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But no miracle happened. Bob was twelve hundred miles away in Sydney. She’d send a cable to him! She wouldn’t go on to these hateful Holmes people! She’d———

The sound of voices interrupted the sequence of these rash resolves. Evidently one or two people had moved into the bar from a passage-way behind the front hall. Through the half-opened door Ann could hear the clink of glasses, and laughter.

“Rod’s keeping up his courage!”

“What for?” asked a woman’s voice.

“Got to drive the old school ma’am back to Tirau in the buggy. She’ll learn you to speak proper, Rod. No bad words, mind!”

“Isn’t Mrs. Holmes bringing in the car?”

“No, Rod’s been told off for the job. Rod’s a good little boy—always does what he’s told.”

There was the sound of a sudden scuffle, and the crash of a broken glass, and then the woman’s voice again, raised sharply:

“None of your skylarking in here! You’ll pay for that glass, Jack.”

“Rod broke it, But Rod don’t pay, of course—Rod’s the white-headed boy at Omoana.”

Ann pushed open the door, and stood in the entrance. The scuffling stopped, and two men and a woman faced her. The men were young—the woman probably in her middle thirties—and it was she to whom Ann spoke.

“Can you tell me how I can reach Mr. Holmes’s station? I’m their governess. I understood that they were meeting me here.”

She already knew how she was to get to her journey’s end. “Rod” was to drive her in the buggy; but