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the shearers had pitched their tent. The cottage was the original station homestead, and was occupied now by the Pratt family, Marsh, Macdonald (the other station hand), and Dan the Maori. A creeper-covered veranda faced a small neglected garden full of straggling shrubs and rose-bushes, and at the back an old orchard and a patch of bush bordered the river bank. Ann halted at the gate leading into the cottage. It was not so much a desire to look at the place, seen dimly in the twilight, as to escape from Mrs. Holmes and Waring. They strolled on towards the camp fire, and she remained gazing across the over-grown flower beds towards the little old house. She tried to picture Dick Holmes with his two brothers, and his sister playing as children in this small garden, thirty years ago. Nice children they must have been, she decided, if they were anything like Holmes himself. But she would not meet them now, for the sister had long ago married and gone to live in England, and the two brothers lay sleeping at Gallipoli.

A voice from the other side of the hedge made her start.

“Come down to fill up the night-pen in the shed?” asked Rodney Marsh, smiling at her.

He wore no hat and his dark hair was wet and smoothed back from his sun-tanned face. The loose white shirt, open at the neck, showed the fine column of his throat, and across his shoulders dangled a colored towel.

“You’ve been in the river,” said Ann.

He nodded.

“We’ve got a swimming pool down at the back of the house there.”