of men he lived and
+worked with; the men he had lived and worked with distrusted and
+disliked in him just those tag-ends of refinement, and odd graces which
+belonged to the crowd he had come to them from.
+
+The station hands, his work-mates--if he had any--had had a slightly
+contemptuous feeling for him. They liked him--they were always saying
+they liked him--but it was clear they never had any great opinion of
+him. As a boy, when he began to work with them, to cover his shyness and
+nervousness, he had been silent and boorish; and he had never had the
+courage of his opinions--courage for anything, it was suspected. It had
+always been hinted that he shirked any jobs where danger was to be
+expected.
+
+The stockmen told each other they would miss him, all the same. They
+would miss that wonderful whistling of his from the camp fires; and they
+were appalled at what he had done to himself. "The last man," Charley
+Este said, "the last man you'd ever 've thought would 've come to that!"
+Most of them believed they had misjudged Arthur Henty--that, after, all,
+he had had courage of a sort. A man must have courage to blow out his
+light, they said. And they were sorry. Every man in the crowd was heavy
+with sorrow.
+
+Ridge people gossiped pitifully, sentimentally, to each other as they
+drove home. Most of the women believed in the strength and fidelity of
+the old love between Sophie and Arthur Henty. But straight-dealing and
+honest themselves, they had no conception of the tricks complex
+personalities play each other; they did not understand how two people
+who had really cared for each other could have gone so astray from the
+natural impulse of their lives.
+
+They recalled the dance at Warria, and how they had teased Sophie when
+they thought she was going to marry Arthur Henty, and how happy and
+pleased she had looked about it. How different both their lives would
+have been if Sophie and Arthur had been true to that instinct of the
+mate for the mate, they reflected; and sighed at the futility of the
+thought. They realised in Arthur Henty's drinking and rough ways of
+late, all his unhappiness. They imagined that they knew why he had
+become the uncouth-looking man he had. They remembered him a slight, shy
+youth, with sun-bright, freckled eyes; then a man, lithe, graceful, and
+good to look at, with his face a clear, fine bronze, his hair taking a
+glint of copper in the sun. When he danced with them at the Ridge balls,
+that occasionally flashing, delightful way of his had made them realise
+why Sophie was in love with him. They remembered how he had looked at
+Sophie; how his eyes had followed her. They had heard of the Warria
+dance, and knew Arthur Henty had not behaved well to Sophie at it. They
+had been angry at the time. Then Sophie had gone away ... and a little
+later he had married.
+
+His marriage had not been a success. Mrs. Arthur Henty had spent most of
+her time in Sydney; she was rarely seen on the Ridge now. So women of
+the Ridge, who had known Arthur Henty, went over all they knew of him
+until that night at the race ball when he and Sophie had met again. And
+then his end in the tank paddock brought them back to exclamations of
+dismay and grief at the mystery of it all.
+
+As she left the cemetery, Sophie began to sing, listlessly, dreamily at
+first. No one had heard her sing since her return to the Ridge. But her
+voice flew out over the plains, through the wide, clear air now, with
+the pure melody it had when she was a girl:
+
+         "Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,
+          Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!
+          Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,
+          E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"
+
+Ella Bryant, driving home beside Bully, knew Sophie was singing as she
+had sung to Arthur Henty years before, when they were coming home from
+the tank paddock together. She wondered why Sophie was riding the horse
+Arthur had brought for her; why she had ridden him to the funeral; and
+why she was singing that song.
+
+Sophie sang on:
+
+         "Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,
+          E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"
+
+Looking back, people saw Potch walking beside her as Joseph walked
+beside Mary when they went down to Nazareth.
+
+"It's hard on Potch," somebody said.
+
+"Yes," it was agreed; "it's hard on Potch."
+
+The buggies, carts, sulkies, and horsemen moving in opposite directions
+on the long, curving road over the plains grew dim in the distance.
+
+The notes of Sophie's singing, with its undying tenderness triumphing
+over life and death, flowed fainter and fainter.
+
+When she and Potch came to the town again, the light was fading. Through
+the green, limpid veil of the sky, stars were glittering; huts of the
+township were darkening under the gathering shadow of night. A breath of
+sandal-wood burning on kitchen hearths came to Sophie and Potch like a
+greeting. The notes of a goat-bell clanking dully sounded from beyond
+the dumps. There were lights in a few of the huts; a warm, friendly
+murmur of voices went up from them. For weeks troubled and disturbed
+thinking, arguments, and conflicting ideas, had created a depressed and
+unrestful atmosphere in every home in Fallen Star. But to-night it was
+different. The temptations, allurements and debris of Armitage's scheme
+had been swept from the minds--even of those who had been ready to
+accept it. Hope and pride in the purpose of the Ridge had been restored
+by Michael's vindication and by reaffirmation of the principle he and
+all staunch men of the Ridge stood for as the mainstay of their life in
+common. Thought of Arthur Henty's death, which had oppressed people
+during the day, seemed to have been put aside now that they had seen him
+laid to rest, and had returned to their homes again.
+
+Voices were heard exclaiming with the light cadence and rhythm of joy.
+The crisis which had come near to shattering the Ridge scheme of things,
+and all that it stood for, had ended by drawing dissenting factions of
+the community into closer sympathy and more intimate relationship. In
+everybody's mind were the hope and enthusiasm of a new endeavour. As
+they went through the town again, neither Sophie nor Potch were
+conscious of them for the sorrow which had soaked into their lives. But
+these things were in the air they breathed, and sooner or later would
+claim them from all personal suffering; faith and loving service fill
+all their future--the long twilight of their days.
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Black Opal, by Katharine Susannah Prichard</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Black Opal</p>
+<p>Author: Katharine Susannah Prichard</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 12, 2011  [eBook #36710]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK OPAL***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Amy Sisson &amp; Marc D'Hooghe<br />
+    (http://www.freeliterature.org)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE BLACK OPAL</h1>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>KATHARINE SUSANNAH PRICHARD</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE PIONEERS," "WINDLESTRAWS," ETC.</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h5>London: William Heinemann</h5>
+
+<h5>1921</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a href="#Contents">Contents</a></p>
+<h3><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a><i>PART I</i></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+
+<p>A string of vehicles moved slowly out of the New Town, taking the road
+over the long, low slope of the Ridge to the plains.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was moving on the wide stretch of the plains or under the fine,
+clear blue sky of early spring, except this train of shabby,
+dust-covered vehicles. The road, no more than a track of wheels on
+shingly earth, wound lazily through paper daisies growing in drifts
+beside it, and throwing a white coverlet to the dim, circling horizon.
+The faint, dry fragrance of paper daisies was in the air; a native
+cuckoo calling.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl sitting beside Michael Brady in Newton's buggy glanced
+behind her now and then. Michael was driving the old black horse from
+the coach stables and Newton's bay mare, and Sophie and her father were
+sitting beside him on the front seat. In the open back of the buggy
+behind them lay a long box with wreaths and bunches of paper daisies and
+budda blossoms over it.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie knew all the people on the road, and to whom the horses and
+buggies they had borrowed belonged. Jun Johnson and Charley Heathfield
+were riding together in the Afghan storekeeper's sulky with his fat
+white pony before them. Anwah Kaked and Mrs. Kaked had the store cart
+themselves. Watty and Mrs. Frost were on the coach. Ed. Ventry was
+driving them and had put up the second seat for George and Mrs. Woods
+and Maggie Grant. Peter Newton and Cash Wilson followed in Newton's
+newly varnished black sulky. Sam Nancarrow had given Martha M'Cready a
+lift, and Pony-Fence Inglewood was driving Mrs. Archie and Mrs. Ted
+Cross in Robb's old heavy buggy, with the shaggy draught mare used for
+carting water in the township during the summer, in the shafts. The
+Flails' home-made jinker, whose body was painted a dull yellow, came
+last of the vehicles on the road. Sophie could just see Arthur Henty and
+two or three stockmen from Warria riding through a thin haze of red
+dust. But she knew men were walking two abreast behind the vehicles and
+horsemen&mdash;Bill Grant, Archie and Ted Cross, and a score of miners from
+the Three Mile and the Punti rush. At a curve of the road she had seen
+Snow-Shoes and Potch straggling along behind the others, the old man
+stooping to pick wild flowers by the roadside, and Potch plodding on,
+looking straight in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>Buggies, horses, and people, they had come all the way from her home at
+the Old Town. Almost everybody who lived on Fallen Star Ridge was there,
+driving, riding, or walking on the road across the plains behind
+Michael, her father, and herself. It was all so strange to Sophie; she
+felt so strange in the black dress she had on and which Mrs. Grant had
+cut down from one of her own. There was a black ribbon on her old yellow
+straw hat too, and she had on a pair of black cotton gloves.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie could not believe her mother was what they called "dead"; that it
+was her mother in the box with flowers on just behind her. They had
+walked along this very road, singing and gathering wild flowers, and had
+waited to watch the sun set, or the moon rise, so often.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at her father. He was sitting beside her, a piece of black
+stuff on his arm and a strip of the same material round his old felt
+hat. The tears poured down his cheeks, and he shook out the large, new,
+white handkerchief he had bought at Chassy Robb's store that morning,
+and blew his nose every few minutes. He spoke sometimes to Michael; but
+Michael did not seem to hear him. Michael sat staring ahead, his face as
+though cut in wood.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie remembered Michael had been with her when Mrs. Grant said.... Her
+mind went back over that.</p>
+
+<p>"She's dead, Michael," Mrs. Grant had said.</p>
+
+<p>And she had leaned against the window beside her mother's bed, crying.
+Michael was on his knees by the bed. Sophie had thought Michael looked
+so funny, kneeling like that, with his head in his hands, his great
+heavy boots jutting up from the floor. The light, coming in through the
+window near the head of the bed, shone on the nails in the soles of his
+boots. It was so strange to see these two people whom she knew quite
+well, and whom she had only seen doing quite ordinary, everyday things,
+behaving like this. Sophie had gazed at her mother who seemed to be
+sleeping. Then Mrs. Grant had come to her, her face working, tears
+streaming down her cheeks. She had taken her hand and they had gone out
+of the room together. Sophie could not remember what Mrs. Grant had said
+to her then.... After a little while Mrs. Grant had gone back to the
+room where her mother was, and Sophie went out to the lean-to where
+Potch was milking the goats.</p>
+
+<p>She told him what Mrs. Grant had said about her mother, and he stopped
+milking. They had gazed at each other with inquiry and bewilderment in
+their eyes; then Potch turned his face away as he sat on the
+milking-stool, and Sophie knew he was crying. She wondered why other
+people had cried so much and she had not cried at all.</p>
+
+<p>When Potch was taking the bucket of milk across the yard, her father had
+come round the corner of the house. His heavy figure with its broad,
+stooping shoulders was outlined against the twilight sky. He made for
+the door, shouting incoherently. Sophie and Potch stood still as they
+saw him.</p>
+
+<p>Catching sight of them, he had turned and come towards them.</p>
+
+<p>"We're on opal," he cried; "on opal!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a feverish light in his eyes; he was trembling with
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>He had pulled a small, washed oatmeal bag from his pocket, untied the
+string, tumbled some stones on to the outstretched palm of his hand, and
+held them for Potch to look at.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bad bit in the lot.... Look at the fire, there in the black
+potch!... And there's green and gold for you. A lovely bit of pattern!
+And look at this ... and this!" he cried eagerly, going over the two or
+three small knobbies in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Potch looked at him dazedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't they tell you&mdash;?" he began.</p>
+
+<p>Her father had closed his hands over the stones and opal dirt.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going in now," he said, thrusting the opals into the bag.</p>
+
+<p>He had gone towards the house again, shouting: "We're on opal! On opal!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie followed him indoors. Mrs. Grant had met her father on the
+threshold of the room where her mother was.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you come when I sent for you?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't think it could be as bad as you made out&mdash;that she was really
+dying," Sophie could hear her father saying again. "And we'd just struck
+opal, me and Jun, struck it rich. Got two or three stones already&mdash;great
+stuff, lovely pattern, green and orange, and fire all through the black
+potch. And there's more of it! Heaps more where it came from, Jun says.
+We're next Watty and George Woods&mdash;and no end of good stuff's come out
+of that claim."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grant stared at him as Potch had done. Then she stood back from the
+doorway of the room behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Every gesture of her father's, of Mrs. Grant's, and of Michael's, was
+photographed on Sophie's brain. She could see that room again&mdash;the quiet
+figure on the bed, light golden-brown hair, threaded with silver, lying
+in thin plaits beside the face of yellow ivory; bare, thin arms and
+hands lying over grey blankets and a counter-pane of faded red twill;
+the window still framing a square of twilight sky on which stars were
+glittering. Mrs. Grant had brought a candle and put it on the box near
+the bed, and the candle light had flared on Mrs. Grant's figure, showing
+it, gaunt and accusing, against the shadows of the room. It had showed
+Sophie her father, also, between Michael and Mrs. Grant, looking from
+one to the other of them, and to the still figure on the bed, with a
+dazed, penitent expression....</p>
+
+<p>The horses jogged slowly on the long, winding road. Sophie was conscious
+of the sunshine, warm and bright, over the plains, the fragrance of
+paper daisies in the air; the cuckoos calling in the distance. Her
+father snuffled and wiped his eyes and nose with his new handkerchief as
+he sat beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"She was so good, Michael," he said, "too good for this world."</p>
+
+<p>Michael did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Too good for this world!" Paul murmured again.</p>
+
+<p>He had said that at least a score of times this morning. Sophie had
+heard him say it to people down at the house before they started. She
+had never heard him talk of her mother like that before. She looked at
+him, sensing vaguely, and resenting the banality. She thought of him as
+he had always been with her mother and with her, querulous and
+complaining, or noisy and rough when he had been drinking. They had
+spent the night in a shed at the back of the house sometimes when he was
+like that....</p>
+
+<p>And her mother had said:</p>
+
+<p>"You'll take care of Sophie, Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie remembered how she had stood in the doorway of her mother's room,
+that afternoon&mdash;How long ago was it? Not only a day surely? She had
+stood there until her mother had seen her, awed without knowing why,
+reluctant to move, afraid almost. Michael had nodded without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"As though she were your own child?"</p>
+
+<p>"So help me, God," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>Her-mother's eyes had rested on Michael's face. She had smiled at him.
+Sophie did not think she had ever seen her smile like that before,
+although her smile had always been like a light on her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let him take her away," her mother had said after a moment. "I
+want her to grow up in this place ... in the quiet ... never to know the
+treacherous ... whirlpool ... of life beyond the Ridge."</p>
+
+<p>Then her mother had seen and called to her.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie glanced back at the slowly-moving train of vehicles. They had a
+dreary, dream-like aspect. She felt as if she were moving in a dream.
+Everything she saw, and heard, and did, was invested with unreality; she
+had a vague, unfeeling curiosity about everything.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Michael," her father was saying when she heard him talking
+again, "we'd just got out that big bit when Potch came and said that
+Marya ... that Marya.... I couldn't believe it was true ... and there
+was the opal! And when I got home in the evening she was gone. My poor
+Marya! And I'd brought some of the stones to show her."</p>
+
+<p>He broke down and wept. "Do you think she knows about the opal,
+Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>Michael did not reply. Sophie looked up at him. The pain of his face, a
+sudden passionate grieving that wrung it, translated to her what this
+dying of her mother meant. She huddled against Michael; in all her
+trouble and bewilderment there seemed nothing to do but to keep close to
+Michael.</p>
+
+<p>And so they came to the gate of a fenced plot which was like a quiet
+garden on the plains. Several young coolebahs, and two or three older
+trees standing in it, scattered light shade; and a few head-stones and
+wooden crosses, painted white or bleached by the weather, showed above
+the waving grass and wild flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie held the reins when Michael got down to open the gate. Then he
+took his seat again and they drove in through the gateway. Other people
+tied their horses and buggies to the fence outside.</p>
+
+<p>When all the people who had been driving, riding, or walking on the road
+went towards an old coolebah under which the earth had been thrown up
+and a grave had been dug, Michael told Sophie to go with her father and
+stand beside them. She did so, and dull, grieving eyes were turned to
+her; glances of pitiful sympathy. But Snow-Shoes came towards the little
+crowd beside the tree, singing.</p>
+
+<p>He was the last person to come into the cemetery, and everybody stared
+at him. An old man in worn white moleskins and cotton shirt, an old
+white felt hat on his head, the wrappings of bag and leather, which gave
+him his name, on his feet&mdash;although snow never fell on the Ridge&mdash;he
+swung towards them. The flowers he had gathered as he came along, not
+otilypaper daisies, but the blue flowers of crowsfoot, gold buttons, and
+creamy and lavender, sweet-scented budda blossoms, were done up in a
+tight little bunch in his hand. He drew nearer still singing under his
+breath, and Sophie realised he was going over and over the fragment of a
+song that her mother had loved and used often to sing herself.</p>
+
+<p>There was a curious smile in his eyes as he came to a standstill beside
+her. The leaves of the coolebah were bronze and gold in the sunshine, a
+white-tail in its branches reiterating plaintively: "Sweet pretty
+creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael, George Woods, Archie Cross,
+and Cash Wilson, came towards the tree, their shoulders bowed beneath
+the burden they were carrying; but Snow-Shoes smiled at everybody as
+though this were really a joyous occasion, and they did not understand.
+Only he understood, and smiled because of his secret knowledge.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+
+<p>In a week or two Mrs. Rouminof's name had dropped out of Ridge life
+almost as if she had never been part of it.</p>
+
+<p>At first people talked of her, of Paul, of Sophie, and of Michael. They
+gossiped of her looks and manner, of her strange air of serenity and
+content, although her life on the Ridge was, they surmised, a hard one,
+and different from the life she had come from. But her death caused no
+more disturbance than a stone thrown into quiet water, falling to the
+bottom, does. No one was surprised, when it was known Paul and Sophie
+had gone to live with Michael. Everyone expected Michael would try to
+look after them for a while, although they could not imagine where he
+was going to find room for them in his small house filled with books.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural enough that Michael should have taken charge of Sophie
+and Rouminof, and that he should have made all arrangements for Mrs.
+Rouminof's funeral. If it had been left to Paul to bury his wife, people
+agreed, she would not have been buried at all; or, at least, not until
+the community insisted. And Michael would have done as much for any
+shiftless man. He was next-of-kin to all lonely and helpless men and
+women on the Ridge, Michael Brady.</p>
+
+<p>Every man, woman, or child on the Ridge knew Michael. His lean figure in
+shabby blue dungarees, faded shirt, and weathered felt hat, with no more
+than a few threads of its band left, was as familiar as any tree, shed,
+or dump on the fields. He walked with a slight stoop, a pipe in his
+mouth always, his head bent as though he were thinking hard; but there
+was no hard thought in his eyes, only meditativeness, and a faint smile
+if he were stopped and spoken to unexpectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a regular 'cyclopædia, Michael," the men said sometimes when he,
+had given information on a subject they were discussing.</p>
+
+<p>"Not me," Michael would reply as often as not. "I just came across that
+in a book I was reading the other day."</p>
+
+<p>Ridge folk were proud of Michael's books, and strangers who saw his
+miscellaneous collection&mdash;mostly of cheap editions, old school books,
+and shilling, sixpenny, and penny publications of literary masterpieces,
+poetry, and works on industrial and religious subjects&mdash;did not wonder
+that it impressed Ridge folk, or that Michael's knowledge of the world
+and affairs was what it was. He had tracts, leaflets, and small books on
+almost every subject under the sun. Books were regarded as his Weakness,
+and, remembering it, some of the men, when they had struck opal and left
+the town, occasionally sent a box of any old books they happened to come
+across to Michael, knowing that a printed page was a printed page to him
+in the long evenings when he lay on the sofa under his window. Michael
+himself had spent all the money he could, after satisfying the needs of
+his everyday life, on those tracts, pamphlets, and cheap books he
+hoarded in his hut on shelves made from wooden boxes and old
+fruit-cases.</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing of the schoolmaster about him. He rarely gave
+information unless he was asked for it. The men appreciated that,
+although they were proud of his erudition and books. They knew dimly but
+surely that Michael used his books for, not against, themselves; and he
+was attached to books and learning, chiefly for what they could do for
+them, his mates. In all community discussions his opinion carried
+considerable weight. A matter was often talked over with more or less
+heat, differences of opinion thrashed out while Michael smoked and
+listened, weighing the arguments. He rarely spoke until his view was
+asked for. Then in a couple of minutes he would straighten out the
+subject of controversy, show what was to be said for and against a
+proposition, sum up, and give his conclusions, for or against it.</p>
+
+<p>Michael Brady, however, was much more the general utility man than
+encyclopædia of Fallen Star Ridge. If a traveller&mdash;swagman&mdash;died on the
+road, it was Michael who saw he got a decent burial; Michael who was
+sent for if a man had his head smashed in a brawl, or a wife died
+unexpectedly. He was the court of final appeal in quarrels and
+disagreements between mates; and once when Martha M'Cready was away in
+Sydney, he had even brought a baby into the world. He was something of a
+dentist, too, honorary dentist to anyone on the Ridge who wanted a tooth
+pulled out; and the friend of any man, woman, or child in distress.</p>
+
+<p>And he did things so quietly, so much as a matter of course, that people
+did not notice what he did for them, or for the rest of the Ridge. They
+took it for granted he liked doing what he did; that he liked helping
+them. It was his sympathy, the sense of his oneness with all their
+lives, and his shy, whimsical humour and innate refusal to be anything
+more than they were, despite his books and the wisdom with which they
+were quite willing to credit him, that gained for Michael the regard of
+the people of the Ridge, and made him the unconscious power he was in
+the community.</p>
+
+<p>Of about middle height, and sparely built, Michael was forty-five, or
+thereabouts, when Mrs. Rouminof died. He looked older, yet had the
+vigour and energy of a much younger man. Crowsfeet had gathered at the
+corners of his eyes, and there were the fines beneath them which all
+back-country men have from screwing their sight against the brilliant
+sunshine of the north-west. But the white of his eyes was as clear as
+the shell of a bird's egg, the irises grey, flecked with hazel and
+green, luminous, and ringed with fine black lines. When he pushed back
+his hat, half a dozen lines from frowning against the glare were on his
+forehead too. His thin, black hair, streaked with grey, lay flat across
+and close to his head. He had a well-shaped nose and the sensitive
+nostrils of a thoroughbred, although Michael himself said he was no
+breed to speak of, but plain Australian&mdash;and proud of it. His father was
+born in the country, and so was his mother. His father had been a
+teemster, and his mother a storekeeper's daughter. Michael had wandered
+from one mining field to another in his young days. He had worked in
+Bendigo and Gippsland; later in Silver Town; and from the Barrier Ranges
+had migrated to Chalk Cliffs, and from the Cliffs to Fallen Star Ridge.
+He had been one of the first comers to the Ridge when opal was
+discovered there.</p>
+
+<p>The Rouminofs had been on Chalk Cliffs too, and had come to the Ridge in
+the early days of the rush. Paul had set up at the Cliffs as an opal
+buyer, it was said; but he knew very little about opal. Anybody could
+sell him a stone for twice as much as it was worth, and he could never
+get a price from other buyers for the stones he bought. He soon lost any
+money he possessed, and had drifted and swung with the careless life of
+the place. He had worked as a gouger for a while when the blocks were
+bought up. Then when the rush to the Ridge started, and most of the men
+tramped north to try their luck on the new fields, he went with them;
+and Mrs. Rouminof and Sophie followed a little later on Ed. Ventry's
+bullock wagon, when Ed. was taking stores to the rush.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rouminof had lived in a hut at the Old Town even after the township
+was moved to the eastern slope of the Ridge. She had learnt a good deal
+about opal on the Cliffs, and soon after she came to the Ridge set up a
+cutting-wheel, and started cutting and polishing stones. Several of the
+men brought her their stones, and after a while she was so good at her
+work that she often added a couple of pounds to the value of a stone.
+She kept a few goats too, to assure a means of livelihood when there was
+no opal about, and she sold goats' milk and butter in the township. She
+had never depended on Rouminof to earn a living, which was just as well,
+Fallen Star folk agreed, since, as long as they had known him, he had
+never done so. For a long time he had drifted between the mines and
+Newton's, cadging drinks or borrowing money from anybody who would lend
+to him. Sometimes he did odd jobs at Newton's or the mail stables for
+the price of a few drinks; but no man who knew him would take up a
+claim, or try working a mine with him.</p>
+
+<p>His first mate on the Ridge had been Pony-Fence Inglewood. They sank a
+hole on a likely spot behind the Old Town; but Paul soon got tired of
+it. When they had not seen anything but bony potch for a while, Paul
+made up his mind there was nothing in the place. Pony-Fence rather liked
+it. He was for working a little longer, but to oblige his mate he agreed
+to sink again. Soon after they had started, Paul began to appear at the
+dump when the morning was half through, or not at all. Or, as often as
+not, when he did decide to sling a pick, or dig a bit, he groaned so
+about the pains in his back or his head that as often as not Pony-Fence
+told him to go home and get the missus to give him something for it.</p>
+
+<p>The mildest man on the fields, Pony-Fence Inglewood did not discover for
+some time what the boys said was correct. There was nothing the matter
+with Rum-Enough but a dislike of shifting mullock if he could get anyone
+to shift it for him. When he did discover he was doing the work of the
+firm, Pony-Fence and Paul had it out with each other, and parted
+company. Pony-Fence took a new mate, Bully Bryant, a youngster from
+Budda, who was anxious to put any amount of elbow grease into his search
+for a fortune, and Paul drifted. He had several mates afterwards,
+newcomers to the fields, who wanted someone to work with them, but they
+were all of the same opinion about him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Rum-Enough there's a bit of colour about, and he'll work like a
+chow," they said; "but if y' don't see anything for a day or two, he
+goes as flat as the day before yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>If he had been working, and happened on a knobby, or a bit of black
+potch with a light or two in it, Paul was like a child, crazy with
+happiness. He could talk of nothing else. He thought of nothing else. He
+slung his pick and shovelled dirt as long as you would let him, with a
+devouring impatience, in a frenzy of eagerness. The smallest piece of
+stone with no more than sun-flash was sufficient to put him in a state
+of frantic excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Strangers to the Ridge sometimes wanted to know whether Rouminof had
+ever had a touch of the sun. But Ridge folk knew he was not mad. He had
+the opal fever all right, they said, but he was not mad.</p>
+
+<p>When Jun Johnson blew along at the end of one summer and could not get
+anyone to work with him, he took Paul on. The two chummed up and started
+to sink a hole together, and the men made bets as to the chance of their
+ever getting ten or a dozen feet below ground; but before long they were
+astounded to see the old saw of setting a thief to catch a thief working
+true in this instance. If anybody was loafing on the new claim, it was
+not Rouminof. He did every bit of his share of the first day's hard pick
+work and shovelling. If anybody was slacking, it was Jun rather than
+Paul. Jun kept his mate's nose to the grindstone, and worked more
+successfully with him than anyone else had ever done. He knew it, too,
+and was proud of his achievement. Joking over it at Newton's in the
+evening, he would say:</p>
+
+<p>"Great mate I've got now! Work? Never saw a chow work like him! Work his
+fingers to the bone, he would, if I'd let him. It's a great life, a
+gouger's, if only you've got the right sort of mate!"</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily, of course, mates shared their finds. There was no question
+of what partners would get out of the luck of one or the other. But
+Jun&mdash;he had his own little way of doing business, everybody knew. He had
+been on the Ridge before. He and his mate did not have any sensational
+luck, but they had saved up two or three packets of opal and taken them
+down to Sydney to sell. Old Bill Olsen was his mate then, and, although
+Bill had said nothing of the business, the men guessed there had been
+something shady about it. Jun had his own story of what happened. He
+said the old chap had "got on his ear" in Sydney, and that "a couple of
+spielers had rooked him of his stones." But Bill no longer noticed Jun
+if they passed each other on the same track on the Ridge, and Jun
+pretended to be sore about it.</p>
+
+<p>"It's dirt," he said, "the old boy treating me as if I had anything to
+do with his bad luck losin' those stones!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you speak to him about it?" somebody asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we had it out in Sydney," Jun replied, "and it's no good raking the
+whole thing up again. Begones is bygones&mdash;that's my motto. But if any
+man wants to have a grudge against me, well, let him. It's a free
+country. That's all I've got to say. Besides, the poor old cuss isn't
+all there, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you fret," Michael had said, "he's all right. He's got as much
+there as you or me, or any of us for that matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, you know, Michael," Jun declared. He was not going to quarrel
+with Michael Brady. "What you say goes, anyhow!"</p>
+
+<p>That was how Jun established himself anywhere. He had an easy,
+plausible, good-natured way. All the men laughed and drank with him and
+gave him grudging admiration, notwithstanding the threads and shreds of
+resentments and distrusts which old stories of his dealings, even with
+mates, had put in their minds. None of those stories had been proved
+against him, his friends said, Charley Heathfield among them. That was a
+fact. But there were too many of them to be good for any man's soul,
+Ridge men, who took Jun with a grain of salt, thought&mdash;Michael Brady,
+George Woods, Archie Cross, and Watty Frost among them; but Charley
+Heathfield, Michael's mate, had struck up a friendship with Jun since
+his return to the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>George Woods and the Crosses said it was a case of birds of a feather,
+but they did not say that to Michael. They knew Michael had the sort of
+affection for Charley that a man has for a dog he has saved from
+drowning.</p>
+
+<p>Charley Heathfield had been down on his luck when he went to the Ridge,
+his wife and a small boy with him; and the rush which he had expected to
+bring him a couple of hundred pounds' worth of opal at least, if it did
+not make his fortune, had left him worse off than it found him&mdash;a piece
+of debris in its wake. He and Rouminof had put down a shaft together,
+and as neither of them, after the first few weeks, did any more work
+than they could help, and were drunk or quarrelling half of their time,
+nothing came of their efforts.</p>
+
+<p>Charley, when his wife died, was ill himself, and living in a hut a few
+yards from Michael's. She had been a waitress in a city restaurant, and
+he had married her, he said, because she could carry ten dishes of hot
+soup on one arm and four trays on the other. A tall, stolid, pale-faced
+woman, she had hated the back-country and her husband's sense of humour,
+and had fretted herself to death rather than endure them. Charley had no
+particular opinion of himself or of her. He called his youngster
+Potch&mdash;"a little bit of Potch," he said, because the kid would never be
+anything better than poor opal at the best of times.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had nursed Charley while he was ill during that winter, and had
+taken him in hand when he was well enough to get about again. Charley
+was supposed to have weak lungs; but better food, steady habits, and the
+fine, dry air of a mild summer set him up wonderfully. Snow-Shoes had
+worked with Michael for a long time; he said that he was getting too old
+for the everyday toil of the mine, though, when Michael talked of taking
+on Charley to work with them. It would suit him all right if Michael
+found another mate. Michael and Charley Heathfield had worked together
+ever since, and Snow-Shoes had made his living as far as anybody knew by
+noodling on the dumps.</p>
+
+<p>But Charley and Michael had not come on a glimmer of opal worth speaking
+of for nearly twelve months. They were hanging on to their claim, hoping
+each day they would strike something good. There is a superstition among
+the miners that luck often changes when it seems at its worst. Both
+Charley and Michael had storekeeper's accounts as long as their arms,
+and the men knew if their luck did not change soon, one or the other of
+them would have to go over to Warria, or to one of the other stations,
+and earn enough money there to keep the other going on the claim.</p>
+
+<p>They had no doubt it would be Michael who would have to go. Charley was
+not fond of work, and would be able to loaf away his time very
+pleasantly on the mine, making only a pretence of doing anything, until
+Michael returned. They wondered why Michael did not go and get a move
+into his affairs at once. Paul and Sophie might have-something to do
+with his putting off going, they told each other; Michael was anxious
+how Paul and his luck would fare when it was a question of squaring up
+with Jun, and as to how the squaring up, when it came, would affect
+Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them had been concerning themselves on Paul's account also. They
+did not like a good deal they had seen of the way Jun was using Paul,
+and they had resolved to see he got fair play when it was time for a
+settlement of his and Jun's account. George Woods, Watty Frost, and Bill
+Grant went along to talk the matter over with Michael one evening, and
+found him fixing a shed at the back of the hut which he and Potch had
+put up for Sophie and her father, a few yards from Charley Heathfield's,
+and in line with Michael's own hut at the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul says he's going away if he gets a good thing out of his and Jun's
+find," George Woods said.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be a good thing&mdash;if he gets a fair deal," Michael replied.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll get that&mdash;if we can fix it," Watty Frost said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't think why you're taking so much trouble with this place if Paul
+and Sophie are going away soon, Michael," George Woods remarked at the
+end of their talk.</p>
+
+<p>"They're not gone yet," Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling
+across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no
+betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did
+not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be
+done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it
+would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away.
+But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father
+would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for
+them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would
+be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be
+prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+
+<p>The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they
+found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all
+that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was
+the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should
+hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was
+like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish
+up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a
+packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better
+tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most
+of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to
+deal squarely by him.</p>
+
+<p>Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about
+like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for
+everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times
+they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell
+their opal.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at
+Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them
+up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's
+package knew that he had kept the best stones.</p>
+
+<p>For a couple of weeks after they had come on their nest of knobbies, Jun
+and Paul had gouged and shovelled dirt enthusiastically; but the wisp
+fires, mysteriously and suddenly as they had come, had died out of the
+stone they moved. Paul searched frantically. He and Jun worked like
+bullocks; but the luck which had flashed on them was withdrawn. Although
+they broke new tunnels, went through tons of opal dirt with their hands,
+and tracked every trace of black potch through a reef of cement stone in
+the mine, not a spark of blue or green light had they seen for over a
+week. That was the way of black opal, everybody knew, and knew, too,
+that the men who had been on a good patch of fired stone would not work
+on a claim, shovelling dirt, long after it disappeared. They would be
+off down to Sydney, if no buyer was due to visit the fields, eager to
+make the most of the good time their luck and the opal would bring them.
+"Opal only brings you bad luck when you don't get enough of it," Ridge
+folk say.</p>
+
+<p>George and Watty had a notion Jun would not stick to the claim much
+longer, when they arranged the night at Newton's to settle his and
+Paul's account with each other. Michael, the Crosses, Cash Wilson,
+Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Bully Bryant, old Bill Olsen, and most
+of the staunch Ridge men were in the bar, Charley Heathfield drinking
+with Jun, when George Woods strolled over to the table where Rouminof
+was showing Sam Nancarrow his stones. Sam was blacksmith, undertaker,
+and electoral registrar in Fallen Star, and occasionally did odd
+butchering jobs when there was no butcher in the township. He had the
+reputation, too, of being one of the best judges of black opal on the
+fields.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was holding up a good-looking knobby so that red, green, and gold
+lights glittered through its shining potch as he moved it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a nice bit of stone you've got, Rummy!" George exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Paul agreed. "But you should see her by candle light, George!" he said
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>He held up the stone again so that it caught the light of a lamp hanging
+over the bar where Peter Newton was standing. The eyes of two or three
+of the men followed the stone as Paul moved it, and its internal fires
+broke in showers of sparks.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, look!" Paul cried, "now she's showin'!"</p>
+
+<p>"How much have you got on her?" Sam Nancarrow asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Jun thinks she'll bring £50 or £60 at least."</p>
+
+<p>Sam's and George Woods' eyes met: £50 was a liberal estimate of the
+stone's value. If Paul got £10 or £15 for it he would be doing well,
+they knew.</p>
+
+<p>"They're nice stones, aren't they?" Paul demanded, sorting over the
+opals he had spread out on the table. He held up a piece of green potch
+with a sun-flash through it.</p>
+
+<p>"My oath!" George Woods exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"But where's the big beaut.?" Archie Cross asked, looking over the
+stones with George.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jun's got her," Paul replied. "Jun!" he called, "the boys want to
+see the big stone."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" Jun swung across to the table. Several of the men by the bar
+followed him. "She's all right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, pulled a shabby leather wallet from his pocket, opened it,
+and took out a roll of dirty flannel; he undid the flannel carefully,
+and spread the stones on the table. There were several pieces of opal in
+the packet. The men, who had seen them before separately, uttered soft
+oaths of admiration and surprise when they saw all the opals together.
+Two knobbies were as big as almonds, and looked like black almonds,
+fossilised, with red fire glinting through their green and gold; a large
+flat stone had stars of red, green, amethyst, blue and gold shifting
+over and melting into each other; and several smaller stones, all good
+stuff, showed smouldering fire in depths of green and blue and gold-lit
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Jun held the biggest of the opals at arm's length from the light of the
+hanging lamp. The men followed his movement, the light washing their
+faces as it did the stone.</p>
+
+<p>"There she goes!" Paul breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got on her?"</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred pounds, or thereabouts."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get it easy!"</p>
+
+<p>Jun put the stone down. He took up another, a smaller piece of opal, of
+even finer quality. The stars were strewn over and over each other in
+its limpid black pool.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice pattern," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Watty Frost murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"She's not as big as the other ... but better pattern," Archie Cross
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Reckon you'll get £100 for her too, Jun?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yup!" Jun put down the stone.</p>
+
+<p>Then he held up each stone in turn, and the men gave it the same level,
+appraising glance. There was no envy in their admiration. In every man's
+eyes was the same worshipful appreciation of black opal.</p>
+
+<p>Jun was drunk with his luck. His luck, as much as Newton's beer, was in
+his head this night. He had shown his stones before, but never like
+this, the strength of his luck.</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you think there is in your packet, Jun?" Archie Cross
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Jun stretched his legs under the table.</p>
+
+<p>"A thou' if there's a penny."</p>
+
+<p>Archie whistled.</p>
+
+<p>"And how much do you reckon there is in Rum-Enough's?" George Woods put
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Four or five hundred," Jun said; "but we're evens, of course."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned across the table and winked at George.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say," Archie protested, "what's the game?"</p>
+
+<p>They knew Jun wanted them to believe he was joking, humouring Paul. But
+that was not what they had arranged this party for.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones, Jun?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>Jun started and stared about him. It was so unusual for one man to
+suggest to another what he ought to do, or that there was anything like
+bad faith in his dealings with his mates, that his blood rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones?" George repeated,
+mildly eyeing him over the bowl of his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Watty butted in, "Rummy ought to hold a few of the good stones,
+Jun. Y' see, you might be run into by rats ... or get knocked out&mdash;and
+have them shook off you, like Oily did down in Sydney&mdash;and it'd be hard
+on Rummy, that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"When I want your advice about how me and my mate's going to work
+things, I'll ask you," Jun snarled.</p>
+
+<p>"We don't mind giving it before we're asked, Jun," Watty explained
+amiably.</p>
+
+<p>Archie Cross leaned across the table. "How about giving Paul a couple of
+those bits of decent pattern&mdash;if you stick to the big stone?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the game?" Jun demanded, sitting up angrily. His hand went over
+his stones.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait on, Jun!" Michael said. "We're not thieves here. You don't have to
+grab y'r stones."</p>
+
+<p>Jun looked about him. He saw that men of the Ridge, in the bar, were all
+standing round the table. Only Peter Newton was left beside the bar,
+although Charley Heathfield, on the outer edge of the crowd, regarded
+him with a smile of faint sympathy and cynicism. Paul leaned over the
+table before him, and looked from Jun to the men who had fallen in round
+the table, a dazed expression broadening on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"What the hell's the matter?" Jun cried, starting to his feet. "What are
+you chaps after? Can't I manage me own affairs and me mate's?"</p>
+
+<p>The crowd moved a little, closer to him. There was no chance of making a
+break for it.</p>
+
+<p>George Woods laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Course you can't, Jun!" he said. "Not on the Ridge, you can't manage
+your affairs and your mate's ... your way ... Not without a little
+helpful advice from the rest of us.... Sit down!"</p>
+
+<p>Jun glanced about him again; then, realising the intention on every
+face, and something of the purpose at the back of it, he sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm jiggered!" he exclaimed. "I see&mdash;you believe old Olsen's
+story. That's about the strength of it. Never thought ... a kid, or a
+chicken, 'd believe that bloody yarn. Well, what's the advice ... boys?
+Let's have it, and be done with it!"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. We won't say anything about ...
+why," George remarked. "But the boys and I was just thinking it might be
+as well if you and Rum-Enough sort of shared up the goods now, and then
+... if he doesn't want to go to Sydney same time as you, Jun, he can
+deal his goods here, or when he does go."</p>
+
+<p>No one knew better than Jun the insult which all this seemingly
+good-natured talking covered. He knew that neither he, nor any other
+man, would have dared to suggest that Watty, or George, or Michael, were
+not to be trusted to deal for their mates, to the death even. But then
+he knew, too, they were to be trusted; that there was not money enough
+in the world to buy their loyalty to each other and to their mates, and
+that he could measure their suspicion of his good faith by his knowledge
+of himself. To play their game as they would have played it was the only
+thing for him to do, he recognised.</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" he said, "I'm more than willing. In fact, I wouldn't have the
+thing on me mind&mdash;seein' the way you chaps 've taken it. But 'd like to
+know which one of you wouldn't 've done what I've done if Rum-Enough was
+your mate?"</p>
+
+<p>Every man was uneasily conscious that Jun was right. Any one of them, if
+he had Paul for a mate, would have taken charge of the most valuable
+stones, in Paul's interest as well as his own. At the same time, every
+man felt pretty sure the thing was a horse of another colour where Jun
+was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>"Which one of us," George Woods inquired, "if a mate'd been set on by a
+spieler in Sydney, would've let him stump his way to Brinarra and foot
+it out here ... like you let old Olsen?"</p>
+
+<p>Jun's expression changed; his features blenched, then a flame of blood
+rushed over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie," he yelled. "He cleared out&mdash;I never saw him afterwards!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well," George said, "we'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. Let's have a
+look at that flat stone."</p>
+
+<p>Jun handed him the stone.</p>
+
+<p>George held it to the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice bit of opal," he said, letting the light play over it a moment,
+then passed it on to Michael and Watty.</p>
+
+<p>"You keep the big stone, and Paul'll have this," Archie Cross said.</p>
+
+<p>He put the stone beside Paul's' little heap of gems.</p>
+
+<p>Jun sat back in his chair: his eyes smouldering as the men went over his
+opals, appraising and allotting each one, putting some before Rouminof,
+and some back before him. They dealt as judicially with the stones as
+though they were a jury of experts, on the case&mdash;as they really were.
+When their decisions were made, Jun had still rather the better of the
+stones, although the division had been as nearly fair as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was too dazed and amazed to speak. He glanced dubiously from his
+stones to Jun, who rolled his opals back in the strip of dirty flannel,
+folded it into his leather wallet, and dropped that into his coat
+pocket. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.</p>
+
+<p>Big and swarthy, with eyes which took a deeper colour from the new blue
+shirt he had on, Jun stood an inch or so above the other men.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "you boys have put it across me to-night. You've made a
+mistake ... but I'm not one to bear malice. You done right if you
+thought I wasn't going to deal square by Rum-Enough ... but I'll lay you
+any money you like I'd 've made more money for him by selling his stones
+than he'll make himself&mdash;Still, that's your business ... if you want it
+that way. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm just where I was&mdash;in luck.
+And you chaps owe me something.... Come and have a drink."</p>
+
+<p>Most of the men, who believed Jun was behaving with better grace than
+they had expected him to, moved off to have a drink with him. They were
+less sure than they had been earlier in the evening that they had done
+Rouminof a good turn by giving him possession of his share of the opals.
+It was just on the cards, they realised as Jun said, that instead of
+doing Rouminof a good turn, if Jun had been going to deal squarely by
+him, they had done him a rather bad one. Paul was pretty certain to make
+a mess of trading his own stones, and to get about half their value from
+an opal-buyer if he insisted on taking them down to Sydney to sell
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"What'll you do now your fortune's fixed up, Rummy?" George Woods asked,
+jokingly, when he and two or three men were left with Paul by the table.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get out of this," Paul said. "We'll go down to Sydney&mdash;me and
+Sophie&mdash;and we'll say good-bye to the Ridge for good."</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed. It was the old song of an outsider who cared nothing
+for the life of the Ridge, when he got a couple of hundred pounds' worth
+of opal. He thought he was made for life and would never come back to
+the Ridge; but he always did when his money was spent. Only Michael,
+standing a little behind George Woods, did not smile.</p>
+
+<p>"But you can't live for ever on three or four hundred quid," Watty Frost
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Paul replied eagerly, "but I can always make a bit playing at
+dances, and Sophie's going to be a singer. You wait till people hear her
+sing.... Her mother was a singer. She had a beautiful voice. When it
+went we came here.... But Sophie can sing as well as her mother. And
+she's young. She ought to make a name for herself."</p>
+
+<p>He wrapped the stones before him in a piece of wadding, touching them
+reverently, and folded them into the tin cigarette box Michael had given
+him to carry about the first stones Jun had let him have. He was still
+mystified over the business of the evening, and why the boys had made
+Jun give him the other stones. He had been quite satisfied for Jun to
+hold most of the stones, and the best ones, as any man on the Ridge
+would be for his mate to take care of their common property. There was a
+newspaper lying on the table. He took it, wrapped it carefully about his
+precious box, tied a piece of strong string round it, and let the box
+down carefully into the big, loose pocket of his shabby coat.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+
+<p>Watty and George were well satisfied with their night's work when they
+went out of the bar into the street. Michael was with them. He said
+nothing, but they took it for granted he was as pleased as they were at
+what had been done and the way in which it had been done. Michael was
+always chary of words, and all night they had noticed that what they
+called his "considering cap" had been well drawn over his brows. He
+stood smoking beside them and listening abstractedly to what they were
+saying.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's fixed him," Watty remarked, glancing back into the room
+they had just left.</p>
+
+<p>Jun was leaning over the bar talking to Newton, the light from the lamp
+above, on his red, handsome face, and cutting the bulk of his head and
+shoulders from the gloom of the room and the rest of the men about him.
+Peter Newton was serving drinks, and Jun laughing and joking
+boisterously as he handed them on to the men.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a clever devil!" George exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"Shouldn't wonder if he didn't clear out by the coach to-morrow," George
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor me," Watty grunted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he won't be taking Paul with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"But Rummy's going down to town soon as he can get, he says."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Michael, why don't you try scarin' him about losing his stones
+like Bill Olsen did?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have."</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Says," Michael smiled, "the sharks won't get any of his money or opal."</p>
+
+<p>Watty snuffed contemptuously by way of exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be getting along," Michael added, and talked away in the
+direction of his hut.</p>
+
+<p>George and Watty watched his spare figure sway down the road between the
+rows of huts which formed the Fallen Star township. It was a misty
+moonlight night, and the huts stood dark against the sheening screen of
+sky, with here and there a glow of light through open doorways, or
+small, square window panes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's on Michael's mind, Rum-Enough's going and taking Sophie with him,"
+George, said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wonder," Watty replied. "He'll come a cropper, sure as eggs....
+And what's to become of her? Michael 'd go to town with them if he had a
+bean&mdash;but he hasn't. He's stony, I know."</p>
+
+<p>Even to his mate he did not say why he knew, and George did not ask,
+understanding Watty's silence. It was not very long since George himself
+had given Michael a couple of pounds; but he had a very good idea
+Michael had little to do with the use of that money. He guessed that he
+would have less to do with whatever he got from Watty.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley's going over to Warria to-morrow, isn't he?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Watty grunted. "About time he did something. Michael's been grafting for
+him for a couple of years ... and he'd have gone to the station
+himself&mdash;only he didn't want to go away till he knew what Paul was going
+to do. Been trying pretty hard to persuade him to leave Sophie&mdash;till
+he's fixed up down town&mdash;but you wouldn't believe how obstinate the
+idiot is. Thinks he can make a singer of her in no time ... then she'll
+keep her old dad till kingdom come."</p>
+
+<p>Michael's figure was lost to sight between the trees which encroached on
+the track beyond the town. Jun was singing in the hotel. His great
+rollicking voice came to George and Watty with shouts of laughter.
+George, looking back through the open door, saw Rouminof had joined the
+crowd round the bar.</p>
+
+<p>He was drinking as George's glance fell on him.</p>
+
+<p>"Think he's all right?" Watty asked.</p>
+
+<p>George did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't suppose Jun 'd try to take the stones off of him, do you,
+George?" Watty inquired again. "You don't think&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose he'd dare, seein' we've ... let him know how we feel."</p>
+
+<p>George spoke slowly, as if he were not quite sure of what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows his hide'd suffer if he tried."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right."</p>
+
+<p>Archie Cross came from the bar and joined them.</p>
+
+<p>"He's trying to make up to the boys&mdash;he likes people to think he's
+Christmas, Jun," he said, "and he just wants 'em to forget that
+anything's been said&mdash;detrimental to his character like."</p>
+
+<p>George was inclined to agree with Archie. They went to the form against
+the wall of the hotel and sat there smoking for a while; then all three
+got up to go home.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think we ought to see Rummy home?" Watty inquired
+hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>He was ashamed to suggest that Rouminof, drunk, and with four or five
+hundred pounds' worth of opal in his pockets, was not as safe as if his
+pockets were empty. But Jun had brought a curious unrest into the
+community. Watty, or Archie, or George, themselves would have walked
+about with the same stuff in their pockets without ever thinking anybody
+might try to put a finger on it.</p>
+
+<p>None of the three looked at each other as they thought over the
+proposition. Then Archie spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"I told Ted," he murmured apologetically, "to keep an eye on Rummy, as
+he's coming home. If there's rats about, you never can tell what may
+happen. We ain't discovered yet who put it over on Rummy and Jun on the
+day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral. So I just worded Ted to keep an eye on
+the old fool. He comes our track most of the way ... And if he's tight,
+he might start sheddin' his stones out along the road&mdash;you never can
+tell."</p>
+
+<p>George Woods laughed. The big, genial soul of the man looked out of his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"That's true," he said heartily.</p>
+
+<p>Archie and he smiled into each other's eyes. They understood very well
+what lay behind Archie's words; They could not bring themselves to admit
+there was any danger to the sacred principle of Ridge life, that a mate
+stands by a mate, in letting Rouminof wander home by himself. He might
+be in danger if there were rats about; they would admit that. But rats,
+the men who sneaked into other men's mines when they were on good stuff,
+and took out their opal during the night, were never Ridge men. They
+were new-comers, outsiders, strangers on the rushes, who had not learnt
+or assimilated Ridge ideas.</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes George turned away. "Well, good-night, Archie," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Watty moved after him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Night!" Archie replied.</p>
+
+<p>George and Watty went along the road together, and Archie walked off in
+the direction Michael had taken.</p>
+
+<p>But Michael had not gone home. When the trees screened him from sight,
+he had struck out across the Ridge, then, turning back on his tracks
+behind the town, had made towards the Warria road. He walked, thinking
+hard, without noticing where he was going, his mind full of Paul, of
+Sophie, and of his promise.</p>
+
+<p>Now that Paul had his opal, it was clear he would be able to do as he
+wished&mdash;leave the Ridge and take Sophie with him. For the time being at
+least he was out of Jun Johnson's hands&mdash;but Michael was sure he would
+not stay out of them if he went to Sydney. How to prevent his
+going&mdash;how, rather, to prevent Sophie going with him&mdash;-that was
+Michael's problem. He did not know what he was going to do.</p>
+
+<p>He had asked Sophie not to go with her father. He had told her what her
+mother had said, and tried to explain to her why her mother had not
+wanted her to go away from the Ridge, or to become a public singer. But
+Sophie was as excited about her future as her father was. It was natural
+she should be, Michael assured himself. She was young, and had heard
+wonderful stories of Sydney and the world beyond the Ridge. Sydney was
+like the town in a fairy tale to her.</p>
+
+<p>It was not to be expected, Michael confessed to himself, that Sophie
+would choose to stay on Fallen Star Ridge. If she could only be
+prevailed upon to put off her departure until she was older and better
+able to take care of herself, he would be satisfied. If the worst came
+to the worst, and she went to Sydney with her father soon, Michael had
+decided to go with them. Peter Newton would give him a couple of pounds
+for his books, he believed, and he would find something to do down in
+Sydney. His roots were in the Ridge. Michael did not know how he was
+going to live away from the mines; but anything seemed better than that
+Sophie should be committed to what her mother had called "the
+treacherous whirlpool" of life in a great city, with no one but her
+father to look after her.</p>
+
+<p>And her mother had said:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let him take her away, Michael."</p>
+
+<p>Michael believed that Marya Rouminof intended Sophie to choose for
+herself whether she would stay on the Ridge or not, when she was old
+enough. But now she was little more than a child, sixteen, nearly
+seventeen, young for her years in some ways and old in others. Michael
+knew her mother had wanted Sophie to grow up on the Ridge and to realise
+that all the potentialities of real and deep happiness were there.</p>
+
+<p>"They say there's got to be a scapegoat in every family, Michael," she
+had said once. "Someone has to pay for the happiness of the others. If
+all that led to my coming here will mean happiness for Sophie, it will
+not have been in vain."</p>
+
+<p>"That's where you're wrong," Michael had told her.</p>
+
+<p>"Looking for justice&mdash;poetic justice, isn't it, they call it?&mdash;in the
+working out of things. There isn't any of this poetic justice except by
+accident. The natural laws just go rolling on&mdash;laying us out under them.
+All we can do is set our lives as far as possible in accordance with
+them and stand by the consequences as well as we know how."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, you're right," she had sighed, "but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was for that "but" Michael was fighting now. He knew what lay beyond
+it&mdash;a yearning for her child to fare a little better in the battle of
+life than she had. Striding almost unconsciously over the loose, shingly
+ground, Michael was not aware what direction his steps were taking until
+he saw glimmering white shapes above the grass and herbage of the
+plains, and realised that he had walked to the gates of the cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>With an uncomfortable sense of broken faith, he turned away from the
+gate, unable to go in and sit under the tree there, to smoke and think,
+as he sometimes did. He had used every argument with Paul to prevent his
+taking Sophie away, he knew; but for the first time since Michael and he
+had been acquainted with each other, Paul had shown a steady will. He
+made up his mind he was "going to shake the dust of the Ridge off his
+feet," he said. And that was the end of it. Michael almost wished the
+men had let Jun clear out with his stones. That would have settled the
+business. But, his instinct of an opal-miner asserting itself, he was
+unable to wish Paul the loss of his luck, and Jun what he would have to
+be to deprive Paul of it. He walked on chewing the cud of bitter and
+troubled reflections.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let him take her away!" a voice seemed to cry suddenly after him.</p>
+
+<p>Michael stopped; he snatched the hat from his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he said, "he shan't take her away!"</p>
+
+<p>Startled by the sound of his own voice, the intensity of thinking which
+had wrung it from him, dazed by the sudden strength of resolution which
+had come over him, he stood, his face turned to the sky. The stars
+rained their soft light over him. As he looked up to them, his soul went
+from him by force of will. How long he stood like that, he did not know;
+but when his eyes found the earth again he looked about him wonderingly.
+After a little while he put on his hat and turned away. All the pain and
+trouble were taken from his thinking; he was strangely soothed and
+comforted. He went back along the road to the town, and, skirting the
+trees and the houses on the far side, came again to the track below
+Newton's.</p>
+
+<p>Lights were still shining in the hotel although it was well after
+midnight. Michael could hear voices in the clear air. A man was singing
+one of Jun's choruses as he went down the road towards the Punti Rush.
+Michael kept on his way. He was still wondering what he could do to
+prevent Paul taking Sophie away; but he was no longer worried about
+it&mdash;his brain was calm and clear; his step lighter than it had been for
+a long time.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the voices laughing and calling to each other as he walked on.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Ted!" he commented to himself, recognising Ted Cross's voice. "He's
+blithered!"</p>
+
+<p>When he came to a fork in the tracks where one went off in the direction
+of his, Charley's, and Rouminof's huts, and the other towards the
+Crosses', Michael saw Ted Cross lumbering along in the direction of his
+own hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Must 've been saying good-night to Charley and Paul," he thought. A
+little farther along the path he saw Charley and Paul, unsteady shadows
+ahead of him in the moonlight, and Charley had his arm under Paul's,
+helping him home.</p>
+
+<p>"Good old Charley!" Michael thought, quickly appreciative of the man he
+loved.</p>
+
+<p>He could hear them talking, Rouminof's voice thick and expostulatory,
+Charley's even and clear.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley's all right. He's not showin', anyhow," Michael told himself.
+He wondered at that. Charley was not often more sober than his company,
+and he had been drinking a good deal, earlier in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>Michael was a few yards behind them and was just going to quicken his
+steps and hail Charley, when he saw the flash of white in Charley's
+hand&mdash;something small, rather longer than square, a cigarette box
+wrapped in newspaper, it might have been&mdash;and Michael saw Charley drop
+it into the pocket of his coat.</p>
+
+<p>Paul wandered on, talking stupidly, drowsily. He wanted to go to sleep
+there on the roadside; but Charley led him on.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be better at home and in bed," he said. "You're nearly there
+now."</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively, with that flash of white, Michael had drawn into the
+shadow of the trees which fringed the track. Charley, glancing back
+along it, had not seen him. Several moments passed before Michael moved.
+He knew what had happened, but the revelation was such a shock that his
+brain would not react to it. Charley, his mate, Charley Heathfield had
+stolen Paul's opals. The thing no man on the Ridge had attempted,
+notwithstanding its easiness, Charley had done. Although he had seen,
+Michael could scarcely believe that what he had seen, had happened.</p>
+
+<p>The two men before him staggered and swayed together. Their huts stood
+only a few yards from each other, a little farther along the track.</p>
+
+<p>Charley took Paul to the door of his hut, opened it and pushed him in.
+He stood beside the door, listening and looking down the track for a
+second longer. Michael imagined he would want to know whether Paul would
+discover his loss or just pitch forward and sleep where he lay. Then
+Charley went on to his own hut and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>When the light glowed in his window, Michael went on up the track,
+keeping well to the cover of the trees. Opposite the hut he took off his
+boots. He put his feet down carefully, pressing the loose pebbles
+beneath him, as he crossed the road. It seemed almost impossible to move
+on that shingly ground without making a sound, and yet when he stood
+beside the bark wall of Charley's room and could see through the smeared
+pane of its small window, Charley had not heard a pebble slip. He was
+sitting on the edge of his bed, the stub of a lighted candle in a saucer
+on the bed beside him, and the box containing the opals lying near it as
+if he were just going to cut the string and have a look at them. The
+wall creaked as Michael leaned against it.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" Charley cried sharply.</p>
+
+<p>He threw a blanket over the box on the bed and started to the door.</p>
+
+<p>Michael moved round the corner of the house. He heard Potch call
+sleepily:</p>
+
+<p>"That you?"</p>
+
+<p>Charley growled;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, go to sleep, can't you? Aren't you asleep yet?"</p>
+
+<p>Potch murmured, and there was silence again.</p>
+
+<p>Michael heard Charley go to the door, look out along the road, and turn
+back into the hut. Then Michael moved along the wall to the window.</p>
+
+<p>Charley was taking down some clothes hanging from nails along the inner
+wall. He changed from the clothes he had on into them, picked up his
+hat, lying where he had thrown it on the floor beside the bed when he
+came in, rolled it up, straightened the brim and dinged the crown to his
+liking. Then he picked up the packet of opal, put it in his coat pocket,
+and went into the other room. Michael followed to the window which gave
+on it. He saw Charley glance at the sofa as though he were contemplating
+a stretch, but, thinking better of it, he settled into an easy,
+bag-bottomed old chair by the table, pulled a newspaper to him, and
+began to read by the guttering light of his candle.</p>
+
+<p>Michael guessed why Charley had dressed, and why he had chosen to sit
+and read rather than go to sleep. It was nearly morning, the first chill
+of dawn in the air. The coach left at seven o'clock, and Charley meant
+to catch the coach. He had no intention of going to Warria. Michael
+began to get a bird's-eye view of the situation. He wondered whether
+Charley had ever intended going to Warria. He realised Charley would go
+off with the five pound note he had made him, Michael, get from Watty
+Frost, as well as with Paul's opals. He began, to see clearly what that
+would mean, too&mdash;Charley's getting away with Paul's opals. Paul would
+not be able to take Sophie away....</p>
+
+<p>In the branches of a shrub nearby, a white-tail was crying plaintively:
+"Sweet pretty creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael remembered how
+it had cried like that on the day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral.</p>
+
+<p>Whether to go into the hut, tell Charley he knew what he had done, and
+demand the return of the opals, or let him get away with them, Michael
+had not decided, when Charley's hand went to his pocket, and, as it
+closed over the package of opals, a smile of infantile satisfaction
+flitted across his face. That smile, criminal in its treachery, enraged
+Michael more than the deed itself. The candle Charley had been reading
+by guttered out. He stumbled about the room looking for another. After a
+while, as if he could not find one, he went back to his chair and
+settled into it. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the dim pane
+of the window by which Michael was standing.</p>
+
+<p>Michael's mind seethed with resentment and anger. The thing he had
+prayed for, that his brain had ached over, had been arranged. Rouminof
+would not be able to take Sophie away. But Michael was too good a Ridge
+man not to detest Charley's breach of the good faith of the Ridge.
+Charley had been accepted by men of the Ridge as one of themselves&mdash;at
+least, Michael believed he had.</p>
+
+<p>George, Watty, the Crosses, and most of the other men would have
+confessed to reservations where Charley Heathfield was concerned. But as
+long as he had lived as a mate among them, they had been mates to him.
+Michael did not want Rouminof to have his stones if having them meant
+taking Sophie away, but he did not want him to lose them. He could not
+allow Charley to get away with them, with that smile of infantile
+satisfaction. If the men knew what he had done there would be little of
+that smile left on his face when they had finished with him. Their
+methods of dealing with rats were short and severe. And although he
+deserved all he got from them, Michael was not able to decide to hand
+Charley over to the justice of the men of the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>As he hesitated, wondering what to do, the sound of heavy, regular
+breathing came to him, and, looking through the window, he saw that
+Charley had done the last thing he intended to do&mdash;he had fallen asleep
+in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>In a vivid, circling flash, Michael's inspiration came to him. He went
+across to his hut, lighted a candle when he got indoors, and took the
+black pannikin he kept odd pieces of opal in, from the top of a
+bookshelf. There was nothing of any great value in the pannikin&mdash;a few
+pieces of coloured potch which would have made a packet for an
+opal-buyer when he came along, and a rather good piece of stone in the
+rough he had kept as a mascot for a number of years&mdash;that was all.
+Michael turned them over. He went to the corner shelf and returned to
+the table with a cigarette box the same size as the one Rouminof had
+kept his opals in. Michael took a piece of soiled wadding from a drawer
+in the table, rolled the stones in it, and fitted them into the box. He
+wrapped the tin in a piece of newspaper and tied it with string. Then he
+blew out his candle and went out of doors again.</p>
+
+<p>He made his way carefully over the shingles to Charley's hut. When he
+reached it, he leaned against the wall, listening to hear whether
+Charley was still asleep. The sound of heavy breathing came slowly and
+regularly. Michael went to the back of the hut. There was no door to it.
+He went in, and slowly approached the chair in which Charley was
+sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>He could never come to any clear understanding with himself as to how he
+had done what he did. He knew only a sick fear possessed him that
+Charley would wake and find him, Michael, barefooted, like a thief in
+his house. But he was not a thief, he assured himself. It was not
+thieving to take from a thief.</p>
+
+<p>Charley stirred uneasily. His arm went out; in the dim light Michael saw
+it go over the pocket which held the packet of opal; his hand clutch at
+it unconsciously. Sweating with fear and the nervous tension he was
+under, Michael remained standing in the darkness. He waited, wondering
+whether he would throw off Charley's hand and snatch the opal, or
+whether he would stand till morning, hesitating, and wondering what to
+do, and Charley would wake at last and find him there. He had decided to
+wrench Charley's arm from the pocket, when Charley himself flung it out
+with a sudden restless movement.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant, almost mechanically, Michael's hand went to the pocket.
+He lifted the packet there and put his own in its place.</p>
+
+<p>The blood was booming in his ears when he turned to the door. A sense of
+triumph unnerved him more than the execution of his inspiration. Charley
+muttered and called out in his sleep as Michael passed through the
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Then the stars were over him. Michael drew a deep breath of the night
+air and crossed to his own hut, the package of opal under his coat. Just
+as he was entering he drew back, vaguely alarmed. A movement light as
+thistledown seemed to have caught his ear. He thought he had detected a
+faint shifting of the shingle nearby. He glanced about with quick
+apprehension, went back to Charley's hut, listened, and looked around;
+but Charley was still sleeping. Michael walked back to his own hut.
+There was no sight or sound of a living thing in the wan, misty
+moonlight of the dawn, except the white-tail which was still crying from
+a wilga near Charley's hut.</p>
+
+<p>The package under his coat felt very heavy and alive when he returned to
+his own hut. Michael was disturbed by that faint sound he had heard, or
+thought he had heard. He persuaded himself he had imagined it, that in
+the overwrought state of his sensibilities the sound of his own breath,
+and his step on the stones, had surprised and alarmed him. The tin of
+opals burned against his body, seeming to scar the skin where it
+pressed. Michael sickened at the thought of how what he had done might
+look to anyone who had seen him. But he put the thought from him. It was
+absurd. He had looked; there was no one about&mdash;nothing. He was allowing
+his mind to play tricks with him. The success of what he had done made
+him seem like a thief. But he was not a thief. The stones were
+Rouminof's. He had taken them from Charley for him, and he would not
+even look at them. He would keep them for Paul.</p>
+
+<p>If Charley got away without discovering the change of the packets, as he
+probably would, in the early morning and in his excitement to catch the
+coach, he would be considered the thief. Rouminof would accuse him;
+Charley would know his own guilt. He would not dare to confess what he
+had done, even when he found that his package of opal had been changed.
+He would not know when it had been changed. He would not know whether it
+had been changed, perhaps, before he took it from Rouminof.</p>
+
+<p>Charley might recognise the stones in that packet he had done up,
+Michael realised; but he did not think so. Charley was not much of a
+judge of opal. Michael did not think he would remember the few scraps of
+sun-flash they had come on together, and Charley had never seen the
+mascot he had put into the packet, with a remnant of feeling for the
+memory of their working days together.</p>
+
+<p>Michael did not light the candle when he went into his hut again. He
+threw himself down on the bed in his clothes; he knew that he would not
+sleep as he lay there. His brain burned and whirled, turning over the
+happenings of the night and their consequences, likely and unlikely. The
+package of opal lay heavy in his pocket. He took it out and dropped it
+into a box of books at the end of the room.</p>
+
+<p>He did not like what he had done, and yet he was glad he had done it.
+When he could see more clearly, he was glad, too, that he had grasped
+this opportunity to control circumstances. A reader and dreamer all his
+days, he had begun to be doubtful of his own capacity for action. He
+could think and plan, but he doubted whether he had strength of will to
+carry out purposes he had dreamed a long time over. He was pleased, in
+an odd, fierce way, that he had been able to do what he thought should
+be done.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want them.... I don't want the cursed stones," he argued
+with himself. "I'll give them to him&mdash;to Paul, as soon as I know what
+ought to be done about Sophie. She's not old enough to go yet&mdash;to know
+her own mind&mdash;what she wants to do. When she's older she can decide for
+herself. That's what her mother meant. She didn't mean for always ...
+only while she's a little girl. By and by, when she's a woman, Sophie
+can decide for herself. Now, she's got to stay here ... that's what I
+promised."</p>
+
+<p>"And Charley," he brooded. "He deserves all that's coming to him ... but
+I couldn't give him away. The boys would half kill him if they got their
+hands on to him. When will he find out? In the train, perhaps&mdash;or not
+till he gets to Sydney.... He'll have my fiver, and the stones to go on
+with&mdash;though they won't bring much. Still, they'll do to go on with....
+Paul'll be a raving lunatic when he knows ... but he can't go&mdash;he can't
+take Sophie away."</p>
+
+<p>His brain surged over and over every phrase: his state of mind since he
+had seen Charley and Paul on the road together; every argument he had
+used with himself. He could not get away from the double sense of
+disquiet and satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or two later he heard Charley moving about, then rush off down
+the track, sending the loose stones flying under his feet as he ran to
+catch the coach.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+
+<p>Watty was winding dirt, standing by the windlass on the top of the dump
+over his and his mates' mine, when he saw Paul coming along the track
+from the New Town. Paul was breaking into a run at every few yards, and
+calling out. Watty threw the mullock from his hide bucket as it came up,
+and lowered it again. He wound up another bucket. The creak of the
+windlass, and the fall of the stone and earth as he threw them over the
+dump, drowned the sound of Rouminof's voice. As he came nearer, Watty
+saw that he was gibbering with rage, and crying like a child.</p>
+
+<p>While he was still some distance away, Watty heard him sobbing and
+calling out.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped work to listen as Paul came to the foot of Michael's dump.
+Ted Cross, who was winding dirt on the top of Crosses' mine, stopped to
+listen too. Old Olsen got up from where he lay noodling on Jun's and
+Paul's claim, and went across to Paul. Snow-Shoes, stretched across the
+slope near where Watty was standing, lifted his head, his turning of
+earth with a little blunt stick arrested for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"They've took me stones!... Took me stones!" Watty heard Paul cry to
+Bill Olsen. And as he climbed the slope of Michael's dump he went on
+crying: "Took me stones! Took me stones! Charley and Jun! Gone by the
+coach! Michael!... They've gone by the coach and took me stones!"</p>
+
+<p>Over and over again he said the same thing in an incoherent wail and
+howl. He went down the shaft of Michael's mine, and Ted Cross came
+across from his dump to Watty.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear what he says, Watty?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Watty replied.</p>
+
+<p>"It gets y'r wind&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If it's true," Watty ventured slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to me it's true all right," Ted said. "Charley took him home last
+night. I went along with them as far as the turn-off. Paul was a bit on
+... and Archie asked me to keep an eye on him.... I was a bit on meself,
+too ... but Charley came along with us&mdash;so I thought he'd be all
+right.... Charley went off by the coach this morning.... Bill Olsen told
+me.... And Michael was reck'ning on him goin' to Warria to-day, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right!"</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be hard on Michael!"</p>
+
+<p>Watty's gesture, upward jerk of his chin, and gusty breath, denoted his
+agreement on that score.</p>
+
+<p>Ted went back to his own claim, and Watty slid down the rope with his
+next bucket to give his mates the news. It was nearly time to knock off
+for the midday meal, and before long men from all the claims were
+standing in groups hearing the story from Rouminof himself, or talking
+it over together.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had come up from his mine soon after Paul had gone down to him.
+The men had seen him go off down the track to the New Town, his head
+bent. They thought they knew why. Michael would feel his mate's
+dishonour as though it were his own. He would not be able to believe
+that what Paul said was true. He would want to know from Peter Newton
+himself if it was a fact that Charley had gone out on the coach with Jun
+and two girls who had been at the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Women were scarce on the opal fields, and the two girls who had come a
+week before to help Mrs. Newton with the work of the hotel had been
+having the time of their lives. Charley, Jun Johnson, and two or three
+other men, had been shouting drinks for them from the time of their
+arrival, and Mrs. Newton had made up her mind to send the girls back to
+town by the next coach. Jun had appropriated the younger of the two, a
+bright-eyed girl, and the elder, a full-bosomed, florid woman with
+straw-coloured hair, had, as the boys said, "taken a fancy to Charley."</p>
+
+<p>Paul had already told his story once or twice when Cash Wilson, George,
+and Watty, went across to where he was standing, with half a dozen of
+the men about him. They were listening gravely and smoking over Paul's
+recital. There had been ratting epidemics on the Ridge; but robbery of a
+mate by a mate had never occurred before. It struck at the fundamental
+principle of their life in common. There was no mistaking the grave,
+rather than indignant view men of the Ridge took of what Charley had
+done. The Ridge code affirmed simply that "a mate stands by a mate." The
+men say: "You can't go back on a mate." By those two recognitions they
+had run their settlement. Far from all the ordinary institutions of law
+and order, they had lived and worked together without need of them, by
+appreciation of their relationship to each other as mates and as a
+fraternity of mates. No one, who had lived under and seemed to accept
+the principle of mateship, had ever before done as Charley had done.</p>
+
+<p>"But Charley Heathfield was never one of us really," Ted Cross said. "He
+was always an outsider."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, Ted," George Woods replied. "We only stuck him on
+Michael's account."</p>
+
+<p>Paul told George, Watty, and Cash the story he had been going over all
+the morning&mdash;how he had gone home with Charley, how he remembered going
+along the road with him, and then how he had wakened on the floor of his
+own hut in the morning. Sophie was there. She was singing. He had
+thought it was her mother. He had called her ... but Sophie had come to
+him. And she had abused him. She had called him "a dirty, fat pig," and
+told him to get out of the way because she wanted to sweep the floor.</p>
+
+<p>He sobbed uncontrollably. The men sympathised with him. They knew the
+loss of opal came harder on Rouminof than it would have on the rest of
+them, because he was so mad about the stuff. They condoned the
+abandonment of his grief as natural enough in a foreigner, too; but
+after a while it irked them.</p>
+
+<p>"Take a pull at y'rself, Rummy, can't you?" George Woods said irritably.
+"What did Michael say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Michael?" Paul looked at him, his eyes streaming.</p>
+
+<p>George nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"He did not say," Paul replied. "He threw down his pick. He would not
+work any more ... and then he went down to Newton's to ask about
+Charley."</p>
+
+<p>Two or three of the men exchanged glances. That was the way they had
+expected Michael to take the news. He would not have believed Paul's
+story at first. They did not see Michael again that day. In the evening
+Peter Newton told them how Michael had come to him, asking if it was
+true Charley had gone on the coach with Jun Johnson and the girls. Peter
+told Michael, he said, that Charley had gone on the coach, and that he
+thought Rouminof's story looked black against Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael didn't say much," Peter explained, "but I don't think he could
+help seeing what I said was true&mdash;however much he didn't want to."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody knew Michael believed in Charley Heathfield. He had thought
+the worst that could be said of Charley was that he was a good-natured,
+rather shiftless fellow. All the men had responded to an odd attractive
+faculty Charley exercised occasionally. He had played it like a woman
+for Michael, and Michael had taken him on as a mate and worked with him
+when no one else would. And now, the men guessed, that Michael, who had
+done more than any of them to make the life of the Ridge what it was,
+would feel more deeply and bitterly than any of them that Charley had
+gone back on him and on what the Ridge stood for.</p>
+
+<p>All they imagined Michael was suffering in the grief and bitterness of
+spirit which come of misplaced faith, he was suffering. But they could
+not imagine the other considerations which had overshadowed grief and
+bitterness, the realisation that Sophie's life had been saved from what
+looked like early wreckage, and the consciousness that the consequences
+of what Charley had done, had fallen, not on Charley, but on himself.
+Michael had lived like a child, with an open heart at the disposal of
+his mates always; and the sense of Charley's guilt descending on him,
+had created a subtle ostracism, a remote alienation from them.</p>
+
+<p>He could not go to Newton's in the evening and talk things over with the
+men as he ordinarily would have. He wandered over the dumps of deserted
+rushes at the Old Town, his eyes on the ground or on the distant
+horizons. He could still only believe he had done the best thing
+possible under the circumstances. If he had let Charlie go away with the
+stones, Sophie would have been saved, but Paul would have lost his
+stones. As it was, Sophie was saved, and Paul had not lost his stones.
+And Michael could not have given Charley away. Charley had been his
+mate; they had worked together. The men might suspect, but they could
+not convict him of being what he was unless they knew what Michael knew.
+Charley had played on the affection, the simplicity of Michael's belief
+in him. He had used them, but Michael had still a lingering tenderness
+and sympathy for him. It was that which had made him put the one decent
+piece of opal he possessed into the parcel he had made up for Charley to
+take instead of Paul's stones. It was the first piece of good stuff he
+had found on the Ridge, and he had kept it as a mascot&mdash;something of a
+nest egg.</p>
+
+<p>Michael wondered at the fate which had sent him along the track just
+when Charley had taken Paul's stones. He was perplexed and impatient of
+it. There would have been no complication, no conflict and turmoil if
+only he had gone along the track a little later, or a little earlier.
+But there was no altering what had happened. He had to bear the
+responsibility of it. He had to meet the men, encounter the eyes of his
+mates as he had never done before, with a reservation from them. If he
+could give the stones to Paul at once, Michael knew he would disembarass
+himself of any sense of guilt. But he could not do that. He was afraid
+if Paul got possession of the opals again he would want to go away and
+take Sophie with him.</p>
+
+<p>Michael thought of taking Watty and George into his confidence, but to
+do so would necessitate explanations&mdash;explanations which involved
+talking of the promise he had made Sophie's mother and all that lay
+behind their relationship. He shrank from allowing even the sympathetic
+eyes of George and Watty to rest on what for him was wrapped in mystery
+and inexplicable reverence. Besides, they both had wives, and Watty was
+not permitted to know anything Mrs. Watty did not worm out of him sooner
+or later. Michael decided that if he could not keep his own confidence
+he could not expect anyone else to keep it. He must take the
+responsibility of what he had done, and of maintaining his position in
+respect to the opals until Sophie was older&mdash;old enough to do as she
+wished with her life.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked, gazing ahead, a hut formed itself out of the distance
+before him, and then the dark shapes of bark huts huddled against the
+white cliff of dumps at the Three Mile, under a starry sky. A glow came
+from the interior of one or two of the houses. A chime of laughter, and
+shredded fragments of talking drifted along in the clear air. Michael
+felt strangely alone and outcast, hearing them and knowing that he could
+not respond to their invitation.</p>
+
+<p>In any one of those huts a place would be eagerly made for him if he
+went into it; eyes would lighten with a smile; warm, kindly greetings
+would go to his heart. But the talk would all be of the stealing of
+Rouminof's opal, and of Charley and Jun, Michael knew. The people at the
+Three Mile would have seen the coach pass. They would be talking about
+it, about himself, and the girls who had driven away with Charley and
+Jun.</p>
+
+<p>Turning back, Michael walked again across the flat country towards the
+Ridge. He sat for a while on a log near the tank paddock. A drugging
+weariness permeated his body and brain, though his brain ticked
+ceaselessly. Now and again one or other of Rouminof's opals flashed and
+scintillated before him in the darkness, or moved off in starry flight
+before his tired gaze. He was vaguely disturbed by the vision of them.</p>
+
+<p>When he rose and went back towards the town, his feet dragged wearily.
+There was a strange lightness at the back of his head, and he wondered
+whether he were walking in the fields of heaven, and smiled to think of
+that. At least one good thing would come of it all, he told himself over
+and over again&mdash;Paul could not take Sophie away.</p>
+
+<p>The houses and stores of the New Town were all in darkness when he
+passed along the main street. Newton's was closed. There were no lights
+in Rouminof's or Charley's huts as he went to his own door. Then a low
+cry caught his ear. He listened, and went to the back door of Charley's
+hut. The cry rose again with shuddering gasps for breath. Michael stood
+in the doorway, listening. The sound came from the window. He went
+towards it, and found Potch lying there on the bunk with his face to the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>He had not heard Michael enter, and lay moaning brokenly. Michael had
+not thought of Potch since the people at Newton's told him that a few
+minutes, after the coach had gone Potch had come down to the hotel to
+cut wood and do odd jobs in the stable, as he usually did. Mrs. Newton
+said he stared at her, aghast, when she told him that his father had
+left on the coach. Then he had started off at a run, taking the short
+cut across country to the Three Mile.</p>
+
+<p>Michael put out his hand. He could not endure that crying.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of his voice, Potch was silent. After a second he struggled
+to his feet, and stood facing Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone, Michael!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"He might have taken you," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"Taken me!" Potch's exclamation did away with any idea Michael had that
+his son was grieving for Charley. "It wasn't that I minded&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Michael did not know what to say. Potch continued:</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as I knew, I went after him&mdash;thought I'd catch up the coach at
+the Three Mile, and I did. I told him he'd have to come back&mdash;or hand
+out that money. I saw you give it to him the other night and arrange
+about going to Warria.... Mr. Ventry pulled up. But <i>he</i> ... set the
+horses going again. I tried to stop them, but the sandy bay let out a
+kick and they went on again.... The swine!"</p>
+
+<p>Michael had never imagined this stolid son of Charley's could show such
+fire. He was trembling with rage and indignation. Michael rarely lost
+his temper, but the blood rushed to his head in response to Potch's
+story. Restraint was second nature with him, though, and he waited until
+his own and Potch's fury had ebbed.</p>
+
+<p>Then he moved to leave the hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael!"</p>
+
+<p>There was such breaking unbelief and joy in the cry. Michael turned and
+caught the boy's expression.</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming along with me, Potch," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch still stood regarding him with a dazed expression of worshipful
+homage and gratitude. Michael put out his hand, and Potch clasped it.</p>
+
+<p>"You and me," he said, "we both seem to be in the same boat, Potch....
+Neither of us has got a mate. I'll be wanting someone to work with now.
+We'd better be mates."</p>
+
+<p>They went out of the hut together.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+
+<p>Michael and Potch were at work next morning as soon as the first cuckoos
+were calling. Michael had been at the windlass for an hour or
+thereabouts, when Watty Frost, who was going along to his claim with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, saw Michael on the top of his
+dump, tossing mullock.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Michael working with?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant considered, and shook their heads, smoking
+thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>Snow-Shoes, where he lay sprawled across the slope of Crosses' dump,
+glanced up at them, and the nickering wisp of a smile went through his
+bright eyes. The three were standing at the foot of the dump before
+separating.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Michael got with him?" Pony-Fence inquired, looking at
+Snow-Shoes.</p>
+
+<p>But the old man had turned his eyes back to the dump and was raking the
+earth with his stick again, as if he had not heard what was said. No one
+was deafer than Snow-Shoes when he did not want to hear.</p>
+
+<p>Watty watched Michael as he bent over the windlass, his lean, slight
+figure cut against the clear azure of the morning sky.</p>
+
+<p>"It's to be hoped he's got a decent mate this time&mdash;that's all," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Pony-Fence and Bully were going off to their own claim when Potch came
+up on the rope and stood by the windlass while Michael went down into
+the mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" Watty gasped, "if that don't beat cock-fighting!"</p>
+
+<p>Bully swore sympathetically, and watched Potch set to work. The three
+watched him winding and throwing mullock from the hide buckets over the
+dump with the jerky energy of a new chum, although Potch had done odd
+jobs on the mines for a good many years. He had often taken his father's
+turn of winding dirt, and had managed to keep himself by doing all
+manner of scavenging in the township since he was quite a little chap,
+but no one had taken him on as a mate till now. He was a big fellow,
+too, Potch, seventeen or eighteen; and as they looked at him Watty and
+Pony-Fence realised it was time someone gave Potch a chance on the
+mines, although after the way his father had behaved Michael was about
+the last person who might have been expected to give him that
+chance&mdash;much less take him on as mate. Like father, like son, was one of
+those superstitions Ridge folk had not quite got away from, and the men
+who saw Potch working on Michael's mine wondered that, having been let
+down by the father as badly as Charley had let Michael down, Michael
+could still work with Potch, and give him the confidence a mate was
+entitled to. But there was no piece of quixotism they did not think
+Michael capable of. The very forlornness of Potch's position on the
+Ridge, and because he would have to face out and live down the fact of
+being Charley Heathfield's son, were recognised as most likely Michael's
+reasons for taking Potch on to work with him.</p>
+
+<p>Watty and Pony-Fence appreciated Michael's move and the point of view it
+indicated. They knew men of the Ridge would endorse it and take Potch on
+his merits. But being Charley's son, Potch would have to prove those
+merits. They knew, too, that what Michael had done would help him to
+tide over the first days of shame and difficulty as nothing else could
+have, and it would start Potch on a better track in life than his father
+had ever given him.</p>
+
+<p>Bully had already gone off to his claim when Watty and Pony-Fence
+separated. Watty broke the news to his mates when he joined them
+underground.</p>
+
+<p>"Who do y' think's Michael's new mate?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>George Woods rested on his pick.</p>
+
+<p>Cash looked up from the corner where he was crouched working a streak of
+green-fired stone from the red floor and lower wall of the mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch!" Watty threw out as George and Cash waited for the information.</p>
+
+<p>George swept the sweat from his forehead with a broad, steady gesture.
+"He was bound to do something nobody else'd 've thought of, Michael!" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Watty replied. "Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant were
+saying," he went on, "he's had a pretty hard time, Potch, and it was
+about up to somebody to give him a leg-up ... some sort of a start in
+life. He may be all right ... on the other hand, there may not be much
+to him...."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right!" Cash muttered, beginning to work again.</p>
+
+<p>"But I reck'n he's all right, Potch." George swung his pick again. His
+blows echoed in the mine as they shattered the hard stone he was working
+on.</p>
+
+<p>Watty crawled off through a drive he was gouging in.</p>
+
+<p>At midday Michael and Charley had always eaten their lunches in the
+shelter where George Woods, Watty, and Cash Wilson ate theirs and
+noodled their opal. They wondered whether Michael would join them this
+day. He strolled over to the shelter with Potch beside him as Watty and
+Cash, with a billy of steaming tea on a stick between them, came from
+the open fire built round with stones, a few yards from the mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch and me's mates," Michael explained to George as he sat down and
+spread out his lunch, his smile whimsical and serene over the
+information. "But we're lookin' for a third to the company. I reck'n a
+lot of you chaps' luck is working on three. It's a lucky number, three,
+they say."</p>
+
+<p>Potch sat down beside him on the outer edge of the shelter's scrap of
+shade.</p>
+
+<p>"See you get one not afraid to do a bit of work, next time&mdash;that's all I
+say," Watty growled.</p>
+
+<p>The blood oozed slowly over Potch's heavy, quiet face. Nothing more was
+said of Charley, but the men who saw his face realised that Potch was
+not the insensible youth they had imagined.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had watched him when they were below ground, and was surprised
+at the way Potch set about his work. He had taken up his father's
+gouging pick and spider as if he had been used to take them every day,
+and he had set to work where Charley had left off. All the morning he
+hewed at a face of honeycombed sandstone, his face tense with
+concentration of energy, the sweat glistening on it as though it were
+oiled under the light of a candle in his spider, stuck in the red earth
+above him. Michael himself swung his pick in leisurely fashion, crumbled
+dirt, and knocked off for a smoke now and then.</p>
+
+<p>"Easy does it, Potch," he remarked, watching the boy's steady slogging.
+"We've got no reason to bust ourselves in this mine."</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock they put their tools back against the wall and went
+above ground. Michael fell in with the Crosses, who were noodling two or
+three good-looking pieces of opal Archie had taken out during the
+afternoon, and Potch streaked away through the scrub in the direction of
+the Old Town.</p>
+
+<p>Michael wondered where he was going. There was a purposeful hunch about
+his shoulders as if he had a definite goal in view. Michael had intended
+asking his new mate to go down to the New Town and get the meat for
+their tea, but he went himself after he had yarned with Archie and Ted
+Cross for a while.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to the hut, Potch was not there. Michael made a fire,
+unwrapped his steak, hung it on a hook over the fire, and spread out the
+pannikins, tin plates and knives and forks for his meal, putting a plate
+and pannikin for Potch. He was kneeling before the fire giving the steak
+a turn when Potch came in. Potch stood in the doorway, looking at
+Michael as doubtfully as a stray kitten which did not know whether it
+might enter.</p>
+
+<p>"That you, Potch?" Michael called.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael got up from the fire and carried the grilled steak on a plate to
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you were nearly late for dinner," he remarked, as he cut the
+steak in half and put a piece on the other plate for Potch. "You better
+come along and tuck in now ... there's a great old crowd down at
+Nancarrow's this evening. First time for nearly a month he's killed a
+beast, and everybody wants a bit of steak. Sam gave me this as a sort of
+treat; and it smells good."</p>
+
+<p>Potch came into the kitchen and sat on the box Michael had drawn up to
+the table for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Been bringing in the goats for Sophie," he jerked out, looking at
+Michael as if there were some need of explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that was it, was it?" Michael replied, getting on with his meal.
+"Thought you'd flitted!"</p>
+
+<p>Potch met his smile with a shadowy one. A big, clumsy-looking fellow,
+with a dull, colourless face and dingy hair, he sat facing Michael, his
+eyes anxious, as though he would like to explain further, but was afraid
+to, or could not find words. His eyes were beautiful; but they were his
+father's eyes, and Michael recoiled to qualms of misgiving, a faint
+distrust, as he looked in them.</p>
+
+<p>It was Ed. Ventry, however, who gave Potch his first claim to the
+respect of men of the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>"How's that boy of Charley Heathfield's?" was his first question when
+the coach came in from Budda, the following week.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Newton said. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was near killed," Mr. Ventry replied. "Stopped us up at the Three
+Mile that morning I was taking Charley and Jun down. He was all for
+Charley stopping ... getting off the coach or something. I didn't get
+what it was all about&mdash;money Charley'd got from Michael, I think. That's
+the worst of bein' a bit hard of hearin' ... and bein' battered about by
+that yaller-bay horse I bought at Warria couple of months ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Potch tried to stop Charley getting away, did he?" Newton asked with
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"He did," Ed. Ventry declared. "I pulled up, seein' something was wrong
+... but what does that god-damned blighter Charley do but give a lurch
+and grab me reins. Scared four months' growth out of the horses&mdash;and
+away they went. I'd a colt I was breakin' in on the off-side&mdash;and he
+landed Potch one&mdash;kicked him right out, I thought. As soon as I could, I
+pulled up, but I see Potch making off across the plain, and he didn't
+look like he was much hurt.... But it was a plucky thing he did, all
+right ... and it's the last time I'll drive Charley Heathfield. I told
+him straight. I'd as soon kill a man as not for putting a hand on me
+reins, like he done&mdash;on me own coach, too!"</p>
+
+<p>Snow-Shoes had drifted up to them as the coach stopped and Newton went
+out to it. He stood beside Peter Newton while Mr. Ventry talked, rolling
+tobacco. Snow-Shoes' eyes glimmered from one to the other of them when
+Ed. Ventry had given the reason for his inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch!" he murmured. "A little bit of potch!" And marched off down the
+road, a straight, stately white figure, on the bare track under the
+azure of the sky.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Give y' three," Watty said.</p>
+
+<p>"Take 'em." George Woods did not turn. He was carefully working round a
+brilliantly fired seam through black potch in the shin cracker he had
+been breaking through two or three days before.</p>
+
+<p>It was about lunch time, and Watty had crawled from his drive to the
+centre of the mine. Cash was still at work, crouched against a corner of
+the alley, a hundred yards or so from George; but he laid down his pick
+when he heard Watty's voice, and went towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"Who d'you think Michael's got as third man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Snow-Shoes?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Old Bill Olsen?"</p>
+
+<p>Watty could not contain himself to the third guess.</p>
+
+<p>"Rum-Enough!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"He would." George chipped at the stone round his colour. "It was bound
+to be a lame dog, anyhow&mdash;and it might as well've been Rummy as
+anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Cash conceded.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Andrews told me," Watty said. "They've just broke through on the
+other side of that drive I'm in...."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be all right," he went on, "if Paul'd work for Michael like he
+did for Jun. But is Michael the man to make him? Not by long chalks.
+Potch is turning out all right, the boys say.... Michael says he works
+like a chow ... has to make him put in the peg ... but they'll both be
+havin' Rum-Enough on their hands before long&mdash;that's a sure thing."</p>
+
+<p>Watty's, George's, and Cash's mine was one of the best worked and best
+planned on the fields.</p>
+
+<p>Watty and Cash inspected the streak George was working, and speculated
+as to what it would yield. George leaned his pick against the wall,
+eager, too, about the chances of what the thread of fire glittering in
+the black potch would lead to. But he was proud of the mine as well as
+the stone it had produced. It represented the first attempt to work a
+claim systematically on the Ridge. George himself had planned and
+prospected every inch of it; and before he went above ground for the
+midday meal, he glanced about it as usual, affirming his pride and
+satisfaction; but his eyes fell on the broken white stone about his
+pitch.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as we get her out, I'll shift that stuff," he said.</p>
+
+<p>When they went up for their meal, Michael did not join Watty, George,
+and Cash as usual. He spread out his lunch and sat with Paul and Potch
+in the shade of some wilgas beside his own mine. He knew that Rouminof
+would not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter, and that Paul and
+Potch would bring a certain reserve to the discussions of Ridge affairs
+which took place there.</p>
+
+<p>Potch saw Michael's eyes wander to where George was sitting yarning with
+his mates. He knew Michael would rather have been over there; and yet
+Michael seemed pleased to have got his own mine in working order again.
+He talked over ways of developing it with Paul, asking his opinion, and
+explaining why he believed the claim was good enough to stick to for a
+while longer, although very little valuable stone had come out of it.
+Potch wondered why his eyes rested on Paul with that faint smile of
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>The Ridge discussed Michael and his new partnership backwards and forth,
+and back again. Michael knew that, and was as amused as the rest of the
+Ridge at the company he was keeping. Although he sat with his own mates
+at midday, he was as often as not with the crowd under Newton's veranda
+in the evening, discussing and settling the affairs of the Ridge and of
+the universe. After a while he was more like his old self than he had
+been for a long time&mdash;since Mrs. Rouminof's death&mdash;people said, when
+they saw him going about again with a quiet smile and whimsical twist to
+his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The gossips had talked a good deal about Michael and Mrs. Rouminof, but
+neither she nor he had bothered their heads about the gossips.</p>
+
+<p>Michael and Mrs. Rouminof had often been seen standing and talking
+together when she was going home from the New Town with stores, or when
+Michael was coming in from his hut. He had usually walked back along the
+road with her, she for the most part, if it was in the evening, with no
+hat on; he smoking the stubby black pipe that was rarely out of his
+mouth. There was something in the way Mrs. Rouminof walked beside
+Michael, in the way her hair blew out in tiny strands curling in the
+wind and taking stray glints of light, in the way she smiled with a
+vague underlying sweetness when she looked at Michael; there was
+something in the way Michael slouched and smoked beside Mrs. Rouminof,
+too, which made their meeting look more than any mere ordinary talking
+and walking home together of two people. That was what Mrs. Watty Frost
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Watty believed it was her duty in life to maintain the prejudices
+of respectable society in Fallen Star township. She had a constitutional
+respect for authority in whatever form it manifested itself. She stood
+for washing on Monday, spring-cleaning, keeping herself to herself, and
+uncompromising hostility to anything in the shape of a new idea which
+threatened the old order of domesticity on the Ridge. And she let
+everybody know it. She never went into the one street of the township
+even at night without a hat on, and wore gloves whenever she walked
+abroad. A little woman, with a mean, sour face, wrinkled like a walnut,
+and small, bead-bright eyes, Mrs. Watty was one of those women who are
+all energy and have no children to absorb their energies. She put all
+her energy into resentment of the Ridge and the conditions Watty had
+settled down to so comfortably and happily. She sighed for shops and a
+suburb of Sydney, and repeatedly told Watty how nice it would be to have
+a little milk shop near Sydney like her father and mother had had.</p>
+
+<p>But Watty would not hear of the milk shop. He loved the Ridge, and the
+milk shop was an evergreen bone of contention between him and his wife.
+The only peace he ever got was when Mrs. Watty went away to Sydney for a
+holiday, or he went with her, because she would rarely go away without
+him. She could not be happy without Watty, people said. She had no one
+to growl to and let off her irritation about things in general at, if he
+were not there. Watty grew fat, and was always whistling cheerily,
+nevertheless. Mrs. Watty cooked like an archangel, he said; and, to give
+her her due, the men admitted that although she had never pretended to
+approve of the life they led, Mrs. Watty had been a good wife to Watty.</p>
+
+<p>But everybody, even Mrs. Watty, was as pleased as if a little fortune
+had come to them, when, towards the end of their first week, Michael and
+his company came on a patch of good stone. Michael struck it, following
+the lead he had been working for some time, and, although not wonderful
+in colour or quality, the opal cut out at about ten ounces and brought
+£3 an ounce. Michael was able to wipe out some of his grocery score, so
+was Paul, and Potch had money to burn.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was very pleased with himself about it. The men began to call him a
+mascot and to say he had brought Michael luck, as he had Jun Johnson.
+There was no saying how the fortunes of the new partnership might
+flourish, if he stuck to it. Paul, responding to the expressions of
+goodwill and the inspiration of being on opal, put all his childish and
+bullocky energy into working with Michael and Potch.</p>
+
+<p>He still told everybody who would listen to him the story of the
+wonderful stones he had found when he was working with Jun, and how they
+had been stolen from him. They grew in number, value, and size every
+time he spoke of them. And he wailed over what he had been going to do,
+and what selling the stones would have meant to him and to Sophie. But
+the partnership was working better than anybody had expected, and people
+began to wonder whether, after all, Michael had done so badly for
+himself with his brace of dead-beat mates.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>In a few weeks thought of the robbery had ceased greatly to disturb
+anybody. Michael settled down to working with his new mates, and the
+Ridge accepted the new partnership as the most natural thing in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Life on the Ridge is usually as still as an inland lake. The settlement
+is just that, a lake of life, in the country of wide plains stretching
+westwards for hundreds on hundreds of miles, broken only by shingly
+ridges to the sea, and eastwards, through pastoral districts, to the
+coastal ranges, and the seaboard with its busy towns, ports, and cities.</p>
+
+<p>In summer the plains are dead and dry; in a drought, deserts. The great
+coolebahs standing with their feet in the river ways are green, and
+scatter tattered shade. Their small, round leaves flash like mirrors in
+the sun, and when the river water vanishes from about their feet, they
+hold themselves in the sandy shallow bed of the rivers as if waiting
+with imperturbable faith for the return of the waters. The surface of
+the dry earth cracks. There are huge fissures where the water lay in
+clayey hollows during the winter and spring. Along the stock routes and
+beside the empty water-holes, sheep and cattle lie rotting. Their
+carcasses, disembowelled by the crows, put an odour of putrefaction in
+the air. The sky burns iron-grey with heat. The dust rises in heavy
+reddish mist about stockmen or cattle on the roads.</p>
+
+<p>But after the rains, in the winter or spring of a good season, the seeds
+break sheath in a few hours; they sprout over-night, and a green mantle
+is flung over the old earth which a few days before was as dead and dry
+as a desert. In a little time the country is a flowering wilderness.
+Trefoil, crow's-foot, clover, mallow, and wild mustard riot, tangling
+and interweaving. The cattle browse through them lazily; stringing out
+across the flowering fields, they look in the distance no more than
+droves of mice; their red and black backs alone are visible above the
+herbage. In places, wild candytuft in blossom spreads a quilt of palest
+lavender in every direction on a wide circling horizon. Darling pea, the
+colour of violets and smelling like them, threads through the candytuft
+and lies in wedges, magenta and dark purple against the sky-line, a
+hundred miles farther on. The sky is a wash of pale, exquisite blue,
+which deepens as it rises to the zenith. The herbage glows beneath it,
+so clear and pure is the light.</p>
+
+<p>Farther inland, for miles, bachelor's buttons paint the earth raw gold.
+Not a hair's breadth of colour shows on the plains except the dull red
+of the road winding through them and the blue of the sky overhead. Paper
+daisies fringe the gold, and then they lie, white as snow, for miles,
+under the bare blue sky. Sometimes the magenta, purple, lavender, gold
+and white of the herbage and wild flowers merge and mingle, and a
+tapestry of incomparable beauty&mdash;a masterpiece of the Immortals&mdash;is
+wrought on the bare earth.</p>
+
+<p>During the spring and early summer of a good season, the air is filled
+with the wild, thymey odour of herbs, and the dry, musky fragrance of
+paper daisies. The crying of lambs, the baa-ing of ewes, and the piping
+of mud-larks&mdash;their thin, silvery notes&mdash;go through the clear air and
+are lost over the flowering land and against the blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>Winter is rarely more than a season of rains on the Ridge. Cold winds
+blow from the inland plains for a week or two. There are nights of frost
+and sparkling stars. People shiver and crouch over their fires; but the
+days have rarely more than a fresh tang in the air.</p>
+
+<p>The rains as often as not are followed by floods. After a few days'
+steady downpour, the shallow rivers and creeks on the plains overflow,
+and their waters stretch out over the plains for thirteen, fourteen, and
+sometimes twenty miles. Fords become impassable; bridges are washed
+away. Fallen Star Ridge is cut off from the rest of the world until the
+flood waters have soaked into the earth, as they do after a few days,
+and the coach can take to the road again.</p>
+
+<p>As spring passes into summer, the warmth of the sunshine loses its
+mildness, and settles to a heavy taciturnity. The light, losing its
+delicate brilliance, becomes a bared sword-blade striking the eyes.
+Everything shrinks from the full gaze and blaze of the sun. Eyes ache,
+the brain reels with the glare; mirages dance on the limitless horizons.
+The scorched herbage falls into dust; water is drawn off from rivers and
+water-holes. All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of
+iron.</p>
+
+<p>Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the
+glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the
+other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze
+of a dust storm.</p>
+
+<p>Ridge folk take the heat as primitive people do most acts of God, as a
+matter of course, with stiff-lipped hardihood, which makes complaint the
+manifestation of a poor spirit. They meet their difficulties with a
+native humour which gives zest to flagging energies. Their houses, with
+roofs whitened to throw off the heat, the dumps of crumbling white clay,
+and the iron roofs of the billiard parlour, the hotel, and Watty Frost's
+new house at the end of the town, shimmer in the intense light. At a
+little distance they seem all quivering and dancing together.</p>
+
+<p>Men like Michael, the Crosses, George Woods, Watty, and women like
+Maggie Grant and Martha M'Cready, who had been on the Ridge a long time,
+become inured to the heat. At least, they say that they "do not mind
+it." No one hears a growl out of them, even when water is scarce and
+flies and mosquitoes a plague. Their good spirits and grit keep the
+community going through a trying summer. But even they raise their faces
+to heaven when an unexpected shower comes, or autumn rains fall a little
+earlier than usual.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days, before stations were fenced, Bill M'Gaffy, a Warria
+shepherd, grazing flocks on the plains, declared he had seen a star fall
+on the Ridge. When he went into the station he showed the scraps of marl
+and dark metallic stone he had picked up near where the star had fallen,
+to James Henty, who had taken up Warria Station. The Ridge lay within
+its boundary. James Henty had turned them over curiously, and surmised
+that some meteoric stone had fallen on the Ridge. The place had always
+been called Fallen Star Ridge after that; but opal was not found there,
+and it did not begin to be known as the black opal field until several
+years later.</p>
+
+<p>In the first days of the rush to the Ridge, men of restless, reckless
+temperament had foregathered at the Old Town. There had been wild nights
+at the shanty. But the wilder spirits soon drifted away to Pigeon Creek
+and the sapphire mines, and the sober and more serious of the miners had
+settled to life on the new fields.</p>
+
+<p>The first gathering of huts on the clay pan below the Ridge was known as
+the Old Town; but it had been flooded so often, that, after people had
+been washed out of their homes, and had been forced to take to the Ridge
+for safety two or three times, it was decided to move the site of the
+township to the brow of the Ridge, above the range of the flood waters
+and near the new rush, where the most important mines on the field
+promised to be.</p>
+
+<p>A year or two ago, a score or so of bark and bag huts were ranged on
+either side of the wide, unmade road space overgrown with herbage, and a
+smithy, a weather-board hotel with roof of corrugated iron, a billiard
+parlour, and a couple of stores, comprised the New Town. A wild cherry
+tree, gnarled and ancient, which had been left in the middle of the road
+near the hotel, bore the news of the district and public notices, nailed
+to it on sheets of paper. A little below the hotel, on the same side,
+Chassy Robb's store served as post-office, and the nearest approach to a
+medicine shop in the township. Opposite was the Afghan's emporium. And
+behind the stores and the miners' huts, everywhere, were the dumps
+thrown up from mines and old rushes.</p>
+
+<p>There was no police station nearer than fifty miles, and although
+telegraph now links the New Town with Budda, the railway town,
+communication with it for a long time was only by coach once or twice a
+week; and even now all the fetching and carrying is done by a four or
+six horse-coach and bullock-wagons. The community to all intents and
+purposes governs itself according to popular custom and popular opinion,
+the seat of government being Newton's big, earthen-floored bar, or the
+brushwood shelters near the mines in which the men sit at midday to eat
+their lunches and noodle&mdash;, go over, snip, and examine&mdash;the opal they
+have taken out of the mines during the morning.</p>
+
+<p>They hold their blocks of land by miner's right, and their houses are
+their own. They formally recognise that they are citizens of the
+Commonwealth and of the State of New South Wales, by voting at elections
+and by accepting the Federal postal service. Some few of them, as well
+as Newton and the storekeepers, pay income tax as compensation for those
+privileges; but beyond that the Ridge lives its own life, and the
+enactments of external authority are respected or disregarded as best
+pleases it.</p>
+
+<p>A sober, easy-going crowd, the Ridge miners do not trouble themselves
+much about law. They have little need of it. They live in accord with
+certain fundamental instincts, on terms of good fellowship with each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"To go back on a mate," is recognised as the major crime of the Ridge
+code.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, during a rush, the wilder spirits who roam from one mining
+camp to another in the back-country, drift back, and "hit things up" on
+the Ridge, as the men say. But they soon drift away again. Sometimes, if
+one of them strikes a good patch of opal and outstays his kind, as often
+as not he sinks into the Ridge life, absorbs Ridge ways and ideas, and
+is accepted into the fellowship of men of the Ridge. There is no
+formality about the acceptance. It just happens naturally, that if a man
+identifies himself with the Ridge principle of mateship, and will stand
+by it as it will stand by him, he is recognised by Ridge men as one of
+themselves. But if his ways and ideas savour of those the Ridge has
+broken from, he remains an outsider, whatever good terms he may seem to
+be on with everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a rush leaves a shiftless ne'er-do-well or two for the Ridge
+to reckon with, but even these rarely disregard the Ridge code. If
+claims are ratted it is said there are strangers about, and the miners
+deal with rats according to their own ideas of justice. On the last
+occasion it was applied, this justice had proved so effectual that there
+had been no repetition of the offence.</p>
+
+<p>Ridge miners find happiness in the sense of being free men. They are
+satisfied in their own minds that it is not good for a man to work all
+day at any mechanical toil; to use himself or allow anyone else to use
+him like a working bullock. A man must have time to think, leisure to
+enjoy being alive, they say. Is he alive only to work? To sleep worn out
+with toil, and work again? It is not good enough, Ridge men say. They
+have agreed between themselves that it is a fair thing to begin work
+about 6.30 or 7 o'clock and knock off about four, with a couple of hours
+above ground at noon for lunch&mdash;a snack of bread and cheese and a cup of
+tea.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock they come up from the mines, noodle their opal, put on
+their coats, smoke and yarn, and saunter down to the town and their
+homes. And it is this leisure end of the day which has given life on the
+Ridge its tone of peace and quiet happiness, and has made Ridge miners
+the thoughtful, well-informed men most of them are.</p>
+
+<p>To a man they have decided against allowing any wealthy man or body of
+wealthy men forming themselves into a company to buy up the mines, put
+the men on a weekly wage, and work them, as the opal blocks at Chalk
+Cliffs had been worked. There might be more money in it, there would be
+a steadier means of livelihood; but the Ridge miners will not hear of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"No," they say; "we'll put up with less money&mdash;and be our own masters."</p>
+
+<p>Most of them worked on Chalk Cliffs' opal blocks, and they realised in
+the early days of the new field the difference between the conditions
+they had lived and worked under on the Cliffs and were living and
+working under on the Ridge, where every man was the proprietor of his
+own energies, worked as long as he liked, and was entitled to the full
+benefit of his labour. They had yarned over these differences of
+conditions at midday in the shelters beside the mines, discussed them in
+the long evenings at Newton's, and without any committees, documents, or
+bond&mdash;except the common interest of the individual and of the
+fraternity&mdash;had come to the conclusion that at all costs they were going
+to remain masters of their own mines.</p>
+
+<p>Common thought and common experience were responsible for that
+recognition of economic independence as the first value of their new
+life together. Michael Brady had stood for it from the earliest days of
+the settlement. He had pointed out that the only things which could give
+joy in life, men might have on the Ridge, if they were satisfied to find
+their joy in these things, and not look for it in enjoyment of the
+superficial luxuries money could provide. Most of the real sources of
+joy were every man's inheritance, but conditions of work, which wrung
+him of energy and spirit, deprived him of leisure to enjoy them until he
+was too weary to do more than sleep or seek the stimulus of alcohol.
+Besides, these conditions recruited him with the merest subsistence for
+his pains, very often&mdash;did not even guarantee that&mdash;and denied him the
+capacity to appreciate the real sources of joy. But the beauty of the
+world, the sky, and the stars, spring, summer, the grass, and the birds,
+were for every man, Michael said. Any and every man could have immortal
+happiness by hearing a bird sing, by gazing into the blue-dark depths of
+the sky on a starry night. No man could sell his joy of these things. No
+man could buy them. Love is for all men: no man can buy or sell love.
+Pleasure in work, in jolly gatherings with friends, peace at the end of
+the day, and satisfaction of his natural hungers, a man might have all
+these things on the Ridge, if he were content with essentials.</p>
+
+<p>Ridge miners' live fearlessly, with the magic of adventure in their
+daily lives, the prospect of one day finding the great stone which is
+the grail of every opal-miner's quest. They are satisfied if they get
+enough opal to make a parcel for a buyer when he puts up for a night or
+two at Newton's. A young man who sells good stones usually goes off to
+Sydney to discover what life in other parts of the world is like, and to
+take a draught of the gay life of cities. A married man gives his wife
+and children a trip to the seaside or a holiday in town. But all drift
+back to the Ridge when the taste of city life has begun to cloy, or when
+all their money is spent. Once an opal miner, always an opal miner, the
+Ridge folk say.</p>
+
+<p>Among the men, only the shiftless and more worthless are not in sympathy
+with Ridge ideas, and talk of money and what money will buy as the
+things of first value in life. They describe the Fallen Star township as
+a God-forsaken hole, and promise each other, as soon as their luck has
+turned, they will leave it for ever, and have the time of their lives in
+Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Women like Maggie Grant share their husband's minds. They read what the
+men read, have the men's vision, and hold it with jealous enthusiasm.
+Others, women used to the rough and simple existence of the
+back-country, are satisfied with the life which gives them a husband,
+home, and children. Those who sympathise with Mrs. Watty Frost regard
+the men's attitude as more than half cussedness, sheer selfishness or
+stick-in-the-mudness; and the more worthy and respectable they are, the
+more they fret and fume at the earthen floors and open hearths of the
+bark and bagging huts they live in, and pine for all the kick-shaws of
+suburban villas. The discontented women are a minority, nevertheless.
+Ridge folk as a whole have set their compass and steer the course of
+their lives with unconscious philosophy, and yet a profound conviction
+as to the rightness of what they are doing.</p>
+
+<p>And the Ridge, which bears them, stands serenely under blue skies the
+year long, rising like a backbone from the plains that stretch for
+hundreds of miles on either side. A wide, dusty road crosses the plains.
+The huts of the Three Mile and Fallen Star crouch beside it, and
+everywhere on the rusty, shingle-strewn slopes of the Ridge, are the
+holes and thrown-up heaps of white and raddled clay or broken
+sandstone&mdash;traces of the search for that "ecstasy in the heart of
+gloom," black opal, which the Fallen Star earth holds.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+
+<p>Darling pea was lying in purple and magenta patches through the long
+grass on the tank paddock when Sophie went with Ella and Mirry Flail to
+gather wild flowers there.</p>
+
+<p>Wild flowers did not grow anywhere on Fallen Star as they did in the
+tank paddock. It was almost a place of faery to children of the Ridge.
+The little ones were not allowed to go there by themselves for fear they
+might fall into the waterhole which lay like a great square lake in the
+middle of it, its steep, well-set-up banks of yellow clay, ruled with
+the precision of a diagram in geometry. The water was almost as yellow
+as the banks, thick and muddy looking; but it was good water, nothing on
+earth the matter with it when you had boiled it and the sediment had
+been allowed to settle, everybody on Fallen Star Ridge was prepared to
+swear. It had to be drawn up by a pump which was worked by a donkey
+engine, Sam Nancarrow, and his old fat roan draught mare, and carted to
+the township when rain-water in the iron tanks beside the houses in
+Fallen Star gave out.</p>
+
+<p>During a dry season, or a very hot summer, all hands turned out to roof
+the paddock tank with tarpaulins to prevent evaporation as far as
+possible and so conserve the township's water supply. On a placard
+facing the roadway a "severe penalty" was promised to anyone using it
+without permission or making improper use of it.</p>
+
+<p>Ella and Mirry were gathering sago flower&mdash;"wild sweet Alice," as they
+called candytuft&mdash;yellow eye-bright, tiny pink starry flowers,
+bluebells, small lavender daisies, taller white ones, and yellow
+daisies, as well as Darling pea; but Sophie picked only long, trailing
+stalks of the pea. She had as many as she could hold when she sat down
+to arrange them into a tighter bunch.</p>
+
+<p>Mirry and Ella Flail had always been good friends of Sophie's. Potch and
+she had often gone on excursions with them, or to the swamp to cart
+water when it was scarce and very dear in the township. And since Potch
+had gone to work Sophie had no one to go about with but Mirry and Ella.
+She pleased their mother by trying to teach them to read and write, and
+they went noodling together, or gathering wild flowers. Sophie was three
+or four years older than Mirry, who was the elder of the two Flails; she
+felt much older since her mother's death nearly a year ago, and in the
+black dress she had worn since then. She was just seventeen, and had put
+her hair up into a knot at the back of her head. That made her feel
+older, too. But she still liked to go for walks and wanderings with Ella
+and Mirry. They knew so much about the birds and flowers, the trees, and
+the ways of all the wild creatures: they were such wild creatures
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>They came running to her, crying excitedly, their hands filled with
+flowers, shedding them as they ran. Then, collapsing in the grass beside
+Sophie, Mirry rolled over on her back and gazed up into the sky. Ella,
+squatting on her thin, sunburnt little sticks of legs, was arranging her
+flowers and glancing every now and then at Sophie with shy, loving
+glances.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie wondered why she had nothing of her old joyous zest in their
+enterprises together. She used to be as wild and happy as Mirry and Ella
+on an afternoon like this. But there was something of the shy, wild
+spirit of a primitive people about Mirry and Ella, she remembered, some
+of their blood, too. One of their mother's people, it was said, had been
+a native of one of the river tribes.</p>
+
+<p>Mirry had her mother's beautiful dark eyes, almost green in the light,
+and freckled with hazel, and her pale, sallow skin. Ella, younger and
+shyer, was more like her father. Her skin was not any darker than
+Sophie's, and her eyes blue-grey, her features delicate, her hair
+golden-brown that glinted in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Sing to us, Sophie," Mirry said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie often sang to them when she and Ella and Mirry were out like
+this. As she sat with them, dreaming in the sunshine, she sang almost
+without any conscious effort; she just put up her chin, and the melodies
+poured from her. Hearing her voice, as it ran in ripples and eddies
+through the clear, warm air, hung and quivered and danced again,
+delighted her.</p>
+
+<p>Ella and Mirry listened in a trance of awe, reverence, and admiration.
+Sophie had a dim vision of them, wide-eyed and still, against the tall
+grass and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"My! You can sing, Sophie! Can't she, Ella?"</p>
+
+<p>Ella nodded, gazing at Sophie with eyes of worshipping love.</p>
+
+<p>"They say you're going away with your father ... and you're going to be
+a great singer, Sophie," Mirry said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Sophie murmured tranquilly, "I am."</p>
+
+<p>A bevy of black and brown birds flashed past them, flew in a wide
+half-circle across the paddock, and alighted on a dead tree beyond the
+fence.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, look!" Mirry started to her feet. "A happy family! I wonder, are
+the whole twelve there?"</p>
+
+<p>She counted the birds, which were calling to each other with little
+shrill cries.</p>
+
+<p>"They're all there!" she announced. "Twelve of them. Mother says in some
+parts they call them the twelve apostles. Sing again, Sophie," she
+begged.</p>
+
+<p>Ella smiled at Sophie. Her lips parted as though she would like to have
+said that, too; but only her eyes entreated, and she went on putting her
+flowers together.</p>
+
+<p>As she sang, Sophie watched a pair of butterflies, white with black
+lines and splashes of yellow and scarlet on their wings, hovering over
+the flowered field of the paddock. She was so lost in her singing and
+watching the butterflies, and the children were so intent listening to
+her, that they did not hear a horseman coming slowly towards them along
+the track. As he came up to them, Sophie's rippling notes broke and fell
+to earth. Ella saw him first, and was on her feet in an instant. Mirry
+and she, their wild instinct asserting itself, darted away and took
+cover behind the trunks of the nearest trees.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked after them, wondering whether she would follow them as she
+used to; but she felt older and more staid now than she had a year ago.
+She stood her ground, as the man, who was leading his horse, came to a
+standstill before her.</p>
+
+<p>She knew him well enough, Arthur Henty, the only son of old Henty of
+Warria Station. She had seen him riding behind cattle or sheep on the
+roads across the plains for years. Sometimes when Potch and she had met
+him riding across the Ridge, or at the swamp, he had stopped to talk to
+them. He had been at her mother's funeral, too; but as he stood before
+her this afternoon, Sophie seemed to be seeing him for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>A tall, slightly-built young man, in riding breeches and leggings, a
+worn coat, and as weathered a felt hat as any man on the Ridge wore, his
+clothes the colour of dust on the roads, he stood before her, smiling
+slightly. His face was dark in the shadow of his hat, but the whole of
+him, cut against the sunshine, had gilded outlines. And he seemed to be
+seeing Sophie for the first time, too. She had jumped up and drawn back
+from the track when the Flails ran away. He could not believe that this
+tall girl in the black dress was the queer, elfish-like girl he had seen
+running about the Ridge, bare-legged, with feet in goat-skin sandals,
+and in the cemetery on the Warria road, not much more than a year ago.
+Her elfish gaiety had deserted her. It was the black dress gave her face
+the warm pallor of ivory, he thought, made her look staider, and as if
+the sadness of all it symbolised had not left her. But her eyes,
+strange, beautiful eyes, the green and blue of opal, with black rings on
+the irises and great black pupils, had still the clear, unconscious gaze
+of youth; her lips the sweet, sucking curves of a child's.</p>
+
+<p>They stood so, smiling and staring at each other, a spell of silence on
+each.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had dropped half her flowers as she sprang up at the sound of
+someone approaching. She had clutched a few in one hand; the rest lay on
+the grass about her, her hat beside them. Henty's eyes went to the trees
+round which Mirry and Ella were peeping.</p>
+
+<p>"They're wild birds, aren't they?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie smiled. She liked the way his eyes narrowed to slits of sunshine
+as he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to sing, again?" he asked hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother's awfully fond of that stuff," Henty said, looking at the
+Darling pea Sophie had in her hand. "We haven't got any near the
+homestead. I came into the paddock to get some for her."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie held out her bunch.</p>
+
+<p>"Not all of it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I can get more," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He took the flowers, and his vague smile changed to one of shy and
+subtle understanding. Ella and Mirry found courage to join Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Potch?" Henty asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He's working with Michael," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he exclaimed, and stood before her awkwardly, not knowing what to
+talk about.</p>
+
+<p>He was still thinking how different she was to the little girl he had
+seen chasing goats on the Ridge no time before, and wondering what had
+changed her so quickly, when Sophie stooped to pick up her hat. Then he
+saw her short, dark hair twisted up into a knot at the back of her head.
+Feeling intuitively that he was looking at the knot she was so proud of,
+Sophie put on her hat quickly. A delicate colour moved on her neck and
+cheeks. Arthur Henty found himself looking into her suffused eyes and
+smiling at her smile of confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we must be going now," Sophie said, a little breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>Henty said that he was going into the New Town and would walk along part
+of the way with her. He tucked the flowers Sophie had given him into his
+saddle-bag, and she and the children turned down the track. Ella, having
+found her tongue, chattered eagerly. Arthur Henty strolled beside them,
+smoking, his reins over his arm. Mirry wanted to ride his horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody rides this horse but me," Henty said. "She'd throw you into the
+middle of next week."</p>
+
+<p>"I can ride," Mirry said; "ride like a flea, the boys say."</p>
+
+<p>She was used to straddling any pony or horse her brothers had in the
+yard, and they had a name as the best horse-breakers in the district.</p>
+
+<p>Henty laughed. "But you couldn't ride Beeswing," he said. "She doesn't
+let anybody but me ride her. You can sit on, if you like; she won't mind
+that so long as I've got hold of her."</p>
+
+<p>The stirrup was too high for Mirry to reach, so he picked her up and put
+her across the saddle. The mare shivered and shrank under the light
+shock of Mirry's landing upon her, but Arthur Henty talked to her and
+rubbed her head soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right ... all right, old girl," he muttered. "Think it was one
+of those stinging flies? But it isn't, you see. It's only Mirry Flail.
+She says she's a flea of a rider. But you'd learn her, wouldn't you, if
+you got off with her by yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>Ella giggled softly, peering at Mirry and Henty and at the beautiful
+golden-red chestnut he was leading. Ed. Ventry had put Sophie on his
+coach horses sometimes. He had let her go for a scamper with Potch on an
+old horse or a likely colt now and then; but she knew she did not ride
+well&mdash;not as Mirry rode.</p>
+
+<p>They walked along the dusty road together when they had left the tank
+paddock, Mirry chattering from Beeswing's back, Sophie, with Ella
+clinging to one hand, on the other side of Henty. But Mirry soon tired
+of riding a led horse at a snail's pace. When a sulphur-coloured
+butterfly fluttered for a few minutes over a wild tobacco plant, she
+slid from the saddle, on the far side, and was off over the plains to
+have another look at the butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>Ella was too shy or too frightened to get on the chestnut, even with
+Henty holding her bridle.</p>
+
+<p>"How about you, Sophie?" Arthur Henty asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie nodded, but before he could help her she had put her foot into
+the stirrup and swung into the saddle herself. Beeswing shivered again
+to the new, strange weight on her back. Henty held her, muttering
+soothingly. They went on again.</p>
+
+<p>After a while, with a shy glance, and as if to please him, Sophie began
+to sing, softly at first, so as not to startle the mare, and then
+letting her voice out so that it rippled as easily and naturally as a
+bird's. Henty, walking with a hand on the horse's bridle beside her,
+heard again the song she had been singing in the tank paddock.</p>
+
+<p>Ella was supposed to be carrying Sophie's flowers. She did not know she
+had dropped nearly half of them, and that they were lying in a trail all
+along the dusty road.</p>
+
+<p>Henty did not speak when Sophie had finished. His pipe had gone out, and
+he put it in his pocket. The stillness of her audience of two was so
+intense that to escape it Sophie went on singing, and the chestnut did
+not flinch. She went quietly to the pace of the song, as though she,
+too, were enjoying its rapture and tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>Then through the clear air came a rattle of wheels and jingle of
+harness. Mirry, running towards them from the other side of the road,
+called eagerly:</p>
+
+<p>"It's the coach.... Mr. Ventry's got six horses in, and a man with him!"</p>
+
+<p>Six horses indicated that a person of some importance was on board the
+coach. Henty drew the chestnut to one side as the coach approached. Mr.
+Ventry jerked his head in Henty's direction when he passed and saw
+Arthur Henty with the Flail children and Sophie. The stranger beside him
+eyed, with a faint smile of amusement, the cavalcade, the girl in the
+black dress on the fine chestnut horse, the children with the flowers,
+and the young man standing beside them. The man on the coach was a
+clean-shaved, well-groomed, rather good-looking man of forty, or
+thereabouts, and his clothes and appearance proclaimed him a man of the
+world beyond the Ridge. His smile and stare annoyed Henty.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mr. Armitage," Mirry said. "The young one. He's not as nice as the
+old man, my father says&mdash;and he doesn't know opal as well&mdash;but he gives
+a good price."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the curve of the road where one arm turns to the town
+and the other goes over the plains to Warria. Sophie slipped from the
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take the short cut here," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She stood looking at Arthur Henty for a moment, and in that moment Henty
+knew that she had sensed his thought. She had guessed he was afraid of
+having looked ridiculous trailing along the road with these children.
+Sophie turned away. The young Flails bounded after her. Henty could hear
+their laughter when he had ridden out some distance along the road.</p>
+
+<p>From the slope of a dump Sophie saw him&mdash;the chestnut and her rider
+loping into the sunset, and, looking after him, she finished her song.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Dear name forever nursed in my memory thou shalt be,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">For my heart first stirred to the delight of love for thee!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">My thoughts and my desire will always be, dear name, toward thee,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And my last breath will be for thee, dear name.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The long, sweet notes and rippled melody followed Arthur Henty over the
+plains in the quiet air of late afternoon. But the afternoon had been
+spoilt for him. He was self-conscious and ill at ease about it all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Mr. Armitage is up at Newton's!" Paul yelled to Michael, when he saw
+him at his back-door a few minutes after Sophie had given him the news.</p>
+
+<p>"Not the old man?" Michael inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"No, the young 'un."</p>
+
+<p>Word was quickly bruited over the fields that the American, one of the
+best buyers who came to the Ridge, had arrived by the evening coach. He
+invariably had a good deal of money to spend, and gave a better price
+than most of the local buyers.</p>
+
+<p>Dawe P. Armitage had visited Fallen Star Ridge from the first year of
+its existence as an opal field, and every year for years after that. But
+when he began to complain about aches and pains in his bones, which he
+refused to allow anybody to call rheumatism, and was assured he was well
+over seventy and that the long rail and sea journey from New York City
+to Fallen Star township were getting too much for him, he let his son,
+whom he had made a partner in his business, make the journey for him.
+John Lincoln Armitage had been going to the Ridge for two or three
+years, and although the men liked him well enough, he was not as popular
+with them as his father had been. And the old man, John Armitage said,
+although he was nearly crippled with rheumatism, still grudged him his
+yearly visit to the Ridge, and hated like poison letting anyone else do
+his opal-buying.</p>
+
+<p>Dawe Armitage had bought some of the best black opal found on the Ridge.
+He had been a hard man to deal with, but the men had a grudging
+admiration for him, a sort of fellow feeling of affection because of his
+oneness with them in a passion for black opal. A grim, sturdy old
+beggar, there was a certain quality about him, a gruff humour, sheer
+doggedness, strength of purpose, and dead honesty within his point of
+view, which kept an appreciative and kindly feeling for him in their
+hearts. They knew he had preyed on them; but he had done it bluntly,
+broadly, and in such an off-with-the-gloves-lads-style, that, after a
+good fight over a stone and price, they had sometimes given in to him
+for sheer amusement, and to let him have the satisfaction of thinking he
+had gained his point.</p>
+
+<p>Usually he set his price on a stone and would not budge from it. The
+gougers knew this, and if their price on a stone was not Dawe
+Armitage's, they did not waste breath on argument, except to draw the
+old boy and get some diversion from his way of playing them. If a man
+had a good stone and did not think anyone else was likely to give him
+his figure, sometimes he sold ten minutes before the coach Armitage was
+going down to town by, left Newton's. But, three or four times, when a
+stone had taken his fancy and a miner was obdurate, the old man, with
+his mind's eye full of the stone and the fires in its dazzling jet, had
+suddenly sent for it and its owner, paid his price, and pocketed the
+stone. He had wrapped up the gem, chuckling in defeat, and rejoicing to
+have it at any price. As a rule he made three or four times as much as
+he had given for opals he bought on the Ridge, but to Dawe Armitage the
+satisfaction of making money on a transaction was nothing like the joy
+of putting a coveted treasure into his wallet and driving off from
+Fallen Star with it.</p>
+
+<p>A gem merchant of considerable standing in the United States, Dawe
+Armitage's collection of opals was world famous. He had put black opal
+on the market, and had been the first to extol the splendour of the
+stones found on Fallen Star Ridge. So different they were from the opal
+found on Chalk Cliffs, or in any other part of the world, with the fires
+in jetty potch rather than in the clear or milky medium people were
+accustomed to, that at first timid and conventional souls were disturbed
+and repelled by them. "They felt," they said, "that there was something
+occultly evil about black opal." They had a curious fear and dread of
+the stones as talismans of evil. Dawe Armitage scattered the quakers
+like chaff with his scorn. They could not, he said, accept the
+magnificent pessimism of black opal. They would not rejoice with pagan
+abandonment in the beauty of those fires in black opal, realising that,
+like the fires of life, they owed their brilliance, their transcendental
+glory, to the dark setting. But every day the opals made worshippers of
+sightseers. They mesmerised beholders who came to look at them.</p>
+
+<p>When the coach rattled to a standstill outside the hotel, Peter Newton
+went to the door of the bar. He knew John Armitage by the size and shape
+of his dust-covered overalls. Armitage dismounted and pulled off his
+gloves. Peter Newton went to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage gripped his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mighty glad to see you, Newton," he said, "and glad to see the Ridge
+again. How are you all?"</p>
+
+<p>Newton smiled, giving him greeting in downright Ridge style.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine," he said. "Glad to see you, Mr. Armitage."</p>
+
+<p>When he got indoors, Armitage threw off his coat. He and Peter had a
+drink together, and then he went to have a wash and brush up before
+dinner. Mrs. Newton came from the kitchen; she was pleased to see Mr.
+Armitage, she said, and he shook hands with her and made her feel that
+he was really quite delighted to see her. She spent a busy hour or so
+making the best of her preparations for the evening meal, so that he
+might repeat his usual little compliments about her cooking. Armitage
+had his dinner in a small private sitting-room, and strolled out
+afterwards to the veranda to smoke and yarn with the men.</p>
+
+<p>He spent the evening with them there, and in the bar, hearing the news
+of the Ridge and gossiping genially. He had come all the way from Sydney
+the day before, spent the night in the train, and had no head for
+business that night, he said. When he yarned with them, Fallen Star men
+had a downright sense of liking John Armitage. He was a good sort, they
+told each other; they appreciated his way of talking, and laughed over
+the stories he told and the rare and racy Americanisms with which he
+flavoured his speech for their benefit.</p>
+
+<p>When he exerted himself to entertain and amuse them, they were as
+pleased with him as a pack of women. And John Lincoln Armitage pleased
+women, men of the Ridge guessed, the women of his own kind as well as
+the women of Fallen Star who had talked to him now and then. His eyes
+had a mild caress when they rested on a woman; it was not in the least
+offensive, but carried challenge and appeal&mdash;a suggestion of sympathy.
+He had a thousand little courtesies for women, the deference which comes
+naturally to "a man of the world" for a member of "the fair sex." Mrs.
+Newton was always flattered and delighted after a talk with him. He
+asked her advice about opals he had bought or was going to buy, and,
+although he did not make use of it very often, she was always pleased by
+his manner of asking. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Archie Cross both
+confessed to a partiality for Mr. Armitage, and even Mrs. Watty agreed
+that he was "a real nice man"; and when he was in the township Mrs.
+Henty and one of the girls usually drove over from the station and took
+him back to Warria to stay a day or two before he went back to Sydney on
+his return journey to New York.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage was very keen to know whether there had been any sensational
+finds on the Ridge during the year, and all about them. He wanted to
+know who had been getting good stuff, and said that he had bought Jun's
+stones in Sydney. The men exclaimed at that.</p>
+
+<p>"I was surprised to hear," John Armitage said, "what happened to the
+other parcel. You don't mean to say you think Charley Heathfield&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't tried him yet," Watty remarked cautiously, "but the evidence
+is all against him."</p>
+
+<p>Rouminof thrust himself forward, eager to tell his story. Realising the
+proud position he might have been in this night with the opal-buyer if
+he had had his opals, tears gathered in his eyes as he went over it all
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage listened intently.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of all the rotten luck!" he exclaimed, when Paul had finished.
+"Have another whisky, Rouminof? But what I can't make out," he added,
+"is why, if he had the stones, Charley didn't come to me with them.... I
+didn't buy anything but Jun's stuff before I came up here ... and he
+just said it was half the find he was showing me. Nice bit of pattern in
+that big black piece, eh? If Charley had the stones, you'd think he'd
+'ve come along to me, or got Jun, or somebody to come along for him...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that." George Woods felt for his reasons. "He
+wouldn't want you&mdash;or anybody else to know he'd got them."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Watty agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got them all right," Ted Cross declared. "You see, I seen him
+taking Rummy home that night&mdash;and he cleared out next morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you boys know best." John Armitage sipped his whisky
+thoughtfully. "But I'm mad to get the rest of the stones. Tell you the
+truth, the old man hasn't been too pleased with my buying lately ... and
+it would put him in no end of a good humour if I could take home with me
+another packet of gems like the one I got from Jun. Jun knew I was keen
+to get the stones ... and I can't help thinking ... if he knew they were
+about, he'd put me in the way of getting them ... or them in my
+way&mdash;somehow. You don't think ... anybody else could have been on the
+job, and ... put it over on Charley, say...."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes went over the faces of the men lounging against the bar, or
+standing in groups about him. Michael was lifting his glass to drink,
+and, for the fraction of a second the opal-buyer's glance wavered on his
+face before it passed on.</p>
+
+<p>"Not likely," George Woods said dryly.</p>
+
+<p>Recognising the disfavour his suggestion raised, Armitage brushed it
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so, of course," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And although he did not speak to him, or even look at him closely again,
+John Armitage was thinking all the evening of the quiver, slight as the
+tremor of a moth's wing, on Michael's face, when that inquiry had been
+thrown out.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+
+
+<p>Armitage was busy going over parcels of stone and bargaining with the
+men for the greater part of the next day. He was beginning to have more
+of Dawe Armitage's zest for the business; and, every time they met,
+Ridge men found him shrewder, keener. His manner was genial and
+easy-going with them; but there was a steel band in him somewhere, they
+were sure.</p>
+
+<p>The old man had been bluff, and as hard as nails; but they understood
+him better than his son. John Armitage, they knew, was only
+perfunctorily interested opal-buying at first; he had gone into it to
+please the old man, but gradually the thing had taken hold of him. He
+was not yet, however, anything like as good a judge of opal, and his
+last buying on the Ridge had displeased his father considerably. John
+Armitage had bought several parcels of good-looking opal; but one stone,
+which had cost £50 in the rough, was not worth £5 when it was cut. A
+grain of sand, Dawe Armitage swore he could have seen a mile away, went
+through it, and it cracked on the wheel. A couple of parcels had brought
+double what had been paid for them; but several stones John had given a
+good price for were not worth half the amount, his father had said.</p>
+
+<p>George Woods and Watty took John Armitage a couple of fine knobbies
+during the morning, and the Crosses had shown him a parcel containing
+two good green and blue stones with rippled lights; but they had more on
+the parcel than Armitage felt inclined to pay, remembering the stormy
+scene there had been with the old man over that last stone from Crosses'
+mine which had cracked in the cutter's hands. Towards the end of the day
+Mr. Armitage came to the conclusion, having gone over the stones the men
+brought him, and having bought all he fancied, that there was very
+little black opal of first quality about. He was meditating the fact,
+leaning back in his chair in the sitting-room Newton had reserved for
+him to see the gougers in, some pieces of opal, his scales and
+microscope on the table before him, when Michael knocked.</p>
+
+<p>Absorbed in his reflections, realising there would be little to show for
+the trouble and pains of his long journey, and reviewing a slowly
+germinating scheme and dream for the better output of opal from Fallen
+Star, John Armitage did not at first pay any attention to the knock.</p>
+
+<p>He had been thinking a good deal of Michael in connection with that
+scheme. Michael, he knew, would be his chief opponent, if ever he tried
+putting it into effect. When he had outlined his idea and vaguely formed
+plans to his father, Dawe Armitage would have nothing to do with them.
+He swept them aside uncompromisingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know what you're up against," he said. "There isn't a man on
+the Ridge wouldn't fight like a pole-cat if you tried it on 'em. Give
+'em a word of it&mdash;and we quit partnership, see? They wouldn't stand for
+it&mdash;not for a second&mdash;and there'd be no more black opal for Armitage and
+Son, if they got any idea on the Ridge you'd that sort of notion at the
+back of your head."</p>
+
+<p>But John Armitage refused to give up his idea. He went to it as a dog
+goes to a planted bone&mdash;gnawed and chewed over it, contemplatively.</p>
+
+<p>He had made this trip to Fallen Star with little result, and he was sure
+a system of working the mines on scientific, up-to-date lines would
+ensure the production of more stone. He wanted to talk organisation and
+efficiency to men of the Ridge, to point out to them that organisation
+and efficiency were of first value in production, not realising Ridge
+men considered their methods both organised and efficient within their
+means and for their purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Michael knocked again, and Armitage called:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in!" When he saw who had come into the room, he rose and greeted
+Michael warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's you, Michael!" he said, with a sense of guilt at the thoughts
+Michael had interrupted. "I wondered what on earth had become of you.
+The old man gave me no end of messages, and there are a couple of
+magazines for you in my grip."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," Michael replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope you've got some good stuff," Armitage said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael took the chair opposite to him on the other side of the table.
+"I haven't got much," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember Newton told me you've been having rotten luck."</p>
+
+<p>"It's looked up lately," Michael said, the flickering wisp of a smile in
+his eyes. "The boys say Rummy's a luck-bringer.... He's working with me
+now, and we've been getting some nice stone."</p>
+
+<p>He took a small packet of opal from his pocket and put it on the table.
+It was wrapped in newspaper. He unfastened the string, turned back the
+cotton-wool in which the pieces of opal were packed, and spread them out
+for Armitage to look at.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage went over the stones. He put them, one by one, under his
+microscope, and held them to and from the light.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a nice bit of colour, Michael," he said, admiring a small piece
+of grey potch with a black strain which flashed needling rays of green
+and gold. "A little bit more of that, and you'd be all right, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Michael nodded. "We're on a streak now," he said. "It ought to work out
+all right."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it will." Armitage held the piece of opal to the light and moved
+it slowly. "Rouminof's working with you now&mdash;and Potch, they tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>Michael nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty hard on him, Charley's getting away with his stones like that!"</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage probed the quiet eyes of the man before him with a swift
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right there, Mr. Armitage," Michael said. "Harder on Paul than
+it would have been on anybody else. He's got the fever pretty bad."</p>
+
+<p>Armitage laughed, handling a stone thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I gave Jun a hundred pounds for his big stone. I'd give the same for
+the other&mdash;if I could lay my hands on it, though the boys say it wasn't
+quite as big, but better pattern."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>Silence lay between them for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got on the lot, Michael?" Armitage asked, picking up the
+stones before him and going over them absent-mindedly.</p>
+
+<p>"A tenner," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>Usually a gouger asked several pounds more than he expected to get. John
+Armitage knew that; Michael knew he knew it. Armitage played with the
+stones, hesitated as though his mind were not made up. There was not
+much more than potch and colour in the bundle. He went over the stones
+with the glass again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, Michael," he said, "we're old friends. I won't haggle with
+you. Ten pounds&mdash;your own valuation."</p>
+
+<p>He would get twice as much for the parcel, but the price was a good one.
+Michael was surprised he had conceded it so easily.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage pulled out his cheque-book and pushed a box of cigars across
+the table. Michael took out his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't mind, Mr. Armitage," he said, "I'm more at home with
+this."</p>
+
+<p>"Please yourself, Michael," Armitage murmured, writing his cheque.</p>
+
+<p>When Michael had put the cheque in his pocket, Armitage took a cigar,
+nipped and lighted it, and leaned back in his chair again.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much big stuff about, Michael," he remarked, conversationally.</p>
+
+<p>"George Woods had some good stones," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage was not enthusiastic. "Pretty fair. But the old man will be
+better pleased with the stuff I got from Jun Johnson than anything else
+this trip.... I'd give a good deal to get the almond-shaped stone in
+that other parcel."</p>
+
+<p>Michael realised Mr. Armitage had said the same thing to him before. He
+wondered why he had said it to him&mdash;what he was driving at.</p>
+
+<p>"There were several good stones in Paul's parcel," he said.</p>
+
+<p>His clear, quiet eyes met John Armitage's curious, inquiring gaze. He
+was vaguely discomfited by Armitage's gaze, although he did not flinch
+from it. He wondered what Mr. Armitage knew, that he should look like
+that.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been hard on Rouminof," Armitage murmured again.</p>
+
+<p>Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"After the boys making Jun shell out, too! It doesn't seem to have been
+much use, does it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"And they say he was going to take that girl of his down to Sydney to
+have her trained as a singer. She can sing, too. But her mother,
+Michael&mdash;I heard her in <i>Dinorah</i> ... when I was a little chap."
+Enthusiasm lighted John Armitage's face. "She was wonderful.... The old
+man says people were mad about her when she was in New York.... It was
+said, you know, she belonged to some aristocratic Russian family, and
+ran away with a rascally violinist&mdash;Rouminof. Can you believe it? ...
+Went on the stage to keep him.... But she couldn't stand the life. Soon
+after she was lost sight of.... I've often wondered how she drifted to
+Fallen Star. But she liked being here, the old man says."</p>
+
+<p>Michael nodded. There was silence between them a moment; then Michael
+rose to go. The opal-buyer got up too, and flung out his arms,
+stretching with relief to be done with his day's work.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been cooped in here all day," he said. "I'll come along with you,
+Michael. I'd like to have a look at the Punti Rush. Can you walk over
+there with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Course I can, Mr. Armitage," Michael said heartily.</p>
+
+<p>They walked out of the hotel and through the town towards the rush,
+where half a dozen new claims had been pegged a few weeks before.</p>
+
+<p>Snow-Shoes passed then going out of the town to his hut, swinging along
+the track and gazing before him with the eyes of a seer, his fine old
+face set in a dream, serene dignity in every line of his erect and
+slowly-moving figure.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage looked after him.</p>
+
+<p>"What a great old chap he is, Michael," he exclaimed. "You don't know
+anything about him ... who he is, or where he comes from, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"How does he live?"</p>
+
+<p>"Noodles."</p>
+
+<p>"He's never brought me any stone."</p>
+
+<p>"Trades it with the storekeepers&mdash;though the boys do say"&mdash;Michael
+looked with smiling eyes after Snow-Shoes&mdash;"he may be a bit of a miser,
+loves opal more than the money it brings."</p>
+
+<p>Armitage's interest deepened. "There are chaps like that. I've heard the
+old man talk about a stone getting hold of a man sometimes&mdash;mesmerising
+him. I believe the old man's a bit like that himself, you know. There
+are two or three pieces of opal he's got from Fallen Star nothing on
+earth will induce him to part with. We wanted a stone for an Indian
+nabob's show tiara&mdash;something of that sort&mdash;not long ago. I fancied that
+big knobby we got from George Woods; do you remember? But the old man
+wouldn't part with it; not he! Said he'd see all the nabobs in the world
+in&mdash;Hades, before they got that opal out of him!"</p>
+
+<p>Michael laughed. The thought of hard-shelled old Dawe Armitage hoarding
+opals tickled him immensely.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact," Armitage continued. "He's got a couple of stones he's like a kid
+over&mdash;takes them out, rubs them, and plays with them. And you should
+hear him if I try to get them from him.... A packet of crackers isn't in
+it with the old man."</p>
+
+<p>"The boys'd like to hear that," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no doubt about the fascination the stuff exercises," John
+Armitage went on. "You people say, once an opal-miner, always an
+opal-miner; but I say, once an opal-buyer, always an opal-buyer. I
+wasn't keen about this business when I came into it ... but it's got me
+all right. I can't see myself coming to this God-forsaken part of the
+world of yours for anything but black opal...."</p>
+
+<p>That expression, whimsical and enigmatic, which was never very far from
+them, had grown in Michael's eyes. He began to sense a motive in
+Armitage's seemingly casual talk, and to understand why the opal-buyer
+was so friendly.</p>
+
+<p>"The old man tells a story," Armitage continued, "of that robbery up at
+Blue Pigeon. You know the yarn I mean ... about sticking up a coach when
+there was a good parcel of opal on board. Somebody did the bush-ranging
+trick and got away with the opal.... The thief was caught, and the stuff
+put for safety in an iron safe at the post office. And sight of the
+opals corrupted one of the men in the post office.... He was caught ...
+and then a mounted trooper took charge of them. And the stuff bewitched
+him, too.... He tried to get away with it...."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Michael murmured serenely.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage eyed him keenly. He could scarcely believe the story he had got
+from Jun, that the second parcel of stones had been exchanged after
+Charley got them, or that they had been changed on Paul before Charley
+got them from him.</p>
+
+<p>Michael guessed Armitage was sounding him by talking so much of
+Rouminof's stones and the robbery. He wondered what Armitage
+knew&mdash;whether he knew anything which would attach him, Michael, to
+knowledge of what had become of Paul's stones. There was always the
+chance that Charley had recognised some of the opal in the parcel
+substituted for Paul's, although none of the scraps were significant
+enough to be remembered, Michael thought, and Charley was never keen
+enough to have taken any notice of the sun-flash and fragments of
+coloured potch they had taken out of the mine during the year. The brown
+knobby, which Michael had kept for something of a sentimental reason,
+because it was the first stone he had found on Fallen Star, Charley had
+never seen.</p>
+
+<p>But, probably, he remarked to himself, Armitage was only trying to get
+information from him because he thought that Michael Brady was the most
+likely man on the Ridge to know what had become of the stones, or to
+guess what might have become of them.</p>
+
+<p>As they walked and talked, these thoughts were an undercurrent in
+Michael's mind. And the undercurrent of John Lincoln Armitage's mind,
+through all his amiable and seemingly inconsequential gossip, was not
+whether Michael had taken the stones, but why he had, and what had
+become of them.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage could not, at first, bring himself to credit the half-formed
+suspicion which that quiver of Michael's face, when he had spoken of
+what Jun said, had given him. Yet they were all more or less mad, people
+who dealt with opal, he believed. It might not be for the sake of profit
+Michael had taken the stones, if he had taken them&mdash;there was still a
+shadow of doubt in his mind. John Armitage knew that any man on the
+Ridge would have knocked him down for harbouring such a thought. Michael
+was the little father, the knight without fear and without a stain, of
+the Ridge. He reflected that Michael had never brought him much stone.
+His father had often talked of Michael Brady and the way he had stuck to
+gouging opal with precious little luck for many years. The parcel he had
+sold that day was perhaps the best Michael had traded with Armitage and
+Son for a long time. John Armitage wondered if any man could work so
+long without having found good stuff, without having realised the hopes
+which had materialised for so many other men of the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>They went over the new rush, inspected "prospects," and yarned with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, who had pegged out a claim there.
+But as Armitage and he walked back to the town discussing the outlook of
+the new field and the colour and potch some of the men already had to
+show, Michael found himself in the undertow of an uneasy imagination. He
+protested to himself that he was unnecessarily apprehensive, that all
+Armitage was trying to get from him was any information which would
+throw light on the disappearance of Paul's stones. And Armitage was
+wondering whether Michael might not be an opal miser&mdash;whether the
+mysterious fires of black opal might not have eaten into his brain as
+they had into the brains of good men before him.</p>
+
+<p>If they had, and if he had found the flaw in Michael's armour, John
+Armitage realised that the way to fulfilment of his schemes for buying
+the mines and working them on up-to-date lines, was opened up. If
+Michael could be proved unfaithful to the law and ideals of Ridge, John
+Armitage believed the men's faith in the fabric of their common life
+would fall to pieces. He envisaged the eating of moths of doubt and
+disappointment into the philosophy of the Ridge, the disintegration of
+ideas which had held the men together, and made them stand together in
+matters of common interest and service, as one man. He had almost
+assured himself that if Michael was not the thief and hoarder of the
+lost opals, he at least knew something of them, when a ripple of
+laughter and gust of singing were flung into the air not far from them.</p>
+
+<p>To Armitage it was as though some blithe spirit was mocking the
+discovery he thought he had made, and the fruition it promised those
+secret hopes of his.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Sophie," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>They had come across the Ridge to the back of the huts. The light was
+failing; the sky, from the earth upwards where the sunset had been, the
+frail, limpid green of a shallow lagoon, deepening to blue, darker than
+indigo. The crescent of a moon, faintly gilded, swung in the sky above
+the dark shapes of the huts which stood by the track to the old
+Flash-in-the-pan rush. The smoke of sandal-wood fires burning in the
+huts was in the air. A goat bell tinkled....</p>
+
+<p>Potch and Sophie were talking behind the hut somewhere; their
+exclamations, laughter, a phrase or two of the song Sophie was singing
+went through the quietness.</p>
+
+<p>And it was all this he wanted to change! John Armitage caught the
+revelation of the moment as he stood to listen to Sophie singing. He
+understood as he had never done what the Ridge stood for&mdash;association of
+people with the earth, their attachment to the primary needs of life,
+the joyous flight of youthful spirits, this quiet happiness and peace at
+evening when the work of the day was done.</p>
+
+<p>As he came from the dumps, having said good-night to Michael, he saw
+Sophie, a slight, girlish figure, on the track ahead of him. Her dress
+flickered and flashed through the trees beside the track; it was a
+wraithlike streak in the twilight. She was taking the milk down to
+Newton's, and singing to herself as she walked. John Armitage quickened
+his steps to overtake her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+
+
+<p>The visit of an opal-buyer ruffled ever so slightly the still surface of
+life on the Ridge. When Armitage had gone, he was talked of for a few
+days; the stones he had bought, the prices he had given for them, were
+discussed. Some of his sayings, and the stories he had told, were
+laughed over. Tricks of speech he had used, tried at first half in fun,
+were adopted and dropped into the vernacular of the mines.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" the men said as easily as an American; and sometimes, talking
+with each other: "You've got another think coming to you"; or, "See,
+you've got your nerve with you!"</p>
+
+<p>For a night or two Michael went over the books and papers John Armitage
+had brought him. At first he just glanced here and there through them,
+and then he began to read systematically, and light glimmered in his
+windows far into the night. He soaked the contents of two or three
+reviews and several newspapers before giving himself to a book on
+international finance in which old Armitage had written his name.</p>
+
+<p>Michael thrilled to the stimulus of the book, the intellectual
+excitement of the ideas it brought forth. He lived tumultuously within
+the four bare walls of his room, arguing with himself, the author, the
+world at large. Wrong and injustice enthroned, he saw in this book
+describing the complexities of national and international systems of
+finance, the subtle weaving and interweaving of webs of the
+money-makers.</p>
+
+<p>This was not the effect Dawe Armitage had expected his book to have; he
+had expected to overawe and daze Michael with its impressive arraignment
+of figures and its subtle and bewildering generalisations on credit and
+foreign exchange. Michael's mind had cut through the fog raised by the
+financier's jargon to the few small facts beneath it all. Neither dazed
+nor dazzled, his brain had swung true to the magnetic meridian of his
+faith. Far from the book having shown him the folly and futility of any
+attempt against the Money Power, as Dawe Armitage, in a moment of
+freakish humour had imagined it might, it had filled him with such an
+intensity of fury that for a moment he believed he alone could
+accomplish the regeneration of the world; that like St. Michael of old
+he would go forth and slay the dragon, this chimera which was ravaging
+the world, drawing the blood, beauty, and joy of youth, the peace and
+wisdom of age; breaking manhood and womanhood with its merciless claws.</p>
+
+<p>But falling back on a consciousness of self, as with broken wings he
+realised he was neither archangel, nor super-man, but Michael Brady, an
+ordinary, ill-educated man who read and dreamed a great deal, and gouged
+for black opal on Fallen Star Ridge. He was a little bitter, and more
+humble, for having entertained that radiant vision of himself.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage had been gone from the Ridge some weeks when Michael went
+over in his mind every phase and phrase of the talk they had had. His
+lips took a slight smile; it crept into his eyes, as he reviewed what he
+had said and what John Armitage had said, smoking unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>Absorbed in his reading, he had thought little of John Armitage and that
+walk to the new rush with him. Occasionally the memory of it had
+nickered and glanced through his mind; but he was so obsessed by the
+ideas this new reading had stirred, that he went about his everyday jobs
+in the mine and in the hut, absent-mindedly, automatically, because they
+were things he was in the habit of doing. Potch watched him anxiously;
+Rouminof growled to him; Sophie laughed and flitted and sang, before his
+eyes; but Michael had been only distantly conscious of what was going on
+about him. George Woods and Watty guessed what was the matter; they knew
+the symptoms of these reading and brooding bouts Michael was subject to.
+The moods wore off when they put questions likely to draw information
+and he began to talk out and discuss what he had been reading with them.</p>
+
+<p>He had talked this one off, when suddenly he remembered how John
+Armitage's eyes had dived into his during that walk to the new rush. He
+could see Armitage's eyes again, keen grey eyes they were. And his
+hands. Michael remembered how Armitage's hands had played over the opals
+he had taken to show him. John Lincoln Armitage had the shrewd eyes of
+any man who lives by his wits&mdash;lawyer, pickpocket, politician, or
+financier&mdash;he decided; and the fine white hands of a woman. Only Michael
+did not know any woman whose hands were as finely shaped and as white as
+John Armitage's. Images of his clean-shaven, hot-house face of a city
+dweller, slightly burned by his long journey on land and sea, recurred
+to him; expressions, gestures, inflections of voice.</p>
+
+<p>Michael smiled to himself in communion with his thoughts as he went over
+the substance of Armitage's conversation, dissecting and shredding it
+critically. The more he thought of what Armitage had said, the more he
+found himself believing John Armitage had some information which caused
+him to think that he, Michael, knew something of the whereabouts of the
+stones. He could not convince himself Armitage believed he actually held
+the stones, or that he had stolen them. Armitage had certainly given him
+an opportunity to sell on the quiet if he had the stones; but his manner
+was too tentative, mingled with a subtle respect, to carry the notion of
+an overt suggestion of the sort, or the possession of incriminating
+knowledge. Then there was the story of the old Cliffs robbery. Michael
+wondered why Mr. Armitage had gone over that. On general principles,
+doubting the truth of his long run of bad luck&mdash;or from curiosity
+merely, perhaps. But Michael did not deceive himself that Armitage might
+have told the story in order to discover whether there was something of
+the miser in him, and whether&mdash;if Michael had anything to do with the
+taking of Paul's opals&mdash;he might prefer to hold rather than sell them.</p>
+
+<p>Michael was amused at the thought of himself as a miser. He went into
+the matter as honestly as he could. He knew the power opal had with him,
+the fascination of the search for it, which had brought him from the
+Cliffs to the Ridge, and which had held him to the place, although the
+life and ideas it had come to represent meant more to him now than black
+opal. Still, he was an opal miner, and through all his lean years on the
+Ridge he had been upheld by the thought of the stone he would find some
+day.</p>
+
+<p>He had dreamed of that stone. It had haunted his idle thoughts for
+years. He had seen it in the dark of the mine, deep in the ruddy earth,
+a mirror of jet with fires swarming, red, green, and gold in it.</p>
+
+<p>Dreams of the great opal he would one day discover had comforted him
+when storekeepers were asking for settlement of long-standing accounts.
+He did not altogether believe he would find it, that wonderful piece of
+black opal; but he dreamed, like a child, of finding it.</p>
+
+<p>As he thought of it, and of John Armitage, the smile in his eyes
+broadened. If Armitage knew of that stone of his dreams, he would
+certainly think his surmise was correct and believe that Michael Brady
+was a miser. But he had held the dream in a dark and distant corner of
+his consciousness; had it out to mood and brood over only at rare and
+distant intervals; and no one was aware of its existence.</p>
+
+<p>Black opal had no more passionate lover than himself, Michael knew. He
+trembled with instinctive eagerness, reverence, and delight, when he saw
+a piece of beautiful stone; his eyes devoured it. But there was nothing
+personal in his love. He might have been high priest of some mysterious
+divinity; when she revealed herself he was consumed with adoration. In a
+vague, whimsical way Michael realised this of himself, and yet, too,
+that if ever he held the stone of his dreams in his hands, he would be
+filled with a glorious and flooding sense of accomplishment; an ecstasy
+would transport him. It would be beyond all value in money, that stone;
+but he would not want to keep it to gaze on alone, he would want to give
+it to the world as a thing of consummate beauty, for everybody to enjoy
+the sight of and adore.</p>
+
+<p>No, Michael assured himself, he was not a miser. And, he reflected, he
+had not even looked at Paul's stones. For all he knew, the stones Paul
+had been showing that night at Newton's might have been removed from the
+box before he left Newton's. Someone might have done to Paul what he,
+Michael, had done to Charley Heathfield, as Armitage had suggested.
+Paul's little tin box was well enough known. He had been opening and
+showing his stones at Newton's a long time before the night when Jun had
+been induced to divide spoils. It would be just as well, Michael
+decided, to see what the box did contain; and he promised himself that
+he would open it and look over the stones&mdash;some evening. But he was not
+inclined to hurry the engagement with himself to do so.</p>
+
+<p>He had been glad enough to forget that he had anything to do with that
+box of Paul's: it still lay among the books where he had thrown it. The
+memory of the night on which he had seen Charley taking Paul home, and
+of all that had happened afterwards, was blurred in an ugly vision for
+him. It had become like the memory of a nightmare. He could scarcely
+believe he had done what he had done; yet he knew he had. He drew a deep
+breath of relief when he realised everything had worked out well so far.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was working with him; they had won that little bit of luck to carry
+them on; Sophie was growing up healthily, happily, on the Ridge. She was
+growing so quickly, too. Within the last few months Michael had noticed
+a subtle change in her. There was an indefinable air of a flower
+approaching its bloom about her. People were beginning to talk of her
+looks. Michael had seen eyes following her admiringly. Sophie walked
+with a light, lithe grace; she was slight and straight, not tall really,
+but she looked tall in the black dress she still wore and which came to
+her ankles. There was less of the eager sprite about her, a suggestion
+of some sobering experience in her eyes&mdash;the shadow of her mother's
+death&mdash;which had banished her unthinking and careless childhood. But the
+eyes still had the purity and radiance of a child's. And she seemed
+happy&mdash;the happiest thing on the Ridge, Michael thought. The cadence of
+her laughter and a ripple of her singing were never long out of the air
+about her father's hut. Wherever she went, people said now: "Sing to us,
+Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>And she sang, whenever she was asked, without the slightest
+self-consciousness, and always those songs from old operas, or some of
+the folk-songs her mother had taught her, which were the only songs she
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had seen a number of neighbours in the township and their wives
+and children sitting round in one or other of their homes while Sophie
+sang. He had seen a glow of pleasure transfuse people as they listened
+to her pure and ringing notes. Singing, Sophie seemed actually to
+diffuse happiness, her own joy in the melodies she flung into the air.
+Oh, yes, Sophie was happy singing, Michael could permit himself to
+believe now. She could make people happy by her singing. He had feared
+her singing as a will-o'-the-wisp which would lead her away from him and
+the Ridge. But when he heard her enthralling people in the huts with it,
+he was not afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Paul sometimes moaned about the chances she was missing, and that she
+could be singing in theatres to great audiences. Sophie herself laughed
+at him. She was quite content with the Ridge, it seemed, and to sing to
+people on their verandas in the summer evenings or round the fires in
+the winter. She might have had greater and finer audiences, the Ridge
+folk said, but she could not have had more appreciative ones.</p>
+
+<p>If she was singing in the town, Michael always went to bring her home,
+and he was as pleased as Sophie to hear people say:</p>
+
+<p>"You're not taking her away yet, Michael? The night's a pup!" or,
+"Another ... just one more song, Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>And if she had been singing at Newton's, Michael liked to see the men
+come to the door of the bar, holding up their glasses, and to hear their
+call, as Sophie and he went down the road:</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie! Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Skin off y'r nose!"</p>
+
+<p>"All the luck!"</p>
+
+<p>"Best respecks, Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>When Sophie did not know what to do with herself all the hours Michael
+and Potch and her father were away at the mines, Michael had showed her
+how to use her mother's cutting-wheel. He taught her all he knew of
+opals, and Sophie was delighted with the idea of learning to cut and
+polish gems as her mother had.</p>
+
+<p>Michael gave her rough stones to practise on, and in no time she learnt
+to handle them skilfully. George, Watty, and the Crosses brought her
+some gems to face and polish for them, and they were so pleased with her
+work that they promised to give her most of their stones to cut and
+polish. She had two or three accidents, and was very crestfallen about
+them; but Michael declared they were part of the education of an
+opal-cutter and would teach her more about her work than anyone could
+tell her.</p>
+
+<p>To Michael those days were of infinite blessedness. They proved again
+and again the right of what he had done. At first he was vaguely alarmed
+and uneasy when he saw younger men of the Ridge, Roy O'Mara or Bully
+Bryant, talking or walking with Sophie, or he saw her laughing and
+talking with them. There was something about Sophie's bearing with them
+which disturbed him&mdash;a subtle, unconscious witchery. Then he explained
+it to himself. He guessed that the woman in her was waking, or awake. On
+second thoughts he was not jealous or uneasy. It was natural enough the
+boys should like Sophie, that she should like them; he recognised the
+age-old call of sex in it all. And if Sophie loved and married a man of
+the Ridge, the future would be clear, Michael thought. He could give
+Paul the opals, and her husband could watch over Sophie and see no harm
+came to her if she left the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>The uneasiness stirred again, though, one afternoon when he found her
+walking from the tank paddock with Arthur Henty beside her. There was a
+startled consciousness about them both when Michael joined them and
+walked along the road with them. He had seen Sophie talking to Henty in
+and about the township before, but it had not occurred to him there was
+anything unusual about that. Sophie had gone about as she liked and
+talked to whom she liked since she was a child. She was on good terms
+with everyone in the countryside. No one knew where she went or what she
+did in the long day while the men were at the mines. Because the
+carillon of her laughter flew through those quiet days, Michael
+instinctively had put up a prayer of thanksgiving. Sophie was happy, he
+thought. He did not ask himself why; he was grateful; but a vague
+disquiet made itself felt when he remembered how he had found her
+walking with Arthur Henty, and the number of times he had seen her
+talking to Arthur Henty at Chassy Robb's store, or on the tracks near
+the town.</p>
+
+<p>Fallen Star folk knew Arthur better than any of the Hentys. For years he
+had been coming through the township with cattle or sheep, and had put
+up at Newton's with stockmen on his way home, or when he was going to an
+out-station beyond the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>His father, James Henty, had taken up land in the back-country long
+before opal was found on Fallen Star Ridge. He had worked half a million
+square acres on an arm of the Darling in the days before runs were
+fenced, with only a few black shepherds and one white man, old Bill
+M'Gaffy, to help him for the first year or two. But, after an era of
+extraordinary prosperity, a series of droughts and misfortunes had
+overwhelmed the station and thrown it on the tender mercies of the
+banks.</p>
+
+<p>The Hentys lived much as they had always done. They entertained as
+usual, and there was no hint of a wolf near the door in the hearty,
+good-natured, and liberal hospitality of the homestead. A constitutional
+optimism enabled James Henty to believe Warria would ultimately throw
+off its debts and the good old days return. Only at the end of a season,
+when year after year he found there was no likelihood of being able to
+meet even the yearly interest on mortgages, did he lose some of his
+sanguine belief in the station's ability to right itself, and become
+irritable beyond endurance, blaming any and everyone within hail for the
+unsatisfactory estimates.</p>
+
+<p>But usually Arthur bore the brunt of these outbursts. Arthur Henty had
+gone from school to work on the station at the beginning of Warria's
+decline from the years of plenty, and had borne the burden and not a
+little of the blame for heavy losses during the droughts, without ever
+attempting to shift or deny the responsibilities his father put upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"It does the old man good to have somebody to go off at," he explained
+indifferently to his sister, Elizabeth, when she called him all the
+fools under the sun for taking so much blackguarding sitting down.</p>
+
+<p>Although James Henty's only son and manager of the station under his
+father's autocratic rule, Arthur Henty lived and worked among Warria
+stockmen as though he were one of them. His clothes were as worn and
+heavy with dust as theirs; his hat was as weathered, his hands as
+hard&mdash;sunburnt and broken with sores when barcoo was in the air. A
+quiet, unassuming man, he never came the "Boss" over them. He passed on
+the old man's orders, and, for the rest, worked as hard as any man on
+the station.</p>
+
+<p>He had never done anything remarkable that anyone could remember; but
+the men he worked with liked him. Everybody rather liked Arthur Henty,
+although nobody enthused about him. He had done man's work ever since he
+was a boy, with no more than a couple of years' schooling; he had done
+it steadily and as well as any other young man in the back-country. But
+there was a curious, almost feminine weakness in him somewhere. The men
+did not understand it. They thought he was too supine with his father;
+that he ought to stand up to him more.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Henty preferred being out on the plains with them rather than in
+at the home station, the men said. He looked happier when he was with
+them; he whistled to them as they lay yarning round the camp-fire before
+turning in. They had never heard anything like his whistling. He seemed
+to be playing some small, fine, invisible flute as he gave them
+old-fashioned airs, ragtime tunes, songs from the comic operas, and
+miscellaneous melodies he had heard his sisters singing. No one had
+heard him whistling like that at the station. Out on the plains, or in
+the bar at Newton's, he was a different man. Once or twice when he had
+been drinking, and a glass or two of beer or whisky had got to his head,
+he had shown more the spirit that it was thought he possessed&mdash;as if,
+when the conscious will was relaxed, a submerged self had leapt forth.</p>
+
+<p>Men who had known him a long time wondered whether time would not
+strengthen the fibres of that submerged self; but they had seen Arthur
+Henty lose the elastic, hopeful outlook of youth, and sink gradually
+into the place assigned him by his father, at first dutifully, then with
+an indifference which slowly became apathy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Henty and the girls exclaimed with dismay and disgust when they
+returned to the station after two years in town, and saw how rough and
+unkempt-looking Arthur had become. They insisted on his having his hair
+and beard cut at once, and that he should manicure his finger-nails.
+After he had dressed for dinner and was clipped and shaved, they said he
+looked more as if he belonged to them; but he was a shy, awkward boor,
+and they did not know what to make of him. In his mother's hands, Arthur
+was still a child, though, and she brought him back to the fold of the
+family, drew his resistance&mdash;an odd, sullen resentment he had acquired
+for the niceties of what she called "civilised society"&mdash;and made him
+amenable to its discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth was twice the man her brother was, James Henty was fond of
+declaring. She had all the vigour and dash he would have liked his son
+to possess. "My daughter Elizabeth," he said as frequently as possible,
+and was always talking of her feats with horses, and the clear-headed
+and clever way she went about doing things, and getting her own way on
+all and every occasion.</p>
+
+<p>When the men rounded buck-jumpers into the yards on a Sunday morning,
+Elizabeth would ride any Chris Este, the head stockman, let her near;
+but Arthur never attempted to ride any of the warrigals. He steered
+clear of horse-breaking and rough horses whenever he could, although he
+broke and handled his own horses. In a curious way he shared a secret
+feeling of his mother's for horses. She had never been able to overcome
+an indefinable apprehension of the raw, half-broken horses of the
+back-country, although her nerve had carried her through years of
+acquaintance with them, innumerable accidents and misadventures, and
+hundreds of miles of journeys at their mercy; and Arthur, although he
+had lived and worked among horses as long as he could remember, had not
+been able to lose something of the same feeling. His sister, suspecting
+it, was frankly contemptuous; so was his father. It was the reason of
+Henty's low estimate of his son's character generally. And the rumour
+that Arthur Henty was shy of tough propositions in horses&mdash;"afraid of
+horses"&mdash;had a good deal to do with the never more than luke-warm
+respect men of the station and countryside had for him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>Sophie often met Arthur Henty on the road just out of the town. Usually
+it was going to or coming from the tank paddock, or in the paddock, on
+Friday afternoons, when he had been into Budda for the sales or to truck
+sheep or cattle. They did not arrange to meet, but Sophie expected to
+see Arthur when she went to the tank paddock, and she knew he expected
+to find her there. She did not know why she liked being with Arthur
+Henty so much, or why they were such golden occasions when she met him.
+They did not talk much when they were together. Their eyes met; they
+knew each other through their eyes&mdash;a something remote from themselves
+was always working through their eyes. It drew them together.</p>
+
+<p>When she was with Arthur Henty, Sophie knew she was filled with an
+ineffable gaiety, a thing so delicate and ethereal that as she sang she
+seemed to be filling the air with it. And Henty looked at her sometimes
+as if he had discovered a new, strange, and beautiful creature, a
+butterfly, or gnat, with gauzy, resplendent wings, whose beauty he was
+bewildered and overcome by. The last time they had been together he had
+longed to draw her to him and kiss her so that the virgin innocence
+would leave her eyes; but fear or some conscientious scruple had
+restrained him. He had been reluctant to awaken her, to change the
+quality of her feeling towards him. He had let her go with a lingering
+handclasp. In all their tender intimacy there had been no more of the
+love-making of the flesh than the subtle interweavings of instincts and
+fibres which this handclasp gave. Ridge folk had seen them walking
+together. They had seen that subtle inclination of Sophie's and Arthur's
+figures towards each other as they walked&mdash;the magnetic, gentle,
+irresistible swaying towards each other&mdash;and the gossips began to
+whisper and nod smilingly when they came across Arthur and Sophie on the
+road. Sophie at first went her way unconscious of the whispers and
+smiles. Then words were dropped slyly&mdash;people teased her about Arthur.
+She realised they thought he was her sweetheart. Was he? She began to
+wonder and think about it. He must be; she came to the conclusion
+happily. Only sweethearts went for walks together as she and Arthur did.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother says," Mirry Flail remarked one day, "she wouldn't be a bit
+surprised to see you marrying Arthur Henty, Sophie, and going over to
+live at Warria."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness!" Sophie exclaimed, surprised and delighted that anybody
+should think such a thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Marry Arthur Henty and go over and live at Warria." Her mind, like a
+delighted little beaver, began to build on the idea. It did not alter
+her bearing with Arthur. She was less shy and thoughtful with him,
+perhaps; but he did not notice it, and she was carelessly and childishly
+content to have found the meaning of why she and Arthur liked meeting
+and talking together. People only felt as she and Arthur felt about each
+other if they were going to marry and live "happy ever after," she
+supposed.</p>
+
+<p>When Michael was aware of what was being said, and of the foundation
+there was for gossip, he was considerably disturbed. He went to talk to
+Maggie Grant about it. She, he thought, would know more of what was in
+the wind than he did, and be better able to gauge what the consequences
+were likely to be to Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been bothered about it myself, Michael," she said. "But neither
+you nor me can live Sophie's life for her.... I don't see we can do
+anything. His crowd'll do all the interfering, if I know anything about
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"And, as far as I can see, it won't do any good our butting in," Mrs.
+Grant continued. "You know Sophie's got a will of her own ... and she's
+always had a good deal her own way. I've talked round the thing to her
+... and I think she understands."</p>
+
+<p>"You've always been real good to her, Maggie," Michael said gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"As to that"&mdash;the lines of Maggie Grant's broad, plain face rucked to
+the strength of her feeling&mdash;"I've done what I could. But then, I'm fond
+of her&mdash;fond of her as you are, Michael. That's saying a lot. And you
+know what I thought of her mother. But it's no use us thinking we can
+buy Sophie's experience for her. She's got to live ... and she's got to
+suffer."</p>
+
+<p>Busy with her opal-cutting, and happy with her thoughts, Sophie had no
+idea of the misgiving Michael and Maggie Grant had on her account, or
+that anyone was disturbed and unhappy because of her happiness. She sang
+as she worked. The whirr of her wheel, the chirr of sandstone and potch
+as they sheared away, made a small, busy noise, like the drone of an
+insect, in her house all day; and every day some of the men brought her
+stones to face and fix up. She had acquired such a reputation for making
+the most of stones committed to her care that men came from the Three
+Mile and from the Punti with opals for her to rough-out and polish.</p>
+
+<p>Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara were often at Rouminof's in the evening, and
+they heard about it when they looked in at Newton's later on, now and
+then.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be striking it pretty good down at the Punti, Bull," Watty
+Frost ventured genially one night. "See you takin' stones for Sophie to
+fix up pretty near every evenin'."</p>
+
+<p>"There's some as sees too much," Bully remarked significantly.</p>
+
+<p>"What you say, you say y'rself, Bull." Watty pulled thoughtfully on his
+pipe, but his little blue eyes squinted over his fat, red-grained
+cheeks, not in the least abashed.</p>
+
+<p>"I do," Bull affirmed. "And them as sees too much ... won't see much ...
+when I'm through with 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Mmm," Watty brooded. "That's a good thing to know, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>He and the rest of the men continued to "sling off," as they said, at
+Bully and Roy O'Mara as they saw fit, nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>The summer had been a mild one; it passed almost without a ripple of
+excitement. There were several hot days, but cool changes blew over, and
+the rains came before people had given up dreading the heat. Several new
+prospects had been made, and there were expectations that holes sunk on
+claims to the north of the Punti Rush would mean the opening up of a new
+field.</p>
+
+<p>Michael and Potch worked on in their old claim with very little to show
+for their pains. Paul had slackened and lost interest as soon as the
+fitful gleams of opal they were on had cut out. Michael was not the man
+to manage Rummy, the men said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch and Michael, however, seemed satisfied enough to regard Paul more
+or less as a sleeping partner; to do the work of the mine and share with
+him for keeping out of the way.</p>
+
+<p>"Shouldn't wonder if they wouldn't rather have his room than his
+company," Watty ventured, "and they just go shares with him so as
+things'll be all right for Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right!" Pony-Fence agreed.</p>
+
+<p>The year had made a great difference to Potch. Doing man's work, going
+about on equal terms with the men, the change of status from being a
+youth at anybody's beck and call to doing work which entitled him to the
+taken-for-granted dignity of being an independent individual, had made a
+man of him. His frame had thickened and hardened. He looked years older
+than he was really, and took being Michael's mate very seriously.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had put up a shelter for himself and his mates, thinking that
+Potch and Paul might not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter; but
+George and Watty were loth to lose Michael's word from their councils.
+They called him over nearly every day, on one pretext or another.
+Sometimes his mates followed Michael. But Rouminof soon wearied of a
+discussion on anything except opal, and wandered off to the other
+shelters to discover whether anybody had struck anything good that
+morning. Potch threw himself on the ground beside Michael when Michael
+had invited him to go across to George and Watty's shelter with him, and
+after a while the men did not notice him there any more than Michael's
+shadow. He lay beside Michael, quite still, throwing crumbs to the birds
+which came round the shelter, and did not seem to be listening to what
+was said. But always when a man was heatedly and with some difficulty
+trying to disentangle his mind on a subject of argument, he found
+Potch's eyes on him, steady and absorbing, and knew from their intent
+expression that Potch was following all he had to say with quick, grave
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>Some people were staying at Warria during the winter, and when there was
+going to be a dance at the station Mrs. Henty wrote to ask Rouminof to
+play for it. She could manage the piano music, she said, and if he would
+tune his violin for the occasion, they would have a splendid band for
+the young people. And, her letter had continued: "We should be so
+pleased if your daughter would come with you."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was wildly excited at the invitation. She had been to Ridge race
+balls for the last two or three years, but she had never even seen
+Warria. Her father had played at a Warria ball once, years before, when
+she was little; but she and her mother had not gone with him to the
+station. She remembered quite well when he came home, how he had told
+them of all the wonderful things there had been to eat at the
+ball&mdash;stuffed chickens and crystallised fruit, iced cakes, and all
+manner of sweets.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had heard of the Warria homestead since she was a child, of its
+orange garden and great, cool rooms. It had loomed like the enchanted
+castle of a legend through all her youthful imaginings. And now, as she
+remembered what Mirry Flail had said, she was filled with delight and
+excitement at the thought of seeing it.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered whether Arthur had asked his mother to invite her to the
+dance. She thought he must have; and with naïve conceit imagined happily
+that Arthur's mother must want to know her because she knew that Arthur
+liked her. And Arthur's sisters&mdash;it would be nice to know them and to
+talk to them. She went over and over in her mind the talks she would
+have with Polly and Nina, and perhaps Elizabeth Henty, some day.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks before the ball she had seen Arthur riding through the
+township with his sisters and a girl who was staying at Warria. He had
+not seen her, and Sophie was glad, because suddenly she had felt shy and
+confused at the thought of talking to him before a lot of people.
+Besides, they all looked so jolly, and were having such a good time,
+that she would not have known what to say to Arthur, or to his sisters,
+just then.</p>
+
+<p>When she told Mrs. Woods and Martha M'Cready about the invitation, they
+smiled and teased her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that tells a tale!" they said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie laughed. She felt silly, and she was blushing, they said. But she
+was very happy at having been asked to the ball. For weeks before she
+found herself singing "Caro Nome" as she sat at work, went about the
+house, or with Potch after the goats in the late afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur liked that song better than any other, and its melody had become
+mingled and interwoven with all her thoughts of him.</p>
+
+<p>The twilight was deepening, on the evening a few days before the dance,
+when Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara came up to Rouminof's hut, calling
+Sophie. She was washing milk tins and tea dishes, and went to the door
+singing to herself, a candle throwing a fluttering light before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father sent us along for you, Sophie," Bully explained. "There's a
+bit of a celebration on at Newton's to-night, and the boys want you to
+sing for them."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie turned from them, going into the house to put down her candle.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she said, pleased at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Michael came into the hut through, the back door. From his own room he
+had heard Bully calling and then explaining why he and Roy O'Mara were
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go, Sophie," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"But why, Michael?" Disappointment clouded Sophie's first bright
+pleasure that the men had sent for her to sing to them, and her
+eagerness to do as they asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not right ... not good for you to sing down there when the boys
+'ve been drinking," Michael said, unable to express clearly his
+opposition to her singing at Newton's.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a spoil-sport, Michael," the boys at the door called when they
+saw he was trying to dissuade Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, Sophie," Roy called.</p>
+
+<p>She looked from Bully and Roy to Michael, hesitating. Theirs was the
+call of youth to youth, of youth to gaiety and adventure. She turned
+away from Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going, Michael," she said quickly, and swung to the door. Michael
+heard her laughing as she went off along the track with Bully and Roy.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know Mr. Armitage is up?" Roy stopped to call back.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"Came up by the coach this evening," Roy said, and ran after Bully and
+Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>It was a rowdy night at Newton's. Shearing was just over at Warria
+sheds, and men with cheques to burn were crowding the bar and passages.
+Sophie was hailed with cheers as she neared the veranda. Her father
+staggered out towards her, waving his arms crazily. Sophie was surprised
+when she found the crowd waiting for her. There were so many strangers
+in it&mdash;rough men with heavy, inflamed faces&mdash;hardly one she knew among
+them. A murmur and boisterous clamour of voices came from the bar. The
+men on the veranda made way for her.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart quailed when she looked into the big earthen-floored bar, and
+saw its crowd of rough-haired, sun-red men, still wearing the clothes
+they had been working in, grey flannel shirts and dungarees,
+blood-splashed, grimy, and greasy with the "yolk" of fleeces they had
+been handling. The smell of sheep and the sweat of long days of shearing
+and struggling with restless beasts were in the air, with fumes of rank
+tobacco and the flat, stale smell of beer. The hanging lamp over the bar
+threw only a dim light through the fog of smoke the men had put up, and
+which from the doorway completely obscured Peter Newton where he stood
+behind the bar.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie hung back.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going in there," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know Mr. Armitage was up?" Roy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He explained how Mr. Armitage had come unexpectedly by the coach that
+evening. Sophie saw him among the men on the veranda.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll sing here," she told Bully and Roy, leaning against a veranda
+post.</p>
+
+<p>She was a little afraid. But she knew she had always pleased Ridge folk
+when she sang to them, so she put back her head and sang a song of youth
+and youthful happiness she had sung on the veranda at Newton's before.
+It did not matter that the words were in Italian, which nobody
+understood. The dancing joyousness and laughing music of her notes
+carried the men with them. The applause was noisy and enthusiastic.
+Sophie laughed, delighted, yet almost afraid of her success.</p>
+
+<p>Big and broad-shouldered, Bully Bryant stood at a little distance from
+her, in front of everybody. Arthur Henty, leaning against the wall near
+the door of the bar, smiled softly, foolishly, when she glanced at him.
+He had been drinking, too, and was watching, and listening to her, with
+the same look in his eyes as Bully.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie caught the excitement about her. An exhilaration of pleasure
+thrilled her. It was crude wine which went to her head, this admiration
+and applause of strangers and of the men she had known since she was a
+child. There was a wonderful elation in having them beg her to sing.
+They looked actually hungry to hear her. She found Arthur Henty's eyes
+resting on her with the expression she knew in them. An imp of
+recklessness entered her. Her father beat the air as if he were leading
+an orchestra, and she threw herself into the Shadow Song, singing with
+an abandonment that carried her beyond consciousness of her
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>She sang again and again, and always in response to an eager tumult of
+cheers, thudding of feet, joggling of glasses, chorus of broken cries:
+"En-core, encore, Sophie!" An instinct of mischief and coquetry urging,
+she glanced sometimes at Arthur, sometimes at Bully. Then with a glance
+at Arthur, and for a last number, she began "Caro Nome," and gave to her
+singing all the glamour and tenderness, the wild sweetness, the aria had
+come to have for her, because she had sung it so often to Arthur when
+they met and were walking along the road together. She was so carried
+away by her singing, she did not realise what had happened until
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>She only knew that suddenly, roughly, she was grasped and lifted. She
+saw Bully's face flaming before her own, gazed with terror and horror
+into his eyes. His face was thrown against hers&mdash;and obliterated.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all right?" someone asked after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Awaking from the daze and bewilderment, Sophie looked up.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage was standing beside her; Potch nearby. They were on the
+outskirts of the crowd on the veranda.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The men on the veranda had broken into two parties; one was surging
+towards the bar door, the other moving off down the road out of the
+town. Michael came towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Potch looked after her. I couldn't get near," John Armitage said.</p>
+
+<p>An extraordinary quiet took possession of Sophie. When she was going
+down the road with Potch and Michael, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Did Bully kiss me, Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what happened then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Arthur Henty knocked him down," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with scared eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"They want to fight it out ... but they're both drunk. The boys are
+trying to stop it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Michael!" Sophie cried on a little gasping breath; and looking into
+her eyes he read her contrition, asking forgiveness, understanding all
+that he had not been able to explain to her. She did not say, "I'll
+never sing there, like that, any more." Her feeling was too deep for
+words; but Michael knew she never would.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+
+
+<p>"It's what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball,"
+Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin
+Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods' mirror, a square of
+glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant
+sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new
+dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was
+also gazing at her and at it admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria,
+Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie's got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael," she
+said. "I'm not going to have people over there laughing at her, and
+she's had nothing but her mother's old dresses, cut down&mdash;for goodness
+knows how long."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you get it?" Michael inquired anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grant nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Bessie Woods and I were thinking it might be pinspot muslin, with a bit
+of lace on it," she said. "We could get the stuff at Chassy Robb's and
+make it up between us."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" Michael replied, looking immensely relieved to have the
+difficulty disposed of. "Tell Chassy to put it on my book."</p>
+
+<p>So the pinspot muslin and some cheap creamy lace had been bought. Mrs.
+Woods and Sophie settled on a style they found illustrating an
+advertisement in a newspaper and which resembled a dress one of the
+Henty girls had worn at the race ball the year before. Maggie Grant had
+done all the plain sewing and Mrs. Woods the fixing and finishing
+touches. They had consulted over and over again about sleeves and the
+length of the skirt. The frock had been fitted at least a dozen times.
+They had wondered where they would put the lace as a bit of trimming,
+and had decided for frills at the elbows and a tucker in the V-shaped
+neck of the blouse. They marvelled at their audacity, but felt sure they
+had done the right thing when they cut the neck rather lower than they
+would have for a dress to be worn in the daytime.</p>
+
+<p>Martha M'Cready, insisting on having a finger in the pie, had pressed
+the dress when it was finished, and she had washed and ironed Mrs.
+George Woods' best embroidered petticoat for Sophie to wear with it.</p>
+
+<p>And now Sophie was dressing in Mrs. Woods' bedroom because it had a
+bigger mirror than her own room, and the three women were watching her,
+giving little tugs and pats to the dress now and then, measuring it with
+appraising glances of conscious pride in their workmanship, and joy at
+Sophie's appearance in it. Sophie, her face flushed, her eyes shining,
+turned to them every now and then, begging to know whether the skirt was
+not a little full here, or a little flat there; and they pinched and
+pulled, until it was thought nothing further could be done to improve
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was anxious about her hair. She had put it in plaits the night
+before, and had kept it in them all the morning. Her hair had never been
+in plaits before, and she had not liked the look of it when she saw it
+all crisp and frizzy, like Mirry Flail's. She had used a wet brush to
+get the crinkle out, but there was still a suggestion of it in the heavy
+dark wave of her hair when she had done it up as usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Your hair looks very nice&mdash;don't worry any more about it, Sophie,"
+Martha M'Cready had said.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother used to say there was nothing nicer for a young girl to wear
+than white muslin," Mrs. Woods remarked, "and that sash of your mother's
+looks real nice as a belt, Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>The sash, a broad piece of blue and green silk shot like a piece of poor
+opal, Sophie had found in a box of her mother's, and it was wound round
+her waist as a belt and tied in a bow at the side.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn round and let me see if the skirt's quite the same length all
+round, Sophie," Mrs. Grant commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Maggie," Bessie Woods exclaimed complacently. "It's quite right."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie glanced at herself in the glass again. Mrs. Woods had lent her a
+pair of opal ear-rings, and Maggie Grant the one piece of finery she
+possessed&mdash;a round piece of very fine black opal set in a rim of gold,
+which Bill had given her when first she came to the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had on for the first time, too, a necklace she had made herself
+of stones the miners had given her at different times. There was a piece
+of opal for almost every man on the fields, and she had strung them
+together, with a beautiful knobby Potch had made her a present of for
+her eighteenth birthday, a few days before, in the centre.</p>
+
+<p>Just as she had finished dressing, Mrs. Watty Frost called in the
+doorway: "Anybody at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," Mrs. George Woods replied.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Watty walked into the bedroom. She had a long slender parcel
+wrapped in brown paper in her hand, but nobody noticed it at the time.</p>
+
+<p>"My!" she exclaimed, staring at Sophie; "we are fine, aren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie caught up her long, cotton gloves and pirouetted in happy
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't we?" she cried gaily. "Just look at my gloves! Did ever you see
+such lovely long gloves, Mrs. Watty? And don't my ear-rings look nice?
+But it does feel funny wearing ear-rings, doesn't it? I want to be
+shaking my head all the time to make them joggle!"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. The blue and green fires of the stones leapt and
+sparkled. Her eyes seemed to catch fire from them. The women exchanged
+admiring glances.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's my handkerchief?" Sophie cried. "Father's late, isn't he? I'm
+sure we'll be late! How long will it take to drive over to Warria?&mdash;An
+hour? Goodness! And it'll be almost time for the dance to begin then!
+Oh, don't my shoes look nice, Maggie?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at her feet in the white cotton stockings and white
+canvas shoes, with ankle straps, which Maggie Grant had sent into Budda
+for. The hem of her skirt came just to her ankles. She played the new
+shoes in and out from under it in little dancing steps, and the women
+laughed at her, happy in her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"But you haven't got a fan, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said.</p>
+
+<p>"A fan?" Sophie's eyes widened.</p>
+
+<p>"You should oughter have a fan. In my young days it wasn't considered
+decent to go to a ball without a fan," Mrs. Watty remarked grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Sophie looked from one to the other of her advisers.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. George Woods was just going to say that it was a long time since
+Mrs. Watty's young days, when Mrs. Watty took the brown paper from the
+long, thin parcel she was carrying.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought most likely you wouldn't have one," she said, "so I brought
+this over."</p>
+
+<p>She unfurled an old-fashioned, long-handled, sandal-wood fan, with birds
+and flowers painted on the brown satin screen, and a little row of
+feathers along the top. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Grant exchanged
+glances that Mrs. Watty should pander to the vanity of an occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Watty!" Sophie took the fan with a little cry of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"My, aren't you a grown-up young lady now, Sophie?" Mrs. Woods
+exclaimed, as Sophie unfurled the fan.</p>
+
+<p>"But mind you take care of it, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said, stiffening
+against the relaxing atmosphere of goodwill and excitement. "Watty got
+it for me last trip he made to sea, before we was married, and I set a
+good deal of store by it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll be ever so careful!" Sophie declared. She opened the fan.
+"Isn't it pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>Dropping into a chair, she murmured: "May I&mdash;have this dance with you,
+Miss Rouminof?" And casting a shy upward glance over her fan, as if
+answering for herself, "I don't mind if I do!"</p>
+
+<p>Martha and Mrs. Woods laughed heartily, recognising Arthur Henty's way
+of talking in the voice Sophie had imitated.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way to do it, Sophie," Mrs. Woods said; "only you shouldn't
+say, 'Don't mind if I do,' but, 'It's a pleasure, I'm sure.'"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pleasure, I'm sure," Sophie mimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she going to wear the dress over?" Mrs. Watty asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Maggie Grant said. "Bessie's lending her a dust-coat. I don't
+think it'll get crushed very much. You see, they won't arrive until it's
+nearly time for the dance to begin, and we thought it'd be better for us
+to help her to get fixed up. Everybody'll be so busy over at Warria&mdash;and
+we thought she mightn't be able to get anybody to do up her dress for
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Mrs. Watty said.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rattle of wheels on the rough shingle near the hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's your father, Sophie," Martha called.</p>
+
+<p>"And Michael and Potch are in the kitchen wanting to have a look at you
+before you go, Sophie," Maggie Grant said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Sophie took the coat Mrs. Woods was lending her, and went out to
+the kitchen with it on her arm.</p>
+
+<p>Michael and Potch were there. They stared at her. But her radiant face,
+the shining eyes, and the little smile which hovered on her mouth, held
+their gaze more than the new white dress standing out in slight, stiff
+folds all round her. The vision of her&mdash;incomparable youth and
+loveliness she was to Michael&mdash;gripped him so that a moisture of love
+and reverence dimmed his eyes.... And Potch just stared and stared at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was bawling from the buggy outside:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready, Sophie? Sophie, are you ready?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Woods held the dust-coat. Very carefully Sophie edged herself into
+it, and wrapped its nondescript buff-coloured folds over her dress. Then
+she put the pink woollen scarf Martha had brought over her head, and
+went out to the buggy. Her father was sitting aloft on the front seat,
+driving Sam Nancarrow's old roan mare, and looking spruce and well
+turned out in a new baggy suit which Michael had arranged for him to get
+in order to look more of a credit to Sophie at the ball.</p>
+
+<p>"See you take good care of her, Paul," Mrs. Grant called after him as
+they drove off.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h3>
+
+
+<p>The drive across the plains seemed interminable to Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went
+along. He called to Sam Nancarrow's old nag, quite pleased to be having
+a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially
+about this and other balls he had been to.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said,
+and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. "I do
+look nice! I do look nice!" she assured herself.</p>
+
+<p>It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought
+she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs.
+Woods' ear-rings, and that old sash of her mother's. She was a little
+anxious, but very happy and excited.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road
+or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then.
+He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle
+recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her
+in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of
+happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The
+sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to
+indigo as it climbed to the zenith.</p>
+
+<p>When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue
+from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted
+Burton, the station book-keeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with
+light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sand-papered,
+came out to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>"There you are, Rouminof!" he said. "Glad to see you. We were beginning
+to be afraid you weren't coming!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables.
+Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men
+were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was
+standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did
+not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup.
+But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his
+forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having
+regained his feet, hit out blindly.</p>
+
+<p>Potch had told Sophie what happened&mdash;she had made him find out in order
+to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first
+exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they
+said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully
+came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>"If anybody'd 've told me I'd treat you like that, Sophie, I'd 've
+killed him," he said. "I'd 've killed him.... You know how I feel about
+you&mdash;you know how we all feel about you&mdash;and for me to have served you
+like that&mdash;me that'd do anything in the world for you.... But it's no
+good trying to say any more. It's no good tryin' to explain. It's got me
+down...."</p>
+
+<p>He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable,
+that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It
+was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to
+see Bully like this.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Bully," she said. "I know ... you weren't yourself ...
+and you didn't mean it."</p>
+
+<p>He started to his feet and came to stand beside her. Sophie put her hand
+in his; he gripped it hard, unable to say anything. Then, when he could
+control his voice, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"I went over to see Mr. Henty this morning ... and told him if anybody
+else 'd done what I did, I'd 've done what he did."</p>
+
+<p>Potch had said the men expected Bully would want to fight the thing out
+when he was sober, and it was a big thing for him to have done what he
+had. The punishing power of Bully's fists was well known, and he had
+taken this way of punishing himself. Sophie understood that, She was
+grateful and reconciled to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad, Bully," she said. "Let's forget all about it."</p>
+
+<p>So the matter ended. But it all came back to her as she saw the broken
+red line on Arthur Henty's forehead.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know that because of it she was an object of interest to the
+crowd on the veranda. News of Arthur Henty's bout with Bully Bryant had
+been very soon noised over the whole countryside. Most of the men who
+came to the ball from Langi-Eumina and other stations had gleaned varied
+and highly-coloured versions, and Arthur had been chaffed and twitted
+until he was sore and ashamed of the whole incident. He could not
+understand himself&mdash;the rush of rage, instinctive and unreasoning, which
+had overwhelmed him when he hit out at Bully.</p>
+
+<p>His mother protested that it was a shame to give Arthur such a bad time
+for what was, after all, merely the chivalrous impulse of any decent
+young man when a girl was treated lightly in his presence; but the men
+and the girls who were staying at the station laughed and teased all the
+more for the explanation. They pretended he was a very heroic and
+quixotic young man, and asked about Sophie&mdash;whether she was pretty, and
+whether it was true she sang well. They redoubled their efforts, and
+goaded him to a state of sulky silence, when they knew she was coming to
+the ball.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Henty had been conscious for some time of an undercurrent within
+him drawing him to Sophie. He was afraid of, and resented it. He had not
+thought of loving her, or marrying her. He had gone to the tank paddock
+in the afternoons he knew she would be there, or had looked for her on
+the Warria road when she had been to the cemetery, with a sensation of
+drifting pleasantly. He had never before felt as he did when he was with
+Sophie, that life was a clear and simple thing&mdash;pleasant, too; that
+nothing could be better than walking over the plains through the limpid
+twilight. He had liked to see the fires of opal run in her eyes when she
+looked at him; to note the black lines on the outer rim of their
+coloured orbs; the black lashes set in silken skin of purest ivory; the
+curve of her chin and neck; the lines of her mouth, and the way she
+walked; all these things he had loved. But he did not want to have the
+responsibility of loving Sophie: he could not contemplate what wanting
+to marry her would mean in tempests and turmoil with his family.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought sometimes of a mediæval knight wandering through
+flowering fields with the girl on a horse beside him, in connection with
+Sophie and himself. A reproduction of the well-known picture of the
+knight and the girl hung in his mother's sitting-room. She had cut it
+out of a magazine, and framed it, because it pleased her; and beneath
+the picture, in fine print, Arthur had often read:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"I met a lady in the meads,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">Full beautiful&mdash;a fairy's child;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Her hair was long, her foot was light,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">And her eyes were wild.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"I set her on my pacing steed,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">And nothing else saw all day long;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">For sideways would she lean, and sing</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">A faery's song."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>As a small boy Arthur had been attracted by the picture, and his mother
+had told him its story, and had read him Keats' poem. He had read it
+ever so many times since then himself, and after he met Sophie in the
+tank paddock that afternoon she had ridden home on his horse, some of
+the verses haunted him with the thought of her. One day when they were
+sitting by the track and she had been singing to him, he had made a
+daisy chain and thrown it over her, murmuring sheepishly, in a caprice
+of tenderness:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"I made a garland for her head,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">She looked at me as she did love</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">And made sweet moan."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had asked about the poem. She had wanted to hear more, and he had
+repeated as many verses as he could remember. When he had finished, she
+had looked at him "as she did love" indeed, with eyes of sweet
+confidence, yet withdrawing from him a little in shy and happy confusion
+that he should think of her as anyone like the lady of the meads, who
+was "full beautiful&mdash;a fairy's child."</p>
+
+<p>But Arthur did not want to love her; he did not want to marry her. He
+did not want to have rows with his father, differences with his mother.
+The affair at Newton's had shown him where he was going.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was "a fairy's child," he decided. "Her hair as long, her foot
+was light, and her eyes were wild"; but he did not want to be "a
+wretched wight, alone and palely loitering" on her account; he did not
+want to marry her. He would close her eyes with "kisses four," he told
+himself, smiling at the precision of the knight of the chronicle;
+"kisses four"&mdash;no more&mdash;and be done with the business.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he wished Sophie were not coming to the ball. He would have
+given anything to prevent her coming; but he could do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought of escaping from the ball by going to the out-station
+with the men; but his mother, foreseeing something of his intention, had
+given him so much to do at the homestead for her, that he could not go
+away. When the buggy with Sophie and her father drove up to the veranda,
+there was a chorus of suppressed exclamations among the assembled
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>"Here she is, Art!"</p>
+
+<p>"Buck up, old chap! None but the brave, etc."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie did not hear the undertone of laughter and raillery which greeted
+her arrival. She was quite unconscious that the people on the veranda
+were interested in her at all, as she walked across the courtyard
+listening to Mr. Burton's amiable commonplaces.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Burton left her in a small room with chintz-covered chairs and
+dressing-table, Sophie took off her old dust-coat and the pink scarf she
+had tied over her hair. The mirror was longer than Mrs. Woods'. Her
+dress looked very crushed when she saw it reflected. She tried to shake
+out the creases. Her hair, too, was flat, and had blown into stringy
+ends. A shade of disappointment dimmed the brightness of her mood as she
+realised she was not looking nearly as nice as she had when she left the
+Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Someone said: "May I come in?" and Polly Henty and another girl entered
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>Polly Henty had just left school. She was a round-faced, jolly-looking
+girl of about Sophie's own age, and the girl with her was not much
+older, pretty and sprightly, an inch or so taller than Polly, and
+slight. She had grey eyes, and a fluff of dry-grass coloured hair about
+a small, sharp-featured, fresh-complexioned face, neatly powdered.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie knew something was wrong with her clothes the moment she
+encountered the girls' curious and patronising glances as they came into
+the room. Their appearance, too, took the skin from her vanity. Polly
+had on a frock of silky white crêpe, with no lace or decoration of any
+kind, except a small gold locket and chain which she was wearing. But
+her dress fell round her in graceful folds, showing her small,
+well-rounded bust and hips, and she had on silk stockings and white
+satin slippers. The other girl's frock was of pale pink, misty material,
+so thin that her shoulders and arms showed through it as though there
+were nothing on them. She had pinned a pink rose in her hair, too, so
+that its petals just lay against the nape of her neck. Sophie thought
+she had never seen anyone look so nice. She had never dreamed of such a
+dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Rouminof," Polly said; "mother sent me to look for you. We're
+just ready to start, and your father wants you to turn over his music
+for him."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie stood up, conscious that her dress was nothing like as pretty as
+she had thought it. It stood out stiffly about her: the starched
+petticoat crackled as she moved. She knew the lace should not have been
+on her sleeves; that her shoes were of canvas, and creaked as she
+walked; that her cotton gloves, and even the heavy, old-fashioned fan
+she was carrying, were not what they ought to have been.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Chelmsford&mdash;Miss Rouminof," Polly said, looking from Sophie to the
+girl in the pink dress.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie said: "How do you do?" gravely, and put out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!... How do you do?" Miss Chelmsford responded hurriedly, and as if
+just remembering she, too, had a hand.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went with Polly and her friend to the veranda, which was screened
+in on one side with hessian to form a ball-room. Behind the hessian the
+walls were draped with flags, sheaves of paper daisies, and bundles of
+Darling pea. Red paper lanterns swung from the roof, threw a rosy glare
+over the floor which had been polished until it shone like burnished
+metal.</p>
+
+<p>Polly Henty took Sophie to the piano where Mrs. Henty was playing the
+opening bars of a waltz. Paul beside her, his violin under his arm,
+stood looking with eager interest over the room where men and girls were
+chatting in little groups.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Henty nodded and smiled to Sophie. Her father signalled to her, and
+she went to a seat near him.</p>
+
+<p>Holding her hands over the piano, Mrs. Henty looked to Paul to see if he
+were ready. He lifted his violin, tucked it under his chin, drew his
+bow, and the piano and violin broke gaily, irregularly, uncertainly, at
+first, into a measure which set and kept the couples swaying round the
+edge of the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie watched them at first, dazed and interested. Under the glow of
+the lanterns, the figures of the dancers looked strange and solemn. Some
+of the dancers were moving without any conscious effort, just skimming
+the floor like swallows; others were working hard as they danced. Tom
+Henderson held Elizabeth Henty as if he never intended to let go of her,
+and worked her arm up and down as if it were a semaphore.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had always admired Arthur's eldest sister, and she thought
+Elizabeth the most beautiful-looking person she had ever seen this
+evening. And that pink dress&mdash;how pretty it was! What had Polly said her
+name was&mdash;the girl who wore it? Phyllis ... Phyllis Chelmsford....
+Sophie watched the dress flutter among the dancers some time before she
+noticed Miss Chelmsford was dancing with Arthur Henty.</p>
+
+<p>She watched the couples revolving, dazed, and thinking vaguely about
+them, noticing how pretty feet looked in satin slippers with high,
+curved heels, wondering why some men danced with stiff knees and others
+as if their knees had funny-bones like their elbows. The red light from
+the lanterns made the whole scene look unreal; she felt as if she were
+dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie!" her father cried sharply.</p>
+
+<p>She turned his page. Her eyes wandered to Mrs. Henty, who sat with her
+back to her. Sophie contemplated the bow of her back in its black frock
+with Spanish lace scarf across it, the outline of the black lace on the
+wrinkled skin of Mrs. Henty's neck, the loose, upward wave of her crisp
+white hair, glinting silverly where the light caught it. Her face was
+cobwebbed with wrinkles, but her features remained delicate and fine as
+sculpturings in ancient ivory. Her eyes were bright: the sparkle of
+youth still leapt in them. Her eyes had a slight smile of secret
+sympathy and amusement as they flew over the roomful of people dancing.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie watched dance after dance, while the music jingled and jangled.</p>
+
+<p>Presently John Armitage appeared in the doorway with Nina Henty. Sophie
+heard him apologising to Mrs. Henty for being late, and explaining that
+he had stayed in the back-country a few days longer than usual for the
+express purpose of coming to the ball.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Henty replied that it was "better late than never," and a pleasure
+to see Mr. Armitage at any time; and then he and Nina joined the throng
+of the dancers.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie drew her chair further back so that the piano screened her. The
+disappointment and stillness which had descended upon her since she came
+into the room tightened and settled. She had thought Arthur would surely
+come to ask her for this dance; but when the waltz began she saw he was
+dancing again with Phyllis Chelmsford. She sat very still, holding
+herself so that she should not feel a pain which was hovering in the
+background of her consciousness and waiting to grip her.</p>
+
+<p>It was different, this sitting on a chair by herself and watching other
+people dance, to anything that had ever happened to her. She had always
+been the centre of Ridge balls, courted and made a lot of from the
+moment she came into the hall. Even Arthur Henty had had to shoulder his
+way if he wanted a waltz with her.</p>
+
+<p>As the crowd brushed and swirled round the room, it became all blurred
+to Sophie. The last rag of that mood of tremulous joyousness which had
+invested her as she drove over the plains to the ball with her father,
+left her. She sat very still; she could not see for a moment. The waltz
+broke because she did not hear her father when he called her to turn the
+page of his music; he knocked over his stand trying to turn the page
+himself, and exclaimed angrily when Sophie did not jump to pick it up
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>After that she watched his book of music with an odd calm. She scarcely
+looked at the dancers, praying for the time to come when the ball would
+end and she could go home. The hours were heavy and dead; she thought it
+would never be midnight or morning again. She was conscious of her
+crushed dress and cotton gloves, and Mrs. Watty's big, old-fashioned
+fan; but after the first shock of disappointment she was not ashamed of
+them. She sat very straight and still in the midst of her finery; but
+she put the fan on the chair behind her, and took off her gloves in
+order to turn over the pages of her father's music more expertly.</p>
+
+<p>She knew now she was not going to dance. She understood she had not been
+invited as a guest like everybody else; but as the fiddler's little girl
+to turn over his music for him. And when she was not watching the music,
+she sat down in her chair beyond the piano, hoping no one would see or
+speak to her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Henty spoke to her occasionally. Once she called pleasantly:</p>
+
+<p>"Come here and let me look at your opals, child."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went to her, and Mrs. Henty lifted the necklace.</p>
+
+<p>"What splendid stones!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked into those bright eyes, very like Arthur's, with the same
+shifting sands in them, but alien to her, she thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said quietly. She did not feel inclined to tell Mrs. Henty
+about the stones.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Henty admired the ear-rings, and looked appreciatively at the big
+flat stone in Mrs. Grant's brooch. Sophie coloured under her attention.
+She wished she had not worn the opals that did not belong to her.</p>
+
+<p>Looking into Sophie's face, Mrs. Henty became aware of its sensitive,
+unformed beauty, a beauty of expression rather than features, and of a
+something indefinable which cast a glamour over the girl. She had been
+considerably disturbed by Arthur's share in the brawl at Newton's. It
+was so unlike Arthur to show fight of any sort. If it had not happened
+after she had sent the invitation, Mrs. Henty would not have spoken of
+Sophie when she asked Rouminof to play at the ball. As it was, she was
+not sorry to see what manner of girl she was.</p>
+
+<p>But as Sophie held a small, quiet face before her, with chin slightly
+uplifted, and eyes steady and measuring, a little disdainful despite
+their pain and surprise, Mrs. Henty realised it was a shame to have
+brought this girl to the ball, in order to inspect her; to discover what
+Arthur thought of her, and not in order that she might have a good time
+like other girls. After all, she was young and used to having a good
+time. Mrs. Henty heard enough of Ridge gossip to know any man on the
+mines thought the world of Sophie Rouminof. She had seen them eager to
+dance with her at race balls. It was not fair to have side-tracked her
+about Arthur, Mrs. Henty confessed to herself. The fine, clear innocence
+which looked from Sophie's eyes accused her. It made her feel mean and
+cruel. She was disturbed by a sensation of guilt.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was fidgeting at the first bars of the next dance, and, knowing the
+long programme to go through, Mrs. Henty's hand fell from Sophie's
+necklace, and Sophie went back to her chair.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Henty's thoughts wandered on the themes she had raised. She
+played absent-mindedly, her fingers skipping and skirling on the notes.
+She was realising what she had done. She had not meant to be cruel, she
+protested: she had just wished to know how Arthur felt about the girl.
+If he had wanted to dance with her, there was nothing to prevent him.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was dancing again with Phyllis, she noticed. She was a little
+annoyed. He was overdoing the thing. And Phyllis was a minx! That was
+the fourth time she had slipped and Arthur had held her up, the rose in
+her hair brushing his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Polly called. "For goodness' sake ... what are you dreaming
+of?"</p>
+
+<p>The music had gone to the pace of Mrs. Henty's reverie until Polly
+called. Then Mrs. Henty splashed out her chords and marked her rhythm
+more briskly.</p>
+
+<p>After all, Mrs. Henty concluded, if Arthur and Phyllis had taken a fancy
+to each, other&mdash;at last&mdash;and were getting on, she could not afford to
+espouse the other girl's cause. What good would it do? She wanted Arthur
+to marry Phyllis. His father did. Phyllis was the only daughter of old
+Chelmsford, of Yuina Yuina, whose cattle sales were the envy of
+pastoralists on both sides of the Queensland border. Phyllis's
+inheritance and the knowledge that the interests of Warria were allied
+to those of Andrew Chelmsford of Yuina, would ensure a new lease of hope
+and opportunity for Warria.... Whereas it would be worse than awful if
+Arthur contemplated anything like marriage with this girl from the
+Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Henty's conscience was uneasy all the same. When the dance was
+ended, she called Arthur to her.</p>
+
+<p>"For goodness' sake, dear, ask that child to dance with you," she said
+when he came to her. "She's been sitting here all the evening by
+herself."</p>
+
+<p>"I was just going to," Sophie heard Arthur say.</p>
+
+<p>He came towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you have the next dance with me, Sophie?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look at him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say&mdash;&mdash;" He sat down beside her. "I've had to dance with these
+people who are staying with us," he added awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes turned to him, all the stormy fires of opal running in them.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't <i>have</i> to dance with me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and stood indecisively a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," he said, "but I want to."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to dance with you," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>He turned away from her, went down the ball-room, and out through the
+doorway in the hessian wall. Everyone had gone to supper. Mrs. Henty had
+left the piano. Paul himself had gone to have some refreshment which was
+being served in the dining-room across the courtyard. From the square,
+washed with the silver radiance of moonlight which she could see through
+the open space in the hessian, came a tinkle of glasses and spoons,
+fragments of talking and laughter. Sophie heard a clear, girlish voice
+cry: "Oh, Arthur!"</p>
+
+<p>She clenched her hands; she thought that she was going to cry; but
+stiffening against the inclination, she sat fighting down the pain which
+was gripping her, and longed for the time to come when she could go home
+and be out in the dark, alone.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage entered the ball-room as if looking for someone. Glancing
+in the direction of the piano, he saw Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"There you are, Sophie!" he exclaimed heartily. "And, would you believe
+it, I've only just discovered you were here."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down beside her, and talked lightly, kindly, for a moment. But
+Sophie was in no mood for talking. John Armitage had guessed something
+of her crisis when he came into the room and found her sitting by
+herself. He had seen the affair at Newton's, and knew enough of Fallen
+Star gossip to understand how Sophie would resent Arthur Henty's
+treatment of her. He could see she was a sorely hurt little creature,
+holding herself together, but throbbing with pain and anger. She could
+not talk; she could only think of Arthur Henty, whose voice they heard
+occasionally out of doors. He was more than jolly after supper. Armitage
+had seen him swallow nearly a glassful of raw whisky. His face had gone
+a ghastly white after it. Rouminof had been drinking too. He came into
+the room unsteadily when Mrs. Henty took her seat at the piano again;
+but he played better.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage's eyes went to her necklace.</p>
+
+<p>"What lovely stones, Sophie!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked up. "Yes, aren't they? The men gave them to me&mdash;there's a
+stone for every one. This is Michael's!"&mdash;she touched each stone as she
+named it&mdash;"Potch gave me that, and Bully Bryant that."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes caught Armitage's with a little smile.</p>
+
+<p>"It's easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge," he said. "And here
+am I&mdash;come hundreds of miles ... can't get anything like that piece of
+stuff in your brooch."</p>
+
+<p>"That's Mrs. Grant's," Sophie confessed.</p>
+
+<p>"And your ear-rings, Sophie!" Armitage said. "'Clare to goodness,' as my
+old nurse used to say, I didn't think you could look such a witch. But I
+always have said black opal ear-rings would make a witch of a New
+England spinster."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he
+looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and
+appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was
+an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have,
+of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so
+extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in
+this out-of-the-way part of the world.</p>
+
+<p>John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world's contempt for churlish
+treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have
+permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying
+Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in
+distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her
+defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her
+disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"May I have the next dance, Sophie?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie glanced up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not dancing," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his
+resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her ear-rings
+swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked
+more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the
+opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the
+room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Why aren't you dancing, Sophie?" John Armitage asked.</p>
+
+<p>His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No one asked me to, until the dance before supper&mdash;then I didn't want
+to," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The dance was already in motion.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have this one with me, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. "Please!"
+he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held
+her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will
+not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and
+when</p>
+
+
+<p>the music stopped, Mr. Armitage took her through the doorway into the
+moonlight with the other couples. They walked to the garden where, the
+orange trees were in blossom.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Sophie breathed, her arm still on his, and a little giddy.</p>
+
+<p>The earth was steeped in purest radiance; the orange blossoms swam like
+stars on the dark bushes; their fragrance filled the air.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie held up her face as if to drink. "Isn't it lovely?" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>A black butterfly with white etchings on his wings hovered over an
+orange bush they were standing near, as if bewildered by the moonlight
+and mistaking it for the light of a strange day.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage spread his handkerchief on a wooden seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you'd like it," he said. "Let's sit here&mdash;I've put down my
+handkerchief because there's a dew, although the air seems so dry."</p>
+
+<p>When the music began again Sophie got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us go in yet," he begged.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" she demurred.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll stay here for this, and have the next dance," Armitage said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie hesitated. She wondered why Mr. Armitage was being so nice to
+her, understanding a little. She smiled into his eyes, dallying with the
+temptation. John Armitage had seen women's eyes like that before; then
+fall to the appeal of his own. But in Sophie's eyes he found something
+he had not seen very often&mdash;a will-o'the-wisp of infinite wispishness
+which incited him to pursue and to insist, while it eluded and flew from
+him.</p>
+
+<p>When she danced with John Armitage again, Sophie looked up, laughed, and
+played her eyes and smiles for him as she had seen Phyllis Chelmsford do
+for Arthur. At first, shyly, she had exerted herself to please him, and
+Armitage had responded to her tentative efforts; but presently she found
+herself enjoying the game. And Armitage was so surprised at the charm
+she revealed as she exerted herself to please him, that he responded
+with an enthusiasm he had not contemplated. But their mutual success at
+this oldest diversion in the world, while it surprised and delighted
+them, did not delight their hosts. Mr. and Mrs. Henty were surprised;
+then frankly scandalised. Several young men asked Sophie to dance with
+them after she had danced with John Armitage. She thanked them, but
+refused, saying she did not wish to dance very much. She sat in her
+chair by the piano except when she was dancing with Mr. Armitage, or was
+in the garden with him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+
+
+<p>"See Ed. means to do you well with a six-horse team this evening, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said, while Armitage was having his early meal
+before starting on his all-night drive into Budda.</p>
+
+<p>Newton remembered afterwards that John Armitage did not seem as
+interested and jolly as usual. Ordinarily he was interested in
+everything, and cordial with everybody; but this evening he was quiet
+and preoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly had a word to say for himself," Peter Newton said.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage had watched Ed. bring the old bone-shaking shandrydan he called
+a coach up to the hotel, and put a couple of young horses into it. He
+had a colt on the wheel he was breaking-in, and a sturdy old dark bay
+beside him, a pair of fine rusty bays ahead of them, and a sorrel, and
+chestnut youngster in the lead. He had got old Olsen and two men on the
+hotel veranda to help him harness-up, and it took them all their time to
+get the leaders into the traces. Bags had to be thrown over the heads of
+the young horses before anything could be done with them, and it took
+three men to hold on to the team until Ed. Ventry got into his seat and
+gathered up the reins. Armitage put his valise on the coach and shook
+hands all round. He got into his seat beside Ed. and wrapped a tarpaulin
+lined with possum skin over his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Let her go, Olly," Ed. yelled.</p>
+
+<p>The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses' heads.
+The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the
+steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to
+throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders
+dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle
+and clash of gear, Ed. Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands,
+pulling on them, and yelling:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders&mdash;yer! I'll warm yer....
+Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get
+alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"</p>
+
+<p>Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of
+the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at
+any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon
+took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and
+they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was
+reached.</p>
+
+<p>"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards.
+"Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that
+day he was dead quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, Ed,' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you
+got this trip?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' he says. But, by God&mdash;if I'd known what he got&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six
+o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning
+train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at
+the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train
+left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and
+scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding
+in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Could've swore I left Baldy at the Ridge," he said to the boy who
+looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought he was there meself," the lad replied, imitating Ed.'s
+perplexed head-scratching.</p>
+
+<p>At the Ridge, when he made his next trip, they were able to tell Mr.
+Ventry how the baldy-face happened to be at Budda when Ed. thought he
+was at Fallen Star, although Ed. heard some of the explanation from
+Potch and Michael a day or two later. Sophie had ridden the baldy-face
+into Budda the night he drove Mr. Armitage to catch the train for
+Sydney. No one discovered she had gone until the end of next day. Then
+Potch went to Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael," he said; "she's gone."</p>
+
+<p>During the evening Paul had been heard calling Sophie. He asked Potch
+whether he had seen her. Potch said he had not. But it was nothing
+unusual for Sophie to wander off for a day on an excursion with Ella or
+Mirry Flail, so neither he nor Michael thought much of not having seen
+her all day, until Paul remarked querulously to Potch that he did not
+know where Sophie was. Looking into her room Potch saw her bed had not
+been slept in, although the room was disordered. He went up to the town,
+to Mrs. Newton and to the Flails', to ask whether they had seen anything
+of Sophie. Mirry Flail said she had seen her on one of the coach-stable
+horses, riding out towards the Three Mile the evening before. Potch knew
+instinctively that Sophie had gone away from the moment Paul had spoken
+to him. She had lived away from him during the last few months; but
+watching her with always anxious, devout eyes, he had known more of her
+than anyone else.</p>
+
+<p>Lying full stretch on his sofa, Michael was reading when Potch came into
+the hut. His stricken face communicated the seriousness of his news.
+Michael had no reason to ask who the "she" Potch spoke of was: there was
+only one woman for whom Potch would look like that. But Michael's mind
+was paralysed by the shock of the thing Potch had said. He could neither
+stir nor speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm riding into Budda, to find out if she went down by the train,"
+Potch said. "I think she did, Michael. She's been talking about going to
+Sydney ... a good deal lately.... She was asking me about it&mdash;day before
+yesterday ... but I never thought&mdash;I never thought she wanted to go so
+soon ... and that she'd go like this. But I think she has gone.... And
+she was afraid to tell us&mdash;to let you know.... She said you'd made up
+your mind you didn't want her to go ... she'd heard her mother tell you
+not to let her go, and if ever she was going she wouldn't tell you...."</p>
+
+<p>Potch's explanation, broken and incoherent as it was, gave Michael's
+thought and feeling time to reassert themselves.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "See if Chassy can lend me his pony, and I'll come with you,
+Potch."</p>
+
+<p>They rode into Budda that night, and inquiry from the station-master
+gave them the information they sought. A girl in a black frock had taken
+a second-class ticket for Sydney. He did not notice very much what she
+was like. She had come to the window by herself; she had no luggage; he
+had seen her later sitting in a corner of a second-class compartment by
+herself. The boy, a stranger to the district, who had clipped her
+ticket, said she was crying when he asked for her ticket. He had asked
+why she was crying. She had said she was going away, and she did not
+like going away from the back-country. She was going away&mdash;to study
+singing, she said, but would be coming back some day.</p>
+
+<p>Michael determined to go to Sydney by the morning train to try to find
+Sophie. He went to Ed. Ventry and borrowed five pounds from him.</p>
+
+<p>"That explains how the baldy-face got here," Ed. said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael nodded. He could not talk about Sophie. Potch explained why they
+wanted the money as well as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no good trying to bring her back if she doesn't want to come,
+Michael," Potch had said before Michael left for Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"If you could get her fixed up with somebody to stay with," Potch
+suggested; "and see she was all right for money ... it might be the best
+thing to do. I've got a bit of dough put by, Michael.... I'll send that
+down to you and go over to one of the stations for a while to keep us
+goin'&mdash;if we want more."</p>
+
+<p>Michael assented.</p>
+
+<p>"You might try round and see if you could find Mr. Armitage," Potch
+said, just before the train went. "He might have seen something of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Michael replied, drearily.</p>
+
+<p>Potch waited until the train left, and started back to Fallen Star in
+the evening.</p>
+
+<p>A week later a letter came for Michael. It was in Sophie's handwriting.
+Potch was beside himself with anxiety and excitement. He wrote to
+Michael, care of an opal-buyer they were on good terms with and who
+might know where Michael was staying. In the bewilderment of his going,
+Potch had not thought to ask Michael where he would live, or where a
+letter would find him.</p>
+
+<p>Michael came back to Fallen Star when he received the letter. He had not
+seen Sophie. No one he knew or had spoken to had seen anything of her
+after she left the train. Michael handed the letter to Potch as soon as
+he got back into the hut.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie wrote that she had gone away because she wanted to learn to be a
+singer, and that she would be on her way to America when they received
+it. She explained that she had made up her mind to go quite suddenly,
+and she had not wanted Michael to know because she remembered his
+promise to her mother. She knew he would not let her go away from the
+Ridge if he could help it. She had sold her necklace, she said, and had
+got £100 for it, so had plenty of money. Potch and Michael were not to
+worry about her. She would be all right, and when she had made a name
+for herself as a singer, she would come home to the Ridge to see them.
+"Don't be angry, Michael dear," the letter ended, "with your lovingest
+Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>Potch looked at Michael; he wondered whether the thought in his own mind
+had reached Michael's. But</p>
+
+<p>Michael was too dazed and overwhelmed to think at all.</p>
+
+<p>"There's one thing, Potch," he said; "if she's gone to America, we could
+write to Mr. Armitage and ask him to keep an eye on her. And," he added,
+"if she's gone to America ... it's just likely she may be on the same
+boat as Mr. Armitage, and he'd look after her."</p>
+
+<p>Potch watched his face. The thought in his mind had not occurred to
+Michael, then, he surmised.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd see she came to no harm."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>But he had seen John Armitage talking to Sophie on the Ridge over near
+Snow-Shoes' hut the afternoon after the dance at Warria. He knew Mr.
+Armitage had driven Sophie home after the dance, too. Paul had been too
+drunk to stand, much less drive. Potch had knocked off early in the mine
+to go across to the Three Mile that afternoon. Then it had surprised
+Potch to see Sophie sitting and talking to Mr. Armitage as though they
+were very good friends; but, beyond a vague, jealous alarm, he had not
+attached any importance to it until he knew Sophie had gone down to
+Sydney by the same train as Mr. Armitage. She had said she was going to
+America, too, and he was going there. Potch had lived all his days on
+the Ridge; he knew nothing of the world outside, and its ways, except
+what he had learnt from books. But an instinct where Sophie was
+concerned had warned him of a link between her going away and John
+Armitage. That meeting of theirs came to have an extraordinary
+significance in his mind. He had thought out the chances of Sophie's
+having gone with Mr. Armitage as far as he could. But Michael had not
+associated her going with him, it was clear. It had never occurred to
+him that Mr. Armitage could have anything to do with Sophie's going
+away. It had not occurred to the rest of the Ridge folk either.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as
+he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her
+as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having
+gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be
+able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said,
+"then she'll send for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time
+here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."</p>
+
+<p>Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then,
+for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing
+him through the delirium of sun-stroke.</p>
+
+<p>A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers&mdash;Jun Johnson
+and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him&mdash;and
+Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been
+down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.</p>
+
+<p>When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found
+Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You
+think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well,
+you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof
+is&mdash;here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If
+I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face
+round here for a bit? Not much...."</p>
+
+<p>Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to
+his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage
+he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you chaps&mdash;I know how you feel about things; and quite right,
+too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that&mdash;why, he's not fit to wipe
+your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let
+run with the rest."</p>
+
+<p>He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business
+than any man-jack of you&mdash;no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is
+bygones&mdash;that's my motto. But I tell you&mdash;and that's the strength of
+it&mdash;I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man
+here. D'y' believe me?"</p>
+
+<p>It was said in good earnest enough, even Watty and George had to admit.
+It was either the best bit of bluff they had ever listened to, or else
+Jun, for once in a way, was enjoying the luxury of telling the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"We're all good triers here, Jun," George said, "but we're not as green
+as we're painted."</p>
+
+<p>Jun regarded his beer meditatively; then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, you chaps, suppose I put it to you straight: I ain't always
+been what you might call the clean potato ... but I ain't always been
+married, either. Well, I'm married now&mdash;married to the best little girl
+ever I struck...."</p>
+
+<p>The idea of Jun taking married life seriously amused two or three of the
+men. Smiles began to go round, and broadened as he talked. That they did
+not please Jun was evident.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, seein' I've taken on family responsibilities," he went on&mdash;"Was
+you smiling, Watty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me? Oh, no, Jun," the offender replied, meekly; "it was only the
+stummick-ache took me. It does that way sometimes. You mightn't think
+so, but I always look as if I was smilin' when I've got the
+stummick-ache."</p>
+
+<p>George Woods, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and some of the others laughed,
+taking Watty's explanation for what it was worth. But Jun continued
+solemnly, playing the reformed blackguard to his own satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Seein' I've taken on family responsibilities, I want to run straight. I
+don't want my kids to think there was anything crook about their dad."</p>
+
+<p>If he moved no one else, he contrived to feel deeply moved himself at
+the prospect of how his unborn children were going to regard him. The
+men who had always more or less believed in him managed to convince
+themselves that Jun meant what he said. George and Watty realised he had
+put up a good case, that he was getting at them in the only way
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>Michael moved out of the crowd round the door towards the bar. Peter
+Newton put his daily ration of beer on the bar.</p>
+
+<p>"'Lo, Michael," Jun said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Lo, Jun," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Jun concluded, tossing off his beer; "that's the way it is,
+boys. Believe me if y'r like, and if y'r don't like&mdash;lump it.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's one thing more I've got to tell you," he added; "and if you
+find what I've been saying hard to believe, you'll find this harder: I
+don't believe Charley got those stones of Rummy's."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>The query was like the crack of a whip-lash. There was a restive,
+restless movement among the men.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe Charley got those stones either," Jun declared. "'Got,'
+I said, not 'took.' All I know is, he was like a sick fish when he
+reached Sydney ... and sold all the opal he had with him. He was lively
+enough when we started out. I give you that. Maybe he took Rum-Enough's
+stones all right; but somebody put it over on him. I thought it might be
+Emmy&mdash;that yeller-haired tart, you remember, went down with us. She was
+a tart, and no mistake. My little girl, now&mdash;she was never ... like
+that! But Maud says she doesn't think so, because Emmy turned Charley
+out neck and crop when she found he'd got no cash. He got mighty little
+for the bit of stone he had with him ... I'll take my oath. He came
+round to borrow from me a day or two after we arrived. And he was ragin'
+mad about something.... If he shook the stones off Rum-Enough, it's my
+belief somebody shook them off of him, either in the train or here&mdash;or
+off of Rummy before he got them...."</p>
+
+<p>Several of the men muttered and grunted their protest. But Jun held to
+his point, and the talk became more general. Jun asked for news of the
+fields: what had been done, and who was getting the stuff. Somebody said
+John Armitage had been up and had bought a few nice stones from the
+Crosses, Pony-Fence, and Bully Bryant.</p>
+
+<p>"Armitage?" Jun said. "He's always a good man&mdash;gives a fair price. He
+bought my stones, that last lot ... gave me a hundred pounds for the big
+knobby. But it fair took my breath away to hear young Sophie Rouminof
+had gone off with him."</p>
+
+<p>Michael was standing beside him before the words were well out of his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Michael," Jun replied, after a quick, scared glance at the
+faces of the men about him. "But I took it for granted you all knew, of
+course. We saw them a good bit together down in Sydney, Maud and me, and
+she said she saw Sophie on the <i>Zealanida</i> the day the boat sailed. Maud
+was down seeing a friend off, and she saw Sophie and Mr. Armitage on
+board. She said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Michael turned heavily, and swung out of the bar.</p>
+
+<p>Jun looked after him. In the faces of the men he read what a bomb his
+news had been among them.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't have said that for a lot," he said, "if I'd 've thought
+Michael didn't know. But, Lord, I thought he knew ... I thought you all
+knew."</p>
+
+<p>In the days which followed, as he wandered over the plains in the late
+afternoon and evening, Michael tried to come to some understanding with
+himself of what had happened. At first he had been too overcast by the
+sense of loss to realise more than that Sophie had gone away. But now,
+beyond her going, he could see the failure of his own effort to control
+circumstances. He had failed; Sophie had gone; she had left the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>"God," he groaned; "with the best intentions in the world, what an awful
+mess we make of things!"</p>
+
+<p>Michael wondered whether it would have been worse for Sophie if she had
+gone away with Paul when her mother died. At least, Sophie was older now
+and better able to take care of herself.</p>
+
+<p>He blamed himself because she had gone away as she had, all the same;
+the failure of the Ridge to hold her as well as his own failure beat him
+to the earth. He had hoped Sophie would care for the things her mother
+had cared for. He had tried to explain them to her. But Sophie, he
+thought now, had more the restless temperament of her father. He had not
+understood her young spirit, its craving for music, laughter,
+admiration, and the life that could give them to her. He had thought the
+Ridge would be enough for her, as it had been for her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Michael never thought of Mrs. Rouminof as dead. He thought of her as
+though she were living some distance from him, that was all. In the
+evening he looked up at the stars, and there was one in which she seemed
+to be. Always he felt as if she were looking at him when its mild
+radiance fell over him. And now he looked to that star as if trying to
+explain and beg forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>His heart was sore because Sophie had left him without a word of
+affection or any explanation. His fear and anxiety for her gave him no
+peace. He sweated in agony with them for a long time, crying to her
+mother, praying her to believe he had not failed in his trust through
+lack of desire to serve her, but through a fault of understanding. If
+she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained
+that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with
+the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and
+sorrow for herself.</p>
+
+<p>Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by
+seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother's way. He had opposed
+the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it;
+and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise
+and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into
+channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas
+identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the
+hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.</p>
+
+<p>Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted
+Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from
+Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding
+Paul's opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would
+not do Sophie any harm.... His having them now could not injure
+Sophie.... Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he
+came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He
+tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always
+with him.... But Paul was delirious with sun-stroke, he remembered; it
+would be foolish to give him the stones just then.... As soon as that
+touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the
+opals and explain how he came to have them....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a><i>PART II</i></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_Ib" id="CHAPTER_Ib"></a>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+
+<p>The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes
+blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms
+continued until March.</p>
+
+<p>Through the heat came the baa-ing of sheep on the plains, moving in
+great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying
+of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from
+the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were
+marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the
+road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust
+from the plains.</p>
+
+<p>It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather.
+Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of
+it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was
+dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before
+the heat of the day began.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump,
+handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone,
+shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of
+the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air.
+But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay,
+moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers
+stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up
+from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the
+busy underground world of the mines.</p>
+
+<p>As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul
+when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium
+of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it.
+Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning;
+he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with
+Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open
+sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once,
+in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti&mdash;the
+yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard
+near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the
+goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch
+saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or
+cheese for the two huts.</p>
+
+<p>People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they
+regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch
+Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of.
+And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of
+his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if
+he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so.
+He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself
+did.</p>
+
+<p>A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought
+much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little
+bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had
+rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff
+of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself
+was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of
+the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody
+who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find
+eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all
+the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house,
+thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.</p>
+
+<p>"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't
+anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael
+for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.</p>
+
+<p>George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for
+Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when
+Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder
+than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.</p>
+
+<p>At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the
+brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of
+the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying
+nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds
+with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there
+was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or
+knew something of.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the
+old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real
+friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was
+that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a
+subtle, inexplicable fascination.</p>
+
+<p>As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had
+left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm
+comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it,
+there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."</p>
+
+<p>Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe
+Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would
+be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year.
+George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the
+Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to
+prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and
+rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be
+driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what
+his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and
+Son and men of the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George.</p>
+
+<p>"DEAR BRADY," it said, "I need hardly say your letter was a great shock
+to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he
+denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since
+found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her
+passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to
+leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy
+production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of
+this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power.
+Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment
+of my son's behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations
+between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I
+need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me
+personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my
+business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the
+best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady&mdash;whom I will regard as
+under my charge&mdash;you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps
+point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to
+visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to
+visit sins of the children upon the fathers.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours very truly,</p>
+
+<p>"DAWE P. ARMITAGE."</p>
+
+<p>"The old man seems fair broken up," Watty remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with
+Armitage and Son&mdash;again," George replied. "If she's all right ... well
+... perhaps it'll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn't get on
+all right ... they won't neither."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Watty muttered.</p>
+
+<p>The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for
+hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had
+crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes
+of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains,
+and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in
+tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man
+and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light;
+the sky, dim, and smoking with heat.</p>
+
+<p>Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with
+sun-stroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to
+eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for
+some time, and a haze the sun-stroke had left hovered over his mind.
+Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping,
+Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle,
+and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or
+dozed the hot, still, midday hours away.</p>
+
+<p>When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which
+came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to
+make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put
+before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one
+day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched
+Potch with the birds.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay
+on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until
+Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation
+of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or white-tail,
+to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was
+a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would
+be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to
+have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and
+entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not
+their common property.</p>
+
+<p>When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for
+granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had
+his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion
+which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and
+assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had
+at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived
+down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing
+for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had
+found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep,
+mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken
+from other loves.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give
+to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him.
+He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to
+tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was
+holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance
+tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his
+mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about
+the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his
+touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits
+again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let
+him know how he came to have them.</p>
+
+<p>All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the
+opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch's belief in him,
+and for not telling Potch how Paul's opals came into his possession.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the
+troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed
+words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the
+stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton's bar. Suddenly it
+occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the
+package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of
+books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.</p>
+
+<p>He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul's
+cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his
+books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he
+found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the
+box&mdash;only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.</p>
+
+<p>Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none
+had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough
+handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again
+more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were
+all right while he was about it, he thought.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table.
+Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin;
+and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted
+them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the
+candle-light. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in&mdash;a piece of
+opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its
+black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless
+night.</p>
+
+<p>One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle,
+letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in
+the stones&mdash;blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red&mdash;melted, sprayed, and
+scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.</p>
+
+<p>"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of
+colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not
+only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a
+sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining
+depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.</p>
+
+<p>Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung
+unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood
+up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that
+Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained
+how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay,
+instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing
+what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really
+guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a
+miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones
+as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at,
+tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and
+flashing.</p>
+
+<p>But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually
+sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement.
+He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Michael said. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the
+light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this
+way."</p>
+
+<p>The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between
+them. Michael lifted his head to listen.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that?" he asked;</p>
+
+<p>Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars,
+was blank in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"May I come in?" a woman's voice called. Her figure wavered in the
+doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into
+the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the
+threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes,
+laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes
+went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on
+the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see
+what you can do for her?"</p>
+
+<p>Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so
+ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to
+Maud.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of
+the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"My," she cried eagerly, "that's a pretty stone, Michael!" She turned it
+back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks
+of red and gold.</p>
+
+<p>"Just been noodlin' over some old scraps ... and came across it,"
+Michael said awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He
+could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul's opals
+before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had.</p>
+
+<p>"Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle," Maud said. "Doin' a
+bit of dealin' myself. I'll give you a good price for it, Michael."</p>
+
+<p>"It's goin' into a parcel," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know," Maud said.
+"Comin', Potch?"</p>
+
+<p>She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael
+caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street
+urchin's, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IIb" id="CHAPTER_IIb"></a>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+
+<p>Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies,
+fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely
+any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were
+clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden,
+flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond
+the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its
+wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed
+Sophie's singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the
+ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang.</p>
+
+<p>"You miss her these nights, don't you?" Michael said to Potch one very
+hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was
+drifting into the room about them.</p>
+
+<p>Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he
+looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any
+more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out
+of doors.</p>
+
+<p>Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they
+found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of
+the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working;
+even the noodlers, Snow-Shoes and young Flail, were standing round with
+the miners.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo," Michael said, "something's up!"</p>
+
+<p>Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only
+once before on the fields.</p>
+
+<p>"Ratting?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like it," Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up, George?" he asked, as Potch and he joined the men.</p>
+
+<p>"Rats, Michael," George said, "that's what's up. They've been on our
+place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was
+working on. They've paid Archie a visit ... and Bully reck'ns his
+spider's been walking lately, too."</p>
+
+<p>Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour
+for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat's visit to
+their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men
+who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the
+rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy
+O'Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods' shelter to talk the
+situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the
+fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards
+them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out
+before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the
+shelter.</p>
+
+<p>George Woods, the best natured, soberest man on the Ridge, was
+smouldering with rage at the ratting.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a good mind to put a bit of dynamite at the bottom of the shaft,
+and then, when a rat strikes a match, up he'll go," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But," Watty objected, "how'd you feel when you found a dead man in your
+claim, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"Feel?" George burst out. "I wouldn't feel&mdash;except he'd got no right to
+be there&mdash;and perlitely put him on one side."</p>
+
+<p>"Remember those chaps was up a couple of years ago, George?" Bill Grant
+asked, "and helped theirselves when Pony-Fence and me had a bit of luck
+up at Rhyll's hill."</p>
+
+<p>"Remember them?" George growled.</p>
+
+<p>"They'd go round selling stuff if there was anybody to buy&mdash;hang round
+the pub all day, and yet had stuff to sell," Watty murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The men smoked silently for a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"How much did they get, again?" Bully Bryant asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Couple of months," George said.</p>
+
+<p>"Police protect criminals&mdash;everybody knows that," Snow-Shoes said.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting on the dump just beyond the shade the shelter cast, he had been
+listening to what the men were saying, the sun full blaze on him, his
+blue eyes glittering in the shadow of his old felt hat. All eyes turned
+to him. The men always listened attentively when Snow-Shoes had anything
+to say.</p>
+
+<p>"If there's a policeman about, and a man starts ratting and is caught,
+he gets a couple of months. Well, what does he care? But if there's a
+chance of the miners getting hold of him and some rough handling ... he
+thinks twice before he rats ... knowing a broken arm or a pain in his
+head'll come of it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true," George said. "I vote we get this bunch ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" The Crosses and Bully agreed with him. Watty did not like the
+idea of the men taking the law into their own hands. He was all for law
+and order. His fat, comfortable soul disliked the idea of violence.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to me," he said, "it 'd be a good thing to set a trap&mdash;catch the
+rats&mdash;then we'd know where we were."</p>
+
+<p>Michael nodded. "I'm with Watty," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we could hand 'em over to the police," Watty said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael smiled. "Well, after the last batch getting two months, and the
+lot of us wasting near on two months gettin' 'em jailed, I reck'n it's
+easier to deal with 'em here&mdash;But we've got to be sure. They've got to
+be caught red-handed, as the sayin' is. It don't do to make mistakes
+when we're dealin' out our own justice."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, Michael," the men agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I reck'n we'd ought to have in the police," Watty remarked
+obstinately.</p>
+
+<p>"The police!" Snow-Shoes stood up as if he had no further patience with
+the controversy. "It's like letting hornets build in your house to keep
+down flies&mdash;to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the
+flies."</p>
+
+<p>He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure,
+straighter than any man's on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet,
+wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the
+shingly earth.</p>
+
+<p>Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among
+themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they
+left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because
+the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But
+when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had "done a
+moonlight flit," it was generally agreed that these suspicions were
+confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal
+within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had
+come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself
+had bought from the gougers. Jun's and Maud's flight was taken not only
+as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men's
+resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring
+them away.</p>
+
+<p>When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went
+its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill
+after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to
+find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby.</p>
+
+<p>The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary
+summer months was Bully Bryant's marriage to Ella Flail, and, although
+it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be
+married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance
+and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple.</p>
+
+<p>"Roy O'Mara's got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael,"
+Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and
+Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had
+thought over what he was going to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" Michael replied.</p>
+
+<p>"How about tryin' our luck there?" Potch ventured.</p>
+
+<p>Michael took the suggestion meditatively. Potch and he had been working
+together for several years with very little luck. They had won only a
+few pieces of opal good enough to put into a parcel for an opal-buyer
+when he came to Fallen Star. But Michael was loth to give up the old
+shaft, not only because he believed in it, but because of the work he
+and his mates had put into it, and because when they did strike opal
+there, the mine would be easily worked. But this was the first time
+Potch had made a suggestion of the sort, and Michael felt bound to
+consider it.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a bit of a rush on, Snow-Shoes told me," Potch said. "Crosses
+have pegged, and I saw Bill Olsen measurin' out a claim."</p>
+
+<p>Michael's reluctance to move was evident.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel sure we'll strike it in the old shaft, sooner or later," he
+murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Might be sooner by the coolebah," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael's eyes lifted to his, the gleam of a smile in them.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, we'll pull pegs," he said.</p>
+
+<p>While stars were still in the high sky and the chill breath of dawn in
+the air, men were busy measuring and pegging claims on the hillside
+round about the old coolebah. Half a dozen blocks were marked one
+hundred feet square before the stars began to fade.</p>
+
+<p>All the morning men with pegs, picks, and shovels came straggling up the
+track from the township and from other workings scattered along the
+Ridge. The sound of picks on the hard ground and the cutting down of
+scrub broke the limpid stillness.</p>
+
+<p>Paul came out of his hut as Potch passed it on his way to the coolebah.
+Immediately he recognised the significance of the heavy pick Potch was
+carrying, and trotted over to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You goin' to break new ground, Potch?" he asked. Potch nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah," he said. "Roy
+O'Mara's bottomed on opal there ... got some pretty good colours, and
+we're goin' to peg out."</p>
+
+<p>"A rush?" Paul's eyes brightened. "Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not bad."</p>
+
+<p>As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul
+chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.</p>
+
+<p>Roy O'Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of
+any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood
+over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great,
+bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound
+of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump&mdash;Roy had
+been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a
+fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day's find was spread
+on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but
+when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the
+pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.</p>
+
+<p>When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had
+marked in his mind's eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond
+Roy's claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at
+slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat
+beading and pouring down their faces.</p>
+
+<p>There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a new
+hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk so many
+shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of
+matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a
+child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after
+the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud
+and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the
+shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a
+fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal
+dirt beneath it. Roy O'Mara, working on his trace of promising black
+potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul.
+Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft;
+Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour
+of sinking again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IIIb" id="CHAPTER_IIIb"></a>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+
+<p>Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from
+the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock
+from the drives, Potch said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to sink another hole, Michael&mdash;higher up."</p>
+
+<p>Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that
+way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but
+he was not disturbed by his doing so.</p>
+
+<p>"Right," he said; "you sink another hole, Potch. I'll stick to this one
+for a bit."</p>
+
+<p>Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site
+carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the
+morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he
+was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had
+been three weeks on the job.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought to be near bottoming, Potch," Roy remarked one day towards the
+end of the three weeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Be there to-day," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his
+impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.</p>
+
+<p>Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a
+certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make
+considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well:
+they had cut out a pocket worth £400 as a result of their sinking, and
+it remained to be seen what Potch's new hole would bring. A good
+prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.</p>
+
+<p>Potch's prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value
+when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of
+promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the
+coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.</p>
+
+<p>They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains,
+for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal
+dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the
+mine, uttered a low cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael," he called.</p>
+
+<p>Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that
+joyous vibration in a man's voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went
+to Potch.</p>
+
+<p>Potch Was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had
+clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red,
+green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering
+together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he
+saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones
+which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some
+size was embedded in the wall of the mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks a beaut, doesn't she, Michael?" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Michael breathed hard.</p>
+
+<p>"By God&mdash;&mdash;" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.</p>
+
+<p>He screamed when he saw the stone.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew!" he yelled. "I knew we'd strike it here."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, stand back while I get her out," Potch cried.</p>
+
+<p>Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth
+about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away
+with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with
+wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.</p>
+
+<p>When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be
+even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it
+had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped
+surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal.
+Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous
+and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch's find to the men
+who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and
+Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They
+gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"You've struck it this time, Potch!" Roy O'Mara said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped
+surface, and held it to the sun again.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the biggest knobby&mdash;ever I see," Archie Cross said.</p>
+
+<p>"Same here," Bill Grant muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Wants polishin' up a bit," Michael said, "and then she'll show better."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul's hut and faced the stone
+on Sophie's wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when
+he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied
+that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a
+hen's egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they
+agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and
+excitement in his voice as he talked.</p>
+
+<p>Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd
+jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought
+in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.</p>
+
+<p>When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their
+plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf
+where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He
+threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the
+light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of
+crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across
+the table to read.</p>
+
+<p>Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the
+magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's
+eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in
+his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before
+him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of
+the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby
+ever taken out of the fields.</p>
+
+<p>Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and
+rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered
+book.</p>
+
+<p>As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul's opals flashed before
+him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious
+of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud
+Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him
+again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or
+explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.</p>
+
+<p>Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like
+that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch's
+bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about
+the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his
+silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except
+that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion
+of unworthiness in the object of its belief.</p>
+
+<p>But since&mdash;since he had made up his mind to give the opals to
+Paul&mdash;since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her
+any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not
+given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had
+seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to
+himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer
+in the mysterious no-man's land of his subconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's slow recovery from sun-stroke was a reason for deferring
+explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the
+first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals,
+Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his
+story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more
+difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of
+his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming
+on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul's opals.</p>
+
+<p>But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had
+only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this
+putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to
+face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals
+had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready
+to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with
+them.... He mocked his fears of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection
+with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own
+consciousness and to be honest with himself.</p>
+
+<p>As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision.
+He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray
+had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement
+seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could
+not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a
+dark corner of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Had Paul's stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their
+witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were
+misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of
+the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul's
+stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want
+to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe
+he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was
+ready to steal&mdash;steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he
+assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do
+that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to
+do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring
+of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had
+done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them
+to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his
+dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put
+off going to Paul and to Watty and George.</p>
+
+<p>Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of,
+Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the
+packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty
+its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette
+tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them
+for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his
+project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few
+books.</p>
+
+<p>He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman's
+year-book and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it
+must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or
+another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked
+them over&mdash;but he could not find the tin with Paul's opals in.</p>
+
+<p>He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the
+candle-fight.</p>
+
+<p>"They're gone," he told himself.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the
+box&mdash;if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absent-mindedly;
+but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there.</p>
+
+<p>Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on
+them&mdash;not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or
+suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able
+to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth
+speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value.
+His mind hovered indecisively. Maud?</p>
+
+<p>Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that
+gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself
+to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had
+come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to
+prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the
+day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat,
+Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man's hut
+either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one
+else who knew he had any stone worth having.</p>
+
+<p>If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By
+and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun
+told where those opals of Paul's had been found, as he would some
+day&mdash;Michael could not contemplate the prospect.</p>
+
+<p>He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it
+would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to
+restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men
+of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but
+knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession
+of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt
+that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the
+stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt.</p>
+
+<p>Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael
+sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him.
+He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul's had worked
+him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought
+him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of
+that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the
+loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty
+book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of
+the story Jun would tell&mdash;that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high
+faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of
+course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men's stones, and
+that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to
+be judged by it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IVb" id="CHAPTER_IVb"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+
+<p>Michael and Potch were finishing their tea when Watty burst in on them.
+His colour was up, his small, blue eyes winking and flashing over his
+fat, pink cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Who d'y' think's come be motor to-day, Michael?" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Michael's movement and the shade of apprehension which crossed his face
+were a question.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man Armitage!" Watty said. "And he's come all the way from New York
+to see the big opal, he says."</p>
+
+<p>There was a rumble of cart wheels, an exclamation and the reverberation
+of a broad, slow voice out-of-doors. Watty looked through Michael's
+window.</p>
+
+<p>"Here he is, Michael," he said. "George and Peter are helping him out of
+Newton's dog-cart. And Archie Cross and Bill Grant are coming along the
+road a bit behind."</p>
+
+<p>Michael pushed back his seat and pulled the fastenings from his front
+door. The front door was more of a decoration and matter of form in the
+face of the hut than intended to serve any useful purpose, and the
+fastening had never been moved before.</p>
+
+<p>Potch cleared away the litter of the meal while Michael went out to meet
+the old man. He was walking with the help of a stick, his heavy,
+colourless face screwed with pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Grr-rr!" he grunted. "What a fool I was to come to this God-damn place
+of yours, George! What? No fool like an old one? Don't know so much
+about that.... What else was I to do? Brrr! Oh, there you are, Michael!
+Came to see you. Came right away because, from what the boys tell me,
+you weren't likely to slip down and call on me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd 've come all right if I'd known you wanted to see me, Mr.
+Armitage," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>The old man went into the hut and, creaking and groaning as though all
+his springs needed oiling, seated himself on the sofa, whipped out a
+silk handkerchief and wiped his face and head with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," he said, "here I am at last&mdash;and mighty glad to get here.
+The journey from New York City, where I reside, to this spot on the
+globe, don't get any nearer as I grow older. No, sir! Who's that young
+man?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Armitage had fixed his eyes on Potch from the moment he came into
+the hut. Potch stood to his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"That's Potch," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch?"</p>
+
+<p>The small, round eyes, brown with black rims and centres, beginning to
+dull with age, winked over Potch, and in that moment Dawe Armitage was
+trying to discover what his chances of getting possession of the stone
+he had come to see, were with the man who had found it.</p>
+
+<p>"Con&mdash;gratulate you, young man," he said, holding out his hand. "I've
+come, Lord knows how many miles, to have a look at that stone of yours."</p>
+
+<p>Potch shook hands with him.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me it's the finest piece of opal ever come out of Ridge
+earth," the old man continued. "Well, I couldn't rest out there at home
+without havin' a look at it. To think there was an opal like that about,
+and I couldn't get me fingers on it! And when I thought how it was I'd
+never even see it, perhaps, I danged 'em to Hades&mdash;doctors, family and
+all&mdash;took me passage out here. Ran away! That's what I did." He chuckled
+with reminiscent glee. "And here I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Cleared out, did y', Mr. Armitage?" Watty asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, Watty," old Armitage answered, still chuckling. "Cleared
+out.... Family'll be scarrifyin' the States for me. Sent 'em a cable
+when I got here to say I'd arrived."</p>
+
+<p>Michael and George laughed with Watty, and the old man looked as pleased
+with himself as a schoolboy who has brought off some soul-satisfying
+piece of mischief.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you, boys," he said, "I felt I couldn't die easy knowing there was
+a stone like that about and I'd never clap eyes on it.... Know you
+chaps'd pretty well turned me down&mdash;me and mine&mdash;and I wouldn't get more
+than a squint at the stone for my pains. You're such damned independent
+beggars! Eh, Michael? That's the old argument, isn't it? How did y' like
+those papers I sent you&mdash;and that book ... by the foreign devil&mdash;what's
+his name? Clever, but mad. Y'r all mad, you socialists, syndicalists, or
+whatever y'r call y'rselves nowadays.... But, for God's sake, let me
+have a look at the stone now, there's a good fellow."</p>
+
+<p>Michael looked at Potch.</p>
+
+<p>"You get her, Potch," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch put his hand to the top of the shelf where, in ah old tin, the
+great opal lay wrapped in wadding, with a few soft cloths about it. He
+put the tin on the table. Michael pushed the table toward the sofa on
+which Mr. Armitage was sitting. The old man leaned forward, his lips
+twitching, his eyes watering with eagerness. Potch's clumsy fingers
+fumbled with the wrappings; he spread the wadding on the table. The opal
+flashed black and shining between the rags and wadding as Potch put it
+on the table. Michael had lighted a candle and brought it alongside.</p>
+
+<p>Dawe Armitage gaped at the stone with wide, dazed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"My!" he breathed; and again: "My!" Then: "She was worth it, Michael,"
+fell from him in an awed exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up, and the men saw tears of reverence and emotion in his
+eyes. He brushed them away and put out his hand to take the stone. He
+lifted the stone, gently and lovingly, as if it were alive and might be
+afraid at the approach of his wrinkled old hand. But it was not afraid,
+Potch's opal; it fluttered with delight in the hand of this old man, who
+was a devout lover, and rayed itself like a bird of paradise. Even to
+the men who had seen the stone before, it had a new and uncanny
+brilliance. It seemed to coquet with Dawe Armitage; to pour out its
+infinitesimal stars&mdash;-red, blue, green, gold, and amethyst&mdash;blazing,
+splintering, and coruscating to dazzle and bewilder him.</p>
+
+<p>The men exclaimed as Mr. Armitage moved the opal. Then he put the stone
+down and mopped his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "I reckon she's the God-damnedest piece of opal I've
+ever seen."</p>
+
+<p>"She is that," Watty declared.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got on her, Michael?" Dawe Armitage queried.</p>
+
+<p>A faint smile touched Michael's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm only asking," Armitage remarked apologetically. "I can tell you,
+boys, it's a pretty bitter thing for me to be out of the running for a
+stone like this. I ain't even bidding, you see&mdash;just inquiring, that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>Michael looked at Potch.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "it's Potch's first bit of luck, and I reck'n he's got
+the say about it."</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked at Potch. He was a good judge of character. His
+chance of getting the stone from Michael was remote; from Potch&mdash;a
+steady, flat look in the eyes, a stolidity and inflexibility about the
+young man, did hot give Dawe Armitage much hope where he was concerned
+either.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me," Mr. Armitage said, the twinkling of a smile in his eyes
+as he realised the metal of his adversary&mdash;"they tell me," he repeated,
+"you've refused three hundred pounds for her?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you reck'n she's worth?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"How much have you got on her?"</p>
+
+<p>Potch looked at Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't fixed any price," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Four hundred pounds?" Armitage asked.</p>
+
+<p>Potch's grey eyes lay on his for the fraction of a second.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't got money enough to buy that stone, Mr. Armitage," he said,
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p>The old man was crestfallen. Although he pretended that he had no hope
+of buying the opal, everybody knew that, hoping against hope, he had not
+altogether despaired of being able to prevail against the Ridge
+resolution not to sell to Armitage and Son, in this instance. Potch
+remarked vaguely that he had to see Paul, and went out of the hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," Dawe Armitage said, "I suppose that settles the matter.
+Daresay I was a durned old fool to try the boy&mdash;but there you are. Well,
+since I can't have her, Michael, see nobody else gets her for less than
+my bid."</p>
+
+<p>The men were sorry for the old man. What Potch had said was rather like
+striking a man when he was down, they thought; and they were not too
+pleased about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch doesn't seem to fancy sellin' at all for a bit," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" Armitage exclaimed. "He's not a miser&mdash;at his age?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not that," Michael replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well"&mdash;the old man's gesture disposed of the matter. He gazed at
+the stone entranced again. "But she's the koh-i-noor of opals, sure
+enough. But tell me"&mdash;he sat back on the sofa for a yarn&mdash;"what's the
+news of the field? Who's been getting the stuff?"</p>
+
+<p>The gossip of Jun and the ratting was still the latest news of the
+Ridge; but Mr. Armitage appeared to know as much of that as anybody. Ed.
+Ventry's boy, who had motored him over from Budda, had told him about
+it, he said. He had no opinion of Jun.</p>
+
+<p>"A bad egg," he said, and began to talk about bygone days on the Ridge.
+There was nothing in the world he liked better than smoking and yarning
+with men of the Ridge about black opal.</p>
+
+<p>He was fond of telling his family and their friends, who were too nice
+and precise in their manners for his taste, and who thought him a boor
+and mad on the subject of black opal, that the happiest times of his
+life had been spent on Fallen Star Ridge, "swoppin' lies with the
+gougers"; yarning with them about the wonderful stuff they had got, and
+other chaps had got, or looking over some of the opal he had bought, or
+was going to buy from them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," Mr. Armitage said after they had been talking for a long
+time, "it's great sitting here yarning with you chaps. Never thought ...
+I'd be sitting here like this again...."</p>
+
+<p>"It's fine to have a yarn with you, Mr. Armitage," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Michael," the old man replied. "But I suppose I must be
+putting my old bones to bed.... There's something else I want to talk to
+you about though, Michael."</p>
+
+<p>The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage's tone that what
+he had to say was for Michael alone.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll just have a look if that bally mare of mine's all right, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Michael," Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, "I guess
+you know what it is I want to talk to you about."</p>
+
+<p>Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment.</p>
+
+<p>"That little girl of yours."</p>
+
+<p>Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as
+if he and not Paul were Sophie's father.</p>
+
+<p>"She"&mdash;old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity
+crossed his face&mdash;"I've seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I've tried
+to keep an eye on her&mdash;but I don't mind admitting to you that a man
+needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what's coming to him
+where Sophie's concerned. But first of all ... she's well ... and
+happy&mdash;at least, she appears to be; and she's a great little lady."</p>
+
+<p>He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it
+were a page he were trying to read.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, she's singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they
+say she's doing well. She's sought after&mdash;made much of. She's got little
+old Manhattan at her feet, as they say.... I don't want to gloss over
+anything that son of mine may have done&mdash;but to put it in a nutshell,
+Michael, he's in love with her. He's really in love with her&mdash;wants to
+marry her, but Sophie won't have him."</p>
+
+<p>Michael did not speak, and he continued:</p>
+
+<p>"And there's this to be said for him. She says it. He isn't quite so
+much to blame as we first thought. Seems he'd been making love to her...
+and did a break before.... He didn't mean to be a blackguard, y' see.
+You know what I'm driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went&mdash;She
+says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then&mdash;well, you
+know, Michael ... you've been young ... you've been in love. And in
+Sydney ... summer-time ... with the harbour there at your feet....</p>
+
+<p>"They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the
+emigration authorities, I don't know. They make enough fuss about an old
+fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found
+her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made
+up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn't hear of getting married.
+Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin' married.
+Said her mother had been married&mdash;and look what it had brought her to.</p>
+
+<p>"She's fond of John, too," the old man continued. "But, at present, New
+York's a side-show, and she's enjoying it like a child on a holiday from
+the country. I've got her living with an old maid cousin of mine....
+Sophie says by and by perhaps she'll marry John, but not yet&mdash;not
+now&mdash;she's having too good a time. She's got all the money she wants ...
+all the gaiety and admiration. It's not the sort of life I like for a
+woman myself ... but I've done my best, Michael."</p>
+
+<p>There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face
+before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage," he said, "and I'm grateful to
+you.".</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you the truth, Michael," he said, "I'm fond of her. I feel about
+her as if she were a piece of live opal&mdash;the best bit that fool of a son
+of mine ever brought from the Ridge...."</p>
+
+<p>His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while
+ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that.
+Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It's a
+God-damned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones
+in me body."</p>
+
+<p>Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him
+his arm, and they went to Rouminof's hut.</p>
+
+<p>Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage's arrival; that he had come to
+the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael's hut. Paul had gone
+to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He
+was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers
+on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage
+came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile,
+Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer
+pockets of his overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought you'd like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof," he said.
+"She's well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And
+I brought along this." He held out a photograph. "She wouldn't give me a
+photograph for you, Michael&mdash;said you'd never know her&mdash;so I prigged
+this from her sitting-room last time I was there."</p>
+
+<p>Michael glanced at the photographer's card of heavy grey paper, which
+Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he
+thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands,
+he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was
+so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the
+picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering
+through all his consciousness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_Vb" id="CHAPTER_Vb"></a>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+
+<p>Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul's
+hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and
+start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the
+sun-stroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and
+Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him
+out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again.</p>
+
+<p>Since old Armitage's visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was
+getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used
+to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had
+been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage's visit he spent
+the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton's
+veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn
+with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies
+over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie's
+neglect of him&mdash;how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to
+do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling
+reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie's
+mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised Sometimes,
+talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York.</p>
+
+<p>He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of
+so much drinking on his never very steady brain.</p>
+
+<p>For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim
+and start work again; but Paul would not.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the good," he had said, "Sophie'll be sending for me soon, and
+I'll be going to live with her in New York, and she won't want people to
+be saying her father is an old miner."</p>
+
+<p>Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever
+to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge;
+he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer
+Paul back to more or less regular ways of living.</p>
+
+<p>This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work
+again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine
+the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that
+news.</p>
+
+<p>Potch had brought Paul home from Newton's the night before, Michael
+knew; but Paul was not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael
+went into the hut.</p>
+
+<p>As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door
+of the room which had been Sophie's was thrown back. Michael went
+towards it.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul!" he called.</p>
+
+<p>No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity
+had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway
+thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been
+like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but
+there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room
+about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the
+frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the
+window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael
+remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago.</p>
+
+<p>He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left
+the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when
+his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He
+gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the
+suggestion they conveyed.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie exclaimed behind him.</p>
+
+<p>When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against
+one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed
+into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come home, Michael," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her
+eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the
+realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of
+his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to
+the Ridge again.</p>
+
+<p>They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what
+words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some
+commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a sight for sore eyes&mdash;the sight of you, Sophie," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael!"</p>
+
+<p>Her arms went out to him with the quick gesture he knew. Michael moved
+to her and caught her in his arms. No moment in all his life had been
+like this when he held Sophie in his arms as though she were his own
+child. His whole being swayed to her in an infinite compassion and
+tenderness. She lay against him, her body quivering. Then she cried,
+brokenly, with spent passion, almost without strength to cry at all.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there!" Michael muttered. "There, there!"</p>
+
+<p>He held her, patting and trying to comfort and soothe her, muttering
+tenderly, and with difficulty because of his trouble for her. The tears
+she had seen in his eyes when he said she was a sight for sore eyes came
+from him and fell on her. His hand went over her hair, clumsily,
+reverently.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there!" he muttered again and again.</p>
+
+<p>Weak with exhaustion, when her crying was over, Sophie moved away from
+him. She pushed back the hair which had fallen over her forehead; her
+eyes had a faint smile as she looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a silly, aren't I, Michael?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael's mouth took its wry twist.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you, Sophie?" he said. "Well ... I don't think there's anyone else
+on the Ridge'd dare say so."</p>
+
+<p>"I've dreamt of that smile of yours, Michael," Sophie said. She swayed a
+little as she looked at him; her eyes closed.</p>
+
+<p>Michael put his arm round her and led her to the bed. He made her lie
+down and drew the coverlet over her.</p>
+
+<p>"You lay down while I make you a cup of tea, Sophie," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was lying so still, her face was so quiet and drained of colour
+when he returned with tea in a pannikin and a piece of thick bread and
+butter on the only china plate in the hut, that Michael thought she had
+fainted. But the lashes swept up, and her eyes smiled into his grave,
+anxious face as he gazed at her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right, Michael," she said, "only a bit crocky and dead tired."
+She sat up, and Michael sat on the bed beside her while she drank the
+tea and ate the bread and butter.</p>
+
+<p>"Tea in a pannikin is much nicer than any other tea in the world,"
+Sophie said. "Don't you think so, Michael? I've often wondered whether
+it's the tea, or the taste of the tin pannikin, or the people who have
+tea in pannikins, that makes it so nice."</p>
+
+<p>After a while she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I came up on the coach this morning ... didn't get in till about
+half-past six.... And I came straight up from Sydney the day before.
+That's all night on the train ... and I didn't get a sleeper. Just sat
+and stared out of the window at the country. Oh! I can't tell you how
+badly I've wanted to come home, Michael. In the end I felt I'd die if I
+didn't come&mdash;so I came."</p>
+
+<p>Then she asked about Potch and her father.</p>
+
+<p>Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sun-stroke, but
+that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of
+putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down
+to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and
+Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the
+night before.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll send him up to you, if he's there," Michael said. "But you'd
+better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shut-eye
+you've been missing these last two or three days."</p>
+
+<p>"Months, Michael," Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her
+eyes again.</p>
+
+<p>They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'll sleep all right here," she said. "I feel as if I'd sleep for
+years and years.... It's the smell of the paper daisies and the
+sandal-wood smoke, I suppose. The air's got such a nice taste,
+Michael.... It smells like peace, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Michael said, "you eat as much of it as you fancy. I don't mind
+if Paul doesn't find you till he comes back to tea.... It'd do you more
+good to have a sleep now, and then you'll be feelin' a bit fitter."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I could go to sleep now, Michael," Sophie murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Michael stood watching her for a moment as she seemed to go to sleep,
+thinking that the dry, northern air, with its drowsy fragrance, was
+already beginning to draw the ache from her body and brain. He went to
+the curtain of the doorway, dropped it, and turned out into the blank
+sunshine of the day again.</p>
+
+<p>He fit his pipe and smoked abstractedly as he walked down the track to
+the mine. He had already made up his mind that it would be better for
+Sophie to sleep for a while, and that he was not going to get anyone to
+look for Paul and send him to her.</p>
+
+<p>She had said nothing of the reason for her return, and Michael knew
+there must be a reason. He could not reconcile the Sophie Dawe Armitage
+had described as taking her life in America with such joyous zest, and
+the elegant young woman on the show-page of the illustrated magazine,
+with the weary and broken-looking girl he had been talking to. Whatever
+it was that had changed her outlook, had been like an earthquake,
+devastating all before it, Michael imagined. It had left her with no
+more than the instinct to go to those who loved and would shelter her.</p>
+
+<p>Potch was at work on a slab of shin-cracker when Michael went down into
+the mine. He straightened and looked up as Michael came to a standstill
+near him. His face was dripping, and his little white cap, stained with
+red earth, was wet with sweat. He had been slogging to get through the
+belt of hard, white stone near the new colours before Michael appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Get him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had almost forgotten Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, switching his thoughts from Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" Potch asked quickly, perceiving something unusual in
+Michael's expression.</p>
+
+<p>Michael wanted to tell him&mdash;this was a big thing for Potch, he knew&mdash;and
+yet he could not bring his news to expression. It caught him by the
+throat. He would have to wait until he could say the thing decently, he
+told himself. He knew what joy it would give Potch.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he said, before he realised what he had said.</p>
+
+<p>But he promised himself that in a few minutes he would tell Potch. He
+would break the news to him. Michael felt as though he were the guardian
+of some sacred treasure which he was afraid to give a glimpse of for
+fear of dazzling the beholder.</p>
+
+<p>The concern went from Potch's face as quickly and vividly as it had
+come. He knew that Michael had reserves from him, and he was afraid of
+having trespassed on them by asking for information which Michael did
+not volunteer. He had been betrayed into the query by the stirred and
+happy look on Michael's face. Only rarely had he seen Michael look like
+that. Potch's thought flashed to Sophie&mdash;Michael must have some good
+news of her, he guessed, and knew Michael would pass it on to him in his
+own time.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to his work again, and Michael took up his pick. Potch's
+steady slinging at the shin-cracker began again. Michael reproached
+himself as the minutes went by for what he was keeping from Potch.</p>
+
+<p>He knew what his news would mean to Potch. He knew the solid flesh of
+the man would grow radiant. Michael had seen that subtle glow transfuse
+him when they talked of Sophie. He pulled himself together and
+determined to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Dropping his pick to take a spell, Michael pulled his pipe from the belt
+round his trousers, relighted the ashes in its bowl, and sat on the
+floor of the mine. Potch also stopped work. He leaned his pick against
+the rock beside him, and threw back his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Where was he?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Who&mdash;Paul?"</p>
+
+<p>Potch nodded, sweeping the drips from his head and neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Michael decided he would tell him now.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know," he said. "He wasn't about when I came away."</p>
+
+<p>Potch wrung his cap, shook it out, and fitted it on his head again.</p>
+
+<p>"He was showin' all right at Newton's last night," he said. "I'd a bit
+of a business getting him home."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," Michael replied absent-mindedly. "Potch ..." he he added, and
+stopped to listen.</p>
+
+<p>There was a muffled rumbling and sound of someone calling in the
+distance. It came from Roy O'Mara's drive, on the other side of the
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo!" Michael called.</p>
+
+<p>"That you, Michael?" Roy replied. "I'm comin' through."</p>
+
+<p>His head appeared through the drive which he had tunnelled to meet
+Potch's and Michael's drive on the eastern side of the mine. He crawled
+out, shook himself, took out his pipe, and squatted on the floor beside
+Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Rummy?" Roy asked.</p>
+
+<p>Michael shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't get him down, after all&mdash;the boys were taking bets about it
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll get him yet," Potch said. "The colour'll work like one thing."</p>
+
+<p>Michael stared ahead of him, smoking as though his thoughts absorbed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"He was pretty full at Newton's last night," Roy said, "and
+talkin'&mdash;talkin' about Sophie singing in America, and the great lady she
+is now. And how she was goin' to send for him, and he'd be leavin' us
+soon, and how sorry we'd all be then."</p>
+
+<p>"Should've thought you'd about wore out that joke," Michael remarked,
+dryly.</p>
+
+<p>Roy's easy, good-natured voice faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," he said, "he likes to show off a bit, and it don't hurt us,
+Michael."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Michael returned; "but Potch was out half the night
+bringing him home. You chaps might remember Paul's our proposition when
+you're having a bit of fun out of him."</p>
+
+<p>Potch turned back to his work.</p>
+
+<p>"Right, Michael," Roy said. And then, after a moment, having decided
+that both Michael's and Potch's demeanours were too calm for them to
+have heard what he had, as if savouring the effect of his news, he
+added:</p>
+
+<p>"But perhaps we won't have many more chances-seein' Rummy 'll be going
+to America before long, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Michael, looking at Roy through his tobacco smoke, realised that he knew
+about Sophie's having come home. His glance travelled to Potch, who was
+slogging at the cement stone again.</p>
+
+<p>"Saw old Ventry on me way down to the mine," Roy said, "and he said he'd
+a passenger on the coach last night.... Who do you think it was?"</p>
+
+<p>Michael dared not look at Potch.</p>
+
+<p>"He said," Roy murmured slowly, "it was Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>They knew that Potch's pick had stopped. Michael had seen a tremor
+traverse the length of his bared back; but Potch did not turn. He stood
+with his face away from them, immobile. His body dripped with sweat and
+seemed to be oiled by the garish light of the candle which outlined his
+head, gilded his splendid arms and torso against the red earth of the
+mine, and threw long shadows into the darkness, shrouding the workings
+behind him. Then his pick smashed into the cement stone with a force
+which sent sharp, white chips flying in every direction.</p>
+
+<p>When Roy crawled away through the tunnel to his own quarters, Potch
+swung round from the face he was working on, his eyes blazing.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true?" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment he added: "I found her in the hut this morning just
+before I came away. I been tryin' all these blasted hours to tell you,
+Potch ... but every time I tried, it got me by the neck, and I had to
+wait until I found me voice."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIb" id="CHAPTER_VIb"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+
+<p>The sunset was fading, a persimmon glow failing from behind the trees,
+its light merging with the blue of the sky, creating the faint, luminous
+green which holds the first stars with such brilliance, when Sophie went
+out of the hut to meet Potch.</p>
+
+<p>The smell of sandal-wood burning on the fireplace in the kitchen she had
+just left, was in the air. Such soothing its fragrance had for her! And
+on the shingly soil, between the old dumps cast up a little distance
+from the huts, in every direction, the paper daisies were lying, white
+as driven snow in the wan light. Sophie went to the goat-pen, strung
+round with a light, crooked fence, a few yards from the back of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>As she leaned against the fence she could hear the tinkling of a
+goat-bell in the distance. The fragrances, the twilight, and the quiet
+were balm to her bruised senses. The note of a bell sounded nearer.
+Potch was bringing the goats in.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went to the shed and stood near it, so that she might see him
+before he saw her. A kid in the shed bleated as the note of the bell
+became harsher and nearer. Sophie heard the answering cry of the nanny
+among the three or four goats coming down to the yard along a narrow
+track from a fringe of trees beyond the dumps. Then she saw Potch's
+figure emerge from the trees.</p>
+
+<p>He drove the goats into the yard where two sticks of the fence were
+down, put up the rails, and went to the shed for a milking bucket. He
+came back into the yard, pulled a little tan-and-white nanny beside a
+low box on which he sat to milk, and the squirt and song of milk in the
+pail began. Sophie wondered what Potch was thinking of as he sat there
+milking. She remembered the night&mdash;Potch had been sitting just like
+that&mdash;when she told him her mother was dead. As she remembered, she saw
+again every flicker and gesture of his, the play of light on his broad,
+heavy face and head, with its shock of fairish hair; how his face had
+puckered up and looked ugly and childish as he began to cry; how, after
+a while, he had wiped his eyes and nose on his shirt-sleeve, and gone on
+with the milking again, crying and sniffling in a subdued way.</p>
+
+<p>There was a deep note of loving them in his voice, rough and burred
+though it was, as Potch spoke to the goats. Two of them came when he
+called.</p>
+
+<p>When he had nearly finished milking, Sophie moved away from the screen
+of the shed. She went along to the fence and stood where he could see
+her when he looked up.</p>
+
+<p>The light had faded, and stars were glimmering in the luminous green of
+the sky when Potch, as he released the last goat, pushed back the box he
+had been sitting on, got up, took his bucket by the handle, and, looking
+towards the fence, saw Sophie standing there. At first he seemed to
+think she was a figure of his imagination, he stood so still gazing at
+her. He had often thought of her, leaning against the rails there,
+smiling at him like that. Then he remembered Sophie had come home; that
+it was really Sophie herself by the fence as he had dreamed of seeing
+her. But her face was wan and ethereal in the half-light; it floated
+before him as if it were a drowned face in the still, thin air.</p>
+
+<p>"She's very like my old white nanny, Potch," Sophie said, her eyes
+glancing from Potch to the goat he had just let go and which had
+followed him across the yard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>"She might almost be Annie Laurie's daughter," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>"She's her grand-daughter," Potch replied.</p>
+
+<p>He put the bucket down at the rails and stooped to get through them.
+Before he took up the bucket again he stood looking at her as though to
+assure himself that it was really Sophie in the flesh who was waiting
+for him by the fence. Then he took up the bucket, and they walked across
+to Michael's hut together.</p>
+
+<p>Potch dared scarcely glance at her when he realised that Sophie was
+really walking beside him&mdash;Sophie herself&mdash;although her eyes and her
+voice were not the eyes and voice of the Sophie he had known. And he had
+so often dreamed of her walking beside him that the dream seemed almost
+more real than the thing which had come to pass.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went with him to the lean-to, where the milk-dishes stood on a
+bench under the window outside Michael's hut. She watched Potch while he
+strained the milk and poured it into big, flat dishes on a bench under
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>Paul came to the door of their own hut. He called her. Sophie could hear
+voices exclaiming and talking to Paul and Michael. She supposed that the
+people her father had said were coming from New Town to see her had
+arrived. She dreaded going into the room where they all were, although
+she knew that she must go.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you coming, Potch?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes went from her to his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get cleaned up a bit first," he said, "then I'll come."</p>
+
+<p>The content in his eyes as they rested on her was transferred to Sophie.
+It completed what the fragrances, those first minutes in the quiet and
+twilight had done for her. It gave her a sense of having come to haven
+after a tempestuous journey on the high seas beyond the reef of the
+Ridge, and of having cast anchor in the lee of a kindly and sheltering
+land.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIIb" id="CHAPTER_VIIb"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+
+<p>Michael had lit the lamp in Rouminof's kitchen; innumerable tiny-winged
+insects, moths, mosquitoes, midges, and golden-winged flying ants hung
+in a cloud about it. Martha M'Cready, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and George
+Woods were there talking to Paul and Michael when Sophie went into the
+kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Here she is," Paul said.</p>
+
+<p>Martha rose from her place on the sofa and trundled cross to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearie!" she cried, as George and Pony-Fence called:</p>
+
+<p>"H'llo, Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>And Sophie said: "Hullo, George! Hullo, Pony-Fence!"</p>
+
+<p>Martha's embrace cut short what else she may have had to say. Sophie
+warmed to her as she had when she was a child. Martha had been so plump
+and soft to rub against, and a sensation of sheer animal comfort and
+rejoicing ran through Sophie as she felt herself against Martha again.
+The slight briny smell of her skin was sweet to her with associations of
+so many old loving and impulsive hugs, so much loving kindness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mother M'Cready," she cried, a more joyous note in her voice than
+Michael had yet heard, "it is nice to see you again!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, lovey," Martha replied, disengaging her arms, "and they'd got me
+that scared of you&mdash;saying what a toff you were. I thought you'd be
+tellin' me my place if I tried this sort of thing. But when I saw you a
+minute ago, I clean forgot all about it. I saw you were just my own
+little Sophie back again ... and I couldn't 've helped throwing me arms
+round you&mdash;not for the life of me."</p>
+
+<p>She was winking and blinking her little blue eyes to keep the tears in
+them, and Sophie laughed the tears back from her eyes too.</p>
+
+<p>"There she is!" a great, hearty voice exclaimed in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>And Bully Bryant, carrying the baby, with Ella beside him, came into the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Bully!" Sophie cried, as she went towards them, "And Ella!"</p>
+
+<p>Ella threw out her arms and clung to Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"She's been that excited, Sophie," Bully said, "I couldn't hardly get
+her to wait till this evening to come along."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bully!" Ella protested shyly.</p>
+
+<p>"And the baby?" Sophie cried, taking his son from Bull. "Just fancy you
+and Ella being married, Bully, and having a baby, and me not knowing a
+word about it!"</p>
+
+<p>The baby roared lustily, and Bully took him from Sophie as Watty Frost,
+the Crosses, and Roy O'Mara came through the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Watty, Archie, Tom, Roy!" Sophie exclaimed with a little gasp of
+pleasure and excitement, shaking hands with each one of them as they
+came to her.</p>
+
+<p>She had not expected people to come to see her like this, and was
+surprised by the genial warmth and real affection of the greetings they
+had given her. Everybody was laughing and talking, the little room was
+full to brimming when Bill Grant appeared in the doorway, and beside him
+the tall, gaunt figure of the woman Sophie loved more than any other
+woman on the Ridge&mdash;Maggie Grant, looking not a day older, and wearing a
+blue print dress with a pin-spot washed almost out of it, as she had
+done as long as Sophie could remember.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went to the long, straight glance of her eyes as to a call.
+Maggie kissed her. She did not speak; but her beautiful, deep-set eyes
+spoke for her. Sophie shook hands with Bill Grant.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad to see you back again, Sophie," he said simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Bill," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then Potch came in; and behind him, slowly, from out of the night,
+Snow-Shoes. The Grants had moved from the door to give him passage; but
+he stood outside a moment, his tall, white figure and old sugar-loaf hat
+outlined against the blue-dark wall of the night sky, as though he did
+not know whether he would go into the room or not.</p>
+
+<p>Then he crossed the threshold, took off his hat, and stood in a stiff,
+gallant attitude until Sophie saw him. He had a fistful of yellow
+flowers in one hand. Everybody knew Sophie had been fond of punti. But
+there were only a few bushes scattered about the Ridge, and they had
+done flowering a month ago, so Snow-Shoes' bouquet was something of a
+triumph. He must have walked miles, to the swamp, perhaps, to find it,
+those who saw him knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Riley!" Sophie cried, as she went to shake hands with him.</p>
+
+<p>"They still call me Snow-Shoes, Sophie," the old man said.</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed, and Sophie joined them. She knew, as they all did, that
+although anyone of them was called by the name the Ridge gave him, no
+one ever addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley.</p>
+
+<p>He held the flowers out to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Punti!" she exclaimed delightedly, holding the yellow blossoms to her
+nose. "Isn't it lovely? ... No flower in the world's got such a
+perfume!"</p>
+
+<p>Michael had explained to the guests that Sophie was not to be asked to
+sing, and that nothing was to be said about her singing. Something had
+gone wrong with her voice, he told two or three of the men.</p>
+
+<p>He thought he had put the fear of God into Paul, and had managed to make
+him understand that it distressed Sophie to talk about her singing, and
+he must not bother her with questions about it. But in a lull of the
+talk Paul's voice was raised querulously:</p>
+
+<p>"What I can't make out, Sophie," he said, "is why you can't sing? What's
+happened to your voice? Have you been singing too much? Or have you
+caught cold? I always told you you'd have to be careful, or your voice'd
+go like your mother's did. If you'd listened to me, now, or I'd been
+with you...."</p>
+
+<p>Bully Bryant, catching Michael's eye, burst across Paul's drivelling
+with a hearty guffaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "Sophie's already had a sample of the fine lungs of
+this family, and I don't mind givin' her another, and then Ella and
+me'll have to be takin' Buffalo Bill home to bed. Now then, old son,
+just let 'em see what we can do." He raised his voice to singing pitch:</p>
+
+<p>"For-er she's a jolly good fellow, for-er-"</p>
+
+<p>All the men and women in the hut joined in Bully's roar, singing in a
+way which meant much more than the words&mdash;singing from their hearts,
+every man and woman of them.</p>
+
+<p>Then Bully put his baby under his arm as though it were a bundle of
+washing, Ella protesting anxiously, and the pair of them said good-night
+to Sophie. Snow-Shoes went out before them; and Martha said she would
+walk down to the town with Bully and Ella. Bill Grant and Maggie said
+good-night.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie looks as if she'd sleep without rocking to-night," Maggie Grant
+said by way of indicating that everybody ought to go home soon and let
+Sophie get to bed early.</p>
+
+<p>"I will," Sophie replied.</p>
+
+<p>Pony-Fence and the Crosses were getting towards the door, Watty and
+George followed them.</p>
+
+<p>"It's about time you was back, that's what I say, Sophie," George Woods
+said, gripping her hand as he passed. "There's been no luck on this
+field since you went away."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie smiled into his kindly brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Watty backed up his mate heartily.</p>
+
+
+<p>"But," Sophie said, "they tell me Potch has had all the luck."</p>
+
+<p>"So he has," George Woods agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a great stone, isn't it, Sophie?" Watty said.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't seen it yet," Sophie said. "Michael said he'd get Potch to
+show it to me to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Not seen it?" George gasped. "Not seen the big opal! Say, boys"&mdash;he
+turned to Pony-Fence, and the Crosses&mdash;"I reck'n we'll have to stay for
+this. Sophie hasn't seen Potch's opal yet. Bring her along, Potch. Bring
+her along, and let's all have another squint at her. You can't get too
+much of a good thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Right," Potch replied.</p>
+
+<p>He went out of the hut to bring the opal from his own room.</p>
+
+<p>"Reck'n it's the finest stone ever found on this field," Watty said,
+"and the biggest. How much did you say Potch had turned down for it,
+Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four hundred," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you hangin' on to her for, Michael?" Pony-Fence asked.</p>
+
+<p>Michael shook his head, that faint smile of his flickering.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch's had an idea he didn't want to part with her," he said. "But I
+daresay he'll be letting her go soon."</p>
+
+<p>He did not say "now." But the men understood that. They guessed that
+Potch had been waiting for this moment; that he wanted to show Sophie
+the stone before selling it.</p>
+
+<p>Potch came into the room again, his head back, an indefinable triumph
+and elation in his eyes as they sought Sophie's. He had a mustard tin,
+skinned of its gaudy paper covering, in his hand. A religious awe and
+emotion stirred the men as, standing beside Sophie, he put the tin on
+the table. They crowded about the table, muscles tightening in sun-red,
+weather-tanned faces, some of them as dark as the bronze of an old
+penny, the light in their eyes brightening, sharpening&mdash;a thirsting,
+eager expression in every face. Potch screwed off the lid of the tin,
+lifted the stone in its wrappings, and unrolled the dingy flannel which
+he had put round it. Then he took the opal from its bed of cotton wool.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie leaned forward, her eyes shining, her breath coming quickly. The
+emotion in the room made itself felt through her.</p>
+
+<p>"Put out the lamp, Michael, and let's have a candle," George said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael turned out the lamp, struck a match and set it to the candle in
+a bottle on the dresser behind him. He put the candle on the table.
+Potch held the great opal to the light, he moved it slowly behind the
+flame of the candle.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's cry of quivering ecstasy thrilled her hearers. She was one of
+them; she had been brought up among them. They had known she would feel
+opal as they did. But that cry of hers heightened their enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>The breaths of suppressed excitement and admiration, and their muttered
+exclamations went up:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, she's showin'!"</p>
+
+<p>"God, look at her now!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie followed every movement of the opal in Potch's hand. It was a
+world in itself, with its thousand thousand suns and stars, shimmering
+and changing before her eyes as they melted mysteriously in the jetty
+pool of the stone.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she breathed again, amazed, dazed, and rapturous.</p>
+
+<p>Potch came closer to her. They stood together, adoring the orb of
+miraculous and mysterious beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," Potch said, "you hold her, Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie put out her hand, trembling, filled with child-like awe and
+emotion. She stretched her fingers. The stone weighed heavy and cold on
+them. Then there was a thin, silvery sound like the shivering of
+glass.... Her hand was light and empty. She stood staring at it for a
+moment; her eyes went to Potch's face, aghast. The blood seemed to have
+left her body. She stood so with her hand out, her lips parted, her eyes
+wide....</p>
+
+<p>After a while she knew Potch was holding her, and that he was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>She could feel him, something to lean against, beside her. Michael
+lifted the candle. With strange intensity, as though she were dreaming,
+Sophie saw the men had fallen away from the table. All their faces were
+caricatures, distorted and ghastly; and they were looking at the floor
+near her. Sophie's eyes went to the floor, too. She could see shattered
+stars&mdash;red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst&mdash;out across the earthen
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>Michael put the candle on the floor. He and George Woods gathered them
+up. When Sophie looked up, the dark of the room swam with galaxies of
+those stars&mdash;red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst.</p>
+
+<p>She stood staring before her: she had lost the power to move or to
+think. After a while she knew that the men had gone from the room, and
+that Potch was still beside her, his eyes on her face. He had eyes only
+for her face: he had barely glanced at the floor, where infinitesimal
+specks of coloured light were still winking in the dust. He took her
+hands. Sophie heard him talking, although she did not know what he was
+saying.</p>
+
+<p>When she began to understand what Potch was saying, Sophie was sitting
+on the sofa under the window, and Potch was kneeling beside her. At
+first she heard him talking as if he were a long way away. She tried to
+listen; tried to understand what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Sophie," Potch kept saying, his voice breaking.</p>
+
+<p>Sight of her suffering overwhelmed him; and he trembled as he knelt
+beside her. Sophie heard him crying distantly:</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered. Her eyes went to him, consciousness in their blank gaze.
+Potch, realising that, murmured incoherently:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of it any more.... It was yours, Sophie. It was for you I
+was keeping it.... Michael knew that, too. He knew that was why I didn't
+want to sell.... It was your opal ... to do what you
+liked with, really. That was what I
+meant when I put it in your hand. But don't let us think of it any more.
+I don't want to think of it any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Sophie cried, in a bitter wailing; "it's true, I believe ...
+somebody said once that I'm as unlucky as opal&mdash;that I bring people bad
+luck like opal...."</p>
+
+<p>"You know what we say on the Ridge?" Potch said; "The only bad luck you
+get through opal is when you can't get enough of it&mdash;so the only bad
+luck you're likely to bring to people is when they can't get enough of
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Potch!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's hands went to him in a flutter of breaking grief. The
+forgiveness she could not ask, the gratitude for his gentleness, which
+she could not express any other way, were in the gesture and
+exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>On her hands, through his hot, clasped hands, the whole of Potch's being
+throbbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of it any more," he begged.</p>
+
+<p>"But it was your luck&mdash;your wonderful opal&mdash;and ... I broke it, Potch. I
+spoilt your luck."</p>
+
+<p>"No," Potch said, borne away from himself on the flood of his desire to
+assuage her distress. "You make everything beautiful for me, Sophie.
+Since you came back I haven't thought of the stone: I'd forgotten it....
+This hasn't been the same place. I'm so filled up with happiness because
+you're here that I can't think of anything else."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked into his face, her eyes swimming. She saw the deep passion
+of love in Potch's eyes; but she turned away from the light it poured
+over her, her face overcast again, bitterness and grief in it. She hung
+so for a moment; then her hands went over her face and she was crying
+abstractedly, wearily.</p>
+
+<p>There was something in her aloofness in that moment which chilled Potch.
+His instincts, sensitive as the antennæ of an insect, wavered over her,
+trying to discover the cause of it. Conscious of a mood which excluded
+him, he withdrew his hand from her. Sophie groped for it. Then the sense
+of sex and of barriers swept from him, by the passion of his desire to
+comfort and console her. Potch put his arm round her and drew Sophie to
+him, murmuring With an utter tenderness, "Sophie! Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>Later she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you ... what happened ... out there, Potch. Not yet ...
+not now.... Perhaps some day I will. It hurt so much that it took all
+the singing out of me. My heart wouldn't move ... so my voice died. I
+thought if I came home, you and Michael wouldn't mind ... my being like
+I am. But you've all been so good to me, Potch ... and it's so restful
+here, I was beginning to think that life might go on from where I left
+it; that it might be just a quiet living together and loving, like it
+was before...."</p>
+
+<p>"It can, Sophie!" Potch said, his eyes on her face, wistful and eager to
+read her thought.</p>
+
+<p>"But look what I've done," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch lifted her hand to his lips, a resurge of the virile male in him
+moving his restraint.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you," he said, "what you've done. You've put joy into all our
+hearts&mdash;just to see you again. Michael's told you that, too, and George
+and the rest of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but, Potch ..." Sophie paused, and he saw the shadow of dark
+thoughts in her eyes again. "I'm not what you think I am. I'm not like
+any of you think."</p>
+
+<p>Potch's grip on her hand tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"You're you&mdash;and you're here. That's enough for us!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie sighed. "I never dreamt everybody would be so good. You and
+Michael I knew would&mdash;but the others ... I thought they'd remember ...
+and disapprove of me, Potch.... Mrs. Watty"&mdash;a smile showed faintly in
+her eyes&mdash;"I thought she'd see to that."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay she's done her best" Potch said, with a memory of Watty's
+valiant bearing and angry, bright eyes when he came into the hut. "Watty
+was vexed ... she wouldn't come with him to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he?"</p>
+
+<p>Potch nodded. "What you didn't reck'n on," he said, "was that all of us
+here ... we&mdash;we love you, Sophie, and we're glad you're back again."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes met him in a straight, clear glance.</p>
+
+<p>"You and Michael," she said, "I knew you loved me, Potch...."</p>
+
+<p>"You know how it's always been with me," Potch said, grateful that he
+might talk of his love, although he had been afraid to since she had
+cried, fearing thought of it stirred that unknown source of distress.
+"But I won't get in your way here, Sophie, because of that. I won't
+bother you ... I want just to stand by&mdash;and help you all I know how."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you, too, Potch," Sophie said; "but there are so many ways of
+loving. I love you because you love me; because your love is the one
+sure thing in the world for me.... I've thought of it when I've been
+hurt and lonely.... I came back because it was here ... and you were
+here."</p>
+
+<p>Potch's eyes were illumined; his face blazed as though a fire had been
+engendered in the depths of his body. He remained so a moment, curbed
+and overcome with emotion. The shadow deepened in Sophie's eyes as she
+looked at him; her face was grave and still.</p>
+
+<p>"I do love you, Potch," she said again; "not as I loved someone else,
+once. That was different. But you're so good to me ... and I'm so
+tired."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIIIb" id="CHAPTER_VIIIb"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>The days which followed that night when Sophie had dropped the great
+opal were the happiest Potch had ever known. They were days in which
+Sophie turned to smile at him when he went into Rouminof's hut; when her
+eyes lay in his serenely; when he could go to her, and stand near her,
+inhaling her being, before he stooped to kiss her hair; when she would
+put back her head so that he might find her lips and take her breath
+from them in the lingering kiss she gave.</p>
+
+<p>When she had laid her head back on his shoulder sometimes, closing her
+eyes, an expression of infinite rest coming over her face, Potch had
+gazed at it, wondering what world of thought lay beneath that still,
+sleep-like mask as, it rested on his shoulder; what thought or emotion
+set a nerve quivering beneath her skin, as the water of some still pool
+quivers when an insect stirs beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had no tricks of sex with Potch. She went to him sometimes when
+ghosts of her mind were driving her before them. She went to him because
+she was sure that she could go to him, whatever her reasons for going.
+With Potch there was no need for explanations.</p>
+
+<p>His quiet strength of body and mind had something to do with the rest
+and assurance which his very presence gave her. It was like being a baby
+and lying in a cradle again to have his arm about her; no harm or ill
+could reach her behind the barrier they raised, Sophie thought. She knew
+Potch loved her with all the passion of a virile man as well as with a
+love like the ocean into which all her misdeeds of commission and
+omission might be dropped. And she had as intimate and sympathetic a
+knowledge of Potch as he had of her. Sophie thought that nothing he
+might do could make her care less, or be less appreciative of him. She
+loved him, she said, with a love of the tenderest affection. If it
+lacked an irresistible impulse, she thought it was because she had lost
+the power to love in that way; but she hoped some day she would love
+Potch as he loved her&mdash;without reservations. For the time being she
+loved him gratefully; her gratitude was as immense as his love.</p>
+
+<p>Potch divined as much; Sophie had not tried to tell him how she felt
+about him, but he understood, perhaps better than she could tell him.
+His humility was equal to any demand she could make of him. He had not
+sufficient belief in himself or his worth to believe that Sophie could
+ever love him as he loved her: he did not expect it. The only way for
+him to take with his love was the way of faith and service. "To love is
+to be all made of faith and service." He had taken that for his text for
+life, and for Sophie. He could be happy holding to it.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's need of him made Potch happier than he had ever hoped to be;
+but he could not help believing that the life with her which had etched
+itself on the horizon of his future would mist away, as the mirages
+which quiver on the long edges of the plains do, as you approach them.</p>
+
+<p>The days were blessed and peaceful to Sophie, too; but she, also, was
+afraid that something might happen to disturb them. She wanted to marry
+Potch in order to secure them, and to live and work with him on the
+Ridge. She wanted to live the life of any other woman on the Ridge with
+her mate. Life looked so straight and simple that way. She could see it
+stretching before her into the years. Her hands would be full of real
+things. She would be living a life of service and usefulness, in
+accordance with the ideal the Ridge had set itself, and which Michael
+had preached with the zeal of a latter-day saint. She believed her life
+would shape itself to this future; but sometimes a wraith in the
+back-country of her mind rose shrieking: "Never! Never!"</p>
+
+<p>It threw her into the outer darkness of despair, that cry, but she had
+learned to exorcise its influence by going to Potch and lifting her lips
+for him to kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked one day, vaguely aware of the meaning of the
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>Before the reverence and worship of his eyes the wraith fled. Sophie
+took his face between her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear," she murmured, her eyes straining on his face, "I do love
+you ... and I will love you, more and more."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't have to worry about that," Potch said. "I love you enough for
+both of us.... Just think of me"&mdash;he lifted her hand and kissed the back
+of it gently&mdash;"like this&mdash;your hand&mdash;a sort of third hand."</p>
+
+<p>When he came back from the mine in the afternoon Potch went to see
+Sophie, cut wood for her, and do any odd jobs she might need done.
+Sometimes he had tea with her, and they read the reviews and books
+Michael passed on to them. In the evening they went for a walk, usually
+towards the Old Town, and sat on a long slope of the Ridge overlooking
+the Rouminofs' first home&mdash;near where they had played when they were
+children, and had watched the goats feeding on green patches between the
+dumps.</p>
+
+<p>They had awed talks there; and now and then the darkness, shutting off
+sight of each other, had made something like disembodied spirits of
+them, and their spirits communicated dumbly as well as on the frail wind
+of their voices.</p>
+
+<p>They yarned and gossiped sometimes, too, about the things that had
+happened, and what Potch had done while Sophie was away. She asked a
+good deal about the ratting, and about Jun and Maud. Potch tried to
+avoid talking of it and of them. He had evaded her questions, and Sophie
+returned to them, perplexed by his reticence.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, Potch," she said on one occasion. "You found out
+that Maud and Jun had something to do with the ratting, and you went
+over to Jun's ... and told them you were going to tell the boys.... They
+must have known you would tell. Maud&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Potch's expression, a queer, sombre and shamed heaviness of his face,
+arrested her thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Maud&mdash;&mdash;" she murmured again. "I see," she added, "it was just
+Maud&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>"That explains a good deal." Sophie's eyes were on the distant horizon
+of the plains; her fingers played idly with quartz pebbles, pink-stained
+like rose coral, lying on the earth about her.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it explain?" Potch asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," Sophie said, "for one thing&mdash;how you grew up. You've changed
+since I went away, Potch, you know...."</p>
+
+<p>His smile showed a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm older."</p>
+
+<p>"Older, graver, harder ... and kinder, though you always had a genius
+for kindness, Potch.... But Maud&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Potch turned his head from her. Sophie regarded his averted profile
+thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch took her gaze steadily, but with troubled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish ... somehow ... I needn't 've done what I did," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have hated her, if you had gone back on the men&mdash;because of her."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Potch agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;you don't now?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw her&mdash;Maud&mdash;in New York ... before I came away," Sophie said
+slowly. "She was selling opal...."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she show you the stones?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what Michael asked me," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael?" Potch's face clouded.</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't show them to me, but I know who saw them all&mdash;he bought
+them&mdash;Mr. Armitage."</p>
+
+<p>"The old man?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, John."</p>
+
+<p>After a minute Sophie said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you so keen about those stones Maud had, Potch? Michael is,
+too.... Most of them were taken from the claims, I suppose&mdash;but was
+there anything more than that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard to say." Potch spoke reluctantly. "There's nothing more than
+a bit of guesswork in my mind ... and I suppose it's the same with
+Michael. I haven't said anything to Michael about it, and he hasn't to
+me, so it's better not to mention it."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a good deal changed on the Ridge since I went away," Sophie
+remarked musingly.</p>
+
+<p>"The new rush, and the school, the Bush Brothers' church, and Mrs.
+Watty's veranda?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean that," Sophie said. "It's the people and things ... you,
+for instance, and Michael&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Michael?" Potch exclaimed. "He's wearing the same old clothes, the same
+old hat."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was too much in earnest to respond to the whimsey.</p>
+
+<p>"He's different somehow ... I don't quite know how," she said. "There's
+a look about him&mdash;his eyes&mdash;a disappointed look, Potch.... It hurt him
+when I went away, I know. But now&mdash;it's not that...."</p>
+
+<p>As Potch did not reply, Sophie's eyes questioned him earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Has anything happened," she asked, "to make Michael look like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ... don't know," Potch replied.</p>
+
+<p>Answered by the slow and doubtful tone of his denial, Sophie exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"There is something, Potch! I don't want to know what it is if you can't
+tell me. I'm only worried about Michael.... I'd always thought he had
+the secret of that inside peace, and now he looks&mdash;&mdash;Oh, I can't bear to
+see him look as he does.... And he seems to have lost interest in
+things&mdash;the life here&mdash;everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Only tell me," Sophie urged, "is this that's bothering Michael likely
+to clear, and has it been hanging over him for long?"</p>
+
+<p>Potch was silent so long that she wondered whether he was going to
+answer the question. Then he said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"I ... don't know. I really don't know anything, Sophie. I happened to
+find out&mdash;by accident&mdash;that Michael's pretty worried about something. I
+don't rightly know what, or why. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>The even pace of those days gave Sophie the quiet mind she had come to
+the Ridge for. There was healing for her in the fragrant air, the
+sunshiny days, the blue-dark nights, with their unclouded, starry skies.
+She went into the shed one morning and threw the bags from the
+cutting-wheel which had been her mother's, cleared and cleaned up the
+room, rearranged the boxes, put out her working gear, and cut and
+polished one or two stones which were lying on a saucer beside the
+wheel, to discover whether her hand had still its old deftness. Michael
+was delighted with the work she showed him in the evening, and gave her
+several small stones to face and polish for him.</p>
+
+<p>Every day then Sophie worked at her wheel for a while. George and Watty,
+Bill Grant and the Crosses brought stuff for her to cut and polish, and
+in a little while her life was going in the even way it had done before
+she left the Ridge, but it was a long time before Sophie went about as
+she used to. After a while, however, she got into the way of walking
+over to see Maggie Grant or Martha M'Cready in the afternoon,
+occasionally; but she never talked to them of her life away from the
+Ridge; they never spoke of it to her.</p>
+
+<p>Only one thing had disturbed her slightly&mdash;seeing Arthur Henty one
+evening as she and Martha were coming from the Three Mile.</p>
+
+<p>He had come towards them, with a couple of stockmen, driving a mob of
+cattle. Dust rose at the heels of the cattle and horses; the cattle
+moved slowly; and the sun was setting in the faces of the men behind the
+cattle. Sophie did not know who they were until a man on a chestnut
+horse stared at her. His face was almost hidden by his beard; but after
+the first glance she recognised Arthur Henty. They passed as people do
+in a dream, Sophie and Martha back from the road, the men riding off the
+cattle, Arthur with the stockmen and cattle which a cloud of dust
+enveloped immediately. The dark trees by the roadside swayed, dipped in
+the gold of the sunset, when they had passed. The image of Arthur Henty
+riding like that in the dust behind the cattle, his face gilded by the
+light of the setting sun, came to Sophie again and again. She was a
+little disturbed by it; but it was only natural that she should be, she
+thought. She had not seen Arthur since the night of the ball, and so
+much had happened to both their lives since then.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him once or twice in the township afterwards. He had stared at
+her; Sophie had bowed and smiled, but they had not spoken. Later, she
+had seen him lounging on the veranda at Newton's, or hanging his bridle
+over the pegs outside Ezra Smith's billiard saloon, and neither her
+brain nor pulse had quickened at the sight of him. She was pleased and
+reassured. She did not think of him after that, and went on her way
+quietly, happily, more deeply content in her life with Michael and
+Potch.</p>
+
+<p>As her natural vigour returned, she grew to a fuller appreciation of
+that life; health and a normal poise of body and soul brought the faint
+light of happiness to her eyes. Michael heard her laughing as she teased
+Paul sometimes, and Potch thrilled to the rippled cadenza of Sophie's
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"It's good to hear that again," Michael said to him one day, hearing it
+fly from Rouminof's hut.</p>
+
+<p>Potch's glance, as his head moved in assent, was eloquent beyond words.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had a sensation of hunger satisfied in the life she was leading.
+Some indefinable hunger of her soul was satisfied by breathing the pure,
+calm air of the Ridge again, and by feeling her life was going the way
+the lives of other women on the Ridge were going. She expected
+her life would go on like this, days and years fall behind her
+unnoticed; that she and Potch would work together, have children, be
+splendid friends always, live out their days in the simple, sturdy
+fashion of Ridge folk, and grow old together.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IXb" id="CHAPTER_IXb"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+
+<p>Tenders had been called for, to clear the course for the annual race
+meeting. A notice posted on the old, wild cherry tree in the road
+opposite Newton's, brought men and boys from every rush on Fallen Star
+to Ezra Smith's billiard-room on the night appointed; and Ezra,
+constituted foreman by the meeting, detailed parties to clear and roll
+the track.</p>
+
+<p>A paddock at the back of the town, with several tall coolebahs at one
+side, was known as the race-course. A table placed a little out from the
+trees served for a judge's box; and because the station folk usually
+drew up their buggies and picnicked there, the shade of the coolebahs
+was called the grand-stand. Farther along a saddling-paddock had been
+fenced off, and in it, on race-days, were collected a miscellaneous
+muster of the show horses of the district&mdash;rough-haired nags, piebald
+and skewbald; rusty, dusty, big-boned old racers with famous
+reputations; wild-eyed, unbroken youngsters, green from the plains;
+Warria chestnuts, graceful as greyhounds, with quivering, scarlet
+nostrils; and the nuggety, deep-chested offspring of the Langi-Eumina
+stallion Black Harry.</p>
+
+<p>People came from far and near for the races, and for the ball which was
+held the same evening in the big, iron-roofed shed opposite Newton's.
+Newton's was filled to the brim with visitors, and there were not
+stables enough for the horses. But Ridge stables are never more than
+railed yards about the size of a room, with bark thatches, and as many
+of them as were needed were run up for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Horses and horsemen were heroes of the occasion The merits of every
+horse that was going to run were argued; histories, points, pedigrees,
+and performances discussed. Stories were told of the doings of strange
+horses brought from distant selections, the out-stations of Warria,
+Langi-Eumina, or Darrawingee; yarns swopped of almost mythical
+warrigals, and warrigal hunting, the breaking of buck-jumpers, the
+enterprises and exploits of famous horsemen. Ridge meetings, since the
+course had been made and the function had become a yearly fixture, were
+gone over; and the chances of every horse and rider entered for the next
+day debated, until anticipation and interest attained their highest
+pitch.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody in the township went to the races; everybody was expected to
+go. Race-day was the Ridge gala day; the day upon which men, women, and
+children gave themselves up to the whole-hearted, joyous excitement of
+an outing. The meeting brought a bookmaker or two from Sydney sometimes,
+and sometimes a man in the town made a book on the event. But nobody, it
+was rumoured, looked forward to, or enjoyed the races more than Mrs.
+Watty Frost, although she had begun by disapproving of them, and still
+maintained she did not "hold with betting." She put up with it, however,
+so long as the Sydney men did not get away with Ridge money.</p>
+
+<p>Potch was disappointed, and so was Michael, that Sophie would not go to
+the races, which were held during the year of her return. They went, and
+Rouminof trotted off by himself, quite early. Sophie did not want to see
+all the strangers who would be in Fallen Star for race-day, she
+said&mdash;people from the river selections, the stations, and country towns.
+Late in the afternoon, as she was going to see Ella Bryant, to offer to
+mind the baby while Ella and Bully went to the ball, she saw Martha was
+at home, a drift of smoke coming from the chimney of her hut.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went to the back door of the hut and stood in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you there, Martha?" she called.</p>
+
+
+<p>"That you, Sophie?" Martha queried. "Come in!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went into the kitchen. Martha had a big fire, and her room was
+full of its hot glare. She was ironing at a table against the wall, and
+freshly laundered, white clothes were hanging to a line stretched from
+above the window to a nail on the inner wall. She looked up happily as
+Sophie appeared, sweat streaming from her fat, jolly face.</p>
+
+<p>"I was just thinking of you, dearie," she exclaimed, putting the iron on
+an upturned tin, and straightening out the flounces of the dress she was
+at work on. "Lovely day it's been for the races, hasn't it? Sit down.
+I'll be done d'reckly, and am going to make a cup of tea before I go
+over to help Mrs. Newton a bit with dinner. My, she's got her hands full
+over there&mdash;with all the crowd up!... Don't think I ever did see such a
+crowd at the races, Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>Martha's iron flashed and swung backwards and forth. Sophie watched the
+brawny forearm which wielded the iron. Hard and as brown as the branch
+of a tree it was, from above the elbow where her sleeve was rolled back
+to the wrist; the hand fastened over the iron, red and dappled with
+great golden-brown freckles; the nails of its short, thick fingers,
+broken, dirt lying in thick, black wedges beneath them. As her other
+hand moved over the dress, preparing the way for the iron, Sophie saw
+its work-worn palm, the lines on it driven deep with scouring,
+scrubbing, and years of washing clothes, and cleaning other folks'
+houses. She thought of the work those hands of Martha's had done for
+Fallen Star; how Martha had looked after sick people, brought babies
+into the world, nursed the mothers, mended, washed, sewed, and darned,
+giving her help wherever it was needed. Always good-natured, hearty,
+healthy, and wholesome, what a wonderful woman she was, Mother M'Cready,
+Sophie exclaimed to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Martha was as excited as any girl on the Ridge, ironing her dress now,
+and getting ready for the ball. Sophie wondered how old she was. She did
+not look any older than when she first remembered her; but people said
+Martha must be sixty if she was a day. And she loved a dance, Sophie
+knew. She could dance, too, Mother M'Cready. The boys said she could
+dance like a two-year-old.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to wear to the ball, Sophie?" Martha asked. "I
+suppose you've got some real nice dresses you brought from America."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going," Sophie said,</p>
+
+<p>"Not going?" Martha's iron came down with a bang, her blue eyes flashed
+wide with astonishment. "The idea! Not goin' to the Ridge ball&mdash;the
+first since you came home? I never heard of such a thing.... 'Course
+you're going, Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's glance left Martha's big, busy figure. It went through the open
+doorway. The sunshine was garish on the plains, although the afternoon
+was nearly over.</p>
+
+<p>"Why aren't you goin'?" Martha pursued. "Why? What'll your father say?
+And Michael? And Potch? We'd all been looking forward to seein' you
+there like you used to be, Sophie. And ... here was me doin' up my dress
+extra special, thinkin' Sophie'll be that grand in the dresses she's
+brought from America ... we'll all have to smarten a bit to keep up with
+her...."</p>
+
+<p>Tears swam in Sophie's eyes at the naïve and genial admiration of what
+Martha had said.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll spoil the ball if you're not there," Martha insisted, her iron
+flashing vigorously. "It just won't be&mdash;the ball&mdash;and everything looking
+as if it were goin' to be the biggest ball ever was on the Ridge.
+Everybody'll be that disappointed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think they will, Martha?" Sophie queried.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think; I know."</p>
+
+<p>A little smile, sceptical yet wistful, hovered in Sophie's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And it don't seem fair to Potch neither."</p>
+
+<p>"Potch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ... you hidin' yourself away as if you weren't happy&mdash;and going to
+marry the best lad in the country." The iron came down emphatically,
+Martha working it as vigorously and intently as she was thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"There's some says Potch isn't a match for you now, Sophie. Not since
+you went away and got manners and all.... They can't tell why you're
+goin' to marry Potch. But as I said to Mrs. Watty the other day, I said:
+'Sophie isn't like that. She isn't like that at all. It's the man she
+goes for, and Potch is good enough for a princess to take up with.'
+That's what I said; and I don't mind who knows it...."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had got up and gone to the door while Martha was talking. She was
+amused at the idea of Mrs. Watty having forgiven her sufficiently to
+think that Potch was not a good enough match for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides ... I did want you to go, Sophie," Martha continued. "They're
+all coming over from Warria&mdash;Mr. and Mrs. Henty and the girls, and Mrs.
+Arthur. They've got a party staying with them, up from Sydney ... and
+most of them have put up at Newton's for the night...."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at Sophie to see how she was taking this news. But no
+flicker of concern changed the thoughtful mask of Sophie's features as
+she leaned in the doorway looking out to the blue fall of the afternoon
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>"They're coming over to see how the natives of these parts amuse
+theirselves," Martha declared scornfully. "They'll have on all the fine
+dresses and things they buy down in Sydney ... and I was lookin' to you,
+Sophie, to keep up our end. I've been thinkin' to meself, 'They think
+they're the salt of the earth, don't they? Think they're that smart ...
+we dress so funny ... and dance so funny, over at Fallen Star. But
+Sophie'll show them; Sophie'll take the shine out of them when they see
+her in one of the dresses she's brought from America.'"</p>
+
+<p>As Martha talked, Sophie could see the ball-room at Warria as she had
+years before. She could see the people in it&mdash;figures swaying down the
+long veranda, the Henty girls, Mrs. Henty, Phyllis Chelmsford&mdash;their
+faces, the dresses they had worn; Arthur, John Armitage, James Henty,
+herself, as she had sat behind the piano, or turned the pages of her
+father's music. She could hear the music he and Mrs. Henty played; the
+rhythm of a waltz swayed her. A twinge of the old wrath, hurt
+indignation, and disappointment, vibrated through her.... She smiled to
+think of it, and of all the long time which lay between that night and
+now.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd give anything for you to be there&mdash;looking your best," Martha
+continued. "I can't bear that lot to think you've come home because you
+weren't a success, as they say over there, or because...."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Armitage wasn't as fond of me&mdash;as he used to be," Sophie murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Martha caught the mocking of a gleam in her eyes as she spoke. No one
+knew why Sophie had come home; but Mrs. Newton had given Martha an
+American newspaper with a paragraph in it about Sophie. Martha had read
+and re-read it, and given it to several other people to read. She put
+her iron on the hearth and disappeared into the bedroom which opened off
+her kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"This is all I know about it, Sophie," she said, returning with the
+paper.</p>
+
+<p>She handed the paper to Sophie, and Sophie glanced at a marked paragraph
+on its page.</p>
+
+<p>"Of a truth, dark are the ways of women, and mysterious beyond human
+understanding," she read. "Probably no young artist for a long time has
+had as meteoric a career on Broadway as Sophie Rouminof. Leaping from
+comparative obscurity, she has scintillated before us in revue and
+musical comedy for the last three or four years, and now, at the zenith
+of her success, when popularity is hers to do what she likes with, she
+goes back to her native element, the obscurity from which she sprang.
+Some first-rate artists have got religion, philanthropy, or love, and
+have renounced the footlights for them; but Sophie is doing so for no
+better reason, it is said, than that she is <i>écœuré</i> of us and our
+life&mdash;the life of any and all great cities. A well-known impresario
+informs us that a week or two ago he asked her to name her own terms for
+a new contract; but she would have nothing to do with one on any terms.
+And now she has slipped back into the darkness of space and time, like
+one of her own magnificent opals, and the bill and boards of the little
+Opera House will know her name and fascinating personality no more."</p>
+
+<p>The faint smile deepened in Sophie's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true, isn't it, Sophie?" Martha asked, as Sophie did not speak
+when she had finished reading.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is," Sophie said. "But your paper doesn't say what made me
+<i>écœuré</i>&mdash;sick to the heart, that is&mdash;of the life over there,
+Martha. And that's the main thing.... It got me down so, I thought I'd
+never sing again. But there's one thing I'd like you to tell people for
+me, Martha: Mr. Armitage was always goodness itself to me. He didn't
+even ask me to go away with him. He did make love to me, and I was just
+a silly little girl. I didn't know then men go on like that without
+meaning much.... I wanted to be a singer, and I made up my mind to go
+away when he did.... Afterwards I lost my voice. My heart wouldn't sing
+any more. I wanted to come home.... That's all I knew.... I wanted to
+come home.... And I came."</p>
+
+<p>Martha went to her. Her arms went round Sophie's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"My lamb," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie rested against her for a moment. Then she kissed one of the bare
+arms she had watched working the iron so vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd best not think of it, Mother M'Cready," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, dearie!"</p>
+
+<p>Martha withdrew her arms and went back to the hearth. She lifted another
+iron, held it to her face to judge its heat, and returned to the table.
+She rubbed the iron on a piece of hessian on a box there, dusted it with
+a soft rag, and went on with the ironing of her dress.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I was as young as you, Martha," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, lovey, you will be when you're my age," Martha replied, with a
+swift, twinkling glance of her blue eyes. "But you're coming ... aren't
+you? I won't have the heart to wear my pink stockings if you don't,
+Sophie. Mrs. Newton gave them to me for a Christmas-box ... and I'm fair
+dying to wear them."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie smiled at the pair of bright pink stockings pinned on the line
+beside a newly-starched petticoat.</p>
+
+<p>"You will, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so, Martha."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went out of the doorway. She was going home, and stood again a
+moment, looking through scattered trees to the waning afternoon sky. A
+couple of birds dashed across her line of vision with shrill, low,
+giggling cries.</p>
+
+<p>She heard people talking in the distance. Several men rode up to
+Newton's. She saw them swing from their horses, put the reins over the
+pegs before the bar, and go into the hotel. Two or three children ran
+down the street chattering eagerly, excitedly. Roy O'Mara went across to
+the hall with some flags under his arm. From all the huts drifted
+ejaculations, fragments of laughter and calling. Excitement about the
+ball was in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie remembered how happy and excited she used to be about the Ridge
+balls. She thought of it all vaguely at first, that lost girlish joy of
+hers, the free, careless gaiety which had swept her along as she danced.
+She remembered her father's fiddling, Mrs. Newton's playing; how the
+music had had a magic in it which set everybody's feet flying and the
+boys singing to tunes they knew. The men polished the floor so that you
+could scarcely walk on it. One year they had spent hours working it up
+so that you slipped along like greased lightning as you danced.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie smiled at her reminiscences. The high tones of a man's voice,
+eager and exultant, shouting to someone across the twilight; the twitter
+of a girl's laughter&mdash;they were all in the air now as they had been
+then. Her listlessness stirred; everybody was preparing for the ball,
+and getting ready to go to it. Excitement and eager looking forward to a
+good time were in the air. They were infectious. Sophie trembled to
+them&mdash;they tempted her. Could she go to the ball, like everybody else?
+Could she drift again in the stream of easy and genial intercourse with
+all these people of the Ridge whom she loved and who loved her?</p>
+
+<p>Martha came to the door. Her eyes strained on the brooding young face,
+trying to read from the changing expressions which flitted across it
+what Sophie was thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming, aren't you, dearie?" she begged.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's eyes surprised the old woman, the brilliance of tears and light
+in them, their childish playing of hope beyond hope and fear, amazed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I could, Martha?" she cried. "Do you think I could?"</p>
+
+<p>"Course you could, darling," Martha said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's arms went round her in an instant's quick pressure; then she
+stood off from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't it be lovely," she cried, "to dance and sing&mdash;and to be young
+again, Martha?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_Xb" id="CHAPTER_Xb"></a>CHAPTER X</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood
+along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall.
+At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against
+the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light
+came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing
+and talking.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like old times, isn't it, Potch"&mdash;Sophie's fingers closed over
+Potch's arm&mdash;"to be going to a Ridge dance?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a faint, sweet stirring which the wind makes in the trees
+within her, Sophie realised. It was strange and delightful to feel alive
+again, and alive with the first freshness, innocence, and vague
+happiness of a girl.</p>
+
+<p>Potch looked down on her, smiling. He was filled with pride to have her
+beside him like this, to think they would go into the hall together, and
+that people would say to each other when they saw them: "There's Sophie
+and Potch!"</p>
+
+<p>That using of their names side by side was a source of infinite content
+to Potch. He loved people to say: "When are you and Sophie coming over
+to see us, Potch?" or, "Would you mind telling Sophie, Potch?" and give
+him a message for Sophie. And this would be the first time they had
+appeared at an assembly of Ridge folk together.</p>
+
+<p>He walked with his head held straight and high, and his eyes shone when
+he went down the hall with Sophie. What did it matter if they called him
+Potch, the Ridge folk, "a little bit of potch," he thought, Sophie was
+going to be Mrs. Heathfield.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's Sophie and Potch," he heard people say, as he had thought they
+would, and his heart welled with happiness and pride.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly everybody had arrived when they went into the hall; the first
+dance was just beginning. Branches of budda, fleeced with creamy and
+lavender blossom, had been stuck through the supports of the hall. Flags
+and pennants of all the colours in the rainbow, strung on a line
+together, were stretched at the end of the platform. On the platform
+Mrs. Newton was sitting at the piano. Paul had his music-stand near her,
+and behind him an old man from the Three Mile was nervously fingering
+and blowing on a black and silver-mounted flute. Women and girls and a
+few of the older men were seated on forms against the walls. Several
+young mothers had babies in their arms, and children of all ages were
+standing about, or sitting beside their parents. By common consent,
+Ridge folk had taken one side of the hall, and station folk the upper
+end of the other side.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's first glance found Martha, her white dress stiff and
+immaculate, her face with its plump, rosy cheeks turned towards her, her
+eyes smiling and expectant. Martha beamed at her; Sophie smiled back,
+and, her glance travelling on, found Maggie and Bill Grant, Mrs. George
+Woods and two of her little girls; Mrs. Watty, in a black dress, its
+high neck fastened by a brooch, with three opals in, Watty had given
+her; and Watty, genial and chirrupy as usual, but afraid to appear as if
+he were promising himself too much of a good time.</p>
+
+<p>Warria, Langi-Eumina, and Darrawingee folk had foregathered; the girls
+and men laughed and chattered in little groups; the older people talked,
+sitting against the wall or leaning towards each other. Mrs. Henty
+looked much as she had done five years before; James Henty not a day
+older; but Mrs. Tom Henderson, who had been Elizabeth Henty, had
+developed a sedate and matronly appearance. Polly was not as plump and
+jolly as she had been&mdash;a little puzzled and apprehensive expression
+flitted through her clear brown eyes, and there were lines of
+discouragement about her mouth. Sophie recognised Mrs. Arthur Henty in a
+slight, well-dressed woman, whose thin, unwrinkled features wore an
+expression of more or less matter-of-fact discontent.</p>
+
+<p>The floor was shining under the light of the one big hanging lamp. Paul
+scraped his violin with a preliminary flourish; Mrs. Newton threw a
+bunch of chords after him, and they cantered into a waltz time the Ridge
+loved. Roy O'Mara, M.C. for the occasion, shouted jubilantly: "Take y'r
+partners for a waltz!" Couples edged out from the wall, and in a moment
+were swirling and whirling up and down on the bared space of the hall.
+There were squeals and little screams as feet slipped and skidded on the
+polished floor; but people soon found their dancing feet, got under way
+of the music, and swung to its rhythms with more ease, security, and
+pleasure. Sophie watched the dance for a while. She saw Martha dancing
+with Michael. Every year at the Ridge ball Michael danced the first
+dance with Martha. And Martha, dancing with Michael&mdash;no one on the Ridge
+was happier, though they moved so solemnly, turning round and round with
+neat little steps, as if they were pledged to turn in the space of a
+threepenny piece!</p>
+
+<p>Sophie smiled at Martha's happy seriousness. Arthur Henty was dancing
+with his wife. Sophie had not seen him so clearly since her return to
+the Ridge. When she had passed him in the township, or at Newton's, he
+had been riding, and she had scarcely seen his face for the beard which
+had overgrown it and the shadow his hat cast. She studied him with
+unmoved curiosity. His beard had been clipped close, and she recognised
+the moulding of his head, the slope of his shoulders, a peculiar loose
+litheness in his gait. Her eyes followed him as he danced with his wife.
+Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Henty were waltzing in the perfunctory, mechanical
+fashion of people thoroughly bored with each other.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sophie swung with Potch into the eddying current of the dancers.
+Potch danced in as steady and methodical a fashion as he did everything.
+The music did not get him; at least, Sophie could not believe it did.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were deep and shining as though it were a great and holy
+ceremony he were engaged in, but there was no melting to the delight of
+rhythmic movement in his sober gyrations. Sophie felt him a clog on the
+flow of her own action as he steered and steadily directed her through
+the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"For goodness' sake, Potch, dance as if you meant it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But I do mean it, Sophie," he said.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked down at her, his flushed, happy face assured her that he
+did mean dancing, but he meant it as he meant everything&mdash;with a dead
+earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>After that dance all her old friends among men of the Ridge came round
+Sophie to ask her to dance with them. Bully and Roy sparred for dances
+as they did in the old days, and Michael and George and Watty threatened
+to knock their heads together and throw them out of the room if they
+didn't get out of the way and give some other chaps a chance to dance
+with Sophie. Between the dances, Sophie went over to talk to Maggie
+Grant, Mrs. Watty, Mrs. George Woods, and Martha. She had time to tell
+Martha how nice her dress and the pink stockings looked, and how the
+opals in her bracelet flashed as she was dancing.</p>
+
+<p>"You can see them from one end of the hall to the other," Sophie
+whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"And you, lovey," Martha said. "It's just lovely, the dress. You should
+have seen how they stared at you when you came in.... And Potch looking
+so nice, too. He wouldn't call the King his uncle to-night, Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie laughed happily as she went off to dance with Bully, who was
+claiming her for a polka mazurka.</p>
+
+<p>The evening was half through when John Armitage appeared in the doorway.
+Sophie had just come from dancing the quadrilles with Potch when she saw
+Armitage standing in the doorway with Peter Newton. Potch saw him as
+Sophie did; their eyes met. Michael came towards them.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Armitage did come, I see," Sophie said quietly, as Potch and
+Michael were looking towards the door. "I had a letter from him a few
+weeks ago saying he thought he would be here for the ball," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"Why has he come?" Michael asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she said. "To see me, I suppose ... and to find out
+whether the men will do business with him again."</p>
+
+<p>Michael's gesture implied it was useless to talk of that.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie continued: "But you know what I said, Michael. I can't be happy
+until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the
+men here.... You must do that for me, Michael. They know I'm going to
+marry Potch ... and if they see there's no ill feeling between John
+Armitage and me, they'll believe I was more to blame than he was&mdash;if
+it's a question of blame.... I want you and Potch to stand by me in
+this, Michael."</p>
+
+<p>Potch's eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and
+sure. But Michael showed no relenting.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in
+the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had
+circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had
+created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and
+indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach
+to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had
+met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them
+than playing a game they had learned to play rather well.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie said: "It is you really?"</p>
+
+<p>He took the hand she held to him. "But you knew I was coming? You had my
+letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course ... but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And my word is my bond."</p>
+
+<p>The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage's voice, and the
+perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised
+people who were near them.</p>
+
+<p>Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded
+Armitage with grave, quiet eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!" Armitage said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael did not reply; but Potch said:</p>
+
+<p>"Evening, Mr. Armitage!" And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and
+Michael's silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had
+made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather.
+Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this my dance, Sophie?" Armitage inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie shook her head, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Which is my dance?" The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"The next one."</p>
+
+<p>She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve
+force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold
+to, or move as she wished.</p>
+
+<p>"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love
+and gratitude beyond words.</p>
+
+<p>While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys;
+he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz
+with Polly Henty.</p>
+
+<p>When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty
+leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an
+odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had
+heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was
+connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about
+all there had been between herself and John Armitage&mdash;even this dancing
+with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer
+anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her
+dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised
+that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting
+on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her
+dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel
+drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure
+blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they
+danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their
+movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and
+about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this
+with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and love-making
+forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate
+sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage's eyes.
+It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing
+and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the
+wall spurred Sophie to further laughter&mdash;a reckless gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>"You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and ... trying its
+wings in the sun, Sophie," Armitage said.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel ... just like that," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or
+three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of
+quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with
+George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of
+the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe
+of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had
+"gone the pace," in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay
+world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie
+guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But
+she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men
+like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she
+caught Potch's gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled
+to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the
+younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was
+talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and
+enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.</p>
+
+<p>As she was coming from a dance with Roy O'Mara she passed Arthur Henty
+where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie
+as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung
+over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M'Cready.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to dance with me?" he asked, a husky uncertainty in his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Sophie said, looking away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and
+sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The
+unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted,
+spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied.</p>
+
+<p>"There's going to be an extra after supper," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she
+had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.</p>
+
+<p>How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as
+she had waited then? But there were all those long years between.
+Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was
+dancing with Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few
+paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among
+the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier
+poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in
+sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an
+effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly,
+indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother
+to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing
+himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie's laughter failed. The
+inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had
+read long before in each other's eyes was still there, after all the
+years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had
+walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was
+remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon
+he had recited:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"I met a lady in the meads</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">Full beautiful, a fairy's child;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Her hair was long, her foot was light,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">And her eyes were wild."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not
+danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not
+laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and
+wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like
+dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing
+on a grave.</p>
+
+<p>Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful,
+working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers
+comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other,
+every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests
+of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.</p>
+
+<p>Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when
+they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie
+wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering&mdash;voices,
+shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy
+exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....</p>
+
+<p>Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared
+not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the
+surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated
+itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.</p>
+
+<p>As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was
+afraid of getting out of her depth ... but he held her carefully. His
+grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that
+hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up;
+she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and
+smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the
+smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp
+tightened. She was afraid of him&mdash;afraid of all the long, old dreams he
+might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those
+hungry, hungry eyes.... She could not see them; she would not.</p>
+
+<p>A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She
+could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices
+were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence
+them ... begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the
+implacable in him&mdash;the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face.
+She was helpless before them.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a
+little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no
+hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean
+fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close
+embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought
+consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow
+of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came
+to them in far-away murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.</p>
+
+<p>He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full
+draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last
+essence.</p>
+
+<p>A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie
+was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a
+moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark,
+she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle
+paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear
+nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged
+animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had
+stupefied her.</p>
+
+<p>She called Michael.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were
+on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant's
+vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch's
+... she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the
+surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from
+where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through
+darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy,
+quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIb" id="CHAPTER_XIb"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+
+
+<p>Sophie went into the shed where her cutting-wheel was soon after eight
+o'clock next morning. She took up a packet of small stones George Woods
+had left with her and set to work on them.</p>
+
+<p>The wheel was in a line with the window, and she sat on the wooden chair
+before it, so that the light fell over her left shoulder. On the bench
+which ran out from the wheel were a spirit lamp and the trays of rough
+opal; on the other side of the bench the polishing buffers were arranged
+one against the other. A hand-basin, the water in it raddled with rouge,
+stood on the table behind her, and a white china jug of fresh water
+beside it.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie lighted the spirit lamp, gathered up a handful of the slender
+sticks about the size of pen-holders which Potch had prepared for her,
+melted her sealing-wax over the flame of the lamp, drew the saucer of
+George's opals to her, and fastened a score of small stones to the
+heated wax on the ends of the sticks. She blew out the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>She was working in order not to think; she worked for awhile without
+thinking, details of the opal-cutting following each other in the
+routine they had made for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The plague of her thoughts grew as she worked. From being nebulæ of a
+state of mind which she could not allow herself to contemplate, such
+darkness of despair there was in it, they evolved to tiny pictures which
+presented themselves singly and in panorama, flitting and flickering
+incoherently, incongruously.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie could see the hall as she had the night before. She seemed to be
+able to see everything at once and in detail&mdash;its polished floors,
+flowering boughs, and flags, the people sitting against the iron walls
+in their best clothes ... Mrs. Watty, Watty and George, Ella and Bully
+... Bully holding the baby ... the two little Woods' girls in their
+white embroidered muslin dresses, with pink ribbons tied round their
+heads.... Cash Wilson dancing solemnly in carpet slippers; Mrs. Newton
+at the piano ... the prim way her fat little hands pranced sedately up
+and down over the keys.... Paul enjoying his own music ... getting a
+little bit wild over it, and working his right leg and knee as though he
+had an orchestra to keep going somehow.... Mrs. Newton refusing to be
+coaxed into anything like enthusiasm, but trying to keep up with him,
+nevertheless.... Mrs. Henty, Polly, Elizabeth ... Mrs. Arthur ... the
+Langi-Eumina party ... the Moffats ... Potch, Michael ... John Armitage.</p>
+
+<p>Images of New York flashed across these pictures of the night before.
+Sophie visualised the city as she had first seen it. A fairy city it had
+seemed to her with its sky-flung lights, thronged thoroughfares, and
+jangling bells. She saw a square of tall, flat-faced buildings before a
+park of leafless trees; shimmering streets on a wet night, near the New
+Theatre and the Little Opera House; a supper-party after the theatre ...
+gilded walls, Byzantian hangings, women with bare shoulders flashing
+satin from slight, elegant limbs, or emerging with jewel-strung necks
+from swathings of mist-like tulle, the men beside them ... a haze of
+cigarette smoke over it all ... tinkle of laughter, a sweet, sleepy
+stirring of music somewhere ... light of golden wine in wide,
+shallow-bowled glasses, with tall, fragile stems ... lipping and sway of
+tides against the hull of a yacht on quiet water ... a man's face, heavy
+and swinish, peering into her own....</p>
+
+<p>Then again, Mrs. Watty against the wall of the Ridge ball-room, stiff
+and disapproving-looking in her high-necked black dress ... Michael
+dancing with Martha ... Martha's pink stockings ... and the way she had
+danced, lightly, delightedly, her feet encased in white canvas shoes.
+Sophie had worn white canvas shoes at the Warria ball, she remembered.
+Pictures of that night crowded on her, of Phyllis Chelmsford and Arthur
+... Arthur....</p>
+
+<p>Her thought stopped there. Arthur ... what did it all mean? She saw
+again the fixed, flat figures she had seen against the wall when she was
+dancing with Arthur&mdash;the corpse-like faces.... Why had everybody died
+when she was dancing with Arthur Henty? Sophie remembered that people
+had looked very much as usual when she went out to dance with Arthur;
+then when she looked at them again, they all seemed to be
+dead&mdash;drowned&mdash;and sitting round the hall in clear, still water, like
+the figures she had seen in mummy cases in foreign museums. Only she and
+Arthur were alive in that roomful of dead people. They had come from
+years before and were going to years beyond. It had been dark before she
+realised this; then they had been caught up into a light, transcending
+all consciousness of light; in which they had seemed no more than atoms
+of light adrift on the tide of the ages. Then the light had gone....</p>
+
+<p>They were out of doors when she recognised time and place again. Sophie
+had seen the hall crouched heavy and dark under a starry sky, its
+windows, yellow eyes.... She was conscious of trees about her ... the
+note of a goat-bell not far away ... and Arthur.... They had kissed, and
+then in the darkness that terror and fear&mdash;those struggling shapes ...
+figures of a nightmare ... light on Potch's hair.... She heard her own
+cry, winging eerie and shrill through the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden desperate effort Sophie threw off the plague of these
+thoughts and small mind-pictures; she turned to the cutting-wheel again.
+It whirred as she bent over it.</p>
+
+<p>"Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!" the wheel purred. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"</p>
+
+<p>Her brain throbbed as she tried not to listen or hear that song of the
+wheel; "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur!" the blood murmured and droned in her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Her hand holding an opal to the wheel trembled, the opal skidded and was
+scratched.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God," Sophie moaned, "don't let me think of him any more. Don't let
+me...."</p>
+
+<p>A mirror on the wall opposite reflected her face. Sophie wondered
+whether that was her face she saw in the mirror: the face in the mirror
+was strangely old, withered and wan. She closed her eyes on the sight of
+it. It confronted her again when she opened them. The eyes of the face
+in the mirror were heavy and dark with a darkness of mind she could not
+fathom.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie got up from her chair before the cutting-wheel. She went to the
+window and stood looking through its small open space at the bare earth
+beyond the hut. A few slight, sketchy trees, and the broken earth and
+scattered mounds of old dumps were thrown up under a fall of clear,
+exquisite sky, of a blue so pure, so fine, that there was balm just in
+looking at it. For a moment she plunged into it, the tragic chaos of her
+mind obliterated.</p>
+
+<p>With new courage from that moment's absorption of peaceful beauty, she
+went back to the wheel, the resolution which had taken her to it twice
+before that morning urging her. She sat down and began to work, took up
+the piece of opal she had scratched, examined it closely, wondering how
+the flaw could be rectified, if it could be rectified.</p>
+
+<p>The wheel, set going, raised its droning whirr. Sophie held her mind to
+the stone. She was pleased after a while. "That's all right," she told
+herself. "If only you don't think.... If only you keep working like this
+and don't think of Arthur."</p>
+
+<p>It was Arthur she did not want to think of. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+the wheel mocked. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"</p>
+
+<p>Her head went into her hands. She was moaning and crying again. "Don't
+let me think of him any more ... if only I needn't think of him any
+more...."</p>
+
+<p>She began to work again. There was nothing to do but persist in trying
+to work, she thought. If she kept to it, perhaps in the end the routine
+would take her; she would become absorbed in the mechanism of what she
+was doing.</p>
+
+<p>A shadow was thrown before her. In the mirror Sophie saw that John
+Armitage was standing in the doorway. Her feet ceased to work the
+treadles of the cutting-wheel; her hands fell to her lap; she waited for
+him to come into the room. He walked past her to the window, and stood
+with his back to it, facing her. Her eyes went to him. She let him take
+what impression he might from her face, her defences were down; vaguely,
+perhaps, she hoped he would read something of her mind in her face, that
+he would need no explanation of what she had no words to express.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a smile of faint cynicism in his eyes as he looked
+towards her; it evaporated as she surrendered to the inquisition of his
+gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he inquired gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she replied as gravely.</p>
+
+<p>They studied each other quietly.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage had changed very little since she had first seen him. His
+clean-shaven face was harder, a little more firmly set perhaps; the
+indecision had gone from it; it had lost some of its amiable mobility.
+He looked much more a man of the world he was living in&mdash;a business man,
+whose intelligence and energies had been trained in its service&mdash;but his
+eyes still had their subtle knowledge and sympathy, his individuality
+the attraction it had first had for her.</p>
+
+<p>He was wearing the loose, well-cut tweeds he travelled in, and had taken
+off his hat. It lay on the window-sill beside him, and Sophie saw that
+there was more silver in his hair where it was brushed back from his
+ears than there used to be. His eyes surveyed her as if she were written
+in an argot or dialect which puzzled him; his hands drifted and moved
+before her as he smoked a cigarette. His hands emphasised the difference
+between John Lincoln Armitage and men of the Ridge. Sophie thought of
+Potch's hands, and of Michael's, and the smile
+Michael might have had for Armitage's hands curved her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage, taking that smile for a lessening of the tension of her mood,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"You'd much better put on your bonnet and shawl, and come home with me,
+Sophie. We can be married en route, or in Sydney if you like.... You
+know how pleased the old man'll be. And, as for me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's gaze swept past him, fretted lines deepening on her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage threw away his cigarette, abandoning his assumption of familiar
+friendliness with the action, and went to her side. Sophie rose to meet
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Sophie," he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking
+into her eyes, "let's have done with all this neurotic rot.... You're
+the only woman in the world for me. I don't know why you left me. I
+don't care.... Come home ... let's get married ... and see whether we
+can't make a better thing of it...."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie had turned her eyes from his.</p>
+
+<p>"When I've said that before, you wouldn't have anything to do with it,"
+he continued. "You had a notion I was saying it because I ought&mdash;thought
+I had to, or the old man had talked me into it.... It wasn't true even
+then. I came here to say it ... so that you would believe I&mdash;want it,
+and I want you&mdash;more than anything on earth, Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>There was no response, only an overshadowing of troubled thought in
+Sophie's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything love or money can give you, girl, that I'm not eager
+to give you?" Armitage demanded. "What is it you want?... Do you know
+what you want?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie did not reply, and her silence exasperated him.</p>
+
+<p>Taking her face in his hands, Armitage scrutinised it as though he must
+read there what her silence held from him.</p>
+
+<p>He realised how wan and weary-looking it was. Shadows beneath her eyes
+fell far down her cheeks, her lips lay together with a new, strange
+sternness. But he could not think of that yet. His male egoism could
+only consider its own situation, fight imperiously in its own defence.</p>
+
+<p>"You want something I can't give you?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes held her for the fraction of a second; then, the pain of
+knowledge gripping him, his hands fell from her face. He turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"Which is it ... Potch or&mdash;the other?" He spoke with cruel bitterness.
+"It's always a case of 'which' with you&mdash;isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at her, surprised to hear a note of the same bitterness in
+her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean that, Sophie," he said. "You know I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me"&mdash;he turned to her&mdash;"I wish you would. You never have&mdash;why you
+left New York ... and gave up singing ... everything there, and came
+here."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie dropped into her chair again.</p>
+
+<p>"But you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Who could know anything of you, Sophie?"</p>
+
+<p>She moved the stones on the bench absent-mindedly. At length she said:</p>
+
+<p>"You remember our big row about Adler, when I was going to the supper on
+his yacht?"</p>
+
+<p>Armitage exclaimed with a gesture of protest.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," Sophie said, "you were angry ... you didn't mean what you
+said. But you were right all the same. You said I had let the life I was
+leading go to my head&mdash;that I was utterly demoralised by it.... I was
+angry; but it was true. You know the people I was going about with...."</p>
+
+<p>"I did my best to get you away from them," Armitage said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie nodded. "But I hadn't had enough then ... of the beautiful places
+and things I found myself in the midst of ... and of all the admiration
+that came my way. What a queer crowd they were&mdash;Kalin, that Greek boy
+who was singing with me in <i>Eurydice</i>, Ina Barres, the Countess, Mrs.
+Youille-Bailey, Adler, and the rest of them.... They seemed to have run
+the gamut of all natural experiences and to be interested only in what
+was unnatural, bizarre, macabre.... Adler in that crowd was almost a
+relief. I liked his&mdash;honest Rabelaisianism, if you like.... I hadn't the
+slightest intention of more than amusing myself with him ... but he,
+evidently, did not intend to be merely a source of amusement to me. The
+supper on the yacht.... I kept my head for a while, not long, and
+then&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then?" Armitage queried.</p>
+
+<p>"That's why I came home," Sophie said. "I was so sick with the shock and
+shame of it all ... so sick and ashamed I couldn't sing any more. I
+wouldn't. My voice died.... I deserved what happened. I'd been playing
+for it ... taking the wine, the music, Adler's love-making ... and
+expecting to escape the taint of it all.... Afterwards I saw where I was
+going ... what that life was making of me...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how you came to have anything to do with such a rotten
+lot," Armitage cried, sweating under a white heat of rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they're just people of means and leisure who like to patronise
+successful young dancers and singers for their own amusement," Sophie
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Because you fell in with a set of ultraæsthetics and degenerates, is no
+reason to suppose all our people of means and leisure are like them,"
+Armitage declared hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," Sophie said; "what I felt, when I began to think about it,
+was that they were just the natural consequences of all the easy,
+luxurious living I'd seen&mdash;the extreme of the pole if you like. I saw
+the other when I went to live in a slum settlement in Chicago."</p>
+
+<p>"You did?" Armitage exclaimed incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"When I got over the shock of&mdash;my awakening," she went on slowly, "I
+began to remember things Michael had said. That's why I went to Chicago
+... and worked in a clothing factory for a while.... I saw there why
+Adler's a millionaire, and heard from girls in a Youille-Bailey-M'Gill
+factory why Connie Youille-Bailey has money to burn...."</p>
+
+<p>"Old Youille-Bailey had fingers in a dozen pies, and he left her all
+he'd got," Armitage said.</p>
+
+<p>"But people down in the district where most of their money is made are
+living like bugs under a rotten log," Sophie exclaimed wearily. "They're
+made to live like that ... in order that people like William P. Adler
+and Mrs. Youille-Bailey ... may live as they do."</p>
+
+<p>Armitage's expression of mild cynicism yielded to one of concerned
+attentiveness. But he was concerned with the bearing on Sophie of what
+she had to say, and not at all with its relation to conditions of
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, life only goes on by its interests," she went on musingly;
+"and Mrs. Youille-Bailey's not altogether to blame for what she is. When
+people are bored, they've got to get interest or die; and if faculties
+which ought to be spent in useful or creative work aren't spent in that
+work, they find outlet in the silly energies a selfish and artificial
+life breeds...."</p>
+
+<p>"I admit," Armitage said, trying to veer her thoughts from the abstract
+to the personal issue, "that you went the pace. I couldn't keep up with
+it&mdash;not with Adler and his mob! But there's no need to go back to that
+sort of life. We could live as quietly as you like."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie shook her head. "I want to live here," she said. "I want to work
+with my hands ... feel myself in the swim of the world's life ... going
+with the great stream; and I want to help Michael here."</p>
+
+<p>Armitage sat back against the window-sill regarding her steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"If I could help you to do a great deal for the Ridge," he said; "if I
+were to settle here and spend all the money I've got in developing this
+place.&mdash;There's nothing innately immoral about a water-supply or
+electric power, I suppose, or in giving people decent houses to live in.
+And it would mean that for Fallen Star, if the scheme I have in mind is
+put into action. And if it is ... and I build a house here and were to
+live here most of my time ... would you marry me then, Sophie?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie gazed at him, her eyes widening to a scarcely believable vision.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you'd give up all your money to do that for the Ridge?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite that," he replied. "But the scheme would work out like that.
+I mean, it would provide more comfort and convenience for everybody on
+the Ridge&mdash;a more assured means of livelihood."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to buy up the mines?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just that," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But the men wouldn't agree...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know so much about that. It would depend on a few&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Michael would never consent."</p>
+
+<p>"As a matter of fact"&mdash;John Armitage returned Sophie's gaze
+tranquilly&mdash;"I know something about Michael&mdash;some information came into
+my hands recently, although I've always vaguely suspected it&mdash;which will
+make his consent much more likely than you would have imagined.... If it
+does not, giving the information I hold to men of the Ridge will so
+destroy their faith and confidence in Michael that what he may say or do
+will not matter."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's bewilderment and dismay constrained him. Then he continued:</p>
+
+<p>"You see, quite apart from you, my dear, it has always been a sort of
+dream of mine&mdash;ambition, if you like&mdash;to make a going concern of this
+place&mdash;to do for Fallen Star what other men I know have done for
+no-count, out-of-the-way towns and countries where natural resources or
+possibilities of investment warranted it.... I've talked the thing over
+with the old man, and with Andy M'Intosh, an old friend of mine, who is
+one of the ablest engineers in the States.... He's willing to throw in
+his lot with me.... Roughly, we've drawn up plans for conservation of
+flood waters and winter rains, which will alter the whole character of
+this country.... The old man at first was opposed&mdash;said the miners would
+never stand it; but since we've been out with the Ridge men, he's
+changed his mind rather. I mean, that when he knew some of the men would
+be willing to stand by us&mdash;and I have means of knowing they would&mdash;he
+was ready to agree. And when I told him Michael might be reckoned a
+traitor to his own creed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not true," Sophie cried, her faith afire. "It couldn't be! ... If
+everybody in the world told me, I wouldn't believe it!"</p>
+
+<p>Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and
+selected a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm only explaining the
+position to you because you're concerned in it. And for God's sake don't
+let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I'm not a villain. I don't feel
+in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.... I see my
+way to a profitable investment&mdash;incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I've
+been working out for a good many years.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he's worth if it weren't for
+this trump card of mine," Armitage went on. "He's got a Utopian dream
+about the place.... I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the
+advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its
+resources. His dream against mine&mdash;that's what it amounts to.... Well,
+it's a fair thing, isn't it, if I know that Michael is false to the
+things he says he stands for&mdash;and he stands in the way of my scheme&mdash;to
+let the men know he's false? ... They will fall away from the ideas he
+stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas
+sans Michael ... but they will be in the minority.... The way will be
+clear for reorganisation then."</p>
+
+<p>Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to
+his own creed&mdash;false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage
+said,&mdash;although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage
+reason for thinking so.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see Michael to-morrow, and have it out with him," John Armitage
+said. "I shall tell him what I know ... and also my plans. If he will
+work with me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked up, her smile glimmering.</p>
+
+<p>"If he will work with me," Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all
+that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, "nothing need be
+said which will undermine Michael's influence with men of the Ridge. I
+know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with
+them&mdash;by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition,
+suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it
+has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected....
+I'll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure&mdash;give it a
+profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won't look like the
+thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses...."</p>
+
+<p>"He will...."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to ask the men to meet me in the hall, at the end of the
+month, to lay before them a proposition for the more effective working
+of the mines. I shall put my proposition before them, and if Michael
+refuses to work with me, I shall be forced to give them proofs of his
+unworthiness of their respect...."</p>
+
+<p>"They won't believe you."</p>
+
+<p>"There will be the proofs, and Michael will not&mdash;he cannot&mdash;deny them."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll tell him what you are going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie realised how far Armitage was from understanding the religious
+intensity and simplicity with which Ridge folk worked for the way of
+life they believed to be the right one, and what the break-up of that
+belief would mean to those who had served it in the unpretentious,
+unprotesting fashion of honest, downright people. To him the Ridge stood
+for messy sentimentalism, Utopian idealism. And there was money in the
+place: there was money to be made by putting money into it&mdash;by working
+the mines and prospecting the country as the men without capital could
+not.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage was ready to admit&mdash;Sophie had heard him admitting in
+controversy&mdash;that the Fallen Star mines which the miners themselves
+controlled were as well worked and as well managed within their means as
+any he had ever come across; that the miners themselves were a sober and
+industrious crowd. What capital could do for them and for the Fallen
+Star community by way of increasing its output and furthering its
+activities was what he saw. And the only security he could have for
+putting his capital into working the mines was ownership of them.
+Ownership would give him the right to organise the workers, and to claim
+interest for his investment from their toil, or the product of their
+toil.</p>
+
+<p>The Ridge declaration of independence had made it clear that people of
+Fallen Star did not want increased output, the comforts and conveniences
+which capital could give them, unless they were provided from the common
+fund of the community. Ultimately, it was hoped the common fund would
+provide them, but until it did Ridge men had announced their willingness
+to do without improvements for the sake of being masters of their own
+mines. If it was a question of barter, they were for the pride and
+dignity of being free men and doing without the comforts and
+conveniences of modern life. Sophie felt sure Armitage underestimated
+the feeling of the majority of men of the Ridge toward the Ridge idea,
+and that most of them would stand by it, even if for some mysterious
+reason Michael lost status with them. But she was dismayed at the test
+the strength of that feeling was to be put to, and at the mysterious
+shame which threatened Michael. She could not believe Michael had ever
+done anything to merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to
+her&mdash;the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no
+reproach could be levelled.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "you could still have all those things you spoke of,
+under my scheme&mdash;the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple;
+the hearth; home, children&mdash;all that sort of thing ... and even time for
+any of the little social reform schemes you fancied...."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of their
+outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much to her and
+to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong
+children&mdash;whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of
+course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them.</p>
+
+<p>"The only little social reform I'd have any time for," she murmured,
+"would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines."</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to
+the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility
+of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to
+the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of
+destroying them.</p>
+
+<p>"Then"&mdash;he stood up suddenly&mdash;"whether I succeed or whether I
+don't&mdash;whether the scheme goes my way or not&mdash;won't make any difference
+to you&mdash;to us."</p>
+
+<p>"It will make this difference," Sophie said. "I'm heart and soul in the
+life here, I've told you. And if you do as you say you're going to ...
+instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I'll have to
+think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and
+chagrin which rushed over him, "you mean you're going to take on
+Henty&mdash;that's what's at the back of all this."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his,
+"that I'm going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the
+men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we'll fight it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIIb" id="CHAPTER_XIIb"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Are you there, Potch?" Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael's hut, a
+wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not here," he said.</p>
+
+<p>His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had
+been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with
+anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes
+had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any
+meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of
+her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about
+her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing
+her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised,
+confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that
+photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and
+sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening
+wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was
+rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against
+anyone&mdash;a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out
+of it; and Sophie's delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole
+being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had
+changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she
+were playing up to him.... She had been much more of his world than of
+the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and
+superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When
+she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping
+and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch
+should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from
+his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he
+had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sophie's cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him.
+He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that
+such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch
+away from Henty.... Henty had fallen.... Potch would have killed him if
+they had not dragged him away.... Henty was carried in an unconscious
+condition to Newton's. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with
+Potch.</p>
+
+<p>Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only
+imagine.... Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the
+other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not
+understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which
+he was not responsible for what he did.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was conscious of Michael's aloofness from her as she stood in the
+doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night
+before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress,
+which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her
+in her everyday white cotton frock&mdash;as she sat at work at her
+cutting-wheel, or went about the hut&mdash;and now that she stood before him
+in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and
+happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer
+in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at
+him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have
+quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain,
+but could not.</p>
+
+<p>Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying and muttering as though
+he were drunk. But he was not drunk, except with rage and grief, Michael
+knew. He had lain on his bunk like a log all night, muttering and
+groaning. Michael had sat in a chair in the next room, trying to
+understand the madness which had overwhelmed Potch.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, he realised that work and the normal order of their
+working days were the only things to restore Potch's mental balance. He
+roused him earlier than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better get down and clear out some of the mullock," he said. "The
+gouges are fair choked up. There'll be no doing anything if we don't get
+a move on with it."</p>
+
+<p>Potch had stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got up, changed his
+clothes, and they had gone down to the mine together. His face was
+swollen and discoloured, his lip broken, one eye almost hidden beneath a
+purple and blue swelling which had risen on the upper part of his left
+cheek. He had dragged his hat over his face, and walked with his head
+down; they had not spoken all the morning. Potch had swung his pick
+stolidly. All day his eyes had not met Michael's as they usually did, in
+that glance of love and comradeship which united them whenever their
+eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon, when they stopped work and went to the top of the
+mine, Potch had said:</p>
+
+<p>"Think I'll clear out&mdash;go away somewhere for awhile, Michael."</p>
+
+<p>From his attitude, averted head and drooping shoulders, Michael got the
+unendurable agony of his mind, his pain and shame. He did not reply, and
+Potch had walked away from him striking out in a south-easterly
+direction across the Ridge. Michael had not seen him since then. And now
+it was early evening, the moon up and silvering the plains with the
+light of her young crescent.</p>
+
+<p>"He says&mdash;Potch says ... he's going away," Michael said to Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew
+it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible.
+Their minds would not accept the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the
+moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground
+at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for
+Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He
+wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for
+him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he
+himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made
+on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town.</p>
+
+<p>She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so
+still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and
+knelt beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had
+brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch," she cried. "Potch!"</p>
+
+<p>Potch did not move or reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't live ... if you won't forgive me, Potch," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>He stirred. "Don't talk like that," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light
+of-the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic
+mask of the tragedy which consumed him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the sort of man I am," Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady.
+"I didn't know ... I didn't know I was like that. It came over me all of
+a sudden, when I saw you and&mdash;him. I didn't know any more until Michael
+was talking to me. I wouldn't've done it if I'd known, Sophie.... But I
+didn't know.... I just saw him&mdash;and you, and I had to put out the sight
+of it ... I had to get it out of my eyes... what I saw.... That's all I
+know. Michael says I didn't kill him ... but I meant to ... that's what
+I started to do."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's face withered under her distress.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, Potch," she begged.</p>
+
+<p>"But I do," he said. "I must.... I can't make out ... how it was ... I
+felt like that. I thought I'd see things like you saw them always, stand
+by you. Now I don't know.... I'm not to be trusted&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd trust you always, and in anything, Potch," Sophie said.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't say that&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p>"It's now ... I want to say it more than ever," she continued. "I can't
+explain ... what I did ... any more than you can what you did, Potch.
+But I'm to blame for what you did ... and yet ... I can't see that I'm
+altogether to blame. I didn't want what happened&mdash;to happen ... any more
+than you."</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to explain to Potch&mdash;to herself also. But she could not see
+clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had
+become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at
+last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love
+with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with
+me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that
+changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me
+to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with
+other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I
+wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls
+Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me....
+Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more....
+Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the
+Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the
+other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and,
+somehow, then&mdash;it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball
+at Warria...."</p>
+
+<p>A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael says you're going away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch replied.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I
+don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get
+married and settle down."</p>
+
+<p>Potch turned to her.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words.
+"I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."</p>
+
+<p>Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held
+her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.</p>
+
+<p>"But you love him!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's eyes did not fail from his.</p>
+
+<p>"I do," she said, "but I don't want to. I wish I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>His hands fell from her. "Why," he asked, "why do you say you'll marry
+me, if you ... if&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and
+there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with
+you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch
+dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful
+... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a
+thousand tender associations&mdash;their home, the quiet course their lives
+might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself.</p>
+
+<p>His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods
+offered him, even for the moment. And yet&mdash;he could not turn from it.
+Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have
+together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by&mdash;he
+stirred to the afterthought of her "and"&mdash;she wanted the children who
+might come to them.... Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that
+she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest
+affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as
+Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the
+thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud's most passionate
+kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of
+Sophie's dress or fingers had.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie took his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch," she said, "if you love me&mdash;if you want me to marry you, let us
+settle the thing this way.... I want to marry you.... I want to be your
+loving and faithful wife.... I'll try to be.... I don't want to think of
+anyone but you.... You may make me forget&mdash;if we are married, and get on
+well together. I hope you will&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his
+voice.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIIIb" id="CHAPTER_XIIIb"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>Potch had looked towards Michael's hut before he went into his own, next
+evening. There was no light in its window, and he supposed that Michael
+had gone to bed. In the morning, as they were walking to the mine, Potch
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"He's back; did you know?"</p>
+
+<p>Michael guessed whom Potch was speaking of. "Saw him ... as I was
+walking out along the Warria road yesterday afternoon," he said; "and
+then at Newton's.... He looks ill."</p>
+
+<p>Potch did not reply. They did not speak of Charley again, and yet as
+they worked they thought of no one else, and of nothing but the
+difficulties his coming would bring into their lives. For Potch, his
+father's return meant the revival of an old shame. He had been accepted
+on his merits by the Ridge; he had made people forget he was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and now Charley was back Potch had no hope of anything
+but the old situation where his father was concerned, the old drag and
+the old fear. The thought of it was more disconcerting than ever, now
+too, because Sophie would have to share the sort of atmosphere Charley
+would put about them.</p>
+
+<p>And Michael was dulled by the weight of the fate which threatened him.
+Every day the consciousness of it weighed more heavily. He wondered
+whether his mind would remain clear and steady enough to interpret his
+resolve. For him, Charley's coming, and the enmity he had gauged in his
+glance the night before, were last straws of misfortune.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage had put the proposition he outlined for Sophie, to
+Michael, the night before he left for Sydney. He had told Michael what
+he knew, and what he suspected in connection with Rouminof's opals.
+Michael had neither defended himself nor denied Armitage's accusation.
+He had ignored any reference to Paul's opals, and had made his position
+of uncompromising hostility to Armitage's proposition clear from the
+outset. There had not been a shadow of hesitation in his decision to
+oppose the Armitages' scheme for buying up the mines. At whatever cost,
+he believed he had no choice but to stand by the ideas and ideals on
+which the life of the Ridge was established and had grown.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage, because of his preconceived notion of the guilty
+conscience Michael was suffering from, was disappointed that the action
+of Michael's mind had been as direct to the poles of his faith as it had
+been. He realised Sophie was right: Michael would not go back on the
+Ridge or the Ridge code; but the Ridge might go back on him. Armitage
+assured himself he had a good hand to play, and he explained his
+position quite frankly to Michael. If Michael would not work with him,
+he, John Armitage, must work against Michael. He would prefer not to do
+so, he said. He described to several men, separately, what the proposals
+of the Armitage Syndicate amounted to, in order that they might think
+over, weigh, and discuss them. He was going down to Sydney for a few
+weeks, and when he came back he would call a meeting and lay his
+proposition before the men. He hoped by then Michael would have
+reconsidered his decision. If he had not, Armitage made it clear that,
+much as he would regret having to, he would nevertheless do all in his
+power to destroy any influence Michael might have with men of the Ridge
+which might militate against their acceptance of the scheme for
+reorganisation of the mines he had to lay before them. Michael
+understood what that meant. John Armitage would accuse him of having
+stolen Paul's opals, and he would have to answer the accusation before
+men of the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>His mind hovered about the thought of Maud Johnson.</p>
+
+<p>He could not conceive how John Armitage had come to the knowledge he
+possessed, unless Maud, whom he was aware Armitage had bought stones
+from in America, had not showed or sold them to him. But Armitage
+believed Michael still had, and was hoarding the stones. That was the
+strange part of it all. How could Armitage declare he had one of the
+stones, and yet believe Michael was holding the rest? Unless Maud had
+taken that one stone from the table the night she came to see Potch?
+Michael could not remember having seen the stone after she went. He
+could not remember having put it back in the box. It only just occurred
+to him she might only have taken the stone that night. Jun had probably
+recognised the stone, and she had told Armitage what Jun had said about
+it. Jun might have gone to the hut for the rest of the stones, but then
+Maud would not have told Armitage they were still on the Ridge. Maud
+would be sure to know if Jun had got the stones on his own account,
+Michael thought.</p>
+
+<p>His brain went over and over again what John Armitage had said,
+querying, exclaiming, explaining, and enlarging on fragments of their
+talk. Armitage declared he had evidence to prove Michael Brady had
+stolen Rouminof's stones. He might have proof that he had had possession
+of them for a while, Michael believed. But if Armitage was under the
+impression he still had the opals, his information was incomplete at
+least, and Michael treasured a vague hope that the proof which he might
+adduce, would be as faulty.</p>
+
+<p>But more important than the bringing home to him of responsibility for
+the lost opals, and the "unmasking" to eyes of men of the Ridge which
+Armitage had promised him, was the bearing it would have on the
+proposition which was to be put before them. Michael realised that there
+was a good deal of truth in what Armitage had said. A section of the
+younger miners, men who had settled on the new rushes, and one or two of
+the older men who had grown away from the Ridge idea, would probably be
+willing enough to fall in with and work under Armitage's scheme. George,
+Watty, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Cash Wilson, and most of the
+older men were against it, and some of the younger ones, too; but Archie
+and Ted Cross were inclined to waver, although they had always been
+staunch for the Ridge principle, and with them was a substantial
+following from the Punti, Three Mile, and other rushes.</p>
+
+<p>A disintegrating influence was at work, Michael recognised. It had been
+active for some time. Since Potch's finding of the big stone, scarcely
+any stone worth speaking of had been unearthed on the fields, and that
+meant long store accounts, and anxious and hard times for most of the
+gougers.</p>
+
+<p>The settlement had weathered seasons of dearth, and had existed on the
+merest traces of precious opal before; but this one had lasted longer,
+and had tried everybody's patience and capacity for endurance to the
+last degree. Murmurs of the need for money to prospect the field and
+open up new workings were heard. Criticisms of the ideas which would
+keep out money and money-owners who might be persuaded to invest their
+money to prospect and open up new workings on Fallen Star, crept into
+the murmurings, and had been circulating for some months. Bat M'Ginnis,
+a tall, lean, herring-gutted Irishman, with big ears, pointed like a
+bat's, was generally considered author of the criticisms and abettor of
+the murmurings. He had sunk on the Coolebah and drifted to the Punti
+rush soon after. On the Punti, it was known, he had expatiated on the
+need for business men and business methods to run the mines and make the
+most of the resources of the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>M'Ginnis was a good agent for Armitage, before Armitage's proposition
+was heard of. Michael wondered now whether he was perhaps an agent of
+Armitage's, and had been sent to the Ridge to prepare the way for John
+Armitage's scheme. When he came to think of it, Michael remembered he
+had heard men exclaim that Bat never seemed short of money himself,
+although if he had to live on what his claim produced he would have been
+as hard up as most of them. Michael wondered whether Charley's
+home-coming was a coincidence likewise, or whether Armitage had laid his
+plans more carefully than might have been imagined.</p>
+
+<p>Michael saw no way out for himself. He could not accept Armitage's bribe
+of silence as to his share in the disappearance of Paul's opals, in
+order to urge men of the Ridge to agree to the Armitages' proposition
+for buying up the mines. If he could have, he realised, he would carry
+perhaps a majority of men of the Ridge with him; and those he cared most
+for would stand by the Ridge idea whether he deserted it or not, he
+believed. He would only fall in their esteem; they would despise him;
+and he would despise himself if he betrayed the idea on which he had
+staked so much, and the realisation of which he would have died to
+preserve. But there was no question of betraying the Ridge idea, or of
+being false to the teaching of his whole life. He was not even tempted
+by the terms Armitage offered for his co-operation. He was glad to think
+no terms Armitage could offer would tempt him from his allegiance to the
+principle which was the corner-stone of life on the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>But he asked himself what the men would think of him when they heard
+Armitage's story; what Sophie would think, and Potch. He turned in agony
+from the thought that Sophie and Potch would believe him guilty of the
+thing he seemed to be guilty of. Anything seemed easier to bear than the
+loss of their love and faith, and the faith of men of the Ridge he had
+worked with and been in close sympathy with for so long&mdash;Watty and
+George, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant and Cash Wilson. Would he have
+to leave the Ridge when they knew? Would they cold-shoulder him out of
+their lives? His imagination had centred for so long about the thing he
+had done that the guilt of it was magnified out of all proportion to the
+degree of his culpability. He did not accuse himself in the initial act.
+He had done what seemed to him the only thing to do, in good faith; the
+opals had nothing to do with it. He did not understand yet how they had
+got an ascendancy over him; how when he had intended just to look at
+them, to see they were well packed, he had been seduced into that trance
+of worshipful admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Why he had not returned the stones to Paul as soon as Sophie had left
+the Ridge, Michael could not entirely explain to himself. He went over
+and over the excuses he had made to himself, seeing in them evidence of
+the subtle witchery the stones had exercised over him. But as soon as he
+was aware of the danger of delay, he tried to assure himself, and the
+appearance it must have, he had determined to get rid of the stones.</p>
+
+<p>Would the men believe he had wanted to give the stones to Paul&mdash;even
+that he had done what he had done for the reasons he would put before
+them? George and Watty and some of the others would believe him&mdash;but the
+rest? Michael could not hope that the majority would believe his story.
+They would want to know if at first he had kept the stones to prevent
+Sophie leaving the Ridge, why he had not given them to Paul as soon as
+she had gone. Michael knew he could only explain to them as he had to
+himself. He had intended to; he had delayed doing so; and then, when he
+went to find the stones to give them to Paul, they were no longer where
+he had left them. It was a thin story&mdash;a poor explanation. But that was
+the truth of the situation as far as he knew it. There was nothing more
+to be said or thought on the subject. He put it away from him with an
+impulse of impatience, desperate and weary.</p>
+
+<p>When Potch returned from the mine that afternoon; he went into Michael's
+hut before going home. Michael himself he had seen strike out westwards
+in the direction of the swamp soon after he came above ground. Potch
+expected to see his father where he was; he had seen him so often before
+on Michael's sofa under the window. Charley glanced up from the
+newspaper he was reading as Potch came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, son," he said, "the prodigal father's returned, and quite ready
+for a fatted calf."</p>
+
+<p>Potch stood staring at him. Light from the window bathed the thin,
+yellow face on the faded cushions of Michael's couch, limning the sharp
+nose with its curiously scenting expression, all the hungry, shrewd
+femininity and weakness of the face, and the smile of triumphant malice
+which glided in and out of the eyes. Michael was right, Potch realised;
+Charley was ill; but he had no pity for the man who lay there and smiled
+like that.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't stay here," he said. "Michael's coming."</p>
+
+<p>Charley smiled imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I?" he said. "You see. Besides ... I want to see Michael. That's
+what I'm here for."</p>
+
+<p>Potch growled inarticulately. He went to the hearth, gathered the
+half-burnt sticks together to make a fire. He would have given anything
+to get Charley out of the hut before Michael returned; but he did not
+know how to manage it. If Charley thought he wanted him to go, nothing
+would move him, Potch knew.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to see Michael about?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice, affectionate son you are," Charley murmured. "Suppose you know
+you are my son&mdash;and heir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Worse luck," Potch muttered, watching the flame he had kindled over the
+dry chips and sticks.</p>
+
+<p>"You might've done worse," Charley replied, watching his son with a
+slight, derisive smile. "I might've done worse myself in the way of a
+son to support me in my old age."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to do that."</p>
+
+<p>Charley laughed. "Aren't you?" he queried. "You might be very glad
+to&mdash;on terms I could suggest. And you're a fine, husky chap to do it,
+Potch, my lad.... They tell me you've married Rouminof's girl, and she's
+chucked the singing racket. Rum go, that! She could sing, too.... People
+I know told me they'd seen her in America in some revue stunt there, and
+she was just the thing. Went the pace a bit, eh? Oh, well, there's
+nothing like matrimony to sober a woman down&mdash;take the devil out of
+her."</p>
+
+<p>Potch's resentment surged; but before he could utter it, his father's
+pleasantries were flipping lightly, cynically.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, I saw a friend of yours in Sydney couple of months ago. Oh,
+well, several perhaps. Might have been a year.... Maud! There's a fine
+woman, Potch. And she told me she was awfully gone on you once. Eh,
+what?... And now you're a married man. And to think of my becoming a
+grandfather. Help!"</p>
+
+<p>Potch sprang to his feet, goaded to fury by the jeering, amiable voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up," he yelled, "shut up, or&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The doorway darkened. Potch saw Charley's face light with an expression
+of curious satisfaction and triumph. He turned and discovered that
+Michael was standing in the doorway. Irresolute and flinching, he stood
+there gazing at Charley, a strange expression of fear and loathing in
+his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You can clear out now, son," Charley remarked, putting an emphasis on
+the "son" calculated to enrage Potch. "I want to talk to Michael."</p>
+
+<p>Potch looked at Michael. It was his intention to stand by Michael if,
+and for as long as, Michael needed him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Potch," Michael said; but his eyes did not go to
+Potch's as they usually did. There was a strange, grave quality of
+aloofness about Michael. Potch hesitated, studying his face; but Michael
+dismissed him with a glance, and Potch went out of the hut.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIVb" id="CHAPTER_XIVb"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+
+
+<p>The sky was like a great shallow basin turned over the plains. No tree
+or rising ground broke the perfect circle of its fall over the earth;
+only in the distance, on the edge of the bowl, a fringe of trees drew a
+blurred line between earth and sky.</p>
+
+<p>Potch and Sophie lay out on the plains, on their backs in the dried
+herbage, watching the sunset&mdash;the play of light on the wide sweep of the
+sky&mdash;silently, as if they were listening to great music.</p>
+
+<p>They had been married some days before in Budda township, and were
+living in Potch's hut.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie and Potch had often wandered over the plains in the evening and
+watched the sunset; but never before had they come to the sense of
+understanding and completeness they attained this evening. The days had
+been long and peaceful since they were living together, an anodyne to
+Sophie, soothing all the restless turmoil of her soul and body. She had
+ceased to desire happiness; she was grateful for this lull of all her
+powers of sense and thought, and eager to love and to serve Potch as he
+did her. She believed her life had found its haven; that if she kept in
+tune with the fundamentals of love and service, she could maintain a
+consciousness of peace and rightness with the world which would make
+living something more than a weary longing for death.</p>
+
+<p>All the days were holy days to Potch since Sophie and he had been
+married. He looked at her as if she were Undine making toast and tea,
+cooking, washing dishes, or sweeping and tidying up his hut. He followed
+her every movement with a worshipful, reverent gaze.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after Sophie's return, Potch had gone to live in the hut which he
+and his father had occupied in the old days. He had put a veranda of
+boughs to the front of it, and had washed the roof and walls with
+carbide to lessen the heat in summer. He had turned out the rooms and
+put up shelves, trying to furnish the place a little for Sophie; but she
+had not wanted it altered at all. She had cleared the cupboard, put
+clean paper on the shelves, and had arranged Potch's books on them
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie loved the austerity of her home when she went to live in it&mdash;its
+earthen floor, bare walls, unvarnished furniture, the couch under the
+window, the curtains of unbleached linen she had hemstitched herself,
+the row of shining syrup-tins in which she kept tea, sugar, and coffee
+on shelves near the fireplace, the big earthenware jar for flowers, and
+a couple of jugs which Snow-Shoes had made for her and baked in an oven
+of his own contrivance. She had a quiet satisfaction in doing all the
+cleaning up and tidying to keep her house in the order she liked, so
+that her eyes could rest on any part of it and take pleasure from the
+sense of beauty in ordinary and commonplace things.</p>
+
+<p>But the hut was small and its arrangements so simple that an hour or two
+after Potch had gone to the mines Sophie went to the shed into which he
+had moved her cutting-wheel, and busied herself facing and polishing the
+stones which some of the men brought her as usual. She knew her work
+pleased them. She was as skilful at showing a stone to all its advantage
+as any cutter on the Ridge, and nothing delighted her more than when
+Watty or George or one of the Crosses exclaimed with satisfaction at a
+piece of work she had done.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon sometimes she went down to the New Town to talk with
+Maggie Grant, Mrs. Woods, or Martha. She was understudying Martha, too,
+when anyone was sick in the town, and needed nursing or a helping hand.
+Martha had her hands full when Mrs. Ted Cross's fourth baby was born.
+There were five babies in the township at the time, and Sophie went to
+Crosses' every morning to fix up the house and look after the children
+and Mrs. Ted before Martha arrived. When Martha found the Crosses'
+washing gaily flapping on the line one morning towards midday, she
+protested in her own vigorous fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't going to have you blackleggin' on me, Mrs. Heathfield," she
+said. "And what's more, if I find you doin' it again, I'll tell Potch.
+It's all right for me to be goin' round doing other people's odd jobs;
+but I don't hold with you doin' 'em&mdash;so there! If folks wants babies,
+well, it's their look-out&mdash;and mine. But I don't see what you've got to
+do with it, coming round makin' your hands look anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"You just sit down, and I'll make you a cup of tea, Mother M'Cready,"
+Sophie said by way of reply, and gently pushed Martha into the most
+comfortable chair in the room. "You look done up ... and you're going on
+to see Ella and Mrs. Inglewood, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>Martha nodded. She watched Sophie with troubled, loving eyes. She was
+really very tired, and glad to be able to sit and rest for a moment. It
+gave her a welling tenderness and gratitude to have Sophie concerned for
+her tiredness, and fuss about her like this. Martha was so accustomed to
+caring for everybody on the Ridge, and she was so strong, good-natured,
+and vigorous, very few people thought of her ever being weary or
+dispirited. But as she bustled into the kitchen, blocking out the light,
+Sophie saw that Martha's fat, jolly face under the shadow of her
+sun-hat, was not as happy-looking as usual. Sophie guessed the weariness
+which had overtaken her, and that she was "poorly" or "out-of-sorts," as
+Martha would have said herself, if she could have been made to admit
+such a thing.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very well to give folks a helping hand," Martha continued,
+"but I'm not going to have you doin' their washin' while I'm about."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie put a cup of tea and slice of bread and syrup down beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"There! You drink that cup of tea, and tell me what you think of it,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Sophie," Martha protested. "It's stone silly for you to be doing
+things like Cross's washing. You're not strong enough, and I won't have
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie put her arms around Martha's neck from behind her chair. She
+pressed her face against the creases of Martha's sunburnt neck and
+kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>Martha gurgled happily under the pressure of Sophie's young arms, the
+childish impulse of that hugging. She turned her face back and kissed
+Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my lamb! My dearie lamb!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>She recognised Sophie's need for common and kindly service to the people
+of the Ridge. She knew what that service had meant to her at one time,
+and was willing to let Sophie share her ministry so long as her health
+was equal to it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Watty, and the women who took their views from her, thought that
+Sophie was giving herself a great deal of unnecessary and laborious work
+as a sort of penance. They had withdrawn all countenance from her after
+the disaster of the ball, although they regarded her marriage to Potch
+as an endeavour to reinstate herself in their good graces. Mrs. Watty
+had been scandalised by the dress she had worn at the ball, by the way
+she had danced, and her behaviour generally. But Sophie was quite
+unconcerned as to what Mrs. Watty and her friends thought: she did not
+go out of her way either to avoid or placate them.</p>
+
+<p>When she went to the Crosses' to take charge of the children and look
+after the house while Mrs. Cross was ill, the gossips had exclaimed
+together. And when it was known that Sophie had taken on herself odds
+and ends of sewing for other women of the township who had large
+families and rather more to do than they knew how to get through, they
+declared that they did not know what to make of it, or of Sophie and her
+moods and misdemeanours.</p>
+
+<p>Potch heard of what Sophie was doing from the people she helped. When he
+came home in the evening she was nearly always in the kitchen getting
+tea for him; but if she was not, she came in soon after he got home, and
+he knew that one of these little tasks she had undertaken for people in
+the town had kept her longer than she expected. Usually he hung in the
+doorway, waiting for her to come and meet him, to hold up her face to be
+kissed, eyes sweet with affection and the tender familiarity of their
+association. Those offered kisses of hers were the treasure of these
+dream-like days to Potch.</p>
+
+<p>He had always loved Sophie. He had thought that his love had reached the
+limit of loving a long time before, but since they had been married and
+were living, day after day, together, he had become no more than a
+loving of her. He went about his work as usual, performed all the other
+functions of his life mechanically, scrupulously, but it was always with
+a subconscious knowledge of Sophie and of their life together.</p>
+
+<p>"You're tired," he said one night when Sophie lifted her face to his,
+his eyes strained on her with infinite concern.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Potch," she said; and she had put back the hair from his forehead
+with a gesture tender and pitiful.</p>
+
+<p>Her glance and gesture were always tender and pitiful. Potch realised
+it. He knew that he worshipped and she accepted his worship. He was
+content&mdash;not quite content, perhaps&mdash;but he assured himself it was
+enough for him that it should be so.</p>
+
+<p>He had never taken Sophie in his arms without an overwhelming sense of
+reverence and worship. There was no passionate need, no spontaneity, no
+leaping flame in the caresses she had given him, in that kiss of the
+evening, and the slight, girlish gestures of affection and tenderness
+she gave as she passed him at meals, or when they were reading or
+walking together.</p>
+
+<p>As they lay on the plains this evening they had been thinking of their
+life together. They had talked of it in low, brooding murmurs. The
+immensity of the silence soaked into them. They had taken into
+themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the
+paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was
+time to go home, Sophie sat up.</p>
+
+<p>"I love to lie against the earth like this," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more
+than specks of dust on the plains ... under the skies, Potch ... and yet
+the whole world is within us...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch said, and the silence streamed between them again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never forget," Sophie continued dreamily, "hearing a negro talk
+once about what they call 'the negro problem' in America. He was an
+ordinary thick-set, curly-haired, coarse-featured negro to look
+at&mdash;Booker Washington&mdash;but he talked some of the clearest, straightest
+stuff I've ever heard.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing he said has always stayed in my mind: 'Keep close to the
+earth.' It was not good, he said, to walk on asphalted paths too
+long.... He was describing what Western civilisation had done for the
+negroes&mdash;a primitive people.... Anyone could see how they had
+degenerated under it. And it's always seemed to me that what was true
+for the negroes ... is true for us, too.... It's good to keep close to
+the earth."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep close to the earth?" Potch mused.</p>
+
+<p>"In tune with the fundamentals, all the great things of loving and
+working&mdash;our eyes on the stars."</p>
+
+<p>"The stars?"</p>
+
+<p>"The objects of our faith and service."</p>
+
+<p>They were silent again for a while. Then Sophie said:</p>
+
+<p>"You ..." she hesitated, remembering what she had told John
+Armitage&mdash;"you and I would fight for the Ridge principle, even if all
+the others accepted Mr. Armitage's offer, wouldn't we, Potch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>"And Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Michael?" His eyes questioned her in the dim light because of the
+hesitation in her question. "Why do you say that? Michael would be the
+last man on earth to have anything to do with Armitage's scheme."</p>
+
+<p>"He comes back to put the proposition to the men definitely in a few
+days, doesn't he?" Sophie asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you talked to Michael about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"To tell you the truth, Sophie," Potch replied slowly,
+conscience-stricken that he had given the subject so little
+consideration, "I took it for granted there could only be one answer to
+the whole thing.... I haven't thought of it. I've only thought of you
+the last week or so. I haven't talked to Michael; I haven't even heard
+what the men were saying at midday.... But, of course, there's only one
+answer."</p>
+
+<p>"I've tried to talk to Michael, but he won't discuss it with me," Sophie
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean," he said&mdash;"you can't think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she cried, with a gesture of desperation, "I know John Armitage is
+holding something over Michael ... and if it's true what he says, it'll
+break Michael, and it'll go very badly against the Ridge."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't tell me what it is?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>Potch got up; his face settled into grave and fighting lines. Sophie,
+too, rose from the ground. They went towards the track where the three
+huts stood facing the scattered dumps of the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to see Michael," Potch said, when they approached the huts.
+"I'll be in, in a couple of minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie went on to their own home, and Potch, swerving from her, walked
+across to the back door of Michael's hut.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVb" id="CHAPTER_XVb"></a>CHAPTER XV</h3>
+
+
+<p>Charley was sitting on the couch, leaning towards Michael, his shoulders
+hunched, his eyes gleaming, when Potch went into the hut.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't bluff me," Potch heard him say. "You may throw dust in the
+eyes of the men here, but you can't bluff me.... It was you did for
+me.... It was you put it over on me&mdash;took those stones."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you tell the boys," Potch heard Michael say.</p>
+
+<p>His voice was as unconcerned as though it were not anything of
+importance they were discussing. Potch found relief in the sound of it,
+but its unconcern drove Charley to fury.</p>
+
+<p>"You know I took them from Paul," he shouted. "You know&mdash;I can see it in
+your eyes ... and you took them from me. When ... how ... I don't
+know.... You must 've sneaked into the house when I dozed off for a bit,
+and put a parcel of your own rotten stuff in their place.... How do I
+know? Well, I'll tell you...."</p>
+
+<p>He settled back on the sofa. "I hung on to the best stone in the
+lot&mdash;clear brown potch with good flame in it&mdash;hopin' it would give me a
+clue some day to the man who'd done that trick on me. But I couldn't
+place the stone; I'd never seen it on you, and Jun had never seen it
+either. I was dead stony when I sold it to Maud ... and I told her why
+I'd been keeping it, seeing she was in the show at the start off. She
+sold the stone to Armitage in America, and first thing the old man said
+when he saw it was: 'Why, that's Michael's mascot!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Remembered when you'd got it, he said," Charley continued, taking
+Michael's interest with gratified malice. "First stone you'd come on, on
+Fallen Star, and you wouldn't sell&mdash;kept her for luck.... Old Armitage
+wouldn't have anything to do with the stone then&mdash;didn't believe Maud's
+story.... But John Lincoln got it. He told me...."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," Michael murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind telling you I'm here to play Armitage's game," Charley said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael nodded. "Well, what about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"This about it," Charley exclaimed irritably, his excitement and
+impatience rising under Michael's calmness. "You're done on the Ridge
+when this story gets around. What I've got to say is ... you took the
+opals. You've got 'em. You're done for here. But you could have a good
+life somewhere else. Clear out, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go halves, eh?" Michael queried.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it," Charley assented. "I'll clear out and say nothing&mdash;although
+I've told Rummy enough already to give him his suspicions. Still,
+suspicions are only suspicions&mdash;nothing more. When I came here I didn't
+even mean to give you this chance.... But 'Life is sweet, brother!'
+There's still a few pubs down in Sydney, and a woman or two. I wouldn't
+go out with such a grouch against things in general if I had a flash in
+the pan first.... And it'd suit you all right, Michael.... With this
+scheme of Armitage's in the wind&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose I haven't got the stones?" Michael inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Charley half rose from the sofa, his thin hands grasping the table.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie!" he shrieked, shivering with impotent fury. "You know it
+is.... What have you done with 'em then? What have you done with those
+stones&mdash;that's what I want to know!"</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't got much breath," Michael said; "you'd better save it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll use all I've got to down you, if you don't come to light," Charley
+cried. "I'll do it, see if I don't."</p>
+
+<p>Potch walked across to his father. He had heard Charley abusing and
+threatening Michael before without being able to make out what it was
+all about. He had thought it bluff and something in the nature of a
+try-on; but he had determined to put a stop to it.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't I?" Charley turned on his son.</p>
+
+<p>"No." Potch's tone was steady and decisive.</p>
+
+<p>Charley looked towards Michael again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well ... what are you going to do about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you," Michael said. "Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Did y' hear what I've been calling your saint?" Charley cried, turning
+to Potch. "I'm calling him what everybody on the fields'd be calling him
+if they knew."</p>
+
+<p>Michael's gaze wavered as it went to Potch.</p>
+
+<p>"A thief," Charley continued, whipping himself into a frenzy. "That's
+what he is&mdash;a dirty, low-down thief! I'm the ordinary, decent sort ...
+get the credit for what I am ... and pay for it, by God! But he&mdash;he
+doesn't pay. I bag all the disgrace ... and he walks off with the
+goods&mdash;Rouminof's stones."</p>
+
+<p>Potch did not look at Michael. What Charley had said did not seem to
+shock or surprise him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've made a perfectly fair and reasonable proposition," Charley went on
+more quietly. "I've told him ... if he'll go halves&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Guess again," Potch sneered.</p>
+
+<p>Charley swung to his feet, a volley of expletives swept from him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told Rummy to get the law on his side," he cried shrilly, "and
+he's going to. There's one little bit of proof I've got that'll help
+him, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get jail yourself over it," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind if I do," Charley shouted, and poured his rage and
+disappointment into a flood of such filthy abuse that Potch took him by
+the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut your mouth," he said. "D'y' hear?... Shut your mouth!"</p>
+
+<p>Charley continued to rave, and Potch, gripping his shoulders, ran him
+out of the hut.</p>
+
+<p>Michael heard them talking in Potch's hut&mdash;Charley yelling, threatening,
+and cursing. A fit of coughing seized him. Then there was silence&mdash;a
+hurrying to and fro in the hut. Michael heard Sophie go to the tank, and
+carry water into the house, and guessed that Charley's paroxysm and
+coughing had brought on the hemorrhage he had had two or three times
+since his return to the Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>A little later Potch came to him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's had a bleeding, Michael," Potch said; "a pretty bad one, and he's
+weak as a kitten. But just before it came on I told him I'd let him have
+a pound a week, somehow, if he goes down to Sydney at once.... But if
+ever he shows his face in the Ridge again ... or says a word more about
+you ... I've promised he'll never get another penny out of me.... He can
+die where and how he likes ... I'm through with him...."</p>
+
+<p>Michael had been sitting beside his fire, staring into it. He had
+dropped into a chair and had not moved since Potch and Charley left the
+hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe what he said, Potch?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Michael felt Potch's eyes on his face; he raised his eyes to meet them.
+There was no lie in the clear depths of Potch's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I've known for a long time," Potch said.</p>
+
+<p>Michael's gaze held him&mdash;the swimming misery of it; then, as if
+overwhelmed by the knowledge of what Potch must be thinking of him, it
+fell. Michael rose from his chair before the fire and stood before
+Potch, his mind darkened as by shutting-off of the only light which had
+penetrated its gloom. He stood so for some time in utter abasement and
+desolation of spirit, believing that he had lost a thing which had come
+to be of inexpressible value to him, the love and homage Potch had given
+him while they had been mates.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always known, too," Potch said, "it was for a good enough reason."</p>
+
+<p>Michael's swift glance went to him, his soul irradiated by that
+unprotesting affirmation of Potch's faith.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped into his chair before the fire again. His head went into his
+hands. Potch knew that Michael was crying. He stood by silently&mdash;unable
+to touch him, unable to realise the whole of Michael's tragedy, and yet
+overcome with love and sympathy for him. He knew only as much of it as
+affected Sophie. His sympathy and instinct where Sophie was concerned
+enabled him to guess why Michael had done what he had.</p>
+
+<p>"It was for Sophie," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I intended to give them back to Paul&mdash;when she was old enough to go
+away, Potch," Michael said after a while. "Then she went away; and I
+don't know why I didn't give them to him at once. The things got hold of
+me, somehow&mdash;for a while, at least. I couldn't make up my mind to give
+them back to him&mdash;kept makin' excuses.... Then, when I did make up my
+mind and went to get them, they were gone."</p>
+
+<p>Potch nodded thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't suspect anybody?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Michael shook his head. "How can I? Nobody knew I had them, and yet ...
+that night ... twice, I thought I had heard someone moving near me....
+The memory of it's stayed with me all these years. Sometimes I think it
+means something&mdash;that somebody must have been near and seen and heard.
+Then that seems absurd. It was a bright night; I looked, and there was
+no one in sight. There's only one person besides you ... saw ... I
+think&mdash;knew I had the stones...."</p>
+
+<p>"Maud?"</p>
+
+<p>Michael nodded. "She came into the room with you that night. You
+remember? ... And I've wondered since ... if she, perhaps, or Jun ... At
+any rate, Armitage knows, or suspects&mdash;I don't know which it is
+really.... He says he has proof. There's that stone I put in Charley's
+parcel&mdash;a silly thing to do when you come to think of it. But I didn't
+like the idea of leaving Charley nothing to sell when he got to Sydney;
+and that was the only decent bit of stone I'd got. Making up the parcel
+in a hurry, I didn't think what putting in that bit of stuff might lead
+to. But for that, I can't think how Armitage could have proof I had the
+stones except through Maud. And she's been in New York, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She may have told him she saw you the night she came for me," Potch
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I think," Michael agreed.</p>
+
+<p>They brooded over the situation for a while.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Sophie know?" Michael's eyes went to Potch, a sharper light in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Only that some danger threatens you," Potch said slowly. "Armitage told
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"You tell her what I've told you, Potch," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>They talked a little longer, then Potch moved to go away.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing to be done?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Michael shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Things have just got to take their course. There's nothing to be done,
+Potch," he said.</p>
+
+<p>They came to him together, Sophie and Potch, in a little while, and
+Sophie went straight to Michael. She put her arms round his neck and her
+face against his; her eyes were shining with tears and tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael, dear!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Michael held her to him; she was indeed the child of his flesh as she
+was of his spirit, as he held her then.</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak; he could not. Looking up, he caught Potch's eyes on
+him, the same expression of faith and tenderness in them. The joy of the
+moment was beyond words.</p>
+
+<p>Potch's and Sophie's love and faith were beyond all value, precious to
+Michael in this time of trouble. When he had failed to believe in
+himself, Sophie and Potch believed in him; when his life-work seemed to
+be falling from his hands, they were ready to take it up. They had told
+him so. In his grief and realisation of failure, that thought was a
+star&mdash;a thing of miraculous joy and beauty.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVIb" id="CHAPTER_XVIb"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+
+
+<p>The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together
+before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his
+proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group
+formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction.
+M'Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were
+prepared to accept Armitage's scheme. The Crosses, while they would not
+go over to the M'Ginnis faction, had a following&mdash;and the group about
+them was by far the largest&mdash;which was asserting an open mind until it
+heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with
+them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than
+against, Armitage's outline of the new order of things for the Ridge
+since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared
+at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of
+Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old
+spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and
+Watty Frost.</p>
+
+<p>"Thing that's surprised me," Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, "is the
+numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say.
+I wouldn't 've thought there'd be so many."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like it meself, Pony," George admitted. "That's why we're here.
+Want to know the strength of them&mdash;and him."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Watty muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Crosses, for instance," Pony-Fence continued. "You wouldn't 've thought
+Archie and Ted'd 've even listened to guff about profit-sharin'&mdash;all
+that.... But they've swallowed it&mdash;swallowed it all down. They say&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>George nodded gloomily. "This blasted talkin' about Michael's done more
+harm than anything."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Pony-Fence said. "What's the strength of it, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"Damned if I know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Michael to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was
+not among them.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he coming?" Pony-Fence asked.</p>
+
+<p>George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted,
+expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking
+of Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"Does he know what's being said?" Pony-Fence asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don't understand Michael over this
+business," George said. "He's been right off his nest the last week or
+two. It might have got him down what's being said&mdash;he might be so sore
+about anybody thinkin' that of him, or that it's just too mean and
+paltry to take any notice of.... But I'd rather he'd said something....
+It's played Armitage's game all right, the yarn that's been goin' round,
+about Michael's not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it
+is, you don't know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course&mdash;but
+it was here before him.... He's just stoked the gossip a bit. But it's
+done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could 've&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To-night'll bring things to a head," Watty interrupted, as though they
+had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to
+say next. "I reck'n we'll see better how we stand&mdash;what's the game&mdash;and
+the men who are going to stand by us.... Michael's with us, I'll swear;
+and if we've got to put up a fight ... we'll have it out with him about
+those yarns.... And it'll be hell for any man who drops a word of them
+afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form
+and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained
+somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the
+fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat
+near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American
+engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a
+little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but
+Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be
+chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he
+took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water
+bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M'Intosh,
+the American engineer, on the other.</p>
+
+<p>His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and
+chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be
+regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage's plan.</p>
+
+<p>John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of
+another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night.
+Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was
+filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred
+the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the
+benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or
+worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats.
+Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the
+weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid
+through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and
+intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.</p>
+
+<p>Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr.
+Andrew M'Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to
+report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the
+United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural
+resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date,
+flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the
+Armitage Syndicate.</p>
+
+<p>Andrew M'Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt
+features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up
+in response to Mr. Armitage's invitation. He was a man of deeds, not
+words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the
+substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and
+hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting
+against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business,
+although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had
+not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he
+would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to
+assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition
+Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He
+himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot
+with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage's proposition; and he gave
+them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of
+the reorganisation of the mines, he would work whole-heartedly for the
+success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might
+mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great
+deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for
+mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of
+the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the
+advantages that would entail.</p>
+
+<p>The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer's
+manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the
+situation, although he gave very little information they had not already
+possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and
+confronted the men again.</p>
+
+<p>He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward
+business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said;
+but one the success of which would depend on their co-operation. As
+their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the
+disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for
+both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he
+proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the
+resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an
+expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and
+prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw
+possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he
+promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had
+outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous
+township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity
+in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all
+manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of
+communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased
+production would ensure.</p>
+
+<p>In a nutshell Armitage's scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines
+for £30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage
+of 20 per cent. profit on all stones over a certain standard and size.
+The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected
+to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but
+otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr.
+Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general
+manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union
+rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining
+companies throughout the country.</p>
+
+<p>When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone's mind that
+John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on
+the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage
+Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been
+driven to consider Armitage's offer from their first hearing of it,
+because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost
+persuaded by his final exposition.</p>
+
+<p>George Woods stood up.</p>
+
+<p>George's strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty
+and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed
+situations and men.</p>
+
+<p>He realised the impression Armitage's statement of his scheme, and its
+bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own
+position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering
+between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen
+Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star
+had stood for so long, would lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "we've got to thank you for puttin' the thing to us as
+clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a
+chance to see just what you're drivin' at. But I might say here and now
+... I've got no time for it ... neither me nor my mates.... It'll save
+time and finish the business of this meeting if there's no beatin' about
+the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all
+right&mdash;your scheme&mdash;nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to
+get out of it than to lose by it.... I don't say it wouldn't mean easier
+times ... more money ... all that sort of thing. We haven't had the
+easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes ... just
+when we're in the worst that's ever knocked us. But speakin' for myself,
+and"&mdash;his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the
+Ridge stood for-"the most of my mates, we'd rather have the hard times
+and be our own masters. That's what we've always said on the Ridge....
+Your scheme 'd be all right if we didn't feel like that; I suppose. But
+we do ... and as far as I'm concerned, we won't touch it. It's no go.</p>
+
+<p>"We're obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you
+could have gone another way about getting control here. You may&mdash;-buy up
+a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not
+that I think the boys'd stand for the experiment."</p>
+
+<p>"They wouldn't," Bill Grant called.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to hear that," George said. He tried to point out that if
+Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage's offer they would be shouldering
+conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest
+that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He
+asked whether a weekly Wage to tide them over years of misfortune would
+compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know
+how they'd feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth £400 or £500 and
+got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big
+stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George
+said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr.
+Armitage's argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could
+see in Mr. Armitage's scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their
+own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for
+them under Mr. Armitage's system was three or four pounds a week&mdash;and
+not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.</p>
+
+<p>"We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine," George said; "that's
+worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties....
+Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and
+there's money about again.... For the present we'll hang on to what
+we've got, thank you, Mr. Armitage."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody else got anything to say?" Peter Newton inquired.</p>
+
+<p>M'Ginnis stood up.</p>
+
+<p>He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he
+said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as
+he could see. He didn't see that the men's ownership of the mines meant
+much more than that&mdash;the freedom to starve. It was all very well for
+them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool
+could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish
+heap. But as far as he was concerned, M'Ginnis declared, he didn't see
+the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had
+volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms....</p>
+
+<p>It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on
+the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to
+it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas
+had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very
+well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance
+of being a millionaire at a minute's notice; but how many of them were
+millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to
+bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down
+this offer of Mr. Armitage's. For his part he was for it, and, what was
+more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr.
+Armitage's scheme, we'll soon see which way the cat's jumping," M'Ginnis
+said. "People'd have the nause to see which side their bread's buttered
+on&mdash;not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I
+don't see why&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not paid to," a voice called from the back of the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why," M'Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the
+interruption, "the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule
+the roost. What's wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near
+M'Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting
+were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round.
+Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to
+restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood
+were heard howling over the din:</p>
+
+<p>"Let him alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's hear what he's got to say."</p>
+
+<p>Then M'Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained
+by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage's offer.</p>
+
+<p>"And," he wound up, "there's the women and children to think of." At the
+back of the hall somebody laughed. "Laugh if you like"&mdash;M'Ginnis worked
+himself into a passion of virtuous indignation&mdash;"but I don't see there's
+anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin' to
+mean to the women and children of this town&mdash;what a few of the
+advantages of civilisation&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Disadvantages!" the same voice called.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin' to mean to the
+women and children of this God-forsaken hole," M'Ginnis cried furiously.
+"If I had a wife and kids, d'ye think I'd have any time for this
+high-falutin' flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The
+best in the country wouldn't be too good for them&mdash;and it's not good
+enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That's what I've got
+to say&mdash;and that's what any decent man would say if he could see
+straight. I'm an ordinary, plain, practical man myself ... and I ask you
+chaps who've been lettin' your legs be pulled pretty freely&mdash;-and
+starvin' to be masters of your own dumps&mdash;to look at this business like
+ordinary, plain, practical men, who've got their heads screwed on the
+right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen
+Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there's some men here want
+to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let 'em, I say: it's a free
+country. But there's no need for the rest of us to starve with 'em."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour
+of Armitage and his Scheme.</p>
+
+<p>"What's Michael got to say about it?" a man from the Three Mile asked.
+And several voices called: "Yes; what's Michael got to say?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment there was silence&mdash;a silence of apprehension. George Woods
+and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had
+heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised
+in that moment the power of Michael's influence; that what Michael was
+going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done,
+either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which
+they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet
+there was fear in the waiting silence.</p>
+
+<p>Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited
+anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield
+waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see
+him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there
+was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed
+on the place where Michael sat&mdash;Charley's eager and cruel as a cat's on
+its victim, Rouminof's alight with the fires of his consuming
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance,
+those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and
+faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile.</p>
+
+<p>"All I've got to say," he said, "George Woods has said. There's nothing
+in Mr. Armitage's scheme for Fallen Star.... It looks all right, but it
+isn't; it's all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership
+of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage 'll give us anything
+but that&mdash;he offers us every inducement but that ... and you know how
+the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to
+him, they're worth as much, or more, to us.</p>
+
+<p>"Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the
+mines&mdash;at a 'fair valuation'&mdash;put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All
+the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen
+Star, might or mightn't come true. P'raps it would. I can't say. All I
+say is, it's being used to gild the pill we're asked to swallow&mdash;buyin'
+up of the mines. There's nothing sure about all this talk of electricity
+and water laid on; it's just gilding. And supposing the new conditions
+did put more money about&mdash;did bring the comforts and conveniences of
+civilisation to Fallen Star&mdash;like M'Ginnis says&mdash;what good would they be
+to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like
+a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn't matter to them any
+more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they'd have their
+wages&mdash;like bullocks have their hay. It's because our work's had
+interest; it's because we've been our own bosses, life's been as good as
+it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn't got interest in
+his work he's got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs
+when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling ... and how did
+that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of
+M'Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old
+hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in
+by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a
+strike in the mines, he'd be saying that to you: 'Remember the women and
+children.'"</p>
+
+<p>Colour flamed in Michael's face, and he continued with more heat than
+there had yet been in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"The time's coming when the man who talks 'women and children' to defeat
+their own interests will be treated like the skunk&mdash;the low-down,
+thieving swine he is. Do we say anything's too good for our women and
+children? Not much. But we want to give them real things&mdash;the real
+things of life and happiness&mdash;not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we
+give our women and children the mines as we've held them, and the record
+of a clean fight for them, we'll be giving them something very much
+bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The
+things we've stood for are better than anything he's got to offer. We've
+got here what they're fighting for all over the world ... it's bigger
+than ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"M'Ginnis says he's heard a lot of 'the freedom to starve on the
+Ridge'&mdash;it's more than I have, it's a sure thing if he wants to starve,
+nobody'd stop him...."</p>
+
+<p>A wave of laughter passed over the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"But most of us here haven't any fancy for starving, and what's more,
+nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don't say that we haven't had
+hard times, that we haven't gone on short commons&mdash;we have; but we
+haven't starved, and we're not going to....</p>
+
+<p>"This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have
+been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we're
+down, in a way; but the slump'll pass. There've been slumps before, and
+they've passed.... Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn't be so keen on
+getting hold of the mines.</p>
+
+<p>"And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to
+me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or
+syndicate ever made could. Didn't old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once
+that he didn't know a better conducted or more industrious mining
+community than this one. 'Why d'y' think that is?' I asked him. He said
+he didn't know. I said, 'You don't think the way the men feel about
+their work's got anything to do with it?' 'Damn it, Michael,' he said,
+'I don't want to think so.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I happen to know"&mdash;Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage,
+who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and
+crossed under his chin&mdash;"that the old man is opposed even now to this
+scheme because he thinks he won't get as much black opal out of us as he
+does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and
+what taking over of the mines did for opal&mdash;and the men&mdash;there. This
+scheme is Mr. John Armitage's idea....</p>
+
+<p>"He's put it to you. You've heard what it is. All I've got to say now
+is, don't touch it. Don't have anything to do with it.... It'll break us
+... the spirit of the men here ... and it'll break what we've been
+working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don't let us
+see which side our bread's buttered on, as Mr. M'Ginnis says. Let us say
+like we always have&mdash;like we've been proud to say: 'We'll eat bread and
+fat, but we'll be our own masters!'"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!" the men who
+were with Michael roared.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam
+at him, filled with rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not
+quite decided what he intended to say.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to ask this meeting for a decision," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"You can have it!" Bully Bryant yelled.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I'm going on up
+there," John Armitage continued. "I'm due in Sydney at the end of the
+month&mdash;that is, a month from this date&mdash;and I'll run up then for your
+answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said
+all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything
+which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your
+gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the
+best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I
+think, however, you ought to know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That Michael Brady's a liar and a thief!" Charley cried, springing from
+his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. "If you believe him,
+you're believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows ... I know ...
+and Paul knows&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Throw him out."</p>
+
+<p>"He's mad!"</p>
+
+<p>The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their
+height M'Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him say what he's got to!" he shouted. "You chaps know as well as I
+do what's been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now.
+If it's not true, Michael'd rather have the strength of it, and give you
+his answer ... and if there is anything in it, we've got a right to
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right!" some of the men near him chorused.</p>
+
+<p>Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"Might as well have it," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully
+Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could
+see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice,
+told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside
+him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of
+corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted,
+Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say
+when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way
+through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken
+everybody, said uncertainly:</p>
+
+<p>"Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that
+Charley Heathfield's story, as far as I know it, is substantially
+correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw
+it, my father said, 'Why, that's Michael's mascot.' I asked him if he
+were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the
+stone....</p>
+
+<p>"I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you.
+That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof's
+opals&mdash;the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck
+together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof's opals, and had been
+exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley
+were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My
+father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the
+business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man
+who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the
+altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that
+stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney ... and also that
+Michael had possession of Rouminof's opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she
+saw Rouminof's stones on the table of Michael Brady's hut one evening
+nearly two years ago.</p>
+
+<p>"I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He
+denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it
+seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account
+of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael
+Brady of having stolen Rouminof's opals. If he has anything to say, now
+is the time to say it."</p>
+
+<p>What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was
+heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody
+spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not
+looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place
+where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first
+sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when
+Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes
+on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance
+swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and
+humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement,
+the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still
+Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.</p>
+
+<p>Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he
+strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close
+together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds
+under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear
+what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he
+turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in
+newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still
+hovering near the edge of the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured
+fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.</p>
+
+<p>Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no
+hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed
+round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When
+order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform
+going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was
+laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but
+his joy in fingering his lost gems.</p>
+
+<p>When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause,
+Armitage spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most
+contritely.... I don't yet understand&mdash;but the facts are, the opals are
+here, and Mr. Riley has said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to
+speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as
+if only a great effort of will drove it from him.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ...
+but from Charley."</p>
+
+<p>His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his
+suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul
+going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of
+opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't want the stones," Michael cried, "I didn't ever want them for
+myself.... It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn't want him to
+have them just then...."</p>
+
+<p>Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he
+had made to Sophie's mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the
+stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had
+gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained
+why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Paul had had sun-stroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night
+he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been
+reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning
+them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the
+thing to himself even.... He had not looked at the opals except once
+again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly
+the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then
+Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was
+drifting&mdash;how the stones were getting hold of him&mdash;and in a panic,
+knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it
+to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to
+do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but
+now it was clear. Probably Snow-Shoes had known all the time he had the
+stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must
+have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he
+came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It
+was just that slight sound Snow-Shoes' moccasins made on the shingle.
+Exclamations and odd queries Snow-Shoes had launched from time to time
+came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken
+the stones to do just what he had done&mdash;and because he feared the
+influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they
+should have been returned to Paul long ago.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the truth, as far as I know it," Michael said. "There's been
+attempts made to injure ... the Ridge, our way of doing things here,
+because of me, and because of those stones.... What happened to me
+doesn't matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I
+done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I'd give anything
+now if I&mdash;if I'd given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn't
+... and I'll stand by anything the men who've been my mates care to say
+or do about that. Only don't let the Ridge, and our way of doing things
+here, get hurt through me. That's bigger&mdash;it means more than any man.
+Don't let it! ... I'd ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to
+say what they think about all this&mdash;and where I stand."</p>
+
+<p>Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of
+the hall.</p>
+
+<p>When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden
+floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned
+and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created
+such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of
+forms. With the exception of M'Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had
+the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who
+a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as
+blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted
+shapes and unlighted countenances.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," George said, "it's been a bit of a shock what we've just heard.
+It wasn't easy what Michael's just done ... and Snow-Shoes, if he'd
+wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn't have it....
+At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to
+stand by the Ridge ... he'd stand by it at any cost.... If there's a
+doubt in anyone's mind as to what he is, what he's just done proves
+Michael. I don't say, as he says himself, that it wouldn't have been
+better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away
+... but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael's
+concerned? We've got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does
+anybody know a mean or selfish thing he's ever done, Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>No one spoke, and George went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Michael's asked for trial by his mates&mdash;and we've got to give it to
+him, if it's only to clear up the whole of this business and be done
+with it.... I move we meet here to-morrow night to settle the thing."</p>
+
+<p>There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in
+back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his
+proposals were forgotten.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h3>
+
+
+<p>When Michael got back to his hut he found Martha there.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Michael," she said, "a dreadful thing has happened."</p>
+
+<p>Michael stared at her, unable to understand what she said. It seemed to
+him all the terrible things that could happen had happened that evening.</p>
+
+<p>"While you were away Arthur Henty came here to see Sophie," Martha said.
+"She hasn't been feeling well ... and I came up to have a look at her.
+She's been doing too much lately. Things haven't been too right between
+her and Potch, either, and that's her way of taking it out of herself.
+Arthur was here when I got here, Michael, and&mdash;you never heard anything
+like the way he went on...."</p>
+
+<p>Michael had fallen wearily into his chair while she was talking.</p>
+
+<p>Martha continued, knowing that the sooner she got rid of her story the
+better it would be for both of them.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an old story, of course, this about Arthur Henty and Sophie....
+When he was ill after the ball he talked a good bit about her.... He
+always has ... to me. I was with his mother when he was born ... and
+he's always called me Mother M'Cready like the rest of you. He told me
+long ago he'd always been fond of Sophie.... He didn't know at first, he
+said. He was a fool; he didn't like being teased about her.... Then she
+went away.... He doesn't seem to know why he got married except that his
+people wanted him to.</p>
+
+<p>"After the ball he'd made up his mind they were going away together,
+Sophie and he. But while he was ill ... before he was able to get around
+again, Sophie married Potch. Then he went mad, stark, starin' mad, and
+started drinking. He's been drinking hard ever since.... And to-night
+when he came, he just went over to Sophie.... She was lying on the couch
+under the window, Michael.... He said, I've got a horse for you outside.
+Sophie didn't seem to realise what he meant at first. Then she did. I
+don't know how he guessed she wouldn't go ... but the next minute he was
+on his knees beside her ... and you never heard anything like it,
+Michael&mdash;the way he went on, sobbing and crying out&mdash;I never want to
+hear anything like it again.... I couldn't 've stood it meself.... I'd
+'ve done anything in the world if a man'd gone on to me like that. And
+Sophie ... she put her arms round him, and mothered him like.... Then
+she began to cry too.... And there they were, both crying and sayin' how
+much they loved each other ... how much they'd always loved each
+other....</p>
+
+<p>"It fair broke me up, Michael.... I didn't know what to do. They didn't
+seem to notice me.... Then he said again they'd go away together, and
+begin life all over again. Sophie tried to tell him it was too late to
+think of that.... They both had responsibilities they'd ought to stand
+by.... Hers was the Ridge and the Ridge life, she said.... He didn't
+understand.... He only understood he wanted her to go away with him, and
+she wouldn't go...."</p>
+
+<p>Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did
+not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling
+him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time
+ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation
+that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him.</p>
+
+<p>"He tried to make her," Martha was saying when he began to listen
+intently. "He said he'd been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn't
+any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to
+have it.... Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever
+make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it.... And Sophie
+hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and
+dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate.</p>
+
+<p>"She said 'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then you've got to come with me,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But she wouldn't go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the
+Ridge&mdash;what the Ridge stood for&mdash;she must stay to work for. She'd sworn
+to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that
+he wouldn't let her go on living with Potch&mdash;be his wife. That he'd kill
+her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her.... I never heard a man
+go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was
+raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite
+quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"'Will you come with me, Sophie?'</p>
+
+<p>"And she said, quiet like that, too, 'No.'</p>
+
+<p>"He went out of the hut.... I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after
+him. She put out her arms ... but she couldn't speak. And if you had
+seen her face, Michael&mdash;&mdash;She just stood there against the wall,
+listening to the hoof-beats.... When we couldn't hear them any more, she
+stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to&mdash;to
+waken her&mdash;she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance,
+Michael.... After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she
+didn't know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table,
+and then she went out as though she were goin' for a walk. I told her
+not to go far ... not to be long ... but I don't think she heard me....
+I watched her walking out towards the old rush.... And she isn't back
+yet...."</p>
+
+<p>"It's too much," Michael muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He sat with his head buried in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>Martha shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her
+mother did."</p>
+
+<p>Michael's face quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"He's such an outsider," he groaned. "Sophie'd never give up the things
+we stand for here, now she understands them."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it," Martha said. "She doesn't want to&mdash;but there's
+something stronger than herself draggin' at her ... it's something
+that's been in all the women she's come of&mdash;the feeling a woman's got
+for the man who's her mate. Sophie married Potch, it's my belief, to get
+away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here.
+She wants to stay with us.... She was kept up at first by ideas of duty
+and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But
+love's like murder, Michael&mdash;it must out, and it's a good thing it
+must...."</p>
+
+<p>"And what about Potch?" Michael asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Potch?" Martha smiled. "The dear lad ... he'll stand up to things.
+There are people like that&mdash;and there're people like Arthur Henty who
+can't stand up to things. It's not their fault they're made that way ...
+and they go under when they have too much to bear."</p>
+
+<p>"Curse him," Michael groaned. "I wish he'd kept out of our lives."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," Martha said; "but he hasn't."</p>
+
+<p>Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Sophie?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She ... went out for a walk, a while ago," Martha said.</p>
+
+<p>At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there
+was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael,
+and held them dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock," he said at length.</p>
+
+<p>Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear
+further.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went
+over," Potch said. "I wanted to tell Sophie myself.... They were looking
+for you in the town, Martha."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Martha got up and went to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"He's at Newton's," Potch said. "Which way did Sophie go?"</p>
+
+<p>"She went towards the Old Town, Potch," Martha said.</p>
+
+<p>The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with
+reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door
+of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse
+was there&mdash;a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled
+abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how
+the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She
+went off down the track to Newton's, and he struck out towards the Old
+Town.</p>
+
+<p>Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of
+her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering
+what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. Prom
+the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur
+Henty.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie! Sophie!" he called.</p>
+
+<p>The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He
+wandered, calling still. Desolation overwhelmed him because he could not
+find Sophie; because she was in none of the places they had spent so
+much time in together. It was significant that she should not be in any
+of them, he felt. He could not bear to think she was eluding him, and
+yet that was what she had done all her life. She had been with him,
+smiling, elfish and tender one moment, and gone the next. She had always
+been elusive. For a long time a presentiment of desolation and disaster
+had overshadowed him. Again and again he had been able to draw breath of
+relief and assure himself that the indefinable dread which was always
+with him was a chimera of his too absorbing, too anxious love. But the
+fear, instinctive, prophetic, begotten by consciousness of the slight
+grasp he had of her, had remained.</p>
+
+<p>That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his
+face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Potch," she had said, and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and
+the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was
+wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.... He had done
+so before.... Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes
+he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she
+had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time
+after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long
+gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had
+deprived her of some earthliness.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge,
+looking for her, his soul in that cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie! Sophie!"</p>
+
+<p>He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael
+coming out to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"She knows, Potch," Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch waited for him to continue.</p>
+
+<p>"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had
+come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She
+had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He
+had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at
+all, Michael said.</p>
+
+<p>She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from
+her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the
+sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He
+knelt beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and
+anguish in those words.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was
+informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it.
+The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the the night before,
+but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit,
+the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wave-like
+vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty's death had left
+everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a
+life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on
+everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air.</p>
+
+<p>George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O'Mara deputed to
+take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman,
+sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the
+platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had
+asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge
+were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have
+seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as
+soon as the men were in their places.</p>
+
+<p>"This isn't like any other inquiry we've had on the Ridge," George Woods
+said. "You chaps know how I feel about it&mdash;I told you last night. But
+Michael was for it, and I take it he's come here to answer any questions
+... and to clear this thing up once and for all.... He's put his case to
+you. He says he'll stand by what you say&mdash;the judgment of his mates."</p>
+
+<p>Anxious to spare Michael another recital of what had happened, he went
+on:</p>
+
+<p>"There's no need for Michael to repeat what he said last night. If
+there's any man here wasn't in the hall, these are the facts."</p>
+
+<p>He repeated the story Michael had told, steadily, clearly, and
+impartially.</p>
+
+<p>"If there's any man wants to ask a question on those facts, he can do it
+now."</p>
+
+<p>George sat down, and M'Ginnis was on his feet the same instant; his
+bat-like ears twitching, his shoulders hunched, his whole tall, thin
+frame strung to the pitch of nervous animosity.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know," he said, "what reason there is for believing a word of
+it. Michael Brady's as good as admitted he's been fooling you for
+goodness knows how long, and I don't see&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Y' soon will, y'r bleedin', blasted, fly-blown fool," Bully Bryant
+roared, rising and pushing back his sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Bull," George Woods called.</p>
+
+<p>"The question is," he added, "what reason is there for believing what
+Michael says?"</p>
+
+<p>"His word's enough," somebody called.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of us think so," George said. "But there's some don't. Is there
+anyone else can say, Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>Michael shook his head. He thought of Snow-Shoes, but the old man had
+refused to be present at the inquiry or to have anything to do with it.
+He had pretended to be deaf when he was asked anything about Paul's
+opals. And Michael, who could only surmise that Snow-Shoes' reasons for
+having taken the stones in a measure resembled his own when he took them
+from Paul, would not have him put to the torture of questioning.</p>
+
+<p>George had said: "It might make a lot of difference to Michael if you'd
+come along, Mr. Riley."</p>
+
+<p>But Snow-Shoes had marched off from him as if he had not heard anyone
+speak, his blue eyes fixed on that invisible goal he was always gazing
+at and going towards.</p>
+
+<p>George had not seen him come into the hall; but when he was needed, his
+tall figure, white clad and straight as a dead tree, rose at the back of
+the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true," he said. "I wanted to be sure of Michael; I shadowed him. I
+saw him with the stones when he says. I did not see him with them any
+other time."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down again; his eyes, which had flashed, resumed their steady,
+distant stare; his features relapsed into their mask of impassivity.</p>
+
+<p>M'Ginnis sprang to his feet again.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all very well," he cried, sticking to his question. "But it's
+not my idea of evidence. It wouldn't stand in any law court in the
+country. Snow-Shoes&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down!"</p>
+
+<p>Half a dozen voices growled.</p>
+
+<p>Because of the respect and affection they had for him, and because of a
+certain aloof dignity he had with them, no man on the Ridge ever
+addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley. They resented M'Ginnis
+calling him "Snow-Shoes" to his face, and guessed that he had been going
+to say something which would reflect on Snow-Shoes' reliability as a
+witness. They admitted his eccentricity; but they would not admit that
+his mental peculiarities amounted to more than that. Above all, they
+were not going to have his feelings hurt by this outsider from the Punti
+rush.</p>
+
+<p>Broad-shouldered, square and solid, Bill Grant towered above the men
+about him. "This doesn't pretend to be a court of law, Mister M'Ginnis,"
+he remarked, with an irony and emphasis which never failed of their mark
+when he used them, although he rarely did, and only once or twice had
+been heard to speak, at any gathering. "It's an inquiry by men of the
+Ridge into the doings of one of their mates. What they want to know is
+the rights of this business ... and what you consider evidence doesn't
+matter. It's what the men in this hall consider evidence matters. And,
+what's more, I don't see why you're butting into our affairs so much:
+you're not one of us&mdash;you're a newcomer. You've only been a year or so
+in the place ... and this concerns only men of the Ridge, who stand by
+the Ridge ways of doing things.... Michael's here to be judged by his
+mates ... not by you and your sort.... If you'd the brain of a louse,
+you'd understand&mdash;this isn't a question of law, but of
+principle&mdash;honour, if you like to call it that."</p>
+
+<p>"Does the meeting consider the question answered?" George Woods inquired
+when Bill Grant sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>A chorus of voices intoned the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"If you believe Michael's story, there's nothing more to be said,"
+George continued. "Does any man want to ask Michael a question?"</p>
+
+<p>No one replied for a moment. Then M'Ginnis exclaimed incoherently.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down!"</p>
+
+<p>Men cried out all over the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all, I think, Michael," George said, looking down to where
+Michael sat before the platform; and Michael, pulling his hat further
+over his eyes, went out of the hall.</p>
+
+<p>It was the custom for men of the Ridge to talk over the subject of their
+inquiry together after the man or men with whom the meeting was
+concerned had left the hall, before giving their verdict.</p>
+
+<p>When Michael had gone, George Woods said:</p>
+
+<p>"The boys would like to hear what you've got to say, I think, Archie."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Archie Cross. "You and Michael haven't been seein' eye to
+eye lately, and if there's any other side in this business, it's the
+side that lost confidence in Michael when we were fed-up with all that
+whispering. You know Michael, and you're a good Ridge man, though you
+were ready to take on Armitage's scheme. The boys'd like to hear what
+you've got to say, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>Archie Cross stood up; he rolled his hat in his hands. His face, hacked
+out of a piece of dull flesh, sun-reddened, moved convulsively; his hair
+was roughed-up from it; his small, sombre eyes went with straight
+lightnings to the men in the hall about him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true&mdash;what George says," he said after a pause, as if it were
+difficult for him to express his thought. "I haven't been seein' eye to
+eye with Michael lately ... and I listened to all the dirty gossip that
+mob"&mdash;he glanced towards M'Ginnis and the men with him&mdash;"put round about
+him. It was part that ... and part listening to their talk about money
+invested here making all the difference to Fallen Star ... and the
+children growing up ... and gettin' scared and worried about seein' them
+through ... made me go agin you boys lately, and let that lot get hold
+of me.... But this business about Michael's shown me where I am.
+Michael's stood for one thing all through&mdash;the Ridge and the hanging on
+to the mines for us.... He's been a better Ridge man than I have.... And
+I want to say ... as far as I'm concerned, Michael's proved himself....
+I don't reck'n hanging on to opals was anything ... no more does Ted.
+It's the sort of thing a chap like Michael'd do absent-minded ... not
+noticin' what he was doin'; but when he did notice&mdash;and got scared
+thinkin' where he was gettin' to, and what it might look like, he
+couldn't get rid of 'em quick, enough. That's what I think, and that's
+what Ted thinks, too. He hasn't got the gift of the gab, Ted, or he'd
+say so himself.... If there's goin' to be opposition to Michael, it's
+not comin' from us.... And we've made up our minds we stand by the
+Ridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Good old Archie!" somebody shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got to say, Roy?" George Woods faced his secretary who
+had been scratching diligently throughout the meeting. "You've been more
+with the M'Ginnis lot, too, than with us, lately."</p>
+
+<p>Roy flushed and sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in the same boat with Archie and Ted," he said. "Except about the
+family ... mine isn't so big yet as it might be. But it's a fact, I
+funked, not having had much luck lately.... But if ever I go back on the
+Ridge again ... may the lot of you go back on me."</p>
+
+<p>Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided
+into his chair again.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all there is to be said on the subject, I think," George Woods
+remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done&mdash;and why he had done
+it. He's asked for judgment from his mates.... If he'd wanted to go back
+on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage
+would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could
+have been bought. Michael need never 've faced all this as far as I can
+see ... but he decided to face it rather than give up all we've been
+fightin' for here. He'd rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him
+than anything they could give him ... and that's why M'Ginnis has been
+up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of
+us have a notion that M'Ginnis has been here to do Armitage's work ...
+work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and
+he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn't 've stood by us, like he's
+always done, we'd have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now."</p>
+
+<p>"To tell you the truth, boys," George went on, after a moment's
+hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were
+too strong for him, "I've always thought Michael was too good. And if
+those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says,
+all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn't any plaster
+saint, but a man like the rest of us."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right!" Watty called, and several men shouted after him.</p>
+
+<p>Pony-Fence moved out from the crowd he was sitting with.</p>
+
+<p>"I vote this meeting records a motion of confidence in Michael Brady,"
+he said. "And when we call Michael in again we'd ought to make it clear
+to him ... that so far from its being a question of not having as much
+confidence in him as we had before&mdash;we've got more. Michael's stood by
+his mates if ever a man did.... He's come to us ... he's given himself
+up to us. He'll stand by what we say or do about him. And what are we
+goin' to do? Are we goin' to turn him down ... read him a bit of a
+lecture and tell him to go home and be a good boy and not do it another
+time ... or are we going to let him know once and for all what we think
+of him?"</p>
+
+<p>Exclamations of agreement went up in a rabble of voices.</p>
+
+<p>Bully Bryant rose from one of the back forms with a grin which
+illuminated the building.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll second that motion," he said, pushing back the sleeve on his left
+arm. "And his own mother won't know the man who says a word against
+it&mdash;when I've done with him."</p>
+
+<p>Watty was sent to bring Michael back to the meeting. They walked to the
+end of the hall together; and George Woods told Michael as quietly as he
+could for his own agitation, and the joy which, welling in him, impeded
+his speech, that men of the Ridge found nothing to censure in what he
+had done. His mates believed in him; they stood by him. They were
+prepared to stand by him as he had stood by the Ridge always. The
+meeting wished to record a vote of confidence....</p>
+
+<p>Cheers roared to the roof. Michael, shaken by the storm of his emotion
+and gratitude, stood before the crowd in the hall with bowed head. When
+the storm was quieter in him, he lifted his head and looked out to the
+men, his eyes shining with tears.</p>
+
+<p>He could not speak; old mates closed round to shake hands with him
+before the meeting broke up. Every man grasped and wrung his hand,
+saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck! Good luck to you, Michael!" Or just grasped his hand and
+smiled with that assurance of fellowship and goodwill which meant more
+to Michael than anything else in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was one of those clear days of late spring, the sky exquisitely blue,
+the cuckoos calling, the paper daisies in blossom, their fragrance in
+the air; they lay across the plains, through the herbage, white to the
+dim, circling horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Horses and vehicles were tied up outside the grey palings of the
+cemetery on the Warria road. All the horses and shabby, or new and
+brightly-painted carts, sulkies, and buggies of Fallen Star and the
+Three Mile were there; and buggies from Warria, Langi-Eumina, and the
+river stations as well. Saddle horses, ranged along one side of the
+fence, reins over the stakes, whinnied and snapped at each other.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd of people standing in the tall grass and herbage on the other
+side of the fence was just breaking up when Sophie and Potch appeared,
+coming over the plains from the direction of the tank paddock, Sophie
+riding the chestnut Arthur Henty had left behind her house, and Potch
+walking beside the horse's head. Sophie had been gathering Darling pea,
+and had a great sheaf in one hand. Potch was carrying some, too: he had
+picked up the flowers Sophie let fall, and had a little bunch of them.
+She was riding astride and gazing before her, her eyes wide with a
+vision beyond the distant horizon. The wind, a light breeze breathing
+now and then, blew her hair out in wisps from her bare head.</p>
+
+<p>All the men of Warria were in the sombre crowd in the cemetery. Old
+Henty, red-eyed and broken by the end of his only son, whom he found he
+had cared for now that he was dead; the stockmen, boundary-riders,
+servants, fencers, shearers from Darrawingee sheds who, a few weeks
+before had been on the Warria board, and men from other stations near
+enough to have heard of Arthur Henty's death. None of the Henty women
+were there; but women of the Ridge, who were accustomed to pay last
+respects as their menfolk did, were with their husbands as usual. They
+would have thought it unnatural and unkind not to follow Arthur Henty to
+his resting-place; not to go as friends would to say good-bye to a
+friend who is making a long journey. And there was more than the
+ordinary reason for being present at Arthur Henty's funeral. He was
+leaving them under a cloud, circumstances which might be interpreted
+unkindly, and it was necessary to be present to express sympathy with
+him and sorrow at his going. That was the way they regarded it.</p>
+
+<p>Martha had driven with Sam Nancarrow, as she always did to functions of
+the sort. No one remembered having seen Martha take a thing so to heart
+as she did Arthur Henty's death. She was utterly shaken by it, and could
+not restrain her tears. They coursed down her cheeks all the time she
+was in that quiet place on the plains; her great, motherly bosom rose
+and fell with the tide of her grief. She tried to subdue it, but every
+now and then the sound of her crying could be heard, and in the end Sam
+took her, sobbing uncontrollably, back to his buggy.</p>
+
+<p>People knew she had seen further into the cause of Arthur Henty's death
+than they had, and they understood that was why she Was so upset.
+Besides, Martha had always confessed to a soft corner for Arthur Henty:
+she had been with his mother when he was born, had nursed him during a
+hot summer and through several slight illnesses since then. And Arthur
+had been fond of her too. He had always called her Mother M'Cready as
+the Ridge folk did. Old Mr. Henty had driven over to see Martha the
+night before, to hear all she knew of what had happened, and Ridge folk
+had gathered something of the story from her broken exclamations and the
+reproaches with which she covered herself.</p>
+
+<p>She cried out over and over again that she could not have believed
+Arthur would shoot himself&mdash;that he was the sort of man to do such a
+thing&mdash;and blamed herself for not having foreseen what had occurred. She
+had never seen him like he was that night&mdash;so strong, so much a man, so
+full of life and love for Sophie. He had begged Sophie to go with him as
+though his life depended on it&mdash;and it had.</p>
+
+<p>If she had been a woman, and Sophie, and had loved him, Martha said, she
+would have had to go with him. She could never have withstood his
+pleading.... But Sophie had been good to him; she had been gentle&mdash;only
+she wouldn't go. Neither Sophie nor she believed, of course, he would do
+as he said&mdash;but he had.</p>
+
+<p>Martha could not forgive herself that she had done nothing to soothe or
+pacify Arthur; that she had said nothing, given him neither kindly word
+nor gesture. But she had been so upset, so carried away. She had not
+known what to do or say. She abused and blackguarded herself; but she
+had sensed enough of the utter loneliness and darkness of Henty's mind
+to realise that most likely she could have done nothing against it. He
+would have brushed her aside had she attempted to influence him; he
+would not have heard what, she said. She would have been as helpless as
+any other human consideration against the blinding, irresistibly
+engulfing forces of despair which had impelled him to put himself out of
+pain as he had put many a suffering animal. It was an act of
+self-defence, as Mother M'Cready saw it, Arthur Henty's end, and that
+was all there was to it.</p>
+
+<p>As Sophie and Potch approached the cemetery, people exclaimed together
+in wonderment, awe&mdash;almost fear.</p>
+
+<p>James Henty, when he saw them, turned away from the men he was talking
+to and walked to his buggy; Tom Henderson, his son-in-law, followed him.
+Although he would have been the last to forgive Sophie if she had done
+as Arthur wished, even to save his life, old Henty had to have a
+whipping-post, and he eased his own sense of responsibility for what had
+blighted his son's life, by blaming Sophie for it. He assured himself,
+his family and friends, that she, and she alone, was responsible for
+Arthur's death. She had played with Arthur; she had always played with
+him, old Henty said. She had driven him to distraction with her
+wiles&mdash;and this was the end of it all.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie rode into the cemetery: she rode to where the broken earth was;
+but she did not dismount. The horse came to a standstill beside it, and
+she sat on him, her eyes closed. Potch stood bare-headed and bowed
+beside her. He put the flowers he had picked up as Sophie let them fall,
+on the grave. Sophie thrust the long, purple trails she was carrying
+into the saddle-bag where Arthur had put the flowers she gave him that
+first day their eyes met and drank the love potion of each others'
+being.</p>
+
+<p>People were already on the road, horses and buggies, dark, ant-like
+trains on the flowering plains, moving slowly in the direction of Warria
+and of Fallen Star, when Sophie and Potch turned away from the cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of what had happened was heavy over everybody as they drove
+home. Arthur Henty had been well enough liked, and he had had much more
+to do with Fallen Star than most of the station people. He had gone
+about so much with his men they had almost ceased to think of him as not
+one of themselves. He was less the "Boss" than any man in the
+back-country. They recognised that, and yet he was the "Boss." He had
+lived like a half-caste, drifting between two races and belonging to
+neither. The people he had been born among cold-shouldered him because
+he had acquired the manners and habits of thought of men he lived and
+worked with; the men he had lived and worked with distrusted and
+disliked in him just those tag-ends of refinement, and odd graces which
+belonged to the crowd he had come to them from.</p>
+
+<p>The station hands, his work-mates&mdash;if he had any&mdash;had had a slightly
+contemptuous feeling for him. They liked him&mdash;they were always saying
+they liked him&mdash;but it was clear they never had any great opinion of
+him. As a boy, when he began to work with them, to cover his shyness and
+nervousness, he had been silent and boorish; and he had never had the
+courage of his opinions&mdash;courage for anything, it was suspected. It had
+always been hinted that he shirked any jobs where danger was to be
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>The stockmen told each other they would miss him, all the same. They
+would miss that wonderful whistling of his from the camp fires; and they
+were appalled at what he had done to himself. "The last man," Charley
+Este said, "the last man you'd ever 've thought would 've come to that!"
+Most of them believed they had misjudged Arthur Henty&mdash;that, after, all,
+he had had courage of a sort. A man must have courage to blow out his
+light, they said. And they were sorry. Every man in the crowd was heavy
+with sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Ridge people gossiped pitifully, sentimentally, to each other as they
+drove home. Most of the women believed in the strength and fidelity of
+the old love between Sophie and Arthur Henty. But straight-dealing and
+honest themselves, they had no conception of the tricks complex
+personalities play each other; they did not understand how two people
+who had really cared for each other could have gone so astray from the
+natural impulse of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>They recalled the dance at Warria, and how they had teased Sophie when
+they thought she was going to marry Arthur Henty, and how happy and
+pleased she had looked about it. How different both their lives would
+have been if Sophie and Arthur had been true to that instinct of the
+mate for the mate, they reflected; and sighed at the futility of the
+thought. They realised in Arthur Henty's drinking and rough ways of
+late, all his unhappiness. They imagined that they knew why he had
+become the uncouth-looking man he had. They remembered him a slight, shy
+youth, with sun-bright, freckled eyes; then a man, lithe, graceful, and
+good to look at, with his face a clear, fine bronze, his hair taking a
+glint of copper in the sun. When he danced with them at the Ridge balls,
+that occasionally flashing, delightful way of his had made them realise
+why Sophie was in love with him. They remembered how he had looked at
+Sophie; how his eyes had followed her. They had heard of the Warria
+dance, and knew Arthur Henty had not behaved well to Sophie at it. They
+had been angry at the time. Then Sophie had gone away ... and a little
+later he had married.</p>
+
+<p>His marriage had not been a success. Mrs. Arthur Henty had spent most of
+her time in Sydney; she was rarely seen on the Ridge now. So women of
+the Ridge, who had known Arthur Henty, went over all they knew of him
+until that night at the race ball when he and Sophie had met again. And
+then his end in the tank paddock brought them back to exclamations of
+dismay and grief at the mystery of it all.</p>
+
+<p>As she left the cemetery, Sophie began to sing, listlessly, dreamily at
+first. No one had heard her sing since her return to the Ridge. But her
+voice flew out over the plains, through the wide, clear air now, with
+the pure melody it had when she was a girl:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">"Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Ella Bryant, driving home beside Bully, knew Sophie was singing as she
+had sung to Arthur Henty years before, when they were coming home from
+the tank paddock together. She wondered why Sophie was riding the horse
+Arthur had brought for her; why she had ridden him to the funeral; and
+why she was singing that song.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie sang on:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">"Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Looking back, people saw Potch walking beside her as Joseph walked
+beside Mary when they went down to Nazareth.</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard on Potch," somebody said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," it was agreed; "it's hard on Potch."</p>
+
+<p>The buggies, carts, sulkies, and horsemen moving in opposite directions
+on the long, curving road over the plains grew dim in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>The notes of Sophie's singing, with its undying tenderness triumphing
+over life and death, flowed fainter and fainter.</p>
+
+<p>When she and Potch came to the town again, the light was fading. Through
+the green, limpid veil of the sky, stars were glittering; huts of the
+township were darkening under the gathering shadow of night. A breath of
+sandal-wood burning on kitchen hearths came to Sophie and Potch like a
+greeting. The notes of a goat-bell clanking dully sounded from beyond
+the dumps. There were lights in a few of the huts; a warm, friendly
+murmur of voices went up from them. For weeks troubled and disturbed
+thinking, arguments, and conflicting ideas, had created a depressed and
+unrestful atmosphere in every home in Fallen Star. But to-night it was
+different. The temptations, allurements and debris of Armitage's scheme
+had been swept from the minds&mdash;even of those who had been ready to
+accept it. Hope and pride in the purpose of the Ridge had been restored
+by Michael's vindication and by reaffirmation of the principle he and
+all staunch men of the Ridge stood for as the mainstay of their life in
+common. Thought of Arthur Henty's death, which had oppressed people
+during the day, seemed to have been put aside now that they had seen him
+laid to rest, and had returned to their homes again.</p>
+
+<p>Voices were heard exclaiming with the light cadence and rhythm of joy.
+The crisis which had come near to shattering the Ridge scheme of things,
+and all that it stood for, had ended by drawing dissenting factions of
+the community into closer sympathy and more intimate relationship. In
+everybody's mind were the hope and enthusiasm of a new endeavour. As
+they went through the town again, neither Sophie nor Potch were
+conscious of them for the sorrow which had soaked into their lives. But
+these things were in the air they breathed, and sooner or later would
+claim them from all personal suffering; faith and loving service fill
+all their future&mdash;the long twilight of their days.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="caption"><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</p>
+
+<p>
+<a href="#PART_I"><b>PART I</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#PART_II"><b>PART II</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Ib"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIb"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIIb"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IVb"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Vb"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIb"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIIb"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIIIb"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IXb"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Xb"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIb"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIIb"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIIIb"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIVb"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVb"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIb"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b></a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK OPAL***</p>
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+</html>
diff --git a/36710.txt b/36710.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..546eabc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/36710.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11906 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Black Opal, by Katharine Susannah Prichard
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Black Opal
+
+
+Author: Katharine Susannah Prichard
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011  [eBook #36710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK OPAL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Amy Sisson & Marc D'Hooghe
+(http://www.freeliterature.org)
+
+
+
+THE BLACK OPAL
+
+by
+
+KATHARINE SUSANNAH PRICHARD
+
+Author of "The Pioneers," "Windlestraws," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: William Heinemann
+1921
+
+
+
+
+_PART I_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A string of vehicles moved slowly out of the New Town, taking the road
+over the long, low slope of the Ridge to the plains.
+
+Nothing was moving on the wide stretch of the plains or under the fine,
+clear blue sky of early spring, except this train of shabby,
+dust-covered vehicles. The road, no more than a track of wheels on
+shingly earth, wound lazily through paper daisies growing in drifts
+beside it, and throwing a white coverlet to the dim, circling horizon.
+The faint, dry fragrance of paper daisies was in the air; a native
+cuckoo calling.
+
+The little girl sitting beside Michael Brady in Newton's buggy glanced
+behind her now and then. Michael was driving the old black horse from
+the coach stables and Newton's bay mare, and Sophie and her father were
+sitting beside him on the front seat. In the open back of the buggy
+behind them lay a long box with wreaths and bunches of paper daisies and
+budda blossoms over it.
+
+Sophie knew all the people on the road, and to whom the horses and
+buggies they had borrowed belonged. Jun Johnson and Charley Heathfield
+were riding together in the Afghan storekeeper's sulky with his fat
+white pony before them. Anwah Kaked and Mrs. Kaked had the store cart
+themselves. Watty and Mrs. Frost were on the coach. Ed. Ventry was
+driving them and had put up the second seat for George and Mrs. Woods
+and Maggie Grant. Peter Newton and Cash Wilson followed in Newton's
+newly varnished black sulky. Sam Nancarrow had given Martha M'Cready a
+lift, and Pony-Fence Inglewood was driving Mrs. Archie and Mrs. Ted
+Cross in Robb's old heavy buggy, with the shaggy draught mare used for
+carting water in the township during the summer, in the shafts. The
+Flails' home-made jinker, whose body was painted a dull yellow, came
+last of the vehicles on the road. Sophie could just see Arthur Henty and
+two or three stockmen from Warria riding through a thin haze of red
+dust. But she knew men were walking two abreast behind the vehicles and
+horsemen--Bill Grant, Archie and Ted Cross, and a score of miners from
+the Three Mile and the Punti rush. At a curve of the road she had seen
+Snow-Shoes and Potch straggling along behind the others, the old man
+stooping to pick wild flowers by the roadside, and Potch plodding on,
+looking straight in front of him.
+
+Buggies, horses, and people, they had come all the way from her home at
+the Old Town. Almost everybody who lived on Fallen Star Ridge was there,
+driving, riding, or walking on the road across the plains behind
+Michael, her father, and herself. It was all so strange to Sophie; she
+felt so strange in the black dress she had on and which Mrs. Grant had
+cut down from one of her own. There was a black ribbon on her old yellow
+straw hat too, and she had on a pair of black cotton gloves.
+
+Sophie could not believe her mother was what they called "dead"; that it
+was her mother in the box with flowers on just behind her. They had
+walked along this very road, singing and gathering wild flowers, and had
+waited to watch the sun set, or the moon rise, so often.
+
+She glanced at her father. He was sitting beside her, a piece of black
+stuff on his arm and a strip of the same material round his old felt
+hat. The tears poured down his cheeks, and he shook out the large, new,
+white handkerchief he had bought at Chassy Robb's store that morning,
+and blew his nose every few minutes. He spoke sometimes to Michael; but
+Michael did not seem to hear him. Michael sat staring ahead, his face as
+though cut in wood.
+
+Sophie remembered Michael had been with her when Mrs. Grant said.... Her
+mind went back over that.
+
+"She's dead, Michael," Mrs. Grant had said.
+
+And she had leaned against the window beside her mother's bed, crying.
+Michael was on his knees by the bed. Sophie had thought Michael looked
+so funny, kneeling like that, with his head in his hands, his great
+heavy boots jutting up from the floor. The light, coming in through the
+window near the head of the bed, shone on the nails in the soles of his
+boots. It was so strange to see these two people whom she knew quite
+well, and whom she had only seen doing quite ordinary, everyday things,
+behaving like this. Sophie had gazed at her mother who seemed to be
+sleeping. Then Mrs. Grant had come to her, her face working, tears
+streaming down her cheeks. She had taken her hand and they had gone out
+of the room together. Sophie could not remember what Mrs. Grant had said
+to her then.... After a little while Mrs. Grant had gone back to the
+room where her mother was, and Sophie went out to the lean-to where
+Potch was milking the goats.
+
+She told him what Mrs. Grant had said about her mother, and he stopped
+milking. They had gazed at each other with inquiry and bewilderment in
+their eyes; then Potch turned his face away as he sat on the
+milking-stool, and Sophie knew he was crying. She wondered why other
+people had cried so much and she had not cried at all.
+
+When Potch was taking the bucket of milk across the yard, her father had
+come round the corner of the house. His heavy figure with its broad,
+stooping shoulders was outlined against the twilight sky. He made for
+the door, shouting incoherently. Sophie and Potch stood still as they
+saw him.
+
+Catching sight of them, he had turned and come towards them.
+
+"We're on opal," he cried; "on opal!"
+
+There was a feverish light in his eyes; he was trembling with
+excitement.
+
+He had pulled a small, washed oatmeal bag from his pocket, untied the
+string, tumbled some stones on to the outstretched palm of his hand, and
+held them for Potch to look at.
+
+"Not a bad bit in the lot.... Look at the fire, there in the black
+potch!... And there's green and gold for you. A lovely bit of pattern!
+And look at this ... and this!" he cried eagerly, going over the two or
+three small knobbies in his hand.
+
+Potch looked at him dazedly.
+
+"Didn't they tell you--?" he began.
+
+Her father had closed his hands over the stones and opal dirt.
+
+"I'm going in now," he said, thrusting the opals into the bag.
+
+He had gone towards the house again, shouting: "We're on opal! On opal!"
+
+Sophie followed him indoors. Mrs. Grant had met her father on the
+threshold of the room where her mother was.
+
+"Why didn't you come when I sent for you?" she asked.
+
+"I didn't think it could be as bad as you made out--that she was really
+dying," Sophie could hear her father saying again. "And we'd just struck
+opal, me and Jun, struck it rich. Got two or three stones already--great
+stuff, lovely pattern, green and orange, and fire all through the black
+potch. And there's more of it! Heaps more where it came from, Jun says.
+We're next Watty and George Woods--and no end of good stuff's come out
+of that claim."
+
+Mrs. Grant stared at him as Potch had done. Then she stood back from the
+doorway of the room behind her.
+
+Every gesture of her father's, of Mrs. Grant's, and of Michael's, was
+photographed on Sophie's brain. She could see that room again--the quiet
+figure on the bed, light golden-brown hair, threaded with silver, lying
+in thin plaits beside the face of yellow ivory; bare, thin arms and
+hands lying over grey blankets and a counter-pane of faded red twill;
+the window still framing a square of twilight sky on which stars were
+glittering. Mrs. Grant had brought a candle and put it on the box near
+the bed, and the candle light had flared on Mrs. Grant's figure, showing
+it, gaunt and accusing, against the shadows of the room. It had showed
+Sophie her father, also, between Michael and Mrs. Grant, looking from
+one to the other of them, and to the still figure on the bed, with a
+dazed, penitent expression....
+
+The horses jogged slowly on the long, winding road. Sophie was conscious
+of the sunshine, warm and bright, over the plains, the fragrance of
+paper daisies in the air; the cuckoos calling in the distance. Her
+father snuffled and wiped his eyes and nose with his new handkerchief as
+he sat beside her.
+
+"She was so good, Michael," he said, "too good for this world."
+
+Michael did not reply.
+
+"Too good for this world!" Paul murmured again.
+
+He had said that at least a score of times this morning. Sophie had
+heard him say it to people down at the house before they started. She
+had never heard him talk of her mother like that before. She looked at
+him, sensing vaguely, and resenting the banality. She thought of him as
+he had always been with her mother and with her, querulous and
+complaining, or noisy and rough when he had been drinking. They had
+spent the night in a shed at the back of the house sometimes when he was
+like that....
+
+And her mother had said:
+
+"You'll take care of Sophie, Michael?"
+
+Sophie remembered how she had stood in the doorway of her mother's room,
+that afternoon--How long ago was it? Not only a day surely? She had
+stood there until her mother had seen her, awed without knowing why,
+reluctant to move, afraid almost. Michael had nodded without speaking.
+
+"As though she were your own child?"
+
+"So help me, God," Michael said.
+
+Her-mother's eyes had rested on Michael's face. She had smiled at him.
+Sophie did not think she had ever seen her smile like that before,
+although her smile had always been like a light on her face.
+
+"Don't let him take her away," her mother had said after a moment. "I
+want her to grow up in this place ... in the quiet ... never to know the
+treacherous ... whirlpool ... of life beyond the Ridge."
+
+Then her mother had seen and called to her.
+
+Sophie glanced back at the slowly-moving train of vehicles. They had a
+dreary, dream-like aspect. She felt as if she were moving in a dream.
+Everything she saw, and heard, and did, was invested with unreality; she
+had a vague, unfeeling curiosity about everything.
+
+"You see, Michael," her father was saying when she heard him talking
+again, "we'd just got out that big bit when Potch came and said that
+Marya ... that Marya.... I couldn't believe it was true ... and there
+was the opal! And when I got home in the evening she was gone. My poor
+Marya! And I'd brought some of the stones to show her."
+
+He broke down and wept. "Do you think she knows about the opal,
+Michael?"
+
+Michael did not reply. Sophie looked up at him. The pain of his face, a
+sudden passionate grieving that wrung it, translated to her what this
+dying of her mother meant. She huddled against Michael; in all her
+trouble and bewilderment there seemed nothing to do but to keep close to
+Michael.
+
+And so they came to the gate of a fenced plot which was like a quiet
+garden on the plains. Several young coolebahs, and two or three older
+trees standing in it, scattered light shade; and a few head-stones and
+wooden crosses, painted white or bleached by the weather, showed above
+the waving grass and wild flowers.
+
+Sophie held the reins when Michael got down to open the gate. Then he
+took his seat again and they drove in through the gateway. Other people
+tied their horses and buggies to the fence outside.
+
+When all the people who had been driving, riding, or walking on the road
+went towards an old coolebah under which the earth had been thrown up
+and a grave had been dug, Michael told Sophie to go with her father and
+stand beside them. She did so, and dull, grieving eyes were turned to
+her; glances of pitiful sympathy. But Snow-Shoes came towards the little
+crowd beside the tree, singing.
+
+He was the last person to come into the cemetery, and everybody stared
+at him. An old man in worn white moleskins and cotton shirt, an old
+white felt hat on his head, the wrappings of bag and leather, which gave
+him his name, on his feet--although snow never fell on the Ridge--he
+swung towards them. The flowers he had gathered as he came along, not
+otilypaper daisies, but the blue flowers of crowsfoot, gold buttons, and
+creamy and lavender, sweet-scented budda blossoms, were done up in a
+tight little bunch in his hand. He drew nearer still singing under his
+breath, and Sophie realised he was going over and over the fragment of a
+song that her mother had loved and used often to sing herself.
+
+There was a curious smile in his eyes as he came to a standstill beside
+her. The leaves of the coolebah were bronze and gold in the sunshine, a
+white-tail in its branches reiterating plaintively: "Sweet pretty
+creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael, George Woods, Archie Cross,
+and Cash Wilson, came towards the tree, their shoulders bowed beneath
+the burden they were carrying; but Snow-Shoes smiled at everybody as
+though this were really a joyous occasion, and they did not understand.
+Only he understood, and smiled because of his secret knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+In a week or two Mrs. Rouminof's name had dropped out of Ridge life
+almost as if she had never been part of it.
+
+At first people talked of her, of Paul, of Sophie, and of Michael. They
+gossiped of her looks and manner, of her strange air of serenity and
+content, although her life on the Ridge was, they surmised, a hard one,
+and different from the life she had come from. But her death caused no
+more disturbance than a stone thrown into quiet water, falling to the
+bottom, does. No one was surprised, when it was known Paul and Sophie
+had gone to live with Michael. Everyone expected Michael would try to
+look after them for a while, although they could not imagine where he
+was going to find room for them in his small house filled with books.
+
+It was natural enough that Michael should have taken charge of Sophie
+and Rouminof, and that he should have made all arrangements for Mrs.
+Rouminof's funeral. If it had been left to Paul to bury his wife, people
+agreed, she would not have been buried at all; or, at least, not until
+the community insisted. And Michael would have done as much for any
+shiftless man. He was next-of-kin to all lonely and helpless men and
+women on the Ridge, Michael Brady.
+
+Every man, woman, or child on the Ridge knew Michael. His lean figure in
+shabby blue dungarees, faded shirt, and weathered felt hat, with no more
+than a few threads of its band left, was as familiar as any tree, shed,
+or dump on the fields. He walked with a slight stoop, a pipe in his
+mouth always, his head bent as though he were thinking hard; but there
+was no hard thought in his eyes, only meditativeness, and a faint smile
+if he were stopped and spoken to unexpectedly.
+
+"You're a regular 'cyclopaedia, Michael," the men said sometimes when he,
+had given information on a subject they were discussing.
+
+"Not me," Michael would reply as often as not. "I just came across that
+in a book I was reading the other day."
+
+Ridge folk were proud of Michael's books, and strangers who saw his
+miscellaneous collection--mostly of cheap editions, old school books,
+and shilling, sixpenny, and penny publications of literary masterpieces,
+poetry, and works on industrial and religious subjects--did not wonder
+that it impressed Ridge folk, or that Michael's knowledge of the world
+and affairs was what it was. He had tracts, leaflets, and small books on
+almost every subject under the sun. Books were regarded as his Weakness,
+and, remembering it, some of the men, when they had struck opal and left
+the town, occasionally sent a box of any old books they happened to come
+across to Michael, knowing that a printed page was a printed page to him
+in the long evenings when he lay on the sofa under his window. Michael
+himself had spent all the money he could, after satisfying the needs of
+his everyday life, on those tracts, pamphlets, and cheap books he
+hoarded in his hut on shelves made from wooden boxes and old
+fruit-cases.
+
+But there was nothing of the schoolmaster about him. He rarely gave
+information unless he was asked for it. The men appreciated that,
+although they were proud of his erudition and books. They knew dimly but
+surely that Michael used his books for, not against, themselves; and he
+was attached to books and learning, chiefly for what they could do for
+them, his mates. In all community discussions his opinion carried
+considerable weight. A matter was often talked over with more or less
+heat, differences of opinion thrashed out while Michael smoked and
+listened, weighing the arguments. He rarely spoke until his view was
+asked for. Then in a couple of minutes he would straighten out the
+subject of controversy, show what was to be said for and against a
+proposition, sum up, and give his conclusions, for or against it.
+
+Michael Brady, however, was much more the general utility man than
+encyclopaedia of Fallen Star Ridge. If a traveller--swagman--died on the
+road, it was Michael who saw he got a decent burial; Michael who was
+sent for if a man had his head smashed in a brawl, or a wife died
+unexpectedly. He was the court of final appeal in quarrels and
+disagreements between mates; and once when Martha M'Cready was away in
+Sydney, he had even brought a baby into the world. He was something of a
+dentist, too, honorary dentist to anyone on the Ridge who wanted a tooth
+pulled out; and the friend of any man, woman, or child in distress.
+
+And he did things so quietly, so much as a matter of course, that people
+did not notice what he did for them, or for the rest of the Ridge. They
+took it for granted he liked doing what he did; that he liked helping
+them. It was his sympathy, the sense of his oneness with all their
+lives, and his shy, whimsical humour and innate refusal to be anything
+more than they were, despite his books and the wisdom with which they
+were quite willing to credit him, that gained for Michael the regard of
+the people of the Ridge, and made him the unconscious power he was in
+the community.
+
+Of about middle height, and sparely built, Michael was forty-five, or
+thereabouts, when Mrs. Rouminof died. He looked older, yet had the
+vigour and energy of a much younger man. Crowsfeet had gathered at the
+corners of his eyes, and there were the fines beneath them which all
+back-country men have from screwing their sight against the brilliant
+sunshine of the north-west. But the white of his eyes was as clear as
+the shell of a bird's egg, the irises grey, flecked with hazel and
+green, luminous, and ringed with fine black lines. When he pushed back
+his hat, half a dozen lines from frowning against the glare were on his
+forehead too. His thin, black hair, streaked with grey, lay flat across
+and close to his head. He had a well-shaped nose and the sensitive
+nostrils of a thoroughbred, although Michael himself said he was no
+breed to speak of, but plain Australian--and proud of it. His father was
+born in the country, and so was his mother. His father had been a
+teemster, and his mother a storekeeper's daughter. Michael had wandered
+from one mining field to another in his young days. He had worked in
+Bendigo and Gippsland; later in Silver Town; and from the Barrier Ranges
+had migrated to Chalk Cliffs, and from the Cliffs to Fallen Star Ridge.
+He had been one of the first comers to the Ridge when opal was
+discovered there.
+
+The Rouminofs had been on Chalk Cliffs too, and had come to the Ridge in
+the early days of the rush. Paul had set up at the Cliffs as an opal
+buyer, it was said; but he knew very little about opal. Anybody could
+sell him a stone for twice as much as it was worth, and he could never
+get a price from other buyers for the stones he bought. He soon lost any
+money he possessed, and had drifted and swung with the careless life of
+the place. He had worked as a gouger for a while when the blocks were
+bought up. Then when the rush to the Ridge started, and most of the men
+tramped north to try their luck on the new fields, he went with them;
+and Mrs. Rouminof and Sophie followed a little later on Ed. Ventry's
+bullock wagon, when Ed. was taking stores to the rush.
+
+Mrs. Rouminof had lived in a hut at the Old Town even after the township
+was moved to the eastern slope of the Ridge. She had learnt a good deal
+about opal on the Cliffs, and soon after she came to the Ridge set up a
+cutting-wheel, and started cutting and polishing stones. Several of the
+men brought her their stones, and after a while she was so good at her
+work that she often added a couple of pounds to the value of a stone.
+She kept a few goats too, to assure a means of livelihood when there was
+no opal about, and she sold goats' milk and butter in the township. She
+had never depended on Rouminof to earn a living, which was just as well,
+Fallen Star folk agreed, since, as long as they had known him, he had
+never done so. For a long time he had drifted between the mines and
+Newton's, cadging drinks or borrowing money from anybody who would lend
+to him. Sometimes he did odd jobs at Newton's or the mail stables for
+the price of a few drinks; but no man who knew him would take up a
+claim, or try working a mine with him.
+
+His first mate on the Ridge had been Pony-Fence Inglewood. They sank a
+hole on a likely spot behind the Old Town; but Paul soon got tired of
+it. When they had not seen anything but bony potch for a while, Paul
+made up his mind there was nothing in the place. Pony-Fence rather liked
+it. He was for working a little longer, but to oblige his mate he agreed
+to sink again. Soon after they had started, Paul began to appear at the
+dump when the morning was half through, or not at all. Or, as often as
+not, when he did decide to sling a pick, or dig a bit, he groaned so
+about the pains in his back or his head that as often as not Pony-Fence
+told him to go home and get the missus to give him something for it.
+
+The mildest man on the fields, Pony-Fence Inglewood did not discover for
+some time what the boys said was correct. There was nothing the matter
+with Rum-Enough but a dislike of shifting mullock if he could get anyone
+to shift it for him. When he did discover he was doing the work of the
+firm, Pony-Fence and Paul had it out with each other, and parted
+company. Pony-Fence took a new mate, Bully Bryant, a youngster from
+Budda, who was anxious to put any amount of elbow grease into his search
+for a fortune, and Paul drifted. He had several mates afterwards,
+newcomers to the fields, who wanted someone to work with them, but they
+were all of the same opinion about him.
+
+"Tell Rum-Enough there's a bit of colour about, and he'll work like a
+chow," they said; "but if y' don't see anything for a day or two, he
+goes as flat as the day before yesterday."
+
+If he had been working, and happened on a knobby, or a bit of black
+potch with a light or two in it, Paul was like a child, crazy with
+happiness. He could talk of nothing else. He thought of nothing else. He
+slung his pick and shovelled dirt as long as you would let him, with a
+devouring impatience, in a frenzy of eagerness. The smallest piece of
+stone with no more than sun-flash was sufficient to put him in a state
+of frantic excitement.
+
+Strangers to the Ridge sometimes wanted to know whether Rouminof had
+ever had a touch of the sun. But Ridge folk knew he was not mad. He had
+the opal fever all right, they said, but he was not mad.
+
+When Jun Johnson blew along at the end of one summer and could not get
+anyone to work with him, he took Paul on. The two chummed up and started
+to sink a hole together, and the men made bets as to the chance of their
+ever getting ten or a dozen feet below ground; but before long they were
+astounded to see the old saw of setting a thief to catch a thief working
+true in this instance. If anybody was loafing on the new claim, it was
+not Rouminof. He did every bit of his share of the first day's hard pick
+work and shovelling. If anybody was slacking, it was Jun rather than
+Paul. Jun kept his mate's nose to the grindstone, and worked more
+successfully with him than anyone else had ever done. He knew it, too,
+and was proud of his achievement. Joking over it at Newton's in the
+evening, he would say:
+
+"Great mate I've got now! Work? Never saw a chow work like him! Work his
+fingers to the bone, he would, if I'd let him. It's a great life, a
+gouger's, if only you've got the right sort of mate!"
+
+Ordinarily, of course, mates shared their finds. There was no question
+of what partners would get out of the luck of one or the other. But
+Jun--he had his own little way of doing business, everybody knew. He had
+been on the Ridge before. He and his mate did not have any sensational
+luck, but they had saved up two or three packets of opal and taken them
+down to Sydney to sell. Old Bill Olsen was his mate then, and, although
+Bill had said nothing of the business, the men guessed there had been
+something shady about it. Jun had his own story of what happened. He
+said the old chap had "got on his ear" in Sydney, and that "a couple of
+spielers had rooked him of his stones." But Bill no longer noticed Jun
+if they passed each other on the same track on the Ridge, and Jun
+pretended to be sore about it.
+
+"It's dirt," he said, "the old boy treating me as if I had anything to
+do with his bad luck losin' those stones!"
+
+"Why don't you speak to him about it?" somebody asked.
+
+"Oh, we had it out in Sydney," Jun replied, "and it's no good raking the
+whole thing up again. Begones is bygones--that's my motto. But if any
+man wants to have a grudge against me, well, let him. It's a free
+country. That's all I've got to say. Besides, the poor old cuss isn't
+all there, perhaps."
+
+"Don't you fret," Michael had said, "he's all right. He's got as much
+there as you or me, or any of us for that matter."
+
+"Oh well, you know, Michael," Jun declared. He was not going to quarrel
+with Michael Brady. "What you say goes, anyhow!"
+
+That was how Jun established himself anywhere. He had an easy,
+plausible, good-natured way. All the men laughed and drank with him and
+gave him grudging admiration, notwithstanding the threads and shreds of
+resentments and distrusts which old stories of his dealings, even with
+mates, had put in their minds. None of those stories had been proved
+against him, his friends said, Charley Heathfield among them. That was a
+fact. But there were too many of them to be good for any man's soul,
+Ridge men, who took Jun with a grain of salt, thought--Michael Brady,
+George Woods, Archie Cross, and Watty Frost among them; but Charley
+Heathfield, Michael's mate, had struck up a friendship with Jun since
+his return to the Ridge.
+
+George Woods and the Crosses said it was a case of birds of a feather,
+but they did not say that to Michael. They knew Michael had the sort of
+affection for Charley that a man has for a dog he has saved from
+drowning.
+
+Charley Heathfield had been down on his luck when he went to the Ridge,
+his wife and a small boy with him; and the rush which he had expected to
+bring him a couple of hundred pounds' worth of opal at least, if it did
+not make his fortune, had left him worse off than it found him--a piece
+of debris in its wake. He and Rouminof had put down a shaft together,
+and as neither of them, after the first few weeks, did any more work
+than they could help, and were drunk or quarrelling half of their time,
+nothing came of their efforts.
+
+Charley, when his wife died, was ill himself, and living in a hut a few
+yards from Michael's. She had been a waitress in a city restaurant, and
+he had married her, he said, because she could carry ten dishes of hot
+soup on one arm and four trays on the other. A tall, stolid, pale-faced
+woman, she had hated the back-country and her husband's sense of humour,
+and had fretted herself to death rather than endure them. Charley had no
+particular opinion of himself or of her. He called his youngster
+Potch--"a little bit of Potch," he said, because the kid would never be
+anything better than poor opal at the best of times.
+
+Michael had nursed Charley while he was ill during that winter, and had
+taken him in hand when he was well enough to get about again. Charley
+was supposed to have weak lungs; but better food, steady habits, and the
+fine, dry air of a mild summer set him up wonderfully. Snow-Shoes had
+worked with Michael for a long time; he said that he was getting too old
+for the everyday toil of the mine, though, when Michael talked of taking
+on Charley to work with them. It would suit him all right if Michael
+found another mate. Michael and Charley Heathfield had worked together
+ever since, and Snow-Shoes had made his living as far as anybody knew by
+noodling on the dumps.
+
+But Charley and Michael had not come on a glimmer of opal worth speaking
+of for nearly twelve months. They were hanging on to their claim, hoping
+each day they would strike something good. There is a superstition among
+the miners that luck often changes when it seems at its worst. Both
+Charley and Michael had storekeeper's accounts as long as their arms,
+and the men knew if their luck did not change soon, one or the other of
+them would have to go over to Warria, or to one of the other stations,
+and earn enough money there to keep the other going on the claim.
+
+They had no doubt it would be Michael who would have to go. Charley was
+not fond of work, and would be able to loaf away his time very
+pleasantly on the mine, making only a pretence of doing anything, until
+Michael returned. They wondered why Michael did not go and get a move
+into his affairs at once. Paul and Sophie might have-something to do
+with his putting off going, they told each other; Michael was anxious
+how Paul and his luck would fare when it was a question of squaring up
+with Jun, and as to how the squaring up, when it came, would affect
+Sophie.
+
+Some of them had been concerning themselves on Paul's account also. They
+did not like a good deal they had seen of the way Jun was using Paul,
+and they had resolved to see he got fair play when it was time for a
+settlement of his and Jun's account. George Woods, Watty Frost, and Bill
+Grant went along to talk the matter over with Michael one evening, and
+found him fixing a shed at the back of the hut which he and Potch had
+put up for Sophie and her father, a few yards from Charley Heathfield's,
+and in line with Michael's own hut at the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
+
+"Paul says he's going away if he gets a good thing out of his and Jun's
+find," George Woods said.
+
+"It'll be a good thing--if he gets a fair deal," Michael replied.
+
+"He'll get that--if we can fix it," Watty Frost said.
+
+"Yes," Michael agreed.
+
+"Can't think why you're taking so much trouble with this place if Paul
+and Sophie are going away soon, Michael," George Woods remarked at the
+end of their talk.
+
+"They're not gone yet," Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling
+across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.
+
+The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no
+betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did
+not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be
+done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it
+would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away.
+But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father
+would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for
+them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would
+be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be
+prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they
+found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all
+that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was
+the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should
+hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was
+like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish
+up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a
+packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better
+tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most
+of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to
+deal squarely by him.
+
+Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about
+like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for
+everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times
+they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell
+their opal.
+
+Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at
+Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them
+up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's
+package knew that he had kept the best stones.
+
+For a couple of weeks after they had come on their nest of knobbies, Jun
+and Paul had gouged and shovelled dirt enthusiastically; but the wisp
+fires, mysteriously and suddenly as they had come, had died out of the
+stone they moved. Paul searched frantically. He and Jun worked like
+bullocks; but the luck which had flashed on them was withdrawn. Although
+they broke new tunnels, went through tons of opal dirt with their hands,
+and tracked every trace of black potch through a reef of cement stone in
+the mine, not a spark of blue or green light had they seen for over a
+week. That was the way of black opal, everybody knew, and knew, too,
+that the men who had been on a good patch of fired stone would not work
+on a claim, shovelling dirt, long after it disappeared. They would be
+off down to Sydney, if no buyer was due to visit the fields, eager to
+make the most of the good time their luck and the opal would bring them.
+"Opal only brings you bad luck when you don't get enough of it," Ridge
+folk say.
+
+George and Watty had a notion Jun would not stick to the claim much
+longer, when they arranged the night at Newton's to settle his and
+Paul's account with each other. Michael, the Crosses, Cash Wilson,
+Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Bully Bryant, old Bill Olsen, and most
+of the staunch Ridge men were in the bar, Charley Heathfield drinking
+with Jun, when George Woods strolled over to the table where Rouminof
+was showing Sam Nancarrow his stones. Sam was blacksmith, undertaker,
+and electoral registrar in Fallen Star, and occasionally did odd
+butchering jobs when there was no butcher in the township. He had the
+reputation, too, of being one of the best judges of black opal on the
+fields.
+
+Paul was holding up a good-looking knobby so that red, green, and gold
+lights glittered through its shining potch as he moved it.
+
+"That's a nice bit of stone you've got, Rummy!" George exclaimed.
+
+Paul agreed. "But you should see her by candle light, George!" he said
+eagerly.
+
+He held up the stone again so that it caught the light of a lamp hanging
+over the bar where Peter Newton was standing. The eyes of two or three
+of the men followed the stone as Paul moved it, and its internal fires
+broke in showers of sparks.
+
+"Look, look!" Paul cried, "now she's showin'!"
+
+"How much have you got on her?" Sam Nancarrow asked.
+
+"Jun thinks she'll bring L50 or L60 at least."
+
+Sam's and George Woods' eyes met: L50 was a liberal estimate of the
+stone's value. If Paul got L10 or L15 for it he would be doing well,
+they knew.
+
+"They're nice stones, aren't they?" Paul demanded, sorting over the
+opals he had spread out on the table. He held up a piece of green potch
+with a sun-flash through it.
+
+"My oath!" George Woods exclaimed.
+
+"But where's the big beaut.?" Archie Cross asked, looking over the
+stones with George.
+
+"Oh, Jun's got her," Paul replied. "Jun!" he called, "the boys want to
+see the big stone."
+
+"Right!" Jun swung across to the table. Several of the men by the bar
+followed him. "She's all right," he said.
+
+He sat down, pulled a shabby leather wallet from his pocket, opened it,
+and took out a roll of dirty flannel; he undid the flannel carefully,
+and spread the stones on the table. There were several pieces of opal in
+the packet. The men, who had seen them before separately, uttered soft
+oaths of admiration and surprise when they saw all the opals together.
+Two knobbies were as big as almonds, and looked like black almonds,
+fossilised, with red fire glinting through their green and gold; a large
+flat stone had stars of red, green, amethyst, blue and gold shifting
+over and melting into each other; and several smaller stones, all good
+stuff, showed smouldering fire in depths of green and blue and gold-lit
+darkness.
+
+Jun held the biggest of the opals at arm's length from the light of the
+hanging lamp. The men followed his movement, the light washing their
+faces as it did the stone.
+
+"There she goes!" Paul breathed.
+
+"What have you got on her?"
+
+"A hundred pounds, or thereabouts."
+
+"You'll get it easy!"
+
+Jun put the stone down. He took up another, a smaller piece of opal, of
+even finer quality. The stars were strewn over and over each other in
+its limpid black pool.
+
+"Nice pattern," he said.
+
+"Yes," Watty Frost murmured.
+
+"She's not as big as the other ... but better pattern," Archie Cross
+said.
+
+"Reckon you'll get L100 for her too, Jun?"
+
+"Yup!" Jun put down the stone.
+
+Then he held up each stone in turn, and the men gave it the same level,
+appraising glance. There was no envy in their admiration. In every man's
+eyes was the same worshipful appreciation of black opal.
+
+Jun was drunk with his luck. His luck, as much as Newton's beer, was in
+his head this night. He had shown his stones before, but never like
+this, the strength of his luck.
+
+"How much do you think there is in your packet, Jun?" Archie Cross
+asked.
+
+Jun stretched his legs under the table.
+
+"A thou' if there's a penny."
+
+Archie whistled.
+
+"And how much do you reckon there is in Rum-Enough's?" George Woods put
+the question.
+
+"Four or five hundred," Jun said; "but we're evens, of course."
+
+He leaned across the table and winked at George.
+
+"Oh, I say," Archie protested, "what's the game?"
+
+They knew Jun wanted them to believe he was joking, humouring Paul. But
+that was not what they had arranged this party for.
+
+"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones, Jun?"
+
+"What?"
+
+Jun started and stared about him. It was so unusual for one man to
+suggest to another what he ought to do, or that there was anything like
+bad faith in his dealings with his mates, that his blood rose.
+
+"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones?" George repeated,
+mildly eyeing him over the bowl of his pipe.
+
+"Yes," Watty butted in, "Rummy ought to hold a few of the good stones,
+Jun. Y' see, you might be run into by rats ... or get knocked out--and
+have them shook off you, like Oily did down in Sydney--and it'd be hard
+on Rummy, that--"
+
+"When I want your advice about how me and my mate's going to work
+things, I'll ask you," Jun snarled.
+
+"We don't mind giving it before we're asked, Jun," Watty explained
+amiably.
+
+Archie Cross leaned across the table. "How about giving Paul a couple of
+those bits of decent pattern--if you stick to the big stone?" he said.
+
+"What's the game?" Jun demanded, sitting up angrily. His hand went over
+his stones.
+
+"Wait on, Jun!" Michael said. "We're not thieves here. You don't have to
+grab y'r stones."
+
+Jun looked about him. He saw that men of the Ridge, in the bar, were all
+standing round the table. Only Peter Newton was left beside the bar,
+although Charley Heathfield, on the outer edge of the crowd, regarded
+him with a smile of faint sympathy and cynicism. Paul leaned over the
+table before him, and looked from Jun to the men who had fallen in round
+the table, a dazed expression broadening on his face.
+
+"What the hell's the matter?" Jun cried, starting to his feet. "What are
+you chaps after? Can't I manage me own affairs and me mate's?"
+
+The crowd moved a little, closer to him. There was no chance of making a
+break for it.
+
+George Woods laughed.
+
+"Course you can't, Jun!" he said. "Not on the Ridge, you can't manage
+your affairs and your mate's ... your way ... Not without a little
+helpful advice from the rest of us.... Sit down!"
+
+Jun glanced about him again; then, realising the intention on every
+face, and something of the purpose at the back of it, he sat down again.
+
+"Well, I'm jiggered!" he exclaimed. "I see--you believe old Olsen's
+story. That's about the strength of it. Never thought ... a kid, or a
+chicken, 'd believe that bloody yarn. Well, what's the advice ... boys?
+Let's have it, and be done with it!"
+
+"We'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. We won't say anything about ...
+why," George remarked. "But the boys and I was just thinking it might be
+as well if you and Rum-Enough sort of shared up the goods now, and then
+... if he doesn't want to go to Sydney same time as you, Jun, he can
+deal his goods here, or when he does go."
+
+No one knew better than Jun the insult which all this seemingly
+good-natured talking covered. He knew that neither he, nor any other
+man, would have dared to suggest that Watty, or George, or Michael, were
+not to be trusted to deal for their mates, to the death even. But then
+he knew, too, they were to be trusted; that there was not money enough
+in the world to buy their loyalty to each other and to their mates, and
+that he could measure their suspicion of his good faith by his knowledge
+of himself. To play their game as they would have played it was the only
+thing for him to do, he recognised.
+
+"Right!" he said, "I'm more than willing. In fact, I wouldn't have the
+thing on me mind--seein' the way you chaps 've taken it. But 'd like to
+know which one of you wouldn't 've done what I've done if Rum-Enough was
+your mate?"
+
+Every man was uneasily conscious that Jun was right. Any one of them, if
+he had Paul for a mate, would have taken charge of the most valuable
+stones, in Paul's interest as well as his own. At the same time, every
+man felt pretty sure the thing was a horse of another colour where Jun
+was concerned.
+
+"Which one of us," George Woods inquired, "if a mate'd been set on by a
+spieler in Sydney, would've let him stump his way to Brinarra and foot
+it out here ... like you let old Olsen?"
+
+Jun's expression changed; his features blenched, then a flame of blood
+rushed over his face.
+
+"It's a lie," he yelled. "He cleared out--I never saw him afterwards!"
+
+"Oh well," George said, "we'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. Let's have a
+look at that flat stone."
+
+Jun handed him the stone.
+
+George held it to the light.
+
+"Nice bit of opal," he said, letting the light play over it a moment,
+then passed it on to Michael and Watty.
+
+"You keep the big stone, and Paul'll have this," Archie Cross said.
+
+He put the stone beside Paul's' little heap of gems.
+
+Jun sat back in his chair: his eyes smouldering as the men went over his
+opals, appraising and allotting each one, putting some before Rouminof,
+and some back before him. They dealt as judicially with the stones as
+though they were a jury of experts, on the case--as they really were.
+When their decisions were made, Jun had still rather the better of the
+stones, although the division had been as nearly fair as possible.
+
+Paul was too dazed and amazed to speak. He glanced dubiously from his
+stones to Jun, who rolled his opals back in the strip of dirty flannel,
+folded it into his leather wallet, and dropped that into his coat
+pocket. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.
+
+Big and swarthy, with eyes which took a deeper colour from the new blue
+shirt he had on, Jun stood an inch or so above the other men.
+
+"Well," he said, "you boys have put it across me to-night. You've made a
+mistake ... but I'm not one to bear malice. You done right if you
+thought I wasn't going to deal square by Rum-Enough ... but I'll lay you
+any money you like I'd 've made more money for him by selling his stones
+than he'll make himself--Still, that's your business ... if you want it
+that way. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm just where I was--in luck.
+And you chaps owe me something.... Come and have a drink."
+
+Most of the men, who believed Jun was behaving with better grace than
+they had expected him to, moved off to have a drink with him. They were
+less sure than they had been earlier in the evening that they had done
+Rouminof a good turn by giving him possession of his share of the opals.
+It was just on the cards, they realised as Jun said, that instead of
+doing Rouminof a good turn, if Jun had been going to deal squarely by
+him, they had done him a rather bad one. Paul was pretty certain to make
+a mess of trading his own stones, and to get about half their value from
+an opal-buyer if he insisted on taking them down to Sydney to sell
+himself.
+
+"What'll you do now your fortune's fixed up, Rummy?" George Woods asked,
+jokingly, when he and two or three men were left with Paul by the table.
+
+"I'll get out of this," Paul said. "We'll go down to Sydney--me and
+Sophie--and we'll say good-bye to the Ridge for good."
+
+The men laughed. It was the old song of an outsider who cared nothing
+for the life of the Ridge, when he got a couple of hundred pounds' worth
+of opal. He thought he was made for life and would never come back to
+the Ridge; but he always did when his money was spent. Only Michael,
+standing a little behind George Woods, did not smile.
+
+"But you can't live for ever on three or four hundred quid," Watty Frost
+said.
+
+"No," Paul replied eagerly, "but I can always make a bit playing at
+dances, and Sophie's going to be a singer. You wait till people hear her
+sing.... Her mother was a singer. She had a beautiful voice. When it
+went we came here.... But Sophie can sing as well as her mother. And
+she's young. She ought to make a name for herself."
+
+He wrapped the stones before him in a piece of wadding, touching them
+reverently, and folded them into the tin cigarette box Michael had given
+him to carry about the first stones Jun had let him have. He was still
+mystified over the business of the evening, and why the boys had made
+Jun give him the other stones. He had been quite satisfied for Jun to
+hold most of the stones, and the best ones, as any man on the Ridge
+would be for his mate to take care of their common property. There was a
+newspaper lying on the table. He took it, wrapped it carefully about his
+precious box, tied a piece of strong string round it, and let the box
+down carefully into the big, loose pocket of his shabby coat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Watty and George were well satisfied with their night's work when they
+went out of the bar into the street. Michael was with them. He said
+nothing, but they took it for granted he was as pleased as they were at
+what had been done and the way in which it had been done. Michael was
+always chary of words, and all night they had noticed that what they
+called his "considering cap" had been well drawn over his brows. He
+stood smoking beside them and listening abstractedly to what they were
+saying.
+
+"Well, that's fixed him," Watty remarked, glancing back into the room
+they had just left.
+
+Jun was leaning over the bar talking to Newton, the light from the lamp
+above, on his red, handsome face, and cutting the bulk of his head and
+shoulders from the gloom of the room and the rest of the men about him.
+Peter Newton was serving drinks, and Jun laughing and joking
+boisterously as he handed them on to the men.
+
+"He's a clever devil!" George exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," Michael said.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if he didn't clear out by the coach to-morrow," George
+said.
+
+"Nor me," Watty grunted.
+
+"Well, he won't be taking Paul with him."
+
+"Not to-morrow."
+
+"No."
+
+"But Rummy's going down to town soon as he can get, he says."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Say, Michael, why don't you try scarin' him about losing his stones
+like Bill Olsen did?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Says," Michael smiled, "the sharks won't get any of his money or opal."
+
+Watty snuffed contemptuously by way of exclamation.
+
+"Well, I'll be getting along," Michael added, and talked away in the
+direction of his hut.
+
+George and Watty watched his spare figure sway down the road between the
+rows of huts which formed the Fallen Star township. It was a misty
+moonlight night, and the huts stood dark against the sheening screen of
+sky, with here and there a glow of light through open doorways, or
+small, square window panes.
+
+"It's on Michael's mind, Rum-Enough's going and taking Sophie with him,"
+George, said.
+
+"I don't wonder," Watty replied. "He'll come a cropper, sure as eggs....
+And what's to become of her? Michael 'd go to town with them if he had a
+bean--but he hasn't. He's stony, I know."
+
+Even to his mate he did not say why he knew, and George did not ask,
+understanding Watty's silence. It was not very long since George himself
+had given Michael a couple of pounds; but he had a very good idea
+Michael had little to do with the use of that money. He guessed that he
+would have less to do with whatever he got from Watty.
+
+"Charley's going over to Warria to-morrow, isn't he?" he asked.
+
+Watty grunted. "About time he did something. Michael's been grafting for
+him for a couple of years ... and he'd have gone to the station
+himself--only he didn't want to go away till he knew what Paul was going
+to do. Been trying pretty hard to persuade him to leave Sophie--till
+he's fixed up down town--but you wouldn't believe how obstinate the
+idiot is. Thinks he can make a singer of her in no time ... then she'll
+keep her old dad till kingdom come."
+
+Michael's figure was lost to sight between the trees which encroached on
+the track beyond the town. Jun was singing in the hotel. His great
+rollicking voice came to George and Watty with shouts of laughter.
+George, looking back through the open door, saw Rouminof had joined the
+crowd round the bar.
+
+He was drinking as George's glance fell on him.
+
+"Think he's all right?" Watty asked.
+
+George did not reply.
+
+"You don't suppose Jun 'd try to take the stones off of him, do you,
+George?" Watty inquired again. "You don't think----?"
+
+"I don't suppose he'd dare, seein' we've ... let him know how we feel."
+
+George spoke slowly, as if he were not quite sure of what he was saying.
+
+"He knows his hide'd suffer if he tried."
+
+"That's right."
+
+Archie Cross came from the bar and joined them.
+
+"He's trying to make up to the boys--he likes people to think he's
+Christmas, Jun," he said, "and he just wants 'em to forget that
+anything's been said--detrimental to his character like."
+
+George was inclined to agree with Archie. They went to the form against
+the wall of the hotel and sat there smoking for a while; then all three
+got up to go home.
+
+"You don't think we ought to see Rummy home?" Watty inquired
+hesitatingly.
+
+He was ashamed to suggest that Rouminof, drunk, and with four or five
+hundred pounds' worth of opal in his pockets, was not as safe as if his
+pockets were empty. But Jun had brought a curious unrest into the
+community. Watty, or Archie, or George, themselves would have walked
+about with the same stuff in their pockets without ever thinking anybody
+might try to put a finger on it.
+
+None of the three looked at each other as they thought over the
+proposition. Then Archie spoke:
+
+"I told Ted," he murmured apologetically, "to keep an eye on Rummy, as
+he's coming home. If there's rats about, you never can tell what may
+happen. We ain't discovered yet who put it over on Rummy and Jun on the
+day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral. So I just worded Ted to keep an eye on
+the old fool. He comes our track most of the way ... And if he's tight,
+he might start sheddin' his stones out along the road--you never can
+tell."
+
+George Woods laughed. The big, genial soul of the man looked out of his
+eyes.
+
+"That's true," he said heartily.
+
+Archie and he smiled into each other's eyes. They understood very well
+what lay behind Archie's words; They could not bring themselves to admit
+there was any danger to the sacred principle of Ridge life, that a mate
+stands by a mate, in letting Rouminof wander home by himself. He might
+be in danger if there were rats about; they would admit that. But rats,
+the men who sneaked into other men's mines when they were on good stuff,
+and took out their opal during the night, were never Ridge men. They
+were new-comers, outsiders, strangers on the rushes, who had not learnt
+or assimilated Ridge ideas.
+
+After a few minutes George turned away. "Well, good-night, Archie," he
+said.
+
+Watty moved after him.
+
+"'Night!" Archie replied.
+
+George and Watty went along the road together, and Archie walked off in
+the direction Michael had taken.
+
+But Michael had not gone home. When the trees screened him from sight,
+he had struck out across the Ridge, then, turning back on his tracks
+behind the town, had made towards the Warria road. He walked, thinking
+hard, without noticing where he was going, his mind full of Paul, of
+Sophie, and of his promise.
+
+Now that Paul had his opal, it was clear he would be able to do as he
+wished--leave the Ridge and take Sophie with him. For the time being at
+least he was out of Jun Johnson's hands--but Michael was sure he would
+not stay out of them if he went to Sydney. How to prevent his
+going--how, rather, to prevent Sophie going with him---that was
+Michael's problem. He did not know what he was going to do.
+
+He had asked Sophie not to go with her father. He had told her what her
+mother had said, and tried to explain to her why her mother had not
+wanted her to go away from the Ridge, or to become a public singer. But
+Sophie was as excited about her future as her father was. It was natural
+she should be, Michael assured himself. She was young, and had heard
+wonderful stories of Sydney and the world beyond the Ridge. Sydney was
+like the town in a fairy tale to her.
+
+It was not to be expected, Michael confessed to himself, that Sophie
+would choose to stay on Fallen Star Ridge. If she could only be
+prevailed upon to put off her departure until she was older and better
+able to take care of herself, he would be satisfied. If the worst came
+to the worst, and she went to Sydney with her father soon, Michael had
+decided to go with them. Peter Newton would give him a couple of pounds
+for his books, he believed, and he would find something to do down in
+Sydney. His roots were in the Ridge. Michael did not know how he was
+going to live away from the mines; but anything seemed better than that
+Sophie should be committed to what her mother had called "the
+treacherous whirlpool" of life in a great city, with no one but her
+father to look after her.
+
+And her mother had said:
+
+"Don't let him take her away, Michael."
+
+Michael believed that Marya Rouminof intended Sophie to choose for
+herself whether she would stay on the Ridge or not, when she was old
+enough. But now she was little more than a child, sixteen, nearly
+seventeen, young for her years in some ways and old in others. Michael
+knew her mother had wanted Sophie to grow up on the Ridge and to realise
+that all the potentialities of real and deep happiness were there.
+
+"They say there's got to be a scapegoat in every family, Michael," she
+had said once. "Someone has to pay for the happiness of the others. If
+all that led to my coming here will mean happiness for Sophie, it will
+not have been in vain."
+
+"That's where you're wrong," Michael had told her.
+
+"Looking for justice--poetic justice, isn't it, they call it?--in the
+working out of things. There isn't any of this poetic justice except by
+accident. The natural laws just go rolling on--laying us out under them.
+All we can do is set our lives as far as possible in accordance with
+them and stand by the consequences as well as we know how."
+
+"Of course, you're right," she had sighed, "but----"
+
+It was for that "but" Michael was fighting now. He knew what lay beyond
+it--a yearning for her child to fare a little better in the battle of
+life than she had. Striding almost unconsciously over the loose, shingly
+ground, Michael was not aware what direction his steps were taking until
+he saw glimmering white shapes above the grass and herbage of the
+plains, and realised that he had walked to the gates of the cemetery.
+
+With an uncomfortable sense of broken faith, he turned away from the
+gate, unable to go in and sit under the tree there, to smoke and think,
+as he sometimes did. He had used every argument with Paul to prevent his
+taking Sophie away, he knew; but for the first time since Michael and he
+had been acquainted with each other, Paul had shown a steady will. He
+made up his mind he was "going to shake the dust of the Ridge off his
+feet," he said. And that was the end of it. Michael almost wished the
+men had let Jun clear out with his stones. That would have settled the
+business. But, his instinct of an opal-miner asserting itself, he was
+unable to wish Paul the loss of his luck, and Jun what he would have to
+be to deprive Paul of it. He walked on chewing the cud of bitter and
+troubled reflections.
+
+"Don't let him take her away!" a voice seemed to cry suddenly after him.
+
+Michael stopped; he snatched the hat from his head.
+
+"No!" he said, "he shan't take her away!"
+
+Startled by the sound of his own voice, the intensity of thinking which
+had wrung it from him, dazed by the sudden strength of resolution which
+had come over him, he stood, his face turned to the sky. The stars
+rained their soft light over him. As he looked up to them, his soul went
+from him by force of will. How long he stood like that, he did not know;
+but when his eyes found the earth again he looked about him wonderingly.
+After a little while he put on his hat and turned away. All the pain and
+trouble were taken from his thinking; he was strangely soothed and
+comforted. He went back along the road to the town, and, skirting the
+trees and the houses on the far side, came again to the track below
+Newton's.
+
+Lights were still shining in the hotel although it was well after
+midnight. Michael could hear voices in the clear air. A man was singing
+one of Jun's choruses as he went down the road towards the Punti Rush.
+Michael kept on his way. He was still wondering what he could do to
+prevent Paul taking Sophie away; but he was no longer worried about
+it--his brain was calm and clear; his step lighter than it had been for
+a long time.
+
+He heard the voices laughing and calling to each other as he walked on.
+
+"Old Ted!" he commented to himself, recognising Ted Cross's voice. "He's
+blithered!"
+
+When he came to a fork in the tracks where one went off in the direction
+of his, Charley's, and Rouminof's huts, and the other towards the
+Crosses', Michael saw Ted Cross lumbering along in the direction of his
+own hut.
+
+"Must 've been saying good-night to Charley and Paul," he thought. A
+little farther along the path he saw Charley and Paul, unsteady shadows
+ahead of him in the moonlight, and Charley had his arm under Paul's,
+helping him home.
+
+"Good old Charley!" Michael thought, quickly appreciative of the man he
+loved.
+
+He could hear them talking, Rouminof's voice thick and expostulatory,
+Charley's even and clear.
+
+"Charley's all right. He's not showin', anyhow," Michael told himself.
+He wondered at that. Charley was not often more sober than his company,
+and he had been drinking a good deal, earlier in the evening.
+
+Michael was a few yards behind them and was just going to quicken his
+steps and hail Charley, when he saw the flash of white in Charley's
+hand--something small, rather longer than square, a cigarette box
+wrapped in newspaper, it might have been--and Michael saw Charley drop
+it into the pocket of his coat.
+
+Paul wandered on, talking stupidly, drowsily. He wanted to go to sleep
+there on the roadside; but Charley led him on.
+
+"You'll be better at home and in bed," he said. "You're nearly there
+now."
+
+Instinctively, with that flash of white, Michael had drawn into the
+shadow of the trees which fringed the track. Charley, glancing back
+along it, had not seen him. Several moments passed before Michael moved.
+He knew what had happened, but the revelation was such a shock that his
+brain would not react to it. Charley, his mate, Charley Heathfield had
+stolen Paul's opals. The thing no man on the Ridge had attempted,
+notwithstanding its easiness, Charley had done. Although he had seen,
+Michael could scarcely believe that what he had seen, had happened.
+
+The two men before him staggered and swayed together. Their huts stood
+only a few yards from each other, a little farther along the track.
+
+Charley took Paul to the door of his hut, opened it and pushed him in.
+He stood beside the door, listening and looking down the track for a
+second longer. Michael imagined he would want to know whether Paul would
+discover his loss or just pitch forward and sleep where he lay. Then
+Charley went on to his own hut and disappeared.
+
+When the light glowed in his window, Michael went on up the track,
+keeping well to the cover of the trees. Opposite the hut he took off his
+boots. He put his feet down carefully, pressing the loose pebbles
+beneath him, as he crossed the road. It seemed almost impossible to move
+on that shingly ground without making a sound, and yet when he stood
+beside the bark wall of Charley's room and could see through the smeared
+pane of its small window, Charley had not heard a pebble slip. He was
+sitting on the edge of his bed, the stub of a lighted candle in a saucer
+on the bed beside him, and the box containing the opals lying near it as
+if he were just going to cut the string and have a look at them. The
+wall creaked as Michael leaned against it.
+
+"Who's there?" Charley cried sharply.
+
+He threw a blanket over the box on the bed and started to the door.
+
+Michael moved round the corner of the house. He heard Potch call
+sleepily:
+
+"That you?"
+
+Charley growled;
+
+"Oh, go to sleep, can't you? Aren't you asleep yet?"
+
+Potch murmured, and there was silence again.
+
+Michael heard Charley go to the door, look out along the road, and turn
+back into the hut. Then Michael moved along the wall to the window.
+
+Charley was taking down some clothes hanging from nails along the inner
+wall. He changed from the clothes he had on into them, picked up his
+hat, lying where he had thrown it on the floor beside the bed when he
+came in, rolled it up, straightened the brim and dinged the crown to his
+liking. Then he picked up the packet of opal, put it in his coat pocket,
+and went into the other room. Michael followed to the window which gave
+on it. He saw Charley glance at the sofa as though he were contemplating
+a stretch, but, thinking better of it, he settled into an easy,
+bag-bottomed old chair by the table, pulled a newspaper to him, and
+began to read by the guttering light of his candle.
+
+Michael guessed why Charley had dressed, and why he had chosen to sit
+and read rather than go to sleep. It was nearly morning, the first chill
+of dawn in the air. The coach left at seven o'clock, and Charley meant
+to catch the coach. He had no intention of going to Warria. Michael
+began to get a bird's-eye view of the situation. He wondered whether
+Charley had ever intended going to Warria. He realised Charley would go
+off with the five pound note he had made him, Michael, get from Watty
+Frost, as well as with Paul's opals. He began, to see clearly what that
+would mean, too--Charley's getting away with Paul's opals. Paul would
+not be able to take Sophie away....
+
+In the branches of a shrub nearby, a white-tail was crying plaintively:
+"Sweet pretty creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael remembered how
+it had cried like that on the day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral.
+
+Whether to go into the hut, tell Charley he knew what he had done, and
+demand the return of the opals, or let him get away with them, Michael
+had not decided, when Charley's hand went to his pocket, and, as it
+closed over the package of opals, a smile of infantile satisfaction
+flitted across his face. That smile, criminal in its treachery, enraged
+Michael more than the deed itself. The candle Charley had been reading
+by guttered out. He stumbled about the room looking for another. After a
+while, as if he could not find one, he went back to his chair and
+settled into it. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the dim pane
+of the window by which Michael was standing.
+
+Michael's mind seethed with resentment and anger. The thing he had
+prayed for, that his brain had ached over, had been arranged. Rouminof
+would not be able to take Sophie away. But Michael was too good a Ridge
+man not to detest Charley's breach of the good faith of the Ridge.
+Charley had been accepted by men of the Ridge as one of themselves--at
+least, Michael believed he had.
+
+George, Watty, the Crosses, and most of the other men would have
+confessed to reservations where Charley Heathfield was concerned. But as
+long as he had lived as a mate among them, they had been mates to him.
+Michael did not want Rouminof to have his stones if having them meant
+taking Sophie away, but he did not want him to lose them. He could not
+allow Charley to get away with them, with that smile of infantile
+satisfaction. If the men knew what he had done there would be little of
+that smile left on his face when they had finished with him. Their
+methods of dealing with rats were short and severe. And although he
+deserved all he got from them, Michael was not able to decide to hand
+Charley over to the justice of the men of the Ridge.
+
+As he hesitated, wondering what to do, the sound of heavy, regular
+breathing came to him, and, looking through the window, he saw that
+Charley had done the last thing he intended to do--he had fallen asleep
+in his chair.
+
+In a vivid, circling flash, Michael's inspiration came to him. He went
+across to his hut, lighted a candle when he got indoors, and took the
+black pannikin he kept odd pieces of opal in, from the top of a
+bookshelf. There was nothing of any great value in the pannikin--a few
+pieces of coloured potch which would have made a packet for an
+opal-buyer when he came along, and a rather good piece of stone in the
+rough he had kept as a mascot for a number of years--that was all.
+Michael turned them over. He went to the corner shelf and returned to
+the table with a cigarette box the same size as the one Rouminof had
+kept his opals in. Michael took a piece of soiled wadding from a drawer
+in the table, rolled the stones in it, and fitted them into the box. He
+wrapped the tin in a piece of newspaper and tied it with string. Then he
+blew out his candle and went out of doors again.
+
+He made his way carefully over the shingles to Charley's hut. When he
+reached it, he leaned against the wall, listening to hear whether
+Charley was still asleep. The sound of heavy breathing came slowly and
+regularly. Michael went to the back of the hut. There was no door to it.
+He went in, and slowly approached the chair in which Charley was
+sleeping.
+
+He could never come to any clear understanding with himself as to how he
+had done what he did. He knew only a sick fear possessed him that
+Charley would wake and find him, Michael, barefooted, like a thief in
+his house. But he was not a thief, he assured himself. It was not
+thieving to take from a thief.
+
+Charley stirred uneasily. His arm went out; in the dim light Michael saw
+it go over the pocket which held the packet of opal; his hand clutch at
+it unconsciously. Sweating with fear and the nervous tension he was
+under, Michael remained standing in the darkness. He waited, wondering
+whether he would throw off Charley's hand and snatch the opal, or
+whether he would stand till morning, hesitating, and wondering what to
+do, and Charley would wake at last and find him there. He had decided to
+wrench Charley's arm from the pocket, when Charley himself flung it out
+with a sudden restless movement.
+
+In an instant, almost mechanically, Michael's hand went to the pocket.
+He lifted the packet there and put his own in its place.
+
+The blood was booming in his ears when he turned to the door. A sense of
+triumph unnerved him more than the execution of his inspiration. Charley
+muttered and called out in his sleep as Michael passed through the
+doorway.
+
+Then the stars were over him. Michael drew a deep breath of the night
+air and crossed to his own hut, the package of opal under his coat. Just
+as he was entering he drew back, vaguely alarmed. A movement light as
+thistledown seemed to have caught his ear. He thought he had detected a
+faint shifting of the shingle nearby. He glanced about with quick
+apprehension, went back to Charley's hut, listened, and looked around;
+but Charley was still sleeping. Michael walked back to his own hut.
+There was no sight or sound of a living thing in the wan, misty
+moonlight of the dawn, except the white-tail which was still crying from
+a wilga near Charley's hut.
+
+The package under his coat felt very heavy and alive when he returned to
+his own hut. Michael was disturbed by that faint sound he had heard, or
+thought he had heard. He persuaded himself he had imagined it, that in
+the overwrought state of his sensibilities the sound of his own breath,
+and his step on the stones, had surprised and alarmed him. The tin of
+opals burned against his body, seeming to scar the skin where it
+pressed. Michael sickened at the thought of how what he had done might
+look to anyone who had seen him. But he put the thought from him. It was
+absurd. He had looked; there was no one about--nothing. He was allowing
+his mind to play tricks with him. The success of what he had done made
+him seem like a thief. But he was not a thief. The stones were
+Rouminof's. He had taken them from Charley for him, and he would not
+even look at them. He would keep them for Paul.
+
+If Charley got away without discovering the change of the packets, as he
+probably would, in the early morning and in his excitement to catch the
+coach, he would be considered the thief. Rouminof would accuse him;
+Charley would know his own guilt. He would not dare to confess what he
+had done, even when he found that his package of opal had been changed.
+He would not know when it had been changed. He would not know whether it
+had been changed, perhaps, before he took it from Rouminof.
+
+Charley might recognise the stones in that packet he had done up,
+Michael realised; but he did not think so. Charley was not much of a
+judge of opal. Michael did not think he would remember the few scraps of
+sun-flash they had come on together, and Charley had never seen the
+mascot he had put into the packet, with a remnant of feeling for the
+memory of their working days together.
+
+Michael did not light the candle when he went into his hut again. He
+threw himself down on the bed in his clothes; he knew that he would not
+sleep as he lay there. His brain burned and whirled, turning over the
+happenings of the night and their consequences, likely and unlikely. The
+package of opal lay heavy in his pocket. He took it out and dropped it
+into a box of books at the end of the room.
+
+He did not like what he had done, and yet he was glad he had done it.
+When he could see more clearly, he was glad, too, that he had grasped
+this opportunity to control circumstances. A reader and dreamer all his
+days, he had begun to be doubtful of his own capacity for action. He
+could think and plan, but he doubted whether he had strength of will to
+carry out purposes he had dreamed a long time over. He was pleased, in
+an odd, fierce way, that he had been able to do what he thought should
+be done.
+
+"But I don't want them.... I don't want the cursed stones," he argued
+with himself. "I'll give them to him--to Paul, as soon as I know what
+ought to be done about Sophie. She's not old enough to go yet--to know
+her own mind--what she wants to do. When she's older she can decide for
+herself. That's what her mother meant. She didn't mean for always ...
+only while she's a little girl. By and by, when she's a woman, Sophie
+can decide for herself. Now, she's got to stay here ... that's what I
+promised."
+
+"And Charley," he brooded. "He deserves all that's coming to him ... but
+I couldn't give him away. The boys would half kill him if they got their
+hands on to him. When will he find out? In the train, perhaps--or not
+till he gets to Sydney.... He'll have my fiver, and the stones to go on
+with--though they won't bring much. Still, they'll do to go on with....
+Paul'll be a raving lunatic when he knows ... but he can't go--he can't
+take Sophie away."
+
+His brain surged over and over every phrase: his state of mind since he
+had seen Charley and Paul on the road together; every argument he had
+used with himself. He could not get away from the double sense of
+disquiet and satisfaction.
+
+An hour or two later he heard Charley moving about, then rush off down
+the track, sending the loose stones flying under his feet as he ran to
+catch the coach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Watty was winding dirt, standing by the windlass on the top of the dump
+over his and his mates' mine, when he saw Paul coming along the track
+from the New Town. Paul was breaking into a run at every few yards, and
+calling out. Watty threw the mullock from his hide bucket as it came up,
+and lowered it again. He wound up another bucket. The creak of the
+windlass, and the fall of the stone and earth as he threw them over the
+dump, drowned the sound of Rouminof's voice. As he came nearer, Watty
+saw that he was gibbering with rage, and crying like a child.
+
+While he was still some distance away, Watty heard him sobbing and
+calling out.
+
+He stopped work to listen as Paul came to the foot of Michael's dump.
+Ted Cross, who was winding dirt on the top of Crosses' mine, stopped to
+listen too. Old Olsen got up from where he lay noodling on Jun's and
+Paul's claim, and went across to Paul. Snow-Shoes, stretched across the
+slope near where Watty was standing, lifted his head, his turning of
+earth with a little blunt stick arrested for the moment.
+
+"They've took me stones!... Took me stones!" Watty heard Paul cry to
+Bill Olsen. And as he climbed the slope of Michael's dump he went on
+crying: "Took me stones! Took me stones! Charley and Jun! Gone by the
+coach! Michael!... They've gone by the coach and took me stones!"
+
+Over and over again he said the same thing in an incoherent wail and
+howl. He went down the shaft of Michael's mine, and Ted Cross came
+across from his dump to Watty.
+
+"Hear what he says, Watty?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Watty replied.
+
+"It gets y'r wind----"
+
+"If it's true," Watty ventured slowly.
+
+"Seems to me it's true all right," Ted said. "Charley took him home last
+night. I went along with them as far as the turn-off. Paul was a bit on
+... and Archie asked me to keep an eye on him.... I was a bit on meself,
+too ... but Charley came along with us--so I thought he'd be all
+right.... Charley went off by the coach this morning.... Bill Olsen told
+me.... And Michael was reck'ning on him goin' to Warria to-day, I know."
+
+"That's right!"
+
+"It'll be hard on Michael!"
+
+Watty's gesture, upward jerk of his chin, and gusty breath, denoted his
+agreement on that score.
+
+Ted went back to his own claim, and Watty slid down the rope with his
+next bucket to give his mates the news. It was nearly time to knock off
+for the midday meal, and before long men from all the claims were
+standing in groups hearing the story from Rouminof himself, or talking
+it over together.
+
+Michael had come up from his mine soon after Paul had gone down to him.
+The men had seen him go off down the track to the New Town, his head
+bent. They thought they knew why. Michael would feel his mate's
+dishonour as though it were his own. He would not be able to believe
+that what Paul said was true. He would want to know from Peter Newton
+himself if it was a fact that Charley had gone out on the coach with Jun
+and two girls who had been at the hotel.
+
+Women were scarce on the opal fields, and the two girls who had come a
+week before to help Mrs. Newton with the work of the hotel had been
+having the time of their lives. Charley, Jun Johnson, and two or three
+other men, had been shouting drinks for them from the time of their
+arrival, and Mrs. Newton had made up her mind to send the girls back to
+town by the next coach. Jun had appropriated the younger of the two, a
+bright-eyed girl, and the elder, a full-bosomed, florid woman with
+straw-coloured hair, had, as the boys said, "taken a fancy to Charley."
+
+Paul had already told his story once or twice when Cash Wilson, George,
+and Watty, went across to where he was standing, with half a dozen of
+the men about him. They were listening gravely and smoking over Paul's
+recital. There had been ratting epidemics on the Ridge; but robbery of a
+mate by a mate had never occurred before. It struck at the fundamental
+principle of their life in common. There was no mistaking the grave,
+rather than indignant view men of the Ridge took of what Charley had
+done. The Ridge code affirmed simply that "a mate stands by a mate." The
+men say: "You can't go back on a mate." By those two recognitions they
+had run their settlement. Far from all the ordinary institutions of law
+and order, they had lived and worked together without need of them, by
+appreciation of their relationship to each other as mates and as a
+fraternity of mates. No one, who had lived under and seemed to accept
+the principle of mateship, had ever before done as Charley had done.
+
+"But Charley Heathfield was never one of us really," Ted Cross said. "He
+was always an outsider."
+
+"That's right, Ted," George Woods replied. "We only stuck him on
+Michael's account."
+
+Paul told George, Watty, and Cash the story he had been going over all
+the morning--how he had gone home with Charley, how he remembered going
+along the road with him, and then how he had wakened on the floor of his
+own hut in the morning. Sophie was there. She was singing. He had
+thought it was her mother. He had called her ... but Sophie had come to
+him. And she had abused him. She had called him "a dirty, fat pig," and
+told him to get out of the way because she wanted to sweep the floor.
+
+He sobbed uncontrollably. The men sympathised with him. They knew the
+loss of opal came harder on Rouminof than it would have on the rest of
+them, because he was so mad about the stuff. They condoned the
+abandonment of his grief as natural enough in a foreigner, too; but
+after a while it irked them.
+
+"Take a pull at y'rself, Rummy, can't you?" George Woods said irritably.
+"What did Michael say?"
+
+"Michael?" Paul looked at him, his eyes streaming.
+
+George nodded.
+
+"He did not say," Paul replied. "He threw down his pick. He would not
+work any more ... and then he went down to Newton's to ask about
+Charley."
+
+Two or three of the men exchanged glances. That was the way they had
+expected Michael to take the news. He would not have believed Paul's
+story at first. They did not see Michael again that day. In the evening
+Peter Newton told them how Michael had come to him, asking if it was
+true Charley had gone on the coach with Jun Johnson and the girls. Peter
+told Michael, he said, that Charley had gone on the coach, and that he
+thought Rouminof's story looked black against Charley.
+
+"Michael didn't say much," Peter explained, "but I don't think he could
+help seeing what I said was true--however much he didn't want to."
+
+Everybody knew Michael believed in Charley Heathfield. He had thought
+the worst that could be said of Charley was that he was a good-natured,
+rather shiftless fellow. All the men had responded to an odd attractive
+faculty Charley exercised occasionally. He had played it like a woman
+for Michael, and Michael had taken him on as a mate and worked with him
+when no one else would. And now, the men guessed, that Michael, who had
+done more than any of them to make the life of the Ridge what it was,
+would feel more deeply and bitterly than any of them that Charley had
+gone back on him and on what the Ridge stood for.
+
+All they imagined Michael was suffering in the grief and bitterness of
+spirit which come of misplaced faith, he was suffering. But they could
+not imagine the other considerations which had overshadowed grief and
+bitterness, the realisation that Sophie's life had been saved from what
+looked like early wreckage, and the consciousness that the consequences
+of what Charley had done, had fallen, not on Charley, but on himself.
+Michael had lived like a child, with an open heart at the disposal of
+his mates always; and the sense of Charley's guilt descending on him,
+had created a subtle ostracism, a remote alienation from them.
+
+He could not go to Newton's in the evening and talk things over with the
+men as he ordinarily would have. He wandered over the dumps of deserted
+rushes at the Old Town, his eyes on the ground or on the distant
+horizons. He could still only believe he had done the best thing
+possible under the circumstances. If he had let Charlie go away with the
+stones, Sophie would have been saved, but Paul would have lost his
+stones. As it was, Sophie was saved, and Paul had not lost his stones.
+And Michael could not have given Charley away. Charley had been his
+mate; they had worked together. The men might suspect, but they could
+not convict him of being what he was unless they knew what Michael knew.
+Charley had played on the affection, the simplicity of Michael's belief
+in him. He had used them, but Michael had still a lingering tenderness
+and sympathy for him. It was that which had made him put the one decent
+piece of opal he possessed into the parcel he had made up for Charley to
+take instead of Paul's stones. It was the first piece of good stuff he
+had found on the Ridge, and he had kept it as a mascot--something of a
+nest egg.
+
+Michael wondered at the fate which had sent him along the track just
+when Charley had taken Paul's stones. He was perplexed and impatient of
+it. There would have been no complication, no conflict and turmoil if
+only he had gone along the track a little later, or a little earlier.
+But there was no altering what had happened. He had to bear the
+responsibility of it. He had to meet the men, encounter the eyes of his
+mates as he had never done before, with a reservation from them. If he
+could give the stones to Paul at once, Michael knew he would disembarass
+himself of any sense of guilt. But he could not do that. He was afraid
+if Paul got possession of the opals again he would want to go away and
+take Sophie with him.
+
+Michael thought of taking Watty and George into his confidence, but to
+do so would necessitate explanations--explanations which involved
+talking of the promise he had made Sophie's mother and all that lay
+behind their relationship. He shrank from allowing even the sympathetic
+eyes of George and Watty to rest on what for him was wrapped in mystery
+and inexplicable reverence. Besides, they both had wives, and Watty was
+not permitted to know anything Mrs. Watty did not worm out of him sooner
+or later. Michael decided that if he could not keep his own confidence
+he could not expect anyone else to keep it. He must take the
+responsibility of what he had done, and of maintaining his position in
+respect to the opals until Sophie was older--old enough to do as she
+wished with her life.
+
+As he walked, gazing ahead, a hut formed itself out of the distance
+before him, and then the dark shapes of bark huts huddled against the
+white cliff of dumps at the Three Mile, under a starry sky. A glow came
+from the interior of one or two of the houses. A chime of laughter, and
+shredded fragments of talking drifted along in the clear air. Michael
+felt strangely alone and outcast, hearing them and knowing that he could
+not respond to their invitation.
+
+In any one of those huts a place would be eagerly made for him if he
+went into it; eyes would lighten with a smile; warm, kindly greetings
+would go to his heart. But the talk would all be of the stealing of
+Rouminof's opal, and of Charley and Jun, Michael knew. The people at the
+Three Mile would have seen the coach pass. They would be talking about
+it, about himself, and the girls who had driven away with Charley and
+Jun.
+
+Turning back, Michael walked again across the flat country towards the
+Ridge. He sat for a while on a log near the tank paddock. A drugging
+weariness permeated his body and brain, though his brain ticked
+ceaselessly. Now and again one or other of Rouminof's opals flashed and
+scintillated before him in the darkness, or moved off in starry flight
+before his tired gaze. He was vaguely disturbed by the vision of them.
+
+When he rose and went back towards the town, his feet dragged wearily.
+There was a strange lightness at the back of his head, and he wondered
+whether he were walking in the fields of heaven, and smiled to think of
+that. At least one good thing would come of it all, he told himself over
+and over again--Paul could not take Sophie away.
+
+The houses and stores of the New Town were all in darkness when he
+passed along the main street. Newton's was closed. There were no lights
+in Rouminof's or Charley's huts as he went to his own door. Then a low
+cry caught his ear. He listened, and went to the back door of Charley's
+hut. The cry rose again with shuddering gasps for breath. Michael stood
+in the doorway, listening. The sound came from the window. He went
+towards it, and found Potch lying there on the bunk with his face to the
+wall.
+
+He had not heard Michael enter, and lay moaning brokenly. Michael had
+not thought of Potch since the people at Newton's told him that a few
+minutes, after the coach had gone Potch had come down to the hotel to
+cut wood and do odd jobs in the stable, as he usually did. Mrs. Newton
+said he stared at her, aghast, when she told him that his father had
+left on the coach. Then he had started off at a run, taking the short
+cut across country to the Three Mile.
+
+Michael put out his hand. He could not endure that crying.
+
+"Potch!" he said.
+
+At the sound of his voice, Potch was silent. After a second he struggled
+to his feet, and stood facing Michael.
+
+"He's gone, Michael!" he cried.
+
+"He might have taken you," Michael said.
+
+"Taken me!" Potch's exclamation did away with any idea Michael had that
+his son was grieving for Charley. "It wasn't that I minded----"
+
+Michael did not know what to say. Potch continued:
+
+"As soon as I knew, I went after him--thought I'd catch up the coach at
+the Three Mile, and I did. I told him he'd have to come back--or hand
+out that money. I saw you give it to him the other night and arrange
+about going to Warria.... Mr. Ventry pulled up. But _he_ ... set the
+horses going again. I tried to stop them, but the sandy bay let out a
+kick and they went on again.... The swine!"
+
+Michael had never imagined this stolid son of Charley's could show such
+fire. He was trembling with rage and indignation. Michael rarely lost
+his temper, but the blood rushed to his head in response to Potch's
+story. Restraint was second nature with him, though, and he waited until
+his own and Potch's fury had ebbed.
+
+Then he moved to leave the hut.
+
+"Come along," he said.
+
+"Michael!"
+
+There was such breaking unbelief and joy in the cry. Michael turned and
+caught the boy's expression.
+
+"You're coming along with me, Potch," he said.
+
+Potch still stood regarding him with a dazed expression of worshipful
+homage and gratitude. Michael put out his hand, and Potch clasped it.
+
+"You and me," he said, "we both seem to be in the same boat, Potch....
+Neither of us has got a mate. I'll be wanting someone to work with now.
+We'd better be mates."
+
+They went out of the hut together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Michael and Potch were at work next morning as soon as the first cuckoos
+were calling. Michael had been at the windlass for an hour or
+thereabouts, when Watty Frost, who was going along to his claim with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, saw Michael on the top of his
+dump, tossing mullock.
+
+"Who's Michael working with?" he asked.
+
+Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant considered, and shook their heads, smoking
+thoughtfully.
+
+Snow-Shoes, where he lay sprawled across the slope of Crosses' dump,
+glanced up at them, and the nickering wisp of a smile went through his
+bright eyes. The three were standing at the foot of the dump before
+separating.
+
+"Who's Michael got with him?" Pony-Fence inquired, looking at
+Snow-Shoes.
+
+But the old man had turned his eyes back to the dump and was raking the
+earth with his stick again, as if he had not heard what was said. No one
+was deafer than Snow-Shoes when he did not want to hear.
+
+Watty watched Michael as he bent over the windlass, his lean, slight
+figure cut against the clear azure of the morning sky.
+
+"It's to be hoped he's got a decent mate this time--that's all," he
+said.
+
+Pony-Fence and Bully were going off to their own claim when Potch came
+up on the rope and stood by the windlass while Michael went down into
+the mine.
+
+"Well!" Watty gasped, "if that don't beat cock-fighting!"
+
+Bully swore sympathetically, and watched Potch set to work. The three
+watched him winding and throwing mullock from the hide buckets over the
+dump with the jerky energy of a new chum, although Potch had done odd
+jobs on the mines for a good many years. He had often taken his father's
+turn of winding dirt, and had managed to keep himself by doing all
+manner of scavenging in the township since he was quite a little chap,
+but no one had taken him on as a mate till now. He was a big fellow,
+too, Potch, seventeen or eighteen; and as they looked at him Watty and
+Pony-Fence realised it was time someone gave Potch a chance on the
+mines, although after the way his father had behaved Michael was about
+the last person who might have been expected to give him that
+chance--much less take him on as mate. Like father, like son, was one of
+those superstitions Ridge folk had not quite got away from, and the men
+who saw Potch working on Michael's mine wondered that, having been let
+down by the father as badly as Charley had let Michael down, Michael
+could still work with Potch, and give him the confidence a mate was
+entitled to. But there was no piece of quixotism they did not think
+Michael capable of. The very forlornness of Potch's position on the
+Ridge, and because he would have to face out and live down the fact of
+being Charley Heathfield's son, were recognised as most likely Michael's
+reasons for taking Potch on to work with him.
+
+Watty and Pony-Fence appreciated Michael's move and the point of view it
+indicated. They knew men of the Ridge would endorse it and take Potch on
+his merits. But being Charley's son, Potch would have to prove those
+merits. They knew, too, that what Michael had done would help him to
+tide over the first days of shame and difficulty as nothing else could
+have, and it would start Potch on a better track in life than his father
+had ever given him.
+
+Bully had already gone off to his claim when Watty and Pony-Fence
+separated. Watty broke the news to his mates when he joined them
+underground.
+
+"Who do y' think's Michael's new mate?" he asked.
+
+George Woods rested on his pick.
+
+Cash looked up from the corner where he was crouched working a streak of
+green-fired stone from the red floor and lower wall of the mine.
+
+"Potch!" Watty threw out as George and Cash waited for the information.
+
+George swept the sweat from his forehead with a broad, steady gesture.
+"He was bound to do something nobody else'd 've thought of, Michael!" he
+said.
+
+"That's right," Watty replied. "Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant were
+saying," he went on, "he's had a pretty hard time, Potch, and it was
+about up to somebody to give him a leg-up ... some sort of a start in
+life. He may be all right ... on the other hand, there may not be much
+to him...."
+
+"That's right!" Cash muttered, beginning to work again.
+
+"But I reck'n he's all right, Potch." George swung his pick again. His
+blows echoed in the mine as they shattered the hard stone he was working
+on.
+
+Watty crawled off through a drive he was gouging in.
+
+At midday Michael and Charley had always eaten their lunches in the
+shelter where George Woods, Watty, and Cash Wilson ate theirs and
+noodled their opal. They wondered whether Michael would join them this
+day. He strolled over to the shelter with Potch beside him as Watty and
+Cash, with a billy of steaming tea on a stick between them, came from
+the open fire built round with stones, a few yards from the mine.
+
+"Potch and me's mates," Michael explained to George as he sat down and
+spread out his lunch, his smile whimsical and serene over the
+information. "But we're lookin' for a third to the company. I reck'n a
+lot of you chaps' luck is working on three. It's a lucky number, three,
+they say."
+
+Potch sat down beside him on the outer edge of the shelter's scrap of
+shade.
+
+"See you get one not afraid to do a bit of work, next time--that's all I
+say," Watty growled.
+
+The blood oozed slowly over Potch's heavy, quiet face. Nothing more was
+said of Charley, but the men who saw his face realised that Potch was
+not the insensible youth they had imagined.
+
+Michael had watched him when they were below ground, and was surprised
+at the way Potch set about his work. He had taken up his father's
+gouging pick and spider as if he had been used to take them every day,
+and he had set to work where Charley had left off. All the morning he
+hewed at a face of honeycombed sandstone, his face tense with
+concentration of energy, the sweat glistening on it as though it were
+oiled under the light of a candle in his spider, stuck in the red earth
+above him. Michael himself swung his pick in leisurely fashion, crumbled
+dirt, and knocked off for a smoke now and then.
+
+"Easy does it, Potch," he remarked, watching the boy's steady slogging.
+"We've got no reason to bust ourselves in this mine."
+
+At four o'clock they put their tools back against the wall and went
+above ground. Michael fell in with the Crosses, who were noodling two or
+three good-looking pieces of opal Archie had taken out during the
+afternoon, and Potch streaked away through the scrub in the direction of
+the Old Town.
+
+Michael wondered where he was going. There was a purposeful hunch about
+his shoulders as if he had a definite goal in view. Michael had intended
+asking his new mate to go down to the New Town and get the meat for
+their tea, but he went himself after he had yarned with Archie and Ted
+Cross for a while.
+
+When he returned to the hut, Potch was not there. Michael made a fire,
+unwrapped his steak, hung it on a hook over the fire, and spread out the
+pannikins, tin plates and knives and forks for his meal, putting a plate
+and pannikin for Potch. He was kneeling before the fire giving the steak
+a turn when Potch came in. Potch stood in the doorway, looking at
+Michael as doubtfully as a stray kitten which did not know whether it
+might enter.
+
+"That you, Potch?" Michael called.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+Michael got up from the fire and carried the grilled steak on a plate to
+the table.
+
+"Well, you were nearly late for dinner," he remarked, as he cut the
+steak in half and put a piece on the other plate for Potch. "You better
+come along and tuck in now ... there's a great old crowd down at
+Nancarrow's this evening. First time for nearly a month he's killed a
+beast, and everybody wants a bit of steak. Sam gave me this as a sort of
+treat; and it smells good."
+
+Potch came into the kitchen and sat on the box Michael had drawn up to
+the table for him.
+
+"Been bringing in the goats for Sophie," he jerked out, looking at
+Michael as if there were some need of explanation.
+
+"Oh, that was it, was it?" Michael replied, getting on with his meal.
+"Thought you'd flitted!"
+
+Potch met his smile with a shadowy one. A big, clumsy-looking fellow,
+with a dull, colourless face and dingy hair, he sat facing Michael, his
+eyes anxious, as though he would like to explain further, but was afraid
+to, or could not find words. His eyes were beautiful; but they were his
+father's eyes, and Michael recoiled to qualms of misgiving, a faint
+distrust, as he looked in them.
+
+It was Ed. Ventry, however, who gave Potch his first claim to the
+respect of men of the Ridge.
+
+"How's that boy of Charley Heathfield's?" was his first question when
+the coach came in from Budda, the following week.
+
+"All right," Newton said. "Why?"
+
+"He was near killed," Mr. Ventry replied. "Stopped us up at the Three
+Mile that morning I was taking Charley and Jun down. He was all for
+Charley stopping ... getting off the coach or something. I didn't get
+what it was all about--money Charley'd got from Michael, I think. That's
+the worst of bein' a bit hard of hearin' ... and bein' battered about by
+that yaller-bay horse I bought at Warria couple of months ago."
+
+"Potch tried to stop Charley getting away, did he?" Newton asked with
+interest.
+
+"He did," Ed. Ventry declared. "I pulled up, seein' something was wrong
+... but what does that god-damned blighter Charley do but give a lurch
+and grab me reins. Scared four months' growth out of the horses--and
+away they went. I'd a colt I was breakin' in on the off-side--and he
+landed Potch one--kicked him right out, I thought. As soon as I could, I
+pulled up, but I see Potch making off across the plain, and he didn't
+look like he was much hurt.... But it was a plucky thing he did, all
+right ... and it's the last time I'll drive Charley Heathfield. I told
+him straight. I'd as soon kill a man as not for putting a hand on me
+reins, like he done--on me own coach, too!"
+
+Snow-Shoes had drifted up to them as the coach stopped and Newton went
+out to it. He stood beside Peter Newton while Mr. Ventry talked, rolling
+tobacco. Snow-Shoes' eyes glimmered from one to the other of them when
+Ed. Ventry had given the reason for his inquiry.
+
+"Potch!" he murmured. "A little bit of potch!" And marched off down the
+road, a straight, stately white figure, on the bare track under the
+azure of the sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Give y' three," Watty said.
+
+"Take 'em." George Woods did not turn. He was carefully working round a
+brilliantly fired seam through black potch in the shin cracker he had
+been breaking through two or three days before.
+
+It was about lunch time, and Watty had crawled from his drive to the
+centre of the mine. Cash was still at work, crouched against a corner of
+the alley, a hundred yards or so from George; but he laid down his pick
+when he heard Watty's voice, and went towards him.
+
+"Who d'you think Michael's got as third man?"
+
+"Snow-Shoes?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Old Bill Olsen?"
+
+Watty could not contain himself to the third guess.
+
+"Rum-Enough!" he said.
+
+"He would." George chipped at the stone round his colour. "It was bound
+to be a lame dog, anyhow--and it might as well've been Rummy as
+anybody."
+
+"That's right," Cash conceded.
+
+"Bill Andrews told me," Watty said. "They've just broke through on the
+other side of that drive I'm in...."
+
+"It would be all right," he went on, "if Paul'd work for Michael like he
+did for Jun. But is Michael the man to make him? Not by long chalks.
+Potch is turning out all right, the boys say.... Michael says he works
+like a chow ... has to make him put in the peg ... but they'll both be
+havin' Rum-Enough on their hands before long--that's a sure thing."
+
+Watty's, George's, and Cash's mine was one of the best worked and best
+planned on the fields.
+
+Watty and Cash inspected the streak George was working, and speculated
+as to what it would yield. George leaned his pick against the wall,
+eager, too, about the chances of what the thread of fire glittering in
+the black potch would lead to. But he was proud of the mine as well as
+the stone it had produced. It represented the first attempt to work a
+claim systematically on the Ridge. George himself had planned and
+prospected every inch of it; and before he went above ground for the
+midday meal, he glanced about it as usual, affirming his pride and
+satisfaction; but his eyes fell on the broken white stone about his
+pitch.
+
+"As soon as we get her out, I'll shift that stuff," he said.
+
+When they went up for their meal, Michael did not join Watty, George,
+and Cash as usual. He spread out his lunch and sat with Paul and Potch
+in the shade of some wilgas beside his own mine. He knew that Rouminof
+would not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter, and that Paul and
+Potch would bring a certain reserve to the discussions of Ridge affairs
+which took place there.
+
+Potch saw Michael's eyes wander to where George was sitting yarning with
+his mates. He knew Michael would rather have been over there; and yet
+Michael seemed pleased to have got his own mine in working order again.
+He talked over ways of developing it with Paul, asking his opinion, and
+explaining why he believed the claim was good enough to stick to for a
+while longer, although very little valuable stone had come out of it.
+Potch wondered why his eyes rested on Paul with that faint smile of
+satisfaction.
+
+The Ridge discussed Michael and his new partnership backwards and forth,
+and back again. Michael knew that, and was as amused as the rest of the
+Ridge at the company he was keeping. Although he sat with his own mates
+at midday, he was as often as not with the crowd under Newton's veranda
+in the evening, discussing and settling the affairs of the Ridge and of
+the universe. After a while he was more like his old self than he had
+been for a long time--since Mrs. Rouminof's death--people said, when
+they saw him going about again with a quiet smile and whimsical twist to
+his mouth.
+
+The gossips had talked a good deal about Michael and Mrs. Rouminof, but
+neither she nor he had bothered their heads about the gossips.
+
+Michael and Mrs. Rouminof had often been seen standing and talking
+together when she was going home from the New Town with stores, or when
+Michael was coming in from his hut. He had usually walked back along the
+road with her, she for the most part, if it was in the evening, with no
+hat on; he smoking the stubby black pipe that was rarely out of his
+mouth. There was something in the way Mrs. Rouminof walked beside
+Michael, in the way her hair blew out in tiny strands curling in the
+wind and taking stray glints of light, in the way she smiled with a
+vague underlying sweetness when she looked at Michael; there was
+something in the way Michael slouched and smoked beside Mrs. Rouminof,
+too, which made their meeting look more than any mere ordinary talking
+and walking home together of two people. That was what Mrs. Watty Frost
+said.
+
+Mrs. Watty believed it was her duty in life to maintain the prejudices
+of respectable society in Fallen Star township. She had a constitutional
+respect for authority in whatever form it manifested itself. She stood
+for washing on Monday, spring-cleaning, keeping herself to herself, and
+uncompromising hostility to anything in the shape of a new idea which
+threatened the old order of domesticity on the Ridge. And she let
+everybody know it. She never went into the one street of the township
+even at night without a hat on, and wore gloves whenever she walked
+abroad. A little woman, with a mean, sour face, wrinkled like a walnut,
+and small, bead-bright eyes, Mrs. Watty was one of those women who are
+all energy and have no children to absorb their energies. She put all
+her energy into resentment of the Ridge and the conditions Watty had
+settled down to so comfortably and happily. She sighed for shops and a
+suburb of Sydney, and repeatedly told Watty how nice it would be to have
+a little milk shop near Sydney like her father and mother had had.
+
+But Watty would not hear of the milk shop. He loved the Ridge, and the
+milk shop was an evergreen bone of contention between him and his wife.
+The only peace he ever got was when Mrs. Watty went away to Sydney for a
+holiday, or he went with her, because she would rarely go away without
+him. She could not be happy without Watty, people said. She had no one
+to growl to and let off her irritation about things in general at, if he
+were not there. Watty grew fat, and was always whistling cheerily,
+nevertheless. Mrs. Watty cooked like an archangel, he said; and, to give
+her her due, the men admitted that although she had never pretended to
+approve of the life they led, Mrs. Watty had been a good wife to Watty.
+
+But everybody, even Mrs. Watty, was as pleased as if a little fortune
+had come to them, when, towards the end of their first week, Michael and
+his company came on a patch of good stone. Michael struck it, following
+the lead he had been working for some time, and, although not wonderful
+in colour or quality, the opal cut out at about ten ounces and brought
+L3 an ounce. Michael was able to wipe out some of his grocery score, so
+was Paul, and Potch had money to burn.
+
+Paul was very pleased with himself about it. The men began to call him a
+mascot and to say he had brought Michael luck, as he had Jun Johnson.
+There was no saying how the fortunes of the new partnership might
+flourish, if he stuck to it. Paul, responding to the expressions of
+goodwill and the inspiration of being on opal, put all his childish and
+bullocky energy into working with Michael and Potch.
+
+He still told everybody who would listen to him the story of the
+wonderful stones he had found when he was working with Jun, and how they
+had been stolen from him. They grew in number, value, and size every
+time he spoke of them. And he wailed over what he had been going to do,
+and what selling the stones would have meant to him and to Sophie. But
+the partnership was working better than anybody had expected, and people
+began to wonder whether, after all, Michael had done so badly for
+himself with his brace of dead-beat mates.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+In a few weeks thought of the robbery had ceased greatly to disturb
+anybody. Michael settled down to working with his new mates, and the
+Ridge accepted the new partnership as the most natural thing in the
+world.
+
+Life on the Ridge is usually as still as an inland lake. The settlement
+is just that, a lake of life, in the country of wide plains stretching
+westwards for hundreds on hundreds of miles, broken only by shingly
+ridges to the sea, and eastwards, through pastoral districts, to the
+coastal ranges, and the seaboard with its busy towns, ports, and cities.
+
+In summer the plains are dead and dry; in a drought, deserts. The great
+coolebahs standing with their feet in the river ways are green, and
+scatter tattered shade. Their small, round leaves flash like mirrors in
+the sun, and when the river water vanishes from about their feet, they
+hold themselves in the sandy shallow bed of the rivers as if waiting
+with imperturbable faith for the return of the waters. The surface of
+the dry earth cracks. There are huge fissures where the water lay in
+clayey hollows during the winter and spring. Along the stock routes and
+beside the empty water-holes, sheep and cattle lie rotting. Their
+carcasses, disembowelled by the crows, put an odour of putrefaction in
+the air. The sky burns iron-grey with heat. The dust rises in heavy
+reddish mist about stockmen or cattle on the roads.
+
+But after the rains, in the winter or spring of a good season, the seeds
+break sheath in a few hours; they sprout over-night, and a green mantle
+is flung over the old earth which a few days before was as dead and dry
+as a desert. In a little time the country is a flowering wilderness.
+Trefoil, crow's-foot, clover, mallow, and wild mustard riot, tangling
+and interweaving. The cattle browse through them lazily; stringing out
+across the flowering fields, they look in the distance no more than
+droves of mice; their red and black backs alone are visible above the
+herbage. In places, wild candytuft in blossom spreads a quilt of palest
+lavender in every direction on a wide circling horizon. Darling pea, the
+colour of violets and smelling like them, threads through the candytuft
+and lies in wedges, magenta and dark purple against the sky-line, a
+hundred miles farther on. The sky is a wash of pale, exquisite blue,
+which deepens as it rises to the zenith. The herbage glows beneath it,
+so clear and pure is the light.
+
+Farther inland, for miles, bachelor's buttons paint the earth raw gold.
+Not a hair's breadth of colour shows on the plains except the dull red
+of the road winding through them and the blue of the sky overhead. Paper
+daisies fringe the gold, and then they lie, white as snow, for miles,
+under the bare blue sky. Sometimes the magenta, purple, lavender, gold
+and white of the herbage and wild flowers merge and mingle, and a
+tapestry of incomparable beauty--a masterpiece of the Immortals--is
+wrought on the bare earth.
+
+During the spring and early summer of a good season, the air is filled
+with the wild, thymey odour of herbs, and the dry, musky fragrance of
+paper daisies. The crying of lambs, the baa-ing of ewes, and the piping
+of mud-larks--their thin, silvery notes--go through the clear air and
+are lost over the flowering land and against the blue sky.
+
+Winter is rarely more than a season of rains on the Ridge. Cold winds
+blow from the inland plains for a week or two. There are nights of frost
+and sparkling stars. People shiver and crouch over their fires; but the
+days have rarely more than a fresh tang in the air.
+
+The rains as often as not are followed by floods. After a few days'
+steady downpour, the shallow rivers and creeks on the plains overflow,
+and their waters stretch out over the plains for thirteen, fourteen, and
+sometimes twenty miles. Fords become impassable; bridges are washed
+away. Fallen Star Ridge is cut off from the rest of the world until the
+flood waters have soaked into the earth, as they do after a few days,
+and the coach can take to the road again.
+
+As spring passes into summer, the warmth of the sunshine loses its
+mildness, and settles to a heavy taciturnity. The light, losing its
+delicate brilliance, becomes a bared sword-blade striking the eyes.
+Everything shrinks from the full gaze and blaze of the sun. Eyes ache,
+the brain reels with the glare; mirages dance on the limitless horizons.
+The scorched herbage falls into dust; water is drawn off from rivers and
+water-holes. All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of
+iron.
+
+Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the
+glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the
+other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze
+of a dust storm.
+
+Ridge folk take the heat as primitive people do most acts of God, as a
+matter of course, with stiff-lipped hardihood, which makes complaint the
+manifestation of a poor spirit. They meet their difficulties with a
+native humour which gives zest to flagging energies. Their houses, with
+roofs whitened to throw off the heat, the dumps of crumbling white clay,
+and the iron roofs of the billiard parlour, the hotel, and Watty Frost's
+new house at the end of the town, shimmer in the intense light. At a
+little distance they seem all quivering and dancing together.
+
+Men like Michael, the Crosses, George Woods, Watty, and women like
+Maggie Grant and Martha M'Cready, who had been on the Ridge a long time,
+become inured to the heat. At least, they say that they "do not mind
+it." No one hears a growl out of them, even when water is scarce and
+flies and mosquitoes a plague. Their good spirits and grit keep the
+community going through a trying summer. But even they raise their faces
+to heaven when an unexpected shower comes, or autumn rains fall a little
+earlier than usual.
+
+In the early days, before stations were fenced, Bill M'Gaffy, a Warria
+shepherd, grazing flocks on the plains, declared he had seen a star fall
+on the Ridge. When he went into the station he showed the scraps of marl
+and dark metallic stone he had picked up near where the star had fallen,
+to James Henty, who had taken up Warria Station. The Ridge lay within
+its boundary. James Henty had turned them over curiously, and surmised
+that some meteoric stone had fallen on the Ridge. The place had always
+been called Fallen Star Ridge after that; but opal was not found there,
+and it did not begin to be known as the black opal field until several
+years later.
+
+In the first days of the rush to the Ridge, men of restless, reckless
+temperament had foregathered at the Old Town. There had been wild nights
+at the shanty. But the wilder spirits soon drifted away to Pigeon Creek
+and the sapphire mines, and the sober and more serious of the miners had
+settled to life on the new fields.
+
+The first gathering of huts on the clay pan below the Ridge was known as
+the Old Town; but it had been flooded so often, that, after people had
+been washed out of their homes, and had been forced to take to the Ridge
+for safety two or three times, it was decided to move the site of the
+township to the brow of the Ridge, above the range of the flood waters
+and near the new rush, where the most important mines on the field
+promised to be.
+
+A year or two ago, a score or so of bark and bag huts were ranged on
+either side of the wide, unmade road space overgrown with herbage, and a
+smithy, a weather-board hotel with roof of corrugated iron, a billiard
+parlour, and a couple of stores, comprised the New Town. A wild cherry
+tree, gnarled and ancient, which had been left in the middle of the road
+near the hotel, bore the news of the district and public notices, nailed
+to it on sheets of paper. A little below the hotel, on the same side,
+Chassy Robb's store served as post-office, and the nearest approach to a
+medicine shop in the township. Opposite was the Afghan's emporium. And
+behind the stores and the miners' huts, everywhere, were the dumps
+thrown up from mines and old rushes.
+
+There was no police station nearer than fifty miles, and although
+telegraph now links the New Town with Budda, the railway town,
+communication with it for a long time was only by coach once or twice a
+week; and even now all the fetching and carrying is done by a four or
+six horse-coach and bullock-wagons. The community to all intents and
+purposes governs itself according to popular custom and popular opinion,
+the seat of government being Newton's big, earthen-floored bar, or the
+brushwood shelters near the mines in which the men sit at midday to eat
+their lunches and noodle--, go over, snip, and examine--the opal they
+have taken out of the mines during the morning.
+
+They hold their blocks of land by miner's right, and their houses are
+their own. They formally recognise that they are citizens of the
+Commonwealth and of the State of New South Wales, by voting at elections
+and by accepting the Federal postal service. Some few of them, as well
+as Newton and the storekeepers, pay income tax as compensation for those
+privileges; but beyond that the Ridge lives its own life, and the
+enactments of external authority are respected or disregarded as best
+pleases it.
+
+A sober, easy-going crowd, the Ridge miners do not trouble themselves
+much about law. They have little need of it. They live in accord with
+certain fundamental instincts, on terms of good fellowship with each
+other.
+
+"To go back on a mate," is recognised as the major crime of the Ridge
+code.
+
+Sometimes, during a rush, the wilder spirits who roam from one mining
+camp to another in the back-country, drift back, and "hit things up" on
+the Ridge, as the men say. But they soon drift away again. Sometimes, if
+one of them strikes a good patch of opal and outstays his kind, as often
+as not he sinks into the Ridge life, absorbs Ridge ways and ideas, and
+is accepted into the fellowship of men of the Ridge. There is no
+formality about the acceptance. It just happens naturally, that if a man
+identifies himself with the Ridge principle of mateship, and will stand
+by it as it will stand by him, he is recognised by Ridge men as one of
+themselves. But if his ways and ideas savour of those the Ridge has
+broken from, he remains an outsider, whatever good terms he may seem to
+be on with everybody.
+
+Sometimes a rush leaves a shiftless ne'er-do-well or two for the Ridge
+to reckon with, but even these rarely disregard the Ridge code. If
+claims are ratted it is said there are strangers about, and the miners
+deal with rats according to their own ideas of justice. On the last
+occasion it was applied, this justice had proved so effectual that there
+had been no repetition of the offence.
+
+Ridge miners find happiness in the sense of being free men. They are
+satisfied in their own minds that it is not good for a man to work all
+day at any mechanical toil; to use himself or allow anyone else to use
+him like a working bullock. A man must have time to think, leisure to
+enjoy being alive, they say. Is he alive only to work? To sleep worn out
+with toil, and work again? It is not good enough, Ridge men say. They
+have agreed between themselves that it is a fair thing to begin work
+about 6.30 or 7 o'clock and knock off about four, with a couple of hours
+above ground at noon for lunch--a snack of bread and cheese and a cup of
+tea.
+
+At four o'clock they come up from the mines, noodle their opal, put on
+their coats, smoke and yarn, and saunter down to the town and their
+homes. And it is this leisure end of the day which has given life on the
+Ridge its tone of peace and quiet happiness, and has made Ridge miners
+the thoughtful, well-informed men most of them are.
+
+To a man they have decided against allowing any wealthy man or body of
+wealthy men forming themselves into a company to buy up the mines, put
+the men on a weekly wage, and work them, as the opal blocks at Chalk
+Cliffs had been worked. There might be more money in it, there would be
+a steadier means of livelihood; but the Ridge miners will not hear of
+it.
+
+"No," they say; "we'll put up with less money--and be our own masters."
+
+Most of them worked on Chalk Cliffs' opal blocks, and they realised in
+the early days of the new field the difference between the conditions
+they had lived and worked under on the Cliffs and were living and
+working under on the Ridge, where every man was the proprietor of his
+own energies, worked as long as he liked, and was entitled to the full
+benefit of his labour. They had yarned over these differences of
+conditions at midday in the shelters beside the mines, discussed them in
+the long evenings at Newton's, and without any committees, documents, or
+bond--except the common interest of the individual and of the
+fraternity--had come to the conclusion that at all costs they were going
+to remain masters of their own mines.
+
+Common thought and common experience were responsible for that
+recognition of economic independence as the first value of their new
+life together. Michael Brady had stood for it from the earliest days of
+the settlement. He had pointed out that the only things which could give
+joy in life, men might have on the Ridge, if they were satisfied to find
+their joy in these things, and not look for it in enjoyment of the
+superficial luxuries money could provide. Most of the real sources of
+joy were every man's inheritance, but conditions of work, which wrung
+him of energy and spirit, deprived him of leisure to enjoy them until he
+was too weary to do more than sleep or seek the stimulus of alcohol.
+Besides, these conditions recruited him with the merest subsistence for
+his pains, very often--did not even guarantee that--and denied him the
+capacity to appreciate the real sources of joy. But the beauty of the
+world, the sky, and the stars, spring, summer, the grass, and the birds,
+were for every man, Michael said. Any and every man could have immortal
+happiness by hearing a bird sing, by gazing into the blue-dark depths of
+the sky on a starry night. No man could sell his joy of these things. No
+man could buy them. Love is for all men: no man can buy or sell love.
+Pleasure in work, in jolly gatherings with friends, peace at the end of
+the day, and satisfaction of his natural hungers, a man might have all
+these things on the Ridge, if he were content with essentials.
+
+Ridge miners' live fearlessly, with the magic of adventure in their
+daily lives, the prospect of one day finding the great stone which is
+the grail of every opal-miner's quest. They are satisfied if they get
+enough opal to make a parcel for a buyer when he puts up for a night or
+two at Newton's. A young man who sells good stones usually goes off to
+Sydney to discover what life in other parts of the world is like, and to
+take a draught of the gay life of cities. A married man gives his wife
+and children a trip to the seaside or a holiday in town. But all drift
+back to the Ridge when the taste of city life has begun to cloy, or when
+all their money is spent. Once an opal miner, always an opal miner, the
+Ridge folk say.
+
+Among the men, only the shiftless and more worthless are not in sympathy
+with Ridge ideas, and talk of money and what money will buy as the
+things of first value in life. They describe the Fallen Star township as
+a God-forsaken hole, and promise each other, as soon as their luck has
+turned, they will leave it for ever, and have the time of their lives in
+Sydney.
+
+Women like Maggie Grant share their husband's minds. They read what the
+men read, have the men's vision, and hold it with jealous enthusiasm.
+Others, women used to the rough and simple existence of the
+back-country, are satisfied with the life which gives them a husband,
+home, and children. Those who sympathise with Mrs. Watty Frost regard
+the men's attitude as more than half cussedness, sheer selfishness or
+stick-in-the-mudness; and the more worthy and respectable they are, the
+more they fret and fume at the earthen floors and open hearths of the
+bark and bagging huts they live in, and pine for all the kick-shaws of
+suburban villas. The discontented women are a minority, nevertheless.
+Ridge folk as a whole have set their compass and steer the course of
+their lives with unconscious philosophy, and yet a profound conviction
+as to the rightness of what they are doing.
+
+And the Ridge, which bears them, stands serenely under blue skies the
+year long, rising like a backbone from the plains that stretch for
+hundreds of miles on either side. A wide, dusty road crosses the plains.
+The huts of the Three Mile and Fallen Star crouch beside it, and
+everywhere on the rusty, shingle-strewn slopes of the Ridge, are the
+holes and thrown-up heaps of white and raddled clay or broken
+sandstone--traces of the search for that "ecstasy in the heart of
+gloom," black opal, which the Fallen Star earth holds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Darling pea was lying in purple and magenta patches through the long
+grass on the tank paddock when Sophie went with Ella and Mirry Flail to
+gather wild flowers there.
+
+Wild flowers did not grow anywhere on Fallen Star as they did in the
+tank paddock. It was almost a place of faery to children of the Ridge.
+The little ones were not allowed to go there by themselves for fear they
+might fall into the waterhole which lay like a great square lake in the
+middle of it, its steep, well-set-up banks of yellow clay, ruled with
+the precision of a diagram in geometry. The water was almost as yellow
+as the banks, thick and muddy looking; but it was good water, nothing on
+earth the matter with it when you had boiled it and the sediment had
+been allowed to settle, everybody on Fallen Star Ridge was prepared to
+swear. It had to be drawn up by a pump which was worked by a donkey
+engine, Sam Nancarrow, and his old fat roan draught mare, and carted to
+the township when rain-water in the iron tanks beside the houses in
+Fallen Star gave out.
+
+During a dry season, or a very hot summer, all hands turned out to roof
+the paddock tank with tarpaulins to prevent evaporation as far as
+possible and so conserve the township's water supply. On a placard
+facing the roadway a "severe penalty" was promised to anyone using it
+without permission or making improper use of it.
+
+Ella and Mirry were gathering sago flower--"wild sweet Alice," as they
+called candytuft--yellow eye-bright, tiny pink starry flowers,
+bluebells, small lavender daisies, taller white ones, and yellow
+daisies, as well as Darling pea; but Sophie picked only long, trailing
+stalks of the pea. She had as many as she could hold when she sat down
+to arrange them into a tighter bunch.
+
+Mirry and Ella Flail had always been good friends of Sophie's. Potch and
+she had often gone on excursions with them, or to the swamp to cart
+water when it was scarce and very dear in the township. And since Potch
+had gone to work Sophie had no one to go about with but Mirry and Ella.
+She pleased their mother by trying to teach them to read and write, and
+they went noodling together, or gathering wild flowers. Sophie was three
+or four years older than Mirry, who was the elder of the two Flails; she
+felt much older since her mother's death nearly a year ago, and in the
+black dress she had worn since then. She was just seventeen, and had put
+her hair up into a knot at the back of her head. That made her feel
+older, too. But she still liked to go for walks and wanderings with Ella
+and Mirry. They knew so much about the birds and flowers, the trees, and
+the ways of all the wild creatures: they were such wild creatures
+themselves.
+
+They came running to her, crying excitedly, their hands filled with
+flowers, shedding them as they ran. Then, collapsing in the grass beside
+Sophie, Mirry rolled over on her back and gazed up into the sky. Ella,
+squatting on her thin, sunburnt little sticks of legs, was arranging her
+flowers and glancing every now and then at Sophie with shy, loving
+glances.
+
+Sophie wondered why she had nothing of her old joyous zest in their
+enterprises together. She used to be as wild and happy as Mirry and Ella
+on an afternoon like this. But there was something of the shy, wild
+spirit of a primitive people about Mirry and Ella, she remembered, some
+of their blood, too. One of their mother's people, it was said, had been
+a native of one of the river tribes.
+
+Mirry had her mother's beautiful dark eyes, almost green in the light,
+and freckled with hazel, and her pale, sallow skin. Ella, younger and
+shyer, was more like her father. Her skin was not any darker than
+Sophie's, and her eyes blue-grey, her features delicate, her hair
+golden-brown that glinted in the sun.
+
+"Sing to us, Sophie," Mirry said.
+
+Sophie often sang to them when she and Ella and Mirry were out like
+this. As she sat with them, dreaming in the sunshine, she sang almost
+without any conscious effort; she just put up her chin, and the melodies
+poured from her. Hearing her voice, as it ran in ripples and eddies
+through the clear, warm air, hung and quivered and danced again,
+delighted her.
+
+Ella and Mirry listened in a trance of awe, reverence, and admiration.
+Sophie had a dim vision of them, wide-eyed and still, against the tall
+grass and flowers.
+
+"My! You can sing, Sophie! Can't she, Ella?"
+
+Ella nodded, gazing at Sophie with eyes of worshipping love.
+
+"They say you're going away with your father ... and you're going to be
+a great singer, Sophie," Mirry said.
+
+"Yes," Sophie murmured tranquilly, "I am."
+
+A bevy of black and brown birds flashed past them, flew in a wide
+half-circle across the paddock, and alighted on a dead tree beyond the
+fence.
+
+"Look, look!" Mirry started to her feet. "A happy family! I wonder, are
+the whole twelve there?"
+
+She counted the birds, which were calling to each other with little
+shrill cries.
+
+"They're all there!" she announced. "Twelve of them. Mother says in some
+parts they call them the twelve apostles. Sing again, Sophie," she
+begged.
+
+Ella smiled at Sophie. Her lips parted as though she would like to have
+said that, too; but only her eyes entreated, and she went on putting her
+flowers together.
+
+As she sang, Sophie watched a pair of butterflies, white with black
+lines and splashes of yellow and scarlet on their wings, hovering over
+the flowered field of the paddock. She was so lost in her singing and
+watching the butterflies, and the children were so intent listening to
+her, that they did not hear a horseman coming slowly towards them along
+the track. As he came up to them, Sophie's rippling notes broke and fell
+to earth. Ella saw him first, and was on her feet in an instant. Mirry
+and she, their wild instinct asserting itself, darted away and took
+cover behind the trunks of the nearest trees.
+
+Sophie looked after them, wondering whether she would follow them as she
+used to; but she felt older and more staid now than she had a year ago.
+She stood her ground, as the man, who was leading his horse, came to a
+standstill before her.
+
+She knew him well enough, Arthur Henty, the only son of old Henty of
+Warria Station. She had seen him riding behind cattle or sheep on the
+roads across the plains for years. Sometimes when Potch and she had met
+him riding across the Ridge, or at the swamp, he had stopped to talk to
+them. He had been at her mother's funeral, too; but as he stood before
+her this afternoon, Sophie seemed to be seeing him for the first time.
+
+A tall, slightly-built young man, in riding breeches and leggings, a
+worn coat, and as weathered a felt hat as any man on the Ridge wore, his
+clothes the colour of dust on the roads, he stood before her, smiling
+slightly. His face was dark in the shadow of his hat, but the whole of
+him, cut against the sunshine, had gilded outlines. And he seemed to be
+seeing Sophie for the first time, too. She had jumped up and drawn back
+from the track when the Flails ran away. He could not believe that this
+tall girl in the black dress was the queer, elfish-like girl he had seen
+running about the Ridge, bare-legged, with feet in goat-skin sandals,
+and in the cemetery on the Warria road, not much more than a year ago.
+Her elfish gaiety had deserted her. It was the black dress gave her face
+the warm pallor of ivory, he thought, made her look staider, and as if
+the sadness of all it symbolised had not left her. But her eyes,
+strange, beautiful eyes, the green and blue of opal, with black rings on
+the irises and great black pupils, had still the clear, unconscious gaze
+of youth; her lips the sweet, sucking curves of a child's.
+
+They stood so, smiling and staring at each other, a spell of silence on
+each.
+
+Sophie had dropped half her flowers as she sprang up at the sound of
+someone approaching. She had clutched a few in one hand; the rest lay on
+the grass about her, her hat beside them. Henty's eyes went to the trees
+round which Mirry and Ella were peeping.
+
+"They're wild birds, aren't they?" he said.
+
+Sophie smiled. She liked the way his eyes narrowed to slits of sunshine
+as he smiled.
+
+"Are you going to sing, again?" he asked hesitatingly.
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+"My mother's awfully fond of that stuff," Henty said, looking at the
+Darling pea Sophie had in her hand. "We haven't got any near the
+homestead. I came into the paddock to get some for her."
+
+Sophie held out her bunch.
+
+"Not all of it," he said.
+
+"I can get more," she said.
+
+He took the flowers, and his vague smile changed to one of shy and
+subtle understanding. Ella and Mirry found courage to join Sophie.
+
+"Where's Potch?" Henty asked.
+
+"He's working with Michael," Sophie said.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, and stood before her awkwardly, not knowing what to
+talk about.
+
+He was still thinking how different she was to the little girl he had
+seen chasing goats on the Ridge no time before, and wondering what had
+changed her so quickly, when Sophie stooped to pick up her hat. Then he
+saw her short, dark hair twisted up into a knot at the back of her head.
+Feeling intuitively that he was looking at the knot she was so proud of,
+Sophie put on her hat quickly. A delicate colour moved on her neck and
+cheeks. Arthur Henty found himself looking into her suffused eyes and
+smiling at her smile of confusion.
+
+"Well, we must be going now," Sophie said, a little breathlessly.
+
+Henty said that he was going into the New Town and would walk along part
+of the way with her. He tucked the flowers Sophie had given him into his
+saddle-bag, and she and the children turned down the track. Ella, having
+found her tongue, chattered eagerly. Arthur Henty strolled beside them,
+smoking, his reins over his arm. Mirry wanted to ride his horse.
+
+"Nobody rides this horse but me," Henty said. "She'd throw you into the
+middle of next week."
+
+"I can ride," Mirry said; "ride like a flea, the boys say."
+
+She was used to straddling any pony or horse her brothers had in the
+yard, and they had a name as the best horse-breakers in the district.
+
+Henty laughed. "But you couldn't ride Beeswing," he said. "She doesn't
+let anybody but me ride her. You can sit on, if you like; she won't mind
+that so long as I've got hold of her."
+
+The stirrup was too high for Mirry to reach, so he picked her up and put
+her across the saddle. The mare shivered and shrank under the light
+shock of Mirry's landing upon her, but Arthur Henty talked to her and
+rubbed her head soothingly.
+
+"It's all right ... all right, old girl," he muttered. "Think it was one
+of those stinging flies? But it isn't, you see. It's only Mirry Flail.
+She says she's a flea of a rider. But you'd learn her, wouldn't you, if
+you got off with her by yourself?"
+
+Ella giggled softly, peering at Mirry and Henty and at the beautiful
+golden-red chestnut he was leading. Ed. Ventry had put Sophie on his
+coach horses sometimes. He had let her go for a scamper with Potch on an
+old horse or a likely colt now and then; but she knew she did not ride
+well--not as Mirry rode.
+
+They walked along the dusty road together when they had left the tank
+paddock, Mirry chattering from Beeswing's back, Sophie, with Ella
+clinging to one hand, on the other side of Henty. But Mirry soon tired
+of riding a led horse at a snail's pace. When a sulphur-coloured
+butterfly fluttered for a few minutes over a wild tobacco plant, she
+slid from the saddle, on the far side, and was off over the plains to
+have another look at the butterfly.
+
+Ella was too shy or too frightened to get on the chestnut, even with
+Henty holding her bridle.
+
+"How about you, Sophie?" Arthur Henty asked.
+
+Sophie nodded, but before he could help her she had put her foot into
+the stirrup and swung into the saddle herself. Beeswing shivered again
+to the new, strange weight on her back. Henty held her, muttering
+soothingly. They went on again.
+
+After a while, with a shy glance, and as if to please him, Sophie began
+to sing, softly at first, so as not to startle the mare, and then
+letting her voice out so that it rippled as easily and naturally as a
+bird's. Henty, walking with a hand on the horse's bridle beside her,
+heard again the song she had been singing in the tank paddock.
+
+Ella was supposed to be carrying Sophie's flowers. She did not know she
+had dropped nearly half of them, and that they were lying in a trail all
+along the dusty road.
+
+Henty did not speak when Sophie had finished. His pipe had gone out, and
+he put it in his pocket. The stillness of her audience of two was so
+intense that to escape it Sophie went on singing, and the chestnut did
+not flinch. She went quietly to the pace of the song, as though she,
+too, were enjoying its rapture and tenderness.
+
+Then through the clear air came a rattle of wheels and jingle of
+harness. Mirry, running towards them from the other side of the road,
+called eagerly:
+
+"It's the coach.... Mr. Ventry's got six horses in, and a man with him!"
+
+Six horses indicated that a person of some importance was on board the
+coach. Henty drew the chestnut to one side as the coach approached. Mr.
+Ventry jerked his head in Henty's direction when he passed and saw
+Arthur Henty with the Flail children and Sophie. The stranger beside him
+eyed, with a faint smile of amusement, the cavalcade, the girl in the
+black dress on the fine chestnut horse, the children with the flowers,
+and the young man standing beside them. The man on the coach was a
+clean-shaved, well-groomed, rather good-looking man of forty, or
+thereabouts, and his clothes and appearance proclaimed him a man of the
+world beyond the Ridge. His smile and stare annoyed Henty.
+
+"It's Mr. Armitage," Mirry said. "The young one. He's not as nice as the
+old man, my father says--and he doesn't know opal as well--but he gives
+a good price."
+
+They had reached the curve of the road where one arm turns to the town
+and the other goes over the plains to Warria. Sophie slipped from the
+horse.
+
+"We'll take the short cut here," she said.
+
+She stood looking at Arthur Henty for a moment, and in that moment Henty
+knew that she had sensed his thought. She had guessed he was afraid of
+having looked ridiculous trailing along the road with these children.
+Sophie turned away. The young Flails bounded after her. Henty could hear
+their laughter when he had ridden out some distance along the road.
+
+From the slope of a dump Sophie saw him--the chestnut and her rider
+loping into the sunset, and, looking after him, she finished her song.
+
+    "Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,
+     Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!
+     Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volera,
+     A fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sara!"
+
+     Dear name forever nursed in my memory thou shalt be,
+     For my heart first stirred to the delight of love for thee!
+     My thoughts and my desire will always be, dear name, toward thee,
+     And my last breath will be for thee, dear name.
+
+The long, sweet notes and rippled melody followed Arthur Henty over the
+plains in the quiet air of late afternoon. But the afternoon had been
+spoilt for him. He was self-conscious and ill at ease about it all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Mr. Armitage is up at Newton's!" Paul yelled to Michael, when he saw
+him at his back-door a few minutes after Sophie had given him the news.
+
+"Not the old man?" Michael inquired.
+
+"No, the young 'un."
+
+Word was quickly bruited over the fields that the American, one of the
+best buyers who came to the Ridge, had arrived by the evening coach. He
+invariably had a good deal of money to spend, and gave a better price
+than most of the local buyers.
+
+Dawe P. Armitage had visited Fallen Star Ridge from the first year of
+its existence as an opal field, and every year for years after that. But
+when he began to complain about aches and pains in his bones, which he
+refused to allow anybody to call rheumatism, and was assured he was well
+over seventy and that the long rail and sea journey from New York City
+to Fallen Star township were getting too much for him, he let his son,
+whom he had made a partner in his business, make the journey for him.
+John Lincoln Armitage had been going to the Ridge for two or three
+years, and although the men liked him well enough, he was not as popular
+with them as his father had been. And the old man, John Armitage said,
+although he was nearly crippled with rheumatism, still grudged him his
+yearly visit to the Ridge, and hated like poison letting anyone else do
+his opal-buying.
+
+Dawe Armitage had bought some of the best black opal found on the Ridge.
+He had been a hard man to deal with, but the men had a grudging
+admiration for him, a sort of fellow feeling of affection because of his
+oneness with them in a passion for black opal. A grim, sturdy old
+beggar, there was a certain quality about him, a gruff humour, sheer
+doggedness, strength of purpose, and dead honesty within his point of
+view, which kept an appreciative and kindly feeling for him in their
+hearts. They knew he had preyed on them; but he had done it bluntly,
+broadly, and in such an off-with-the-gloves-lads-style, that, after a
+good fight over a stone and price, they had sometimes given in to him
+for sheer amusement, and to let him have the satisfaction of thinking he
+had gained his point.
+
+Usually he set his price on a stone and would not budge from it. The
+gougers knew this, and if their price on a stone was not Dawe
+Armitage's, they did not waste breath on argument, except to draw the
+old boy and get some diversion from his way of playing them. If a man
+had a good stone and did not think anyone else was likely to give him
+his figure, sometimes he sold ten minutes before the coach Armitage was
+going down to town by, left Newton's. But, three or four times, when a
+stone had taken his fancy and a miner was obdurate, the old man, with
+his mind's eye full of the stone and the fires in its dazzling jet, had
+suddenly sent for it and its owner, paid his price, and pocketed the
+stone. He had wrapped up the gem, chuckling in defeat, and rejoicing to
+have it at any price. As a rule he made three or four times as much as
+he had given for opals he bought on the Ridge, but to Dawe Armitage the
+satisfaction of making money on a transaction was nothing like the joy
+of putting a coveted treasure into his wallet and driving off from
+Fallen Star with it.
+
+A gem merchant of considerable standing in the United States, Dawe
+Armitage's collection of opals was world famous. He had put black opal
+on the market, and had been the first to extol the splendour of the
+stones found on Fallen Star Ridge. So different they were from the opal
+found on Chalk Cliffs, or in any other part of the world, with the fires
+in jetty potch rather than in the clear or milky medium people were
+accustomed to, that at first timid and conventional souls were disturbed
+and repelled by them. "They felt," they said, "that there was something
+occultly evil about black opal." They had a curious fear and dread of
+the stones as talismans of evil. Dawe Armitage scattered the quakers
+like chaff with his scorn. They could not, he said, accept the
+magnificent pessimism of black opal. They would not rejoice with pagan
+abandonment in the beauty of those fires in black opal, realising that,
+like the fires of life, they owed their brilliance, their transcendental
+glory, to the dark setting. But every day the opals made worshippers of
+sightseers. They mesmerised beholders who came to look at them.
+
+When the coach rattled to a standstill outside the hotel, Peter Newton
+went to the door of the bar. He knew John Armitage by the size and shape
+of his dust-covered overalls. Armitage dismounted and pulled off his
+gloves. Peter Newton went to meet him.
+
+Armitage gripped his hand.
+
+"Mighty glad to see you, Newton," he said, "and glad to see the Ridge
+again. How are you all?"
+
+Newton smiled, giving him greeting in downright Ridge style.
+
+"Fine," he said. "Glad to see you, Mr. Armitage."
+
+When he got indoors, Armitage threw off his coat. He and Peter had a
+drink together, and then he went to have a wash and brush up before
+dinner. Mrs. Newton came from the kitchen; she was pleased to see Mr.
+Armitage, she said, and he shook hands with her and made her feel that
+he was really quite delighted to see her. She spent a busy hour or so
+making the best of her preparations for the evening meal, so that he
+might repeat his usual little compliments about her cooking. Armitage
+had his dinner in a small private sitting-room, and strolled out
+afterwards to the veranda to smoke and yarn with the men.
+
+He spent the evening with them there, and in the bar, hearing the news
+of the Ridge and gossiping genially. He had come all the way from Sydney
+the day before, spent the night in the train, and had no head for
+business that night, he said. When he yarned with them, Fallen Star men
+had a downright sense of liking John Armitage. He was a good sort, they
+told each other; they appreciated his way of talking, and laughed over
+the stories he told and the rare and racy Americanisms with which he
+flavoured his speech for their benefit.
+
+When he exerted himself to entertain and amuse them, they were as
+pleased with him as a pack of women. And John Lincoln Armitage pleased
+women, men of the Ridge guessed, the women of his own kind as well as
+the women of Fallen Star who had talked to him now and then. His eyes
+had a mild caress when they rested on a woman; it was not in the least
+offensive, but carried challenge and appeal--a suggestion of sympathy.
+He had a thousand little courtesies for women, the deference which comes
+naturally to "a man of the world" for a member of "the fair sex." Mrs.
+Newton was always flattered and delighted after a talk with him. He
+asked her advice about opals he had bought or was going to buy, and,
+although he did not make use of it very often, she was always pleased by
+his manner of asking. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Archie Cross both
+confessed to a partiality for Mr. Armitage, and even Mrs. Watty agreed
+that he was "a real nice man"; and when he was in the township Mrs.
+Henty and one of the girls usually drove over from the station and took
+him back to Warria to stay a day or two before he went back to Sydney on
+his return journey to New York.
+
+Armitage was very keen to know whether there had been any sensational
+finds on the Ridge during the year, and all about them. He wanted to
+know who had been getting good stuff, and said that he had bought Jun's
+stones in Sydney. The men exclaimed at that.
+
+"I was surprised to hear," John Armitage said, "what happened to the
+other parcel. You don't mean to say you think Charley Heathfield----?"
+
+"We ain't tried him yet," Watty remarked cautiously, "but the evidence
+is all against him."
+
+Rouminof thrust himself forward, eager to tell his story. Realising the
+proud position he might have been in this night with the opal-buyer if
+he had had his opals, tears gathered in his eyes as he went over it all
+again.
+
+Armitage listened intently.
+
+"Well, of all the rotten luck!" he exclaimed, when Paul had finished.
+"Have another whisky, Rouminof? But what I can't make out," he added,
+"is why, if he had the stones, Charley didn't come to me with them.... I
+didn't buy anything but Jun's stuff before I came up here ... and he
+just said it was half the find he was showing me. Nice bit of pattern in
+that big black piece, eh? If Charley had the stones, you'd think he'd
+'ve come along to me, or got Jun, or somebody to come along for him...."
+
+"I don't know about that." George Woods felt for his reasons. "He
+wouldn't want you--or anybody else to know he'd got them."
+
+"That's right," Watty agreed.
+
+"He's got them all right," Ted Cross declared. "You see, I seen him
+taking Rummy home that night--and he cleared out next morning."
+
+"I guess you boys know best." John Armitage sipped his whisky
+thoughtfully. "But I'm mad to get the rest of the stones. Tell you the
+truth, the old man hasn't been too pleased with my buying lately ... and
+it would put him in no end of a good humour if I could take home with me
+another packet of gems like the one I got from Jun. Jun knew I was keen
+to get the stones ... and I can't help thinking ... if he knew they were
+about, he'd put me in the way of getting them ... or them in my
+way--somehow. You don't think ... anybody else could have been on the
+job, and ... put it over on Charley, say...."
+
+His eyes went over the faces of the men lounging against the bar, or
+standing in groups about him. Michael was lifting his glass to drink,
+and, for the fraction of a second the opal-buyer's glance wavered on his
+face before it passed on.
+
+"Not likely," George Woods said dryly.
+
+Recognising the disfavour his suggestion raised, Armitage brushed it
+aside.
+
+"I don't think so, of course," he said.
+
+And although he did not speak to him, or even look at him closely again,
+John Armitage was thinking all the evening of the quiver, slight as the
+tremor of a moth's wing, on Michael's face, when that inquiry had been
+thrown out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Armitage was busy going over parcels of stone and bargaining with the
+men for the greater part of the next day. He was beginning to have more
+of Dawe Armitage's zest for the business; and, every time they met,
+Ridge men found him shrewder, keener. His manner was genial and
+easy-going with them; but there was a steel band in him somewhere, they
+were sure.
+
+The old man had been bluff, and as hard as nails; but they understood
+him better than his son. John Armitage, they knew, was only
+perfunctorily interested opal-buying at first; he had gone into it to
+please the old man, but gradually the thing had taken hold of him. He
+was not yet, however, anything like as good a judge of opal, and his
+last buying on the Ridge had displeased his father considerably. John
+Armitage had bought several parcels of good-looking opal; but one stone,
+which had cost L50 in the rough, was not worth L5 when it was cut. A
+grain of sand, Dawe Armitage swore he could have seen a mile away, went
+through it, and it cracked on the wheel. A couple of parcels had brought
+double what had been paid for them; but several stones John had given a
+good price for were not worth half the amount, his father had said.
+
+George Woods and Watty took John Armitage a couple of fine knobbies
+during the morning, and the Crosses had shown him a parcel containing
+two good green and blue stones with rippled lights; but they had more on
+the parcel than Armitage felt inclined to pay, remembering the stormy
+scene there had been with the old man over that last stone from Crosses'
+mine which had cracked in the cutter's hands. Towards the end of the day
+Mr. Armitage came to the conclusion, having gone over the stones the men
+brought him, and having bought all he fancied, that there was very
+little black opal of first quality about. He was meditating the fact,
+leaning back in his chair in the sitting-room Newton had reserved for
+him to see the gougers in, some pieces of opal, his scales and
+microscope on the table before him, when Michael knocked.
+
+Absorbed in his reflections, realising there would be little to show for
+the trouble and pains of his long journey, and reviewing a slowly
+germinating scheme and dream for the better output of opal from Fallen
+Star, John Armitage did not at first pay any attention to the knock.
+
+He had been thinking a good deal of Michael in connection with that
+scheme. Michael, he knew, would be his chief opponent, if ever he tried
+putting it into effect. When he had outlined his idea and vaguely formed
+plans to his father, Dawe Armitage would have nothing to do with them.
+He swept them aside uncompromisingly.
+
+"You don't know what you're up against," he said. "There isn't a man on
+the Ridge wouldn't fight like a pole-cat if you tried it on 'em. Give
+'em a word of it--and we quit partnership, see? They wouldn't stand for
+it--not for a second--and there'd be no more black opal for Armitage and
+Son, if they got any idea on the Ridge you'd that sort of notion at the
+back of your head."
+
+But John Armitage refused to give up his idea. He went to it as a dog
+goes to a planted bone--gnawed and chewed over it, contemplatively.
+
+He had made this trip to Fallen Star with little result, and he was sure
+a system of working the mines on scientific, up-to-date lines would
+ensure the production of more stone. He wanted to talk organisation and
+efficiency to men of the Ridge, to point out to them that organisation
+and efficiency were of first value in production, not realising Ridge
+men considered their methods both organised and efficient within their
+means and for their purposes.
+
+Michael knocked again, and Armitage called:
+
+"Come in!" When he saw who had come into the room, he rose and greeted
+Michael warmly.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Michael!" he said, with a sense of guilt at the thoughts
+Michael had interrupted. "I wondered what on earth had become of you.
+The old man gave me no end of messages, and there are a couple of
+magazines for you in my grip."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," Michael replied.
+
+"Well, I hope you've got some good stuff," Armitage said.
+
+Michael took the chair opposite to him on the other side of the table.
+"I haven't got much," he said.
+
+"I remember Newton told me you've been having rotten luck."
+
+"It's looked up lately," Michael said, the flickering wisp of a smile in
+his eyes. "The boys say Rummy's a luck-bringer.... He's working with me
+now, and we've been getting some nice stone."
+
+He took a small packet of opal from his pocket and put it on the table.
+It was wrapped in newspaper. He unfastened the string, turned back the
+cotton-wool in which the pieces of opal were packed, and spread them out
+for Armitage to look at.
+
+Armitage went over the stones. He put them, one by one, under his
+microscope, and held them to and from the light.
+
+"That's a nice bit of colour, Michael," he said, admiring a small piece
+of grey potch with a black strain which flashed needling rays of green
+and gold. "A little bit more of that, and you'd be all right, eh?"
+
+Michael nodded. "We're on a streak now," he said. "It ought to work out
+all right."
+
+"I hope it will." Armitage held the piece of opal to the light and moved
+it slowly. "Rouminof's working with you now--and Potch, they tell me?"
+
+Michael nodded.
+
+"Pretty hard on him, Charley's getting away with his stones like that!"
+
+John Armitage probed the quiet eyes of the man before him with a swift
+glance.
+
+"You're right there, Mr. Armitage," Michael said. "Harder on Paul than
+it would have been on anybody else. He's got the fever pretty bad."
+
+Armitage laughed, handling a stone thoughtfully.
+
+"I gave Jun a hundred pounds for his big stone. I'd give the same for
+the other--if I could lay my hands on it, though the boys say it wasn't
+quite as big, but better pattern."
+
+"That's right," Michael said.
+
+Silence lay between them for a moment.
+
+"What have you got on the lot, Michael?" Armitage asked, picking up the
+stones before him and going over them absent-mindedly.
+
+"A tenner," Michael said.
+
+Usually a gouger asked several pounds more than he expected to get. John
+Armitage knew that; Michael knew he knew it. Armitage played with the
+stones, hesitated as though his mind were not made up. There was not
+much more than potch and colour in the bundle. He went over the stones
+with the glass again.
+
+"Oh well, Michael," he said, "we're old friends. I won't haggle with
+you. Ten pounds--your own valuation."
+
+He would get twice as much for the parcel, but the price was a good one.
+Michael was surprised he had conceded it so easily.
+
+Armitage pulled out his cheque-book and pushed a box of cigars across
+the table. Michael took out his pipe.
+
+"If you don't mind, Mr. Armitage," he said, "I'm more at home with
+this."
+
+"Please yourself, Michael," Armitage murmured, writing his cheque.
+
+When Michael had put the cheque in his pocket, Armitage took a cigar,
+nipped and lighted it, and leaned back in his chair again.
+
+"Not much big stuff about, Michael," he remarked, conversationally.
+
+"George Woods had some good stones," Michael said.
+
+Armitage was not enthusiastic. "Pretty fair. But the old man will be
+better pleased with the stuff I got from Jun Johnson than anything else
+this trip.... I'd give a good deal to get the almond-shaped stone in
+that other parcel."
+
+Michael realised Mr. Armitage had said the same thing to him before. He
+wondered why he had said it to him--what he was driving at.
+
+"There were several good stones in Paul's parcel," he said.
+
+His clear, quiet eyes met John Armitage's curious, inquiring gaze. He
+was vaguely discomfited by Armitage's gaze, although he did not flinch
+from it. He wondered what Mr. Armitage knew, that he should look like
+that.
+
+"It's been hard on Rouminof," Armitage murmured again.
+
+Michael agreed.
+
+"After the boys making Jun shell out, too! It doesn't seem to have been
+much use, does it?"
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"And they say he was going to take that girl of his down to Sydney to
+have her trained as a singer. She can sing, too. But her mother,
+Michael--I heard her in _Dinorah_ ... when I was a little chap."
+Enthusiasm lighted John Armitage's face. "She was wonderful.... The old
+man says people were mad about her when she was in New York.... It was
+said, you know, she belonged to some aristocratic Russian family, and
+ran away with a rascally violinist--Rouminof. Can you believe it? ...
+Went on the stage to keep him.... But she couldn't stand the life. Soon
+after she was lost sight of.... I've often wondered how she drifted to
+Fallen Star. But she liked being here, the old man says."
+
+Michael nodded. There was silence between them a moment; then Michael
+rose to go. The opal-buyer got up too, and flung out his arms,
+stretching with relief to be done with his day's work.
+
+"I've been cooped in here all day," he said. "I'll come along with you,
+Michael. I'd like to have a look at the Punti Rush. Can you walk over
+there with me?"
+
+"'Course I can, Mr. Armitage," Michael said heartily.
+
+They walked out of the hotel and through the town towards the rush,
+where half a dozen new claims had been pegged a few weeks before.
+
+Snow-Shoes passed then going out of the town to his hut, swinging along
+the track and gazing before him with the eyes of a seer, his fine old
+face set in a dream, serene dignity in every line of his erect and
+slowly-moving figure.
+
+Armitage looked after him.
+
+"What a great old chap he is, Michael," he exclaimed. "You don't know
+anything about him ... who he is, or where he comes from, do you?"
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"How does he live?"
+
+"Noodles."
+
+"He's never brought me any stone."
+
+"Trades it with the storekeepers--though the boys do say"--Michael
+looked with smiling eyes after Snow-Shoes--"he may be a bit of a miser,
+loves opal more than the money it brings."
+
+Armitage's interest deepened. "There are chaps like that. I've heard the
+old man talk about a stone getting hold of a man sometimes--mesmerising
+him. I believe the old man's a bit like that himself, you know. There
+are two or three pieces of opal he's got from Fallen Star nothing on
+earth will induce him to part with. We wanted a stone for an Indian
+nabob's show tiara--something of that sort--not long ago. I fancied that
+big knobby we got from George Woods; do you remember? But the old man
+wouldn't part with it; not he! Said he'd see all the nabobs in the world
+in--Hades, before they got that opal out of him!"
+
+Michael laughed. The thought of hard-shelled old Dawe Armitage hoarding
+opals tickled him immensely.
+
+"Fact," Armitage continued. "He's got a couple of stones he's like a kid
+over--takes them out, rubs them, and plays with them. And you should
+hear him if I try to get them from him.... A packet of crackers isn't in
+it with the old man."
+
+"The boys'd like to hear that," Michael said.
+
+"There's no doubt about the fascination the stuff exercises," John
+Armitage went on. "You people say, once an opal-miner, always an
+opal-miner; but I say, once an opal-buyer, always an opal-buyer. I
+wasn't keen about this business when I came into it ... but it's got me
+all right. I can't see myself coming to this God-forsaken part of the
+world of yours for anything but black opal...."
+
+That expression, whimsical and enigmatic, which was never very far from
+them, had grown in Michael's eyes. He began to sense a motive in
+Armitage's seemingly casual talk, and to understand why the opal-buyer
+was so friendly.
+
+"The old man tells a story," Armitage continued, "of that robbery up at
+Blue Pigeon. You know the yarn I mean ... about sticking up a coach when
+there was a good parcel of opal on board. Somebody did the bush-ranging
+trick and got away with the opal.... The thief was caught, and the stuff
+put for safety in an iron safe at the post office. And sight of the
+opals corrupted one of the men in the post office.... He was caught ...
+and then a mounted trooper took charge of them. And the stuff bewitched
+him, too.... He tried to get away with it...."
+
+"That's right," Michael murmured serenely.
+
+Armitage eyed him keenly. He could scarcely believe the story he had got
+from Jun, that the second parcel of stones had been exchanged after
+Charley got them, or that they had been changed on Paul before Charley
+got them from him.
+
+Michael guessed Armitage was sounding him by talking so much of
+Rouminof's stones and the robbery. He wondered what Armitage
+knew--whether he knew anything which would attach him, Michael, to
+knowledge of what had become of Paul's stones. There was always the
+chance that Charley had recognised some of the opal in the parcel
+substituted for Paul's, although none of the scraps were significant
+enough to be remembered, Michael thought, and Charley was never keen
+enough to have taken any notice of the sun-flash and fragments of
+coloured potch they had taken out of the mine during the year. The brown
+knobby, which Michael had kept for something of a sentimental reason,
+because it was the first stone he had found on Fallen Star, Charley had
+never seen.
+
+But, probably, he remarked to himself, Armitage was only trying to get
+information from him because he thought that Michael Brady was the most
+likely man on the Ridge to know what had become of the stones, or to
+guess what might have become of them.
+
+As they walked and talked, these thoughts were an undercurrent in
+Michael's mind. And the undercurrent of John Lincoln Armitage's mind,
+through all his amiable and seemingly inconsequential gossip, was not
+whether Michael had taken the stones, but why he had, and what had
+become of them.
+
+Armitage could not, at first, bring himself to credit the half-formed
+suspicion which that quiver of Michael's face, when he had spoken of
+what Jun said, had given him. Yet they were all more or less mad, people
+who dealt with opal, he believed. It might not be for the sake of profit
+Michael had taken the stones, if he had taken them--there was still a
+shadow of doubt in his mind. John Armitage knew that any man on the
+Ridge would have knocked him down for harbouring such a thought. Michael
+was the little father, the knight without fear and without a stain, of
+the Ridge. He reflected that Michael had never brought him much stone.
+His father had often talked of Michael Brady and the way he had stuck to
+gouging opal with precious little luck for many years. The parcel he had
+sold that day was perhaps the best Michael had traded with Armitage and
+Son for a long time. John Armitage wondered if any man could work so
+long without having found good stuff, without having realised the hopes
+which had materialised for so many other men of the Ridge.
+
+They went over the new rush, inspected "prospects," and yarned with
+Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, who had pegged out a claim there.
+But as Armitage and he walked back to the town discussing the outlook of
+the new field and the colour and potch some of the men already had to
+show, Michael found himself in the undertow of an uneasy imagination. He
+protested to himself that he was unnecessarily apprehensive, that all
+Armitage was trying to get from him was any information which would
+throw light on the disappearance of Paul's stones. And Armitage was
+wondering whether Michael might not be an opal miser--whether the
+mysterious fires of black opal might not have eaten into his brain as
+they had into the brains of good men before him.
+
+If they had, and if he had found the flaw in Michael's armour, John
+Armitage realised that the way to fulfilment of his schemes for buying
+the mines and working them on up-to-date lines, was opened up. If
+Michael could be proved unfaithful to the law and ideals of Ridge, John
+Armitage believed the men's faith in the fabric of their common life
+would fall to pieces. He envisaged the eating of moths of doubt and
+disappointment into the philosophy of the Ridge, the disintegration of
+ideas which had held the men together, and made them stand together in
+matters of common interest and service, as one man. He had almost
+assured himself that if Michael was not the thief and hoarder of the
+lost opals, he at least knew something of them, when a ripple of
+laughter and gust of singing were flung into the air not far from them.
+
+To Armitage it was as though some blithe spirit was mocking the
+discovery he thought he had made, and the fruition it promised those
+secret hopes of his.
+
+"It's Sophie," Michael said.
+
+They had come across the Ridge to the back of the huts. The light was
+failing; the sky, from the earth upwards where the sunset had been, the
+frail, limpid green of a shallow lagoon, deepening to blue, darker than
+indigo. The crescent of a moon, faintly gilded, swung in the sky above
+the dark shapes of the huts which stood by the track to the old
+Flash-in-the-pan rush. The smoke of sandal-wood fires burning in the
+huts was in the air. A goat bell tinkled....
+
+Potch and Sophie were talking behind the hut somewhere; their
+exclamations, laughter, a phrase or two of the song Sophie was singing
+went through the quietness.
+
+And it was all this he wanted to change! John Armitage caught the
+revelation of the moment as he stood to listen to Sophie singing. He
+understood as he had never done what the Ridge stood for--association of
+people with the earth, their attachment to the primary needs of life,
+the joyous flight of youthful spirits, this quiet happiness and peace at
+evening when the work of the day was done.
+
+As he came from the dumps, having said good-night to Michael, he saw
+Sophie, a slight, girlish figure, on the track ahead of him. Her dress
+flickered and flashed through the trees beside the track; it was a
+wraithlike streak in the twilight. She was taking the milk down to
+Newton's, and singing to herself as she walked. John Armitage quickened
+his steps to overtake her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The visit of an opal-buyer ruffled ever so slightly the still surface of
+life on the Ridge. When Armitage had gone, he was talked of for a few
+days; the stones he had bought, the prices he had given for them, were
+discussed. Some of his sayings, and the stories he had told, were
+laughed over. Tricks of speech he had used, tried at first half in fun,
+were adopted and dropped into the vernacular of the mines.
+
+"Sure!" the men said as easily as an American; and sometimes, talking
+with each other: "You've got another think coming to you"; or, "See,
+you've got your nerve with you!"
+
+For a night or two Michael went over the books and papers John Armitage
+had brought him. At first he just glanced here and there through them,
+and then he began to read systematically, and light glimmered in his
+windows far into the night. He soaked the contents of two or three
+reviews and several newspapers before giving himself to a book on
+international finance in which old Armitage had written his name.
+
+Michael thrilled to the stimulus of the book, the intellectual
+excitement of the ideas it brought forth. He lived tumultuously within
+the four bare walls of his room, arguing with himself, the author, the
+world at large. Wrong and injustice enthroned, he saw in this book
+describing the complexities of national and international systems of
+finance, the subtle weaving and interweaving of webs of the
+money-makers.
+
+This was not the effect Dawe Armitage had expected his book to have; he
+had expected to overawe and daze Michael with its impressive arraignment
+of figures and its subtle and bewildering generalisations on credit and
+foreign exchange. Michael's mind had cut through the fog raised by the
+financier's jargon to the few small facts beneath it all. Neither dazed
+nor dazzled, his brain had swung true to the magnetic meridian of his
+faith. Far from the book having shown him the folly and futility of any
+attempt against the Money Power, as Dawe Armitage, in a moment of
+freakish humour had imagined it might, it had filled him with such an
+intensity of fury that for a moment he believed he alone could
+accomplish the regeneration of the world; that like St. Michael of old
+he would go forth and slay the dragon, this chimera which was ravaging
+the world, drawing the blood, beauty, and joy of youth, the peace and
+wisdom of age; breaking manhood and womanhood with its merciless claws.
+
+But falling back on a consciousness of self, as with broken wings he
+realised he was neither archangel, nor super-man, but Michael Brady, an
+ordinary, ill-educated man who read and dreamed a great deal, and gouged
+for black opal on Fallen Star Ridge. He was a little bitter, and more
+humble, for having entertained that radiant vision of himself.
+
+John Armitage had been gone from the Ridge some weeks when Michael went
+over in his mind every phase and phrase of the talk they had had. His
+lips took a slight smile; it crept into his eyes, as he reviewed what he
+had said and what John Armitage had said, smoking unconsciously.
+
+Absorbed in his reading, he had thought little of John Armitage and that
+walk to the new rush with him. Occasionally the memory of it had
+nickered and glanced through his mind; but he was so obsessed by the
+ideas this new reading had stirred, that he went about his everyday jobs
+in the mine and in the hut, absent-mindedly, automatically, because they
+were things he was in the habit of doing. Potch watched him anxiously;
+Rouminof growled to him; Sophie laughed and flitted and sang, before his
+eyes; but Michael had been only distantly conscious of what was going on
+about him. George Woods and Watty guessed what was the matter; they knew
+the symptoms of these reading and brooding bouts Michael was subject to.
+The moods wore off when they put questions likely to draw information
+and he began to talk out and discuss what he had been reading with them.
+
+He had talked this one off, when suddenly he remembered how John
+Armitage's eyes had dived into his during that walk to the new rush. He
+could see Armitage's eyes again, keen grey eyes they were. And his
+hands. Michael remembered how Armitage's hands had played over the opals
+he had taken to show him. John Lincoln Armitage had the shrewd eyes of
+any man who lives by his wits--lawyer, pickpocket, politician, or
+financier--he decided; and the fine white hands of a woman. Only Michael
+did not know any woman whose hands were as finely shaped and as white as
+John Armitage's. Images of his clean-shaven, hot-house face of a city
+dweller, slightly burned by his long journey on land and sea, recurred
+to him; expressions, gestures, inflections of voice.
+
+Michael smiled to himself in communion with his thoughts as he went over
+the substance of Armitage's conversation, dissecting and shredding it
+critically. The more he thought of what Armitage had said, the more he
+found himself believing John Armitage had some information which caused
+him to think that he, Michael, knew something of the whereabouts of the
+stones. He could not convince himself Armitage believed he actually held
+the stones, or that he had stolen them. Armitage had certainly given him
+an opportunity to sell on the quiet if he had the stones; but his manner
+was too tentative, mingled with a subtle respect, to carry the notion of
+an overt suggestion of the sort, or the possession of incriminating
+knowledge. Then there was the story of the old Cliffs robbery. Michael
+wondered why Mr. Armitage had gone over that. On general principles,
+doubting the truth of his long run of bad luck--or from curiosity
+merely, perhaps. But Michael did not deceive himself that Armitage might
+have told the story in order to discover whether there was something of
+the miser in him, and whether--if Michael had anything to do with the
+taking of Paul's opals--he might prefer to hold rather than sell them.
+
+Michael was amused at the thought of himself as a miser. He went into
+the matter as honestly as he could. He knew the power opal had with him,
+the fascination of the search for it, which had brought him from the
+Cliffs to the Ridge, and which had held him to the place, although the
+life and ideas it had come to represent meant more to him now than black
+opal. Still, he was an opal miner, and through all his lean years on the
+Ridge he had been upheld by the thought of the stone he would find some
+day.
+
+He had dreamed of that stone. It had haunted his idle thoughts for
+years. He had seen it in the dark of the mine, deep in the ruddy earth,
+a mirror of jet with fires swarming, red, green, and gold in it.
+
+Dreams of the great opal he would one day discover had comforted him
+when storekeepers were asking for settlement of long-standing accounts.
+He did not altogether believe he would find it, that wonderful piece of
+black opal; but he dreamed, like a child, of finding it.
+
+As he thought of it, and of John Armitage, the smile in his eyes
+broadened. If Armitage knew of that stone of his dreams, he would
+certainly think his surmise was correct and believe that Michael Brady
+was a miser. But he had held the dream in a dark and distant corner of
+his consciousness; had it out to mood and brood over only at rare and
+distant intervals; and no one was aware of its existence.
+
+Black opal had no more passionate lover than himself, Michael knew. He
+trembled with instinctive eagerness, reverence, and delight, when he saw
+a piece of beautiful stone; his eyes devoured it. But there was nothing
+personal in his love. He might have been high priest of some mysterious
+divinity; when she revealed herself he was consumed with adoration. In a
+vague, whimsical way Michael realised this of himself, and yet, too,
+that if ever he held the stone of his dreams in his hands, he would be
+filled with a glorious and flooding sense of accomplishment; an ecstasy
+would transport him. It would be beyond all value in money, that stone;
+but he would not want to keep it to gaze on alone, he would want to give
+it to the world as a thing of consummate beauty, for everybody to enjoy
+the sight of and adore.
+
+No, Michael assured himself, he was not a miser. And, he reflected, he
+had not even looked at Paul's stones. For all he knew, the stones Paul
+had been showing that night at Newton's might have been removed from the
+box before he left Newton's. Someone might have done to Paul what he,
+Michael, had done to Charley Heathfield, as Armitage had suggested.
+Paul's little tin box was well enough known. He had been opening and
+showing his stones at Newton's a long time before the night when Jun had
+been induced to divide spoils. It would be just as well, Michael
+decided, to see what the box did contain; and he promised himself that
+he would open it and look over the stones--some evening. But he was not
+inclined to hurry the engagement with himself to do so.
+
+He had been glad enough to forget that he had anything to do with that
+box of Paul's: it still lay among the books where he had thrown it. The
+memory of the night on which he had seen Charley taking Paul home, and
+of all that had happened afterwards, was blurred in an ugly vision for
+him. It had become like the memory of a nightmare. He could scarcely
+believe he had done what he had done; yet he knew he had. He drew a deep
+breath of relief when he realised everything had worked out well so far.
+
+Paul was working with him; they had won that little bit of luck to carry
+them on; Sophie was growing up healthily, happily, on the Ridge. She was
+growing so quickly, too. Within the last few months Michael had noticed
+a subtle change in her. There was an indefinable air of a flower
+approaching its bloom about her. People were beginning to talk of her
+looks. Michael had seen eyes following her admiringly. Sophie walked
+with a light, lithe grace; she was slight and straight, not tall really,
+but she looked tall in the black dress she still wore and which came to
+her ankles. There was less of the eager sprite about her, a suggestion
+of some sobering experience in her eyes--the shadow of her mother's
+death--which had banished her unthinking and careless childhood. But the
+eyes still had the purity and radiance of a child's. And she seemed
+happy--the happiest thing on the Ridge, Michael thought. The cadence of
+her laughter and a ripple of her singing were never long out of the air
+about her father's hut. Wherever she went, people said now: "Sing to us,
+Sophie!"
+
+And she sang, whenever she was asked, without the slightest
+self-consciousness, and always those songs from old operas, or some of
+the folk-songs her mother had taught her, which were the only songs she
+knew.
+
+Michael had seen a number of neighbours in the township and their wives
+and children sitting round in one or other of their homes while Sophie
+sang. He had seen a glow of pleasure transfuse people as they listened
+to her pure and ringing notes. Singing, Sophie seemed actually to
+diffuse happiness, her own joy in the melodies she flung into the air.
+Oh, yes, Sophie was happy singing, Michael could permit himself to
+believe now. She could make people happy by her singing. He had feared
+her singing as a will-o'-the-wisp which would lead her away from him and
+the Ridge. But when he heard her enthralling people in the huts with it,
+he was not afraid.
+
+Paul sometimes moaned about the chances she was missing, and that she
+could be singing in theatres to great audiences. Sophie herself laughed
+at him. She was quite content with the Ridge, it seemed, and to sing to
+people on their verandas in the summer evenings or round the fires in
+the winter. She might have had greater and finer audiences, the Ridge
+folk said, but she could not have had more appreciative ones.
+
+If she was singing in the town, Michael always went to bring her home,
+and he was as pleased as Sophie to hear people say:
+
+"You're not taking her away yet, Michael? The night's a pup!" or,
+"Another ... just one more song, Sophie!"
+
+And if she had been singing at Newton's, Michael liked to see the men
+come to the door of the bar, holding up their glasses, and to hear their
+call, as Sophie and he went down the road:
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+"Skin off y'r nose!"
+
+"All the luck!"
+
+"Best respecks, Sophie!"
+
+When Sophie did not know what to do with herself all the hours Michael
+and Potch and her father were away at the mines, Michael had showed her
+how to use her mother's cutting-wheel. He taught her all he knew of
+opals, and Sophie was delighted with the idea of learning to cut and
+polish gems as her mother had.
+
+Michael gave her rough stones to practise on, and in no time she learnt
+to handle them skilfully. George, Watty, and the Crosses brought her
+some gems to face and polish for them, and they were so pleased with her
+work that they promised to give her most of their stones to cut and
+polish. She had two or three accidents, and was very crestfallen about
+them; but Michael declared they were part of the education of an
+opal-cutter and would teach her more about her work than anyone could
+tell her.
+
+To Michael those days were of infinite blessedness. They proved again
+and again the right of what he had done. At first he was vaguely alarmed
+and uneasy when he saw younger men of the Ridge, Roy O'Mara or Bully
+Bryant, talking or walking with Sophie, or he saw her laughing and
+talking with them. There was something about Sophie's bearing with them
+which disturbed him--a subtle, unconscious witchery. Then he explained
+it to himself. He guessed that the woman in her was waking, or awake. On
+second thoughts he was not jealous or uneasy. It was natural enough the
+boys should like Sophie, that she should like them; he recognised the
+age-old call of sex in it all. And if Sophie loved and married a man of
+the Ridge, the future would be clear, Michael thought. He could give
+Paul the opals, and her husband could watch over Sophie and see no harm
+came to her if she left the Ridge.
+
+The uneasiness stirred again, though, one afternoon when he found her
+walking from the tank paddock with Arthur Henty beside her. There was a
+startled consciousness about them both when Michael joined them and
+walked along the road with them. He had seen Sophie talking to Henty in
+and about the township before, but it had not occurred to him there was
+anything unusual about that. Sophie had gone about as she liked and
+talked to whom she liked since she was a child. She was on good terms
+with everyone in the countryside. No one knew where she went or what she
+did in the long day while the men were at the mines. Because the
+carillon of her laughter flew through those quiet days, Michael
+instinctively had put up a prayer of thanksgiving. Sophie was happy, he
+thought. He did not ask himself why; he was grateful; but a vague
+disquiet made itself felt when he remembered how he had found her
+walking with Arthur Henty, and the number of times he had seen her
+talking to Arthur Henty at Chassy Robb's store, or on the tracks near
+the town.
+
+Fallen Star folk knew Arthur better than any of the Hentys. For years he
+had been coming through the township with cattle or sheep, and had put
+up at Newton's with stockmen on his way home, or when he was going to an
+out-station beyond the Ridge.
+
+His father, James Henty, had taken up land in the back-country long
+before opal was found on Fallen Star Ridge. He had worked half a million
+square acres on an arm of the Darling in the days before runs were
+fenced, with only a few black shepherds and one white man, old Bill
+M'Gaffy, to help him for the first year or two. But, after an era of
+extraordinary prosperity, a series of droughts and misfortunes had
+overwhelmed the station and thrown it on the tender mercies of the
+banks.
+
+The Hentys lived much as they had always done. They entertained as
+usual, and there was no hint of a wolf near the door in the hearty,
+good-natured, and liberal hospitality of the homestead. A constitutional
+optimism enabled James Henty to believe Warria would ultimately throw
+off its debts and the good old days return. Only at the end of a season,
+when year after year he found there was no likelihood of being able to
+meet even the yearly interest on mortgages, did he lose some of his
+sanguine belief in the station's ability to right itself, and become
+irritable beyond endurance, blaming any and everyone within hail for the
+unsatisfactory estimates.
+
+But usually Arthur bore the brunt of these outbursts. Arthur Henty had
+gone from school to work on the station at the beginning of Warria's
+decline from the years of plenty, and had borne the burden and not a
+little of the blame for heavy losses during the droughts, without ever
+attempting to shift or deny the responsibilities his father put upon
+him.
+
+"It does the old man good to have somebody to go off at," he explained
+indifferently to his sister, Elizabeth, when she called him all the
+fools under the sun for taking so much blackguarding sitting down.
+
+Although James Henty's only son and manager of the station under his
+father's autocratic rule, Arthur Henty lived and worked among Warria
+stockmen as though he were one of them. His clothes were as worn and
+heavy with dust as theirs; his hat was as weathered, his hands as
+hard--sunburnt and broken with sores when barcoo was in the air. A
+quiet, unassuming man, he never came the "Boss" over them. He passed on
+the old man's orders, and, for the rest, worked as hard as any man on
+the station.
+
+He had never done anything remarkable that anyone could remember; but
+the men he worked with liked him. Everybody rather liked Arthur Henty,
+although nobody enthused about him. He had done man's work ever since he
+was a boy, with no more than a couple of years' schooling; he had done
+it steadily and as well as any other young man in the back-country. But
+there was a curious, almost feminine weakness in him somewhere. The men
+did not understand it. They thought he was too supine with his father;
+that he ought to stand up to him more.
+
+Arthur Henty preferred being out on the plains with them rather than in
+at the home station, the men said. He looked happier when he was with
+them; he whistled to them as they lay yarning round the camp-fire before
+turning in. They had never heard anything like his whistling. He seemed
+to be playing some small, fine, invisible flute as he gave them
+old-fashioned airs, ragtime tunes, songs from the comic operas, and
+miscellaneous melodies he had heard his sisters singing. No one had
+heard him whistling like that at the station. Out on the plains, or in
+the bar at Newton's, he was a different man. Once or twice when he had
+been drinking, and a glass or two of beer or whisky had got to his head,
+he had shown more the spirit that it was thought he possessed--as if,
+when the conscious will was relaxed, a submerged self had leapt forth.
+
+Men who had known him a long time wondered whether time would not
+strengthen the fibres of that submerged self; but they had seen Arthur
+Henty lose the elastic, hopeful outlook of youth, and sink gradually
+into the place assigned him by his father, at first dutifully, then with
+an indifference which slowly became apathy.
+
+Mrs. Henty and the girls exclaimed with dismay and disgust when they
+returned to the station after two years in town, and saw how rough and
+unkempt-looking Arthur had become. They insisted on his having his hair
+and beard cut at once, and that he should manicure his finger-nails.
+After he had dressed for dinner and was clipped and shaved, they said he
+looked more as if he belonged to them; but he was a shy, awkward boor,
+and they did not know what to make of him. In his mother's hands, Arthur
+was still a child, though, and she brought him back to the fold of the
+family, drew his resistance--an odd, sullen resentment he had acquired
+for the niceties of what she called "civilised society"--and made him
+amenable to its discipline.
+
+Elizabeth was twice the man her brother was, James Henty was fond of
+declaring. She had all the vigour and dash he would have liked his son
+to possess. "My daughter Elizabeth," he said as frequently as possible,
+and was always talking of her feats with horses, and the clear-headed
+and clever way she went about doing things, and getting her own way on
+all and every occasion.
+
+When the men rounded buck-jumpers into the yards on a Sunday morning,
+Elizabeth would ride any Chris Este, the head stockman, let her near;
+but Arthur never attempted to ride any of the warrigals. He steered
+clear of horse-breaking and rough horses whenever he could, although he
+broke and handled his own horses. In a curious way he shared a secret
+feeling of his mother's for horses. She had never been able to overcome
+an indefinable apprehension of the raw, half-broken horses of the
+back-country, although her nerve had carried her through years of
+acquaintance with them, innumerable accidents and misadventures, and
+hundreds of miles of journeys at their mercy; and Arthur, although he
+had lived and worked among horses as long as he could remember, had not
+been able to lose something of the same feeling. His sister, suspecting
+it, was frankly contemptuous; so was his father. It was the reason of
+Henty's low estimate of his son's character generally. And the rumour
+that Arthur Henty was shy of tough propositions in horses--"afraid of
+horses"--had a good deal to do with the never more than luke-warm
+respect men of the station and countryside had for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Sophie often met Arthur Henty on the road just out of the town. Usually
+it was going to or coming from the tank paddock, or in the paddock, on
+Friday afternoons, when he had been into Budda for the sales or to truck
+sheep or cattle. They did not arrange to meet, but Sophie expected to
+see Arthur when she went to the tank paddock, and she knew he expected
+to find her there. She did not know why she liked being with Arthur
+Henty so much, or why they were such golden occasions when she met him.
+They did not talk much when they were together. Their eyes met; they
+knew each other through their eyes--a something remote from themselves
+was always working through their eyes. It drew them together.
+
+When she was with Arthur Henty, Sophie knew she was filled with an
+ineffable gaiety, a thing so delicate and ethereal that as she sang she
+seemed to be filling the air with it. And Henty looked at her sometimes
+as if he had discovered a new, strange, and beautiful creature, a
+butterfly, or gnat, with gauzy, resplendent wings, whose beauty he was
+bewildered and overcome by. The last time they had been together he had
+longed to draw her to him and kiss her so that the virgin innocence
+would leave her eyes; but fear or some conscientious scruple had
+restrained him. He had been reluctant to awaken her, to change the
+quality of her feeling towards him. He had let her go with a lingering
+handclasp. In all their tender intimacy there had been no more of the
+love-making of the flesh than the subtle interweavings of instincts and
+fibres which this handclasp gave. Ridge folk had seen them walking
+together. They had seen that subtle inclination of Sophie's and Arthur's
+figures towards each other as they walked--the magnetic, gentle,
+irresistible swaying towards each other--and the gossips began to
+whisper and nod smilingly when they came across Arthur and Sophie on the
+road. Sophie at first went her way unconscious of the whispers and
+smiles. Then words were dropped slyly--people teased her about Arthur.
+She realised they thought he was her sweetheart. Was he? She began to
+wonder and think about it. He must be; she came to the conclusion
+happily. Only sweethearts went for walks together as she and Arthur did.
+
+"My mother says," Mirry Flail remarked one day, "she wouldn't be a bit
+surprised to see you marrying Arthur Henty, Sophie, and going over to
+live at Warria."
+
+"Goodness!" Sophie exclaimed, surprised and delighted that anybody
+should think such a thing.
+
+"Marry Arthur Henty and go over and live at Warria." Her mind, like a
+delighted little beaver, began to build on the idea. It did not alter
+her bearing with Arthur. She was less shy and thoughtful with him,
+perhaps; but he did not notice it, and she was carelessly and childishly
+content to have found the meaning of why she and Arthur liked meeting
+and talking together. People only felt as she and Arthur felt about each
+other if they were going to marry and live "happy ever after," she
+supposed.
+
+When Michael was aware of what was being said, and of the foundation
+there was for gossip, he was considerably disturbed. He went to talk to
+Maggie Grant about it. She, he thought, would know more of what was in
+the wind than he did, and be better able to gauge what the consequences
+were likely to be to Sophie.
+
+"I've been bothered about it myself, Michael," she said. "But neither
+you nor me can live Sophie's life for her.... I don't see we can do
+anything. His crowd'll do all the interfering, if I know anything about
+them."
+
+"I suppose so," Michael agreed.
+
+"And, as far as I can see, it won't do any good our butting in," Mrs.
+Grant continued. "You know Sophie's got a will of her own ... and she's
+always had a good deal her own way. I've talked round the thing to her
+... and I think she understands."
+
+"You've always been real good to her, Maggie," Michael said gratefully.
+
+"As to that"--the lines of Maggie Grant's broad, plain face rucked to
+the strength of her feeling--"I've done what I could. But then, I'm fond
+of her--fond of her as you are, Michael. That's saying a lot. And you
+know what I thought of her mother. But it's no use us thinking we can
+buy Sophie's experience for her. She's got to live ... and she's got to
+suffer."
+
+Busy with her opal-cutting, and happy with her thoughts, Sophie had no
+idea of the misgiving Michael and Maggie Grant had on her account, or
+that anyone was disturbed and unhappy because of her happiness. She sang
+as she worked. The whirr of her wheel, the chirr of sandstone and potch
+as they sheared away, made a small, busy noise, like the drone of an
+insect, in her house all day; and every day some of the men brought her
+stones to face and fix up. She had acquired such a reputation for making
+the most of stones committed to her care that men came from the Three
+Mile and from the Punti with opals for her to rough-out and polish.
+
+Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara were often at Rouminof's in the evening, and
+they heard about it when they looked in at Newton's later on, now and
+then.
+
+"You must be striking it pretty good down at the Punti, Bull," Watty
+Frost ventured genially one night. "See you takin' stones for Sophie to
+fix up pretty near every evenin'."
+
+"There's some as sees too much," Bully remarked significantly.
+
+"What you say, you say y'rself, Bull." Watty pulled thoughtfully on his
+pipe, but his little blue eyes squinted over his fat, red-grained
+cheeks, not in the least abashed.
+
+"I do," Bull affirmed. "And them as sees too much ... won't see much ...
+when I'm through with 'em."
+
+"Mmm," Watty brooded. "That's a good thing to know, isn't it?"
+
+He and the rest of the men continued to "sling off," as they said, at
+Bully and Roy O'Mara as they saw fit, nevertheless.
+
+The summer had been a mild one; it passed almost without a ripple of
+excitement. There were several hot days, but cool changes blew over, and
+the rains came before people had given up dreading the heat. Several new
+prospects had been made, and there were expectations that holes sunk on
+claims to the north of the Punti Rush would mean the opening up of a new
+field.
+
+Michael and Potch worked on in their old claim with very little to show
+for their pains. Paul had slackened and lost interest as soon as the
+fitful gleams of opal they were on had cut out. Michael was not the man
+to manage Rummy, the men said.
+
+Potch and Michael, however, seemed satisfied enough to regard Paul more
+or less as a sleeping partner; to do the work of the mine and share with
+him for keeping out of the way.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if they wouldn't rather have his room than his
+company," Watty ventured, "and they just go shares with him so as
+things'll be all right for Sophie."
+
+"That's right!" Pony-Fence agreed.
+
+The year had made a great difference to Potch. Doing man's work, going
+about on equal terms with the men, the change of status from being a
+youth at anybody's beck and call to doing work which entitled him to the
+taken-for-granted dignity of being an independent individual, had made a
+man of him. His frame had thickened and hardened. He looked years older
+than he was really, and took being Michael's mate very seriously.
+
+Michael had put up a shelter for himself and his mates, thinking that
+Potch and Paul might not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter; but
+George and Watty were loth to lose Michael's word from their councils.
+They called him over nearly every day, on one pretext or another.
+Sometimes his mates followed Michael. But Rouminof soon wearied of a
+discussion on anything except opal, and wandered off to the other
+shelters to discover whether anybody had struck anything good that
+morning. Potch threw himself on the ground beside Michael when Michael
+had invited him to go across to George and Watty's shelter with him, and
+after a while the men did not notice him there any more than Michael's
+shadow. He lay beside Michael, quite still, throwing crumbs to the birds
+which came round the shelter, and did not seem to be listening to what
+was said. But always when a man was heatedly and with some difficulty
+trying to disentangle his mind on a subject of argument, he found
+Potch's eyes on him, steady and absorbing, and knew from their intent
+expression that Potch was following all he had to say with quick, grave
+interest.
+
+Some people were staying at Warria during the winter, and when there was
+going to be a dance at the station Mrs. Henty wrote to ask Rouminof to
+play for it. She could manage the piano music, she said, and if he would
+tune his violin for the occasion, they would have a splendid band for
+the young people. And, her letter had continued: "We should be so
+pleased if your daughter would come with you."
+
+Sophie was wildly excited at the invitation. She had been to Ridge race
+balls for the last two or three years, but she had never even seen
+Warria. Her father had played at a Warria ball once, years before, when
+she was little; but she and her mother had not gone with him to the
+station. She remembered quite well when he came home, how he had told
+them of all the wonderful things there had been to eat at the
+ball--stuffed chickens and crystallised fruit, iced cakes, and all
+manner of sweets.
+
+Sophie had heard of the Warria homestead since she was a child, of its
+orange garden and great, cool rooms. It had loomed like the enchanted
+castle of a legend through all her youthful imaginings. And now, as she
+remembered what Mirry Flail had said, she was filled with delight and
+excitement at the thought of seeing it.
+
+She wondered whether Arthur had asked his mother to invite her to the
+dance. She thought he must have; and with naive conceit imagined happily
+that Arthur's mother must want to know her because she knew that Arthur
+liked her. And Arthur's sisters--it would be nice to know them and to
+talk to them. She went over and over in her mind the talks she would
+have with Polly and Nina, and perhaps Elizabeth Henty, some day.
+
+A few weeks before the ball she had seen Arthur riding through the
+township with his sisters and a girl who was staying at Warria. He had
+not seen her, and Sophie was glad, because suddenly she had felt shy and
+confused at the thought of talking to him before a lot of people.
+Besides, they all looked so jolly, and were having such a good time,
+that she would not have known what to say to Arthur, or to his sisters,
+just then.
+
+When she told Mrs. Woods and Martha M'Cready about the invitation, they
+smiled and teased her.
+
+"Oh, that tells a tale!" they said.
+
+Sophie laughed. She felt silly, and she was blushing, they said. But she
+was very happy at having been asked to the ball. For weeks before she
+found herself singing "Caro Nome" as she sat at work, went about the
+house, or with Potch after the goats in the late afternoon.
+
+Arthur liked that song better than any other, and its melody had become
+mingled and interwoven with all her thoughts of him.
+
+The twilight was deepening, on the evening a few days before the dance,
+when Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara came up to Rouminof's hut, calling
+Sophie. She was washing milk tins and tea dishes, and went to the door
+singing to herself, a candle throwing a fluttering light before her.
+
+"Your father sent us along for you, Sophie," Bully explained. "There's a
+bit of a celebration on at Newton's to-night, and the boys want you to
+sing for them."
+
+Sophie turned from them, going into the house to put down her candle.
+
+"All right," she said, pleased at the idea.
+
+Michael came into the hut through, the back door. From his own room he
+had heard Bully calling and then explaining why he and Roy O'Mara were
+there.
+
+"Don't go, Sophie," Michael said.
+
+"But why, Michael?" Disappointment clouded Sophie's first bright
+pleasure that the men had sent for her to sing to them, and her
+eagerness to do as they asked.
+
+"It's not right ... not good for you to sing down there when the boys
+'ve been drinking," Michael said, unable to express clearly his
+opposition to her singing at Newton's.
+
+"Don't be a spoil-sport, Michael," the boys at the door called when they
+saw he was trying to dissuade Sophie.
+
+"Come along, Sophie," Roy called.
+
+She looked from Bully and Roy to Michael, hesitating. Theirs was the
+call of youth to youth, of youth to gaiety and adventure. She turned
+away from Michael.
+
+"I'm going, Michael," she said quickly, and swung to the door. Michael
+heard her laughing as she went off along the track with Bully and Roy.
+
+"Did you know Mr. Armitage is up?" Roy stopped to call back.
+
+"No," Michael said.
+
+"Came up by the coach this evening," Roy said, and ran after Bully and
+Sophie.
+
+It was a rowdy night at Newton's. Shearing was just over at Warria
+sheds, and men with cheques to burn were crowding the bar and passages.
+Sophie was hailed with cheers as she neared the veranda. Her father
+staggered out towards her, waving his arms crazily. Sophie was surprised
+when she found the crowd waiting for her. There were so many strangers
+in it--rough men with heavy, inflamed faces--hardly one she knew among
+them. A murmur and boisterous clamour of voices came from the bar. The
+men on the veranda made way for her.
+
+Her heart quailed when she looked into the big earthen-floored bar, and
+saw its crowd of rough-haired, sun-red men, still wearing the clothes
+they had been working in, grey flannel shirts and dungarees,
+blood-splashed, grimy, and greasy with the "yolk" of fleeces they had
+been handling. The smell of sheep and the sweat of long days of shearing
+and struggling with restless beasts were in the air, with fumes of rank
+tobacco and the flat, stale smell of beer. The hanging lamp over the bar
+threw only a dim light through the fog of smoke the men had put up, and
+which from the doorway completely obscured Peter Newton where he stood
+behind the bar.
+
+Sophie hung back.
+
+"I'm not going in there," she said.
+
+"Did you know Mr. Armitage was up?" Roy asked.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+He explained how Mr. Armitage had come unexpectedly by the coach that
+evening. Sophie saw him among the men on the veranda.
+
+"I'll sing here," she told Bully and Roy, leaning against a veranda
+post.
+
+She was a little afraid. But she knew she had always pleased Ridge folk
+when she sang to them, so she put back her head and sang a song of youth
+and youthful happiness she had sung on the veranda at Newton's before.
+It did not matter that the words were in Italian, which nobody
+understood. The dancing joyousness and laughing music of her notes
+carried the men with them. The applause was noisy and enthusiastic.
+Sophie laughed, delighted, yet almost afraid of her success.
+
+Big and broad-shouldered, Bully Bryant stood at a little distance from
+her, in front of everybody. Arthur Henty, leaning against the wall near
+the door of the bar, smiled softly, foolishly, when she glanced at him.
+He had been drinking, too, and was watching, and listening to her, with
+the same look in his eyes as Bully.
+
+Sophie caught the excitement about her. An exhilaration of pleasure
+thrilled her. It was crude wine which went to her head, this admiration
+and applause of strangers and of the men she had known since she was a
+child. There was a wonderful elation in having them beg her to sing.
+They looked actually hungry to hear her. She found Arthur Henty's eyes
+resting on her with the expression she knew in them. An imp of
+recklessness entered her. Her father beat the air as if he were leading
+an orchestra, and she threw herself into the Shadow Song, singing with
+an abandonment that carried her beyond consciousness of her
+surroundings.
+
+She sang again and again, and always in response to an eager tumult of
+cheers, thudding of feet, joggling of glasses, chorus of broken cries:
+"En-core, encore, Sophie!" An instinct of mischief and coquetry urging,
+she glanced sometimes at Arthur, sometimes at Bully. Then with a glance
+at Arthur, and for a last number, she began "Caro Nome," and gave to her
+singing all the glamour and tenderness, the wild sweetness, the aria had
+come to have for her, because she had sung it so often to Arthur when
+they met and were walking along the road together. She was so carried
+away by her singing, she did not realise what had happened until
+afterwards.
+
+She only knew that suddenly, roughly, she was grasped and lifted. She
+saw Bully's face flaming before her own, gazed with terror and horror
+into his eyes. His face was thrown against hers--and obliterated.
+
+"Are you all right?" someone asked after a moment.
+
+Awaking from the daze and bewilderment, Sophie looked up.
+
+John Armitage was standing beside her; Potch nearby. They were on the
+outskirts of the crowd on the veranda.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+The men on the veranda had broken into two parties; one was surging
+towards the bar door, the other moving off down the road out of the
+town. Michael came towards her.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," he said.
+
+"Oh, Potch looked after her. I couldn't get near," John Armitage said.
+
+An extraordinary quiet took possession of Sophie. When she was going
+down the road with Potch and Michael, she said:
+
+"Did Bully kiss me, Michael?"
+
+"Yes," he replied.
+
+"I don't know what happened then?"
+
+"Arthur Henty knocked him down," Michael said.
+
+She looked at him with scared eyes.
+
+"They want to fight it out ... but they're both drunk. The boys are
+trying to stop it."
+
+"Oh, Michael!" Sophie cried on a little gasping breath; and looking into
+her eyes he read her contrition, asking forgiveness, understanding all
+that he had not been able to explain to her. She did not say, "I'll
+never sing there, like that, any more." Her feeling was too deep for
+words; but Michael knew she never would.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+"It's what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball,"
+Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin
+Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.
+
+Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods' mirror, a square of
+glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant
+sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new
+dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was
+also gazing at her and at it admiringly.
+
+When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria,
+Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.
+
+"Sophie's got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael," she
+said. "I'm not going to have people over there laughing at her, and
+she's had nothing but her mother's old dresses, cut down--for goodness
+knows how long."
+
+"Will you get it?" Michael inquired anxiously.
+
+Mrs. Grant nodded.
+
+"Bessie Woods and I were thinking it might be pinspot muslin, with a bit
+of lace on it," she said. "We could get the stuff at Chassy Robb's and
+make it up between us."
+
+"Right!" Michael replied, looking immensely relieved to have the
+difficulty disposed of. "Tell Chassy to put it on my book."
+
+So the pinspot muslin and some cheap creamy lace had been bought. Mrs.
+Woods and Sophie settled on a style they found illustrating an
+advertisement in a newspaper and which resembled a dress one of the
+Henty girls had worn at the race ball the year before. Maggie Grant had
+done all the plain sewing and Mrs. Woods the fixing and finishing
+touches. They had consulted over and over again about sleeves and the
+length of the skirt. The frock had been fitted at least a dozen times.
+They had wondered where they would put the lace as a bit of trimming,
+and had decided for frills at the elbows and a tucker in the V-shaped
+neck of the blouse. They marvelled at their audacity, but felt sure they
+had done the right thing when they cut the neck rather lower than they
+would have for a dress to be worn in the daytime.
+
+Martha M'Cready, insisting on having a finger in the pie, had pressed
+the dress when it was finished, and she had washed and ironed Mrs.
+George Woods' best embroidered petticoat for Sophie to wear with it.
+
+And now Sophie was dressing in Mrs. Woods' bedroom because it had a
+bigger mirror than her own room, and the three women were watching her,
+giving little tugs and pats to the dress now and then, measuring it with
+appraising glances of conscious pride in their workmanship, and joy at
+Sophie's appearance in it. Sophie, her face flushed, her eyes shining,
+turned to them every now and then, begging to know whether the skirt was
+not a little full here, or a little flat there; and they pinched and
+pulled, until it was thought nothing further could be done to improve
+it.
+
+Sophie was anxious about her hair. She had put it in plaits the night
+before, and had kept it in them all the morning. Her hair had never been
+in plaits before, and she had not liked the look of it when she saw it
+all crisp and frizzy, like Mirry Flail's. She had used a wet brush to
+get the crinkle out, but there was still a suggestion of it in the heavy
+dark wave of her hair when she had done it up as usual.
+
+"Your hair looks very nice--don't worry any more about it, Sophie,"
+Martha M'Cready had said.
+
+"My mother used to say there was nothing nicer for a young girl to wear
+than white muslin," Mrs. Woods remarked, "and that sash of your mother's
+looks real nice as a belt, Sophie."
+
+The sash, a broad piece of blue and green silk shot like a piece of poor
+opal, Sophie had found in a box of her mother's, and it was wound round
+her waist as a belt and tied in a bow at the side.
+
+"Turn round and let me see if the skirt's quite the same length all
+round, Sophie," Mrs. Grant commanded.
+
+"Yes, Maggie," Bessie Woods exclaimed complacently. "It's quite right."
+
+Sophie glanced at herself in the glass again. Mrs. Woods had lent her a
+pair of opal ear-rings, and Maggie Grant the one piece of finery she
+possessed--a round piece of very fine black opal set in a rim of gold,
+which Bill had given her when first she came to the Ridge.
+
+Sophie had on for the first time, too, a necklace she had made herself
+of stones the miners had given her at different times. There was a piece
+of opal for almost every man on the fields, and she had strung them
+together, with a beautiful knobby Potch had made her a present of for
+her eighteenth birthday, a few days before, in the centre.
+
+Just as she had finished dressing, Mrs. Watty Frost called in the
+doorway: "Anybody at home?"
+
+"Come in," Mrs. George Woods replied.
+
+Mrs. Watty walked into the bedroom. She had a long slender parcel
+wrapped in brown paper in her hand, but nobody noticed it at the time.
+
+"My!" she exclaimed, staring at Sophie; "we are fine, aren't we?"
+
+Sophie caught up her long, cotton gloves and pirouetted in happy
+excitement.
+
+"Aren't we?" she cried gaily. "Just look at my gloves! Did ever you see
+such lovely long gloves, Mrs. Watty? And don't my ear-rings look nice?
+But it does feel funny wearing ear-rings, doesn't it? I want to be
+shaking my head all the time to make them joggle!"
+
+She shook her head. The blue and green fires of the stones leapt and
+sparkled. Her eyes seemed to catch fire from them. The women exchanged
+admiring glances.
+
+"Where's my handkerchief?" Sophie cried. "Father's late, isn't he? I'm
+sure we'll be late! How long will it take to drive over to Warria?--An
+hour? Goodness! And it'll be almost time for the dance to begin then!
+Oh, don't my shoes look nice, Maggie?"
+
+She looked down at her feet in the white cotton stockings and white
+canvas shoes, with ankle straps, which Maggie Grant had sent into Budda
+for. The hem of her skirt came just to her ankles. She played the new
+shoes in and out from under it in little dancing steps, and the women
+laughed at her, happy in her happiness.
+
+"But you haven't got a fan, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said.
+
+"A fan?" Sophie's eyes widened.
+
+"You should oughter have a fan. In my young days it wasn't considered
+decent to go to a ball without a fan," Mrs. Watty remarked grimly.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie looked from one to the other of her advisers.
+
+Mrs. George Woods was just going to say that it was a long time since
+Mrs. Watty's young days, when Mrs. Watty took the brown paper from the
+long, thin parcel she was carrying.
+
+"I thought most likely you wouldn't have one," she said, "so I brought
+this over."
+
+She unfurled an old-fashioned, long-handled, sandal-wood fan, with birds
+and flowers painted on the brown satin screen, and a little row of
+feathers along the top. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Grant exchanged
+glances that Mrs. Watty should pander to the vanity of an occasion.
+
+"Mrs. Watty!" Sophie took the fan with a little cry of delight.
+
+"My, aren't you a grown-up young lady now, Sophie?" Mrs. Woods
+exclaimed, as Sophie unfurled the fan.
+
+"But mind you take care of it, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said, stiffening
+against the relaxing atmosphere of goodwill and excitement. "Watty got
+it for me last trip he made to sea, before we was married, and I set a
+good deal of store by it."
+
+"Oh, I'll be ever so careful!" Sophie declared. She opened the fan.
+"Isn't it pretty?"
+
+Dropping into a chair, she murmured: "May I--have this dance with you,
+Miss Rouminof?" And casting a shy upward glance over her fan, as if
+answering for herself, "I don't mind if I do!"
+
+Martha and Mrs. Woods laughed heartily, recognising Arthur Henty's way
+of talking in the voice Sophie had imitated.
+
+"That's the way to do it, Sophie," Mrs. Woods said; "only you shouldn't
+say, 'Don't mind if I do,' but, 'It's a pleasure, I'm sure.'"
+
+"It's a pleasure, I'm sure," Sophie mimed.
+
+"Is she going to wear the dress over?" Mrs. Watty asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes," Maggie Grant said. "Bessie's lending her a dust-coat. I don't
+think it'll get crushed very much. You see, they won't arrive until it's
+nearly time for the dance to begin, and we thought it'd be better for us
+to help her to get fixed up. Everybody'll be so busy over at Warria--and
+we thought she mightn't be able to get anybody to do up her dress for
+her."
+
+"That's right," Mrs. Watty said.
+
+There was a rattle of wheels on the rough shingle near the hut.
+
+"Here's your father, Sophie," Martha called.
+
+"And Michael and Potch are in the kitchen wanting to have a look at you
+before you go, Sophie," Maggie Grant said.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie took the coat Mrs. Woods was lending her, and went out to
+the kitchen with it on her arm.
+
+Michael and Potch were there. They stared at her. But her radiant face,
+the shining eyes, and the little smile which hovered on her mouth, held
+their gaze more than the new white dress standing out in slight, stiff
+folds all round her. The vision of her--incomparable youth and
+loveliness she was to Michael--gripped him so that a moisture of love
+and reverence dimmed his eyes.... And Potch just stared and stared at
+her.
+
+Paul was bawling from the buggy outside:
+
+"Are you ready, Sophie? Sophie, are you ready?"
+
+Mrs. Woods held the dust-coat. Very carefully Sophie edged herself into
+it, and wrapped its nondescript buff-coloured folds over her dress. Then
+she put the pink woollen scarf Martha had brought over her head, and
+went out to the buggy. Her father was sitting aloft on the front seat,
+driving Sam Nancarrow's old roan mare, and looking spruce and well
+turned out in a new baggy suit which Michael had arranged for him to get
+in order to look more of a credit to Sophie at the ball.
+
+"See you take good care of her, Paul," Mrs. Grant called after him as
+they drove off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The drive across the plains seemed interminable to Sophie.
+
+Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went
+along. He called to Sam Nancarrow's old nag, quite pleased to be having
+a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially
+about this and other balls he had been to.
+
+Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said,
+and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. "I do
+look nice! I do look nice!" she assured herself.
+
+It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought
+she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs.
+Woods' ear-rings, and that old sash of her mother's. She was a little
+anxious, but very happy and excited.
+
+She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road
+or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then.
+He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle
+recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her
+in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of
+happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The
+sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to
+indigo as it climbed to the zenith.
+
+When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue
+from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted
+Burton, the station book-keeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with
+light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sand-papered,
+came out to meet them.
+
+"There you are, Rouminof!" he said. "Glad to see you. We were beginning
+to be afraid you weren't coming!"
+
+Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables.
+Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men
+were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was
+standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did
+not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup.
+But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his
+forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having
+regained his feet, hit out blindly.
+
+Potch had told Sophie what happened--she had made him find out in order
+to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first
+exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they
+said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully
+came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.
+
+"If anybody'd 've told me I'd treat you like that, Sophie, I'd 've
+killed him," he said. "I'd 've killed him.... You know how I feel about
+you--you know how we all feel about you--and for me to have served you
+like that--me that'd do anything in the world for you.... But it's no
+good trying to say any more. It's no good tryin' to explain. It's got me
+down...."
+
+He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable,
+that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It
+was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to
+see Bully like this.
+
+"It's all right, Bully," she said. "I know ... you weren't yourself ...
+and you didn't mean it."
+
+He started to his feet and came to stand beside her. Sophie put her hand
+in his; he gripped it hard, unable to say anything. Then, when he could
+control his voice, he said:
+
+"I went over to see Mr. Henty this morning ... and told him if anybody
+else 'd done what I did, I'd 've done what he did."
+
+Potch had said the men expected Bully would want to fight the thing out
+when he was sober, and it was a big thing for him to have done what he
+had. The punishing power of Bully's fists was well known, and he had
+taken this way of punishing himself. Sophie understood that, She was
+grateful and reconciled to him.
+
+"I'm glad, Bully," she said. "Let's forget all about it."
+
+So the matter ended. But it all came back to her as she saw the broken
+red line on Arthur Henty's forehead.
+
+She did not know that because of it she was an object of interest to the
+crowd on the veranda. News of Arthur Henty's bout with Bully Bryant had
+been very soon noised over the whole countryside. Most of the men who
+came to the ball from Langi-Eumina and other stations had gleaned varied
+and highly-coloured versions, and Arthur had been chaffed and twitted
+until he was sore and ashamed of the whole incident. He could not
+understand himself--the rush of rage, instinctive and unreasoning, which
+had overwhelmed him when he hit out at Bully.
+
+His mother protested that it was a shame to give Arthur such a bad time
+for what was, after all, merely the chivalrous impulse of any decent
+young man when a girl was treated lightly in his presence; but the men
+and the girls who were staying at the station laughed and teased all the
+more for the explanation. They pretended he was a very heroic and
+quixotic young man, and asked about Sophie--whether she was pretty, and
+whether it was true she sang well. They redoubled their efforts, and
+goaded him to a state of sulky silence, when they knew she was coming to
+the ball.
+
+Arthur Henty had been conscious for some time of an undercurrent within
+him drawing him to Sophie. He was afraid of, and resented it. He had not
+thought of loving her, or marrying her. He had gone to the tank paddock
+in the afternoons he knew she would be there, or had looked for her on
+the Warria road when she had been to the cemetery, with a sensation of
+drifting pleasantly. He had never before felt as he did when he was with
+Sophie, that life was a clear and simple thing--pleasant, too; that
+nothing could be better than walking over the plains through the limpid
+twilight. He had liked to see the fires of opal run in her eyes when she
+looked at him; to note the black lines on the outer rim of their
+coloured orbs; the black lashes set in silken skin of purest ivory; the
+curve of her chin and neck; the lines of her mouth, and the way she
+walked; all these things he had loved. But he did not want to have the
+responsibility of loving Sophie: he could not contemplate what wanting
+to marry her would mean in tempests and turmoil with his family.
+
+He had thought sometimes of a mediaeval knight wandering through
+flowering fields with the girl on a horse beside him, in connection with
+Sophie and himself. A reproduction of the well-known picture of the
+knight and the girl hung in his mother's sitting-room. She had cut it
+out of a magazine, and framed it, because it pleased her; and beneath
+the picture, in fine print, Arthur had often read:
+
+          "I met a lady in the meads,
+               Full beautiful--a fairy's child;
+           Her hair was long, her foot was light,
+               And her eyes were wild.
+
+          "I set her on my pacing steed,
+               And nothing else saw all day long;
+           For sideways would she lean, and sing
+               A faery's song."
+
+As a small boy Arthur had been attracted by the picture, and his mother
+had told him its story, and had read him Keats' poem. He had read it
+ever so many times since then himself, and after he met Sophie in the
+tank paddock that afternoon she had ridden home on his horse, some of
+the verses haunted him with the thought of her. One day when they were
+sitting by the track and she had been singing to him, he had made a
+daisy chain and thrown it over her, murmuring sheepishly, in a caprice
+of tenderness:
+
+          "I made a garland for her head,
+               And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
+           She looked at me as she did love
+               And made sweet moan."
+
+Sophie had asked about the poem. She had wanted to hear more, and he had
+repeated as many verses as he could remember. When he had finished, she
+had looked at him "as she did love" indeed, with eyes of sweet
+confidence, yet withdrawing from him a little in shy and happy confusion
+that he should think of her as anyone like the lady of the meads, who
+was "full beautiful--a fairy's child."
+
+But Arthur did not want to love her; he did not want to marry her. He
+did not want to have rows with his father, differences with his mother.
+The affair at Newton's had shown him where he was going.
+
+Sophie was "a fairy's child," he decided. "Her hair as long, her foot
+was light, and her eyes were wild"; but he did not want to be "a
+wretched wight, alone and palely loitering" on her account; he did not
+want to marry her. He would close her eyes with "kisses four," he told
+himself, smiling at the precision of the knight of the chronicle;
+"kisses four"--no more--and be done with the business.
+
+Meanwhile, he wished Sophie were not coming to the ball. He would have
+given anything to prevent her coming; but he could do nothing.
+
+He had thought of escaping from the ball by going to the out-station
+with the men; but his mother, foreseeing something of his intention, had
+given him so much to do at the homestead for her, that he could not go
+away. When the buggy with Sophie and her father drove up to the veranda,
+there was a chorus of suppressed exclamations among the assembled
+guests.
+
+"Here she is, Art!"
+
+"Buck up, old chap! None but the brave, etc."
+
+Sophie did not hear the undertone of laughter and raillery which greeted
+her arrival. She was quite unconscious that the people on the veranda
+were interested in her at all, as she walked across the courtyard
+listening to Mr. Burton's amiable commonplaces.
+
+When Mr. Burton left her in a small room with chintz-covered chairs and
+dressing-table, Sophie took off her old dust-coat and the pink scarf she
+had tied over her hair. The mirror was longer than Mrs. Woods'. Her
+dress looked very crushed when she saw it reflected. She tried to shake
+out the creases. Her hair, too, was flat, and had blown into stringy
+ends. A shade of disappointment dimmed the brightness of her mood as she
+realised she was not looking nearly as nice as she had when she left the
+Ridge.
+
+Someone said: "May I come in?" and Polly Henty and another girl entered
+the room.
+
+Polly Henty had just left school. She was a round-faced, jolly-looking
+girl of about Sophie's own age, and the girl with her was not much
+older, pretty and sprightly, an inch or so taller than Polly, and
+slight. She had grey eyes, and a fluff of dry-grass coloured hair about
+a small, sharp-featured, fresh-complexioned face, neatly powdered.
+
+Sophie knew something was wrong with her clothes the moment she
+encountered the girls' curious and patronising glances as they came into
+the room. Their appearance, too, took the skin from her vanity. Polly
+had on a frock of silky white crepe, with no lace or decoration of any
+kind, except a small gold locket and chain which she was wearing. But
+her dress fell round her in graceful folds, showing her small,
+well-rounded bust and hips, and she had on silk stockings and white
+satin slippers. The other girl's frock was of pale pink, misty material,
+so thin that her shoulders and arms showed through it as though there
+were nothing on them. She had pinned a pink rose in her hair, too, so
+that its petals just lay against the nape of her neck. Sophie thought
+she had never seen anyone look so nice. She had never dreamed of such a
+dress.
+
+"Oh, Miss Rouminof," Polly said; "mother sent me to look for you. We're
+just ready to start, and your father wants you to turn over his music
+for him."
+
+Sophie stood up, conscious that her dress was nothing like as pretty as
+she had thought it. It stood out stiffly about her: the starched
+petticoat crackled as she moved. She knew the lace should not have been
+on her sleeves; that her shoes were of canvas, and creaked as she
+walked; that her cotton gloves, and even the heavy, old-fashioned fan
+she was carrying, were not what they ought to have been.
+
+"Miss Chelmsford--Miss Rouminof," Polly said, looking from Sophie to the
+girl in the pink dress.
+
+Sophie said: "How do you do?" gravely, and put out her hand.
+
+"Oh!... How do you do?" Miss Chelmsford responded hurriedly, and as if
+just remembering she, too, had a hand.
+
+Sophie went with Polly and her friend to the veranda, which was screened
+in on one side with hessian to form a ball-room. Behind the hessian the
+walls were draped with flags, sheaves of paper daisies, and bundles of
+Darling pea. Red paper lanterns swung from the roof, threw a rosy glare
+over the floor which had been polished until it shone like burnished
+metal.
+
+Polly Henty took Sophie to the piano where Mrs. Henty was playing the
+opening bars of a waltz. Paul beside her, his violin under his arm,
+stood looking with eager interest over the room where men and girls were
+chatting in little groups.
+
+Mrs. Henty nodded and smiled to Sophie. Her father signalled to her, and
+she went to a seat near him.
+
+Holding her hands over the piano, Mrs. Henty looked to Paul to see if he
+were ready. He lifted his violin, tucked it under his chin, drew his
+bow, and the piano and violin broke gaily, irregularly, uncertainly, at
+first, into a measure which set and kept the couples swaying round the
+edge of the ball-room.
+
+Sophie watched them at first, dazed and interested. Under the glow of
+the lanterns, the figures of the dancers looked strange and solemn. Some
+of the dancers were moving without any conscious effort, just skimming
+the floor like swallows; others were working hard as they danced. Tom
+Henderson held Elizabeth Henty as if he never intended to let go of her,
+and worked her arm up and down as if it were a semaphore.
+
+Sophie had always admired Arthur's eldest sister, and she thought
+Elizabeth the most beautiful-looking person she had ever seen this
+evening. And that pink dress--how pretty it was! What had Polly said her
+name was--the girl who wore it? Phyllis ... Phyllis Chelmsford....
+Sophie watched the dress flutter among the dancers some time before she
+noticed Miss Chelmsford was dancing with Arthur Henty.
+
+She watched the couples revolving, dazed, and thinking vaguely about
+them, noticing how pretty feet looked in satin slippers with high,
+curved heels, wondering why some men danced with stiff knees and others
+as if their knees had funny-bones like their elbows. The red light from
+the lanterns made the whole scene look unreal; she felt as if she were
+dreaming.
+
+"Sophie!" her father cried sharply.
+
+She turned his page. Her eyes wandered to Mrs. Henty, who sat with her
+back to her. Sophie contemplated the bow of her back in its black frock
+with Spanish lace scarf across it, the outline of the black lace on the
+wrinkled skin of Mrs. Henty's neck, the loose, upward wave of her crisp
+white hair, glinting silverly where the light caught it. Her face was
+cobwebbed with wrinkles, but her features remained delicate and fine as
+sculpturings in ancient ivory. Her eyes were bright: the sparkle of
+youth still leapt in them. Her eyes had a slight smile of secret
+sympathy and amusement as they flew over the roomful of people dancing.
+
+Sophie watched dance after dance, while the music jingled and jangled.
+
+Presently John Armitage appeared in the doorway with Nina Henty. Sophie
+heard him apologising to Mrs. Henty for being late, and explaining that
+he had stayed in the back-country a few days longer than usual for the
+express purpose of coming to the ball.
+
+Mrs. Henty replied that it was "better late than never," and a pleasure
+to see Mr. Armitage at any time; and then he and Nina joined the throng
+of the dancers.
+
+Sophie drew her chair further back so that the piano screened her. The
+disappointment and stillness which had descended upon her since she came
+into the room tightened and settled. She had thought Arthur would surely
+come to ask her for this dance; but when the waltz began she saw he was
+dancing again with Phyllis Chelmsford. She sat very still, holding
+herself so that she should not feel a pain which was hovering in the
+background of her consciousness and waiting to grip her.
+
+It was different, this sitting on a chair by herself and watching other
+people dance, to anything that had ever happened to her. She had always
+been the centre of Ridge balls, courted and made a lot of from the
+moment she came into the hall. Even Arthur Henty had had to shoulder his
+way if he wanted a waltz with her.
+
+As the crowd brushed and swirled round the room, it became all blurred
+to Sophie. The last rag of that mood of tremulous joyousness which had
+invested her as she drove over the plains to the ball with her father,
+left her. She sat very still; she could not see for a moment. The waltz
+broke because she did not hear her father when he called her to turn the
+page of his music; he knocked over his stand trying to turn the page
+himself, and exclaimed angrily when Sophie did not jump to pick it up
+for him.
+
+After that she watched his book of music with an odd calm. She scarcely
+looked at the dancers, praying for the time to come when the ball would
+end and she could go home. The hours were heavy and dead; she thought it
+would never be midnight or morning again. She was conscious of her
+crushed dress and cotton gloves, and Mrs. Watty's big, old-fashioned
+fan; but after the first shock of disappointment she was not ashamed of
+them. She sat very straight and still in the midst of her finery; but
+she put the fan on the chair behind her, and took off her gloves in
+order to turn over the pages of her father's music more expertly.
+
+She knew now she was not going to dance. She understood she had not been
+invited as a guest like everybody else; but as the fiddler's little girl
+to turn over his music for him. And when she was not watching the music,
+she sat down in her chair beyond the piano, hoping no one would see or
+speak to her.
+
+Mrs. Henty spoke to her occasionally. Once she called pleasantly:
+
+"Come here and let me look at your opals, child."
+
+Sophie went to her, and Mrs. Henty lifted the necklace.
+
+"What splendid stones!" she said.
+
+Sophie looked into those bright eyes, very like Arthur's, with the same
+shifting sands in them, but alien to her, she thought.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. She did not feel inclined to tell Mrs. Henty
+about the stones.
+
+Mrs. Henty admired the ear-rings, and looked appreciatively at the big
+flat stone in Mrs. Grant's brooch. Sophie coloured under her attention.
+She wished she had not worn the opals that did not belong to her.
+
+Looking into Sophie's face, Mrs. Henty became aware of its sensitive,
+unformed beauty, a beauty of expression rather than features, and of a
+something indefinable which cast a glamour over the girl. She had been
+considerably disturbed by Arthur's share in the brawl at Newton's. It
+was so unlike Arthur to show fight of any sort. If it had not happened
+after she had sent the invitation, Mrs. Henty would not have spoken of
+Sophie when she asked Rouminof to play at the ball. As it was, she was
+not sorry to see what manner of girl she was.
+
+But as Sophie held a small, quiet face before her, with chin slightly
+uplifted, and eyes steady and measuring, a little disdainful despite
+their pain and surprise, Mrs. Henty realised it was a shame to have
+brought this girl to the ball, in order to inspect her; to discover what
+Arthur thought of her, and not in order that she might have a good time
+like other girls. After all, she was young and used to having a good
+time. Mrs. Henty heard enough of Ridge gossip to know any man on the
+mines thought the world of Sophie Rouminof. She had seen them eager to
+dance with her at race balls. It was not fair to have side-tracked her
+about Arthur, Mrs. Henty confessed to herself. The fine, clear innocence
+which looked from Sophie's eyes accused her. It made her feel mean and
+cruel. She was disturbed by a sensation of guilt.
+
+Paul was fidgeting at the first bars of the next dance, and, knowing the
+long programme to go through, Mrs. Henty's hand fell from Sophie's
+necklace, and Sophie went back to her chair.
+
+But Mrs. Henty's thoughts wandered on the themes she had raised. She
+played absent-mindedly, her fingers skipping and skirling on the notes.
+She was realising what she had done. She had not meant to be cruel, she
+protested: she had just wished to know how Arthur felt about the girl.
+If he had wanted to dance with her, there was nothing to prevent him.
+
+Arthur was dancing again with Phyllis, she noticed. She was a little
+annoyed. He was overdoing the thing. And Phyllis was a minx! That was
+the fourth time she had slipped and Arthur had held her up, the rose in
+her hair brushing his cheek.
+
+"Mother!" Polly called. "For goodness' sake ... what are you dreaming
+of?"
+
+The music had gone to the pace of Mrs. Henty's reverie until Polly
+called. Then Mrs. Henty splashed out her chords and marked her rhythm
+more briskly.
+
+After all, Mrs. Henty concluded, if Arthur and Phyllis had taken a fancy
+to each, other--at last--and were getting on, she could not afford to
+espouse the other girl's cause. What good would it do? She wanted Arthur
+to marry Phyllis. His father did. Phyllis was the only daughter of old
+Chelmsford, of Yuina Yuina, whose cattle sales were the envy of
+pastoralists on both sides of the Queensland border. Phyllis's
+inheritance and the knowledge that the interests of Warria were allied
+to those of Andrew Chelmsford of Yuina, would ensure a new lease of hope
+and opportunity for Warria.... Whereas it would be worse than awful if
+Arthur contemplated anything like marriage with this girl from the
+Ridge.
+
+Mrs. Henty's conscience was uneasy all the same. When the dance was
+ended, she called Arthur to her.
+
+"For goodness' sake, dear, ask that child to dance with you," she said
+when he came to her. "She's been sitting here all the evening by
+herself."
+
+"I was just going to," Sophie heard Arthur say.
+
+He came towards her.
+
+"Will you have the next dance with me, Sophie?" he asked.
+
+She did not look at him.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Oh, I say----" He sat down beside her. "I've had to dance with these
+people who are staying with us," he added awkwardly.
+
+Her eyes turned to him, all the stormy fires of opal running in them.
+
+"You don't _have_ to dance with me," she said.
+
+He got up and stood indecisively a moment.
+
+"Of course not," he said, "but I want to."
+
+"I don't want to dance with you," Sophie said.
+
+He turned away from her, went down the ball-room, and out through the
+doorway in the hessian wall. Everyone had gone to supper. Mrs. Henty had
+left the piano. Paul himself had gone to have some refreshment which was
+being served in the dining-room across the courtyard. From the square,
+washed with the silver radiance of moonlight which she could see through
+the open space in the hessian, came a tinkle of glasses and spoons,
+fragments of talking and laughter. Sophie heard a clear, girlish voice
+cry: "Oh, Arthur!"
+
+She clenched her hands; she thought that she was going to cry; but
+stiffening against the inclination, she sat fighting down the pain which
+was gripping her, and longed for the time to come when she could go home
+and be out in the dark, alone.
+
+John Armitage entered the ball-room as if looking for someone. Glancing
+in the direction of the piano, he saw Sophie.
+
+"There you are, Sophie!" he exclaimed heartily. "And, would you believe
+it, I've only just discovered you were here."
+
+He sat down beside her, and talked lightly, kindly, for a moment. But
+Sophie was in no mood for talking. John Armitage had guessed something
+of her crisis when he came into the room and found her sitting by
+herself. He had seen the affair at Newton's, and knew enough of Fallen
+Star gossip to understand how Sophie would resent Arthur Henty's
+treatment of her. He could see she was a sorely hurt little creature,
+holding herself together, but throbbing with pain and anger. She could
+not talk; she could only think of Arthur Henty, whose voice they heard
+occasionally out of doors. He was more than jolly after supper. Armitage
+had seen him swallow nearly a glassful of raw whisky. His face had gone
+a ghastly white after it. Rouminof had been drinking too. He came into
+the room unsteadily when Mrs. Henty took her seat at the piano again;
+but he played better.
+
+Armitage's eyes went to her necklace.
+
+"What lovely stones, Sophie!" he said.
+
+Sophie looked up. "Yes, aren't they? The men gave them to me--there's a
+stone for every one. This is Michael's!"--she touched each stone as she
+named it--"Potch gave me that, and Bully Bryant that."
+
+Her eyes caught Armitage's with a little smile.
+
+"It's easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge," he said. "And here
+am I--come hundreds of miles ... can't get anything like that piece of
+stuff in your brooch."
+
+"That's Mrs. Grant's," Sophie confessed.
+
+"And your ear-rings, Sophie!" Armitage said. "'Clare to goodness,' as my
+old nurse used to say, I didn't think you could look such a witch. But I
+always have said black opal ear-rings would make a witch of a New
+England spinster."
+
+Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he
+looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and
+appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.
+
+Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was
+an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have,
+of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so
+extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in
+this out-of-the-way part of the world.
+
+John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world's contempt for churlish
+treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have
+permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying
+Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in
+distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her
+defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her
+disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.
+
+"May I have the next dance, Sophie?" he inquired.
+
+Sophie glanced up at him.
+
+"I'm not dancing," she said.
+
+Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his
+resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her ear-rings
+swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked
+more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the
+opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the
+room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.
+
+"Why aren't you dancing, Sophie?" John Armitage asked.
+
+His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.
+
+"No one asked me to, until the dance before supper--then I didn't want
+to," she said.
+
+The dance was already in motion.
+
+"You'll have this one with me, won't you?"
+
+John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. "Please!"
+he insisted.
+
+Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held
+her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will
+not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and
+when
+
+
+the music stopped, Mr. Armitage took her through the doorway into the
+moonlight with the other couples. They walked to the garden where, the
+orange trees were in blossom.
+
+"Oh!" Sophie breathed, her arm still on his, and a little giddy.
+
+The earth was steeped in purest radiance; the orange blossoms swam like
+stars on the dark bushes; their fragrance filled the air.
+
+Sophie held up her face as if to drink. "Isn't it lovely?" she murmured.
+
+A black butterfly with white etchings on his wings hovered over an
+orange bush they were standing near, as if bewildered by the moonlight
+and mistaking it for the light of a strange day.
+
+Armitage spread his handkerchief on a wooden seat.
+
+"I thought you'd like it," he said. "Let's sit here--I've put down my
+handkerchief because there's a dew, although the air seems so dry."
+
+When the music began again Sophie got up.
+
+"Don't let us go in yet," he begged.
+
+"But----" she demurred.
+
+"We'll stay here for this, and have the next dance," Armitage said.
+
+Sophie hesitated. She wondered why Mr. Armitage was being so nice to
+her, understanding a little. She smiled into his eyes, dallying with the
+temptation. John Armitage had seen women's eyes like that before; then
+fall to the appeal of his own. But in Sophie's eyes he found something
+he had not seen very often--a will-o'the-wisp of infinite wispishness
+which incited him to pursue and to insist, while it eluded and flew from
+him.
+
+When she danced with John Armitage again, Sophie looked up, laughed, and
+played her eyes and smiles for him as she had seen Phyllis Chelmsford do
+for Arthur. At first, shyly, she had exerted herself to please him, and
+Armitage had responded to her tentative efforts; but presently she found
+herself enjoying the game. And Armitage was so surprised at the charm
+she revealed as she exerted herself to please him, that he responded
+with an enthusiasm he had not contemplated. But their mutual success at
+this oldest diversion in the world, while it surprised and delighted
+them, did not delight their hosts. Mr. and Mrs. Henty were surprised;
+then frankly scandalised. Several young men asked Sophie to dance with
+them after she had danced with John Armitage. She thanked them, but
+refused, saying she did not wish to dance very much. She sat in her
+chair by the piano except when she was dancing with Mr. Armitage, or was
+in the garden with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+"See Ed. means to do you well with a six-horse team this evening, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said, while Armitage was having his early meal
+before starting on his all-night drive into Budda.
+
+Newton remembered afterwards that John Armitage did not seem as
+interested and jolly as usual. Ordinarily he was interested in
+everything, and cordial with everybody; but this evening he was quiet
+and preoccupied.
+
+"Hardly had a word to say for himself," Peter Newton said.
+
+Armitage had watched Ed. bring the old bone-shaking shandrydan he called
+a coach up to the hotel, and put a couple of young horses into it. He
+had a colt on the wheel he was breaking-in, and a sturdy old dark bay
+beside him, a pair of fine rusty bays ahead of them, and a sorrel, and
+chestnut youngster in the lead. He had got old Olsen and two men on the
+hotel veranda to help him harness-up, and it took them all their time to
+get the leaders into the traces. Bags had to be thrown over the heads of
+the young horses before anything could be done with them, and it took
+three men to hold on to the team until Ed. Ventry got into his seat and
+gathered up the reins. Armitage put his valise on the coach and shook
+hands all round. He got into his seat beside Ed. and wrapped a tarpaulin
+lined with possum skin over his knees.
+
+"Let her go, Olly," Ed. yelled.
+
+The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses' heads.
+The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the
+steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to
+throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders
+dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle
+and clash of gear, Ed. Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands,
+pulling on them, and yelling:
+
+"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders--yer! I'll warm yer....
+Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get
+alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"
+
+Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of
+the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at
+any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon
+took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and
+they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was
+reached.
+
+"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards.
+"Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that
+day he was dead quiet."
+
+"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.
+
+"'No, Ed,' he says.
+
+"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you
+got this trip?'
+
+"'No,' he says. But, by God--if I'd known what he got----"
+
+It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six
+o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning
+train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at
+the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train
+left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and
+scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding
+in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.
+
+"Could've swore I left Baldy at the Ridge," he said to the boy who
+looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.
+
+"Thought he was there meself," the lad replied, imitating Ed.'s
+perplexed head-scratching.
+
+At the Ridge, when he made his next trip, they were able to tell Mr.
+Ventry how the baldy-face happened to be at Budda when Ed. thought he
+was at Fallen Star, although Ed. heard some of the explanation from
+Potch and Michael a day or two later. Sophie had ridden the baldy-face
+into Budda the night he drove Mr. Armitage to catch the train for
+Sydney. No one discovered she had gone until the end of next day. Then
+Potch went to Michael.
+
+"Michael," he said; "she's gone."
+
+During the evening Paul had been heard calling Sophie. He asked Potch
+whether he had seen her. Potch said he had not. But it was nothing
+unusual for Sophie to wander off for a day on an excursion with Ella or
+Mirry Flail, so neither he nor Michael thought much of not having seen
+her all day, until Paul remarked querulously to Potch that he did not
+know where Sophie was. Looking into her room Potch saw her bed had not
+been slept in, although the room was disordered. He went up to the town,
+to Mrs. Newton and to the Flails', to ask whether they had seen anything
+of Sophie. Mirry Flail said she had seen her on one of the coach-stable
+horses, riding out towards the Three Mile the evening before. Potch knew
+instinctively that Sophie had gone away from the moment Paul had spoken
+to him. She had lived away from him during the last few months; but
+watching her with always anxious, devout eyes, he had known more of her
+than anyone else.
+
+Lying full stretch on his sofa, Michael was reading when Potch came into
+the hut. His stricken face communicated the seriousness of his news.
+Michael had no reason to ask who the "she" Potch spoke of was: there was
+only one woman for whom Potch would look like that. But Michael's mind
+was paralysed by the shock of the thing Potch had said. He could neither
+stir nor speak.
+
+"I'm riding into Budda, to find out if she went down by the train,"
+Potch said. "I think she did, Michael. She's been talking about going to
+Sydney ... a good deal lately.... She was asking me about it--day before
+yesterday ... but I never thought--I never thought she wanted to go so
+soon ... and that she'd go like this. But I think she has gone.... And
+she was afraid to tell us--to let you know.... She said you'd made up
+your mind you didn't want her to go ... she'd heard her mother tell you
+not to let her go, and if ever she was going she wouldn't tell you...."
+
+Potch's explanation, broken and incoherent as it was, gave Michael's
+thought and feeling time to reassert themselves.
+
+He said: "See if Chassy can lend me his pony, and I'll come with you,
+Potch."
+
+They rode into Budda that night, and inquiry from the station-master
+gave them the information they sought. A girl in a black frock had taken
+a second-class ticket for Sydney. He did not notice very much what she
+was like. She had come to the window by herself; she had no luggage; he
+had seen her later sitting in a corner of a second-class compartment by
+herself. The boy, a stranger to the district, who had clipped her
+ticket, said she was crying when he asked for her ticket. He had asked
+why she was crying. She had said she was going away, and she did not
+like going away from the back-country. She was going away--to study
+singing, she said, but would be coming back some day.
+
+Michael determined to go to Sydney by the morning train to try to find
+Sophie. He went to Ed. Ventry and borrowed five pounds from him.
+
+"That explains how the baldy-face got here," Ed. said.
+
+Michael nodded. He could not talk about Sophie. Potch explained why they
+wanted the money as well as he could.
+
+"It's no good trying to bring her back if she doesn't want to come,
+Michael," Potch had said before Michael left for Sydney.
+
+"No," Michael agreed.
+
+"If you could get her fixed up with somebody to stay with," Potch
+suggested; "and see she was all right for money ... it might be the best
+thing to do. I've got a bit of dough put by, Michael.... I'll send that
+down to you and go over to one of the stations for a while to keep us
+goin'--if we want more."
+
+Michael assented.
+
+"You might try round and see if you could find Mr. Armitage," Potch
+said, just before the train went. "He might have seen something of her."
+
+"Yes," Michael replied, drearily.
+
+Potch waited until the train left, and started back to Fallen Star in
+the evening.
+
+A week later a letter came for Michael. It was in Sophie's handwriting.
+Potch was beside himself with anxiety and excitement. He wrote to
+Michael, care of an opal-buyer they were on good terms with and who
+might know where Michael was staying. In the bewilderment of his going,
+Potch had not thought to ask Michael where he would live, or where a
+letter would find him.
+
+Michael came back to Fallen Star when he received the letter. He had not
+seen Sophie. No one he knew or had spoken to had seen anything of her
+after she left the train. Michael handed the letter to Potch as soon as
+he got back into the hut.
+
+Sophie wrote that she had gone away because she wanted to learn to be a
+singer, and that she would be on her way to America when they received
+it. She explained that she had made up her mind to go quite suddenly,
+and she had not wanted Michael to know because she remembered his
+promise to her mother. She knew he would not let her go away from the
+Ridge if he could help it. She had sold her necklace, she said, and had
+got L100 for it, so had plenty of money. Potch and Michael were not to
+worry about her. She would be all right, and when she had made a name
+for herself as a singer, she would come home to the Ridge to see them.
+"Don't be angry, Michael dear," the letter ended, "with your lovingest
+Sophie."
+
+Potch looked at Michael; he wondered whether the thought in his own mind
+had reached Michael's. But
+
+Michael was too dazed and overwhelmed to think at all.
+
+"There's one thing, Potch," he said; "if she's gone to America, we could
+write to Mr. Armitage and ask him to keep an eye on her. And," he added,
+"if she's gone to America ... it's just likely she may be on the same
+boat as Mr. Armitage, and he'd look after her."
+
+Potch watched his face. The thought in his mind had not occurred to
+Michael, then, he surmised.
+
+"He'd see she came to no harm."
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+But he had seen John Armitage talking to Sophie on the Ridge over near
+Snow-Shoes' hut the afternoon after the dance at Warria. He knew Mr.
+Armitage had driven Sophie home after the dance, too. Paul had been too
+drunk to stand, much less drive. Potch had knocked off early in the mine
+to go across to the Three Mile that afternoon. Then it had surprised
+Potch to see Sophie sitting and talking to Mr. Armitage as though they
+were very good friends; but, beyond a vague, jealous alarm, he had not
+attached any importance to it until he knew Sophie had gone down to
+Sydney by the same train as Mr. Armitage. She had said she was going to
+America, too, and he was going there. Potch had lived all his days on
+the Ridge; he knew nothing of the world outside, and its ways, except
+what he had learnt from books. But an instinct where Sophie was
+concerned had warned him of a link between her going away and John
+Armitage. That meeting of theirs came to have an extraordinary
+significance in his mind. He had thought out the chances of Sophie's
+having gone with Mr. Armitage as far as he could. But Michael had not
+associated her going with him, it was clear. It had never occurred to
+him that Mr. Armitage could have anything to do with Sophie's going
+away. It had not occurred to the rest of the Ridge folk either.
+
+Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as
+he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her
+as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having
+gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be
+able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.
+
+"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said,
+"then she'll send for you."
+
+"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time
+here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."
+
+Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then,
+for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing
+him through the delirium of sun-stroke.
+
+A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers--Jun Johnson
+and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him--and
+Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been
+down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.
+
+When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found
+Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.
+
+"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You
+think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well,
+you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof
+is--here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If
+I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face
+round here for a bit? Not much...."
+
+Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to
+his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage
+he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.
+
+"I know you chaps--I know how you feel about things; and quite right,
+too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that--why, he's not fit to wipe
+your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let
+run with the rest."
+
+He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business
+than any man-jack of you--no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is
+bygones--that's my motto. But I tell you--and that's the strength of
+it--I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man
+here. D'y' believe me?"
+
+It was said in good earnest enough, even Watty and George had to admit.
+It was either the best bit of bluff they had ever listened to, or else
+Jun, for once in a way, was enjoying the luxury of telling the truth.
+
+"We're all good triers here, Jun," George said, "but we're not as green
+as we're painted."
+
+Jun regarded his beer meditatively; then he said:
+
+"Look here, you chaps, suppose I put it to you straight: I ain't always
+been what you might call the clean potato ... but I ain't always been
+married, either. Well, I'm married now--married to the best little girl
+ever I struck...."
+
+The idea of Jun taking married life seriously amused two or three of the
+men. Smiles began to go round, and broadened as he talked. That they did
+not please Jun was evident.
+
+"Well, seein' I've taken on family responsibilities," he went on--"Was
+you smiling, Watty?"
+
+"Me? Oh, no, Jun," the offender replied, meekly; "it was only the
+stummick-ache took me. It does that way sometimes. You mightn't think
+so, but I always look as if I was smilin' when I've got the
+stummick-ache."
+
+George Woods, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and some of the others laughed,
+taking Watty's explanation for what it was worth. But Jun continued
+solemnly, playing the reformed blackguard to his own satisfaction.
+
+"Seein' I've taken on family responsibilities, I want to run straight. I
+don't want my kids to think there was anything crook about their dad."
+
+If he moved no one else, he contrived to feel deeply moved himself at
+the prospect of how his unborn children were going to regard him. The
+men who had always more or less believed in him managed to convince
+themselves that Jun meant what he said. George and Watty realised he had
+put up a good case, that he was getting at them in the only way
+possible.
+
+Michael moved out of the crowd round the door towards the bar. Peter
+Newton put his daily ration of beer on the bar.
+
+"'Lo, Michael," Jun said.
+
+"'Lo, Jun," Michael said.
+
+"Well," Jun concluded, tossing off his beer; "that's the way it is,
+boys. Believe me if y'r like, and if y'r don't like--lump it.
+
+"But there's one thing more I've got to tell you," he added; "and if you
+find what I've been saying hard to believe, you'll find this harder: I
+don't believe Charley got those stones of Rummy's."
+
+"What?"
+
+The query was like the crack of a whip-lash. There was a restive,
+restless movement among the men.
+
+"I don't believe Charley got those stones either," Jun declared. "'Got,'
+I said, not 'took.' All I know is, he was like a sick fish when he
+reached Sydney ... and sold all the opal he had with him. He was lively
+enough when we started out. I give you that. Maybe he took Rum-Enough's
+stones all right; but somebody put it over on him. I thought it might be
+Emmy--that yeller-haired tart, you remember, went down with us. She was
+a tart, and no mistake. My little girl, now--she was never ... like
+that! But Maud says she doesn't think so, because Emmy turned Charley
+out neck and crop when she found he'd got no cash. He got mighty little
+for the bit of stone he had with him ... I'll take my oath. He came
+round to borrow from me a day or two after we arrived. And he was ragin'
+mad about something.... If he shook the stones off Rum-Enough, it's my
+belief somebody shook them off of him, either in the train or here--or
+off of Rummy before he got them...."
+
+Several of the men muttered and grunted their protest. But Jun held to
+his point, and the talk became more general. Jun asked for news of the
+fields: what had been done, and who was getting the stuff. Somebody said
+John Armitage had been up and had bought a few nice stones from the
+Crosses, Pony-Fence, and Bully Bryant.
+
+"Armitage?" Jun said. "He's always a good man--gives a fair price. He
+bought my stones, that last lot ... gave me a hundred pounds for the big
+knobby. But it fair took my breath away to hear young Sophie Rouminof
+had gone off with him."
+
+Michael was standing beside him before the words were well out of his
+mouth.
+
+"What did you say?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm sorry, Michael," Jun replied, after a quick, scared glance at the
+faces of the men about him. "But I took it for granted you all knew, of
+course. We saw them a good bit together down in Sydney, Maud and me, and
+she said she saw Sophie on the _Zealanida_ the day the boat sailed. Maud
+was down seeing a friend off, and she saw Sophie and Mr. Armitage on
+board. She said--"
+
+Michael turned heavily, and swung out of the bar.
+
+Jun looked after him. In the faces of the men he read what a bomb his
+news had been among them.
+
+"I wouldn't have said that for a lot," he said, "if I'd 've thought
+Michael didn't know. But, Lord, I thought he knew ... I thought you all
+knew."
+
+In the days which followed, as he wandered over the plains in the late
+afternoon and evening, Michael tried to come to some understanding with
+himself of what had happened. At first he had been too overcast by the
+sense of loss to realise more than that Sophie had gone away. But now,
+beyond her going, he could see the failure of his own effort to control
+circumstances. He had failed; Sophie had gone; she had left the Ridge.
+
+"God," he groaned; "with the best intentions in the world, what an awful
+mess we make of things!"
+
+Michael wondered whether it would have been worse for Sophie if she had
+gone away with Paul when her mother died. At least, Sophie was older now
+and better able to take care of herself.
+
+He blamed himself because she had gone away as she had, all the same;
+the failure of the Ridge to hold her as well as his own failure beat him
+to the earth. He had hoped Sophie would care for the things her mother
+had cared for. He had tried to explain them to her. But Sophie, he
+thought now, had more the restless temperament of her father. He had not
+understood her young spirit, its craving for music, laughter,
+admiration, and the life that could give them to her. He had thought the
+Ridge would be enough for her, as it had been for her mother.
+
+Michael never thought of Mrs. Rouminof as dead. He thought of her as
+though she were living some distance from him, that was all. In the
+evening he looked up at the stars, and there was one in which she seemed
+to be. Always he felt as if she were looking at him when its mild
+radiance fell over him. And now he looked to that star as if trying to
+explain and beg forgiveness.
+
+His heart was sore because Sophie had left him without a word of
+affection or any explanation. His fear and anxiety for her gave him no
+peace. He sweated in agony with them for a long time, crying to her
+mother, praying her to believe he had not failed in his trust through
+lack of desire to serve her, but through a fault of understanding. If
+she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained
+that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with
+the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and
+sorrow for herself.
+
+Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by
+seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother's way. He had opposed
+the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it;
+and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise
+and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into
+channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas
+identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the
+hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.
+
+Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted
+Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from
+Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding
+Paul's opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would
+not do Sophie any harm.... His having them now could not injure
+Sophie.... Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he
+came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He
+tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always
+with him.... But Paul was delirious with sun-stroke, he remembered; it
+would be foolish to give him the stones just then.... As soon as that
+touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the
+opals and explain how he came to have them....
+
+
+
+
+_PART II_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes
+blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms
+continued until March.
+
+Through the heat came the baa-ing of sheep on the plains, moving in
+great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying
+of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from
+the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were
+marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the
+road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust
+from the plains.
+
+It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather.
+Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of
+it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was
+dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before
+the heat of the day began.
+
+In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump,
+handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone,
+shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of
+the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air.
+But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay,
+moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers
+stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up
+from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the
+busy underground world of the mines.
+
+As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul
+when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium
+of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it.
+Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning;
+he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with
+Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open
+sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once,
+in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti--the
+yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard
+near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the
+goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch
+saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or
+cheese for the two huts.
+
+People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they
+regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch
+Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of.
+And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of
+his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if
+he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so.
+He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself
+did.
+
+A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought
+much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little
+bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had
+rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff
+of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself
+was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of
+the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody
+who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find
+eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all
+the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house,
+thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.
+
+"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't
+anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael
+for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.
+
+George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for
+Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when
+Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder
+than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.
+
+At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the
+brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of
+the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying
+nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds
+with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there
+was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or
+knew something of.
+
+Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the
+old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real
+friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was
+that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a
+subtle, inexplicable fascination.
+
+As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had
+left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm
+comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it,
+there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."
+
+Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe
+Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would
+be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year.
+George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the
+Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to
+prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and
+rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be
+driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what
+his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and
+Son and men of the Ridge.
+
+When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George.
+
+"DEAR BRADY," it said, "I need hardly say your letter was a great shock
+to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he
+denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since
+found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her
+passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to
+leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy
+production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of
+this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power.
+Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment
+of my son's behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations
+between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I
+need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me
+personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my
+business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the
+best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady--whom I will regard as
+under my charge--you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps
+point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to
+visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to
+visit sins of the children upon the fathers.
+
+"Yours very truly,
+
+"DAWE P. ARMITAGE."
+
+"The old man seems fair broken up," Watty remarked.
+
+"Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with
+Armitage and Son--again," George replied. "If she's all right ... well
+... perhaps it'll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn't get on
+all right ... they won't neither."
+
+"That's right," Watty muttered.
+
+The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for
+hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had
+crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes
+of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains,
+and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in
+tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man
+and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light;
+the sky, dim, and smoking with heat.
+
+Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with
+sun-stroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to
+eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for
+some time, and a haze the sun-stroke had left hovered over his mind.
+Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping,
+Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle,
+and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or
+dozed the hot, still, midday hours away.
+
+When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which
+came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to
+make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put
+before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one
+day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched
+Potch with the birds.
+
+Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay
+on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until
+Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation
+of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or white-tail,
+to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was
+a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would
+be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to
+have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and
+entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not
+their common property.
+
+When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for
+granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had
+his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion
+which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and
+assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had
+at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived
+down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing
+for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had
+found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep,
+mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken
+from other loves.
+
+Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give
+to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him.
+He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to
+tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was
+holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance
+tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his
+mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.
+
+Paul's illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about
+the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his
+touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits
+again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let
+him know how he came to have them.
+
+All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the
+opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch's belief in him,
+and for not telling Potch how Paul's opals came into his possession.
+
+In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the
+troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed
+words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the
+stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton's bar. Suddenly it
+occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the
+package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of
+books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.
+
+He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul's
+cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his
+books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he
+found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the
+box--only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.
+
+Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none
+had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough
+handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again
+more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were
+all right while he was about it, he thought.
+
+He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table.
+Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin;
+and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted
+them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the
+candle-light. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in--a piece of
+opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its
+black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless
+night.
+
+One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle,
+letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in
+the stones--blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red--melted, sprayed, and
+scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.
+
+"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and
+emotion.
+
+With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of
+colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not
+only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a
+sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining
+depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.
+
+Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung
+unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.
+
+Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood
+up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that
+Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained
+how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay,
+instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing
+what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really
+guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a
+miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones
+as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at,
+tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and
+flashing.
+
+But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually
+sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement.
+He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was
+doing.
+
+"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.
+
+"No," Michael said. "Why?"
+
+He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the
+light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this
+way."
+
+The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between
+them. Michael lifted his head to listen.
+
+"Who's that?" he asked;
+
+Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars,
+was blank in the doorway.
+
+"May I come in?" a woman's voice called. Her figure wavered in the
+doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into
+the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the
+threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes,
+laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes
+went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.
+
+"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on
+the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see
+what you can do for her?"
+
+Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so
+ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to
+Maud.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of
+the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.
+
+"My," she cried eagerly, "that's a pretty stone, Michael!" She turned it
+back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks
+of red and gold.
+
+"Just been noodlin' over some old scraps ... and came across it,"
+Michael said awkwardly.
+
+It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He
+could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul's opals
+before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had.
+
+"Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle," Maud said. "Doin' a
+bit of dealin' myself. I'll give you a good price for it, Michael."
+
+"It's goin' into a parcel," he replied.
+
+"Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know," Maud said.
+"Comin', Potch?"
+
+She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael
+caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street
+urchin's, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies,
+fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely
+any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were
+clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden,
+flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond
+the Ridge.
+
+Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its
+wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed
+Sophie's singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the
+ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang.
+
+"You miss her these nights, don't you?" Michael said to Potch one very
+hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was
+drifting into the room about them.
+
+Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he
+looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him.
+
+"Yes," he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any
+more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out
+of doors.
+
+Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they
+found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of
+the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working;
+even the noodlers, Snow-Shoes and young Flail, were standing round with
+the miners.
+
+"Hullo," Michael said, "something's up!"
+
+Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only
+once before on the fields.
+
+"Ratting?" he said.
+
+"Looks like it," Michael agreed.
+
+"What's up, George?" he asked, as Potch and he joined the men.
+
+"Rats, Michael," George said, "that's what's up. They've been on our
+place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was
+working on. They've paid Archie a visit ... and Bully reck'ns his
+spider's been walking lately, too."
+
+Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour
+for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat's visit to
+their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men
+who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the
+rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy
+O'Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods' shelter to talk the
+situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the
+fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards
+them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out
+before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the
+shelter.
+
+George Woods, the best natured, soberest man on the Ridge, was
+smouldering with rage at the ratting.
+
+"I've a good mind to put a bit of dynamite at the bottom of the shaft,
+and then, when a rat strikes a match, up he'll go," he said.
+
+"But," Watty objected, "how'd you feel when you found a dead man in your
+claim, George?"
+
+"Feel?" George burst out. "I wouldn't feel--except he'd got no right to
+be there--and perlitely put him on one side."
+
+"Remember those chaps was up a couple of years ago, George?" Bill Grant
+asked, "and helped theirselves when Pony-Fence and me had a bit of luck
+up at Rhyll's hill."
+
+"Remember them?" George growled.
+
+"They'd go round selling stuff if there was anybody to buy--hang round
+the pub all day, and yet had stuff to sell," Watty murmured.
+
+The men smoked silently for a few minutes.
+
+"How much did they get, again?" Bully Bryant asked.
+
+"Couple of months," George said.
+
+"Police protect criminals--everybody knows that," Snow-Shoes said.
+
+Sitting on the dump just beyond the shade the shelter cast, he had been
+listening to what the men were saying, the sun full blaze on him, his
+blue eyes glittering in the shadow of his old felt hat. All eyes turned
+to him. The men always listened attentively when Snow-Shoes had anything
+to say.
+
+"If there's a policeman about, and a man starts ratting and is caught,
+he gets a couple of months. Well, what does he care? But if there's a
+chance of the miners getting hold of him and some rough handling ... he
+thinks twice before he rats ... knowing a broken arm or a pain in his
+head'll come of it."
+
+"That's true," George said. "I vote we get this bunch ourselves."
+
+"Right!" The Crosses and Bully agreed with him. Watty did not like the
+idea of the men taking the law into their own hands. He was all for law
+and order. His fat, comfortable soul disliked the idea of violence.
+
+"Seems to me," he said, "it 'd be a good thing to set a trap--catch the
+rats--then we'd know where we were."
+
+Michael nodded. "I'm with Watty," he said.
+
+"Then we could hand 'em over to the police," Watty said.
+
+Michael smiled. "Well, after the last batch getting two months, and the
+lot of us wasting near on two months gettin' 'em jailed, I reck'n it's
+easier to deal with 'em here--But we've got to be sure. They've got to
+be caught red-handed, as the sayin' is. It don't do to make mistakes
+when we're dealin' out our own justice."
+
+"That's right, Michael," the men agreed.
+
+"Well, I reck'n we'd ought to have in the police," Watty remarked
+obstinately.
+
+"The police!" Snow-Shoes stood up as if he had no further patience with
+the controversy. "It's like letting hornets build in your house to keep
+down flies--to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the
+flies."
+
+He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure,
+straighter than any man's on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet,
+wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the
+shingly earth.
+
+Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among
+themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they
+left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats.
+
+Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because
+the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But
+when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had "done a
+moonlight flit," it was generally agreed that these suspicions were
+confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal
+within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had
+come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself
+had bought from the gougers. Jun's and Maud's flight was taken not only
+as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men's
+resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring
+them away.
+
+When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went
+its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill
+after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to
+find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby.
+
+The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary
+summer months was Bully Bryant's marriage to Ella Flail, and, although
+it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be
+married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance
+and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple.
+
+"Roy O'Mara's got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael,"
+Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and
+Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had
+thought over what he was going to say.
+
+"Yes?" Michael replied.
+
+"How about tryin' our luck there?" Potch ventured.
+
+Michael took the suggestion meditatively. Potch and he had been working
+together for several years with very little luck. They had won only a
+few pieces of opal good enough to put into a parcel for an opal-buyer
+when he came to Fallen Star. But Michael was loth to give up the old
+shaft, not only because he believed in it, but because of the work he
+and his mates had put into it, and because when they did strike opal
+there, the mine would be easily worked. But this was the first time
+Potch had made a suggestion of the sort, and Michael felt bound to
+consider it.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush on, Snow-Shoes told me," Potch said. "Crosses
+have pegged, and I saw Bill Olsen measurin' out a claim."
+
+Michael's reluctance to move was evident.
+
+"I feel sure we'll strike it in the old shaft, sooner or later," he
+murmured.
+
+"Might be sooner by the coolebah," Potch said.
+
+Michael's eyes lifted to his, the gleam of a smile in them.
+
+"Very well, we'll pull pegs," he said.
+
+While stars were still in the high sky and the chill breath of dawn in
+the air, men were busy measuring and pegging claims on the hillside
+round about the old coolebah. Half a dozen blocks were marked one
+hundred feet square before the stars began to fade.
+
+All the morning men with pegs, picks, and shovels came straggling up the
+track from the township and from other workings scattered along the
+Ridge. The sound of picks on the hard ground and the cutting down of
+scrub broke the limpid stillness.
+
+Paul came out of his hut as Potch passed it on his way to the coolebah.
+Immediately he recognised the significance of the heavy pick Potch was
+carrying, and trotted over to him.
+
+"You goin' to break new ground, Potch?" he asked. Potch nodded.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah," he said. "Roy
+O'Mara's bottomed on opal there ... got some pretty good colours, and
+we're goin' to peg out."
+
+"A rush?" Paul's eyes brightened. "Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?"
+
+"Not bad."
+
+As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul
+chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.
+
+Roy O'Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of
+any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood
+over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great,
+bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound
+of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump--Roy had
+been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a
+fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day's find was spread
+on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but
+when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the
+pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.
+
+When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had
+marked in his mind's eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond
+Roy's claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at
+slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat
+beading and pouring down their faces.
+
+There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a
+new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk
+so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of
+matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a
+child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.
+
+Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after
+the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud
+and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the
+shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a
+fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal
+dirt beneath it. Roy O'Mara, working on his trace of promising black
+potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul.
+Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft;
+Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour
+of sinking again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from
+the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock
+from the drives, Potch said:
+
+"I'm going to sink another hole, Michael--higher up."
+
+Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that
+way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but
+he was not disturbed by his doing so.
+
+"Right," he said; "you sink another hole, Potch. I'll stick to this one
+for a bit."
+
+Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site
+carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the
+morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he
+was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had
+been three weeks on the job.
+
+"Ought to be near bottoming, Potch," Roy remarked one day towards the
+end of the three weeks.
+
+"Be there to-day," Potch said.
+
+Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his
+impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.
+
+Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a
+certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make
+considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well:
+they had cut out a pocket worth L400 as a result of their sinking, and
+it remained to be seen what Potch's new hole would bring. A good
+prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.
+
+Potch's prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value
+when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of
+promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the
+coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.
+
+They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains,
+for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal
+dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the
+mine, uttered a low cry.
+
+"Michael," he called.
+
+Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that
+joyous vibration in a man's voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went
+to Potch.
+
+Potch Was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had
+clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red,
+green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering
+together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he
+saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones
+which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some
+size was embedded in the wall of the mine.
+
+"Looks a beaut, doesn't she, Michael?" he gasped.
+
+Michael breathed hard.
+
+"By God----" he murmured.
+
+Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.
+
+He screamed when he saw the stone.
+
+"I knew!" he yelled. "I knew we'd strike it here."
+
+"Well, stand back while I get her out," Potch cried.
+
+Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth
+about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away
+with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with
+wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.
+
+When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be
+even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it
+had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped
+surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal.
+Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous
+and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with
+excitement.
+
+He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch's find to the men
+who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and
+Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They
+gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and
+admiration.
+
+"You've struck it this time, Potch!" Roy O'Mara said.
+
+Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped
+surface, and held it to the sun again.
+
+"It's the biggest knobby--ever I see," Archie Cross said.
+
+"Same here," Bill Grant muttered.
+
+"Wants polishin' up a bit," Michael said, "and then she'll show better."
+
+As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul's hut and faced the stone
+on Sophie's wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when
+he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied
+that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a
+hen's egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they
+agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever
+seen.
+
+Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and
+excitement in his voice as he talked.
+
+Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd
+jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought
+in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.
+
+When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their
+plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf
+where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He
+threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the
+light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of
+crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across
+the table to read.
+
+Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the
+magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's
+eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in
+his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before
+him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of
+the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby
+ever taken out of the fields.
+
+Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and
+rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered
+book.
+
+As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul's opals flashed before
+him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious
+of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud
+Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him
+again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or
+explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.
+
+Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like
+that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch's
+bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about
+the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his
+silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except
+that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion
+of unworthiness in the object of its belief.
+
+But since--since he had made up his mind to give the opals to
+Paul--since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her
+any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not
+given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had
+seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to
+himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer
+in the mysterious no-man's land of his subconsciousness.
+
+Paul's slow recovery from sun-stroke was a reason for deferring
+explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the
+first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals,
+Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his
+story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more
+difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of
+his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming
+on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul's opals.
+
+But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had
+only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this
+putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to
+face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals
+had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready
+to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with
+them.... He mocked his fears of himself.
+
+Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection
+with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own
+consciousness and to be honest with himself.
+
+As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision.
+He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray
+had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement
+seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could
+not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a
+dark corner of his mind.
+
+Had Paul's stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their
+witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were
+misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of
+the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul's
+stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want
+to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe
+he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was
+ready to steal--steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he
+assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do
+that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to
+do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring
+of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had
+done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them
+to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his
+dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put
+off going to Paul and to Watty and George.
+
+Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of,
+Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the
+packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty
+its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette
+tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them
+for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his
+project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few
+books.
+
+He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman's
+year-book and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it
+must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or
+another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked
+them over--but he could not find the tin with Paul's opals in.
+
+He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the
+candle-fight.
+
+"They're gone," he told himself.
+
+He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the
+box--if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absent-mindedly;
+but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there.
+
+Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea.
+
+Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on
+them--not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or
+suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able
+to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth
+speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value.
+His mind hovered indecisively. Maud?
+
+Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that
+gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself
+to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had
+come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to
+prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the
+day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat,
+Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man's hut
+either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one
+else who knew he had any stone worth having.
+
+If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By
+and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun
+told where those opals of Paul's had been found, as he would some
+day--Michael could not contemplate the prospect.
+
+He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it
+would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to
+restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men
+of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but
+knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession
+of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt
+that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the
+stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt.
+
+Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael
+sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him.
+He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul's had worked
+him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought
+him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of
+that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the
+loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty
+book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of
+the story Jun would tell--that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high
+faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of
+course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men's stones, and
+that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to
+be judged by it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Michael and Potch were finishing their tea when Watty burst in on them.
+His colour was up, his small, blue eyes winking and flashing over his
+fat, pink cheeks.
+
+"Who d'y' think's come be motor to-day, Michael?" he gasped.
+
+Michael's movement and the shade of apprehension which crossed his face
+were a question.
+
+"Old man Armitage!" Watty said. "And he's come all the way from New York
+to see the big opal, he says."
+
+There was a rumble of cart wheels, an exclamation and the reverberation
+of a broad, slow voice out-of-doors. Watty looked through Michael's
+window.
+
+"Here he is, Michael," he said. "George and Peter are helping him out of
+Newton's dog-cart. And Archie Cross and Bill Grant are coming along the
+road a bit behind."
+
+Michael pushed back his seat and pulled the fastenings from his front
+door. The front door was more of a decoration and matter of form in the
+face of the hut than intended to serve any useful purpose, and the
+fastening had never been moved before.
+
+Potch cleared away the litter of the meal while Michael went out to meet
+the old man. He was walking with the help of a stick, his heavy,
+colourless face screwed with pain.
+
+"Grr-rr!" he grunted. "What a fool I was to come to this God-damn place
+of yours, George! What? No fool like an old one? Don't know so much
+about that.... What else was I to do? Brrr! Oh, there you are, Michael!
+Came to see you. Came right away because, from what the boys tell me,
+you weren't likely to slip down and call on me."
+
+"I'd 've come all right if I'd known you wanted to see me, Mr.
+Armitage," Michael said.
+
+The old man went into the hut and, creaking and groaning as though all
+his springs needed oiling, seated himself on the sofa, whipped out a
+silk handkerchief and wiped his face and head with it.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "here I am at last--and mighty glad to get here.
+The journey from New York City, where I reside, to this spot on the
+globe, don't get any nearer as I grow older. No, sir! Who's that young
+man?"
+
+Mr. Armitage had fixed his eyes on Potch from the moment he came into
+the hut. Potch stood to his gaze.
+
+"That's Potch," Michael said.
+
+"Potch?"
+
+The small, round eyes, brown with black rims and centres, beginning to
+dull with age, winked over Potch, and in that moment Dawe Armitage was
+trying to discover what his chances of getting possession of the stone
+he had come to see, were with the man who had found it.
+
+"Con--gratulate you, young man," he said, holding out his hand. "I've
+come, Lord knows how many miles, to have a look at that stone of yours."
+
+Potch shook hands with him.
+
+"They tell me it's the finest piece of opal ever come out of Ridge
+earth," the old man continued. "Well, I couldn't rest out there at home
+without havin' a look at it. To think there was an opal like that about,
+and I couldn't get me fingers on it! And when I thought how it was I'd
+never even see it, perhaps, I danged 'em to Hades--doctors, family and
+all--took me passage out here. Ran away! That's what I did." He chuckled
+with reminiscent glee. "And here I am."
+
+"Cleared out, did y', Mr. Armitage?" Watty asked.
+
+"That's it, Watty," old Armitage answered, still chuckling. "Cleared
+out.... Family'll be scarrifyin' the States for me. Sent 'em a cable
+when I got here to say I'd arrived."
+
+Michael and George laughed with Watty, and the old man looked as pleased
+with himself as a schoolboy who has brought off some soul-satisfying
+piece of mischief.
+
+"Tell you, boys," he said, "I felt I couldn't die easy knowing there was
+a stone like that about and I'd never clap eyes on it.... Know you
+chaps'd pretty well turned me down--me and mine--and I wouldn't get more
+than a squint at the stone for my pains. You're such damned independent
+beggars! Eh, Michael? That's the old argument, isn't it? How did y' like
+those papers I sent you--and that book ... by the foreign devil--what's
+his name? Clever, but mad. Y'r all mad, you socialists, syndicalists, or
+whatever y'r call y'rselves nowadays.... But, for God's sake, let me
+have a look at the stone now, there's a good fellow."
+
+Michael looked at Potch.
+
+"You get her, Potch," he said.
+
+Potch put his hand to the top of the shelf where, in ah old tin, the
+great opal lay wrapped in wadding, with a few soft cloths about it. He
+put the tin on the table. Michael pushed the table toward the sofa on
+which Mr. Armitage was sitting. The old man leaned forward, his lips
+twitching, his eyes watering with eagerness. Potch's clumsy fingers
+fumbled with the wrappings; he spread the wadding on the table. The opal
+flashed black and shining between the rags and wadding as Potch put it
+on the table. Michael had lighted a candle and brought it alongside.
+
+Dawe Armitage gaped at the stone with wide, dazed eyes.
+
+"My!" he breathed; and again: "My!" Then: "She was worth it, Michael,"
+fell from him in an awed exclamation.
+
+He looked up, and the men saw tears of reverence and emotion in his
+eyes. He brushed them away and put out his hand to take the stone. He
+lifted the stone, gently and lovingly, as if it were alive and might be
+afraid at the approach of his wrinkled old hand. But it was not afraid,
+Potch's opal; it fluttered with delight in the hand of this old man, who
+was a devout lover, and rayed itself like a bird of paradise. Even to
+the men who had seen the stone before, it had a new and uncanny
+brilliance. It seemed to coquet with Dawe Armitage; to pour out its
+infinitesimal stars---red, blue, green, gold, and amethyst--blazing,
+splintering, and coruscating to dazzle and bewilder him.
+
+The men exclaimed as Mr. Armitage moved the opal. Then he put the stone
+down and mopped his forehead.
+
+"Well," he said, "I reckon she's the God-damnedest piece of opal I've
+ever seen."
+
+"She is that," Watty declared.
+
+"What have you got on her, Michael?" Dawe Armitage queried.
+
+A faint smile touched Michael's mouth.
+
+"I'm only asking," Armitage remarked apologetically. "I can tell you,
+boys, it's a pretty bitter thing for me to be out of the running for a
+stone like this. I ain't even bidding, you see--just inquiring, that's
+all."
+
+Michael looked at Potch.
+
+"Well," he said, "it's Potch's first bit of luck, and I reck'n he's got
+the say about it."
+
+The old man looked at Potch. He was a good judge of character. His
+chance of getting the stone from Michael was remote; from Potch--a
+steady, flat look in the eyes, a stolidity and inflexibility about the
+young man, did hot give Dawe Armitage much hope where he was concerned
+either.
+
+"They tell me," Mr. Armitage said, the twinkling of a smile in his eyes
+as he realised the metal of his adversary--"they tell me," he repeated,
+"you've refused three hundred pounds for her?"
+
+"That's right," Potch said.
+
+"How much do you reck'n she's worth?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How much have you got on her?"
+
+Potch looked at Michael.
+
+"We haven't fixed any price," he said.
+
+"Four hundred pounds?" Armitage asked.
+
+Potch's grey eyes lay on his for the fraction of a second.
+
+"You haven't got money enough to buy that stone, Mr. Armitage," he said,
+quietly.
+
+The old man was crestfallen. Although he pretended that he had no hope
+of buying the opal, everybody knew that, hoping against hope, he had not
+altogether despaired of being able to prevail against the Ridge
+resolution not to sell to Armitage and Son, in this instance. Potch
+remarked vaguely that he had to see Paul, and went out of the hut.
+
+"Oh, well," Dawe Armitage said, "I suppose that settles the matter.
+Daresay I was a durned old fool to try the boy--but there you are. Well,
+since I can't have her, Michael, see nobody else gets her for less than
+my bid."
+
+The men were sorry for the old man. What Potch had said was rather like
+striking a man when he was down, they thought; and they were not too
+pleased about it.
+
+"Potch doesn't seem to fancy sellin' at all for a bit," Michael said.
+
+"What!" Armitage exclaimed. "He's not a miser--at his age?"
+
+"It's not that," Michael replied.
+
+"Oh, well"--the old man's gesture disposed of the matter. He gazed at
+the stone entranced again. "But she's the koh-i-noor of opals, sure
+enough. But tell me"--he sat back on the sofa for a yarn--"what's the
+news of the field? Who's been getting the stuff?"
+
+The gossip of Jun and the ratting was still the latest news of the
+Ridge; but Mr. Armitage appeared to know as much of that as anybody. Ed.
+Ventry's boy, who had motored him over from Budda, had told him about
+it, he said. He had no opinion of Jun.
+
+"A bad egg," he said, and began to talk about bygone days on the Ridge.
+There was nothing in the world he liked better than smoking and yarning
+with men of the Ridge about black opal.
+
+He was fond of telling his family and their friends, who were too nice
+and precise in their manners for his taste, and who thought him a boor
+and mad on the subject of black opal, that the happiest times of his
+life had been spent on Fallen Star Ridge, "swoppin' lies with the
+gougers"; yarning with them about the wonderful stuff they had got, and
+other chaps had got, or looking over some of the opal he had bought, or
+was going to buy from them.
+
+"Oh, well," Mr. Armitage said after they had been talking for a long
+time, "it's great sitting here yarning with you chaps. Never thought ...
+I'd be sitting here like this again...."
+
+"It's fine to have a yarn with you, Mr. Armitage," Michael said.
+
+"Thank you, Michael," the old man replied. "But I suppose I must be
+putting my old bones to bed.... There's something else I want to talk to
+you about though, Michael."
+
+The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage's tone that what
+he had to say was for Michael alone.
+
+"I'll just have a look if that bally mare of mine's all right, Mr.
+Armitage," Peter Newton said.
+
+He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him.
+
+"Well, Michael," Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, "I guess
+you know what it is I want to talk to you about."
+
+Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment.
+
+"That little girl of yours."
+
+Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as
+if he and not Paul were Sophie's father.
+
+"She"--old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity
+crossed his face--"I've seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I've tried
+to keep an eye on her--but I don't mind admitting to you that a man
+needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what's coming to him
+where Sophie's concerned. But first of all ... she's well ... and
+happy--at least, she appears to be; and she's a great little lady."
+
+He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it
+were a page he were trying to read.
+
+"You know, she's singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they
+say she's doing well. She's sought after--made much of. She's got little
+old Manhattan at her feet, as they say.... I don't want to gloss over
+anything that son of mine may have done--but to put it in a nutshell,
+Michael, he's in love with her. He's really in love with her--wants to
+marry her, but Sophie won't have him."
+
+Michael did not speak, and he continued:
+
+"And there's this to be said for him. She says it. He isn't quite so
+much to blame as we first thought. Seems he'd been making love to her...
+and did a break before.... He didn't mean to be a blackguard, y' see.
+You know what I'm driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went--She
+says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then--well, you
+know, Michael ... you've been young ... you've been in love. And in
+Sydney ... summer-time ... with the harbour there at your feet....
+
+"They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the
+emigration authorities, I don't know. They make enough fuss about an old
+fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found
+her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made
+up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn't hear of getting married.
+Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin' married.
+Said her mother had been married--and look what it had brought her to.
+
+"She's fond of John, too," the old man continued. "But, at present, New
+York's a side-show, and she's enjoying it like a child on a holiday from
+the country. I've got her living with an old maid cousin of mine....
+Sophie says by and by perhaps she'll marry John, but not yet--not
+now--she's having too good a time. She's got all the money she wants ...
+all the gaiety and admiration. It's not the sort of life I like for a
+woman myself ... but I've done my best, Michael."
+
+There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face
+before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.
+
+"You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage," he said, "and I'm grateful to
+you.".
+
+"Tell you the truth, Michael," he said, "I'm fond of her. I feel about
+her as if she were a piece of live opal--the best bit that fool of a son
+of mine ever brought from the Ridge...."
+
+His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.
+
+"But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while
+ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that.
+Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It's a
+God-damned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones
+in me body."
+
+Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him
+his arm, and they went to Rouminof's hut.
+
+Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage's arrival; that he had come to
+the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael's hut. Paul had gone
+to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He
+was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers
+on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage
+came into the room.
+
+After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile,
+Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer
+pockets of his overcoat.
+
+"Thought you'd like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof," he said.
+"She's well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And
+I brought along this." He held out a photograph. "She wouldn't give me a
+photograph for you, Michael--said you'd never know her--so I prigged
+this from her sitting-room last time I was there."
+
+Michael glanced at the photographer's card of heavy grey paper, which
+Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he
+thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands,
+he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was
+so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the
+picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering
+through all his consciousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul's
+hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and
+start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the
+sun-stroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and
+Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him
+out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again.
+
+Since old Armitage's visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was
+getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used
+to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had
+been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage's visit he spent
+the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton's
+veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn
+with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies
+over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie's
+neglect of him--how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to
+do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling
+reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie's
+mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised Sometimes,
+talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York.
+
+He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of
+so much drinking on his never very steady brain.
+
+For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim
+and start work again; but Paul would not.
+
+"What's the good," he had said, "Sophie'll be sending for me soon, and
+I'll be going to live with her in New York, and she won't want people to
+be saying her father is an old miner."
+
+Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever
+to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge;
+he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer
+Paul back to more or less regular ways of living.
+
+This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work
+again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine
+the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that
+news.
+
+Potch had brought Paul home from Newton's the night before, Michael
+knew; but Paul was not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael
+went into the hut.
+
+As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door
+of the room which had been Sophie's was thrown back. Michael went
+towards it.
+
+"Paul!" he called.
+
+No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity
+had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway
+thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been
+like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but
+there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room
+about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the
+frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the
+window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael
+remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago.
+
+He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left
+the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when
+his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He
+gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the
+suggestion they conveyed.
+
+Sophie exclaimed behind him.
+
+When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against
+one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed
+into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill.
+
+"I've come home, Michael," she said.
+
+Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her
+eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the
+realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of
+his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to
+the Ridge again.
+
+They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what
+words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some
+commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection.
+
+"It's a sight for sore eyes--the sight of you, Sophie," he said.
+
+"Michael!"
+
+Her arms went out to him with the quick gesture he knew. Michael moved
+to her and caught her in his arms. No moment in all his life had been
+like this when he held Sophie in his arms as though she were his own
+child. His whole being swayed to her in an infinite compassion and
+tenderness. She lay against him, her body quivering. Then she cried,
+brokenly, with spent passion, almost without strength to cry at all.
+
+"There, there!" Michael muttered. "There, there!"
+
+He held her, patting and trying to comfort and soothe her, muttering
+tenderly, and with difficulty because of his trouble for her. The tears
+she had seen in his eyes when he said she was a sight for sore eyes came
+from him and fell on her. His hand went over her hair, clumsily,
+reverently.
+
+"There, there!" he muttered again and again.
+
+Weak with exhaustion, when her crying was over, Sophie moved away from
+him. She pushed back the hair which had fallen over her forehead; her
+eyes had a faint smile as she looked at him.
+
+"I am a silly, aren't I, Michael?" she said.
+
+Michael's mouth took its wry twist.
+
+"Are you, Sophie?" he said. "Well ... I don't think there's anyone else
+on the Ridge'd dare say so."
+
+"I've dreamt of that smile of yours, Michael," Sophie said. She swayed a
+little as she looked at him; her eyes closed.
+
+Michael put his arm round her and led her to the bed. He made her lie
+down and drew the coverlet over her.
+
+"You lay down while I make you a cup of tea, Sophie," he said.
+
+Sophie was lying so still, her face was so quiet and drained of colour
+when he returned with tea in a pannikin and a piece of thick bread and
+butter on the only china plate in the hut, that Michael thought she had
+fainted. But the lashes swept up, and her eyes smiled into his grave,
+anxious face as he gazed at her.
+
+"I'm all right, Michael," she said, "only a bit crocky and dead tired."
+She sat up, and Michael sat on the bed beside her while she drank the
+tea and ate the bread and butter.
+
+"Tea in a pannikin is much nicer than any other tea in the world,"
+Sophie said. "Don't you think so, Michael? I've often wondered whether
+it's the tea, or the taste of the tin pannikin, or the people who have
+tea in pannikins, that makes it so nice."
+
+After a while she said:
+
+"I came up on the coach this morning ... didn't get in till about
+half-past six.... And I came straight up from Sydney the day before.
+That's all night on the train ... and I didn't get a sleeper. Just sat
+and stared out of the window at the country. Oh! I can't tell you how
+badly I've wanted to come home, Michael. In the end I felt I'd die if I
+didn't come--so I came."
+
+Then she asked about Potch and her father.
+
+Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sun-stroke, but
+that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of
+putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down
+to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and
+Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the
+night before.
+
+"I'll send him up to you, if he's there," Michael said. "But you'd
+better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shut-eye
+you've been missing these last two or three days."
+
+"Months, Michael," Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her
+eyes again.
+
+They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed.
+
+"But I'll sleep all right here," she said. "I feel as if I'd sleep for
+years and years.... It's the smell of the paper daisies and the
+sandal-wood smoke, I suppose. The air's got such a nice taste,
+Michael.... It smells like peace, I think."
+
+"Well," Michael said, "you eat as much of it as you fancy. I don't mind
+if Paul doesn't find you till he comes back to tea.... It'd do you more
+good to have a sleep now, and then you'll be feelin' a bit fitter."
+
+"I think I could go to sleep now, Michael," Sophie murmured.
+
+Michael stood watching her for a moment as she seemed to go to sleep,
+thinking that the dry, northern air, with its drowsy fragrance, was
+already beginning to draw the ache from her body and brain. He went to
+the curtain of the doorway, dropped it, and turned out into the blank
+sunshine of the day again.
+
+He fit his pipe and smoked abstractedly as he walked down the track to
+the mine. He had already made up his mind that it would be better for
+Sophie to sleep for a while, and that he was not going to get anyone to
+look for Paul and send him to her.
+
+She had said nothing of the reason for her return, and Michael knew
+there must be a reason. He could not reconcile the Sophie Dawe Armitage
+had described as taking her life in America with such joyous zest, and
+the elegant young woman on the show-page of the illustrated magazine,
+with the weary and broken-looking girl he had been talking to. Whatever
+it was that had changed her outlook, had been like an earthquake,
+devastating all before it, Michael imagined. It had left her with no
+more than the instinct to go to those who loved and would shelter her.
+
+Potch was at work on a slab of shin-cracker when Michael went down into
+the mine. He straightened and looked up as Michael came to a standstill
+near him. His face was dripping, and his little white cap, stained with
+red earth, was wet with sweat. He had been slogging to get through the
+belt of hard, white stone near the new colours before Michael appeared.
+
+"Get him?" he asked.
+
+Michael had almost forgotten Paul.
+
+"No," he said, switching his thoughts from Sophie.
+
+"What's up?" Potch asked quickly, perceiving something unusual in
+Michael's expression.
+
+Michael wanted to tell him--this was a big thing for Potch, he knew--and
+yet he could not bring his news to expression. It caught him by the
+throat. He would have to wait until he could say the thing decently, he
+told himself. He knew what joy it would give Potch.
+
+"Nothing," he said, before he realised what he had said.
+
+But he promised himself that in a few minutes he would tell Potch. He
+would break the news to him. Michael felt as though he were the guardian
+of some sacred treasure which he was afraid to give a glimpse of for
+fear of dazzling the beholder.
+
+The concern went from Potch's face as quickly and vividly as it had
+come. He knew that Michael had reserves from him, and he was afraid of
+having trespassed on them by asking for information which Michael did
+not volunteer. He had been betrayed into the query by the stirred and
+happy look on Michael's face. Only rarely had he seen Michael look like
+that. Potch's thought flashed to Sophie--Michael must have some good
+news of her, he guessed, and knew Michael would pass it on to him in his
+own time.
+
+He turned to his work again, and Michael took up his pick. Potch's
+steady slinging at the shin-cracker began again. Michael reproached
+himself as the minutes went by for what he was keeping from Potch.
+
+He knew what his news would mean to Potch. He knew the solid flesh of
+the man would grow radiant. Michael had seen that subtle glow transfuse
+him when they talked of Sophie. He pulled himself together and
+determined to speak.
+
+Dropping his pick to take a spell, Michael pulled his pipe from the belt
+round his trousers, relighted the ashes in its bowl, and sat on the
+floor of the mine. Potch also stopped work. He leaned his pick against
+the rock beside him, and threw back his shoulders.
+
+"Where was he?" he asked.
+
+"Who--Paul?"
+
+Potch nodded, sweeping the drips from his head and neck.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Michael decided he would tell him now.
+
+"Don't know," he said. "He wasn't about when I came away."
+
+Potch wrung his cap, shook it out, and fitted it on his head again.
+
+"He was showin' all right at Newton's last night," he said. "I'd a bit
+of a business getting him home."
+
+"Go on," Michael replied absent-mindedly. "Potch ..." he he added, and
+stopped to listen.
+
+There was a muffled rumbling and sound of someone calling in the
+distance. It came from Roy O'Mara's drive, on the other side of the
+mine.
+
+"Hullo!" Michael called.
+
+"That you, Michael?" Roy replied. "I'm comin' through."
+
+His head appeared through the drive which he had tunnelled to meet
+Potch's and Michael's drive on the eastern side of the mine. He crawled
+out, shook himself, took out his pipe, and squatted on the floor beside
+Michael.
+
+"Where's Rummy?" Roy asked.
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"You didn't get him down, after all--the boys were taking bets about it
+last night."
+
+"We'll get him yet," Potch said. "The colour'll work like one thing."
+
+Michael stared ahead of him, smoking as though his thoughts absorbed
+him.
+
+"He was pretty full at Newton's last night," Roy said, "and
+talkin'--talkin' about Sophie singing in America, and the great lady she
+is now. And how she was goin' to send for him, and he'd be leavin' us
+soon, and how sorry we'd all be then."
+
+"Should've thought you'd about wore out that joke," Michael remarked,
+dryly.
+
+Roy's easy, good-natured voice faltered.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "he likes to show off a bit, and it don't hurt us,
+Michael."
+
+"That's right," Michael returned; "but Potch was out half the night
+bringing him home. You chaps might remember Paul's our proposition when
+you're having a bit of fun out of him."
+
+Potch turned back to his work.
+
+"Right, Michael," Roy said. And then, after a moment, having decided
+that both Michael's and Potch's demeanours were too calm for them to
+have heard what he had, as if savouring the effect of his news, he
+added:
+
+"But perhaps we won't have many more chances-seein' Rummy 'll be going
+to America before long, perhaps----"
+
+Michael, looking at Roy through his tobacco smoke, realised that he knew
+about Sophie's having come home. His glance travelled to Potch, who was
+slogging at the cement stone again.
+
+"Saw old Ventry on me way down to the mine," Roy said, "and he said he'd
+a passenger on the coach last night.... Who do you think it was?"
+
+Michael dared not look at Potch.
+
+"He said," Roy murmured slowly, "it was Sophie."
+
+They knew that Potch's pick had stopped. Michael had seen a tremor
+traverse the length of his bared back; but Potch did not turn. He stood
+with his face away from them, immobile. His body dripped with sweat and
+seemed to be oiled by the garish light of the candle which outlined his
+head, gilded his splendid arms and torso against the red earth of the
+mine, and threw long shadows into the darkness, shrouding the workings
+behind him. Then his pick smashed into the cement stone with a force
+which sent sharp, white chips flying in every direction.
+
+When Roy crawled away through the tunnel to his own quarters, Potch
+swung round from the face he was working on, his eyes blazing.
+
+"Is it true?" he gasped.
+
+"Yes," Michael said.
+
+After a moment he added: "I found her in the hut this morning just
+before I came away. I been tryin' all these blasted hours to tell you,
+Potch ... but every time I tried, it got me by the neck, and I had to
+wait until I found me voice."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The sunset was fading, a persimmon glow failing from behind the trees,
+its light merging with the blue of the sky, creating the faint, luminous
+green which holds the first stars with such brilliance, when Sophie went
+out of the hut to meet Potch.
+
+The smell of sandal-wood burning on the fireplace in the kitchen she had
+just left, was in the air. Such soothing its fragrance had for her! And
+on the shingly soil, between the old dumps cast up a little distance
+from the huts, in every direction, the paper daisies were lying, white
+as driven snow in the wan light. Sophie went to the goat-pen, strung
+round with a light, crooked fence, a few yards from the back of the
+house.
+
+As she leaned against the fence she could hear the tinkling of a
+goat-bell in the distance. The fragrances, the twilight, and the quiet
+were balm to her bruised senses. The note of a bell sounded nearer.
+Potch was bringing the goats in.
+
+Sophie went to the shed and stood near it, so that she might see him
+before he saw her. A kid in the shed bleated as the note of the bell
+became harsher and nearer. Sophie heard the answering cry of the nanny
+among the three or four goats coming down to the yard along a narrow
+track from a fringe of trees beyond the dumps. Then she saw Potch's
+figure emerge from the trees.
+
+He drove the goats into the yard where two sticks of the fence were
+down, put up the rails, and went to the shed for a milking bucket. He
+came back into the yard, pulled a little tan-and-white nanny beside a
+low box on which he sat to milk, and the squirt and song of milk in the
+pail began. Sophie wondered what Potch was thinking of as he sat there
+milking. She remembered the night--Potch had been sitting just like
+that--when she told him her mother was dead. As she remembered, she saw
+again every flicker and gesture of his, the play of light on his broad,
+heavy face and head, with its shock of fairish hair; how his face had
+puckered up and looked ugly and childish as he began to cry; how, after
+a while, he had wiped his eyes and nose on his shirt-sleeve, and gone on
+with the milking again, crying and sniffling in a subdued way.
+
+There was a deep note of loving them in his voice, rough and burred
+though it was, as Potch spoke to the goats. Two of them came when he
+called.
+
+When he had nearly finished milking, Sophie moved away from the screen
+of the shed. She went along to the fence and stood where he could see
+her when he looked up.
+
+The light had faded, and stars were glimmering in the luminous green of
+the sky when Potch, as he released the last goat, pushed back the box he
+had been sitting on, got up, took his bucket by the handle, and, looking
+towards the fence, saw Sophie standing there. At first he seemed to
+think she was a figure of his imagination, he stood so still gazing at
+her. He had often thought of her, leaning against the rails there,
+smiling at him like that. Then he remembered Sophie had come home; that
+it was really Sophie herself by the fence as he had dreamed of seeing
+her. But her face was wan and ethereal in the half-light; it floated
+before him as if it were a drowned face in the still, thin air.
+
+"She's very like my old white nanny, Potch," Sophie said, her eyes
+glancing from Potch to the goat he had just let go and which had
+followed him across the yard.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"She might almost be Annie Laurie's daughter," Sophie said.
+
+"She's her grand-daughter," Potch replied.
+
+He put the bucket down at the rails and stooped to get through them.
+Before he took up the bucket again he stood looking at her as though to
+assure himself that it was really Sophie in the flesh who was waiting
+for him by the fence. Then he took up the bucket, and they walked across
+to Michael's hut together.
+
+Potch dared scarcely glance at her when he realised that Sophie was
+really walking beside him--Sophie herself--although her eyes and her
+voice were not the eyes and voice of the Sophie he had known. And he had
+so often dreamed of her walking beside him that the dream seemed almost
+more real than the thing which had come to pass.
+
+Sophie went with him to the lean-to, where the milk-dishes stood on a
+bench under the window outside Michael's hut. She watched Potch while he
+strained the milk and poured it into big, flat dishes on a bench under
+the window.
+
+Paul came to the door of their own hut. He called her. Sophie could hear
+voices exclaiming and talking to Paul and Michael. She supposed that the
+people her father had said were coming from New Town to see her had
+arrived. She dreaded going into the room where they all were, although
+she knew that she must go.
+
+"Are you coming, Potch?" she asked.
+
+His eyes went from her to his hands.
+
+"I'll get cleaned up a bit first," he said, "then I'll come."
+
+The content in his eyes as they rested on her was transferred to Sophie.
+It completed what the fragrances, those first minutes in the quiet and
+twilight had done for her. It gave her a sense of having come to haven
+after a tempestuous journey on the high seas beyond the reef of the
+Ridge, and of having cast anchor in the lee of a kindly and sheltering
+land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Michael had lit the lamp in Rouminof's kitchen; innumerable tiny-winged
+insects, moths, mosquitoes, midges, and golden-winged flying ants hung
+in a cloud about it. Martha M'Cready, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and George
+Woods were there talking to Paul and Michael when Sophie went into the
+kitchen.
+
+"Here she is," Paul said.
+
+Martha rose from her place on the sofa and trundled cross to her.
+
+"Dearie!" she cried, as George and Pony-Fence called:
+
+"H'llo, Sophie!"
+
+And Sophie said: "Hullo, George! Hullo, Pony-Fence!"
+
+Martha's embrace cut short what else she may have had to say. Sophie
+warmed to her as she had when she was a child. Martha had been so plump
+and soft to rub against, and a sensation of sheer animal comfort and
+rejoicing ran through Sophie as she felt herself against Martha again.
+The slight briny smell of her skin was sweet to her with associations of
+so many old loving and impulsive hugs, so much loving kindness.
+
+"Oh, Mother M'Cready," she cried, a more joyous note in her voice than
+Michael had yet heard, "it is nice to see you again!"
+
+"Lord, lovey," Martha replied, disengaging her arms, "and they'd got me
+that scared of you--saying what a toff you were. I thought you'd be
+tellin' me my place if I tried this sort of thing. But when I saw you a
+minute ago, I clean forgot all about it. I saw you were just my own
+little Sophie back again ... and I couldn't 've helped throwing me arms
+round you--not for the life of me."
+
+She was winking and blinking her little blue eyes to keep the tears in
+them, and Sophie laughed the tears back from her eyes too.
+
+"There she is!" a great, hearty voice exclaimed in the doorway.
+
+And Bully Bryant, carrying the baby, with Ella beside him, came into the
+room.
+
+"Bully!" Sophie cried, as she went towards them, "And Ella!"
+
+Ella threw out her arms and clung to Sophie.
+
+"She's been that excited, Sophie," Bully said, "I couldn't hardly get
+her to wait till this evening to come along."
+
+"Oh, Bully!" Ella protested shyly.
+
+"And the baby?" Sophie cried, taking his son from Bull. "Just fancy you
+and Ella being married, Bully, and having a baby, and me not knowing a
+word about it!"
+
+The baby roared lustily, and Bully took him from Sophie as Watty Frost,
+the Crosses, and Roy O'Mara came through the door.
+
+"Hullo, Watty, Archie, Tom, Roy!" Sophie exclaimed with a little gasp of
+pleasure and excitement, shaking hands with each one of them as they
+came to her.
+
+She had not expected people to come to see her like this, and was
+surprised by the genial warmth and real affection of the greetings they
+had given her. Everybody was laughing and talking, the little room was
+full to brimming when Bill Grant appeared in the doorway, and beside him
+the tall, gaunt figure of the woman Sophie loved more than any other
+woman on the Ridge--Maggie Grant, looking not a day older, and wearing a
+blue print dress with a pin-spot washed almost out of it, as she had
+done as long as Sophie could remember.
+
+Sophie went to the long, straight glance of her eyes as to a call.
+Maggie kissed her. She did not speak; but her beautiful, deep-set eyes
+spoke for her. Sophie shook hands with Bill Grant.
+
+"Glad to see you back again, Sophie," he said simply.
+
+"Thank you, Bill," she replied.
+
+Then Potch came in; and behind him, slowly, from out of the night,
+Snow-Shoes. The Grants had moved from the door to give him passage; but
+he stood outside a moment, his tall, white figure and old sugar-loaf hat
+outlined against the blue-dark wall of the night sky, as though he did
+not know whether he would go into the room or not.
+
+Then he crossed the threshold, took off his hat, and stood in a stiff,
+gallant attitude until Sophie saw him. He had a fistful of yellow
+flowers in one hand. Everybody knew Sophie had been fond of punti. But
+there were only a few bushes scattered about the Ridge, and they had
+done flowering a month ago, so Snow-Shoes' bouquet was something of a
+triumph. He must have walked miles, to the swamp, perhaps, to find it,
+those who saw him knew.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Riley!" Sophie cried, as she went to shake hands with him.
+
+"They still call me Snow-Shoes, Sophie," the old man said.
+
+The men laughed, and Sophie joined them. She knew, as they all did, that
+although anyone of them was called by the name the Ridge gave him, no
+one ever addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley.
+
+He held the flowers out to her.
+
+"Punti!" she exclaimed delightedly, holding the yellow blossoms to her
+nose. "Isn't it lovely? ... No flower in the world's got such a
+perfume!"
+
+Michael had explained to the guests that Sophie was not to be asked to
+sing, and that nothing was to be said about her singing. Something had
+gone wrong with her voice, he told two or three of the men.
+
+He thought he had put the fear of God into Paul, and had managed to make
+him understand that it distressed Sophie to talk about her singing, and
+he must not bother her with questions about it. But in a lull of the
+talk Paul's voice was raised querulously:
+
+"What I can't make out, Sophie," he said, "is why you can't sing? What's
+happened to your voice? Have you been singing too much? Or have you
+caught cold? I always told you you'd have to be careful, or your voice'd
+go like your mother's did. If you'd listened to me, now, or I'd been
+with you...."
+
+Bully Bryant, catching Michael's eye, burst across Paul's drivelling
+with a hearty guffaw.
+
+"Well," he said, "Sophie's already had a sample of the fine lungs of
+this family, and I don't mind givin' her another, and then Ella and
+me'll have to be takin' Buffalo Bill home to bed. Now then, old son,
+just let 'em see what we can do." He raised his voice to singing pitch:
+
+"For-er she's a jolly good fellow, for-er-"
+
+All the men and women in the hut joined in Bully's roar, singing in a
+way which meant much more than the words--singing from their hearts,
+every man and woman of them.
+
+Then Bully put his baby under his arm as though it were a bundle of
+washing, Ella protesting anxiously, and the pair of them said good-night
+to Sophie. Snow-Shoes went out before them; and Martha said she would
+walk down to the town with Bully and Ella. Bill Grant and Maggie said
+good-night.
+
+"Sophie looks as if she'd sleep without rocking to-night," Maggie Grant
+said by way of indicating that everybody ought to go home soon and let
+Sophie get to bed early.
+
+"I will," Sophie replied.
+
+Pony-Fence and the Crosses were getting towards the door, Watty and
+George followed them.
+
+"It's about time you was back, that's what I say, Sophie," George Woods
+said, gripping her hand as he passed. "There's been no luck on this
+field since you went away."
+
+Sophie smiled into his kindly brown eyes.
+
+"That's right," Watty backed up his mate heartily.
+
+
+"But," Sophie said, "they tell me Potch has had all the luck."
+
+"So he has," George Woods agreed.
+
+"It's a great stone, isn't it, Sophie?" Watty said.
+
+"I haven't seen it yet," Sophie said. "Michael said he'd get Potch to
+show it to me to-night."
+
+"Not seen it?" George gasped. "Not seen the big opal! Say, boys"--he
+turned to Pony-Fence, and the Crosses--"I reck'n we'll have to stay for
+this. Sophie hasn't seen Potch's opal yet. Bring her along, Potch. Bring
+her along, and let's all have another squint at her. You can't get too
+much of a good thing."
+
+"Right," Potch replied.
+
+He went out of the hut to bring the opal from his own room.
+
+"Reck'n it's the finest stone ever found on this field," Watty said,
+"and the biggest. How much did you say Potch had turned down for it,
+Michael?"
+
+"Four hundred," Michael said.
+
+"What are you hangin' on to her for, Michael?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+Michael shook his head, that faint smile of his flickering.
+
+"Potch's had an idea he didn't want to part with her," he said. "But I
+daresay he'll be letting her go soon."
+
+He did not say "now." But the men understood that. They guessed that
+Potch had been waiting for this moment; that he wanted to show Sophie
+the stone before selling it.
+
+Potch came into the room again, his head back, an indefinable triumph
+and elation in his eyes as they sought Sophie's. He had a mustard tin,
+skinned of its gaudy paper covering, in his hand. A religious awe and
+emotion stirred the men as, standing beside Sophie, he put the tin on
+the table. They crowded about the table, muscles tightening in sun-red,
+weather-tanned faces, some of them as dark as the bronze of an old
+penny, the light in their eyes brightening, sharpening--a thirsting,
+eager expression in every face. Potch screwed off the lid of the tin,
+lifted the stone in its wrappings, and unrolled the dingy flannel which
+he had put round it. Then he took the opal from its bed of cotton wool.
+
+Sophie leaned forward, her eyes shining, her breath coming quickly. The
+emotion in the room made itself felt through her.
+
+"Put out the lamp, Michael, and let's have a candle," George said.
+
+Michael turned out the lamp, struck a match and set it to the candle in
+a bottle on the dresser behind him. He put the candle on the table.
+Potch held the great opal to the light, he moved it slowly behind the
+flame of the candle.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Sophie's cry of quivering ecstasy thrilled her hearers. She was one of
+them; she had been brought up among them. They had known she would feel
+opal as they did. But that cry of hers heightened their enthusiasm.
+
+The breaths of suppressed excitement and admiration, and their muttered
+exclamations went up:
+
+"Now, she's showin'!"
+
+"God, look at her now!"
+
+Sophie followed every movement of the opal in Potch's hand. It was a
+world in itself, with its thousand thousand suns and stars, shimmering
+and changing before her eyes as they melted mysteriously in the jetty
+pool of the stone.
+
+"Oh!" she breathed again, amazed, dazed, and rapturous.
+
+Potch came closer to her. They stood together, adoring the orb of
+miraculous and mysterious beauty.
+
+"Here," Potch said, "you hold her, Sophie."
+
+Sophie put out her hand, trembling, filled with child-like awe and
+emotion. She stretched her fingers. The stone weighed heavy and cold on
+them. Then there was a thin, silvery sound like the shivering of
+glass.... Her hand was light and empty. She stood staring at it for a
+moment; her eyes went to Potch's face, aghast. The blood seemed to have
+left her body. She stood so with her hand out, her lips parted, her eyes
+wide....
+
+After a while she knew Potch was holding her, and that he was saying:
+
+"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
+
+She could feel him, something to lean against, beside her. Michael
+lifted the candle. With strange intensity, as though she were dreaming,
+Sophie saw the men had fallen away from the table. All their faces were
+caricatures, distorted and ghastly; and they were looking at the floor
+near her. Sophie's eyes went to the floor, too. She could see shattered
+stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst--out across the earthen
+floor.
+
+Michael put the candle on the floor. He and George Woods gathered them
+up. When Sophie looked up, the dark of the room swam with galaxies of
+those stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst.
+
+She stood staring before her: she had lost the power to move or to
+think. After a while she knew that the men had gone from the room, and
+that Potch was still beside her, his eyes on her face. He had eyes only
+for her face: he had barely glanced at the floor, where infinitesimal
+specks of coloured light were still winking in the dust. He took her
+hands. Sophie heard him talking, although she did not know what he was
+saying.
+
+When she began to understand what Potch was saying, Sophie was sitting
+on the sofa under the window, and Potch was kneeling beside her. At
+first she heard him talking as if he were a long way away. She tried to
+listen; tried to understand what he was saying.
+
+"It's all right, Sophie," Potch kept saying, his voice breaking.
+
+Sight of her suffering overwhelmed him; and he trembled as he knelt
+beside her. Sophie heard him crying distantly:
+
+"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
+
+She shuddered. Her eyes went to him, consciousness in their blank gaze.
+Potch, realising that, murmured incoherently:
+
+"Don't think of it any more.... It was yours, Sophie. It was for you I
+was keeping it.... Michael knew that, too. He knew that was why I didn't
+want to sell.... It was your opal ... to do what you liked with, really.
+That was what I meant when I put it in your hand. But don't let us think
+of it any more. I don't want to think of it any more."
+
+"Oh!" Sophie cried, in a bitter wailing; "it's true, I believe ...
+somebody said once that I'm as unlucky as opal--that I bring people bad
+luck like opal...."
+
+"You know what we say on the Ridge?" Potch said; "The only bad luck you
+get through opal is when you can't get enough of it--so the only bad
+luck you're likely to bring to people is when they can't get enough of
+you."
+
+"Potch!"
+
+Sophie's hands went to him in a flutter of breaking grief. The
+forgiveness she could not ask, the gratitude for his gentleness, which
+she could not express any other way, were in the gesture and
+exclamation.
+
+On her hands, through his hot, clasped hands, the whole of Potch's being
+throbbed.
+
+"Don't think of it any more," he begged.
+
+"But it was your luck--your wonderful opal--and ... I broke it, Potch. I
+spoilt your luck."
+
+"No," Potch said, borne away from himself on the flood of his desire to
+assuage her distress. "You make everything beautiful for me, Sophie.
+Since you came back I haven't thought of the stone: I'd forgotten it....
+This hasn't been the same place. I'm so filled up with happiness because
+you're here that I can't think of anything else."
+
+Sophie looked into his face, her eyes swimming. She saw the deep passion
+of love in Potch's eyes; but she turned away from the light it poured
+over her, her face overcast again, bitterness and grief in it. She hung
+so for a moment; then her hands went over her face and she was crying
+abstractedly, wearily.
+
+There was something in her aloofness in that moment which chilled Potch.
+His instincts, sensitive as the antennae of an insect, wavered over her,
+trying to discover the cause of it. Conscious of a mood which excluded
+him, he withdrew his hand from her. Sophie groped for it. Then the sense
+of sex and of barriers swept from him, by the passion of his desire to
+comfort and console her. Potch put his arm round her and drew Sophie to
+him, murmuring With an utter tenderness, "Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+Later she said:
+
+"I can't tell you ... what happened ... out there, Potch. Not yet ...
+not now.... Perhaps some day I will. It hurt so much that it took all
+the singing out of me. My heart wouldn't move ... so my voice died. I
+thought if I came home, you and Michael wouldn't mind ... my being like
+I am. But you've all been so good to me, Potch ... and it's so restful
+here, I was beginning to think that life might go on from where I left
+it; that it might be just a quiet living together and loving, like it
+was before...."
+
+"It can, Sophie!" Potch said, his eyes on her face, wistful and eager to
+read her thought.
+
+"But look what I've done," she said.
+
+Potch lifted her hand to his lips, a resurge of the virile male in him
+moving his restraint.
+
+"I've told you," he said, "what you've done. You've put joy into all our
+hearts--just to see you again. Michael's told you that, too, and George
+and the rest of them."
+
+"Yes, but, Potch ..." Sophie paused, and he saw the shadow of dark
+thoughts in her eyes again. "I'm not what you think I am. I'm not like
+any of you think."
+
+Potch's grip on her hand tightened.
+
+"You're you--and you're here. That's enough for us!" he said.
+
+Sophie sighed. "I never dreamt everybody would be so good. You and
+Michael I knew would--but the others ... I thought they'd remember ...
+and disapprove of me, Potch.... Mrs. Watty"--a smile showed faintly in
+her eyes--"I thought she'd see to that."
+
+"I daresay she's done her best" Potch said, with a memory of Watty's
+valiant bearing and angry, bright eyes when he came into the hut. "Watty
+was vexed ... she wouldn't come with him to-night."
+
+"Was he?"
+
+Potch nodded. "What you didn't reck'n on," he said, "was that all of us
+here ... we--we love you, Sophie, and we're glad you're back again."
+
+Her eyes met him in a straight, clear glance.
+
+"You and Michael," she said, "I knew you loved me, Potch...."
+
+"You know how it's always been with me," Potch said, grateful that he
+might talk of his love, although he had been afraid to since she had
+cried, fearing thought of it stirred that unknown source of distress.
+"But I won't get in your way here, Sophie, because of that. I won't
+bother you ... I want just to stand by--and help you all I know how."
+
+"I love you, too, Potch," Sophie said; "but there are so many ways of
+loving. I love you because you love me; because your love is the one
+sure thing in the world for me.... I've thought of it when I've been
+hurt and lonely.... I came back because it was here ... and you were
+here."
+
+Potch's eyes were illumined; his face blazed as though a fire had been
+engendered in the depths of his body. He remained so a moment, curbed
+and overcome with emotion. The shadow deepened in Sophie's eyes as she
+looked at him; her face was grave and still.
+
+"I do love you, Potch," she said again; "not as I loved someone else,
+once. That was different. But you're so good to me ... and I'm so
+tired."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The days which followed that night when Sophie had dropped the great
+opal were the happiest Potch had ever known. They were days in which
+Sophie turned to smile at him when he went into Rouminof's hut; when her
+eyes lay in his serenely; when he could go to her, and stand near her,
+inhaling her being, before he stooped to kiss her hair; when she would
+put back her head so that he might find her lips and take her breath
+from them in the lingering kiss she gave.
+
+When she had laid her head back on his shoulder sometimes, closing her
+eyes, an expression of infinite rest coming over her face, Potch had
+gazed at it, wondering what world of thought lay beneath that still,
+sleep-like mask as, it rested on his shoulder; what thought or emotion
+set a nerve quivering beneath her skin, as the water of some still pool
+quivers when an insect stirs beneath it.
+
+Sophie had no tricks of sex with Potch. She went to him sometimes when
+ghosts of her mind were driving her before them. She went to him because
+she was sure that she could go to him, whatever her reasons for going.
+With Potch there was no need for explanations.
+
+His quiet strength of body and mind had something to do with the rest
+and assurance which his very presence gave her. It was like being a baby
+and lying in a cradle again to have his arm about her; no harm or ill
+could reach her behind the barrier they raised, Sophie thought. She knew
+Potch loved her with all the passion of a virile man as well as with a
+love like the ocean into which all her misdeeds of commission and
+omission might be dropped. And she had as intimate and sympathetic a
+knowledge of Potch as he had of her. Sophie thought that nothing he
+might do could make her care less, or be less appreciative of him. She
+loved him, she said, with a love of the tenderest affection. If it
+lacked an irresistible impulse, she thought it was because she had lost
+the power to love in that way; but she hoped some day she would love
+Potch as he loved her--without reservations. For the time being she
+loved him gratefully; her gratitude was as immense as his love.
+
+Potch divined as much; Sophie had not tried to tell him how she felt
+about him, but he understood, perhaps better than she could tell him.
+His humility was equal to any demand she could make of him. He had not
+sufficient belief in himself or his worth to believe that Sophie could
+ever love him as he loved her: he did not expect it. The only way for
+him to take with his love was the way of faith and service. "To love is
+to be all made of faith and service." He had taken that for his text for
+life, and for Sophie. He could be happy holding to it.
+
+Sophie's need of him made Potch happier than he had ever hoped to be;
+but he could not help believing that the life with her which had etched
+itself on the horizon of his future would mist away, as the mirages
+which quiver on the long edges of the plains do, as you approach them.
+
+The days were blessed and peaceful to Sophie, too; but she, also, was
+afraid that something might happen to disturb them. She wanted to marry
+Potch in order to secure them, and to live and work with him on the
+Ridge. She wanted to live the life of any other woman on the Ridge with
+her mate. Life looked so straight and simple that way. She could see it
+stretching before her into the years. Her hands would be full of real
+things. She would be living a life of service and usefulness, in
+accordance with the ideal the Ridge had set itself, and which Michael
+had preached with the zeal of a latter-day saint. She believed her life
+would shape itself to this future; but sometimes a wraith in the
+back-country of her mind rose shrieking: "Never! Never!"
+
+It threw her into the outer darkness of despair, that cry, but she had
+learned to exorcise its influence by going to Potch and lifting her lips
+for him to kiss.
+
+"What is it?" he asked one day, vaguely aware of the meaning of the
+movement.
+
+Before the reverence and worship of his eyes the wraith fled. Sophie
+took his face between her hands.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she murmured, her eyes straining on his face, "I do love
+you ... and I will love you, more and more."
+
+"You don't have to worry about that," Potch said. "I love you enough for
+both of us.... Just think of me"--he lifted her hand and kissed the back
+of it gently--"like this--your hand--a sort of third hand."
+
+When he came back from the mine in the afternoon Potch went to see
+Sophie, cut wood for her, and do any odd jobs she might need done.
+Sometimes he had tea with her, and they read the reviews and books
+Michael passed on to them. In the evening they went for a walk, usually
+towards the Old Town, and sat on a long slope of the Ridge overlooking
+the Rouminofs' first home--near where they had played when they were
+children, and had watched the goats feeding on green patches between the
+dumps.
+
+They had awed talks there; and now and then the darkness, shutting off
+sight of each other, had made something like disembodied spirits of
+them, and their spirits communicated dumbly as well as on the frail wind
+of their voices.
+
+They yarned and gossiped sometimes, too, about the things that had
+happened, and what Potch had done while Sophie was away. She asked a
+good deal about the ratting, and about Jun and Maud. Potch tried to
+avoid talking of it and of them. He had evaded her questions, and Sophie
+returned to them, perplexed by his reticence.
+
+"I don't understand, Potch," she said on one occasion. "You found out
+that Maud and Jun had something to do with the ratting, and you went
+over to Jun's ... and told them you were going to tell the boys.... They
+must have known you would tell. Maud----"
+
+Potch's expression, a queer, sombre and shamed heaviness of his face,
+arrested her thought.
+
+"Maud----" she murmured again. "I see," she added, "it was just
+Maud----"
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"That explains a good deal." Sophie's eyes were on the distant horizon
+of the plains; her fingers played idly with quartz pebbles, pink-stained
+like rose coral, lying on the earth about her.
+
+"What does it explain?" Potch asked.
+
+"Why," Sophie said, "for one thing--how you grew up. You've changed
+since I went away, Potch, you know...."
+
+His smile showed a moment.
+
+"I'm older."
+
+"Older, graver, harder ... and kinder, though you always had a genius
+for kindness, Potch.... But Maud----"
+
+Potch turned his head from her. Sophie regarded his averted profile
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I understand," she said.
+
+Potch took her gaze steadily, but with troubled eyes.
+
+"I wish ... somehow ... I needn't 've done what I did," he said.
+
+"You'd have hated her, if you had gone back on the men--because of her."
+
+"That's right," Potch agreed.
+
+"And--you don't now?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I saw her--Maud--in New York ... before I came away," Sophie said
+slowly. "She was selling opal...."
+
+"Did she show you the stones?"
+
+"That's just what Michael asked me," Sophie said.
+
+"Michael?" Potch's face clouded.
+
+"She didn't show them to me, but I know who saw them all--he bought
+them--Mr. Armitage."
+
+"The old man?"
+
+"No, John."
+
+After a minute Sophie said:
+
+"Why are you so keen about those stones Maud had, Potch? Michael is,
+too.... Most of them were taken from the claims, I suppose--but was
+there anything more than that?"
+
+"It's hard to say." Potch spoke reluctantly. "There's nothing more than
+a bit of guesswork in my mind ... and I suppose it's the same with
+Michael. I haven't said anything to Michael about it, and he hasn't to
+me, so it's better not to mention it."
+
+"There's a good deal changed on the Ridge since I went away," Sophie
+remarked musingly.
+
+"The new rush, and the school, the Bush Brothers' church, and Mrs.
+Watty's veranda?"
+
+"I don't mean that," Sophie said. "It's the people and things ... you,
+for instance, and Michael----"
+
+"Michael?" Potch exclaimed. "He's wearing the same old clothes, the same
+old hat."
+
+Sophie was too much in earnest to respond to the whimsey.
+
+"He's different somehow ... I don't quite know how," she said. "There's
+a look about him--his eyes--a disappointed look, Potch.... It hurt him
+when I went away, I know. But now--it's not that...."
+
+As Potch did not reply, Sophie's eyes questioned him earnestly.
+
+"Has anything happened," she asked, "to make Michael look like that?"
+
+"I ... don't know," Potch replied.
+
+Answered by the slow and doubtful tone of his denial, Sophie exclaimed:
+
+"There is something, Potch! I don't want to know what it is if you can't
+tell me. I'm only worried about Michael.... I'd always thought he had
+the secret of that inside peace, and now he looks----Oh, I can't bear to
+see him look as he does.... And he seems to have lost interest in
+things--the life here--everything."
+
+"Yes," Potch admitted.
+
+"Only tell me," Sophie urged, "is this that's bothering Michael likely
+to clear, and has it been hanging over him for long?"
+
+Potch was silent so long that she wondered whether he was going to
+answer the question. Then he said slowly:
+
+"I ... don't know. I really don't know anything, Sophie. I happened to
+find out--by accident--that Michael's pretty worried about something. I
+don't rightly know what, or why. That's all."
+
+The even pace of those days gave Sophie the quiet mind she had come to
+the Ridge for. There was healing for her in the fragrant air, the
+sunshiny days, the blue-dark nights, with their unclouded, starry skies.
+She went into the shed one morning and threw the bags from the
+cutting-wheel which had been her mother's, cleared and cleaned up the
+room, rearranged the boxes, put out her working gear, and cut and
+polished one or two stones which were lying on a saucer beside the
+wheel, to discover whether her hand had still its old deftness. Michael
+was delighted with the work she showed him in the evening, and gave her
+several small stones to face and polish for him.
+
+Every day then Sophie worked at her wheel for a while. George and Watty,
+Bill Grant and the Crosses brought stuff for her to cut and polish, and
+in a little while her life was going in the even way it had done before
+she left the Ridge, but it was a long time before Sophie went about as
+she used to. After a while, however, she got into the way of walking
+over to see Maggie Grant or Martha M'Cready in the afternoon,
+occasionally; but she never talked to them of her life away from the
+Ridge; they never spoke of it to her.
+
+Only one thing had disturbed her slightly--seeing Arthur Henty one
+evening as she and Martha were coming from the Three Mile.
+
+He had come towards them, with a couple of stockmen, driving a mob of
+cattle. Dust rose at the heels of the cattle and horses; the cattle
+moved slowly; and the sun was setting in the faces of the men behind the
+cattle. Sophie did not know who they were until a man on a chestnut
+horse stared at her. His face was almost hidden by his beard; but after
+the first glance she recognised Arthur Henty. They passed as people do
+in a dream, Sophie and Martha back from the road, the men riding off the
+cattle, Arthur with the stockmen and cattle which a cloud of dust
+enveloped immediately. The dark trees by the roadside swayed, dipped in
+the gold of the sunset, when they had passed. The image of Arthur Henty
+riding like that in the dust behind the cattle, his face gilded by the
+light of the setting sun, came to Sophie again and again. She was a
+little disturbed by it; but it was only natural that she should be, she
+thought. She had not seen Arthur since the night of the ball, and so
+much had happened to both their lives since then.
+
+She saw him once or twice in the township afterwards. He had stared at
+her; Sophie had bowed and smiled, but they had not spoken. Later, she
+had seen him lounging on the veranda at Newton's, or hanging his bridle
+over the pegs outside Ezra Smith's billiard saloon, and neither her
+brain nor pulse had quickened at the sight of him. She was pleased and
+reassured. She did not think of him after that, and went on her way
+quietly, happily, more deeply content in her life with Michael and
+Potch.
+
+As her natural vigour returned, she grew to a fuller appreciation of
+that life; health and a normal poise of body and soul brought the faint
+light of happiness to her eyes. Michael heard her laughing as she teased
+Paul sometimes, and Potch thrilled to the rippled cadenza of Sophie's
+laughter.
+
+"It's good to hear that again," Michael said to him one day, hearing it
+fly from Rouminof's hut.
+
+Potch's glance, as his head moved in assent, was eloquent beyond words.
+
+Sophie had a sensation of hunger satisfied in the life she was leading.
+Some indefinable hunger of her soul was satisfied by breathing the pure,
+calm air of the Ridge again, and by feeling her life was going the way
+the lives of other women on the Ridge were going. She expected
+her life would go on like this, days and years fall behind her
+unnoticed; that she and Potch would work together, have children, be
+splendid friends always, live out their days in the simple, sturdy
+fashion of Ridge folk, and grow old together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Tenders had been called for, to clear the course for the annual race
+meeting. A notice posted on the old, wild cherry tree in the road
+opposite Newton's, brought men and boys from every rush on Fallen Star
+to Ezra Smith's billiard-room on the night appointed; and Ezra,
+constituted foreman by the meeting, detailed parties to clear and roll
+the track.
+
+A paddock at the back of the town, with several tall coolebahs at one
+side, was known as the race-course. A table placed a little out from the
+trees served for a judge's box; and because the station folk usually
+drew up their buggies and picnicked there, the shade of the coolebahs
+was called the grand-stand. Farther along a saddling-paddock had been
+fenced off, and in it, on race-days, were collected a miscellaneous
+muster of the show horses of the district--rough-haired nags, piebald
+and skewbald; rusty, dusty, big-boned old racers with famous
+reputations; wild-eyed, unbroken youngsters, green from the plains;
+Warria chestnuts, graceful as greyhounds, with quivering, scarlet
+nostrils; and the nuggety, deep-chested offspring of the Langi-Eumina
+stallion Black Harry.
+
+People came from far and near for the races, and for the ball which was
+held the same evening in the big, iron-roofed shed opposite Newton's.
+Newton's was filled to the brim with visitors, and there were not
+stables enough for the horses. But Ridge stables are never more than
+railed yards about the size of a room, with bark thatches, and as many
+of them as were needed were run up for the occasion.
+
+Horses and horsemen were heroes of the occasion The merits of every
+horse that was going to run were argued; histories, points, pedigrees,
+and performances discussed. Stories were told of the doings of strange
+horses brought from distant selections, the out-stations of Warria,
+Langi-Eumina, or Darrawingee; yarns swopped of almost mythical
+warrigals, and warrigal hunting, the breaking of buck-jumpers, the
+enterprises and exploits of famous horsemen. Ridge meetings, since the
+course had been made and the function had become a yearly fixture, were
+gone over; and the chances of every horse and rider entered for the next
+day debated, until anticipation and interest attained their highest
+pitch.
+
+Everybody in the township went to the races; everybody was expected to
+go. Race-day was the Ridge gala day; the day upon which men, women, and
+children gave themselves up to the whole-hearted, joyous excitement of
+an outing. The meeting brought a bookmaker or two from Sydney sometimes,
+and sometimes a man in the town made a book on the event. But nobody, it
+was rumoured, looked forward to, or enjoyed the races more than Mrs.
+Watty Frost, although she had begun by disapproving of them, and still
+maintained she did not "hold with betting." She put up with it, however,
+so long as the Sydney men did not get away with Ridge money.
+
+Potch was disappointed, and so was Michael, that Sophie would not go to
+the races, which were held during the year of her return. They went, and
+Rouminof trotted off by himself, quite early. Sophie did not want to see
+all the strangers who would be in Fallen Star for race-day, she
+said--people from the river selections, the stations, and country towns.
+Late in the afternoon, as she was going to see Ella Bryant, to offer to
+mind the baby while Ella and Bully went to the ball, she saw Martha was
+at home, a drift of smoke coming from the chimney of her hut.
+
+Sophie went to the back door of the hut and stood in the doorway.
+
+"Are you there, Martha?" she called.
+
+
+"That you, Sophie?" Martha queried. "Come in!"
+
+Sophie went into the kitchen. Martha had a big fire, and her room was
+full of its hot glare. She was ironing at a table against the wall, and
+freshly laundered, white clothes were hanging to a line stretched from
+above the window to a nail on the inner wall. She looked up happily as
+Sophie appeared, sweat streaming from her fat, jolly face.
+
+"I was just thinking of you, dearie," she exclaimed, putting the iron on
+an upturned tin, and straightening out the flounces of the dress she was
+at work on. "Lovely day it's been for the races, hasn't it? Sit down.
+I'll be done d'reckly, and am going to make a cup of tea before I go
+over to help Mrs. Newton a bit with dinner. My, she's got her hands full
+over there--with all the crowd up!... Don't think I ever did see such a
+crowd at the races, Sophie."
+
+Martha's iron flashed and swung backwards and forth. Sophie watched the
+brawny forearm which wielded the iron. Hard and as brown as the branch
+of a tree it was, from above the elbow where her sleeve was rolled back
+to the wrist; the hand fastened over the iron, red and dappled with
+great golden-brown freckles; the nails of its short, thick fingers,
+broken, dirt lying in thick, black wedges beneath them. As her other
+hand moved over the dress, preparing the way for the iron, Sophie saw
+its work-worn palm, the lines on it driven deep with scouring,
+scrubbing, and years of washing clothes, and cleaning other folks'
+houses. She thought of the work those hands of Martha's had done for
+Fallen Star; how Martha had looked after sick people, brought babies
+into the world, nursed the mothers, mended, washed, sewed, and darned,
+giving her help wherever it was needed. Always good-natured, hearty,
+healthy, and wholesome, what a wonderful woman she was, Mother M'Cready,
+Sophie exclaimed to herself.
+
+Martha was as excited as any girl on the Ridge, ironing her dress now,
+and getting ready for the ball. Sophie wondered how old she was. She did
+not look any older than when she first remembered her; but people said
+Martha must be sixty if she was a day. And she loved a dance, Sophie
+knew. She could dance, too, Mother M'Cready. The boys said she could
+dance like a two-year-old.
+
+"What are you going to wear to the ball, Sophie?" Martha asked. "I
+suppose you've got some real nice dresses you brought from America."
+
+"I'm not going," Sophie said,
+
+"Not going?" Martha's iron came down with a bang, her blue eyes flashed
+wide with astonishment. "The idea! Not goin' to the Ridge ball--the
+first since you came home? I never heard of such a thing.... 'Course
+you're going, Sophie!"
+
+Sophie's glance left Martha's big, busy figure. It went through the open
+doorway. The sunshine was garish on the plains, although the afternoon
+was nearly over.
+
+"Why aren't you goin'?" Martha pursued. "Why? What'll your father say?
+And Michael? And Potch? We'd all been looking forward to seein' you
+there like you used to be, Sophie. And ... here was me doin' up my dress
+extra special, thinkin' Sophie'll be that grand in the dresses she's
+brought from America ... we'll all have to smarten a bit to keep up with
+her...."
+
+Tears swam in Sophie's eyes at the naive and genial admiration of what
+Martha had said.
+
+"It'll spoil the ball if you're not there," Martha insisted, her iron
+flashing vigorously. "It just won't be--the ball--and everything looking
+as if it were goin' to be the biggest ball ever was on the Ridge.
+Everybody'll be that disappointed----"
+
+"Do you think they will, Martha?" Sophie queried.
+
+"I don't think; I know."
+
+A little smile, sceptical yet wistful, hovered in Sophie's eyes.
+
+"And it don't seem fair to Potch neither."
+
+"Potch?"
+
+"Yes ... you hidin' yourself away as if you weren't happy--and going to
+marry the best lad in the country." The iron came down emphatically,
+Martha working it as vigorously and intently as she was thinking.
+
+"There's some says Potch isn't a match for you now, Sophie. Not since
+you went away and got manners and all.... They can't tell why you're
+goin' to marry Potch. But as I said to Mrs. Watty the other day, I said:
+'Sophie isn't like that. She isn't like that at all. It's the man she
+goes for, and Potch is good enough for a princess to take up with.'
+That's what I said; and I don't mind who knows it...."
+
+Sophie had got up and gone to the door while Martha was talking. She was
+amused at the idea of Mrs. Watty having forgiven her sufficiently to
+think that Potch was not a good enough match for her.
+
+"Besides ... I did want you to go, Sophie," Martha continued. "They're
+all coming over from Warria--Mr. and Mrs. Henty and the girls, and Mrs.
+Arthur. They've got a party staying with them, up from Sydney ... and
+most of them have put up at Newton's for the night...."
+
+She glanced at Sophie to see how she was taking this news. But no
+flicker of concern changed the thoughtful mask of Sophie's features as
+she leaned in the doorway looking out to the blue fall of the afternoon
+sky.
+
+"They're coming over to see how the natives of these parts amuse
+theirselves," Martha declared scornfully. "They'll have on all the fine
+dresses and things they buy down in Sydney ... and I was lookin' to you,
+Sophie, to keep up our end. I've been thinkin' to meself, 'They think
+they're the salt of the earth, don't they? Think they're that smart ...
+we dress so funny ... and dance so funny, over at Fallen Star. But
+Sophie'll show them; Sophie'll take the shine out of them when they see
+her in one of the dresses she's brought from America.'"
+
+As Martha talked, Sophie could see the ball-room at Warria as she had
+years before. She could see the people in it--figures swaying down the
+long veranda, the Henty girls, Mrs. Henty, Phyllis Chelmsford--their
+faces, the dresses they had worn; Arthur, John Armitage, James Henty,
+herself, as she had sat behind the piano, or turned the pages of her
+father's music. She could hear the music he and Mrs. Henty played; the
+rhythm of a waltz swayed her. A twinge of the old wrath, hurt
+indignation, and disappointment, vibrated through her.... She smiled to
+think of it, and of all the long time which lay between that night and
+now.
+
+"I'd give anything for you to be there--looking your best," Martha
+continued. "I can't bear that lot to think you've come home because you
+weren't a success, as they say over there, or because...."
+
+"Mr. Armitage wasn't as fond of me--as he used to be," Sophie murmured.
+
+Martha caught the mocking of a gleam in her eyes as she spoke. No one
+knew why Sophie had come home; but Mrs. Newton had given Martha an
+American newspaper with a paragraph in it about Sophie. Martha had read
+and re-read it, and given it to several other people to read. She put
+her iron on the hearth and disappeared into the bedroom which opened off
+her kitchen.
+
+"This is all I know about it, Sophie," she said, returning with the
+paper.
+
+She handed the paper to Sophie, and Sophie glanced at a marked paragraph
+on its page.
+
+"Of a truth, dark are the ways of women, and mysterious beyond human
+understanding," she read. "Probably no young artist for a long time has
+had as meteoric a career on Broadway as Sophie Rouminof. Leaping from
+comparative obscurity, she has scintillated before us in revue and
+musical comedy for the last three or four years, and now, at the zenith
+of her success, when popularity is hers to do what she likes with, she
+goes back to her native element, the obscurity from which she sprang.
+Some first-rate artists have got religion, philanthropy, or love, and
+have renounced the footlights for them; but Sophie is doing so for no
+better reason, it is said, than that she is _ecoeoeure_ of us and our
+life--the life of any and all great cities. A well-known impresario
+informs us that a week or two ago he asked her to name her own terms for
+a new contract; but she would have nothing to do with one on any terms.
+And now she has slipped back into the darkness of space and time, like
+one of her own magnificent opals, and the bill and boards of the little
+Opera House will know her name and fascinating personality no more."
+
+The faint smile deepened in Sophie's eyes.
+
+"It's true, isn't it, Sophie?" Martha asked, as Sophie did not speak
+when she had finished reading.
+
+"I suppose it is," Sophie said. "But your paper doesn't say what made me
+_ecoeoeure_--sick to the heart, that is--of the life over there,
+Martha. And that's the main thing.... It got me down so, I thought I'd
+never sing again. But there's one thing I'd like you to tell people for
+me, Martha: Mr. Armitage was always goodness itself to me. He didn't
+even ask me to go away with him. He did make love to me, and I was just
+a silly little girl. I didn't know then men go on like that without
+meaning much.... I wanted to be a singer, and I made up my mind to go
+away when he did.... Afterwards I lost my voice. My heart wouldn't sing
+any more. I wanted to come home.... That's all I knew.... I wanted to
+come home.... And I came."
+
+Martha went to her. Her arms went round Sophie's neck.
+
+"My lamb," she whispered.
+
+Sophie rested against her for a moment. Then she kissed one of the bare
+arms she had watched working the iron so vigorously.
+
+"We'd best not think of it, Mother M'Cready," she said.
+
+"All right, dearie!"
+
+Martha withdrew her arms and went back to the hearth. She lifted another
+iron, held it to her face to judge its heat, and returned to the table.
+She rubbed the iron on a piece of hessian on a box there, dusted it with
+a soft rag, and went on with the ironing of her dress.
+
+"I wish I was as young as you, Martha," Sophie said.
+
+"Lord, lovey, you will be when you're my age," Martha replied, with a
+swift, twinkling glance of her blue eyes. "But you're coming ... aren't
+you? I won't have the heart to wear my pink stockings if you don't,
+Sophie. Mrs. Newton gave them to me for a Christmas-box ... and I'm fair
+dying to wear them."
+
+Sophie smiled at the pair of bright pink stockings pinned on the line
+beside a newly-starched petticoat.
+
+"You will, won't you?"
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+"I don't think so, Martha."
+
+Sophie went out of the doorway. She was going home, and stood again a
+moment, looking through scattered trees to the waning afternoon sky. A
+couple of birds dashed across her line of vision with shrill, low,
+giggling cries.
+
+She heard people talking in the distance. Several men rode up to
+Newton's. She saw them swing from their horses, put the reins over the
+pegs before the bar, and go into the hotel. Two or three children ran
+down the street chattering eagerly, excitedly. Roy O'Mara went across to
+the hall with some flags under his arm. From all the huts drifted
+ejaculations, fragments of laughter and calling. Excitement about the
+ball was in the air.
+
+Sophie remembered how happy and excited she used to be about the Ridge
+balls. She thought of it all vaguely at first, that lost girlish joy of
+hers, the free, careless gaiety which had swept her along as she danced.
+She remembered her father's fiddling, Mrs. Newton's playing; how the
+music had had a magic in it which set everybody's feet flying and the
+boys singing to tunes they knew. The men polished the floor so that you
+could scarcely walk on it. One year they had spent hours working it up
+so that you slipped along like greased lightning as you danced.
+
+Sophie smiled at her reminiscences. The high tones of a man's voice,
+eager and exultant, shouting to someone across the twilight; the twitter
+of a girl's laughter--they were all in the air now as they had been
+then. Her listlessness stirred; everybody was preparing for the ball,
+and getting ready to go to it. Excitement and eager looking forward to a
+good time were in the air. They were infectious. Sophie trembled to
+them--they tempted her. Could she go to the ball, like everybody else?
+Could she drift again in the stream of easy and genial intercourse with
+all these people of the Ridge whom she loved and who loved her?
+
+Martha came to the door. Her eyes strained on the brooding young face,
+trying to read from the changing expressions which flitted across it
+what Sophie was thinking.
+
+"You're coming, aren't you, dearie?" she begged.
+
+Sophie's eyes surprised the old woman, the brilliance of tears and light
+in them, their childish playing of hope beyond hope and fear, amazed
+her.
+
+"Do you think I could, Martha?" she cried. "Do you think I could?"
+
+"Course you could, darling," Martha said.
+
+Sophie's arms went round her in an instant's quick pressure; then she
+stood off from her.
+
+"Won't it be lovely," she cried, "to dance and sing--and to be young
+again, Martha?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood
+along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall.
+At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against
+the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light
+came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing
+and talking.
+
+"It's like old times, isn't it, Potch"--Sophie's fingers closed over
+Potch's arm--"to be going to a Ridge dance?"
+
+There was a faint, sweet stirring which the wind makes in the trees
+within her, Sophie realised. It was strange and delightful to feel alive
+again, and alive with the first freshness, innocence, and vague
+happiness of a girl.
+
+Potch looked down on her, smiling. He was filled with pride to have her
+beside him like this, to think they would go into the hall together, and
+that people would say to each other when they saw them: "There's Sophie
+and Potch!"
+
+That using of their names side by side was a source of infinite content
+to Potch. He loved people to say: "When are you and Sophie coming over
+to see us, Potch?" or, "Would you mind telling Sophie, Potch?" and give
+him a message for Sophie. And this would be the first time they had
+appeared at an assembly of Ridge folk together.
+
+He walked with his head held straight and high, and his eyes shone when
+he went down the hall with Sophie. What did it matter if they called him
+Potch, the Ridge folk, "a little bit of potch," he thought, Sophie was
+going to be Mrs. Heathfield.
+
+"Here's Sophie and Potch," he heard people say, as he had thought they
+would, and his heart welled with happiness and pride.
+
+Nearly everybody had arrived when they went into the hall; the first
+dance was just beginning. Branches of budda, fleeced with creamy and
+lavender blossom, had been stuck through the supports of the hall. Flags
+and pennants of all the colours in the rainbow, strung on a line
+together, were stretched at the end of the platform. On the platform
+Mrs. Newton was sitting at the piano. Paul had his music-stand near her,
+and behind him an old man from the Three Mile was nervously fingering
+and blowing on a black and silver-mounted flute. Women and girls and a
+few of the older men were seated on forms against the walls. Several
+young mothers had babies in their arms, and children of all ages were
+standing about, or sitting beside their parents. By common consent,
+Ridge folk had taken one side of the hall, and station folk the upper
+end of the other side.
+
+Sophie's first glance found Martha, her white dress stiff and
+immaculate, her face with its plump, rosy cheeks turned towards her, her
+eyes smiling and expectant. Martha beamed at her; Sophie smiled back,
+and, her glance travelling on, found Maggie and Bill Grant, Mrs. George
+Woods and two of her little girls; Mrs. Watty, in a black dress, its
+high neck fastened by a brooch, with three opals in, Watty had given
+her; and Watty, genial and chirrupy as usual, but afraid to appear as if
+he were promising himself too much of a good time.
+
+Warria, Langi-Eumina, and Darrawingee folk had foregathered; the girls
+and men laughed and chattered in little groups; the older people talked,
+sitting against the wall or leaning towards each other. Mrs. Henty
+looked much as she had done five years before; James Henty not a day
+older; but Mrs. Tom Henderson, who had been Elizabeth Henty, had
+developed a sedate and matronly appearance. Polly was not as plump and
+jolly as she had been--a little puzzled and apprehensive expression
+flitted through her clear brown eyes, and there were lines of
+discouragement about her mouth. Sophie recognised Mrs. Arthur Henty in a
+slight, well-dressed woman, whose thin, unwrinkled features wore an
+expression of more or less matter-of-fact discontent.
+
+The floor was shining under the light of the one big hanging lamp. Paul
+scraped his violin with a preliminary flourish; Mrs. Newton threw a
+bunch of chords after him, and they cantered into a waltz time the Ridge
+loved. Roy O'Mara, M.C. for the occasion, shouted jubilantly: "Take y'r
+partners for a waltz!" Couples edged out from the wall, and in a moment
+were swirling and whirling up and down on the bared space of the hall.
+There were squeals and little screams as feet slipped and skidded on the
+polished floor; but people soon found their dancing feet, got under way
+of the music, and swung to its rhythms with more ease, security, and
+pleasure. Sophie watched the dance for a while. She saw Martha dancing
+with Michael. Every year at the Ridge ball Michael danced the first
+dance with Martha. And Martha, dancing with Michael--no one on the Ridge
+was happier, though they moved so solemnly, turning round and round with
+neat little steps, as if they were pledged to turn in the space of a
+threepenny piece!
+
+Sophie smiled at Martha's happy seriousness. Arthur Henty was dancing
+with his wife. Sophie had not seen him so clearly since her return to
+the Ridge. When she had passed him in the township, or at Newton's, he
+had been riding, and she had scarcely seen his face for the beard which
+had overgrown it and the shadow his hat cast. She studied him with
+unmoved curiosity. His beard had been clipped close, and she recognised
+the moulding of his head, the slope of his shoulders, a peculiar loose
+litheness in his gait. Her eyes followed him as he danced with his wife.
+Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Henty were waltzing in the perfunctory, mechanical
+fashion of people thoroughly bored with each other.
+
+Then Sophie swung with Potch into the eddying current of the dancers.
+Potch danced in as steady and methodical a fashion as he did everything.
+The music did not get him; at least, Sophie could not believe it did.
+
+His eyes were deep and shining as though it were a great and holy
+ceremony he were engaged in, but there was no melting to the delight of
+rhythmic movement in his sober gyrations. Sophie felt him a clog on the
+flow of her own action as he steered and steadily directed her through
+the crowd.
+
+"For goodness' sake, Potch, dance as if you meant it," she said.
+
+"But I do mean it, Sophie," he said.
+
+As he looked down at her, his flushed, happy face assured her that he
+did mean dancing, but he meant it as he meant everything--with a dead
+earnestness.
+
+After that dance all her old friends among men of the Ridge came round
+Sophie to ask her to dance with them. Bully and Roy sparred for dances
+as they did in the old days, and Michael and George and Watty threatened
+to knock their heads together and throw them out of the room if they
+didn't get out of the way and give some other chaps a chance to dance
+with Sophie. Between the dances, Sophie went over to talk to Maggie
+Grant, Mrs. Watty, Mrs. George Woods, and Martha. She had time to tell
+Martha how nice her dress and the pink stockings looked, and how the
+opals in her bracelet flashed as she was dancing.
+
+"You can see them from one end of the hall to the other," Sophie
+whispered.
+
+"And you, lovey," Martha said. "It's just lovely, the dress. You should
+have seen how they stared at you when you came in.... And Potch looking
+so nice, too. He wouldn't call the King his uncle to-night, Sophie!"
+
+Sophie laughed happily as she went off to dance with Bully, who was
+claiming her for a polka mazurka.
+
+The evening was half through when John Armitage appeared in the doorway.
+Sophie had just come from dancing the quadrilles with Potch when she saw
+Armitage standing in the doorway with Peter Newton. Potch saw him as
+Sophie did; their eyes met. Michael came towards them.
+
+"Mr. Armitage did come, I see," Sophie said quietly, as Potch and
+Michael were looking towards the door. "I had a letter from him a few
+weeks ago saying he thought he would be here for the ball," she added.
+
+"Why has he come?" Michael asked.
+
+"I don't know," she said. "To see me, I suppose ... and to find out
+whether the men will do business with him again."
+
+Michael's gesture implied it was useless to talk of that.
+
+Sophie continued: "But you know what I said, Michael. I can't be happy
+until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the
+men here.... You must do that for me, Michael. They know I'm going to
+marry Potch ... and if they see there's no ill feeling between John
+Armitage and me, they'll believe I was more to blame than he was--if
+it's a question of blame.... I want you and Potch to stand by me in
+this, Michael."
+
+Potch's eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and
+sure. But Michael showed no relenting.
+
+Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in
+the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had
+circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had
+created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and
+indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach
+to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie.
+
+She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had
+met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them
+than playing a game they had learned to play rather well.
+
+Sophie said: "It is you really?"
+
+He took the hand she held to him. "But you knew I was coming? You had my
+letter?"
+
+"Of course ... but----"
+
+"And my word is my bond."
+
+The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage's voice, and the
+perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised
+people who were near them.
+
+Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded
+Armitage with grave, quiet eyes.
+
+"Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!" Armitage said.
+
+Michael did not reply; but Potch said:
+
+"Evening, Mr. Armitage!" And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and
+Michael's silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had
+made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather.
+Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning.
+
+"Is this my dance, Sophie?" Armitage inquired.
+
+Sophie shook her head, smiling.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Which is my dance?" The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.
+
+Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly
+understanding.
+
+"The next one."
+
+She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve
+force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold
+to, or move as she wished.
+
+"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at
+him.
+
+"Sophie!"
+
+His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love
+and gratitude beyond words.
+
+While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys;
+he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz
+with Polly Henty.
+
+When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty
+leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an
+odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had
+heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was
+connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about
+all there had been between herself and John Armitage--even this dancing
+with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer
+anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her
+dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised
+that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting
+on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her
+dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel
+drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure
+blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.
+
+Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they
+danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their
+movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and
+about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this
+with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and love-making
+forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate
+sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage's eyes.
+It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing
+and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the
+wall spurred Sophie to further laughter--a reckless gaiety.
+
+"You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and ... trying its
+wings in the sun, Sophie," Armitage said.
+
+"I feel ... just like that," Sophie said.
+
+After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or
+three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of
+quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with
+George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of
+the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe
+of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had
+"gone the pace," in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay
+world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie
+guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But
+she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men
+like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she
+caught Potch's gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled
+to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the
+younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was
+talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and
+enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.
+
+As she was coming from a dance with Roy O'Mara she passed Arthur Henty
+where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie
+as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung
+over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M'Cready.
+
+"You're going to dance with me?" he asked, a husky uncertainty in his
+voice.
+
+"No," Sophie said, looking away from him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and
+sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The
+unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted,
+spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied.
+
+"There's going to be an extra after supper," he said.
+
+"Very well."
+
+What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she
+had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.
+
+How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as
+she had waited then? But there were all those long years between.
+Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was
+dancing with Arthur.
+
+He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few
+paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among
+the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier
+poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in
+sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an
+effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly,
+indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother
+to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing
+himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie's laughter failed. The
+inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had
+read long before in each other's eyes was still there, after all the
+years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.
+
+Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had
+walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was
+remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon
+he had recited:
+
+          "I met a lady in the meads
+             Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
+           Her hair was long, her foot was light,
+             And her eyes were wild."
+
+Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not
+danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not
+laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and
+wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like
+dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing
+on a grave.
+
+Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful,
+working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers
+comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other,
+every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests
+of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
+
+Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when
+they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie
+wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering--voices,
+shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy
+exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....
+
+Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared
+not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the
+surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated
+itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.
+
+As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was
+afraid of getting out of her depth ... but he held her carefully. His
+grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that
+hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up;
+she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and
+smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the
+smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp
+tightened. She was afraid of him--afraid of all the long, old dreams he
+might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those
+hungry, hungry eyes.... She could not see them; she would not.
+
+A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She
+could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices
+were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence
+them ... begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the
+implacable in him--the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face.
+She was helpless before them.
+
+Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a
+little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no
+hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean
+fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close
+embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought
+consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow
+of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came
+to them in far-away murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and
+laughter.
+
+Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.
+
+"No, no," she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.
+
+He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full
+draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last
+essence.
+
+A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie
+was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a
+moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark,
+she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle
+paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear
+nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged
+animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had
+stupefied her.
+
+She called Michael.
+
+Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were
+on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant's
+vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch's
+... she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the
+surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from
+where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through
+darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy,
+quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Sophie went into the shed where her cutting-wheel was soon after eight
+o'clock next morning. She took up a packet of small stones George Woods
+had left with her and set to work on them.
+
+The wheel was in a line with the window, and she sat on the wooden chair
+before it, so that the light fell over her left shoulder. On the bench
+which ran out from the wheel were a spirit lamp and the trays of rough
+opal; on the other side of the bench the polishing buffers were arranged
+one against the other. A hand-basin, the water in it raddled with rouge,
+stood on the table behind her, and a white china jug of fresh water
+beside it.
+
+Sophie lighted the spirit lamp, gathered up a handful of the slender
+sticks about the size of pen-holders which Potch had prepared for her,
+melted her sealing-wax over the flame of the lamp, drew the saucer of
+George's opals to her, and fastened a score of small stones to the
+heated wax on the ends of the sticks. She blew out the lamp.
+
+She was working in order not to think; she worked for awhile without
+thinking, details of the opal-cutting following each other in the
+routine they had made for themselves.
+
+The plague of her thoughts grew as she worked. From being nebulae of a
+state of mind which she could not allow herself to contemplate, such
+darkness of despair there was in it, they evolved to tiny pictures which
+presented themselves singly and in panorama, flitting and flickering
+incoherently, incongruously.
+
+Sophie could see the hall as she had the night before. She seemed to be
+able to see everything at once and in detail--its polished floors,
+flowering boughs, and flags, the people sitting against the iron walls
+in their best clothes ... Mrs. Watty, Watty and George, Ella and Bully
+... Bully holding the baby ... the two little Woods' girls in their
+white embroidered muslin dresses, with pink ribbons tied round their
+heads.... Cash Wilson dancing solemnly in carpet slippers; Mrs. Newton
+at the piano ... the prim way her fat little hands pranced sedately up
+and down over the keys.... Paul enjoying his own music ... getting a
+little bit wild over it, and working his right leg and knee as though he
+had an orchestra to keep going somehow.... Mrs. Newton refusing to be
+coaxed into anything like enthusiasm, but trying to keep up with him,
+nevertheless.... Mrs. Henty, Polly, Elizabeth ... Mrs. Arthur ... the
+Langi-Eumina party ... the Moffats ... Potch, Michael ... John Armitage.
+
+Images of New York flashed across these pictures of the night before.
+Sophie visualised the city as she had first seen it. A fairy city it had
+seemed to her with its sky-flung lights, thronged thoroughfares, and
+jangling bells. She saw a square of tall, flat-faced buildings before a
+park of leafless trees; shimmering streets on a wet night, near the New
+Theatre and the Little Opera House; a supper-party after the theatre ...
+gilded walls, Byzantian hangings, women with bare shoulders flashing
+satin from slight, elegant limbs, or emerging with jewel-strung necks
+from swathings of mist-like tulle, the men beside them ... a haze of
+cigarette smoke over it all ... tinkle of laughter, a sweet, sleepy
+stirring of music somewhere ... light of golden wine in wide,
+shallow-bowled glasses, with tall, fragile stems ... lipping and sway of
+tides against the hull of a yacht on quiet water ... a man's face, heavy
+and swinish, peering into her own....
+
+Then again, Mrs. Watty against the wall of the Ridge ball-room, stiff
+and disapproving-looking in her high-necked black dress ... Michael
+dancing with Martha ... Martha's pink stockings ... and the way she had
+danced, lightly, delightedly, her feet encased in white canvas shoes.
+Sophie had worn white canvas shoes at the Warria ball, she remembered.
+Pictures of that night crowded on her, of Phyllis Chelmsford and Arthur
+... Arthur....
+
+Her thought stopped there. Arthur ... what did it all mean? She saw
+again the fixed, flat figures she had seen against the wall when she was
+dancing with Arthur--the corpse-like faces.... Why had everybody died
+when she was dancing with Arthur Henty? Sophie remembered that people
+had looked very much as usual when she went out to dance with Arthur;
+then when she looked at them again, they all seemed to be
+dead--drowned--and sitting round the hall in clear, still water, like
+the figures she had seen in mummy cases in foreign museums. Only she and
+Arthur were alive in that roomful of dead people. They had come from
+years before and were going to years beyond. It had been dark before she
+realised this; then they had been caught up into a light, transcending
+all consciousness of light; in which they had seemed no more than atoms
+of light adrift on the tide of the ages. Then the light had gone....
+
+They were out of doors when she recognised time and place again. Sophie
+had seen the hall crouched heavy and dark under a starry sky, its
+windows, yellow eyes.... She was conscious of trees about her ... the
+note of a goat-bell not far away ... and Arthur.... They had kissed, and
+then in the darkness that terror and fear--those struggling shapes ...
+figures of a nightmare ... light on Potch's hair.... She heard her own
+cry, winging eerie and shrill through the darkness.
+
+With a sudden desperate effort Sophie threw off the plague of these
+thoughts and small mind-pictures; she turned to the cutting-wheel again.
+It whirred as she bent over it.
+
+"Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!" the wheel purred. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+
+Her brain throbbed as she tried not to listen or hear that song of the
+wheel; "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur!" the blood murmured and droned in her
+head.
+
+Her hand holding an opal to the wheel trembled, the opal skidded and was
+scratched.
+
+"Oh, God," Sophie moaned, "don't let me think of him any more. Don't let
+me...."
+
+A mirror on the wall opposite reflected her face. Sophie wondered
+whether that was her face she saw in the mirror: the face in the mirror
+was strangely old, withered and wan. She closed her eyes on the sight of
+it. It confronted her again when she opened them. The eyes of the face
+in the mirror were heavy and dark with a darkness of mind she could not
+fathom.
+
+Sophie got up from her chair before the cutting-wheel. She went to the
+window and stood looking through its small open space at the bare earth
+beyond the hut. A few slight, sketchy trees, and the broken earth and
+scattered mounds of old dumps were thrown up under a fall of clear,
+exquisite sky, of a blue so pure, so fine, that there was balm just in
+looking at it. For a moment she plunged into it, the tragic chaos of her
+mind obliterated.
+
+With new courage from that moment's absorption of peaceful beauty, she
+went back to the wheel, the resolution which had taken her to it twice
+before that morning urging her. She sat down and began to work, took up
+the piece of opal she had scratched, examined it closely, wondering how
+the flaw could be rectified, if it could be rectified.
+
+The wheel, set going, raised its droning whirr. Sophie held her mind to
+the stone. She was pleased after a while. "That's all right," she told
+herself. "If only you don't think.... If only you keep working like this
+and don't think of Arthur."
+
+It was Arthur she did not want to think of. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+the wheel mocked. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
+
+Her head went into her hands. She was moaning and crying again. "Don't
+let me think of him any more ... if only I needn't think of him any
+more...."
+
+She began to work again. There was nothing to do but persist in trying
+to work, she thought. If she kept to it, perhaps in the end the routine
+would take her; she would become absorbed in the mechanism of what she
+was doing.
+
+A shadow was thrown before her. In the mirror Sophie saw that John
+Armitage was standing in the doorway. Her feet ceased to work the
+treadles of the cutting-wheel; her hands fell to her lap; she waited for
+him to come into the room. He walked past her to the window, and stood
+with his back to it, facing her. Her eyes went to him. She let him take
+what impression he might from her face, her defences were down; vaguely,
+perhaps, she hoped he would read something of her mind in her face, that
+he would need no explanation of what she had no words to express.
+
+There had been a smile of faint cynicism in his eyes as he looked
+towards her; it evaporated as she surrendered to the inquisition of his
+gaze.
+
+"Well?" he inquired gravely.
+
+"Well?" she replied as gravely.
+
+They studied each other quietly.
+
+John Armitage had changed very little since she had first seen him. His
+clean-shaven face was harder, a little more firmly set perhaps; the
+indecision had gone from it; it had lost some of its amiable mobility.
+He looked much more a man of the world he was living in--a business man,
+whose intelligence and energies had been trained in its service--but his
+eyes still had their subtle knowledge and sympathy, his individuality
+the attraction it had first had for her.
+
+He was wearing the loose, well-cut tweeds he travelled in, and had taken
+off his hat. It lay on the window-sill beside him, and Sophie saw that
+there was more silver in his hair where it was brushed back from his
+ears than there used to be. His eyes surveyed her as if she were written
+in an argot or dialect which puzzled him; his hands drifted and moved
+before her as he smoked a cigarette. His hands emphasised the difference
+between John Lincoln Armitage and men of the Ridge. Sophie thought of
+Potch's hands, and of Michael's, and the smile Michael might have had
+for Armitage's hands curved her lips.
+
+Armitage, taking that smile for a lessening of the tension of her mood,
+said:
+
+"You'd much better put on your bonnet and shawl, and come home with me,
+Sophie. We can be married en route, or in Sydney if you like.... You
+know how pleased the old man'll be. And, as for me----"
+
+Sophie's gaze swept past him, fretted lines deepening on her forehead.
+
+Armitage threw away his cigarette, abandoning his assumption of familiar
+friendliness with the action, and went to her side. Sophie rose to meet
+him.
+
+"Look here, Sophie," he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking
+into her eyes, "let's have done with all this neurotic rot.... You're
+the only woman in the world for me. I don't know why you left me. I
+don't care.... Come home ... let's get married ... and see whether we
+can't make a better thing of it...."
+
+Sophie had turned her eyes from his.
+
+"When I've said that before, you wouldn't have anything to do with it,"
+he continued. "You had a notion I was saying it because I ought--thought
+I had to, or the old man had talked me into it.... It wasn't true even
+then. I came here to say it ... so that you would believe I--want it,
+and I want you--more than anything on earth, Sophie."
+
+There was no response, only an overshadowing of troubled thought in
+Sophie's face.
+
+"Is there anything love or money can give you, girl, that I'm not eager
+to give you?" Armitage demanded. "What is it you want?... Do you know
+what you want?"
+
+Sophie did not reply, and her silence exasperated him.
+
+Taking her face in his hands, Armitage scrutinised it as though he must
+read there what her silence held from him.
+
+He realised how wan and weary-looking it was. Shadows beneath her eyes
+fell far down her cheeks, her lips lay together with a new, strange
+sternness. But he could not think of that yet. His male egoism could
+only consider its own situation, fight imperiously in its own defence.
+
+"You want something I can't give you?"
+
+His eyes held her for the fraction of a second; then, the pain of
+knowledge gripping him, his hands fell from her face. He turned away.
+
+"Which is it ... Potch or--the other?" He spoke with cruel bitterness.
+"It's always a case of 'which' with you--isn't it?"
+
+"That's just it," Sophie said.
+
+He glanced at her, surprised to hear a note of the same bitterness in
+her voice.
+
+"I didn't mean that, Sophie," he said. "You know I didn't."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"It's true all the same."
+
+"Tell me"--he turned to her--"I wish you would. You never have--why you
+left New York ... and gave up singing ... everything there, and came
+here."
+
+Sophie dropped into her chair again.
+
+"But you know."
+
+"Who could know anything of you, Sophie?"
+
+She moved the stones on the bench absent-mindedly. At length she said:
+
+"You remember our big row about Adler, when I was going to the supper on
+his yacht?"
+
+Armitage exclaimed with a gesture of protest.
+
+"I know," Sophie said, "you were angry ... you didn't mean what you
+said. But you were right all the same. You said I had let the life I was
+leading go to my head--that I was utterly demoralised by it.... I was
+angry; but it was true. You know the people I was going about with...."
+
+"I did my best to get you away from them," Armitage said.
+
+Sophie nodded. "But I hadn't had enough then ... of the beautiful places
+and things I found myself in the midst of ... and of all the admiration
+that came my way. What a queer crowd they were--Kalin, that Greek boy
+who was singing with me in _Eurydice_, Ina Barres, the Countess, Mrs.
+Youille-Bailey, Adler, and the rest of them.... They seemed to have run
+the gamut of all natural experiences and to be interested only in what
+was unnatural, bizarre, macabre.... Adler in that crowd was almost a
+relief. I liked his--honest Rabelaisianism, if you like.... I hadn't the
+slightest intention of more than amusing myself with him ... but he,
+evidently, did not intend to be merely a source of amusement to me. The
+supper on the yacht.... I kept my head for a while, not long, and
+then----"
+
+"Then?" Armitage queried.
+
+"That's why I came home," Sophie said. "I was so sick with the shock and
+shame of it all ... so sick and ashamed I couldn't sing any more. I
+wouldn't. My voice died.... I deserved what happened. I'd been playing
+for it ... taking the wine, the music, Adler's love-making ... and
+expecting to escape the taint of it all.... Afterwards I saw where I was
+going ... what that life was making of me...."
+
+"I don't know how you came to have anything to do with such a rotten
+lot," Armitage cried, sweating under a white heat of rage.
+
+"Oh, they're just people of means and leisure who like to patronise
+successful young dancers and singers for their own amusement," Sophie
+said.
+
+"Because you fell in with a set of ultraaesthetics and degenerates, is no
+reason to suppose all our people of means and leisure are like them,"
+Armitage declared hotly.
+
+"I don't," Sophie said; "what I felt, when I began to think about it,
+was that they were just the natural consequences of all the easy,
+luxurious living I'd seen--the extreme of the pole if you like. I saw
+the other when I went to live in a slum settlement in Chicago."
+
+"You did?" Armitage exclaimed incredulously.
+
+"When I got over the shock of--my awakening," she went on slowly, "I
+began to remember things Michael had said. That's why I went to Chicago
+... and worked in a clothing factory for a while.... I saw there why
+Adler's a millionaire, and heard from girls in a Youille-Bailey-M'Gill
+factory why Connie Youille-Bailey has money to burn...."
+
+"Old Youille-Bailey had fingers in a dozen pies, and he left her all
+he'd got," Armitage said.
+
+"But people down in the district where most of their money is made are
+living like bugs under a rotten log," Sophie exclaimed wearily. "They're
+made to live like that ... in order that people like William P. Adler
+and Mrs. Youille-Bailey ... may live as they do."
+
+Armitage's expression of mild cynicism yielded to one of concerned
+attentiveness. But he was concerned with the bearing on Sophie of what
+she had to say, and not at all with its relation to conditions of
+existence.
+
+"After all, life only goes on by its interests," she went on musingly;
+"and Mrs. Youille-Bailey's not altogether to blame for what she is. When
+people are bored, they've got to get interest or die; and if faculties
+which ought to be spent in useful or creative work aren't spent in that
+work, they find outlet in the silly energies a selfish and artificial
+life breeds...."
+
+"I admit," Armitage said, trying to veer her thoughts from the abstract
+to the personal issue, "that you went the pace. I couldn't keep up with
+it--not with Adler and his mob! But there's no need to go back to that
+sort of life. We could live as quietly as you like."
+
+Sophie shook her head. "I want to live here," she said. "I want to work
+with my hands ... feel myself in the swim of the world's life ... going
+with the great stream; and I want to help Michael here."
+
+Armitage sat back against the window-sill regarding her steadily.
+
+"If I could help you to do a great deal for the Ridge," he said; "if I
+were to settle here and spend all the money I've got in developing this
+place.--There's nothing innately immoral about a water-supply or
+electric power, I suppose, or in giving people decent houses to live in.
+And it would mean that for Fallen Star, if the scheme I have in mind is
+put into action. And if it is ... and I build a house here and were to
+live here most of my time ... would you marry me then, Sophie?"
+
+Sophie gazed at him, her eyes widening to a scarcely believable vision.
+
+"Do you mean you'd give up all your money to do that for the Ridge?" she
+asked.
+
+"Not quite that," he replied. "But the scheme would work out like that.
+I mean, it would provide more comfort and convenience for everybody on
+the Ridge--a more assured means of livelihood."
+
+"You don't mean to buy up the mines?"
+
+"Just that," he said.
+
+"But the men wouldn't agree...."
+
+"I don't know so much about that. It would depend on a few----"
+
+"Michael would never consent."
+
+"As a matter of fact"--John Armitage returned Sophie's gaze
+tranquilly--"I know something about Michael--some information came into
+my hands recently, although I've always vaguely suspected it--which will
+make his consent much more likely than you would have imagined.... If it
+does not, giving the information I hold to men of the Ridge will so
+destroy their faith and confidence in Michael that what he may say or do
+will not matter."
+
+Sophie's bewilderment and dismay constrained him. Then he continued:
+
+"You see, quite apart from you, my dear, it has always been a sort of
+dream of mine--ambition, if you like--to make a going concern of this
+place--to do for Fallen Star what other men I know have done for
+no-count, out-of-the-way towns and countries where natural resources or
+possibilities of investment warranted it.... I've talked the thing over
+with the old man, and with Andy M'Intosh, an old friend of mine, who is
+one of the ablest engineers in the States.... He's willing to throw in
+his lot with me.... Roughly, we've drawn up plans for conservation of
+flood waters and winter rains, which will alter the whole character of
+this country.... The old man at first was opposed--said the miners would
+never stand it; but since we've been out with the Ridge men, he's
+changed his mind rather. I mean, that when he knew some of the men would
+be willing to stand by us--and I have means of knowing they would--he
+was ready to agree. And when I told him Michael might be reckoned a
+traitor to his own creed----"
+
+"It's not true," Sophie cried, her faith afire. "It couldn't be! ... If
+everybody in the world told me, I wouldn't believe it!"
+
+Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and
+selected a cigarette.
+
+"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm only explaining the
+position to you because you're concerned in it. And for God's sake don't
+let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I'm not a villain. I don't feel
+in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.... I see my
+way to a profitable investment--incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I've
+been working out for a good many years.
+
+"Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he's worth if it weren't for
+this trump card of mine," Armitage went on. "He's got a Utopian dream
+about the place.... I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the
+advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its
+resources. His dream against mine--that's what it amounts to.... Well,
+it's a fair thing, isn't it, if I know that Michael is false to the
+things he says he stands for--and he stands in the way of my scheme--to
+let the men know he's false? ... They will fall away from the ideas he
+stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas
+sans Michael ... but they will be in the minority.... The way will be
+clear for reorganisation then."
+
+Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to
+his own creed--false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage
+said,--although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage
+reason for thinking so.
+
+"I'll see Michael to-morrow, and have it out with him," John Armitage
+said. "I shall tell him what I know ... and also my plans. If he will
+work with me----"
+
+Sophie looked up, her smile glimmering.
+
+"If he will work with me," Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all
+that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, "nothing need be
+said which will undermine Michael's influence with men of the Ridge. I
+know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with
+them--by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition,
+suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it
+has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected....
+I'll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure--give it a
+profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won't look like the
+thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses...."
+
+"He will...."
+
+"I am going to ask the men to meet me in the hall, at the end of the
+month, to lay before them a proposition for the more effective working
+of the mines. I shall put my proposition before them, and if Michael
+refuses to work with me, I shall be forced to give them proofs of his
+unworthiness of their respect...."
+
+"They won't believe you."
+
+"There will be the proofs, and Michael will not--he cannot--deny them."
+
+"You'll tell him what you are going to do?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Sophie realised how far Armitage was from understanding the religious
+intensity and simplicity with which Ridge folk worked for the way of
+life they believed to be the right one, and what the break-up of that
+belief would mean to those who had served it in the unpretentious,
+unprotesting fashion of honest, downright people. To him the Ridge stood
+for messy sentimentalism, Utopian idealism. And there was money in the
+place: there was money to be made by putting money into it--by working
+the mines and prospecting the country as the men without capital could
+not.
+
+John Armitage was ready to admit--Sophie had heard him admitting in
+controversy--that the Fallen Star mines which the miners themselves
+controlled were as well worked and as well managed within their means as
+any he had ever come across; that the miners themselves were a sober and
+industrious crowd. What capital could do for them and for the Fallen
+Star community by way of increasing its output and furthering its
+activities was what he saw. And the only security he could have for
+putting his capital into working the mines was ownership of them.
+Ownership would give him the right to organise the workers, and to claim
+interest for his investment from their toil, or the product of their
+toil.
+
+The Ridge declaration of independence had made it clear that people of
+Fallen Star did not want increased output, the comforts and conveniences
+which capital could give them, unless they were provided from the common
+fund of the community. Ultimately, it was hoped the common fund would
+provide them, but until it did Ridge men had announced their willingness
+to do without improvements for the sake of being masters of their own
+mines. If it was a question of barter, they were for the pride and
+dignity of being free men and doing without the comforts and
+conveniences of modern life. Sophie felt sure Armitage underestimated
+the feeling of the majority of men of the Ridge toward the Ridge idea,
+and that most of them would stand by it, even if for some mysterious
+reason Michael lost status with them. But she was dismayed at the test
+the strength of that feeling was to be put to, and at the mysterious
+shame which threatened Michael. She could not believe Michael had ever
+done anything to merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to
+her--the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no
+reproach could be levelled.
+
+Armitage spoke again.
+
+"You see," he said, "you could still have all those things you spoke of,
+under my scheme--the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple;
+the hearth; home, children--all that sort of thing ... and even time for
+any of the little social reform schemes you fancied...."
+
+Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of
+their outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much
+to her and to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong
+children--whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of
+course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them.
+
+"The only little social reform I'd have any time for," she murmured,
+"would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines."
+
+John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to
+the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility
+of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to
+the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of
+destroying them.
+
+"Then"--he stood up suddenly--"whether I succeed or whether I
+don't--whether the scheme goes my way or not--won't make any difference
+to you--to us."
+
+"It will make this difference," Sophie said. "I'm heart and soul in the
+life here, I've told you. And if you do as you say you're going to ...
+instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I'll have to
+think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me."
+
+"You mean," John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and
+chagrin which rushed over him, "you mean you're going to take on
+Henty--that's what's at the back of all this."
+
+"I mean," Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his,
+"that I'm going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the
+men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we'll fight it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Are you there, Potch?" Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael's hut, a
+wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her.
+
+Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in
+his hands.
+
+"He's not here," he said.
+
+His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had
+been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with
+anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes
+had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any
+meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of
+her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about
+her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing
+her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised,
+confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that
+photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and
+sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening
+wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety.
+
+Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was
+rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against
+anyone--a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out
+of it; and Sophie's delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole
+being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had
+changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she
+were playing up to him.... She had been much more of his world than of
+the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and
+superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When
+she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping
+and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch
+should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from
+his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he
+had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together.
+
+Then Sophie's cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him.
+He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that
+such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch
+away from Henty.... Henty had fallen.... Potch would have killed him if
+they had not dragged him away.... Henty was carried in an unconscious
+condition to Newton's. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with
+Potch.
+
+Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only
+imagine.... Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the
+other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not
+understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which
+he was not responsible for what he did.
+
+Sophie was conscious of Michael's aloofness from her as she stood in the
+doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night
+before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress,
+which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her
+in her everyday white cotton frock--as she sat at work at her
+cutting-wheel, or went about the hut--and now that she stood before him
+in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and
+happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer
+in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at
+him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have
+quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain,
+but could not.
+
+Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying and muttering as though
+he were drunk. But he was not drunk, except with rage and grief, Michael
+knew. He had lain on his bunk like a log all night, muttering and
+groaning. Michael had sat in a chair in the next room, trying to
+understand the madness which had overwhelmed Potch.
+
+In the morning, he realised that work and the normal order of their
+working days were the only things to restore Potch's mental balance. He
+roused him earlier than usual.
+
+"We'd better get down and clear out some of the mullock," he said. "The
+gouges are fair choked up. There'll be no doing anything if we don't get
+a move on with it."
+
+Potch had stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got up, changed his
+clothes, and they had gone down to the mine together. His face was
+swollen and discoloured, his lip broken, one eye almost hidden beneath a
+purple and blue swelling which had risen on the upper part of his left
+cheek. He had dragged his hat over his face, and walked with his head
+down; they had not spoken all the morning. Potch had swung his pick
+stolidly. All day his eyes had not met Michael's as they usually did, in
+that glance of love and comradeship which united them whenever their
+eyes met.
+
+In the afternoon, when they stopped work and went to the top of the
+mine, Potch had said:
+
+"Think I'll clear out--go away somewhere for awhile, Michael."
+
+From his attitude, averted head and drooping shoulders, Michael got the
+unendurable agony of his mind, his pain and shame. He did not reply, and
+Potch had walked away from him striking out in a south-easterly
+direction across the Ridge. Michael had not seen him since then. And now
+it was early evening, the moon up and silvering the plains with the
+light of her young crescent.
+
+"He says--Potch says ... he's going away," Michael said to Sophie.
+
+Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew
+it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible.
+Their minds would not accept the idea.
+
+Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the
+moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground
+at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for
+Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He
+wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for
+him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he
+himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery.
+
+Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made
+on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town.
+
+She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so
+still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and
+knelt beside him.
+
+"Potch!" she said.
+
+He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had
+brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched
+beside him.
+
+"Potch," she cried. "Potch!"
+
+Potch did not move or reply.
+
+"I can't live ... if you won't forgive me, Potch," Sophie said.
+
+He stirred. "Don't talk like that," he muttered.
+
+After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light
+of-the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic
+mask of the tragedy which consumed him.
+
+"That's the sort of man I am," Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady.
+"I didn't know ... I didn't know I was like that. It came over me all of
+a sudden, when I saw you and--him. I didn't know any more until Michael
+was talking to me. I wouldn't've done it if I'd known, Sophie.... But I
+didn't know.... I just saw him--and you, and I had to put out the sight
+of it ... I had to get it out of my eyes... what I saw.... That's all I
+know. Michael says I didn't kill him ... but I meant to ... that's what
+I started to do."
+
+Sophie's face withered under her distress.
+
+"Don't say that, Potch," she begged.
+
+"But I do," he said. "I must.... I can't make out ... how it was ... I
+felt like that. I thought I'd see things like you saw them always, stand
+by you. Now I don't know.... I'm not to be trusted----"
+
+"I'd trust you always, and in anything, Potch," Sophie said.
+
+"You can't say that--now."
+
+"It's now ... I want to say it more than ever," she continued. "I can't
+explain ... what I did ... any more than you can what you did, Potch.
+But I'm to blame for what you did ... and yet ... I can't see that I'm
+altogether to blame. I didn't want what happened--to happen ... any more
+than you."
+
+She wanted to explain to Potch--to herself also. But she could not see
+clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had
+become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain.
+
+"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at
+last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love
+with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with
+me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that
+changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me
+to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with
+other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I
+wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls
+Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me....
+Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more....
+Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the
+Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the
+other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and,
+somehow, then--it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball
+at Warria...."
+
+A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.
+
+"Michael says you're going away?"
+
+"Yes," Potch replied.
+
+Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.
+
+"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I
+don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get
+married and settle down."
+
+Potch turned to her.
+
+"You don't mean that?"
+
+"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words.
+"I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."
+
+Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held
+her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.
+
+"But you love him!" he said.
+
+Sophie's eyes did not fail from his.
+
+"I do," she said, "but I don't want to. I wish I didn't."
+
+His hands fell from her. "Why," he asked, "why do you say you'll marry
+me, if you ... if----"
+
+Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.
+
+"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and
+there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with
+you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch
+dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful
+... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and----"
+
+Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a
+thousand tender associations--their home, the quiet course their lives
+might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself.
+
+His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods
+offered him, even for the moment. And yet--he could not turn from it.
+Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have
+together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by--he
+stirred to the afterthought of her "and"--she wanted the children who
+might come to them.... Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that
+she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest
+affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as
+Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the
+thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud's most passionate
+kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of
+Sophie's dress or fingers had.
+
+Sophie took his hand.
+
+"Potch," she said, "if you love me--if you want me to marry you, let us
+settle the thing this way.... I want to marry you.... I want to be your
+loving and faithful wife.... I'll try to be.... I don't want to think of
+anyone but you.... You may make me forget--if we are married, and get on
+well together. I hope you will----"
+
+Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his
+voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Potch had looked towards Michael's hut before he went into his own, next
+evening. There was no light in its window, and he supposed that Michael
+had gone to bed. In the morning, as they were walking to the mine, Potch
+said:
+
+"He's back; did you know?"
+
+Michael guessed whom Potch was speaking of. "Saw him ... as I was
+walking out along the Warria road yesterday afternoon," he said; "and
+then at Newton's.... He looks ill."
+
+Potch did not reply. They did not speak of Charley again, and yet as
+they worked they thought of no one else, and of nothing but the
+difficulties his coming would bring into their lives. For Potch, his
+father's return meant the revival of an old shame. He had been accepted
+on his merits by the Ridge; he had made people forget he was Charley
+Heathfield's son, and now Charley was back Potch had no hope of anything
+but the old situation where his father was concerned, the old drag and
+the old fear. The thought of it was more disconcerting than ever, now
+too, because Sophie would have to share the sort of atmosphere Charley
+would put about them.
+
+And Michael was dulled by the weight of the fate which threatened him.
+Every day the consciousness of it weighed more heavily. He wondered
+whether his mind would remain clear and steady enough to interpret his
+resolve. For him, Charley's coming, and the enmity he had gauged in his
+glance the night before, were last straws of misfortune.
+
+John Armitage had put the proposition he outlined for Sophie, to
+Michael, the night before he left for Sydney. He had told Michael what
+he knew, and what he suspected in connection with Rouminof's opals.
+Michael had neither defended himself nor denied Armitage's accusation.
+He had ignored any reference to Paul's opals, and had made his position
+of uncompromising hostility to Armitage's proposition clear from the
+outset. There had not been a shadow of hesitation in his decision to
+oppose the Armitages' scheme for buying up the mines. At whatever cost,
+he believed he had no choice but to stand by the ideas and ideals on
+which the life of the Ridge was established and had grown.
+
+John Armitage, because of his preconceived notion of the guilty
+conscience Michael was suffering from, was disappointed that the action
+of Michael's mind had been as direct to the poles of his faith as it had
+been. He realised Sophie was right: Michael would not go back on the
+Ridge or the Ridge code; but the Ridge might go back on him. Armitage
+assured himself he had a good hand to play, and he explained his
+position quite frankly to Michael. If Michael would not work with him,
+he, John Armitage, must work against Michael. He would prefer not to do
+so, he said. He described to several men, separately, what the proposals
+of the Armitage Syndicate amounted to, in order that they might think
+over, weigh, and discuss them. He was going down to Sydney for a few
+weeks, and when he came back he would call a meeting and lay his
+proposition before the men. He hoped by then Michael would have
+reconsidered his decision. If he had not, Armitage made it clear that,
+much as he would regret having to, he would nevertheless do all in his
+power to destroy any influence Michael might have with men of the Ridge
+which might militate against their acceptance of the scheme for
+reorganisation of the mines he had to lay before them. Michael
+understood what that meant. John Armitage would accuse him of having
+stolen Paul's opals, and he would have to answer the accusation before
+men of the Ridge.
+
+His mind hovered about the thought of Maud Johnson.
+
+He could not conceive how John Armitage had come to the knowledge he
+possessed, unless Maud, whom he was aware Armitage had bought stones
+from in America, had not showed or sold them to him. But Armitage
+believed Michael still had, and was hoarding the stones. That was the
+strange part of it all. How could Armitage declare he had one of the
+stones, and yet believe Michael was holding the rest? Unless Maud had
+taken that one stone from the table the night she came to see Potch?
+Michael could not remember having seen the stone after she went. He
+could not remember having put it back in the box. It only just occurred
+to him she might only have taken the stone that night. Jun had probably
+recognised the stone, and she had told Armitage what Jun had said about
+it. Jun might have gone to the hut for the rest of the stones, but then
+Maud would not have told Armitage they were still on the Ridge. Maud
+would be sure to know if Jun had got the stones on his own account,
+Michael thought.
+
+His brain went over and over again what John Armitage had said,
+querying, exclaiming, explaining, and enlarging on fragments of their
+talk. Armitage declared he had evidence to prove Michael Brady had
+stolen Rouminof's stones. He might have proof that he had had possession
+of them for a while, Michael believed. But if Armitage was under the
+impression he still had the opals, his information was incomplete at
+least, and Michael treasured a vague hope that the proof which he might
+adduce, would be as faulty.
+
+But more important than the bringing home to him of responsibility for
+the lost opals, and the "unmasking" to eyes of men of the Ridge which
+Armitage had promised him, was the bearing it would have on the
+proposition which was to be put before them. Michael realised that there
+was a good deal of truth in what Armitage had said. A section of the
+younger miners, men who had settled on the new rushes, and one or two of
+the older men who had grown away from the Ridge idea, would probably be
+willing enough to fall in with and work under Armitage's scheme. George,
+Watty, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Cash Wilson, and most of the
+older men were against it, and some of the younger ones, too; but Archie
+and Ted Cross were inclined to waver, although they had always been
+staunch for the Ridge principle, and with them was a substantial
+following from the Punti, Three Mile, and other rushes.
+
+A disintegrating influence was at work, Michael recognised. It had been
+active for some time. Since Potch's finding of the big stone, scarcely
+any stone worth speaking of had been unearthed on the fields, and that
+meant long store accounts, and anxious and hard times for most of the
+gougers.
+
+The settlement had weathered seasons of dearth, and had existed on the
+merest traces of precious opal before; but this one had lasted longer,
+and had tried everybody's patience and capacity for endurance to the
+last degree. Murmurs of the need for money to prospect the field and
+open up new workings were heard. Criticisms of the ideas which would
+keep out money and money-owners who might be persuaded to invest their
+money to prospect and open up new workings on Fallen Star, crept into
+the murmurings, and had been circulating for some months. Bat M'Ginnis,
+a tall, lean, herring-gutted Irishman, with big ears, pointed like a
+bat's, was generally considered author of the criticisms and abettor of
+the murmurings. He had sunk on the Coolebah and drifted to the Punti
+rush soon after. On the Punti, it was known, he had expatiated on the
+need for business men and business methods to run the mines and make the
+most of the resources of the Ridge.
+
+M'Ginnis was a good agent for Armitage, before Armitage's proposition
+was heard of. Michael wondered now whether he was perhaps an agent of
+Armitage's, and had been sent to the Ridge to prepare the way for John
+Armitage's scheme. When he came to think of it, Michael remembered he
+had heard men exclaim that Bat never seemed short of money himself,
+although if he had to live on what his claim produced he would have been
+as hard up as most of them. Michael wondered whether Charley's
+home-coming was a coincidence likewise, or whether Armitage had laid his
+plans more carefully than might have been imagined.
+
+Michael saw no way out for himself. He could not accept Armitage's bribe
+of silence as to his share in the disappearance of Paul's opals, in
+order to urge men of the Ridge to agree to the Armitages' proposition
+for buying up the mines. If he could have, he realised, he would carry
+perhaps a majority of men of the Ridge with him; and those he cared most
+for would stand by the Ridge idea whether he deserted it or not, he
+believed. He would only fall in their esteem; they would despise him;
+and he would despise himself if he betrayed the idea on which he had
+staked so much, and the realisation of which he would have died to
+preserve. But there was no question of betraying the Ridge idea, or of
+being false to the teaching of his whole life. He was not even tempted
+by the terms Armitage offered for his co-operation. He was glad to think
+no terms Armitage could offer would tempt him from his allegiance to the
+principle which was the corner-stone of life on the Ridge.
+
+But he asked himself what the men would think of him when they heard
+Armitage's story; what Sophie would think, and Potch. He turned in agony
+from the thought that Sophie and Potch would believe him guilty of the
+thing he seemed to be guilty of. Anything seemed easier to bear than the
+loss of their love and faith, and the faith of men of the Ridge he had
+worked with and been in close sympathy with for so long--Watty and
+George, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant and Cash Wilson. Would he have
+to leave the Ridge when they knew? Would they cold-shoulder him out of
+their lives? His imagination had centred for so long about the thing he
+had done that the guilt of it was magnified out of all proportion to the
+degree of his culpability. He did not accuse himself in the initial act.
+He had done what seemed to him the only thing to do, in good faith; the
+opals had nothing to do with it. He did not understand yet how they had
+got an ascendancy over him; how when he had intended just to look at
+them, to see they were well packed, he had been seduced into that trance
+of worshipful admiration.
+
+Why he had not returned the stones to Paul as soon as Sophie had left
+the Ridge, Michael could not entirely explain to himself. He went over
+and over the excuses he had made to himself, seeing in them evidence of
+the subtle witchery the stones had exercised over him. But as soon as he
+was aware of the danger of delay, he tried to assure himself, and the
+appearance it must have, he had determined to get rid of the stones.
+
+Would the men believe he had wanted to give the stones to Paul--even
+that he had done what he had done for the reasons he would put before
+them? George and Watty and some of the others would believe him--but the
+rest? Michael could not hope that the majority would believe his story.
+They would want to know if at first he had kept the stones to prevent
+Sophie leaving the Ridge, why he had not given them to Paul as soon as
+she had gone. Michael knew he could only explain to them as he had to
+himself. He had intended to; he had delayed doing so; and then, when he
+went to find the stones to give them to Paul, they were no longer where
+he had left them. It was a thin story--a poor explanation. But that was
+the truth of the situation as far as he knew it. There was nothing more
+to be said or thought on the subject. He put it away from him with an
+impulse of impatience, desperate and weary.
+
+When Potch returned from the mine that afternoon; he went into Michael's
+hut before going home. Michael himself he had seen strike out westwards
+in the direction of the swamp soon after he came above ground. Potch
+expected to see his father where he was; he had seen him so often before
+on Michael's sofa under the window. Charley glanced up from the
+newspaper he was reading as Potch came into the room.
+
+"Well, son," he said, "the prodigal father's returned, and quite ready
+for a fatted calf."
+
+Potch stood staring at him. Light from the window bathed the thin,
+yellow face on the faded cushions of Michael's couch, limning the sharp
+nose with its curiously scenting expression, all the hungry, shrewd
+femininity and weakness of the face, and the smile of triumphant malice
+which glided in and out of the eyes. Michael was right, Potch realised;
+Charley was ill; but he had no pity for the man who lay there and smiled
+like that.
+
+"You can't stay here," he said. "Michael's coming."
+
+Charley smiled imperturbably.
+
+"Can't I?" he said. "You see. Besides ... I want to see Michael. That's
+what I'm here for."
+
+Potch growled inarticulately. He went to the hearth, gathered the
+half-burnt sticks together to make a fire. He would have given anything
+to get Charley out of the hut before Michael returned; but he did not
+know how to manage it. If Charley thought he wanted him to go, nothing
+would move him, Potch knew.
+
+"What do you want to see Michael about?" he asked.
+
+"Nice, affectionate son you are," Charley murmured. "Suppose you know
+you are my son--and heir?"
+
+"Worse luck," Potch muttered, watching the flame he had kindled over the
+dry chips and sticks.
+
+"You might've done worse," Charley replied, watching his son with a
+slight, derisive smile. "I might've done worse myself in the way of a
+son to support me in my old age."
+
+"I'm not going to do that."
+
+Charley laughed. "Aren't you?" he queried. "You might be very glad
+to--on terms I could suggest. And you're a fine, husky chap to do it,
+Potch, my lad.... They tell me you've married Rouminof's girl, and she's
+chucked the singing racket. Rum go, that! She could sing, too.... People
+I know told me they'd seen her in America in some revue stunt there, and
+she was just the thing. Went the pace a bit, eh? Oh, well, there's
+nothing like matrimony to sober a woman down--take the devil out of
+her."
+
+Potch's resentment surged; but before he could utter it, his father's
+pleasantries were flipping lightly, cynically.
+
+"By the way, I saw a friend of yours in Sydney couple of months ago. Oh,
+well, several perhaps. Might have been a year.... Maud! There's a fine
+woman, Potch. And she told me she was awfully gone on you once. Eh,
+what?... And now you're a married man. And to think of my becoming a
+grandfather. Help!"
+
+Potch sprang to his feet, goaded to fury by the jeering, amiable voice.
+
+"Shut up," he yelled, "shut up, or----"
+
+The doorway darkened. Potch saw Charley's face light with an expression
+of curious satisfaction and triumph. He turned and discovered that
+Michael was standing in the doorway. Irresolute and flinching, he stood
+there gazing at Charley, a strange expression of fear and loathing in
+his eyes.
+
+"You can clear out now, son," Charley remarked, putting an emphasis on
+the "son" calculated to enrage Potch. "I want to talk to Michael."
+
+Potch looked at Michael. It was his intention to stand by Michael if,
+and for as long as, Michael needed him.
+
+"It's all right, Potch," Michael said; but his eyes did not go to
+Potch's as they usually did. There was a strange, grave quality of
+aloofness about Michael. Potch hesitated, studying his face; but Michael
+dismissed him with a glance, and Potch went out of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The sky was like a great shallow basin turned over the plains. No tree
+or rising ground broke the perfect circle of its fall over the earth;
+only in the distance, on the edge of the bowl, a fringe of trees drew a
+blurred line between earth and sky.
+
+Potch and Sophie lay out on the plains, on their backs in the dried
+herbage, watching the sunset--the play of light on the wide sweep of the
+sky--silently, as if they were listening to great music.
+
+They had been married some days before in Budda township, and were
+living in Potch's hut.
+
+Sophie and Potch had often wandered over the plains in the evening and
+watched the sunset; but never before had they come to the sense of
+understanding and completeness they attained this evening. The days had
+been long and peaceful since they were living together, an anodyne to
+Sophie, soothing all the restless turmoil of her soul and body. She had
+ceased to desire happiness; she was grateful for this lull of all her
+powers of sense and thought, and eager to love and to serve Potch as he
+did her. She believed her life had found its haven; that if she kept in
+tune with the fundamentals of love and service, she could maintain a
+consciousness of peace and rightness with the world which would make
+living something more than a weary longing for death.
+
+All the days were holy days to Potch since Sophie and he had been
+married. He looked at her as if she were Undine making toast and tea,
+cooking, washing dishes, or sweeping and tidying up his hut. He followed
+her every movement with a worshipful, reverent gaze.
+
+Soon after Sophie's return, Potch had gone to live in the hut which he
+and his father had occupied in the old days. He had put a veranda of
+boughs to the front of it, and had washed the roof and walls with
+carbide to lessen the heat in summer. He had turned out the rooms and
+put up shelves, trying to furnish the place a little for Sophie; but she
+had not wanted it altered at all. She had cleared the cupboard, put
+clean paper on the shelves, and had arranged Potch's books on them
+herself.
+
+Sophie loved the austerity of her home when she went to live in it--its
+earthen floor, bare walls, unvarnished furniture, the couch under the
+window, the curtains of unbleached linen she had hemstitched herself,
+the row of shining syrup-tins in which she kept tea, sugar, and coffee
+on shelves near the fireplace, the big earthenware jar for flowers, and
+a couple of jugs which Snow-Shoes had made for her and baked in an oven
+of his own contrivance. She had a quiet satisfaction in doing all the
+cleaning up and tidying to keep her house in the order she liked, so
+that her eyes could rest on any part of it and take pleasure from the
+sense of beauty in ordinary and commonplace things.
+
+But the hut was small and its arrangements so simple that an hour or two
+after Potch had gone to the mines Sophie went to the shed into which he
+had moved her cutting-wheel, and busied herself facing and polishing the
+stones which some of the men brought her as usual. She knew her work
+pleased them. She was as skilful at showing a stone to all its advantage
+as any cutter on the Ridge, and nothing delighted her more than when
+Watty or George or one of the Crosses exclaimed with satisfaction at a
+piece of work she had done.
+
+In the afternoon sometimes she went down to the New Town to talk with
+Maggie Grant, Mrs. Woods, or Martha. She was understudying Martha, too,
+when anyone was sick in the town, and needed nursing or a helping hand.
+Martha had her hands full when Mrs. Ted Cross's fourth baby was born.
+There were five babies in the township at the time, and Sophie went to
+Crosses' every morning to fix up the house and look after the children
+and Mrs. Ted before Martha arrived. When Martha found the Crosses'
+washing gaily flapping on the line one morning towards midday, she
+protested in her own vigorous fashion.
+
+"I ain't going to have you blackleggin' on me, Mrs. Heathfield," she
+said. "And what's more, if I find you doin' it again, I'll tell Potch.
+It's all right for me to be goin' round doing other people's odd jobs;
+but I don't hold with you doin' 'em--so there! If folks wants babies,
+well, it's their look-out--and mine. But I don't see what you've got to
+do with it, coming round makin' your hands look anyhow."
+
+"You just sit down, and I'll make you a cup of tea, Mother M'Cready,"
+Sophie said by way of reply, and gently pushed Martha into the most
+comfortable chair in the room. "You look done up ... and you're going on
+to see Ella and Mrs. Inglewood, I suppose."
+
+Martha nodded. She watched Sophie with troubled, loving eyes. She was
+really very tired, and glad to be able to sit and rest for a moment. It
+gave her a welling tenderness and gratitude to have Sophie concerned for
+her tiredness, and fuss about her like this. Martha was so accustomed to
+caring for everybody on the Ridge, and she was so strong, good-natured,
+and vigorous, very few people thought of her ever being weary or
+dispirited. But as she bustled into the kitchen, blocking out the light,
+Sophie saw that Martha's fat, jolly face under the shadow of her
+sun-hat, was not as happy-looking as usual. Sophie guessed the weariness
+which had overtaken her, and that she was "poorly" or "out-of-sorts," as
+Martha would have said herself, if she could have been made to admit
+such a thing.
+
+"It's all very well to give folks a helping hand," Martha continued,
+"but I'm not going to have you doin' their washin' while I'm about."
+
+Sophie put a cup of tea and slice of bread and syrup down beside her.
+
+"There! You drink that cup of tea, and tell me what you think of it,"
+she said.
+
+"But, Sophie," Martha protested. "It's stone silly for you to be doing
+things like Cross's washing. You're not strong enough, and I won't have
+it."
+
+"Won't you?"
+
+Sophie put her arms around Martha's neck from behind her chair. She
+pressed her face against the creases of Martha's sunburnt neck and
+kissed it.
+
+Martha gurgled happily under the pressure of Sophie's young arms, the
+childish impulse of that hugging. She turned her face back and kissed
+Sophie.
+
+"Oh, my lamb! My dearie lamb!" she murmured.
+
+She recognised Sophie's need for common and kindly service to the people
+of the Ridge. She knew what that service had meant to her at one time,
+and was willing to let Sophie share her ministry so long as her health
+was equal to it.
+
+Mrs. Watty, and the women who took their views from her, thought that
+Sophie was giving herself a great deal of unnecessary and laborious work
+as a sort of penance. They had withdrawn all countenance from her after
+the disaster of the ball, although they regarded her marriage to Potch
+as an endeavour to reinstate herself in their good graces. Mrs. Watty
+had been scandalised by the dress she had worn at the ball, by the way
+she had danced, and her behaviour generally. But Sophie was quite
+unconcerned as to what Mrs. Watty and her friends thought: she did not
+go out of her way either to avoid or placate them.
+
+When she went to the Crosses' to take charge of the children and look
+after the house while Mrs. Cross was ill, the gossips had exclaimed
+together. And when it was known that Sophie had taken on herself odds
+and ends of sewing for other women of the township who had large
+families and rather more to do than they knew how to get through, they
+declared that they did not know what to make of it, or of Sophie and her
+moods and misdemeanours.
+
+Potch heard of what Sophie was doing from the people she helped. When he
+came home in the evening she was nearly always in the kitchen getting
+tea for him; but if she was not, she came in soon after he got home, and
+he knew that one of these little tasks she had undertaken for people in
+the town had kept her longer than she expected. Usually he hung in the
+doorway, waiting for her to come and meet him, to hold up her face to be
+kissed, eyes sweet with affection and the tender familiarity of their
+association. Those offered kisses of hers were the treasure of these
+dream-like days to Potch.
+
+He had always loved Sophie. He had thought that his love had reached the
+limit of loving a long time before, but since they had been married and
+were living, day after day, together, he had become no more than a
+loving of her. He went about his work as usual, performed all the other
+functions of his life mechanically, scrupulously, but it was always with
+a subconscious knowledge of Sophie and of their life together.
+
+"You're tired," he said one night when Sophie lifted her face to his,
+his eyes strained on her with infinite concern.
+
+"Dear Potch," she said; and she had put back the hair from his forehead
+with a gesture tender and pitiful.
+
+Her glance and gesture were always tender and pitiful. Potch realised
+it. He knew that he worshipped and she accepted his worship. He was
+content--not quite content, perhaps--but he assured himself it was
+enough for him that it should be so.
+
+He had never taken Sophie in his arms without an overwhelming sense of
+reverence and worship. There was no passionate need, no spontaneity, no
+leaping flame in the caresses she had given him, in that kiss of the
+evening, and the slight, girlish gestures of affection and tenderness
+she gave as she passed him at meals, or when they were reading or
+walking together.
+
+As they lay on the plains this evening they had been thinking of their
+life together. They had talked of it in low, brooding murmurs. The
+immensity of the silence soaked into them. They had taken into
+themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the
+paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was
+time to go home, Sophie sat up.
+
+"I love to lie against the earth like this," she said.
+
+"We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more
+than specks of dust on the plains ... under the skies, Potch ... and yet
+the whole world is within us...."
+
+"Yes," Potch said, and the silence streamed between them again.
+
+"I'll never forget," Sophie continued dreamily, "hearing a negro talk
+once about what they call 'the negro problem' in America. He was an
+ordinary thick-set, curly-haired, coarse-featured negro to look
+at--Booker Washington--but he talked some of the clearest, straightest
+stuff I've ever heard.
+
+"One thing he said has always stayed in my mind: 'Keep close to the
+earth.' It was not good, he said, to walk on asphalted paths too
+long.... He was describing what Western civilisation had done for the
+negroes--a primitive people.... Anyone could see how they had
+degenerated under it. And it's always seemed to me that what was true
+for the negroes ... is true for us, too.... It's good to keep close to
+the earth."
+
+"Keep close to the earth?" Potch mused.
+
+"In tune with the fundamentals, all the great things of loving and
+working--our eyes on the stars."
+
+"The stars?"
+
+"The objects of our faith and service."
+
+They were silent again for a while. Then Sophie said:
+
+"You ..." she hesitated, remembering what she had told John
+Armitage--"you and I would fight for the Ridge principle, even if all
+the others accepted Mr. Armitage's offer, wouldn't we, Potch?"
+
+"Of course," Potch said.
+
+"And Michael?"
+
+"Michael?" His eyes questioned her in the dim light because of the
+hesitation in her question. "Why do you say that? Michael would be the
+last man on earth to have anything to do with Armitage's scheme."
+
+"He comes back to put the proposition to the men definitely in a few
+days, doesn't he?" Sophie asked.
+
+"Yes," Potch said.
+
+"Have you talked to Michael about it?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, Sophie," Potch replied slowly,
+conscience-stricken that he had given the subject so little
+consideration, "I took it for granted there could only be one answer to
+the whole thing.... I haven't thought of it. I've only thought of you
+the last week or so. I haven't talked to Michael; I haven't even heard
+what the men were saying at midday.... But, of course, there's only one
+answer."
+
+"I've tried to talk to Michael, but he won't discuss it with me," Sophie
+said.
+
+Potch stared at her.
+
+"You don't mean," he said--"you can't think--"
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a gesture of desperation, "I know John Armitage is
+holding something over Michael ... and if it's true what he says, it'll
+break Michael, and it'll go very badly against the Ridge."
+
+"You can't tell me what it is?"
+
+Sophie shook her head.
+
+Potch got up; his face settled into grave and fighting lines. Sophie,
+too, rose from the ground. They went towards the track where the three
+huts stood facing the scattered dumps of the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
+
+"I want to see Michael," Potch said, when they approached the huts.
+"I'll be in, in a couple of minutes."
+
+Sophie went on to their own home, and Potch, swerving from her, walked
+across to the back door of Michael's hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Charley was sitting on the couch, leaning towards Michael, his shoulders
+hunched, his eyes gleaming, when Potch went into the hut.
+
+"You can't bluff me," Potch heard him say. "You may throw dust in the
+eyes of the men here, but you can't bluff me.... It was you did for
+me.... It was you put it over on me--took those stones."
+
+"Well, you tell the boys," Potch heard Michael say.
+
+His voice was as unconcerned as though it were not anything of
+importance they were discussing. Potch found relief in the sound of it,
+but its unconcern drove Charley to fury.
+
+"You know I took them from Paul," he shouted. "You know--I can see it in
+your eyes ... and you took them from me. When ... how ... I don't
+know.... You must 've sneaked into the house when I dozed off for a bit,
+and put a parcel of your own rotten stuff in their place.... How do I
+know? Well, I'll tell you...."
+
+He settled back on the sofa. "I hung on to the best stone in the
+lot--clear brown potch with good flame in it--hopin' it would give me a
+clue some day to the man who'd done that trick on me. But I couldn't
+place the stone; I'd never seen it on you, and Jun had never seen it
+either. I was dead stony when I sold it to Maud ... and I told her why
+I'd been keeping it, seeing she was in the show at the start off. She
+sold the stone to Armitage in America, and first thing the old man said
+when he saw it was: 'Why, that's Michael's mascot!'"
+
+"Remembered when you'd got it, he said," Charley continued, taking
+Michael's interest with gratified malice. "First stone you'd come on, on
+Fallen Star, and you wouldn't sell--kept her for luck.... Old Armitage
+wouldn't have anything to do with the stone then--didn't believe Maud's
+story.... But John Lincoln got it. He told me...."
+
+"I see," Michael murmured.
+
+"Don't mind telling you I'm here to play Armitage's game," Charley said.
+
+Michael nodded. "Well, what about it?"
+
+"This about it," Charley exclaimed irritably, his excitement and
+impatience rising under Michael's calmness. "You're done on the Ridge
+when this story gets around. What I've got to say is ... you took the
+opals. You've got 'em. You're done for here. But you could have a good
+life somewhere else. Clear out, and----"
+
+"We'll go halves, eh?" Michael queried.
+
+"That's it," Charley assented. "I'll clear out and say nothing--although
+I've told Rummy enough already to give him his suspicions. Still,
+suspicions are only suspicions--nothing more. When I came here I didn't
+even mean to give you this chance.... But 'Life is sweet, brother!'
+There's still a few pubs down in Sydney, and a woman or two. I wouldn't
+go out with such a grouch against things in general if I had a flash in
+the pan first.... And it'd suit you all right, Michael.... With this
+scheme of Armitage's in the wind----"
+
+"And suppose I haven't got the stones?" Michael inquired.
+
+Charley half rose from the sofa, his thin hands grasping the table.
+
+"It's a lie!" he shrieked, shivering with impotent fury. "You know it
+is.... What have you done with 'em then? What have you done with those
+stones--that's what I want to know!"
+
+"You haven't got much breath," Michael said; "you'd better save it."
+
+"I'll use all I've got to down you, if you don't come to light," Charley
+cried. "I'll do it, see if I don't."
+
+Potch walked across to his father. He had heard Charley abusing and
+threatening Michael before without being able to make out what it was
+all about. He had thought it bluff and something in the nature of a
+try-on; but he had determined to put a stop to it.
+
+"No, you won't!" he said.
+
+"Won't I?" Charley turned on his son.
+
+"No." Potch's tone was steady and decisive.
+
+Charley looked towards Michael again.
+
+"Well ... what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I've told you," Michael said. "Nothing."
+
+"Did y' hear what I've been calling your saint?" Charley cried, turning
+to Potch. "I'm calling him what everybody on the fields'd be calling him
+if they knew."
+
+Michael's gaze wavered as it went to Potch.
+
+"A thief," Charley continued, whipping himself into a frenzy. "That's
+what he is--a dirty, low-down thief! I'm the ordinary, decent sort ...
+get the credit for what I am ... and pay for it, by God! But he--he
+doesn't pay. I bag all the disgrace ... and he walks off with the
+goods--Rouminof's stones."
+
+Potch did not look at Michael. What Charley had said did not seem to
+shock or surprise him.
+
+"I've made a perfectly fair and reasonable proposition," Charley went on
+more quietly. "I've told him ... if he'll go halves----"
+
+"Guess again," Potch sneered.
+
+Charley swung to his feet, a volley of expletives swept from him.
+
+"I've told Rummy to get the law on his side," he cried shrilly, "and
+he's going to. There's one little bit of proof I've got that'll help
+him, and----"
+
+"You'll get jail yourself over it," Potch said.
+
+"Don't mind if I do," Charley shouted, and poured his rage and
+disappointment into a flood of such filthy abuse that Potch took him by
+the shoulders.
+
+"Shut your mouth," he said. "D'y' hear?... Shut your mouth!"
+
+Charley continued to rave, and Potch, gripping his shoulders, ran him
+out of the hut.
+
+Michael heard them talking in Potch's hut--Charley yelling, threatening,
+and cursing. A fit of coughing seized him. Then there was silence--a
+hurrying to and fro in the hut. Michael heard Sophie go to the tank, and
+carry water into the house, and guessed that Charley's paroxysm and
+coughing had brought on the hemorrhage he had had two or three times
+since his return to the Ridge.
+
+A little later Potch came to him.
+
+"He's had a bleeding, Michael," Potch said; "a pretty bad one, and he's
+weak as a kitten. But just before it came on I told him I'd let him have
+a pound a week, somehow, if he goes down to Sydney at once.... But if
+ever he shows his face in the Ridge again ... or says a word more about
+you ... I've promised he'll never get another penny out of me.... He can
+die where and how he likes ... I'm through with him...."
+
+Michael had been sitting beside his fire, staring into it. He had
+dropped into a chair and had not moved since Potch and Charley left the
+hut.
+
+"Do you believe what he said, Potch?" he asked.
+
+Michael felt Potch's eyes on his face; he raised his eyes to meet them.
+There was no lie in the clear depths of Potch's eyes.
+
+"I've known for a long time," Potch said.
+
+Michael's gaze held him--the swimming misery of it; then, as if
+overwhelmed by the knowledge of what Potch must be thinking of him, it
+fell. Michael rose from his chair before the fire and stood before
+Potch, his mind darkened as by shutting-off of the only light which had
+penetrated its gloom. He stood so for some time in utter abasement and
+desolation of spirit, believing that he had lost a thing which had come
+to be of inexpressible value to him, the love and homage Potch had given
+him while they had been mates.
+
+"I've always known, too," Potch said, "it was for a good enough reason."
+
+Michael's swift glance went to him, his soul irradiated by that
+unprotesting affirmation of Potch's faith.
+
+He dropped into his chair before the fire again. His head went into his
+hands. Potch knew that Michael was crying. He stood by silently--unable
+to touch him, unable to realise the whole of Michael's tragedy, and yet
+overcome with love and sympathy for him. He knew only as much of it as
+affected Sophie. His sympathy and instinct where Sophie was concerned
+enabled him to guess why Michael had done what he had.
+
+"It was for Sophie," he said.
+
+"I intended to give them back to Paul--when she was old enough to go
+away, Potch," Michael said after a while. "Then she went away; and I
+don't know why I didn't give them to him at once. The things got hold of
+me, somehow--for a while, at least. I couldn't make up my mind to give
+them back to him--kept makin' excuses.... Then, when I did make up my
+mind and went to get them, they were gone."
+
+Potch nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"You don't suspect anybody?" he asked.
+
+Michael shook his head. "How can I? Nobody knew I had them, and yet ...
+that night ... twice, I thought I had heard someone moving near me....
+The memory of it's stayed with me all these years. Sometimes I think it
+means something--that somebody must have been near and seen and heard.
+Then that seems absurd. It was a bright night; I looked, and there was
+no one in sight. There's only one person besides you ... saw ... I
+think--knew I had the stones...."
+
+"Maud?"
+
+Michael nodded. "She came into the room with you that night. You
+remember? ... And I've wondered since ... if she, perhaps, or Jun ... At
+any rate, Armitage knows, or suspects--I don't know which it is
+really.... He says he has proof. There's that stone I put in Charley's
+parcel--a silly thing to do when you come to think of it. But I didn't
+like the idea of leaving Charley nothing to sell when he got to Sydney;
+and that was the only decent bit of stone I'd got. Making up the parcel
+in a hurry, I didn't think what putting in that bit of stuff might lead
+to. But for that, I can't think how Armitage could have proof I had the
+stones except through Maud. And she's been in New York, and----"
+
+"She may have told him she saw you the night she came for me," Potch
+said.
+
+"That's what I think," Michael agreed.
+
+They brooded over the situation for a while.
+
+"Does Sophie know?" Michael's eyes went to Potch, a sharper light in
+them.
+
+"Only that some danger threatens you," Potch said slowly. "Armitage told
+her."
+
+"You tell her what I've told you, Potch," Michael said.
+
+They talked a little longer, then Potch moved to go away.
+
+"There's nothing to be done?" he asked.
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"Things have just got to take their course. There's nothing to be done,
+Potch," he said.
+
+They came to him together, Sophie and Potch, in a little while, and
+Sophie went straight to Michael. She put her arms round his neck and her
+face against his; her eyes were shining with tears and tenderness.
+
+"Michael, dear!" she whispered.
+
+Michael held her to him; she was indeed the child of his flesh as she
+was of his spirit, as he held her then.
+
+He did not speak; he could not. Looking up, he caught Potch's eyes on
+him, the same expression of faith and tenderness in them. The joy of the
+moment was beyond words.
+
+Potch's and Sophie's love and faith were beyond all value, precious to
+Michael in this time of trouble. When he had failed to believe in
+himself, Sophie and Potch believed in him; when his life-work seemed to
+be falling from his hands, they were ready to take it up. They had told
+him so. In his grief and realisation of failure, that thought was a
+star--a thing of miraculous joy and beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together
+before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his
+proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group
+formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction.
+M'Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were
+prepared to accept Armitage's scheme. The Crosses, while they would not
+go over to the M'Ginnis faction, had a following--and the group about
+them was by far the largest--which was asserting an open mind until it
+heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with
+them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than
+against, Armitage's outline of the new order of things for the Ridge
+since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared
+at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of
+Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old
+spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and
+Watty Frost.
+
+"Thing that's surprised me," Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, "is the
+numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say.
+I wouldn't 've thought there'd be so many."
+
+"I don't like it meself, Pony," George admitted. "That's why we're here.
+Want to know the strength of them--and him."
+
+"That's right," Watty muttered.
+
+"Crosses, for instance," Pony-Fence continued. "You wouldn't 've thought
+Archie and Ted'd 've even listened to guff about profit-sharin'--all
+that.... But they've swallowed it--swallowed it all down. They say----"
+
+George nodded gloomily. "This blasted talkin' about Michael's done more
+harm than anything."
+
+"That's right," Pony-Fence said. "What's the strength of it, George?"
+
+"Damned if I know!"
+
+"Where's Michael to-night?"
+
+Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was
+not among them.
+
+"Is he coming?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted,
+expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking
+of Michael.
+
+"Does he know what's being said?" Pony-Fence asked.
+
+"He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know
+about it."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don't understand Michael over this
+business," George said. "He's been right off his nest the last week or
+two. It might have got him down what's being said--he might be so sore
+about anybody thinkin' that of him, or that it's just too mean and
+paltry to take any notice of.... But I'd rather he'd said something....
+It's played Armitage's game all right, the yarn that's been goin' round,
+about Michael's not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it
+is, you don't know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course--but
+it was here before him.... He's just stoked the gossip a bit. But it's
+done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could 've----"
+
+"To-night'll bring things to a head," Watty interrupted, as though they
+had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to
+say next. "I reck'n we'll see better how we stand--what's the game--and
+the men who are going to stand by us.... Michael's with us, I'll swear;
+and if we've got to put up a fight ... we'll have it out with him about
+those yarns.... And it'll be hell for any man who drops a word of them
+afterwards."
+
+When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form
+and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained
+somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the
+fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat
+near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American
+engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a
+little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but
+Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was.
+
+Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be
+chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he
+took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water
+bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M'Intosh,
+the American engineer, on the other.
+
+His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and
+chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be
+regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage's plan.
+
+John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of
+another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night.
+Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was
+filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred
+the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the
+benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or
+worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats.
+Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the
+weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid
+through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and
+intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.
+
+Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr.
+Andrew M'Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to
+report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the
+United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural
+resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date,
+flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the
+Armitage Syndicate.
+
+Andrew M'Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt
+features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up
+in response to Mr. Armitage's invitation. He was a man of deeds, not
+words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the
+substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and
+hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting
+against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business,
+although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had
+not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he
+would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to
+assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition
+Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He
+himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot
+with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage's proposition; and he gave
+them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of
+the reorganisation of the mines, he would work whole-heartedly for the
+success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might
+mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great
+deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for
+mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of
+the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the
+advantages that would entail.
+
+The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer's
+manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the
+situation, although he gave very little information they had not already
+possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and
+confronted the men again.
+
+He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward
+business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said;
+but one the success of which would depend on their co-operation. As
+their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the
+disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for
+both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he
+proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the
+resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an
+expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and
+prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw
+possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he
+promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had
+outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous
+township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity
+in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all
+manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of
+communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased
+production would ensure.
+
+In a nutshell Armitage's scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines
+for L30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage
+of 20 per cent. profit on all stones over a certain standard and size.
+The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected
+to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but
+otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr.
+Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general
+manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union
+rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining
+companies throughout the country.
+
+When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone's mind that
+John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on
+the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage
+Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been
+driven to consider Armitage's offer from their first hearing of it,
+because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost
+persuaded by his final exposition.
+
+George Woods stood up.
+
+George's strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty
+and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed
+situations and men.
+
+He realised the impression Armitage's statement of his scheme, and its
+bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own
+position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering
+between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen
+Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star
+had stood for so long, would lie.
+
+"Well," he said, "we've got to thank you for puttin' the thing to us as
+clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a
+chance to see just what you're drivin' at. But I might say here and now
+... I've got no time for it ... neither me nor my mates.... It'll save
+time and finish the business of this meeting if there's no beatin' about
+the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all
+right--your scheme--nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to
+get out of it than to lose by it.... I don't say it wouldn't mean easier
+times ... more money ... all that sort of thing. We haven't had the
+easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes ... just
+when we're in the worst that's ever knocked us. But speakin' for myself,
+and"--his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the
+Ridge stood for-"the most of my mates, we'd rather have the hard times
+and be our own masters. That's what we've always said on the Ridge....
+Your scheme 'd be all right if we didn't feel like that; I suppose. But
+we do ... and as far as I'm concerned, we won't touch it. It's no go.
+
+"We're obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you
+could have gone another way about getting control here. You may---buy up
+a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not
+that I think the boys'd stand for the experiment."
+
+"They wouldn't," Bill Grant called.
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," George said. He tried to point out that if
+Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage's offer they would be shouldering
+conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest
+that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He
+asked whether a weekly Wage to tide them over years of misfortune would
+compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know
+how they'd feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth L400 or L500 and
+got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big
+stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George
+said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr.
+Armitage's argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could
+see in Mr. Armitage's scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their
+own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for
+them under Mr. Armitage's system was three or four pounds a week--and
+not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.
+
+"We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine," George said; "that's
+worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties....
+Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and
+there's money about again.... For the present we'll hang on to what
+we've got, thank you, Mr. Armitage."
+
+He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.
+
+"Anybody else got anything to say?" Peter Newton inquired.
+
+M'Ginnis stood up.
+
+He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he
+said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as
+he could see. He didn't see that the men's ownership of the mines meant
+much more than that--the freedom to starve. It was all very well for
+them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool
+could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish
+heap. But as far as he was concerned, M'Ginnis declared, he didn't see
+the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had
+volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms....
+
+It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on
+the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to
+it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas
+had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very
+well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance
+of being a millionaire at a minute's notice; but how many of them were
+millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to
+bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down
+this offer of Mr. Armitage's. For his part he was for it, and, what was
+more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.
+
+"If it's put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr.
+Armitage's scheme, we'll soon see which way the cat's jumping," M'Ginnis
+said. "People'd have the nause to see which side their bread's buttered
+on--not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I
+don't see why----"
+
+"You're not paid to," a voice called from the back of the hall.
+
+"I don't see why," M'Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the
+interruption, "the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule
+the roost. What's wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense----"
+
+Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near
+M'Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting
+were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round.
+Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to
+restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood
+were heard howling over the din:
+
+"Let him alone."
+
+"Let's hear what he's got to say."
+
+Then M'Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained
+by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage's offer.
+
+"And," he wound up, "there's the women and children to think of." At the
+back of the hall somebody laughed. "Laugh if you like"--M'Ginnis worked
+himself into a passion of virtuous indignation--"but I don't see there's
+anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin' to
+mean to the women and children of this town--what a few of the
+advantages of civilisation----"
+
+"Disadvantages!" the same voice called.
+
+"--Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin' to mean to the
+women and children of this God-forsaken hole," M'Ginnis cried furiously.
+"If I had a wife and kids, d'ye think I'd have any time for this
+high-falutin' flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The
+best in the country wouldn't be too good for them--and it's not good
+enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That's what I've got
+to say--and that's what any decent man would say if he could see
+straight. I'm an ordinary, plain, practical man myself ... and I ask you
+chaps who've been lettin' your legs be pulled pretty freely---and
+starvin' to be masters of your own dumps--to look at this business like
+ordinary, plain, practical men, who've got their heads screwed on the
+right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen
+Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there's some men here want
+to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let 'em, I say: it's a free
+country. But there's no need for the rest of us to starve with 'em."
+
+He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour
+of Armitage and his Scheme.
+
+"What's Michael got to say about it?" a man from the Three Mile asked.
+And several voices called: "Yes; what's Michael got to say?"
+
+For a moment there was silence--a silence of apprehension. George Woods
+and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had
+heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised
+in that moment the power of Michael's influence; that what Michael was
+going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done,
+either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which
+they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet
+there was fear in the waiting silence.
+
+Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited
+anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield
+waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see
+him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there
+was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed
+on the place where Michael sat--Charley's eager and cruel as a cat's on
+its victim, Rouminof's alight with the fires of his consuming
+excitement.
+
+Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance,
+those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and
+faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile.
+
+"All I've got to say," he said, "George Woods has said. There's nothing
+in Mr. Armitage's scheme for Fallen Star.... It looks all right, but it
+isn't; it's all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership
+of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage 'll give us anything
+but that--he offers us every inducement but that ... and you know how
+the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to
+him, they're worth as much, or more, to us.
+
+"Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the
+mines--at a 'fair valuation'--put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All
+the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen
+Star, might or mightn't come true. P'raps it would. I can't say. All I
+say is, it's being used to gild the pill we're asked to swallow--buyin'
+up of the mines. There's nothing sure about all this talk of electricity
+and water laid on; it's just gilding. And supposing the new conditions
+did put more money about--did bring the comforts and conveniences of
+civilisation to Fallen Star--like M'Ginnis says--what good would they be
+to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like
+a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn't matter to them any
+more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they'd have their
+wages--like bullocks have their hay. It's because our work's had
+interest; it's because we've been our own bosses, life's been as good as
+it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn't got interest in
+his work he's got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs
+when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling ... and how did
+that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of
+M'Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old
+hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in
+by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a
+strike in the mines, he'd be saying that to you: 'Remember the women and
+children.'"
+
+Colour flamed in Michael's face, and he continued with more heat than
+there had yet been in his voice.
+
+"The time's coming when the man who talks 'women and children' to defeat
+their own interests will be treated like the skunk--the low-down,
+thieving swine he is. Do we say anything's too good for our women and
+children? Not much. But we want to give them real things--the real
+things of life and happiness--not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we
+give our women and children the mines as we've held them, and the record
+of a clean fight for them, we'll be giving them something very much
+bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The
+things we've stood for are better than anything he's got to offer. We've
+got here what they're fighting for all over the world ... it's bigger
+than ourselves.
+
+"M'Ginnis says he's heard a lot of 'the freedom to starve on the
+Ridge'--it's more than I have, it's a sure thing if he wants to starve,
+nobody'd stop him...."
+
+A wave of laughter passed over the hall.
+
+"But most of us here haven't any fancy for starving, and what's more,
+nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don't say that we haven't had
+hard times, that we haven't gone on short commons--we have; but we
+haven't starved, and we're not going to....
+
+"This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have
+been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we're
+down, in a way; but the slump'll pass. There've been slumps before, and
+they've passed.... Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn't be so keen on
+getting hold of the mines.
+
+"And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to
+me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or
+syndicate ever made could. Didn't old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once
+that he didn't know a better conducted or more industrious mining
+community than this one. 'Why d'y' think that is?' I asked him. He said
+he didn't know. I said, 'You don't think the way the men feel about
+their work's got anything to do with it?' 'Damn it, Michael,' he said,
+'I don't want to think so.'
+
+"And I happen to know"--Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage,
+who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and
+crossed under his chin--"that the old man is opposed even now to this
+scheme because he thinks he won't get as much black opal out of us as he
+does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and
+what taking over of the mines did for opal--and the men--there. This
+scheme is Mr. John Armitage's idea....
+
+"He's put it to you. You've heard what it is. All I've got to say now
+is, don't touch it. Don't have anything to do with it.... It'll break us
+... the spirit of the men here ... and it'll break what we've been
+working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don't let us
+see which side our bread's buttered on, as Mr. M'Ginnis says. Let us say
+like we always have--like we've been proud to say: 'We'll eat bread and
+fat, but we'll be our own masters!'"
+
+"We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!" the men who
+were with Michael roared.
+
+He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam
+at him, filled with rejoicing.
+
+Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not
+quite decided what he intended to say.
+
+"I'm not going to ask this meeting for a decision," he began.
+
+"You can have it!" Bully Bryant yelled.
+
+"There's a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I'm going on up
+there," John Armitage continued. "I'm due in Sydney at the end of the
+month--that is, a month from this date--and I'll run up then for your
+answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said
+all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything
+which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your
+gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the
+best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I
+think, however, you ought to know----"
+
+"That Michael Brady's a liar and a thief!" Charley cried, springing from
+his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. "If you believe him,
+you're believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows ... I know ...
+and Paul knows----"
+
+"Throw him out."
+
+"He's mad!"
+
+The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their
+height M'Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.
+
+"Let him say what he's got to!" he shouted. "You chaps know as well as I
+do what's been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now.
+If it's not true, Michael'd rather have the strength of it, and give you
+his answer ... and if there is anything in it, we've got a right to
+know."
+
+"That's right!" some of the men near him chorused.
+
+Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.
+
+"Might as well have it," Michael said.
+
+Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully
+Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could
+see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice,
+told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside
+him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of
+corroboration.
+
+When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted,
+Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say
+when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way
+through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken
+everybody, said uncertainly:
+
+"Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that
+Charley Heathfield's story, as far as I know it, is substantially
+correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw
+it, my father said, 'Why, that's Michael's mascot.' I asked him if he
+were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the
+stone....
+
+"I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you.
+That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof's
+opals--the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck
+together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof's opals, and had been
+exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley
+were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My
+father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the
+business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man
+who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the
+altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that
+stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney ... and also that
+Michael had possession of Rouminof's opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she
+saw Rouminof's stones on the table of Michael Brady's hut one evening
+nearly two years ago.
+
+"I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He
+denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it
+seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account
+of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael
+Brady of having stolen Rouminof's opals. If he has anything to say, now
+is the time to say it."
+
+What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was
+heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody
+spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not
+looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place
+where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first
+sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when
+Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes
+on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance
+swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and
+humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement,
+the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still
+Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
+
+"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.
+
+Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he
+strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close
+together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds
+under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear
+what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he
+turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in
+newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still
+hovering near the edge of the platform.
+
+"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured
+fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
+
+Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no
+hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed
+round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When
+order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform
+going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was
+laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but
+his joy in fingering his lost gems.
+
+When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause,
+Armitage spoke.
+
+"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most
+contritely.... I don't yet understand--but the facts are, the opals are
+here, and Mr. Riley has said--"
+
+Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to
+speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as
+if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
+
+"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ...
+but from Charley."
+
+His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his
+suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul
+going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of
+opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.
+
+"I didn't want the stones," Michael cried, "I didn't ever want them for
+myself.... It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn't want him to
+have them just then...."
+
+Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he
+had made to Sophie's mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the
+stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had
+gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained
+why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare
+himself.
+
+Paul had had sun-stroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night
+he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been
+reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning
+them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the
+thing to himself even.... He had not looked at the opals except once
+again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly
+the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then
+Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was
+drifting--how the stones were getting hold of him--and in a panic,
+knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it
+to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to
+do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.
+
+Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but
+now it was clear. Probably Snow-Shoes had known all the time he had the
+stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must
+have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he
+came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It
+was just that slight sound Snow-Shoes' moccasins made on the shingle.
+Exclamations and odd queries Snow-Shoes had launched from time to time
+came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken
+the stones to do just what he had done--and because he feared the
+influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they
+should have been returned to Paul long ago.
+
+"That's the truth, as far as I know it," Michael said. "There's been
+attempts made to injure ... the Ridge, our way of doing things here,
+because of me, and because of those stones.... What happened to me
+doesn't matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I
+done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I'd give anything
+now if I--if I'd given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn't
+... and I'll stand by anything the men who've been my mates care to say
+or do about that. Only don't let the Ridge, and our way of doing things
+here, get hurt through me. That's bigger--it means more than any man.
+Don't let it! ... I'd ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to
+say what they think about all this--and where I stand."
+
+Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of
+the hall.
+
+When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden
+floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned
+and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created
+such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of
+forms. With the exception of M'Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had
+the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who
+a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as
+blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted
+shapes and unlighted countenances.
+
+"Well," George said, "it's been a bit of a shock what we've just heard.
+It wasn't easy what Michael's just done ... and Snow-Shoes, if he'd
+wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn't have it....
+At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to
+stand by the Ridge ... he'd stand by it at any cost.... If there's a
+doubt in anyone's mind as to what he is, what he's just done proves
+Michael. I don't say, as he says himself, that it wouldn't have been
+better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away
+... but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael's
+concerned? We've got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does
+anybody know a mean or selfish thing he's ever done, Michael?"
+
+No one spoke, and George went on:
+
+"Michael's asked for trial by his mates--and we've got to give it to
+him, if it's only to clear up the whole of this business and be done
+with it.... I move we meet here to-morrow night to settle the thing."
+
+There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in
+back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his
+proposals were forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Michael got back to his hut he found Martha there.
+
+"Oh, Michael," she said, "a dreadful thing has happened."
+
+Michael stared at her, unable to understand what she said. It seemed to
+him all the terrible things that could happen had happened that evening.
+
+"While you were away Arthur Henty came here to see Sophie," Martha said.
+"She hasn't been feeling well ... and I came up to have a look at her.
+She's been doing too much lately. Things haven't been too right between
+her and Potch, either, and that's her way of taking it out of herself.
+Arthur was here when I got here, Michael, and--you never heard anything
+like the way he went on...."
+
+Michael had fallen wearily into his chair while she was talking.
+
+Martha continued, knowing that the sooner she got rid of her story the
+better it would be for both of them.
+
+"It's an old story, of course, this about Arthur Henty and Sophie....
+When he was ill after the ball he talked a good bit about her.... He
+always has ... to me. I was with his mother when he was born ... and
+he's always called me Mother M'Cready like the rest of you. He told me
+long ago he'd always been fond of Sophie.... He didn't know at first, he
+said. He was a fool; he didn't like being teased about her.... Then she
+went away.... He doesn't seem to know why he got married except that his
+people wanted him to.
+
+"After the ball he'd made up his mind they were going away together,
+Sophie and he. But while he was ill ... before he was able to get around
+again, Sophie married Potch. Then he went mad, stark, starin' mad, and
+started drinking. He's been drinking hard ever since.... And to-night
+when he came, he just went over to Sophie.... She was lying on the couch
+under the window, Michael.... He said, I've got a horse for you outside.
+Sophie didn't seem to realise what he meant at first. Then she did. I
+don't know how he guessed she wouldn't go ... but the next minute he was
+on his knees beside her ... and you never heard anything like it,
+Michael--the way he went on, sobbing and crying out--I never want to
+hear anything like it again.... I couldn't 've stood it meself.... I'd
+'ve done anything in the world if a man'd gone on to me like that. And
+Sophie ... she put her arms round him, and mothered him like.... Then
+she began to cry too.... And there they were, both crying and sayin' how
+much they loved each other ... how much they'd always loved each
+other....
+
+"It fair broke me up, Michael.... I didn't know what to do. They didn't
+seem to notice me.... Then he said again they'd go away together, and
+begin life all over again. Sophie tried to tell him it was too late to
+think of that.... They both had responsibilities they'd ought to stand
+by.... Hers was the Ridge and the Ridge life, she said.... He didn't
+understand.... He only understood he wanted her to go away with him, and
+she wouldn't go...."
+
+Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did
+not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling
+him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time
+ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation
+that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him.
+
+"He tried to make her," Martha was saying when he began to listen
+intently. "He said he'd been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn't
+any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to
+have it.... Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever
+make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it.... And Sophie
+hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and
+dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate.
+
+"She said 'Yes.'
+
+"'Then you've got to come with me,' he said.
+
+"But she wouldn't go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the
+Ridge--what the Ridge stood for--she must stay to work for. She'd sworn
+to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that
+he wouldn't let her go on living with Potch--be his wife. That he'd kill
+her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her.... I never heard a man
+go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was
+raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite
+quietly:
+
+"'Will you come with me, Sophie?'
+
+"And she said, quiet like that, too, 'No.'
+
+"He went out of the hut.... I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after
+him. She put out her arms ... but she couldn't speak. And if you had
+seen her face, Michael----She just stood there against the wall,
+listening to the hoof-beats.... When we couldn't hear them any more, she
+stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to--to
+waken her--she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance,
+Michael.... After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she
+didn't know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table,
+and then she went out as though she were goin' for a walk. I told her
+not to go far ... not to be long ... but I don't think she heard me....
+I watched her walking out towards the old rush.... And she isn't back
+yet...."
+
+"It's too much," Michael muttered.
+
+He sat with his head buried in his hands.
+
+"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.
+
+Martha shook her head.
+
+"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her
+mother did."
+
+Michael's face quivered.
+
+"He's such an outsider," he groaned. "Sophie'd never give up the things
+we stand for here, now she understands them."
+
+"That's just it," Martha said. "She doesn't want to--but there's
+something stronger than herself draggin' at her ... it's something
+that's been in all the women she's come of--the feeling a woman's got
+for the man who's her mate. Sophie married Potch, it's my belief, to get
+away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here.
+She wants to stay with us.... She was kept up at first by ideas of duty
+and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But
+love's like murder, Michael--it must out, and it's a good thing it
+must...."
+
+"And what about Potch?" Michael asked.
+
+"Potch?" Martha smiled. "The dear lad ... he'll stand up to things.
+There are people like that--and there're people like Arthur Henty who
+can't stand up to things. It's not their fault they're made that way ...
+and they go under when they have too much to bear."
+
+"Curse him," Michael groaned. "I wish he'd kept out of our lives."
+
+"So do I," Martha said; "but he hasn't."
+
+Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.
+
+"Where's Sophie?" he asked.
+
+"She ... went out for a walk, a while ago," Martha said.
+
+At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there
+was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael,
+and held them dumb.
+
+"Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock," he said at length.
+
+Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear
+further.
+
+"Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went
+over," Potch said. "I wanted to tell Sophie myself.... They were looking
+for you in the town, Martha."
+
+"Oh!" Martha got up and went to the door.
+
+"He's at Newton's," Potch said. "Which way did Sophie go?"
+
+"She went towards the Old Town, Potch," Martha said.
+
+The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with
+reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door
+of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse
+was there--a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled
+abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how
+the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She
+went off down the track to Newton's, and he struck out towards the Old
+Town.
+
+Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of
+her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering
+what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. Prom
+the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur
+Henty.
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!" he called.
+
+The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He
+wandered, calling still. Desolation overwhelmed him because he could not
+find Sophie; because she was in none of the places they had spent so
+much time in together. It was significant that she should not be in any
+of them, he felt. He could not bear to think she was eluding him, and
+yet that was what she had done all her life. She had been with him,
+smiling, elfish and tender one moment, and gone the next. She had always
+been elusive. For a long time a presentiment of desolation and disaster
+had overshadowed him. Again and again he had been able to draw breath of
+relief and assure himself that the indefinable dread which was always
+with him was a chimera of his too absorbing, too anxious love. But the
+fear, instinctive, prophetic, begotten by consciousness of the slight
+grasp he had of her, had remained.
+
+That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his
+face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in
+her eyes.
+
+"Dear Potch," she had said, and kissed him.
+
+She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and
+the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was
+wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.... He had done
+so before.... Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes
+he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she
+had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time
+after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long
+gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had
+deprived her of some earthliness.
+
+He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge,
+looking for her, his soul in that cry:
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael
+coming out to meet him.
+
+"She knows, Potch," Michael said.
+
+Potch waited for him to continue.
+
+"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael
+said.
+
+Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had
+come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She
+had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He
+had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at
+all, Michael said.
+
+She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from
+her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the
+sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He
+knelt beside her.
+
+"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and
+anguish in those words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was
+informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it.
+The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the the night before,
+but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit,
+the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wave-like
+vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty's death had left
+everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a
+life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on
+everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air.
+
+George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O'Mara deputed to
+take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman,
+sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the
+platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had
+asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge
+were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have
+seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as
+soon as the men were in their places.
+
+"This isn't like any other inquiry we've had on the Ridge," George Woods
+said. "You chaps know how I feel about it--I told you last night. But
+Michael was for it, and I take it he's come here to answer any questions
+... and to clear this thing up once and for all.... He's put his case to
+you. He says he'll stand by what you say--the judgment of his mates."
+
+Anxious to spare Michael another recital of what had happened, he went
+on:
+
+"There's no need for Michael to repeat what he said last night. If
+there's any man here wasn't in the hall, these are the facts."
+
+He repeated the story Michael had told, steadily, clearly, and
+impartially.
+
+"If there's any man wants to ask a question on those facts, he can do it
+now."
+
+George sat down, and M'Ginnis was on his feet the same instant; his
+bat-like ears twitching, his shoulders hunched, his whole tall, thin
+frame strung to the pitch of nervous animosity.
+
+"I want to know," he said, "what reason there is for believing a word of
+it. Michael Brady's as good as admitted he's been fooling you for
+goodness knows how long, and I don't see----"
+
+"Y' soon will, y'r bleedin', blasted, fly-blown fool," Bully Bryant
+roared, rising and pushing back his sleeves.
+
+"Sit down, Bull," George Woods called.
+
+"The question is," he added, "what reason is there for believing what
+Michael says?"
+
+"His word's enough," somebody called.
+
+"Some of us think so," George said. "But there's some don't. Is there
+anyone else can say, Michael?"
+
+Michael shook his head. He thought of Snow-Shoes, but the old man had
+refused to be present at the inquiry or to have anything to do with it.
+He had pretended to be deaf when he was asked anything about Paul's
+opals. And Michael, who could only surmise that Snow-Shoes' reasons for
+having taken the stones in a measure resembled his own when he took them
+from Paul, would not have him put to the torture of questioning.
+
+George had said: "It might make a lot of difference to Michael if you'd
+come along, Mr. Riley."
+
+But Snow-Shoes had marched off from him as if he had not heard anyone
+speak, his blue eyes fixed on that invisible goal he was always gazing
+at and going towards.
+
+George had not seen him come into the hall; but when he was needed, his
+tall figure, white clad and straight as a dead tree, rose at the back of
+the hall.
+
+"It's true," he said. "I wanted to be sure of Michael; I shadowed him. I
+saw him with the stones when he says. I did not see him with them any
+other time."
+
+He sat down again; his eyes, which had flashed, resumed their steady,
+distant stare; his features relapsed into their mask of impassivity.
+
+M'Ginnis sprang to his feet again.
+
+"That's all very well," he cried, sticking to his question. "But it's
+not my idea of evidence. It wouldn't stand in any law court in the
+country. Snow-Shoes----"
+
+"Shut up!"
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+Half a dozen voices growled.
+
+Because of the respect and affection they had for him, and because of a
+certain aloof dignity he had with them, no man on the Ridge ever
+addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley. They resented M'Ginnis
+calling him "Snow-Shoes" to his face, and guessed that he had been going
+to say something which would reflect on Snow-Shoes' reliability as a
+witness. They admitted his eccentricity; but they would not admit that
+his mental peculiarities amounted to more than that. Above all, they
+were not going to have his feelings hurt by this outsider from the Punti
+rush.
+
+Broad-shouldered, square and solid, Bill Grant towered above the men
+about him. "This doesn't pretend to be a court of law, Mister M'Ginnis,"
+he remarked, with an irony and emphasis which never failed of their mark
+when he used them, although he rarely did, and only once or twice had
+been heard to speak, at any gathering. "It's an inquiry by men of the
+Ridge into the doings of one of their mates. What they want to know is
+the rights of this business ... and what you consider evidence doesn't
+matter. It's what the men in this hall consider evidence matters. And,
+what's more, I don't see why you're butting into our affairs so much:
+you're not one of us--you're a newcomer. You've only been a year or so
+in the place ... and this concerns only men of the Ridge, who stand
+by the Ridge ways of doing things.... Michael's here to be judged
+by his mates ... not by you and your sort.... If you'd the brain
+of a louse, you'd understand--this isn't a question of law, but of
+principle--honour, if you like to call it that."
+
+"Does the meeting consider the question answered?" George Woods inquired
+when Bill Grant sat down.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+A chorus of voices intoned the answer.
+
+"If you believe Michael's story, there's nothing more to be said,"
+George continued. "Does any man want to ask Michael a question?"
+
+No one replied for a moment. Then M'Ginnis exclaimed incoherently.
+
+"Shut up!"
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+Men cried out all over the hall.
+
+"That's all, I think, Michael," George said, looking down to where
+Michael sat before the platform; and Michael, pulling his hat further
+over his eyes, went out of the hall.
+
+It was the custom for men of the Ridge to talk over the subject of their
+inquiry together after the man or men with whom the meeting was
+concerned had left the hall, before giving their verdict.
+
+When Michael had gone, George Woods said:
+
+"The boys would like to hear what you've got to say, I think, Archie."
+
+He looked at Archie Cross. "You and Michael haven't been seein' eye to
+eye lately, and if there's any other side in this business, it's the
+side that lost confidence in Michael when we were fed-up with all that
+whispering. You know Michael, and you're a good Ridge man, though you
+were ready to take on Armitage's scheme. The boys'd like to hear what
+you've got to say, I'm sure."
+
+Archie Cross stood up; he rolled his hat in his hands. His face, hacked
+out of a piece of dull flesh, sun-reddened, moved convulsively; his hair
+was roughed-up from it; his small, sombre eyes went with straight
+lightnings to the men in the hall about him.
+
+"It's true--what George says," he said after a pause, as if it were
+difficult for him to express his thought. "I haven't been seein' eye to
+eye with Michael lately ... and I listened to all the dirty gossip that
+mob"--he glanced towards M'Ginnis and the men with him--"put round about
+him. It was part that ... and part listening to their talk about money
+invested here making all the difference to Fallen Star ... and the
+children growing up ... and gettin' scared and worried about seein' them
+through ... made me go agin you boys lately, and let that lot get hold
+of me.... But this business about Michael's shown me where I am.
+Michael's stood for one thing all through--the Ridge and the hanging on
+to the mines for us.... He's been a better Ridge man than I have.... And
+I want to say ... as far as I'm concerned, Michael's proved himself....
+I don't reck'n hanging on to opals was anything ... no more does Ted.
+It's the sort of thing a chap like Michael'd do absent-minded ... not
+noticin' what he was doin'; but when he did notice--and got scared
+thinkin' where he was gettin' to, and what it might look like, he
+couldn't get rid of 'em quick, enough. That's what I think, and that's
+what Ted thinks, too. He hasn't got the gift of the gab, Ted, or he'd
+say so himself.... If there's goin' to be opposition to Michael, it's
+not comin' from us.... And we've made up our minds we stand by the
+Ridge."
+
+"Good old Archie!" somebody shouted.
+
+"What have you got to say, Roy?" George Woods faced his secretary who
+had been scratching diligently throughout the meeting. "You've been more
+with the M'Ginnis lot, too, than with us, lately."
+
+Roy flushed and sprang to his feet.
+
+"I'm in the same boat with Archie and Ted," he said. "Except about the
+family ... mine isn't so big yet as it might be. But it's a fact, I
+funked, not having had much luck lately.... But if ever I go back on the
+Ridge again ... may the lot of you go back on me."
+
+Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided
+into his chair again.
+
+"That's all there is to be said on the subject, I think," George Woods
+remarked.
+
+"Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done--and why he had done
+it. He's asked for judgment from his mates.... If he'd wanted to go back
+on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage
+would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could
+have been bought. Michael need never 've faced all this as far as I can
+see ... but he decided to face it rather than give up all we've been
+fightin' for here. He'd rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him
+than anything they could give him ... and that's why M'Ginnis has been
+up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of
+us have a notion that M'Ginnis has been here to do Armitage's work ...
+work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and
+he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn't 've stood by us, like he's
+always done, we'd have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now."
+
+"To tell you the truth, boys," George went on, after a moment's
+hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were
+too strong for him, "I've always thought Michael was too good. And if
+those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says,
+all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn't any plaster
+saint, but a man like the rest of us."
+
+"That's right!" Watty called, and several men shouted after him.
+
+Pony-Fence moved out from the crowd he was sitting with.
+
+"I vote this meeting records a motion of confidence in Michael Brady,"
+he said. "And when we call Michael in again we'd ought to make it clear
+to him ... that so far from its being a question of not having as much
+confidence in him as we had before--we've got more. Michael's stood by
+his mates if ever a man did.... He's come to us ... he's given himself
+up to us. He'll stand by what we say or do about him. And what are we
+goin' to do? Are we goin' to turn him down ... read him a bit of a
+lecture and tell him to go home and be a good boy and not do it another
+time ... or are we going to let him know once and for all what we think
+of him?"
+
+Exclamations of agreement went up in a rabble of voices.
+
+Bully Bryant rose from one of the back forms with a grin which
+illuminated the building.
+
+"I'll second that motion," he said, pushing back the sleeve on his left
+arm. "And his own mother won't know the man who says a word against
+it--when I've done with him."
+
+Watty was sent to bring Michael back to the meeting. They walked to the
+end of the hall together; and George Woods told Michael as quietly as he
+could for his own agitation, and the joy which, welling in him, impeded
+his speech, that men of the Ridge found nothing to censure in what he
+had done. His mates believed in him; they stood by him. They were
+prepared to stand by him as he had stood by the Ridge always. The
+meeting wished to record a vote of confidence....
+
+Cheers roared to the roof. Michael, shaken by the storm of his emotion
+and gratitude, stood before the crowd in the hall with bowed head. When
+the storm was quieter in him, he lifted his head and looked out to the
+men, his eyes shining with tears.
+
+He could not speak; old mates closed round to shake hands with him
+before the meeting broke up. Every man grasped and wrung his hand,
+saying:
+
+"Good luck! Good luck to you, Michael!" Or just grasped his hand and
+smiled with that assurance of fellowship and goodwill which meant more
+to Michael than anything else in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+It was one of those clear days of late spring, the sky exquisitely blue,
+the cuckoos calling, the paper daisies in blossom, their fragrance in
+the air; they lay across the plains, through the herbage, white to the
+dim, circling horizon.
+
+Horses and vehicles were tied up outside the grey palings of the
+cemetery on the Warria road. All the horses and shabby, or new and
+brightly-painted carts, sulkies, and buggies of Fallen Star and the
+Three Mile were there; and buggies from Warria, Langi-Eumina, and the
+river stations as well. Saddle horses, ranged along one side of the
+fence, reins over the stakes, whinnied and snapped at each other.
+
+The crowd of people standing in the tall grass and herbage on the other
+side of the fence was just breaking up when Sophie and Potch appeared,
+coming over the plains from the direction of the tank paddock, Sophie
+riding the chestnut Arthur Henty had left behind her house, and Potch
+walking beside the horse's head. Sophie had been gathering Darling pea,
+and had a great sheaf in one hand. Potch was carrying some, too: he had
+picked up the flowers Sophie let fall, and had a little bunch of them.
+She was riding astride and gazing before her, her eyes wide with a
+vision beyond the distant horizon. The wind, a light breeze breathing
+now and then, blew her hair out in wisps from her bare head.
+
+All the men of Warria were in the sombre crowd in the cemetery. Old
+Henty, red-eyed and broken by the end of his only son, whom he found he
+had cared for now that he was dead; the stockmen, boundary-riders,
+servants, fencers, shearers from Darrawingee sheds who, a few weeks
+before had been on the Warria board, and men from other stations near
+enough to have heard of Arthur Henty's death. None of the Henty women
+were there; but women of the Ridge, who were accustomed to pay last
+respects as their menfolk did, were with their husbands as usual. They
+would have thought it unnatural and unkind not to follow Arthur Henty to
+his resting-place; not to go as friends would to say good-bye to a
+friend who is making a long journey. And there was more than the
+ordinary reason for being present at Arthur Henty's funeral. He was
+leaving them under a cloud, circumstances which might be interpreted
+unkindly, and it was necessary to be present to express sympathy with
+him and sorrow at his going. That was the way they regarded it.
+
+Martha had driven with Sam Nancarrow, as she always did to functions of
+the sort. No one remembered having seen Martha take a thing so to heart
+as she did Arthur Henty's death. She was utterly shaken by it, and could
+not restrain her tears. They coursed down her cheeks all the time she
+was in that quiet place on the plains; her great, motherly bosom rose
+and fell with the tide of her grief. She tried to subdue it, but every
+now and then the sound of her crying could be heard, and in the end Sam
+took her, sobbing uncontrollably, back to his buggy.
+
+People knew she had seen further into the cause of Arthur Henty's death
+than they had, and they understood that was why she Was so upset.
+Besides, Martha had always confessed to a soft corner for Arthur Henty:
+she had been with his mother when he was born, had nursed him during a
+hot summer and through several slight illnesses since then. And Arthur
+had been fond of her too. He had always called her Mother M'Cready as
+the Ridge folk did. Old Mr. Henty had driven over to see Martha the
+night before, to hear all she knew of what had happened, and Ridge folk
+had gathered something of the story from her broken exclamations and the
+reproaches with which she covered herself.
+
+She cried out over and over again that she could not have believed
+Arthur would shoot himself--that he was the sort of man to do such a
+thing--and blamed herself for not having foreseen what had occurred. She
+had never seen him like he was that night--so strong, so much a man, so
+full of life and love for Sophie. He had begged Sophie to go with him as
+though his life depended on it--and it had.
+
+If she had been a woman, and Sophie, and had loved him, Martha said, she
+would have had to go with him. She could never have withstood his
+pleading.... But Sophie had been good to him; she had been gentle--only
+she wouldn't go. Neither Sophie nor she believed, of course, he would do
+as he said--but he had.
+
+Martha could not forgive herself that she had done nothing to soothe or
+pacify Arthur; that she had said nothing, given him neither kindly word
+nor gesture. But she had been so upset, so carried away. She had not
+known what to do or say. She abused and blackguarded herself; but she
+had sensed enough of the utter loneliness and darkness of Henty's mind
+to realise that most likely she could have done nothing against it. He
+would have brushed her aside had she attempted to influence him; he
+would not have heard what, she said. She would have been as helpless as
+any other human consideration against the blinding, irresistibly
+engulfing forces of despair which had impelled him to put himself out of
+pain as he had put many a suffering animal. It was an act of
+self-defence, as Mother M'Cready saw it, Arthur Henty's end, and that
+was all there was to it.
+
+As Sophie and Potch approached the cemetery, people exclaimed together
+in wonderment, awe--almost fear.
+
+James Henty, when he saw them, turned away from the men he was talking
+to and walked to his buggy; Tom Henderson, his son-in-law, followed him.
+Although he would have been the last to forgive Sophie if she had done
+as Arthur wished, even to save his life, old Henty had to have a
+whipping-post, and he eased his own sense of responsibility for what had
+blighted his son's life, by blaming Sophie for it. He assured himself,
+his family and friends, that she, and she alone, was responsible for
+Arthur's death. She had played with Arthur; she had always played with
+him, old Henty said. She had driven him to distraction with her
+wiles--and this was the end of it all.
+
+Sophie rode into the cemetery: she rode to where the broken earth was;
+but she did not dismount. The horse came to a standstill beside it, and
+she sat on him, her eyes closed. Potch stood bare-headed and bowed
+beside her. He put the flowers he had picked up as Sophie let them fall,
+on the grave. Sophie thrust the long, purple trails she was carrying
+into the saddle-bag where Arthur had put the flowers she gave him that
+first day their eyes met and drank the love potion of each others'
+being.
+
+People were already on the road, horses and buggies, dark, ant-like
+trains on the flowering plains, moving slowly in the direction of Warria
+and of Fallen Star, when Sophie and Potch turned away from the cemetery.
+
+The shadow of what had happened was heavy over everybody as they drove
+home. Arthur Henty had been well enough liked, and he had had much more
+to do with Fallen Star than most of the station people. He had gone
+about so much with his men they had almost ceased to think of him as not
+one of themselves. He was less the "Boss" than any man in the
+back-country. They recognised that, and yet he was the "Boss." He had
+lived like a half-caste, drifting between two races and belonging to
+neither. The people he had been born among cold-shouldered him because
+he had acquired the manners and habits of thought of men he lived and
+worked with; the men he had lived and worked with distrusted and
+disliked in him just those tag-ends of refinement, and odd graces which
+belonged to the crowd he had come to them from.
+
+The station hands, his work-mates--if he had any--had had a slightly
+contemptuous feeling for him. They liked him--they were always saying
+they liked him--but it was clear they never had any great opinion of
+him. As a boy, when he began to work with them, to cover his shyness and
+nervousness, he had been silent and boorish; and he had never had the
+courage of his opinions--courage for anything, it was suspected. It had
+always been hinted that he shirked any jobs where danger was to be
+expected.
+
+The stockmen told each other they would miss him, all the same. They
+would miss that wonderful whistling of his from the camp fires; and they
+were appalled at what he had done to himself. "The last man," Charley
+Este said, "the last man you'd ever 've thought would 've come to that!"
+Most of them believed they had misjudged Arthur Henty--that, after, all,
+he had had courage of a sort. A man must have courage to blow out his
+light, they said. And they were sorry. Every man in the crowd was heavy
+with sorrow.
+
+Ridge people gossiped pitifully, sentimentally, to each other as they
+drove home. Most of the women believed in the strength and fidelity of
+the old love between Sophie and Arthur Henty. But straight-dealing and
+honest themselves, they had no conception of the tricks complex
+personalities play each other; they did not understand how two people
+who had really cared for each other could have gone so astray from the
+natural impulse of their lives.
+
+They recalled the dance at Warria, and how they had teased Sophie when
+they thought she was going to marry Arthur Henty, and how happy and
+pleased she had looked about it. How different both their lives would
+have been if Sophie and Arthur had been true to that instinct of the
+mate for the mate, they reflected; and sighed at the futility of the
+thought. They realised in Arthur Henty's drinking and rough ways of
+late, all his unhappiness. They imagined that they knew why he had
+become the uncouth-looking man he had. They remembered him a slight, shy
+youth, with sun-bright, freckled eyes; then a man, lithe, graceful, and
+good to look at, with his face a clear, fine bronze, his hair taking a
+glint of copper in the sun. When he danced with them at the Ridge balls,
+that occasionally flashing, delightful way of his had made them realise
+why Sophie was in love with him. They remembered how he had looked at
+Sophie; how his eyes had followed her. They had heard of the Warria
+dance, and knew Arthur Henty had not behaved well to Sophie at it. They
+had been angry at the time. Then Sophie had gone away ... and a little
+later he had married.
+
+His marriage had not been a success. Mrs. Arthur Henty had spent most of
+her time in Sydney; she was rarely seen on the Ridge now. So women of
+the Ridge, who had known Arthur Henty, went over all they knew of him
+until that night at the race ball when he and Sophie had met again. And
+then his end in the tank paddock brought them back to exclamations of
+dismay and grief at the mystery of it all.
+
+As she left the cemetery, Sophie began to sing, listlessly, dreamily at
+first. No one had heard her sing since her return to the Ridge. But her
+voice flew out over the plains, through the wide, clear air now, with
+the pure melody it had when she was a girl:
+
+         "Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,
+          Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!
+          Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volera,
+          E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sara!"
+
+Ella Bryant, driving home beside Bully, knew Sophie was singing as she
+had sung to Arthur Henty years before, when they were coming home from
+the tank paddock together. She wondered why Sophie was riding the horse
+Arthur had brought for her; why she had ridden him to the funeral; and
+why she was singing that song.
+
+Sophie sang on:
+
+         "Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volera,
+          E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sara!"
+
+Looking back, people saw Potch walking beside her as Joseph walked
+beside Mary when they went down to Nazareth.
+
+"It's hard on Potch," somebody said.
+
+"Yes," it was agreed; "it's hard on Potch."
+
+The buggies, carts, sulkies, and horsemen moving in opposite directions
+on the long, curving road over the plains grew dim in the distance.
+
+The notes of Sophie's singing, with its undying tenderness triumphing
+over life and death, flowed fainter and fainter.
+
+When she and Potch came to the town again, the light was fading. Through
+the green, limpid veil of the sky, stars were glittering; huts of the
+township were darkening under the gathering shadow of night. A breath of
+sandal-wood burning on kitchen hearths came to Sophie and Potch like a
+greeting. The notes of a goat-bell clanking dully sounded from beyond
+the dumps. There were lights in a few of the huts; a warm, friendly
+murmur of voices went up from them. For weeks troubled and disturbed
+thinking, arguments, and conflicting ideas, had created a depressed and
+unrestful atmosphere in every home in Fallen Star. But to-night it was
+different. The temptations, allurements and debris of Armitage's scheme
+had been swept from the minds--even of those who had been ready to
+accept it. Hope and pride in the purpose of the Ridge had been restored
+by Michael's vindication and by reaffirmation of the principle he and
+all staunch men of the Ridge stood for as the mainstay of their life in
+common. Thought of Arthur Henty's death, which had oppressed people
+during the day, seemed to have been put aside now that they had seen him
+laid to rest, and had returned to their homes again.
+
+Voices were heard exclaiming with the light cadence and rhythm of joy.
+The crisis which had come near to shattering the Ridge scheme of things,
+and all that it stood for, had ended by drawing dissenting factions of
+the community into closer sympathy and more intimate relationship. In
+everybody's mind were the hope and enthusiasm of a new endeavour. As
+they went through the town again, neither Sophie nor Potch were
+conscious of them for the sorrow which had soaked into their lives. But
+these things were in the air they breathed, and sooner or later would
+claim them from all personal suffering; faith and loving service fill
+all their future--the long twilight of their days.
+
+
+
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