making the room tidy at the last moment before going to bed, when suddenly a violent darkness came over him, he felt his arms pinned, and he heard a man's voice speaking mockingly behind him, with a laugh. It was as if he saw the man's face too—a stranger, a rough, strong sort of Australian. And he realised with horror: "Now they have put a sack over my head, and fastened my arms, and I am in the dark, and they are going to steal my little brown handbag from the bedroom, which contains all the money we have." The shock of intense reality made him fight his way out of the depths of the first sleep, but it was some time before he could really lay hold of facts, like: "I am not at Coo-ee. I am not at Mullumbimby. I am in Sydney at Wyewurk, and the Callcotts are in the next room." So he came really awake. But if the thing had really happened, it could hardly have happened to him more than in this dream.
In the morning they were returning to the South Coast. But Jack said to Somers, a little sarcastically:
"You aren't altogether pleased with us, then?"
Somers hesitated before replying:
"I'm not altogether pleased with myself, am I?"
"You don't have to be so particular, in this life," said Jack.
"I may have to be."
""You can't have it all perfect beforehand, you know. You've got to sink a few times before you can swim."
"Sink in what?"
"Why, it seems to me you want to have a thing all ready in your hand, know all about it, before you'll try it. And there's some things you can't do that with. You've just got to flop into them, like when you chuck a dog into water."
Somers received this rebuke rather sourly. This was the first wintry day they had really had. There was a cold fog in Sydney in the morning, and rain in the fog. In the hills it would be snow—away in the Blue Mountains. But the fog lifted, and the rain held off, and there was a wash of yellowish sunshine.
Harriet of course had to talk to a fellow-passenger in the train, because Lovat was his glummest. It was a red-moustached Welshman with a slightly injured look in his
