“He never does, and couldn’t persuade me, except for my good,” said she, getting more and more roused, and her black eyes glowed again, “and I’ll tell you what I’ll do to prove it. It’s a sin, but if it is I’ll stand by it, and now I’ll swear it (here she knelt down), as Almighty God shall help me at the last day, if you and Jim will promise me to start straight off up the country and take bush-work till shearing comes on, and never to have any truck with cross chaps and their ways, I’ll turn Protestant. I’ll go to church with you, and keep to it till I die.”

Wasn’t she a trump? I’ve known women that would give up a lot for a man they were sweet on, and wives that would follow their husbands about like spaniels, and women that would lie and deceive and all but rob and murder for men they were fond of, and some times do nearly as much to spite other women. But I don’t think I ever knew a woman that would give up her religion for any one before, and it’s not as if she wasn’t staunch to her own faith. She was as regular in her prayers and crossings and beads and all the rest of it as mother herself, and if there ever was a good girl in the whole world she was one. She turned faint as she said this, and I thought she was going to drop down. If anything could have turned me then it would have been this. It was almost like giving her life for ours, and I don’t think she’d have valued hers two straws if she could have saved us. There’s a great deal said about different kinds of love in this world, but I can’t help thinking that the love between brothers and sisters that have been brought up together and have had very few other people to care about is a higher, better sort than any other in the world. There’s less selfishness about it—no thought but for the other’s good. If that can be made safe, death and pain and poverty and misery are all little things. And wasn’t I fond of Aileen, in spite of all my hardness and cross-grained obstinacy?—so fond that I was just going to hug her to me and say, “Take it all your own way, Alice dear,” when Jim came tearing out of the hut, bareheaded, and stood listening to a far-off sound that caught all our ears at once. We made out the source of it too well—far too well.

What was the noise at that hour of the night?

It was a hollow, faint, distant roaring that gradually kept getting louder. It was the strange mournful bellowing that comes from a drove of cattle forced along an unknown track. As we listened the sound came clearly on the night wind, faint, yet still clearly coming nearer.

“Cattle being driven,” Jim cried out; “and a big mob too. It’s father—for a note. Let’s get our horses and meet him.”