Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/61

The river lay like a string of jewels in the crevasses of the hills. Away in the sun-haze to the west the sand dunes of Wairangi blazed like pyramids of gold.

Geoffrey paused on the summit of Bald Hill to gaze at the familiar scene. Eighteen or twenty miles away, but looking vastly nearer, rose a green hillock, cut into terraces, a Norfolk Island pine on its summit. He had once spent an afternoon with Eve beneath the shadow of that tree, and memory recalled easily the homestead in its sheltering plantation, nestling under the pa.^[1] His mind’s eye saw the flashing casements, the deep, cool verandahs, the sub-tropical flower-garden, the woods and orchards in which the house was embowered. Peace was there if anywhere in the world. It was in the pens, where were the prize-bred fowls in which Major Milward took such a deep interest; in the ducks diving in the creek; in the cows coming lazily down to the slip-rail for the evening’s milking; in the flocks of sheep cropping the broad pastures over a