When we got home it was pretty late, and the air was beginning to Cool after the hot day. There was a low moon, and everything showed out clear, so that you could see the smallest branches of the trees on Nulla Mountain, where it stood like a dark cloud-bank against the western sky. There wasn’t the smallest breeze. The air was that still and quiet you could have heard anything stir in the grass, or almost a ‘possum digging his claws into the smooth bark of the white gum trees. The curlews set up a cry from time to time; but they didn’t sound so queer and shrill as they mostly do at night. I don’t know how it was, but everything seemed quiet and pleasant and homelike, as if a chap might live a hundred years, if it was all like this, and growing better and happier every day. I remember all this so particular because it was the only time I’d felt it for years, and I never had the same feeling afterwards—nor likely to.

“Oh! what a happy day I’ve had,” Aileen said, on a sudden. Jim and I and her had been riding a long spell without speaking. “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself so much; I’ve got quite out of the way of being happy lately, and hardly know the taste of it. How lovely it would be if you and Jim could always stay at home like this, and we could do our work happy and comfortable together, without separating, and all this deadly fear of something terrible happening, that’s never out of my mind. Oh! Dick, won’t you promise me to stop quiet and work steady at home, if you—if you and Jim haven’t anything brought against you?”

She bent forward and looked into my face as she said this. I could see her eyes shine, and every word she said seemed to come straight from her heart. How sad and pitiful she looked, and we felt for a moment just as we did when we were boys, and she used to come and persuade us to go on with our work and not grieve mother, and run the risk of a licking from father when he came home.

Her mare, Lowan, was close alongside of my horse, stepping along at her fast tearing walk, throwing up her head and snorting every now and then, but Aileen sat in her saddle better than some people can sit in a chair; she held the rein and whip together and kept her hand on mine till I spoke.