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into it, and then the sun’s rim showed. Tony had to turn his head to see it, as he looked back he could see his straight track till it was lost in the soft veiling dust, and, tiny on the edge of the plain, the two houses of Widgery township. They seemed oddly important—or insignificant, whichever way you choose to take it. The only things in sight. . . . He wondered idly if Widgery would be a real town some day. At present it called itself one, while containing fewer houses than any station you liked to name. Why, a real station was a city to it.

He had not been looking back at Widgery while he thought. The dawn coolness was too valuable for that. After one look he had plodded straight on, the sky was quite blue now, and the few low clouds were dispersing. Soon the heat would begin.

It was not long in coming. He walked till he judged he had gone about fifteen miles, and the sky was pressing on his head like heated brass, so he methodically pegged out his blanket and camped. He had a perverse and childish wish to walk on till he was tired out, but he was determined to do this thing sensibly, especially as Alison saw no sense in it at all! Ten miles or so further on he should strike the first water-hole. After that, there was another in twelve miles, and then a bad stretch—sixty in this weather, they said. Anyhow there was no need to worry yet; if the heat grew no worse it would not even inconvenience him. Tony loved heat, it made him feel, and look, like a basking panther. The biting cold of the New Zealand hill country had been one of the chief horrors of his life; he never thought of it without a mental shudder.

He reached the water-hole in the late afternoon and filled his water-bag there before going on. He might have camped there, but it seemed a waste of time.

There was a splendid rose-scarlet sunset—all flamingo-feathers of cloud. Tony remarked inwardly that it was as