of someone following her. Once she drew rein, and listened to some bush sound. “Kangaroos,” she murmured; it was only kangaroos. She crossed a dimmed little clearing where a farm had been, and entered a thick scrub of box and stringy-bark saplings. Suddenly with a heavy thud, thud, an “old man” kangaroo leapt the path in front, startling the girl fearfully, and went up the siding towards the peak.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped, with her hand on her heart.
She was very nervous this evening; her heart was hurt now, and she held her hand close to it, while tears started from her eyes and glistened in the light of the moon, which was rising over the gap ahead.
“Oh, if I could only go away from the bush!” she moaned.
The old horse plodded on, and now and then shook his head—sadly, it seemed—as if he knew her troubles and was sorry.
She passed another clearing, and presently came to a small homestead in a stringy-bark hollow below a great gap in the ridges—“Deadman’s Gap”. The place was called “Deadman’s Hollow”, and looked like it. The “house”—a low, two-roomed affair, with skillions—was built of half-round slabs and stringy-bark, and was nearly all roof; the bark, being darkened from recent rain, gave it a drearier appearance than usual.
A big, coarse-looking youth of about twenty was nailing a green kangaroo skin to the slabs; he was out of temper because he had bruised his thumb. The girl
