Wallace had scarcely completed his report when once more he was interrupted by Gale entering the office.

"Mrs. Eustace has given me this order to remove all her belongings at once," he said, as he entered the office and handed the order to Wallace.

"Very good. I'll tell the girl to bring them downstairs. Will you be at the front door?"

"Tell the girl?" Gale remarked. "You don't think it's a girl's job, do you, to move a houseful of furniture?"

"There's no furniture; there is nothing here belonging to Mrs. Eustace beyond her clothing, and some few odds and ends, I suppose?"

"Then you know very little about the matter, Mr. Wallace. Everything beyond that door belongs to Mrs. Eustace; everything in the residence portion of this building is hers absolutely, her own personal private property. Even that lamp on your table is hers. I have it down on my list."

"Oh, that is nonsense, utter nonsense," Wallace exclaimed pompously. "The furniture is the property of the Bank."

"The furniture is not the property of the Bank. Ask Mr. Harding."

"He is asleep at present, but——"

"Then he had better get up, because I am about to remove the bed on which he is sleeping. It belongs to Mrs. Eustace; so do the blankets, the sheets, the coverlet, everything, in fact, even to the towels in his room."

"What absolute preposterous nonsense!" Wallace replied. "I never heard of such a thing. The Bank always provides furniture for its branches."

"And does the Bank always allow the wife of a branch manager so much a year for the use of that furniture, napery, linen, cutlery, and the rest?"

"Why ask such a ridiculous question?"

"Because Mrs. Eustace has been paid such an allowance since she has been in Waroona. Refer to the office records. They will show you whether it is so or not."

Wallace turned to the book-racks, and pulled down the ledger. Running his eye down the index, he saw the item "Furniture Account." Opening the book at the page indicated, he read enough to prove to him that Gale's statement was correct.

"Then all I have to say is, that it is extremely unusual," he said, as he slammed the book, and returned it to its place.

"I am not concerned in that, Mr. Wallace. All I know are the facts. Now that you are also satisfied, you will see the work is hardly what a girl can carry out. I'll send half a dozen men down at once."

"But," Wallace exclaimed, looking up aghast, "you don't mean to say you are going to remove everything?"

"Mrs. Eustace has given me her order to remove all her belongings. That, I understand, includes everything in the living portion of the premises, and the lamp now standing on your table."

"But what am I to do? What is Harding to do? We cannot sleep on the bare boards and eat our meals raw."

"I don't see what concern that is of mine. You requested Mrs. Eustace to vacate these premises at once, and she is doing as you asked. It is not for you to complain, surely?"

"It is, under the circumstances, most decidedly it is. Someone must always be on the premises after what has occurred; but if there is nothing on which to sleep, what can be done? Mrs. Eustace knew the furniture belonged to her and should have said so."

"I am afraid I cannot agree with you," Gale replied. "You should have known the furniture was hers. Your one desire, it seems to me, was to vent on her head the wrath of the Bank at what may, or may not have been, her husband's fault. Whether it added to the trouble she already had did not matter to you in the slightest. But directly you find that your spite recoils on yourself and entails some inconvenience for you, there is a very different tale to tell. Personally I am very glad to think you can be inconvenienced. You had better have Harding called, as I shall be back in half an hour with my men. Oh, by the by, the servant is engaged by Mrs. Eustace, not by the Bank. She will leave with the furniture."

He enjoyed the look of consternation on Wallace's face. The banker could not deceive himself. Gale held him in a cleft stick.

"But this cannot go on," he exclaimed. "Mrs. Eustace must see how unreasonable it is. The Bank is entitled to at least a month's notice, before the things can be removed."

"It is the Bank that gave the notice. Mrs. Eustace was told to go at once. Well, she waived her right to demand time and said she would go at once. Now you blame her!"

"Will she sell the furniture?"

"No, she will not."

"I shall go to Taloona and see about it."

"It will not assist you if you do. In the first place, you will not be able to see her, and, in the second, even if you did see her, you would only learn that the matter has been placed in my hands."

"Then, if it is in your hands, deal with it as a reasonable business man. While Mrs. Eustace remains at Taloona she will not require the furniture; it will be at least a couple of weeks before we can have any sent up to serve us. How much does Mrs. Eustace want for the hire of what is in the house at present?"

"Twenty pounds a week," Gale replied, without moving a muscle, even when Wallace flared up at the proposal.

"Utterly preposterous," he cried. "Ten shillings a week was what was allowed her. That amount is ample."

"You are the buyer, not the seller, Mr. Wallace. You pay twenty pounds a week, or the furniture goes. Even at that sum I consider that Mrs. Eustace is placing the Bank under a distinct obligation to her."

There was no escape; reluctantly Wallace admitted it, and agreed to the terms, humiliating though they were. But it was still more humiliating for him to learn the following day that Mrs. Eustace declined to accept anything whatever, but allowed the Bank to use the furniture and retain the services of Bessie until other arrangements could be made.

"What is the game she is playing?" he said to Harding. "Is it all part of some elaborate scheme between herself and her husband, or is she really sincere?"

The letter sewn into the lining of his coat seemed to burn itself into Harding's back. Was it all part of an elaborate scheme, part of the "everything" she had to do "as arranged"? If he could only be sure!

"I don't know what to make of it," he answered. "I don't know." But while they were speculating at the bank as to the sincerity or insincerity of Mrs. Eustace, she was driving her own troubles from her mind by the constant and unremitting care of a taciturn and exacting patient.

For the first two or three days after the bullet was extracted from his leg, Dudgeon was in a high state of fever. In his semi-delirium he babbled incessantly of Kitty, grew dangerously excited whenever the doctor came near him, and would only be pacified by the presence of Mrs. Eustace. In his lucid intervals he told her over and over again the story of his betrayal; when his mind wandered, he regarded her as the Kitty he had known before the shattering of his life's romance. It was difficult for her to decide which experience was the more trying.

Later, when the fever left him, he was as a child in her hands, listening while she read or talked to him, taking anything she brought him without demur, and only showing signs of impatience when she left the hut for a while.

Consequently, she was unable to give any attention to Durham, and as the days slipped by the doctor began to chafe, for there were patients scattered through the bush whom he was anxious to visit, but he could not go away and leave both men to Mrs. Eustace to nurse.

It was at this juncture that Mrs. Burke put her threat into execution, and drove over to Taloona in a big old-fashioned waggonette with Patsy perched on the box and a store of blankets inside.

"I've come to do my share of the work," she told the doctor. "They stopped me from coming before—I was turned back by a trooper a mile from the house. But I'm tired of waiting for word how the poor fellows are, and have just come to take one of them away with me."

She had driven right up to the huts, and the sound of her voice penetrated both. Old Dudgeon, striving to sit up, stared at Mrs. Eustace with gleaming eyes.

"That devil," he muttered. "It's her voice. I'd know it in a million. Keep her away! Don't let her come near me, or I'll——"

"Hush, you must not get excited," Mrs. Eustace said, as she gently pushed him back. "No one is coming in here. I'll see to that. I'll shut the door and bolt them out."

In the other hut the patient's eyes also gleamed, but with a different light. The forced inaction, the solitude, the wearying monotony of lying still, to one accustomed to a life full of incident and action, was more than trying; but when, as was the case with Durham, there was urgent and engrossing work to be done, the compulsory delay aggravated the evils of the injury he had sustained.

Through the long hours he chafed against the helplessness which prevented him from following up the clue he had already obtained, but still more did he chafe against his inability to renew his acquaintance with the woman who had fascinated him.

He was anxious to make headway in her estimation so that he would have some understanding, however slight, with her when the recovery of her papers and the winning of the reward gave him the opportunity of offering her marriage. His impatience bred many fancies in his mind. Daily he pictured to himself the danger of someone else becoming his rival in her affections.

Were he free to see her he did not fear defeat; but while he was lying helpless at Taloona anything might be happening at Waroona Downs.

That morning the doctor had told him it would be weeks before he would be well enough to resume work if he did not make more rapid progress. He had poured out professional platitudes against the folly of fretting and worrying against the inevitable, but neither his platitudes nor the soundness of his reasoning could still the eager longing which was at the root of the patient's retarded convalescence.

If he could only see her the days would not be so blank; even to hear of or from her would be something; but this complete separation, this seemingly hopeless isolation racked him with impatience. Wherefore the sound of her voice breaking in upon his mournful reveries, of which she was the central figure, made his heart leap with delight.

Come to take one of them away with her! Saving that his head swam so much when he moved he would have crawled out of his bunk and appealed to her that he should be the one, lest the other should be before him.

He strove to catch something more of the conversation carried on between her and the doctor, but their voices were not sufficiently loud for him to hear more than the sound of them. The creaking of the door as it opened made him turn his eyes as the doctor came in.

"I've a visitor to see you. Do you think you can stand it?" he asked.

Over the doctor's shoulder Durham caught a glimpse of Mrs. Burke, and the smile that rippled over his face was all the answer he had time to give before she stood beside him.

"Oh, the poor, poor fellow," she exclaimed softly. "Sure he's just pining for a change of air and a sight of the bush once more. It's Waroona Downs that's the place where he can get what he wants and recover so as to catch those villains that have done him so much harm. I've come to fetch you, Mr. Durham. I've a waggonette outside and a storeful of blankets, and Patsy to drive—sure he can't go faster than a funeral at the best, so there's no fear of any jolting on the way. If you want to come, the doctor says you may, and he'll ride along later and see you are all fixed up before he goes after his other patients who are all dying, poor things, without his help one way or the other."

Would he go? His pale cheeks flushed at the chance of escape from the deadly solitude of the past few days. Anywhere would be better than inside that bare, cheerless hut, anything preferable to lying on the hard wooden bunk with only a blanket over him, and only an occasional flying visit from Mrs. Eustace and the periodical dosing by the doctor. But Waroona Downs with the woman he was beginning to idolise daily with him!

"Will you come?" she asked softly, as he did not speak.

"If I only could," he answered.

"There, doctor, you heard him? I'll tell Patsy to spread the blankets on the floor of the waggonette, and sure he'll never know he's moving till he's there."

"It may shake you up a bit," the doctor said, as Mrs. Burke left the hut. "But I must get away to a case to-morrow, and the old man is as much as any woman can look after. Do you think you can stand the drive?"

"I'd stand anything to get out of this place," Durham answered. "If you think I can stand it, I'm satisfied."

"Oh, you're tough enough to stand anything," the doctor replied. "You could not be alive to-day if you had not the constitution of a steam-engine. They'd charge me with manslaughter down in one of the cities, moving a man who had barely had a week's rest after a crack in his skull; but we have to take things as they come in the bush, my lad, and it's mostly rough at the best."

New life seemed already to have come to him, and when they had placed him in the waggonette, lying comfortably on the pile of blankets Mrs. Burke had spread, the wan weariness had gone and Durham smiled up into the face that looked down on him with so much softness in the dark-lashed eyes.

Overhead the sky was blue as turquoise, and the clear sunlit air fanned him with a faint breeze redolent with the aromatic perfumes which float through the atmosphere of the bush. The horses moved along at the slowest pace they could manage beyond a walk, and the gentle sway of the waggonette on its easy, old-fashioned springs lulled Durham into a delightful sense of restfulness and content. Gradually his eyelids grew heavy and drooped; peaceful, restful, he floated away into slumber as easily as though he had been a child rocked in a cradle.

The sunlight had given place to the shade of evening when he opened his eyes. The rhythmic beat of the horses' hoofs blended harmoniously with the sway of the vehicle in which he was travelling, and the cool air was filled with a delicious fragrance. He awakened with so keen a sense of vitality that for the moment he forgot he was an invalid, and made an effort to rise. But the strength he felt in his muscles was only the trick of his imagination; he could barely lift his head.

But that was sufficient to show him that he was in the waggonette alone. The seat where Mrs. Burke had been when his eyes closed was unoccupied. He turned sufficiently to look at the box-seat. A figure loomed through the dusk, but it seemed more sturdy than the withered frame of old Patsy.

He made another effort to sit up. It was not entirely successful, but it enabled him to see out of the vehicle. Away behind them the dark shadow of the range between the township and Waroona Downs rose against the sky.

"Where is Mrs. Burke?" he called, turning his face towards the form of the driver.

The horses stopped, and the figure on the box leaned back as a merry laugh came down to him.

"Oh, are you awake then? Sure I thought you were asleep for good and all the way you never moved all the journey. And did you think I had vanished and left you to the tender mercies of that old fool? Well, now, that's a poor compliment to yourself surely, to think I'd run away from you as soon as I saw your eyes were closed. No, no, I've got charge of you till you are well and strong again, though maybe I'll have hard work to shunt you at all then, you'll be so used to being nursed. But I had to come and drive while I sent the old man on ahead to get the door open and a fire alight so as to give you something hot to cheer you as soon as you reached the house."

"But he cannot walk quicker than we are going?"

"Going? Why, we're standing still. So we were at the top of the hill where the horses, poor beasts, wanted a long rest to get their wind again, seeing how they had come all the way without as much as a five minutes' break since we started. You were sleeping through it all so peacefully I had not the heart to disturb you, but sent the old man on ahead while I climbed up here. Sure we're nearly there; I can see the light of the lamp shining out of the window. Just keep quiet and rest now till we're there."

She started the horses again, and Durham lay back on his blankets till he felt the waggonette turn off the main road and drive slowly up to the house.

As it stopped, he managed to raise himself into a sitting position. There was a momentary humming in his head, and he gripped the seats to steady himself. The cessation of the noise made by the moving wheels and trotting horses accentuated to his ears the still silence of the night. So quiet was it that as the humming passed from him the creaking of the springs when Mrs. Burke swung herself down from the box-seat seemed an actual noise.

Patsy's heavy tread echoed on the bare boards of the verandah. For a second they stopped, and through Durham's brain there rang a curious stifled sound, something like a cry coming from afar, a cry indistinct and choked as if it were muffled.

The loud tones of Mrs. Burke's voice, speaking quickly and decisively, drowned it before the dulled brain could either locate whence it came or decide whether it was anything more than a variation of the humming in his ears.

"Come along now, Patsy. Hasten, you slow old fool. Don't you know Mr. Durham will be tired?"

The old man stumbled and blundered down the steps, and Mrs. Burke came to the end of the waggonette.

"Oh, now, now! Sure is it wise to do that?" she exclaimed, as she saw Durham sitting up. "Why didn't you wait till we could help you?"

She leaned in and took hold of his arm.

"If you back the waggonette against the steps, I can get out easier," he said.

"Of course, of course. Now then, Patsy, why didn't you think of that?" she exclaimed. "Turn the horses round while I stay with Mr. Durham."

She sat on the floor of the vehicle, still holding Durham's arm.

The touch of her hands, the sound of her voice as she maintained a steady stream of directions to Patsy, the fact of being so near to her, filled Durham with a gentle soothing. The dreaminess which had been upon him when the journey began, and before he sank into the contented slumber, returned. Her voice reached him as from a distance; his grip of the seats loosened, and as the waggonette turned he swayed until his head drooped upon the shoulder of the woman by his side.

Thereafter all was vague and misty until he came to himself and knew he was ascending the short flight of steps leading to the verandah, with Mrs. Burke supporting him on one side and Patsy the other.

As he reached the verandah his legs trembled beneath him, and he stood for a moment, leaning heavily upon the arms which supported him.

Again there came to his dulled brain the sound like a distant stifled cry.

"What's that?" he muttered. "What's that?"

"Oh, lean on me. Don't fall now. Oh, keep up, keep up. Sure what will the doctor say when he comes if you've hurt yourself?" the voice of Mrs. Burke said in his ear.

"But that—that cry," he gasped. A cold shiver ran through him.

"There's no cry; there's nothing but me and old Patsy. Keep up, now. If you're worse, oh, what will the doctor say?"

The glare from the lamp shining through the open window grew dim; the floor of the verandah rose and fell; his arms dropped nerveless to his sides and, with the faint muffled cry still ringing in his ears, Durham went down into oblivion.

Once the veil partly lifted, and he saw, as through a mist, Mrs. Burke standing defiantly before a man who slunk away out of the room while she turned quickly and came to the couch where he was lying and bent over him. As in a dream he felt her cool hand touch his brow and her face come close to him.

"Oh, why? Why?" he heard her whisper. "Why have you come into my life—now—to bring love to me? Better if I were dead; but I cannot let you go, I cannot! Oh, my love, why have you come so late to me?"

Her lips were pressed to his, her arms encircled his neck, and as he thrilled at her touch, at her voice, at her presence, he essayed to answer her. But he had no strength even to move his lips in response to her kiss, no power to raise a hand. It was as though his will no longer had control over his muscles, as though his consciousness were something apart from his body, something floating in space, voiceless, nerveless, motionless, apart from himself, apart from all save the love she had for him, and the love he had for her.

And in the glamour of that love, the bare knowledge that he existed at all faded away, until he was as one enveloped in a mist through which neither sight nor sound could penetrate.

The sunlight was streaming around him when next he remembered. He was lying in a bed in an unfamiliar room. By his side the doctor was standing. His first memory was of the stifled cry which had come to him as he stepped on to the verandah.

"Ah, you're awake again, are you?" the doctor said cheerily. "Well, how do you feel now?"

"Where am I?" Durham asked weakly.

"Oh, you're where you're all right, if you feel all right. Do you?"

"I'm—this isn't the hut."

He glanced round the room which was at once strange and familiar to him.

"Don't you remember leaving there? You ought to. Don't you remember how we got you into the waggonette? When we put you on the blankets? Just think. You're at Waroona Downs. Mrs. Burke brought you."

"But I—how did I get here?" Durham repeated, glancing again round the room. Then it was that the memory of the cry forced itself to the front.

"Who was it?" he asked. "Who was it?"

Another figure joined the doctor, and Mrs. Burke looked down at him.

"Who was what?" the doctor asked.

"That cry—the cry I heard," Durham replied.

"There was no cry," the doctor said. "You've been dreaming."

Durham looked from one to the other. As his eyes rested on Mrs. Burke's, vaguely there came to him the visionary recollection of her kneeling beside him with her arms around him and her lips pressed to his.

"Dreaming?" he said slowly. "Dreaming? Was it all dreaming?"

He was looking straight into her eyes, as he spoke, forgetful of the doctor's presence, watching for the return of the soft love-light which had filled her eyes in that memoried scene. But no love-light shone from them. They were unmoved, cold in their grey-blue depths almost to hardness.

"Listen to me, my lad," the doctor said briskly. "The drive in from Taloona shook you up a bit, they tell me. Made you delirious, so that they had to keep you on the sofa all night watching you. That's where I found you when I got here at dawn. But you'll be all right now, I fancy, if you keep quiet and don't think about things that never happened. You're at Waroona Downs in bed, and Mrs. Burke and that old idiot of a doddering Irishman are looking after you. That's all you've got to remember."

"Except to get well," Mrs. Burke added.

"Yes, except to get well; and I reckon your nurse will see to that. I'll call in again to-morrow or the next day. But remember—no more dreams."