Part + 

II + 

I + 

The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms continued until March. + 

Through the heat came the baaing of sheep on the plains, moving in great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust from the plains. + 

It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather. Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before the heat of the day began. + 

In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump, handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone, shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air. But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay, moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the busy underground world of the mines. + 

As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium of sunstroke, and Paul’s hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it. Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning; he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie’s room open sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once, in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti⁠—the yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat’s-milk butter or cheese for the two huts. + 

People at first were surprised at Potch’s care of Paul; then they regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of. And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so. He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself did. + 

A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought much of him. “Potch,” they would say, as his father used to, “a little bit of potch!” Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley Heathfield’s son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house, thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut. + 

“He’s the only mate worth a straw Michael’s had since God knows when, ’t anyrate,” Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael for some time. George and Cash agreed with him. + 

George and Watty and Cash had “no time,” as they said themselves, for Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty’s shelter. + 

At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of the shelter’s shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or knew something of. + 

Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a subtle, inexplicable fascination. + 

As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. “It’s up to you to see no harm comes to that girl,” he wrote. “If it does, you can take my word for it, there’s no man on this field will sell to Armitages.” + 

Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year. George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and Son and men of the Ridge. + 

When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George. + 

“Dear Brady,” it said, “I need hardly say your letter was a great shock to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power. Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment of my son’s behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady⁠—whom I will regard as under my charge⁠—you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to visit sins of the children upon the fathers. + 

“The old man seems fair broken up,” Watty remarked. + 

“Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with Armitage and Son⁠—again,” George replied. “If she’s all right⁠ ⁠… well⁠ ⁠… perhaps it’ll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn’t get on all right⁠ ⁠… they won’t neither.” + 

“That’s right,” Watty muttered. + 

The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains, and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light; the sky, dim, and smoking with heat. + 

Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with sunstroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for some time, and a haze the sunstroke had left hovered over his mind. Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping, Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle, and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or dozed the hot, still, midday hours away. + 

When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched Potch with the birds. + 

Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or whitetail, to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not their common property. + 

When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep, mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken from other loves. + 

Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him. He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself. + 

Paul’s illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let him know how he came to have them. + 

All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch’s belief in him, and for not telling Potch how Paul’s opals came into his possession. + 

In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton’s bar. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley. + 

He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul’s cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the box⁠—only the wrappings of newspaper were loose. + 

Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were all right while he was about it, he thought. + 

He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table. Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin; and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the candlelight. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in⁠—a piece of opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless night. + 

One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle, letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in the stones⁠—blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red⁠—melted, sprayed, and scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires. + 

“God! it’s good stuff!” he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and emotion. + 

With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars. + 

Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly. + 

Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay, instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at, tumbled out from the others and lay under the candlelight, winking and flashing. + 

But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement. He was too preoccupied to notice Michael’s movement, or what he was doing. + 

“Snowshoes been here?” he asked, breathlessly. + 

“No,” Michael said. “Why?” + 

He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the light and put it among the others. Potch’s excitement died out. + 

“Oh, nothing,” he said, lamely. “I only thought I saw him making this way.” + 

The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between them. Michael lifted his head to listen. + 

“Who’s that?” he asked; + 

Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars, was blank in the doorway. + 

“May I come in?” a woman’s voice called. Her figure wavered in the doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson’s wife. She stood there on the threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair windblown, her eyes, laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away. + 

“My old nanny’s awful bad, Potch,” she said. “They say there’s no one on the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see what you can do for her?” + 

Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to Maud. + 

“All right,” he said. + 

He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table. + 

“My,” she cried eagerly, “that’s a pretty stone, Michael!” She turned it back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks of red and gold. + 

“Just been noodlin’ over some old scraps⁠ ⁠… and came across it,” Michael said awkwardly. + 

It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul’s opals before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had. + 

“Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle,” Maud said. “Doin’ a bit of dealin’ myself. I’ll give you a good price for it, Michael.” + 

“It’s goin’ into a parcel,” he replied. + 

“Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know,” Maud said. “Comin’, Potch?” + 

She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street urchin’s, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut. + 

II + 

Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies, fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden, flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond the Ridge. + 

Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed Sophie’s singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang. + 

“You miss her these nights, don’t you?” Michael said to Potch one very hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was drifting into the room about them. + 

Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him. + 

“Yes,” he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out of doors. + 

Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working; even the noodlers, Snowshoes and young Flail, were standing round with the miners. + 

“Hullo,” Michael said, “something’s up!” + 

Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only once before on the fields. + 

“Ratting?” he said. + 

“Looks like it,” Michael agreed. + 

“What’s up, George?” he asked, as Potch and he joined the men. + 

“Rats, Michael,” George said, “that’s what’s up. They’ve been on our place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was working on. They’ve paid Archie a visit⁠ ⁠… and Bully reck’ns his spider’s been walking lately, too.” + 

Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat’s visit to their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy O’Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods’ shelter to talk the situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the shelter. + 

George Woods, the best natured, soberest man on the Ridge, was smouldering with rage at the ratting. + 

“I’ve a good mind to put a bit of dynamite at the bottom of the shaft, and then, when a rat strikes a match, up he’ll go,” he said. + 

“But,” Watty objected, “how’d you feel when you found a dead man in your claim, George?” + 

“Feel?” George burst out. “I wouldn’t feel⁠—except he’d got no right to be there⁠—and perlitely put him on one side.” + 

“Remember those chaps was up a couple of years ago, George?” Bill Grant asked, “and helped theirselves when Pony-Fence and me had a bit of luck up at Rhyll’s hill.” + 

“Remember them?” George growled. + 

“They’d go round selling stuff if there was anybody to buy⁠—hang round the pub all day, and yet had stuff to sell,” Watty murmured. + 

The men smoked silently for a few minutes. + 

“How much did they get, again?” Bully Bryant asked. + 

“Couple of months,” George said. + 

“Police protect criminals⁠—everybody knows that,” Snowshoes said. + 

Sitting on the dump just beyond the shade the shelter cast, he had been listening to what the men were saying, the sun full blaze on him, his blue eyes glittering in the shadow of his old felt hat. All eyes turned to him. The men always listened attentively when Snowshoes had anything to say. + 

“If there’s a policeman about, and a man starts ratting and is caught, he gets a couple of months. Well, what does he care? But if there’s a chance of the miners getting hold of him and some rough handling⁠ ⁠… he thinks twice before he rats⁠ ⁠… knowing a broken arm or a pain in his head’ll come of it.” + 

“That’s true,” George said. “I vote we get this bunch ourselves.” + 

“Right!” The Crosses and Bully agreed with him. Watty did not like the idea of the men taking the law into their own hands. He was all for law and order. His fat, comfortable soul disliked the idea of violence. + 

“Seems to me,” he said, “it ’d be a good thing to set a trap⁠—catch the rats⁠—then we’d know where we were.” + 

Michael nodded. “I’m with Watty,” he said. + 

“Then we could hand ’em over to the police,” Watty said. + 

Michael smiled. “Well, after the last batch getting two months, and the lot of us wasting near on two months gettin’ ’em jailed, I reck’n it’s easier to deal with ’em here⁠—But we’ve got to be sure. They’ve got to be caught red-handed, as the sayin’ is. It don’t do to make mistakes when we’re dealin’ out our own justice.” + 

“That’s right, Michael,” the men agreed. + 

“Well, I reck’n we’d ought to have in the police,” Watty remarked obstinately. + 

“The police!” Snowshoes stood up as if he had no further patience with the controversy. “It’s like letting hornets build in your house to keep down flies⁠—to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the flies.” + 

He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure, straighter than any man’s on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet, wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the shingly earth. + 

Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats. + 

Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had “done a moonlight flit,” it was generally agreed that these suspicions were confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself had bought from the gougers. Jun’s and Maud’s flight was taken not only as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men’s resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring them away. + 

When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby. + 

The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary summer months was Bully Bryant’s marriage to Ella Flail, and, although it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple. + 

“Roy O’Mara’s got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael,” Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had thought over what he was going to say. + 

“Yes?” Michael replied. + 

“How about tryin’ our luck there?” Potch ventured. + 

Michael took the suggestion meditatively. Potch and he had been working together for several years with very little luck. They had won only a few pieces of opal good enough to put into a parcel for an opal-buyer when he came to Fallen Star. But Michael was loth to give up the old shaft, not only because he believed in it, but because of the work he and his mates had put into it, and because when they did strike opal there, the mine would be easily worked. But this was the first time Potch had made a suggestion of the sort, and Michael felt bound to consider it. + 

“There’s a bit of a rush on, Snowshoes told me,” Potch said. “Crosses have pegged, and I saw Bill Olsen measurin’ out a claim.” + 

Michael’s reluctance to move was evident. + 

“I feel sure we’ll strike it in the old shaft, sooner or later,” he murmured. + 

“Might be sooner by the coolebah,” Potch said. + 

Michael’s eyes lifted to his, the gleam of a smile in them. + 

“Very well, we’ll pull pegs,” he said. + 

While stars were still in the high sky and the chill breath of dawn in the air, men were busy measuring and pegging claims on the hillside round about the old coolebah. Half a dozen blocks were marked one hundred feet square before the stars began to fade. + 

All the morning men with pegs, picks, and shovels came straggling up the track from the township and from other workings scattered along the Ridge. The sound of picks on the hard ground and the cutting down of scrub broke the limpid stillness. + 

Paul came out of his hut as Potch passed it on his way to the coolebah. Immediately he recognised the significance of the heavy pick Potch was carrying, and trotted over to him. + 

“You goin’ to break new ground, Potch?” he asked. Potch nodded. + 

“There’s a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah,” he said. “Roy O’Mara’s bottomed on opal there⁠ ⁠… got some pretty good colours, and we’re goin’ to peg out.” + 

“A rush?” Paul’s eyes brightened. “Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?” + 

“Not bad.” + 

As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush. + 

Roy O’Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great, bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump⁠—Roy had been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day’s find was spread on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement. + 

When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had marked in his mind’s eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond Roy’s claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat beading and pouring down their faces. + 

There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush. + 

Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal dirt beneath it. Roy O’Mara, working on his trace of promising black potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul. Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft; Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour of sinking again. + 

III + 

Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock from the drives, Potch said: + 

“I’m going to sink another hole, Michael⁠—higher up.” + 

Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but he was not disturbed by his doing so. + 

“Right,” he said; “you sink another hole, Potch. I’ll stick to this one for a bit.” + 

Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had been three weeks on the job. + 

“Ought to be near bottoming, Potch,” Roy remarked one day towards the end of the three weeks. + 

“Be there today,” Potch said. + 

Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then. + 

Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well: they had cut out a pocket worth £400 as a result of their sinking, and it remained to be seen what Potch’s new hole would bring. A good prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned. + 

Potch’s prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine. + 

They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains, for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the mine, uttered a low cry. + 

“Michael,” he called. + 

Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that joyous vibration in a man’s voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went to Potch. + 

Potch was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some size was embedded in the wall of the mine. + 

“Looks a beaut, doesn’t she, Michael?” he gasped. + 

Michael breathed hard. + 

“By God⁠—” he murmured. + 

Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them. + 

He screamed when he saw the stone. + 

“I knew!” he yelled. “I knew we’d strike it here.” + 

“Well, stand back while I get her out,” Potch cried. + 

Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed. + 

When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal. Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with excitement. + 

He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch’s find to the men who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and admiration. + 

“You’ve struck it this time, Potch!” Roy O’Mara said. + 

Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped surface, and held it to the sun again. + 

“It’s the biggest knobby⁠—ever I see,” Archie Cross said. + 

“Same here,” Bill Grant muttered. + 

“Wants polishin’ up a bit,” Michael said, “and then she’ll show better.” + 

As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul’s hut and faced the stone on Sophie’s wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a hen’s egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever seen. + 

Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and excitement in his voice as he talked. + 

Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea. + 

When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across the table to read. + 

Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael’s eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby ever taken out of the fields. + 

Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered book. + 

As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul’s opals flashed before him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them. + 

Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch’s bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion of unworthiness in the object of its belief. + 

But since⁠—since he had made up his mind to give the opals to Paul⁠—since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer in the mysterious no-man’s land of his subconsciousness. + 

Paul’s slow recovery from sunstroke was a reason for deferring explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals, Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul’s opals. + 

But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with them.⁠ ⁠… He mocked his fears of himself. + 

Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own consciousness and to be honest with himself. + 

As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision. He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a dark corner of his mind. + 

Had Paul’s stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul’s stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was ready to steal⁠—steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put off going to Paul and to Watty and George. + 

Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of, Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few books. + 

He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman’s yearbook and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked them over⁠—but he could not find the tin with Paul’s opals in. + 

He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the candle-fight. + 

“They’re gone,” he told himself. + 

He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the box⁠—if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absentmindedly; but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there. + 

Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea. + 

Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on them⁠—not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value. His mind hovered indecisively. Maud? + 

Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat, Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man’s hut either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one else who knew he had any stone worth having. + 

If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun told where those opals of Paul’s had been found, as he would some day⁠—Michael could not contemplate the prospect. + 

He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt. + 

Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him. He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul’s had worked him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of the story Jun would tell⁠—that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men’s stones, and that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to be judged by it. + 

IV + 

Michael and Potch were finishing their tea when Watty burst in on them. His colour was up, his small, blue eyes winking and flashing over his fat, pink cheeks. + 

“Who d’y’ think’s come be motor today, Michael?” he gasped. + 

Michael’s movement and the shade of apprehension which crossed his face were a question. + 

“Old man Armitage!” Watty said. “And he’s come all the way from New York to see the big opal, he says.” + 

There was a rumble of cart wheels, an exclamation and the reverberation of a broad, slow voice out-of-doors. Watty looked through Michael’s window. + 

“Here he is, Michael,” he said. “George and Peter are helping him out of Newton’s dogcart. And Archie Cross and Bill Grant are coming along the road a bit behind.” + 

Michael pushed back his seat and pulled the fastenings from his front door. The front door was more of a decoration and matter of form in the face of the hut than intended to serve any useful purpose, and the fastening had never been moved before. + 

Potch cleared away the litter of the meal while Michael went out to meet the old man. He was walking with the help of a stick, his heavy, colourless face screwed with pain. + 

“Grr-rr!” he grunted. “What a fool I was to come to this Goddamn place of yours, George! What? No fool like an old one? Don’t know so much about that.⁠ ⁠… What else was I to do? Brrr! Oh, there you are, Michael! Came to see you. Came right away because, from what the boys tell me, you weren’t likely to slip down and call on me.” + 

“I’d ’ve come all right if I’d known you wanted to see me, Mr. Armitage,” Michael said. + 

The old man went into the hut and, creaking and groaning as though all his springs needed oiling, seated himself on the sofa, whipped out a silk handkerchief and wiped his face and head with it. + 

“Oh, well,” he said, “here I am at last⁠—and mighty glad to get here. The journey from New York City, where I reside, to this spot on the globe, don’t get any nearer as I grow older. No, sir! Who’s that young man?” + 

Mr. Armitage had fixed his eyes on Potch from the moment he came into the hut. Potch stood to his gaze. + 

“That’s Potch,” Michael said. + 

“Potch?” + 

The small, round eyes, brown with black rims and centres, beginning to dull with age, winked over Potch, and in that moment Dawe Armitage was trying to discover what his chances of getting possession of the stone he had come to see, were with the man who had found it. + 

“Con⁠—gratulate you, young man,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ve come, Lord knows how many miles, to have a look at that stone of yours.” + 

Potch shook hands with him. + 

“They tell me it’s the finest piece of opal ever come out of Ridge earth,” the old man continued. “Well, I couldn’t rest out there at home without havin’ a look at it. To think there was an opal like that about, and I couldn’t get me fingers on it! And when I thought how it was I’d never even see it, perhaps, I danged ’em to Hades⁠—doctors, family and all⁠—took me passage out here. Ran away! That’s what I did.” He chuckled with reminiscent glee. “And here I am.” + 

“Cleared out, did y’, Mr. Armitage?” Watty asked. + 

“That’s it, Watty,” old Armitage answered, still chuckling. “Cleared out.⁠ ⁠… Family’ll be scarrifyin’ the States for me. Sent ’em a cable when I got here to say I’d arrived.” + 

Michael and George laughed with Watty, and the old man looked as pleased with himself as a schoolboy who has brought off some soul-satisfying piece of mischief. + 

“Tell you, boys,” he said, “I felt I couldn’t die easy knowing there was a stone like that about and I’d never clap eyes on it.⁠ ⁠… Know you chaps’d pretty well turned me down⁠—me and mine⁠—and I wouldn’t get more than a squint at the stone for my pains. You’re such damned independent beggars! Eh, Michael? That’s the old argument, isn’t it? How did y’ like those papers I sent you⁠—and that book⁠ ⁠… by the foreign devil⁠—what’s his name? Clever, but mad. Y’r all mad, you socialists, syndicalists, or whatever y’r call y’rselves nowadays.⁠ ⁠… But, for God’s sake, let me have a look at the stone now, there’s a good fellow.” + 

Michael looked at Potch. + 

“You get her, Potch,” he said. + 

Potch put his hand to the top of the shelf where, in an old tin, the great opal lay wrapped in wadding, with a few soft cloths about it. He put the tin on the table. Michael pushed the table toward the sofa on which Mr. Armitage was sitting. The old man leaned forward, his lips twitching, his eyes watering with eagerness. Potch’s clumsy fingers fumbled with the wrappings; he spread the wadding on the table. The opal flashed black and shining between the rags and wadding as Potch put it on the table. Michael had lighted a candle and brought it alongside. + 

Dawe Armitage gaped at the stone with wide, dazed eyes. + 

“My!” he breathed; and again: “My!” Then: “She was worth it, Michael,” fell from him in an awed exclamation. + 

He looked up, and the men saw tears of reverence and emotion in his eyes. He brushed them away and put out his hand to take the stone. He lifted the stone, gently and lovingly, as if it were alive and might be afraid at the approach of his wrinkled old hand. But it was not afraid, Potch’s opal; it fluttered with delight in the hand of this old man, who was a devout lover, and rayed itself like a bird of paradise. Even to the men who had seen the stone before, it had a new and uncanny brilliance. It seemed to coquet with Dawe Armitage; to pour out its infinitesimal stars⁠—red, blue, green, gold, and amethyst⁠—blazing, splintering, and coruscating to dazzle and bewilder him. + 

The men exclaimed as Mr. Armitage moved the opal. Then he put the stone down and mopped his forehead. + 

“Well,” he said, “I reckon she’s the Goddamnedest piece of opal I’ve ever seen.” + 

“She is that,” Watty declared. + 

“What have you got on her, Michael?” Dawe Armitage queried. + 

A faint smile touched Michael’s mouth. + 

“I’m only asking,” Armitage remarked apologetically. “I can tell you, boys, it’s a pretty bitter thing for me to be out of the running for a stone like this. I ain’t even bidding, you see⁠—just inquiring, that’s all.” + 

Michael looked at Potch. + 

“Well,” he said, “it’s Potch’s first bit of luck, and I reck’n he’s got the say about it.” + 

The old man looked at Potch. He was a good judge of character. His chance of getting the stone from Michael was remote; from Potch⁠—a steady, flat look in the eyes, a stolidity and inflexibility about the young man, did not give Dawe Armitage much hope where he was concerned either. + 

“They tell me,” Mr. Armitage said, the twinkling of a smile in his eyes as he realised the metal of his adversary⁠—“they tell me,” he repeated, “you’ve refused three hundred pounds for her?” + 

“That’s right,” Potch said. + 

“How much do you reck’n she’s worth?” + 

“I don’t know.” + 

“How much have you got on her?” + 

Potch looked at Michael. + 

“We haven’t fixed any price,” he said. + 

“Four hundred pounds?” Armitage asked. + 

Potch’s grey eyes lay on his for the fraction of a second. + 

“You haven’t got money enough to buy that stone, Mr. Armitage,” he said, quietly. + 

The old man was crestfallen. Although he pretended that he had no hope of buying the opal, everybody knew that, hoping against hope, he had not altogether despaired of being able to prevail against the Ridge resolution not to sell to Armitage and Son, in this instance. Potch remarked vaguely that he had to see Paul, and went out of the hut. + 

“Oh, well,” Dawe Armitage said, “I suppose that settles the matter. Daresay I was a durned old fool to try the boy⁠—but there you are. Well, since I can’t have her, Michael, see nobody else gets her for less than my bid.” + 

The men were sorry for the old man. What Potch had said was rather like striking a man when he was down, they thought; and they were not too pleased about it. + 

“Potch doesn’t seem to fancy sellin’ at all for a bit,” Michael said. + 

“What!” Armitage exclaimed. “He’s not a miser⁠—at his age?” + 

“It’s not that,” Michael replied. + 

“Oh, well”⁠—the old man’s gesture disposed of the matter. He gazed at the stone entranced again. “But she’s the koh-i-noor of opals, sure enough. But tell me”⁠—he sat back on the sofa for a yarn⁠—“what’s the news of the field? Who’s been getting the stuff?” + 

The gossip of Jun and the ratting was still the latest news of the Ridge; but Mr. Armitage appeared to know as much of that as anybody. Ed Ventry’s boy, who had motored him over from Budda, had told him about it, he said. He had no opinion of Jun. + 

“A bad egg,” he said, and began to talk about bygone days on the Ridge. There was nothing in the world he liked better than smoking and yarning with men of the Ridge about black opal. + 

He was fond of telling his family and their friends, who were too nice and precise in their manners for his taste, and who thought him a boor and mad on the subject of black opal, that the happiest times of his life had been spent on Fallen Star Ridge, “swappin’ lies with the gougers”; yarning with them about the wonderful stuff they had got, and other chaps had got, or looking over some of the opal he had bought, or was going to buy from them. + 

“Oh, well,” Mr. Armitage said after they had been talking for a long time, “it’s great sitting here yarning with you chaps. Never thought⁠ ⁠… I’d be sitting here like this again.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“It’s fine to have a yarn with you, Mr. Armitage,” Michael said. + 

“Thank you, Michael,” the old man replied. “But I suppose I must be putting my old bones to bed.⁠ ⁠… There’s something else I want to talk to you about though, Michael.” + 

The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage’s tone that what he had to say was for Michael alone. + 

“I’ll just have a look if that bally mare of mine’s all right, Mr. Armitage,” Peter Newton said. + 

He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him. + 

“Well, Michael,” Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, “I guess you know what it is I want to talk to you about.” + 

Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment. + 

“That little girl of yours.” + 

Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as if he and not Paul were Sophie’s father. + 

“She”⁠—old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity crossed his face⁠—“I’ve seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I’ve tried to keep an eye on her⁠—but I don’t mind admitting to you that a man needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what’s coming to him where Sophie’s concerned. But first of all⁠ ⁠… she’s well⁠ ⁠… and happy⁠—at least, she appears to be; and she’s a great little lady.” + 

He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it were a page he were trying to read. + 

“You know, she’s singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they say she’s doing well. She’s sought after⁠—made much of. She’s got little old Manhattan at her feet, as they say.⁠ ⁠… I don’t want to gloss over anything that son of mine may have done⁠—but to put it in a nutshell, Michael, he’s in love with her. He’s really in love with her⁠—wants to marry her, but Sophie won’t have him.” + 

Michael did not speak, and he continued: + 

“And there’s this to be said for him. She says it. He isn’t quite so much to blame as we first thought. Seems he’d been making love to her⁠ ⁠… and did a break before.⁠ ⁠… He didn’t mean to be a blackguard, y’ see. You know what I’m driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went⁠—She says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then⁠—well, you know, Michael⁠ ⁠… you’ve been young⁠ ⁠… you’ve been in love. And in Sydney⁠ ⁠… summertime⁠ ⁠… with the harbour there at your feet.⁠ ⁠… + 

“They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the emigration authorities, I don’t know. They make enough fuss about an old fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn’t hear of getting married. Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin’ married. Said her mother had been married⁠—and look what it had brought her to. + 

“She’s fond of John, too,” the old man continued. “But, at present, New York’s a sideshow, and she’s enjoying it like a child on a holiday from the country. I’ve got her living with an old maid cousin of mine.⁠ ⁠… Sophie says by and by perhaps she’ll marry John, but not yet⁠—not now⁠—she’s having too good a time. She’s got all the money she wants⁠ ⁠… all the gaiety and admiration. It’s not the sort of life I like for a woman myself⁠ ⁠… but I’ve done my best, Michael.” + 

There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face before him. Michael responded to it gratefully. + 

“You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage,” he said, “and I’m grateful to you.” + 

“Tell you the truth, Michael,” he said, “I’m fond of her. I feel about her as if she were a piece of live opal⁠—the best bit that fool of a son of mine ever brought from the Ridge.⁠ ⁠…” + 

His face writhed as he got up from the sofa. + 

“But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that. Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It’s a Goddamned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones in me body.” + 

Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him his arm, and they went to Rouminof’s hut. + 

Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage’s arrival; that he had come to the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael’s hut. Paul had gone to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage came into the room. + 

After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile, Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer pockets of his overcoat. + 

“Thought you’d like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof,” he said. “She’s well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And I brought along this.” He held out a photograph. “She wouldn’t give me a photograph for you, Michael⁠—said you’d never know her⁠—so I prigged this from her sitting-room last time I was there.” + 

Michael glanced at the photographer’s card of heavy grey paper, which Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands, he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering through all his consciousness. + 

V + 

Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul’s hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the sunstroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again. + 

Since old Armitage’s visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage’s visit he spent the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton’s veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie’s neglect of him⁠—how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie’s mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised sometimes, talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York. + 

He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of so much drinking on his never very steady brain. + 

For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim and start work again; but Paul would not. + 

“What’s the good,” he had said, “Sophie’ll be sending for me soon, and I’ll be going to live with her in New York, and she won’t want people to be saying her father is an old miner.” + 

Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge; he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer Paul back to more or less regular ways of living. + 

This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that news. + 

Potch had brought Paul home from Newton’s the night before, Michael knew; but Paul was not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael went into the hut. + 

As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door of the room which had been Sophie’s was thrown back. Michael went towards it. + 

“Paul!” he called. + 

No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago. + 

He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the suggestion they conveyed. + 

Sophie exclaimed behind him. + 

When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill. + 

“I’ve come home, Michael,” she said. + 

Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to the Ridge again. + 

They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection. + 

“It’s a sight for sore eyes⁠—the sight of you, Sophie,” he said. + 

“Michael!” + 

Her arms went out to him with the quick gesture he knew. Michael moved to her and caught her in his arms. No moment in all his life had been like this when he held Sophie in his arms as though she were his own child. His whole being swayed to her in an infinite compassion and tenderness. She lay against him, her body quivering. Then she cried, brokenly, with spent passion, almost without strength to cry at all. + 

“There, there!” Michael muttered. “There, there!” + 

He held her, patting and trying to comfort and soothe her, muttering tenderly, and with difficulty because of his trouble for her. The tears she had seen in his eyes when he said she was a sight for sore eyes came from him and fell on her. His hand went over her hair, clumsily, reverently. + 

“There, there!” he muttered again and again. + 

Weak with exhaustion, when her crying was over, Sophie moved away from him. She pushed back the hair which had fallen over her forehead; her eyes had a faint smile as she looked at him. + 

“I am a silly, aren’t I, Michael?” she said. + 

Michael’s mouth took its wry twist. + 

“Are you, Sophie?” he said. “Well⁠ ⁠… I don’t think there’s anyone else on the Ridge’d dare say so.” + 

“I’ve dreamt of that smile of yours, Michael,” Sophie said. She swayed a little as she looked at him; her eyes closed. + 

Michael put his arm round her and led her to the bed. He made her lie down and drew the coverlet over her. + 

“You lay down while I make you a cup of tea, Sophie,” he said. + 

Sophie was lying so still, her face was so quiet and drained of colour when he returned with tea in a pannikin and a piece of thick bread and butter on the only china plate in the hut, that Michael thought she had fainted. But the lashes swept up, and her eyes smiled into his grave, anxious face as he gazed at her. + 

“I’m all right, Michael,” she said, “only a bit crocky and dead tired.” She sat up, and Michael sat on the bed beside her while she drank the tea and ate the bread and butter. + 

“Tea in a pannikin is much nicer than any other tea in the world,” Sophie said. “Don’t you think so, Michael? I’ve often wondered whether it’s the tea, or the taste of the tin pannikin, or the people who have tea in pannikins, that makes it so nice.” + 

After a while she said: + 

“I came up on the coach this morning⁠ ⁠… didn’t get in till about half-past six.⁠ ⁠… And I came straight up from Sydney the day before. That’s all night on the train⁠ ⁠… and I didn’t get a sleeper. Just sat and stared out of the window at the country. Oh! I can’t tell you how badly I’ve wanted to come home, Michael. In the end I felt I’d die if I didn’t come⁠—so I came.” + 

Then she asked about Potch and her father. + 

Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sunstroke, but that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the night before. + 

“I’ll send him up to you, if he’s there,” Michael said. “But you’d better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shuteye you’ve been missing these last two or three days.” + 

“Months, Michael,” Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her eyes again. + 

They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed. + 

“But I’ll sleep all right here,” she said. “I feel as if I’d sleep for years and years.⁠ ⁠… It’s the smell of the paper daisies and the sandalwood smoke, I suppose. The air’s got such a nice taste, Michael.⁠ ⁠… It smells like peace, I think.” + 

“Well,” Michael said, “you eat as much of it as you fancy. I don’t mind if Paul doesn’t find you till he comes back to tea.⁠ ⁠… It’d do you more good to have a sleep now, and then you’ll be feelin’ a bit fitter.” + 

“I think I could go to sleep now, Michael,” Sophie murmured. + 

Michael stood watching her for a moment as she seemed to go to sleep, thinking that the dry, northern air, with its drowsy fragrance, was already beginning to draw the ache from her body and brain. He went to the curtain of the doorway, dropped it, and turned out into the blank sunshine of the day again. + 

He fit his pipe and smoked abstractedly as he walked down the track to the mine. He had already made up his mind that it would be better for Sophie to sleep for a while, and that he was not going to get anyone to look for Paul and send him to her. + 

She had said nothing of the reason for her return, and Michael knew there must be a reason. He could not reconcile the Sophie Dawe Armitage had described as taking her life in America with such joyous zest, and the elegant young woman on the show-page of the illustrated magazine, with the weary and broken-looking girl he had been talking to. Whatever it was that had changed her outlook, had been like an earthquake, devastating all before it, Michael imagined. It had left her with no more than the instinct to go to those who loved and would shelter her. + 

Potch was at work on a slab of shin-cracker when Michael went down into the mine. He straightened and looked up as Michael came to a standstill near him. His face was dripping, and his little white cap, stained with red earth, was wet with sweat. He had been slogging to get through the belt of hard, white stone near the new colours before Michael appeared. + 

“Get him?” he asked. + 

Michael had almost forgotten Paul. + 

“No,” he said, switching his thoughts from Sophie. + 

“What’s up?” Potch asked quickly, perceiving something unusual in Michael’s expression. + 

Michael wanted to tell him⁠—this was a big thing for Potch, he knew⁠—and yet he could not bring his news to expression. It caught him by the throat. He would have to wait until he could say the thing decently, he told himself. He knew what joy it would give Potch. + 

“Nothing,” he said, before he realised what he had said. + 

But he promised himself that in a few minutes he would tell Potch. He would break the news to him. Michael felt as though he were the guardian of some sacred treasure which he was afraid to give a glimpse of for fear of dazzling the beholder. + 

The concern went from Potch’s face as quickly and vividly as it had come. He knew that Michael had reserves from him, and he was afraid of having trespassed on them by asking for information which Michael did not volunteer. He had been betrayed into the query by the stirred and happy look on Michael’s face. Only rarely had he seen Michael look like that. Potch’s thought flashed to Sophie⁠—Michael must have some good news of her, he guessed, and knew Michael would pass it on to him in his own time. + 

He turned to his work again, and Michael took up his pick. Potch’s steady slinging at the shin-cracker began again. Michael reproached himself as the minutes went by for what he was keeping from Potch. + 

He knew what his news would mean to Potch. He knew the solid flesh of the man would grow radiant. Michael had seen that subtle glow transfuse him when they talked of Sophie. He pulled himself together and determined to speak. + 

Dropping his pick to take a spell, Michael pulled his pipe from the belt round his trousers, relighted the ashes in its bowl, and sat on the floor of the mine. Potch also stopped work. He leaned his pick against the rock beside him, and threw back his shoulders. + 

“Where was he?” he asked. + 

“Who⁠—Paul?” + 

Potch nodded, sweeping the drips from his head and neck. + 

“Yes.” + 

Michael decided he would tell him now. + 

“Don’t know,” he said. “He wasn’t about when I came away.” + 

Potch wrung his cap, shook it out, and fitted it on his head again. + 

“He was showin’ all right at Newton’s last night,” he said. “I’d a bit of a business getting him home.” + 

“Go on,” Michael replied absentmindedly. “Potch⁠ ⁠…” he added, and stopped to listen. + 

There was a muffled rumbling and sound of someone calling in the distance. It came from Roy O’Mara’s drive, on the other side of the mine. + 

“Hullo!” Michael called. + 

“That you, Michael?” Roy replied. “I’m comin’ through.” + 

His head appeared through the drive which he had tunnelled to meet Potch’s and Michael’s drive on the eastern side of the mine. He crawled out, shook himself, took out his pipe, and squatted on the floor beside Michael. + 

“Where’s Rummy?” Roy asked. + 

Michael shook his head. + 

“You didn’t get him down, after all⁠—the boys were taking bets about it last night.” + 

“We’ll get him yet,” Potch said. “The colour’ll work like one thing.” + 

Michael stared ahead of him, smoking as though his thoughts absorbed him. + 

“He was pretty full at Newton’s last night,” Roy said, “and talkin’⁠—talkin’ about Sophie singing in America, and the great lady she is now. And how she was goin’ to send for him, and he’d be leavin’ us soon, and how sorry we’d all be then.” + 

“Should’ve thought you’d about wore out that joke,” Michael remarked, dryly. + 

Roy’s easy, good-natured voice faltered. + 

“Oh, well,” he said, “he likes to show off a bit, and it don’t hurt us, Michael.” + 

“That’s right,” Michael returned; “but Potch was out half the night bringing him home. You chaps might remember Paul’s our proposition when you’re having a bit of fun out of him.” + 

Potch turned back to his work. + 

“Right, Michael,” Roy said. And then, after a moment, having decided that both Michael’s and Potch’s demeanours were too calm for them to have heard what he had, as if savouring the effect of his news, he added: + 

“But perhaps we won’t have many more chances-seein’ Rummy’ll be going to America before long, perhaps⁠—” + 

Michael, looking at Roy through his tobacco smoke, realised that he knew about Sophie’s having come home. His glance travelled to Potch, who was slogging at the cement stone again. + 

“Saw old Ventry on me way down to the mine,” Roy said, “and he said he’d a passenger on the coach last night.⁠ ⁠… Who do you think it was?” + 

Michael dared not look at Potch. + 

“He said,” Roy murmured slowly, “it was Sophie.” + 

They knew that Potch’s pick had stopped. Michael had seen a tremor traverse the length of his bared back; but Potch did not turn. He stood with his face away from them, immobile. His body dripped with sweat and seemed to be oiled by the garish light of the candle which outlined his head, gilded his splendid arms and torso against the red earth of the mine, and threw long shadows into the darkness, shrouding the workings behind him. Then his pick smashed into the cement stone with a force which sent sharp, white chips flying in every direction. + 

When Roy crawled away through the tunnel to his own quarters, Potch swung round from the face he was working on, his eyes blazing. + 

“Is it true?” he gasped. + 

“Yes,” Michael said. + 

After a moment he added: “I found her in the hut this morning just before I came away. I been tryin’ all these blasted hours to tell you, Potch⁠ ⁠… but every time I tried, it got me by the neck, and I had to wait until I found me voice.” + 

VI + 

The sunset was fading, a persimmon glow failing from behind the trees, its light merging with the blue of the sky, creating the faint, luminous green which holds the first stars with such brilliance, when Sophie went out of the hut to meet Potch. + 

The smell of sandalwood burning on the fireplace in the kitchen she had just left, was in the air. Such soothing its fragrance had for her! And on the shingly soil, between the old dumps cast up a little distance from the huts, in every direction, the paper daisies were lying, white as driven snow in the wan light. Sophie went to the goat-pen, strung round with a light, crooked fence, a few yards from the back of the house. + 

As she leaned against the fence she could hear the tinkling of a goat-bell in the distance. The fragrances, the twilight, and the quiet were balm to her bruised senses. The note of a bell sounded nearer. Potch was bringing the goats in. + 

Sophie went to the shed and stood near it, so that she might see him before he saw her. A kid in the shed bleated as the note of the bell became harsher and nearer. Sophie heard the answering cry of the nanny among the three or four goats coming down to the yard along a narrow track from a fringe of trees beyond the dumps. Then she saw Potch’s figure emerge from the trees. + 

He drove the goats into the yard where two sticks of the fence were down, put up the rails, and went to the shed for a milking bucket. He came back into the yard, pulled a little tan-and-white nanny beside a low box on which he sat to milk, and the squirt and song of milk in the pail began. Sophie wondered what Potch was thinking of as he sat there milking. She remembered the night⁠—Potch had been sitting just like that⁠—when she told him her mother was dead. As she remembered, she saw again every flicker and gesture of his, the play of light on his broad, heavy face and head, with its shock of fairish hair; how his face had puckered up and looked ugly and childish as he began to cry; how, after a while, he had wiped his eyes and nose on his shirtsleeve, and gone on with the milking again, crying and sniffling in a subdued way. + 

There was a deep note of loving them in his voice, rough and burred though it was, as Potch spoke to the goats. Two of them came when he called. + 

When he had nearly finished milking, Sophie moved away from the screen of the shed. She went along to the fence and stood where he could see her when he looked up. + 

The light had faded, and stars were glimmering in the luminous green of the sky when Potch, as he released the last goat, pushed back the box he had been sitting on, got up, took his bucket by the handle, and, looking towards the fence, saw Sophie standing there. At first he seemed to think she was a figure of his imagination, he stood so still gazing at her. He had often thought of her, leaning against the rails there, smiling at him like that. Then he remembered Sophie had come home; that it was really Sophie herself by the fence as he had dreamed of seeing her. But her face was wan and ethereal in the half-light; it floated before him as if it were a drowned face in the still, thin air. + 

“She’s very like my old white nanny, Potch,” Sophie said, her eyes glancing from Potch to the goat he had just let go and which had followed him across the yard. + 

“Yes,” Potch said. + 

“She might almost be Annie Laurie’s daughter,” Sophie said. + 

“She’s her granddaughter,” Potch replied. + 

He put the bucket down at the rails and stooped to get through them. Before he took up the bucket again he stood looking at her as though to assure himself that it was really Sophie in the flesh who was waiting for him by the fence. Then he took up the bucket, and they walked across to Michael’s hut together. + 

Potch dared scarcely glance at her when he realised that Sophie was really walking beside him⁠—Sophie herself⁠—although her eyes and her voice were not the eyes and voice of the Sophie he had known. And he had so often dreamed of her walking beside him that the dream seemed almost more real than the thing which had come to pass. + 

Sophie went with him to the lean-to, where the milk-dishes stood on a bench under the window outside Michael’s hut. She watched Potch while he strained the milk and poured it into big, flat dishes on a bench under the window. + 

Paul came to the door of their own hut. He called her. Sophie could hear voices exclaiming and talking to Paul and Michael. She supposed that the people her father had said were coming from New Town to see her had arrived. She dreaded going into the room where they all were, although she knew that she must go. + 

“Are you coming, Potch?” she asked. + 

His eyes went from her to his hands. + 

“I’ll get cleaned up a bit first,” he said, “then I’ll come.” + 

The content in his eyes as they rested on her was transferred to Sophie. It completed what the fragrances, those first minutes in the quiet and twilight had done for her. It gave her a sense of having come to haven after a tempestuous journey on the high seas beyond the reef of the Ridge, and of having cast anchor in the lee of a kindly and sheltering land. + 

VII + 

Michael had lit the lamp in Rouminof’s kitchen; innumerable tiny-winged insects, moths, mosquitoes, midges, and golden-winged flying ants hung in a cloud about it. Martha M’Cready, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and George Woods were there talking to Paul and Michael when Sophie went into the kitchen. + 

“Here she is,” Paul said. + 

Martha rose from her place on the sofa and trundled cross to her. + 

“Dearie!” she cried, as George and Pony-Fence called: + 

“H’llo, Sophie!” + 

And Sophie said: “Hullo, George! Hullo, Pony-Fence!” + 

Martha’s embrace cut short what else she may have had to say. Sophie warmed to her as she had when she was a child. Martha had been so plump and soft to rub against, and a sensation of sheer animal comfort and rejoicing ran through Sophie as she felt herself against Martha again. The slight briny smell of her skin was sweet to her with associations of so many old loving and impulsive hugs, so much loving kindness. + 

“Oh, Mother M’Cready,” she cried, a more joyous note in her voice than Michael had yet heard, “it is nice to see you again!” + 

“Lord, lovey,” Martha replied, disengaging her arms, “and they’d got me that scared of you⁠—saying what a toff you were. I thought you’d be tellin’ me my place if I tried this sort of thing. But when I saw you a minute ago, I clean forgot all about it. I saw you were just my own little Sophie back again⁠ ⁠… and I couldn’t ’ve helped throwing me arms round you⁠—not for the life of me.” + 

She was winking and blinking her little blue eyes to keep the tears in them, and Sophie laughed the tears back from her eyes too. + 

“There she is!” a great, hearty voice exclaimed in the doorway. + 

And Bully Bryant, carrying the baby, with Ella beside him, came into the room. + 

“Bully!” Sophie cried, as she went towards them, “And Ella!” + 

Ella threw out her arms and clung to Sophie. + 

“She’s been that excited, Sophie,” Bully said, “I couldn’t hardly get her to wait till this evening to come along.” + 

“Oh, Bully!” Ella protested shyly. + 

“And the baby?” Sophie cried, taking his son from Bull. “Just fancy you and Ella being married, Bully, and having a baby, and me not knowing a word about it!” + 

The baby roared lustily, and Bully took him from Sophie as Watty Frost, the Crosses, and Roy O’Mara came through the door. + 

“Hullo, Watty, Archie, Tom, Roy!” Sophie exclaimed with a little gasp of pleasure and excitement, shaking hands with each one of them as they came to her. + 

She had not expected people to come to see her like this, and was surprised by the genial warmth and real affection of the greetings they had given her. Everybody was laughing and talking, the little room was full to brimming when Bill Grant appeared in the doorway, and beside him the tall, gaunt figure of the woman Sophie loved more than any other woman on the Ridge⁠—Maggie Grant, looking not a day older, and wearing a blue print dress with a pin-spot washed almost out of it, as she had done as long as Sophie could remember. + 

Sophie went to the long, straight glance of her eyes as to a call. Maggie kissed her. She did not speak; but her beautiful, deep-set eyes spoke for her. Sophie shook hands with Bill Grant. + 

“Glad to see you back again, Sophie,” he said simply. + 

“Thank you, Bill,” she replied. + 

Then Potch came in; and behind him, slowly, from out of the night, Snowshoes. The Grants had moved from the door to give him passage; but he stood outside a moment, his tall, white figure and old sugar-loaf hat outlined against the blue-dark wall of the night sky, as though he did not know whether he would go into the room or not. + 

Then he crossed the threshold, took off his hat, and stood in a stiff, gallant attitude until Sophie saw him. He had a fistful of yellow flowers in one hand. Everybody knew Sophie had been fond of punti. But there were only a few bushes scattered about the Ridge, and they had done flowering a month ago, so Snowshoes’ bouquet was something of a triumph. He must have walked miles, to the swamp, perhaps, to find it, those who saw him knew. + 

“Oh, Mr. Riley!” Sophie cried, as she went to shake hands with him. + 

“They still call me Snowshoes, Sophie,” the old man said. + 

The men laughed, and Sophie joined them. She knew, as they all did, that although anyone of them was called by the name the Ridge gave him, no one ever addressed Snowshoes as anything but Mr. Riley. + 

He held the flowers out to her. + 

“Punti!” she exclaimed delightedly, holding the yellow blossoms to her nose. “Isn’t it lovely?⁠ ⁠… No flower in the world’s got such a perfume!” + 

Michael had explained to the guests that Sophie was not to be asked to sing, and that nothing was to be said about her singing. Something had gone wrong with her voice, he told two or three of the men. + 

He thought he had put the fear of God into Paul, and had managed to make him understand that it distressed Sophie to talk about her singing, and he must not bother her with questions about it. But in a lull of the talk Paul’s voice was raised querulously: + 

“What I can’t make out, Sophie,” he said, “is why you can’t sing? What’s happened to your voice? Have you been singing too much? Or have you caught cold? I always told you you’d have to be careful, or your voice’d go like your mother’s did. If you’d listened to me, now, or I’d been with you.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Bully Bryant, catching Michael’s eye, burst across Paul’s drivelling with a hearty guffaw. + 

“Well,” he said, “Sophie’s already had a sample of the fine lungs of this family, and I don’t mind givin’ her another, and then Ella and me’ll have to be takin’ Buffalo Bill home to bed. Now then, old son, just let ’em see what we can do.” He raised his voice to singing pitch: + 

“For-er she’s a jolly good fellow, for-er⁠—” + 

All the men and women in the hut joined in Bully’s roar, singing in a way which meant much more than the words⁠—singing from their hearts, every man and woman of them. + 

Then Bully put his baby under his arm as though it were a bundle of washing, Ella protesting anxiously, and the pair of them said good night to Sophie. Snowshoes went out before them; and Martha said she would walk down to the town with Bully and Ella. Bill Grant and Maggie said good night. + 

“Sophie looks as if she’d sleep without rocking tonight,” Maggie Grant said by way of indicating that everybody ought to go home soon and let Sophie get to bed early. + 

“I will,” Sophie replied. + 

Pony-Fence and the Crosses were getting towards the door, Watty and George followed them. + 

“It’s about time you was back, that’s what I say, Sophie,” George Woods said, gripping her hand as he passed. “There’s been no luck on this field since you went away.” + 

Sophie smiled into his kindly brown eyes. + 

“That’s right,” Watty backed up his mate heartily. + 

“But,” Sophie said, “they tell me Potch has had all the luck.” + 

“So he has,” George Woods agreed. + 

“It’s a great stone, isn’t it, Sophie?” Watty said. + 

“I haven’t seen it yet,” Sophie said. “Michael said he’d get Potch to show it to me tonight.” + 

“Not seen it?” George gasped. “Not seen the big opal! Say, boys”⁠—he turned to Pony-Fence, and the Crosses⁠—“I reck’n we’ll have to stay for this. Sophie hasn’t seen Potch’s opal yet. Bring her along, Potch. Bring her along, and let’s all have another squint at her. You can’t get too much of a good thing.” + 

“Right,” Potch replied. + 

He went out of the hut to bring the opal from his own room. + 

“Reck’n it’s the finest stone ever found on this field,” Watty said, “and the biggest. How much did you say Potch had turned down for it, Michael?” + 

“Four hundred,” Michael said. + 

“What are you hangin’ on to her for, Michael?” Pony-Fence asked. + 

Michael shook his head, that faint smile of his flickering. + 

“Potch’s had an idea he didn’t want to part with her,” he said. “But I daresay he’ll be letting her go soon.” + 

He did not say “now.” But the men understood that. They guessed that Potch had been waiting for this moment; that he wanted to show Sophie the stone before selling it. + 

Potch came into the room again, his head back, an indefinable triumph and elation in his eyes as they sought Sophie’s. He had a mustard tin, skinned of its gaudy paper covering, in his hand. A religious awe and emotion stirred the men as, standing beside Sophie, he put the tin on the table. They crowded about the table, muscles tightening in sun-red, weather-tanned faces, some of them as dark as the bronze of an old penny, the light in their eyes brightening, sharpening⁠—a thirsting, eager expression in every face. Potch screwed off the lid of the tin, lifted the stone in its wrappings, and unrolled the dingy flannel which he had put round it. Then he took the opal from its bed of cotton wool. + 

Sophie leaned forward, her eyes shining, her breath coming quickly. The emotion in the room made itself felt through her. + 

“Put out the lamp, Michael, and let’s have a candle,” George said. + 

Michael turned out the lamp, struck a match and set it to the candle in a bottle on the dresser behind him. He put the candle on the table. Potch held the great opal to the light, he moved it slowly behind the flame of the candle. + 

“Oh!” + 

Sophie’s cry of quivering ecstasy thrilled her hearers. She was one of them; she had been brought up among them. They had known she would feel opal as they did. But that cry of hers heightened their enthusiasm. + 

The breaths of suppressed excitement and admiration, and their muttered exclamations went up: + 

“Now, she’s showin’!” + 

“God, look at her now!” + 

Sophie followed every movement of the opal in Potch’s hand. It was a world in itself, with its thousand thousand suns and stars, shimmering and changing before her eyes as they melted mysteriously in the jetty pool of the stone. + 

“Oh!” she breathed again, amazed, dazed, and rapturous. + 

Potch came closer to her. They stood together, adoring the orb of miraculous and mysterious beauty. + 

“Here,” Potch said, “you hold her, Sophie.” + 

Sophie put out her hand, trembling, filled with childlike awe and emotion. She stretched her fingers. The stone weighed heavy and cold on them. Then there was a thin, silvery sound like the shivering of glass.⁠ ⁠… Her hand was light and empty. She stood staring at it for a moment; her eyes went to Potch’s face, aghast. The blood seemed to have left her body. She stood so with her hand out, her lips parted, her eyes wide.⁠ ⁠… + 

After a while she knew Potch was holding her, and that he was saying: + 

“It’s all right! It’s all right, Sophie!” + 

She could feel him, something to lean against, beside her. Michael lifted the candle. With strange intensity, as though she were dreaming, Sophie saw the men had fallen away from the table. All their faces were caricatures, distorted and ghastly; and they were looking at the floor near her. Sophie’s eyes went to the floor, too. She could see shattered stars⁠—red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst⁠—out across the earthen floor. + 

Michael put the candle on the floor. He and George Woods gathered them up. When Sophie looked up, the dark of the room swam with galaxies of those stars⁠—red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst. + 

She stood staring before her: she had lost the power to move or to think. After a while she knew that the men had gone from the room, and that Potch was still beside her, his eyes on her face. He had eyes only for her face: he had barely glanced at the floor, where infinitesimal specks of coloured light were still winking in the dust. He took her hands. Sophie heard him talking, although she did not know what he was saying. + 

When she began to understand what Potch was saying, Sophie was sitting on the sofa under the window, and Potch was kneeling beside her. At first she heard him talking as if he were a long way away. She tried to listen; tried to understand what he was saying. + 

“It’s all right, Sophie,” Potch kept saying, his voice breaking. + 

Sight of her suffering overwhelmed him; and he trembled as he knelt beside her. Sophie heard him crying distantly: + 

“It’s all right! It’s all right, Sophie!” + 

She shuddered. Her eyes went to him, consciousness in their blank gaze. Potch, realising that, murmured incoherently: + 

“Don’t think of it any more.⁠ ⁠… It was yours, Sophie. It was for you I was keeping it.⁠ ⁠… Michael knew that, too. He knew that was why I didn’t want to sell.⁠ ⁠… It was your opal⁠ ⁠… to do what you liked with, really. That was what I meant when I put it in your hand. But don’t let us think of it any more. I don’t want to think of it any more.” + 

“Oh!” Sophie cried, in a bitter wailing; “it’s true, I believe⁠ ⁠… somebody said once that I’m as unlucky as opal⁠—that I bring people bad luck like opal.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“You know what we say on the Ridge?” Potch said; “The only bad luck you get through opal is when you can’t get enough of it⁠—so the only bad luck you’re likely to bring to people is when they can’t get enough of you.” + 

“Potch!” + 

Sophie’s hands went to him in a flutter of breaking grief. The forgiveness she could not ask, the gratitude for his gentleness, which she could not express any other way, were in the gesture and exclamation. + 

On her hands, through his hot, clasped hands, the whole of Potch’s being throbbed. + 

“Don’t think of it any more,” he begged. + 

“But it was your luck⁠—your wonderful opal⁠—and⁠ ⁠… I broke it, Potch. I spoilt your luck.” + 

“No,” Potch said, borne away from himself on the flood of his desire to assuage her distress. “You make everything beautiful for me, Sophie. Since you came back I haven’t thought of the stone: I’d forgotten it.⁠ ⁠… This hasn’t been the same place. I’m so filled up with happiness because you’re here that I can’t think of anything else.” + 

Sophie looked into his face, her eyes swimming. She saw the deep passion of love in Potch’s eyes; but she turned away from the light it poured over her, her face overcast again, bitterness and grief in it. She hung so for a moment; then her hands went over her face and she was crying abstractedly, wearily. + 

There was something in her aloofness in that moment which chilled Potch. His instincts, sensitive as the antennae of an insect, wavered over her, trying to discover the cause of it. Conscious of a mood which excluded him, he withdrew his hand from her. Sophie groped for it. Then the sense of sex and of barriers swept from him, by the passion of his desire to comfort and console her. Potch put his arm round her and drew Sophie to him, murmuring with an utter tenderness, “Sophie! Sophie!” + 

Later she said: + 

“I can’t tell you⁠ ⁠… what happened⁠ ⁠… out there, Potch. Not yet⁠ ⁠… not now.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps some day I will. It hurt so much that it took all the singing out of me. My heart wouldn’t move⁠ ⁠… so my voice died. I thought if I came home, you and Michael wouldn’t mind⁠ ⁠… my being like I am. But you’ve all been so good to me, Potch⁠ ⁠… and it’s so restful here, I was beginning to think that life might go on from where I left it; that it might be just a quiet living together and loving, like it was before.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“It can, Sophie!” Potch said, his eyes on her face, wistful and eager to read her thought. + 

“But look what I’ve done,” she said. + 

Potch lifted her hand to his lips, a resurge of the virile male in him moving his restraint. + 

“I’ve told you,” he said, “what you’ve done. You’ve put joy into all our hearts⁠—just to see you again. Michael’s told you that, too, and George and the rest of them.” + 

“Yes, but, Potch⁠ ⁠…” Sophie paused, and he saw the shadow of dark thoughts in her eyes again. “I’m not what you think I am. I’m not like any of you think.” + 

Potch’s grip on her hand tightened. + 

“You’re you⁠—and you’re here. That’s enough for us!” he said. + 

Sophie sighed. “I never dreamt everybody would be so good. You and Michael I knew would⁠—but the others⁠ ⁠… I thought they’d remember⁠ ⁠… and disapprove of me, Potch.⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Watty”⁠—a smile showed faintly in her eyes⁠—“I thought she’d see to that.” + 

“I daresay she’s done her best,” Potch said, with a memory of Watty’s valiant bearing and angry, bright eyes when he came into the hut. “Watty was vexed⁠ ⁠… she wouldn’t come with him tonight.” + 

“Was he?” + 

Potch nodded. “What you didn’t reck’n on,” he said, “was that all of us here⁠ ⁠… we⁠—we love you, Sophie, and we’re glad you’re back again.” + 

Her eyes met him in a straight, clear glance. + 

“You and Michael,” she said, “I knew you loved me, Potch.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“You know how it’s always been with me,” Potch said, grateful that he might talk of his love, although he had been afraid to since she had cried, fearing thought of it stirred that unknown source of distress. “But I won’t get in your way here, Sophie, because of that. I won’t bother you⁠ ⁠… I want just to stand by⁠—and help you all I know how.” + 

“I love you, too, Potch,” Sophie said; “but there are so many ways of loving. I love you because you love me; because your love is the one sure thing in the world for me.⁠ ⁠… I’ve thought of it when I’ve been hurt and lonely.⁠ ⁠… I came back because it was here⁠ ⁠… and you were here.” + 

Potch’s eyes were illumined; his face blazed as though a fire had been engendered in the depths of his body. He remained so a moment, curbed and overcome with emotion. The shadow deepened in Sophie’s eyes as she looked at him; her face was grave and still. + 

“I do love you, Potch,” she said again; “not as I loved someone else, once. That was different. But you’re so good to me⁠ ⁠… and I’m so tired.” + 

VIII + 

The days which followed that night when Sophie had dropped the great opal were the happiest Potch had ever known. They were days in which Sophie turned to smile at him when he went into Rouminof’s hut; when her eyes lay in his serenely; when he could go to her, and stand near her, inhaling her being, before he stooped to kiss her hair; when she would put back her head so that he might find her lips and take her breath from them in the lingering kiss she gave. + 

When she had laid her head back on his shoulder sometimes, closing her eyes, an expression of infinite rest coming over her face, Potch had gazed at it, wondering what world of thought lay beneath that still, sleep-like mask as, it rested on his shoulder; what thought or emotion set a nerve quivering beneath her skin, as the water of some still pool quivers when an insect stirs beneath it. + 

Sophie had no tricks of sex with Potch. She went to him sometimes when ghosts of her mind were driving her before them. She went to him because she was sure that she could go to him, whatever her reasons for going. With Potch there was no need for explanations. + 

His quiet strength of body and mind had something to do with the rest and assurance which his very presence gave her. It was like being a baby and lying in a cradle again to have his arm about her; no harm or ill could reach her behind the barrier they raised, Sophie thought. She knew Potch loved her with all the passion of a virile man as well as with a love like the ocean into which all her misdeeds of commission and omission might be dropped. And she had as intimate and sympathetic a knowledge of Potch as he had of her. Sophie thought that nothing he might do could make her care less, or be less appreciative of him. She loved him, she said, with a love of the tenderest affection. If it lacked an irresistible impulse, she thought it was because she had lost the power to love in that way; but she hoped some day she would love Potch as he loved her⁠—without reservations. For the time being she loved him gratefully; her gratitude was as immense as his love. + 

Potch divined as much; Sophie had not tried to tell him how she felt about him, but he understood, perhaps better than she could tell him. His humility was equal to any demand she could make of him. He had not sufficient belief in himself or his worth to believe that Sophie could ever love him as he loved her: he did not expect it. The only way for him to take with his love was the way of faith and service. “To love is to be all made of faith and service.” He had taken that for his text for life, and for Sophie. He could be happy holding to it. + 

Sophie’s need of him made Potch happier than he had ever hoped to be; but he could not help believing that the life with her which had etched itself on the horizon of his future would mist away, as the mirages which quiver on the long edges of the plains do, as you approach them. + 

The days were blessed and peaceful to Sophie, too; but she, also, was afraid that something might happen to disturb them. She wanted to marry Potch in order to secure them, and to live and work with him on the Ridge. She wanted to live the life of any other woman on the Ridge with her mate. Life looked so straight and simple that way. She could see it stretching before her into the years. Her hands would be full of real things. She would be living a life of service and usefulness, in accordance with the ideal the Ridge had set itself, and which Michael had preached with the zeal of a latter-day saint. She believed her life would shape itself to this future; but sometimes a wraith in the back-country of her mind rose shrieking: “Never! Never!” + 

It threw her into the outer darkness of despair, that cry, but she had learned to exorcise its influence by going to Potch and lifting her lips for him to kiss. + 

“What is it?” he asked one day, vaguely aware of the meaning of the movement. + 

Before the reverence and worship of his eyes the wraith fled. Sophie took his face between her hands. + 

“Oh, my dear,” she murmured, her eyes straining on his face, “I do love you⁠ ⁠… and I will love you, more and more.” + 

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Potch said. “I love you enough for both of us.⁠ ⁠… Just think of me”⁠—he lifted her hand and kissed the back of it gently⁠—“like this⁠—your hand⁠—a sort of third hand.” + 

When he came back from the mine in the afternoon Potch went to see Sophie, cut wood for her, and do any odd jobs she might need done. Sometimes he had tea with her, and they read the reviews and books Michael passed on to them. In the evening they went for a walk, usually towards the Old Town, and sat on a long slope of the Ridge overlooking the Rouminofs’ first home⁠—near where they had played when they were children, and had watched the goats feeding on green patches between the dumps. + 

They had awed talks there; and now and then the darkness, shutting off sight of each other, had made something like disembodied spirits of them, and their spirits communicated dumbly as well as on the frail wind of their voices. + 

They yarned and gossiped sometimes, too, about the things that had happened, and what Potch had done while Sophie was away. She asked a good deal about the ratting, and about Jun and Maud. Potch tried to avoid talking of it and of them. He had evaded her questions, and Sophie returned to them, perplexed by his reticence. + 

“I don’t understand, Potch,” she said on one occasion. “You found out that Maud and Jun had something to do with the ratting, and you went over to Jun’s⁠ ⁠… and told them you were going to tell the boys.⁠ ⁠… They must have known you would tell. Maud⁠—” + 

Potch’s expression, a queer, sombre and shamed heaviness of his face, arrested her thought. + 

“Maud⁠—” she murmured again. “I see,” she added, “it was just Maud⁠—” + 

“Yes,” Potch said. + 

“That explains a good deal.” Sophie’s eyes were on the distant horizon of the plains; her fingers played idly with quartz pebbles, pink-stained like rose coral, lying on the earth about her. + 

“What does it explain?” Potch asked. + 

“Why,” Sophie said, “for one thing⁠—how you grew up. You’ve changed since I went away, Potch, you know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

His smile showed a moment. + 

“I’m older.” + 

“Older, graver, harder⁠ ⁠… and kinder, though you always had a genius for kindness, Potch.⁠ ⁠… But Maud⁠—” + 

Potch turned his head from her. Sophie regarded his averted profile thoughtfully. + 

“I understand,” she said. + 

Potch took her gaze steadily, but with troubled eyes. + 

“I wish⁠ ⁠… somehow⁠ ⁠… I needn’t ’ve done what I did,” he said. + 

“You’d have hated her, if you had gone back on the men⁠—because of her.” + 

“That’s right,” Potch agreed. + 

“And⁠—you don’t now?” + 

“No.” + 

“I saw her⁠—Maud⁠—in New York⁠ ⁠… before I came away,” Sophie said slowly. “She was selling opal.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Did she show you the stones?” + 

“That’s just what Michael asked me,” Sophie said. + 

“Michael?” Potch’s face clouded. + 

“She didn’t show them to me, but I know who saw them all⁠—he bought them⁠—Mr. Armitage.” + 

“The old man?” + 

“No, John.” + 

After a minute Sophie said: + 

“Why are you so keen about those stones Maud had, Potch? Michael is, too.⁠ ⁠… Most of them were taken from the claims, I suppose⁠—but was there anything more than that?” + 

“It’s hard to say.” Potch spoke reluctantly. “There’s nothing more than a bit of guesswork in my mind⁠ ⁠… and I suppose it’s the same with Michael. I haven’t said anything to Michael about it, and he hasn’t to me, so it’s better not to mention it.” + 

“There’s a good deal changed on the Ridge since I went away,” Sophie remarked musingly. + 

“The new rush, and the school, the Bush Brothers’ church, and Mrs. Watty’s veranda?” + 

“I don’t mean that,” Sophie said. “It’s the people and things⁠ ⁠… you, for instance, and Michael⁠—” + 

“Michael?” Potch exclaimed. “He’s wearing the same old clothes, the same old hat.” + 

Sophie was too much in earnest to respond to the whimsey. + 

“He’s different somehow⁠ ⁠… I don’t quite know how,” she said. “There’s a look about him⁠—his eyes⁠—a disappointed look, Potch.⁠ ⁠… It hurt him when I went away, I know. But now⁠—it’s not that.⁠ ⁠…” + 

As Potch did not reply, Sophie’s eyes questioned him earnestly. + 

“Has anything happened,” she asked, “to make Michael look like that?” + 

“I⁠ ⁠… don’t know,” Potch replied. + 

Answered by the slow and doubtful tone of his denial, Sophie exclaimed: + 

“There is something, Potch! I don’t want to know what it is if you can’t tell me. I’m only worried about Michael.⁠ ⁠… I’d always thought he had the secret of that inside peace, and now he looks⁠—Oh, I can’t bear to see him look as he does.⁠ ⁠… And he seems to have lost interest in things⁠—the life here⁠—everything.” + 

“Yes,” Potch admitted. + 

“Only tell me,” Sophie urged, “is this that’s bothering Michael likely to clear, and has it been hanging over him for long?” + 

Potch was silent so long that she wondered whether he was going to answer the question. Then he said slowly: + 

“I⁠ ⁠… don’t know. I really don’t know anything, Sophie. I happened to find out⁠—by accident⁠—that Michael’s pretty worried about something. I don’t rightly know what, or why. That’s all.” + 

The even pace of those days gave Sophie the quiet mind she had come to the Ridge for. There was healing for her in the fragrant air, the sunshiny days, the blue-dark nights, with their unclouded, starry skies. She went into the shed one morning and threw the bags from the cutting-wheel which had been her mother’s, cleared and cleaned up the room, rearranged the boxes, put out her working gear, and cut and polished one or two stones which were lying on a saucer beside the wheel, to discover whether her hand had still its old deftness. Michael was delighted with the work she showed him in the evening, and gave her several small stones to face and polish for him. + 

Every day then Sophie worked at her wheel for a while. George and Watty, Bill Grant and the Crosses brought stuff for her to cut and polish, and in a little while her life was going in the even way it had done before she left the Ridge, but it was a long time before Sophie went about as she used to. After a while, however, she got into the way of walking over to see Maggie Grant or Martha M’Cready in the afternoon, occasionally; but she never talked to them of her life away from the Ridge; they never spoke of it to her. + 

Only one thing had disturbed her slightly⁠—seeing Arthur Henty one evening as she and Martha were coming from the Three Mile. + 

He had come towards them, with a couple of stockmen, driving a mob of cattle. Dust rose at the heels of the cattle and horses; the cattle moved slowly; and the sun was setting in the faces of the men behind the cattle. Sophie did not know who they were until a man on a chestnut horse stared at her. His face was almost hidden by his beard; but after the first glance she recognised Arthur Henty. They passed as people do in a dream, Sophie and Martha back from the road, the men riding off the cattle, Arthur with the stockmen and cattle which a cloud of dust enveloped immediately. The dark trees by the roadside swayed, dipped in the gold of the sunset, when they had passed. The image of Arthur Henty riding like that in the dust behind the cattle, his face gilded by the light of the setting sun, came to Sophie again and again. She was a little disturbed by it; but it was only natural that she should be, she thought. She had not seen Arthur since the night of the ball, and so much had happened to both their lives since then. + 

She saw him once or twice in the township afterwards. He had stared at her; Sophie had bowed and smiled, but they had not spoken. Later, she had seen him lounging on the veranda at Newton’s, or hanging his bridle over the pegs outside Ezra Smith’s billiard saloon, and neither her brain nor pulse had quickened at the sight of him. She was pleased and reassured. She did not think of him after that, and went on her way quietly, happily, more deeply content in her life with Michael and Potch. + 

As her natural vigour returned, she grew to a fuller appreciation of that life; health and a normal poise of body and soul brought the faint light of happiness to her eyes. Michael heard her laughing as she teased Paul sometimes, and Potch thrilled to the rippled cadenza of Sophie’s laughter. + 

“It’s good to hear that again,” Michael said to him one day, hearing it fly from Rouminof’s hut. + 

Potch’s glance, as his head moved in assent, was eloquent beyond words. + 

Sophie had a sensation of hunger satisfied in the life she was leading. Some indefinable hunger of her soul was satisfied by breathing the pure, calm air of the Ridge again, and by feeling her life was going the way the lives of other women on the Ridge were going. She expected her life would go on like this, days and years fall behind her unnoticed; that she and Potch would work together, have children, be splendid friends always, live out their days in the simple, sturdy fashion of Ridge folk, and grow old together. + 

IX + 

Tenders had been called for, to clear the course for the annual race meeting. A notice posted on the old, wild cherry tree in the road opposite Newton’s, brought men and boys from every rush on Fallen Star to Ezra Smith’s billiard-room on the night appointed; and Ezra, constituted foreman by the meeting, detailed parties to clear and roll the track. + 

A paddock at the back of the town, with several tall coolebahs at one side, was known as the racecourse. A table placed a little out from the trees served for a judge’s box; and because the station folk usually drew up their buggies and picnicked there, the shade of the coolebahs was called the grandstand. Farther along a saddling-paddock had been fenced off, and in it, on race-days, were collected a miscellaneous muster of the show horses of the district⁠—rough-haired nags, piebald and skewbald; rusty, dusty, big-boned old racers with famous reputations; wild-eyed, unbroken youngsters, green from the plains; Warria chestnuts, graceful as greyhounds, with quivering, scarlet nostrils; and the nuggety, deep-chested offspring of the Langi-Eumina stallion Black Harry. + 

People came from far and near for the races, and for the ball which was held the same evening in the big, iron-roofed shed opposite Newton’s. Newton’s was filled to the brim with visitors, and there were not stables enough for the horses. But Ridge stables are never more than railed yards about the size of a room, with bark thatches, and as many of them as were needed were run up for the occasion. + 

Horses and horsemen were heroes of the occasion The merits of every horse that was going to run were argued; histories, points, pedigrees, and performances discussed. Stories were told of the doings of strange horses brought from distant selections, the outstations of Warria, Langi-Eumina, or Darrawingee; yarns swapped of almost mythical warrigals, and warrigal hunting, the breaking of buck-jumpers, the enterprises and exploits of famous horsemen. Ridge meetings, since the course had been made and the function had become a yearly fixture, were gone over; and the chances of every horse and rider entered for the next day debated, until anticipation and interest attained their highest pitch. + 

Everybody in the township went to the races; everybody was expected to go. Race-day was the Ridge gala day; the day upon which men, women, and children gave themselves up to the wholehearted, joyous excitement of an outing. The meeting brought a bookmaker or two from Sydney sometimes, and sometimes a man in the town made a book on the event. But nobody, it was rumoured, looked forward to, or enjoyed the races more than Mrs. Watty Frost, although she had begun by disapproving of them, and still maintained she did not “hold with betting.” She put up with it, however, so long as the Sydney men did not get away with Ridge money. + 

Potch was disappointed, and so was Michael, that Sophie would not go to the races, which were held during the year of her return. They went, and Rouminof trotted off by himself, quite early. Sophie did not want to see all the strangers who would be in Fallen Star for race-day, she said⁠—people from the river selections, the stations, and country towns. Late in the afternoon, as she was going to see Ella Bryant, to offer to mind the baby while Ella and Bully went to the ball, she saw Martha was at home, a drift of smoke coming from the chimney of her hut. + 

Sophie went to the back door of the hut and stood in the doorway. + 

“Are you there, Martha?” she called. + 

“That you, Sophie?” Martha queried. “Come in!” + 

Sophie went into the kitchen. Martha had a big fire, and her room was full of its hot glare. She was ironing at a table against the wall, and freshly laundered, white clothes were hanging to a line stretched from above the window to a nail on the inner wall. She looked up happily as Sophie appeared, sweat streaming from her fat, jolly face. + 

“I was just thinking of you, dearie,” she exclaimed, putting the iron on an upturned tin, and straightening out the flounces of the dress she was at work on. “Lovely day it’s been for the races, hasn’t it? Sit down. I’ll be done d’reckly, and am going to make a cup of tea before I go over to help Mrs. Newton a bit with dinner. My, she’s got her hands full over there⁠—with all the crowd up!⁠ ⁠… Don’t think I ever did see such a crowd at the races, Sophie.” + 

Martha’s iron flashed and swung backwards and forth. Sophie watched the brawny forearm which wielded the iron. Hard and as brown as the branch of a tree it was, from above the elbow where her sleeve was rolled back to the wrist; the hand fastened over the iron, red and dappled with great golden-brown freckles; the nails of its short, thick fingers, broken, dirt lying in thick, black wedges beneath them. As her other hand moved over the dress, preparing the way for the iron, Sophie saw its work-worn palm, the lines on it driven deep with scouring, scrubbing, and years of washing clothes, and cleaning other folks’ houses. She thought of the work those hands of Martha’s had done for Fallen Star; how Martha had looked after sick people, brought babies into the world, nursed the mothers, mended, washed, sewed, and darned, giving her help wherever it was needed. Always good-natured, hearty, healthy, and wholesome, what a wonderful woman she was, Mother M’Cready, Sophie exclaimed to herself. + 

Martha was as excited as any girl on the Ridge, ironing her dress now, and getting ready for the ball. Sophie wondered how old she was. She did not look any older than when she first remembered her; but people said Martha must be sixty if she was a day. And she loved a dance, Sophie knew. She could dance, too, Mother M’Cready. The boys said she could dance like a two-year-old. + 

“What are you going to wear to the ball, Sophie?” Martha asked. “I suppose you’ve got some real nice dresses you brought from America.” + 

“I’m not going,” Sophie said, + 

“Not going?” Martha’s iron came down with a bang, her blue eyes flashed wide with astonishment. “The idea! Not goin’ to the Ridge ball⁠—the first since you came home? I never heard of such a thing.⁠ ⁠… ‘Course you’re going, Sophie!” + 

Sophie’s glance left Martha’s big, busy figure. It went through the open doorway. The sunshine was garish on the plains, although the afternoon was nearly over. + 

“Why aren’t you goin’?” Martha pursued. “Why? What’ll your father say? And Michael? And Potch? We’d all been looking forward to seein’ you there like you used to be, Sophie. And⁠ ⁠… here was me doin’ up my dress extra special, thinkin’ Sophie’ll be that grand in the dresses she’s brought from America⁠ ⁠… we’ll all have to smarten a bit to keep up with her.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Tears swam in Sophie’s eyes at the naive and genial admiration of what Martha had said. + 

“It’ll spoil the ball if you’re not there,” Martha insisted, her iron flashing vigorously. “It just won’t be⁠—the ball⁠—and everything looking as if it were goin’ to be the biggest ball ever was on the Ridge. Everybody’ll be that disappointed⁠—” + 

“Do you think they will, Martha?” Sophie queried. + 

“I don’t think; I know.” + 

A little smile, sceptical yet wistful, hovered in Sophie’s eyes. + 

“And it don’t seem fair to Potch neither.” + 

“Potch?” + 

“Yes⁠ ⁠… you hidin’ yourself away as if you weren’t happy⁠—and going to marry the best lad in the country.” The iron came down emphatically, Martha working it as vigorously and intently as she was thinking. + 

“There’s some says Potch isn’t a match for you now, Sophie. Not since you went away and got manners and all.⁠ ⁠… They can’t tell why you’re goin’ to marry Potch. But as I said to Mrs. Watty the other day, I said: ‘Sophie isn’t like that. She isn’t like that at all. It’s the man she goes for, and Potch is good enough for a princess to take up with.’ That’s what I said; and I don’t mind who knows it.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Sophie had got up and gone to the door while Martha was talking. She was amused at the idea of Mrs. Watty having forgiven her sufficiently to think that Potch was not a good enough match for her. + 

“Besides⁠ ⁠… I did want you to go, Sophie,” Martha continued. “They’re all coming over from Warria⁠—Mr. and Mrs. Henty and the girls, and Mrs. Arthur. They’ve got a party staying with them, up from Sydney⁠ ⁠… and most of them have put up at Newton’s for the night.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She glanced at Sophie to see how she was taking this news. But no flicker of concern changed the thoughtful mask of Sophie’s features as she leaned in the doorway looking out to the blue fall of the afternoon sky. + 

“They’re coming over to see how the natives of these parts amuse theirselves,” Martha declared scornfully. “They’ll have on all the fine dresses and things they buy down in Sydney⁠ ⁠… and I was lookin’ to you, Sophie, to keep up our end. I’ve been thinkin’ to meself, ‘They think they’re the salt of the earth, don’t they? Think they’re that smart⁠ ⁠… we dress so funny⁠ ⁠… and dance so funny, over at Fallen Star. But Sophie’ll show them; Sophie’ll take the shine out of them when they see her in one of the dresses she’s brought from America.’ ” + 

As Martha talked, Sophie could see the ballroom at Warria as she had years before. She could see the people in it⁠—figures swaying down the long veranda, the Henty girls, Mrs. Henty, Phyllis Chelmsford⁠—their faces, the dresses they had worn; Arthur, John Armitage, James Henty, herself, as she had sat behind the piano, or turned the pages of her father’s music. She could hear the music he and Mrs. Henty played; the rhythm of a waltz swayed her. A twinge of the old wrath, hurt indignation, and disappointment, vibrated through her.⁠ ⁠… She smiled to think of it, and of all the long time which lay between that night and now. + 

“I’d give anything for you to be there⁠—looking your best,” Martha continued. “I can’t bear that lot to think you’ve come home because you weren’t a success, as they say over there, or because.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Mr. Armitage wasn’t as fond of me⁠—as he used to be,” Sophie murmured. + 

Martha caught the mocking of a gleam in her eyes as she spoke. No one knew why Sophie had come home; but Mrs. Newton had given Martha an American newspaper with a paragraph in it about Sophie. Martha had read and reread it, and given it to several other people to read. She put her iron on the hearth and disappeared into the bedroom which opened off her kitchen. + 

“This is all I know about it, Sophie,” she said, returning with the paper. + 

She handed the paper to Sophie, and Sophie glanced at a marked paragraph on its page. + 

“Of a truth, dark are the ways of women, and mysterious beyond human understanding,” she read. “Probably no young artist for a long time has had as meteoric a career on Broadway as Sophie Rouminof. Leaping from comparative obscurity, she has scintillated before us in revue and musical comedy for the last three or four years, and now, at the zenith of her success, when popularity is hers to do what she likes with, she goes back to her native element, the obscurity from which she sprang. Some first-rate artists have got religion, philanthropy, or love, and have renounced the footlights for them; but Sophie is doing so for no better reason, it is said, than that she is écoeuré of us and our life⁠—the life of any and all great cities. A well-known impresario informs us that a week or two ago he asked her to name her own terms for a new contract; but she would have nothing to do with one on any terms. And now she has slipped back into the darkness of space and time, like one of her own magnificent opals, and the bill and boards of the little Opera House will know her name and fascinating personality no more.” + 

The faint smile deepened in Sophie’s eyes. + 

“It’s true, isn’t it, Sophie?” Martha asked, as Sophie did not speak when she had finished reading. + 

“I suppose it is,” Sophie said. “But your paper doesn’t say what made me écoeuré⁠—sick to the heart, that is⁠—of the life over there, Martha. And that’s the main thing.⁠ ⁠… It got me down so, I thought I’d never sing again. But there’s one thing I’d like you to tell people for me, Martha: Mr. Armitage was always goodness itself to me. He didn’t even ask me to go away with him. He did make love to me, and I was just a silly little girl. I didn’t know then men go on like that without meaning much.⁠ ⁠… I wanted to be a singer, and I made up my mind to go away when he did.⁠ ⁠… Afterwards I lost my voice. My heart wouldn’t sing any more. I wanted to come home.⁠ ⁠… That’s all I knew.⁠ ⁠… I wanted to come home.⁠ ⁠… And I came.” + 

Martha went to her. Her arms went round Sophie’s neck. + 

“My lamb,” she whispered. + 

Sophie rested against her for a moment. Then she kissed one of the bare arms she had watched working the iron so vigorously. + 

“We’d best not think of it, Mother M’Cready,” she said. + 

“All right, dearie!” + 

Martha withdrew her arms and went back to the hearth. She lifted another iron, held it to her face to judge its heat, and returned to the table. She rubbed the iron on a piece of hessian on a box there, dusted it with a soft rag, and went on with the ironing of her dress. + 

“I wish I was as young as you, Martha,” Sophie said. + 

“Lord, lovey, you will be when you’re my age,” Martha replied, with a swift, twinkling glance of her blue eyes. “But you’re coming⁠ ⁠… aren’t you? I won’t have the heart to wear my pink stockings if you don’t, Sophie. Mrs. Newton gave them to me for a Christmas-box⁠ ⁠… and I’m fair dying to wear them.” + 

Sophie smiled at the pair of bright pink stockings pinned on the line beside a newly-starched petticoat. + 

“You will, won’t you?” + 

Sophie shook her head. + 

“I don’t think so, Martha.” + 

Sophie went out of the doorway. She was going home, and stood again a moment, looking through scattered trees to the waning afternoon sky. A couple of birds dashed across her line of vision with shrill, low, giggling cries. + 

She heard people talking in the distance. Several men rode up to Newton’s. She saw them swing from their horses, put the reins over the pegs before the bar, and go into the hotel. Two or three children ran down the street chattering eagerly, excitedly. Roy O’Mara went across to the hall with some flags under his arm. From all the huts drifted ejaculations, fragments of laughter and calling. Excitement about the ball was in the air. + 

Sophie remembered how happy and excited she used to be about the Ridge balls. She thought of it all vaguely at first, that lost girlish joy of hers, the free, careless gaiety which had swept her along as she danced. She remembered her father’s fiddling, Mrs. Newton’s playing; how the music had had a magic in it which set everybody’s feet flying and the boys singing to tunes they knew. The men polished the floor so that you could scarcely walk on it. One year they had spent hours working it up so that you slipped along like greased lightning as you danced. + 

Sophie smiled at her reminiscences. The high tones of a man’s voice, eager and exultant, shouting to someone across the twilight; the twitter of a girl’s laughter⁠—they were all in the air now as they had been then. Her listlessness stirred; everybody was preparing for the ball, and getting ready to go to it. Excitement and eager looking forward to a good time were in the air. They were infectious. Sophie trembled to them⁠—they tempted her. Could she go to the ball, like everybody else? Could she drift again in the stream of easy and genial intercourse with all these people of the Ridge whom she loved and who loved her? + 

Martha came to the door. Her eyes strained on the brooding young face, trying to read from the changing expressions which flitted across it what Sophie was thinking. + 

“You’re coming, aren’t you, dearie?” she begged. + 

Sophie’s eyes surprised the old woman, the brilliance of tears and light in them, their childish playing of hope beyond hope and fear, amazed her. + 

“Do you think I could, Martha?” she cried. “Do you think I could?” + 

“ ’Course you could, darling,” Martha said. + 

Sophie’s arms went round her in an instant’s quick pressure; then she stood off from her. + 

“Won’t it be lovely,” she cried, “to dance and sing⁠—and to be young again, Martha?” + 

X + 

It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall. At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing and talking. + 

“It’s like old times, isn’t it, Potch”⁠—Sophie’s fingers closed over Potch’s arm⁠—“to be going to a Ridge dance?” + 

There was a faint, sweet stirring which the wind makes in the trees within her, Sophie realised. It was strange and delightful to feel alive again, and alive with the first freshness, innocence, and vague happiness of a girl. + 

Potch looked down on her, smiling. He was filled with pride to have her beside him like this, to think they would go into the hall together, and that people would say to each other when they saw them: “There’s Sophie and Potch!” + 

That using of their names side by side was a source of infinite content to Potch. He loved people to say: “When are you and Sophie coming over to see us, Potch?” or, “Would you mind telling Sophie, Potch?” and give him a message for Sophie. And this would be the first time they had appeared at an assembly of Ridge folk together. + 

He walked with his head held straight and high, and his eyes shone when he went down the hall with Sophie. What did it matter if they called him Potch, the Ridge folk, “a little bit of potch,” he thought, Sophie was going to be Mrs. Heathfield. + 

“Here’s Sophie and Potch,” he heard people say, as he had thought they would, and his heart welled with happiness and pride. + 

Nearly everybody had arrived when they went into the hall; the first dance was just beginning. Branches of budda, fleeced with creamy and lavender blossom, had been stuck through the supports of the hall. Flags and pennants of all the colours in the rainbow, strung on a line together, were stretched at the end of the platform. On the platform Mrs. Newton was sitting at the piano. Paul had his music-stand near her, and behind him an old man from the Three Mile was nervously fingering and blowing on a black and silver-mounted flute. Women and girls and a few of the older men were seated on forms against the walls. Several young mothers had babies in their arms, and children of all ages were standing about, or sitting beside their parents. By common consent, Ridge folk had taken one side of the hall, and station folk the upper end of the other side. + 

Sophie’s first glance found Martha, her white dress stiff and immaculate, her face with its plump, rosy cheeks turned towards her, her eyes smiling and expectant. Martha beamed at her; Sophie smiled back, and, her glance travelling on, found Maggie and Bill Grant, Mrs. George Woods and two of her little girls; Mrs. Watty, in a black dress, its high neck fastened by a brooch, with three opals in, Watty had given her; and Watty, genial and chirrupy as usual, but afraid to appear as if he were promising himself too much of a good time. + 

Warria, Langi-Eumina, and Darrawingee folk had foregathered; the girls and men laughed and chattered in little groups; the older people talked, sitting against the wall or leaning towards each other. Mrs. Henty looked much as she had done five years before; James Henty not a day older; but Mrs. Tom Henderson, who had been Elizabeth Henty, had developed a sedate and matronly appearance. Polly was not as plump and jolly as she had been⁠—a little puzzled and apprehensive expression flitted through her clear brown eyes, and there were lines of discouragement about her mouth. Sophie recognised Mrs. Arthur Henty in a slight, well-dressed woman, whose thin, unwrinkled features wore an expression of more or less matter-of-fact discontent. + 

The floor was shining under the light of the one big hanging lamp. Paul scraped his violin with a preliminary flourish; Mrs. Newton threw a bunch of chords after him, and they cantered into a waltz time the Ridge loved. Roy O’Mara, M.C. for the occasion, shouted jubilantly: “Take y’r partners for a waltz!” Couples edged out from the wall, and in a moment were swirling and whirling up and down on the bared space of the hall. There were squeals and little screams as feet slipped and skidded on the polished floor; but people soon found their dancing feet, got under way of the music, and swung to its rhythms with more ease, security, and pleasure. Sophie watched the dance for a while. She saw Martha dancing with Michael. Every year at the Ridge ball Michael danced the first dance with Martha. And Martha, dancing with Michael⁠—no one on the Ridge was happier, though they moved so solemnly, turning round and round with neat little steps, as if they were pledged to turn in the space of a threepenny piece! + 

Sophie smiled at Martha’s happy seriousness. Arthur Henty was dancing with his wife. Sophie had not seen him so clearly since her return to the Ridge. When she had passed him in the township, or at Newton’s, he had been riding, and she had scarcely seen his face for the beard which had overgrown it and the shadow his hat cast. She studied him with unmoved curiosity. His beard had been clipped close, and she recognised the moulding of his head, the slope of his shoulders, a peculiar loose litheness in his gait. Her eyes followed him as he danced with his wife. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Henty were waltzing in the perfunctory, mechanical fashion of people thoroughly bored with each other. + 

Then Sophie swung with Potch into the eddying current of the dancers. Potch danced in as steady and methodical a fashion as he did everything. The music did not get him; at least, Sophie could not believe it did. + 

His eyes were deep and shining as though it were a great and holy ceremony he were engaged in, but there was no melting to the delight of rhythmic movement in his sober gyrations. Sophie felt him a clog on the flow of her own action as he steered and steadily directed her through the crowd. + 

“For goodness’ sake, Potch, dance as if you meant it,” she said. + 

“But I do mean it, Sophie,” he said. + 

As he looked down at her, his flushed, happy face assured her that he did mean dancing, but he meant it as he meant everything⁠—with a dead earnestness. + 

After that dance all her old friends among men of the Ridge came round Sophie to ask her to dance with them. Bully and Roy sparred for dances as they did in the old days, and Michael and George and Watty threatened to knock their heads together and throw them out of the room if they didn’t get out of the way and give some other chaps a chance to dance with Sophie. Between the dances, Sophie went over to talk to Maggie Grant, Mrs. Watty, Mrs. George Woods, and Martha. She had time to tell Martha how nice her dress and the pink stockings looked, and how the opals in her bracelet flashed as she was dancing. + 

“You can see them from one end of the hall to the other,” Sophie whispered. + 

“And you, lovey,” Martha said. “It’s just lovely, the dress. You should have seen how they stared at you when you came in.⁠ ⁠… And Potch looking so nice, too. He wouldn’t call the King his uncle tonight, Sophie!” + 

Sophie laughed happily as she went off to dance with Bully, who was claiming her for a polka mazurka. + 

The evening was half through when John Armitage appeared in the doorway. Sophie had just come from dancing the quadrilles with Potch when she saw Armitage standing in the doorway with Peter Newton. Potch saw him as Sophie did; their eyes met. Michael came towards them. + 

“Mr. Armitage did come, I see,” Sophie said quietly, as Potch and Michael were looking towards the door. “I had a letter from him a few weeks ago saying he thought he would be here for the ball,” she added. + 

“Why has he come?” Michael asked. + 

“I don’t know,” she said. “To see me, I suppose⁠ ⁠… and to find out whether the men will do business with him again.” + 

Michael’s gesture implied it was useless to talk of that. + 

Sophie continued: “But you know what I said, Michael. I can’t be happy until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the men here.⁠ ⁠… You must do that for me, Michael. They know I’m going to marry Potch⁠ ⁠… and if they see there’s no ill feeling between John Armitage and me, they’ll believe I was more to blame than he was⁠—if it’s a question of blame.⁠ ⁠… I want you and Potch to stand by me in this, Michael.” + 

Potch’s eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and sure. But Michael showed no relenting. + 

Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie. + 

She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them than playing a game they had learned to play rather well. + 

Sophie said: “It is you really?” + 

He took the hand she held to him. “But you knew I was coming? You had my letter?” + 

“Of course⁠ ⁠… but⁠—” + 

“And my word is my bond.” + 

The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage’s voice, and the perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised people who were near them. + 

Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded Armitage with grave, quiet eyes. + 

“Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!” Armitage said. + 

Michael did not reply; but Potch said: + 

“Evening, Mr. Armitage!” And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and Michael’s silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather. Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning. + 

“Is this my dance, Sophie?” Armitage inquired. + 

Sophie shook her head, smiling. + 

“No,” she said. + 

“Which is my dance?” The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal. + 

Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly understanding. + 

“The next one.” + 

She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold to, or move as she wished. + 

“It’s awfully good to have you, Potch,” she murmured, glancing up at him. + 

“Sophie!” + 

His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love and gratitude beyond words. + 

While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys; he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz with Polly Henty. + 

When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about all there had been between herself and John Armitage⁠—even this dancing with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall. + 

Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and lovemaking forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage’s eyes. It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the wall spurred Sophie to further laughter⁠—a reckless gaiety. + 

“You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and⁠ ⁠… trying its wings in the sun, Sophie,” Armitage said. + 

“I feel⁠ ⁠… just like that,” Sophie said. + 

After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had “gone the pace,” in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she caught Potch’s gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and enjoying the game as much as she had ever done. + 

As she was coming from a dance with Roy O’Mara she passed Arthur Henty where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M’Cready. + 

“You’re going to dance with me?” he asked, a husky uncertainty in his voice. + 

“No,” Sophie said, looking away from him. + 

“Yes.” + 

The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted, spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied. + 

“There’s going to be an extra after supper,” he said. + 

“Very well.” + 

What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty. + 

How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as she had waited then? But there were all those long years between. Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was dancing with Arthur. + 

He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly, indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie’s laughter failed. The inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had read long before in each other’s eyes was still there, after all the years and the dark and troubled times they had been through. + 

Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was remembering little things he had said⁠ ⁠… she had said⁠ ⁠… the afternoon he had recited: + 

“I met a lady in the meads + 

Full beautiful, a fairy’s child; + 

Her hair was long, her foot was light, + 

And her eyes were wild.” + 

Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and wanted to cry.⁠ ⁠… She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing on a grave. + 

Henty’s grip tightened. Sophie’s face had become childish and pitiful, working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other, every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other. + 

Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie wondered. The noises of the ballroom broke in on her wondering⁠—voices, shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them.⁠ ⁠… + 

Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared not look up. Arthur’s will, working against hers, demanded the surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again. + 

As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was afraid of getting out of her depth⁠ ⁠… but he held her carefully. His grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up; she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp tightened. She was afraid of him⁠—afraid of all the long, old dreams he might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those hungry, hungry eyes.⁠ ⁠… She could not see them; she would not. + 

A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence them⁠ ⁠… begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the implacable in him⁠—the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face. She was helpless before them. + 

Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came to them in faraway murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and laughter. + 

Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her. + 

“No, no,” she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again. + 

He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last essence. + 

A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark, she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had stupefied her. + 

She called Michael. + 

Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant’s vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch’s⁠ ⁠… she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy, quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness. + 

XI + 

Sophie went into the shed where her cutting-wheel was soon after eight o’clock next morning. She took up a packet of small stones George Woods had left with her and set to work on them. + 

The wheel was in a line with the window, and she sat on the wooden chair before it, so that the light fell over her left shoulder. On the bench which ran out from the wheel were a spirit lamp and the trays of rough opal; on the other side of the bench the polishing buffers were arranged one against the other. A hand-basin, the water in it raddled with rouge, stood on the table behind her, and a white china jug of fresh water beside it. + 

Sophie lighted the spirit lamp, gathered up a handful of the slender sticks about the size of pen-holders which Potch had prepared for her, melted her sealing-wax over the flame of the lamp, drew the saucer of George’s opals to her, and fastened a score of small stones to the heated wax on the ends of the sticks. She blew out the lamp. + 

She was working in order not to think; she worked for awhile without thinking, details of the opal-cutting following each other in the routine they had made for themselves. + 

The plague of her thoughts grew as she worked. From being nebulae of a state of mind which she could not allow herself to contemplate, such darkness of despair there was in it, they evolved to tiny pictures which presented themselves singly and in panorama, flitting and flickering incoherently, incongruously. + 

Sophie could see the hall as she had the night before. She seemed to be able to see everything at once and in detail⁠—its polished floors, flowering boughs, and flags, the people sitting against the iron walls in their best clothes⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Watty, Watty and George, Ella and Bully⁠ ⁠… Bully holding the baby⁠ ⁠… the two little Woods’ girls in their white embroidered muslin dresses, with pink ribbons tied round their heads.⁠ ⁠… Cash Wilson dancing solemnly in carpet slippers; Mrs. Newton at the piano⁠ ⁠… the prim way her fat little hands pranced sedately up and down over the keys.⁠ ⁠… Paul enjoying his own music⁠ ⁠… getting a little bit wild over it, and working his right leg and knee as though he had an orchestra to keep going somehow.⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Newton refusing to be coaxed into anything like enthusiasm, but trying to keep up with him, nevertheless.⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Henty, Polly, Elizabeth⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Arthur⁠ ⁠… the Langi-Eumina party⁠ ⁠… the Moffats⁠ ⁠… Potch, Michael⁠ ⁠… John Armitage. + 

Images of New York flashed across these pictures of the night before. Sophie visualised the city as she had first seen it. A fairy city it had seemed to her with its sky-flung lights, thronged thoroughfares, and jangling bells. She saw a square of tall, flat-faced buildings before a park of leafless trees; shimmering streets on a wet night, near the New Theatre and the Little Opera House; a supper-party after the theatre⁠ ⁠… gilded walls, Byzantian hangings, women with bare shoulders flashing satin from slight, elegant limbs, or emerging with jewel-strung necks from swathings of mist-like tulle, the men beside them⁠ ⁠… a haze of cigarette smoke over it all⁠ ⁠… tinkle of laughter, a sweet, sleepy stirring of music somewhere⁠ ⁠… light of golden wine in wide, shallow-bowled glasses, with tall, fragile stems⁠ ⁠… lipping and sway of tides against the hull of a yacht on quiet water⁠ ⁠… a man’s face, heavy and swinish, peering into her own.⁠ ⁠… + 

Then again, Mrs. Watty against the wall of the Ridge ballroom, stiff and disapproving-looking in her high-necked black dress⁠ ⁠… Michael dancing with Martha⁠ ⁠… Martha’s pink stockings⁠ ⁠… and the way she had danced, lightly, delightedly, her feet encased in white canvas shoes. Sophie had worn white canvas shoes at the Warria ball, she remembered. Pictures of that night crowded on her, of Phyllis Chelmsford and Arthur⁠ ⁠… Arthur.⁠ ⁠… + 

Her thought stopped there. Arthur⁠ ⁠… what did it all mean? She saw again the fixed, flat figures she had seen against the wall when she was dancing with Arthur⁠—the corpse-like faces.⁠ ⁠… Why had everybody died when she was dancing with Arthur Henty? Sophie remembered that people had looked very much as usual when she went out to dance with Arthur; then when she looked at them again, they all seemed to be dead⁠—drowned⁠—and sitting round the hall in clear, still water, like the figures she had seen in mummy cases in foreign museums. Only she and Arthur were alive in that roomful of dead people. They had come from years before and were going to years beyond. It had been dark before she realised this; then they had been caught up into a light, transcending all consciousness of light; in which they had seemed no more than atoms of light adrift on the tide of the ages. Then the light had gone.⁠ ⁠… + 

They were out of doors when she recognised time and place again. Sophie had seen the hall crouched heavy and dark under a starry sky, its windows, yellow eyes.⁠ ⁠… She was conscious of trees about her⁠ ⁠… the note of a goat-bell not far away⁠ ⁠… and Arthur.⁠ ⁠… They had kissed, and then in the darkness that terror and fear⁠—those struggling shapes⁠ ⁠… figures of a nightmare⁠ ⁠… light on Potch’s hair.⁠ ⁠… She heard her own cry, winging eerie and shrill through the darkness. + 

With a sudden desperate effort Sophie threw off the plague of these thoughts and small mind-pictures; she turned to the cutting-wheel again. It whirred as she bent over it. + 

“Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!” the wheel purred. “Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!” + 

Her brain throbbed as she tried not to listen or hear that song of the wheel; “Arthur, Arthur, Arthur!” the blood murmured and droned in her head. + 

Her hand holding an opal to the wheel trembled, the opal skidded and was scratched. + 

“Oh, God,” Sophie moaned, “don’t let me think of him any more. Don’t let me.⁠ ⁠…” + 

A mirror on the wall opposite reflected her face. Sophie wondered whether that was her face she saw in the mirror: the face in the mirror was strangely old, withered and wan. She closed her eyes on the sight of it. It confronted her again when she opened them. The eyes of the face in the mirror were heavy and dark with a darkness of mind she could not fathom. + 

Sophie got up from her chair before the cutting-wheel. She went to the window and stood looking through its small open space at the bare earth beyond the hut. A few slight, sketchy trees, and the broken earth and scattered mounds of old dumps were thrown up under a fall of clear, exquisite sky, of a blue so pure, so fine, that there was balm just in looking at it. For a moment she plunged into it, the tragic chaos of her mind obliterated. + 

With new courage from that moment’s absorption of peaceful beauty, she went back to the wheel, the resolution which had taken her to it twice before that morning urging her. She sat down and began to work, took up the piece of opal she had scratched, examined it closely, wondering how the flaw could be rectified, if it could be rectified. + 

The wheel, set going, raised its droning whirr. Sophie held her mind to the stone. She was pleased after a while. “That’s all right,” she told herself. “If only you don’t think.⁠ ⁠… If only you keep working like this and don’t think of Arthur.” + 

It was Arthur she did not want to think of. “Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!” the wheel mocked. “Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!” + 

Her head went into her hands. She was moaning and crying again. “Don’t let me think of him any more⁠ ⁠… if only I needn’t think of him any more.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She began to work again. There was nothing to do but persist in trying to work, she thought. If she kept to it, perhaps in the end the routine would take her; she would become absorbed in the mechanism of what she was doing. + 

A shadow was thrown before her. In the mirror Sophie saw that John Armitage was standing in the doorway. Her feet ceased to work the treadles of the cutting-wheel; her hands fell to her lap; she waited for him to come into the room. He walked past her to the window, and stood with his back to it, facing her. Her eyes went to him. She let him take what impression he might from her face, her defences were down; vaguely, perhaps, she hoped he would read something of her mind in her face, that he would need no explanation of what she had no words to express. + 

There had been a smile of faint cynicism in his eyes as he looked towards her; it evaporated as she surrendered to the inquisition of his gaze. + 

“Well?” he inquired gravely. + 

“Well?” she replied as gravely. + 

They studied each other quietly. + 

John Armitage had changed very little since she had first seen him. His clean-shaven face was harder, a little more firmly set perhaps; the indecision had gone from it; it had lost some of its amiable mobility. He looked much more a man of the world he was living in⁠—a business man, whose intelligence and energies had been trained in its service⁠—but his eyes still had their subtle knowledge and sympathy, his individuality the attraction it had first had for her. + 

He was wearing the loose, well-cut tweeds he travelled in, and had taken off his hat. It lay on the windowsill beside him, and Sophie saw that there was more silver in his hair where it was brushed back from his ears than there used to be. His eyes surveyed her as if she were written in an argot or dialect which puzzled him; his hands drifted and moved before her as he smoked a cigarette. His hands emphasised the difference between John Lincoln Armitage and men of the Ridge. Sophie thought of Potch’s hands, and of Michael’s, and the smile Michael might have had for Armitage’s hands curved her lips. + 

Armitage, taking that smile for a lessening of the tension of her mood, said: + 

“You’d much better put on your bonnet and shawl, and come home with me, Sophie. We can be married en route, or in Sydney if you like.⁠ ⁠… You know how pleased the old man’ll be. And, as for me⁠—” + 

Sophie’s gaze swept past him, fretted lines deepening on her forehead. + 

Armitage threw away his cigarette, abandoning his assumption of familiar friendliness with the action, and went to her side. Sophie rose to meet him. + 

“Look here, Sophie,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes, “let’s have done with all this neurotic rot.⁠ ⁠… You’re the only woman in the world for me. I don’t know why you left me. I don’t care.⁠ ⁠… Come home⁠ ⁠… let’s get married⁠ ⁠… and see whether we can’t make a better thing of it.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Sophie had turned her eyes from his. + 

“When I’ve said that before, you wouldn’t have anything to do with it,” he continued. “You had a notion I was saying it because I ought⁠—thought I had to, or the old man had talked me into it.⁠ ⁠… It wasn’t true even then. I came here to say it⁠ ⁠… so that you would believe I⁠—want it, and I want you⁠—more than anything on earth, Sophie.” + 

There was no response, only an overshadowing of troubled thought in Sophie’s face. + 

“Is there anything love or money can give you, girl, that I’m not eager to give you?” Armitage demanded. “What is it you want?⁠ ⁠… Do you know what you want?” + 

Sophie did not reply, and her silence exasperated him. + 

Taking her face in his hands, Armitage scrutinised it as though he must read there what her silence held from him. + 

He realised how wan and weary-looking it was. Shadows beneath her eyes fell far down her cheeks, her lips lay together with a new, strange sternness. But he could not think of that yet. His male egoism could only consider its own situation, fight imperiously in its own defence. + 

“You want something I can’t give you?” + 

His eyes held her for the fraction of a second; then, the pain of knowledge gripping him, his hands fell from her face. He turned away. + 

“Which is it⁠ ⁠… Potch or⁠—the other?” He spoke with cruel bitterness. “It’s always a case of ‘which’ with you⁠—isn’t it?” + 

“That’s just it,” Sophie said. + 

He glanced at her, surprised to hear a note of the same bitterness in her voice. + 

“I didn’t mean that, Sophie,” he said. “You know I didn’t.” + 

She smiled. + 

“It’s true all the same.” + 

“Tell me”⁠—he turned to her⁠—“I wish you would. You never have⁠—why you left New York⁠ ⁠… and gave up singing⁠ ⁠… everything there, and came here.” + 

Sophie dropped into her chair again. + 

“But you know.” + 

“Who could know anything of you, Sophie?” + 

She moved the stones on the bench absentmindedly. At length she said: + 

“You remember our big row about Adler, when I was going to the supper on his yacht?” + 

Armitage exclaimed with a gesture of protest. + 

“I know,” Sophie said, “you were angry⁠ ⁠… you didn’t mean what you said. But you were right all the same. You said I had let the life I was leading go to my head⁠—that I was utterly demoralised by it.⁠ ⁠… I was angry; but it was true. You know the people I was going about with.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I did my best to get you away from them,” Armitage said. + 

Sophie nodded. “But I hadn’t had enough then⁠ ⁠… of the beautiful places and things I found myself in the midst of⁠ ⁠… and of all the admiration that came my way. What a queer crowd they were⁠—Kalin, that Greek boy who was singing with me in Eurydice, Ina Barres, the Countess, Mrs. Youille-Bailey, Adler, and the rest of them.⁠ ⁠… They seemed to have run the gamut of all natural experiences and to be interested only in what was unnatural, bizarre, macabre.⁠ ⁠… Adler in that crowd was almost a relief. I liked his⁠—honest Rabelaisianism, if you like.⁠ ⁠… I hadn’t the slightest intention of more than amusing myself with him⁠ ⁠… but he, evidently, did not intend to be merely a source of amusement to me. The supper on the yacht.⁠ ⁠… I kept my head for a while, not long, and then⁠—” + 

“Then?” Armitage queried. + 

“That’s why I came home,” Sophie said. “I was so sick with the shock and shame of it all⁠ ⁠… so sick and ashamed I couldn’t sing any more. I wouldn’t. My voice died.⁠ ⁠… I deserved what happened. I’d been playing for it⁠ ⁠… taking the wine, the music, Adler’s lovemaking⁠ ⁠… and expecting to escape the taint of it all.⁠ ⁠… Afterwards I saw where I was going⁠ ⁠… what that life was making of me.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I don’t know how you came to have anything to do with such a rotten lot,” Armitage cried, sweating under a white heat of rage. + 

“Oh, they’re just people of means and leisure who like to patronise successful young dancers and singers for their own amusement,” Sophie said. + 

“Because you fell in with a set of ultra-aesthetics and degenerates, is no reason to suppose all our people of means and leisure are like them,” Armitage declared hotly. + 

“I don’t,” Sophie said; “what I felt, when I began to think about it, was that they were just the natural consequences of all the easy, luxurious living I’d seen⁠—the extreme of the pole if you like. I saw the other when I went to live in a slum settlement in Chicago.” + 

“You did?” Armitage exclaimed incredulously. + 

“When I got over the shock of⁠—my awakening,” she went on slowly, “I began to remember things Michael had said. That’s why I went to Chicago⁠ ⁠… and worked in a clothing factory for a while.⁠ ⁠… I saw there why Adler’s a millionaire, and heard from girls in a Youille-Bailey-M’Gill factory why Connie Youille-Bailey has money to burn.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Old Youille-Bailey had fingers in a dozen pies, and he left her all he’d got,” Armitage said. + 

“But people down in the district where most of their money is made are living like bugs under a rotten log,” Sophie exclaimed wearily. “They’re made to live like that⁠ ⁠… in order that people like William P. Adler and Mrs. Youille-Bailey⁠ ⁠… may live as they do.” + 

Armitage’s expression of mild cynicism yielded to one of concerned attentiveness. But he was concerned with the bearing on Sophie of what she had to say, and not at all with its relation to conditions of existence. + 

“After all, life only goes on by its interests,” she went on musingly; “and Mrs. Youille-Bailey’s not altogether to blame for what she is. When people are bored, they’ve got to get interest or die; and if faculties which ought to be spent in useful or creative work aren’t spent in that work, they find outlet in the silly energies a selfish and artificial life breeds.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I admit,” Armitage said, trying to veer her thoughts from the abstract to the personal issue, “that you went the pace. I couldn’t keep up with it⁠—not with Adler and his mob! But there’s no need to go back to that sort of life. We could live as quietly as you like.” + 

Sophie shook her head. “I want to live here,” she said. “I want to work with my hands⁠ ⁠… feel myself in the swim of the world’s life⁠ ⁠… going with the great stream; and I want to help Michael here.” + 

Armitage sat back against the windowsill regarding her steadily. + 

“If I could help you to do a great deal for the Ridge,” he said; “if I were to settle here and spend all the money I’ve got in developing this place.⁠—There’s nothing innately immoral about a water-supply or electric power, I suppose, or in giving people decent houses to live in. And it would mean that for Fallen Star, if the scheme I have in mind is put into action. And if it is⁠ ⁠… and I build a house here and were to live here most of my time⁠ ⁠… would you marry me then, Sophie?” + 

Sophie gazed at him, her eyes widening to a scarcely believable vision. + 

“Do you mean you’d give up all your money to do that for the Ridge?” she asked. + 

“Not quite that,” he replied. “But the scheme would work out like that. I mean, it would provide more comfort and convenience for everybody on the Ridge⁠—a more assured means of livelihood.” + 

“You don’t mean to buy up the mines?” + 

“Just that,” he said. + 

“But the men wouldn’t agree.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I don’t know so much about that. It would depend on a few⁠—” + 

“Michael would never consent.” + 

“As a matter of fact”⁠—John Armitage returned Sophie’s gaze tranquilly⁠—“I know something about Michael⁠—some information came into my hands recently, although I’ve always vaguely suspected it⁠—which will make his consent much more likely than you would have imagined.⁠ ⁠… If it does not, giving the information I hold to men of the Ridge will so destroy their faith and confidence in Michael that what he may say or do will not matter.” + 

Sophie’s bewilderment and dismay constrained him. Then he continued: + 

“You see, quite apart from you, my dear, it has always been a sort of dream of mine⁠—ambition, if you like⁠—to make a going concern of this place⁠—to do for Fallen Star what other men I know have done for no-count, out-of-the-way towns and countries where natural resources or possibilities of investment warranted it.⁠ ⁠… I’ve talked the thing over with the old man, and with Andy M’Intosh, an old friend of mine, who is one of the ablest engineers in the States.⁠ ⁠… He’s willing to throw in his lot with me.⁠ ⁠… Roughly, we’ve drawn up plans for conservation of flood waters and winter rains, which will alter the whole character of this country.⁠ ⁠… The old man at first was opposed⁠—said the miners would never stand it; but since we’ve been out with the Ridge men, he’s changed his mind rather. I mean, that when he knew some of the men would be willing to stand by us⁠—and I have means of knowing they would⁠—he was ready to agree. And when I told him Michael might be reckoned a traitor to his own creed⁠—” + 

“It’s not true,” Sophie cried, her faith afire. “It couldn’t be!⁠ ⁠… If everybody in the world told me, I wouldn’t believe it!” + 

Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and selected a cigarette. + 

“I’m not asking you to believe me,” he said. “I’m only explaining the position to you because you’re concerned in it. And for God’s sake don’t let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I’m not a villain. I don’t feel in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.⁠ ⁠… I see my way to a profitable investment⁠—incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I’ve been working out for a good many years. + 

“Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he’s worth if it weren’t for this trump card of mine,” Armitage went on. “He’s got a Utopian dream about the place.⁠ ⁠… I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its resources. His dream against mine⁠—that’s what it amounts to.⁠ ⁠… Well, it’s a fair thing, isn’t it, if I know that Michael is false to the things he says he stands for⁠—and he stands in the way of my scheme⁠—to let the men know he’s false?⁠ ⁠… They will fall away from the ideas he stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas sans Michael⁠ ⁠… but they will be in the minority.⁠ ⁠… The way will be clear for reorganisation then.” + 

Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to his own creed⁠—false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage said⁠—although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage reason for thinking so. + 

“I’ll see Michael tomorrow, and have it out with him,” John Armitage said. “I shall tell him what I know⁠ ⁠… and also my plans. If he will work with me⁠—” + 

Sophie looked up, her smile glimmering. + 

“If he will work with me,” Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, “nothing need be said which will undermine Michael’s influence with men of the Ridge. I know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with them⁠—by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition, suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected.⁠ ⁠… I’ll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure⁠—give it a profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won’t look like the thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“He will.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I am going to ask the men to meet me in the hall, at the end of the month, to lay before them a proposition for the more effective working of the mines. I shall put my proposition before them, and if Michael refuses to work with me, I shall be forced to give them proofs of his unworthiness of their respect.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“They won’t believe you.” + 

“There will be the proofs, and Michael will not⁠—he cannot⁠—deny them.” + 

“You’ll tell him what you are going to do?” + 

“Certainly.” + 

Sophie realised how far Armitage was from understanding the religious intensity and simplicity with which Ridge folk worked for the way of life they believed to be the right one, and what the breakup of that belief would mean to those who had served it in the unpretentious, unprotesting fashion of honest, downright people. To him the Ridge stood for messy sentimentalism, Utopian idealism. And there was money in the place: there was money to be made by putting money into it⁠—by working the mines and prospecting the country as the men without capital could not. + 

John Armitage was ready to admit⁠—Sophie had heard him admitting in controversy⁠—that the Fallen Star mines which the miners themselves controlled were as well worked and as well managed within their means as any he had ever come across; that the miners themselves were a sober and industrious crowd. What capital could do for them and for the Fallen Star community by way of increasing its output and furthering its activities was what he saw. And the only security he could have for putting his capital into working the mines was ownership of them. Ownership would give him the right to organise the workers, and to claim interest for his investment from their toil, or the product of their toil. + 

The Ridge declaration of independence had made it clear that people of Fallen Star did not want increased output, the comforts and conveniences which capital could give them, unless they were provided from the common fund of the community. Ultimately, it was hoped the common fund would provide them, but until it did Ridge men had announced their willingness to do without improvements for the sake of being masters of their own mines. If it was a question of barter, they were for the pride and dignity of being free men and doing without the comforts and conveniences of modern life. Sophie felt sure Armitage underestimated the feeling of the majority of men of the Ridge toward the Ridge idea, and that most of them would stand by it, even if for some mysterious reason Michael lost status with them. But she was dismayed at the test the strength of that feeling was to be put to, and at the mysterious shame which threatened Michael. She could not believe Michael had ever done anything to merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to her⁠—the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no reproach could be levelled. + 

Armitage spoke again. + 

“You see,” he said, “you could still have all those things you spoke of, under my scheme⁠—the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple; the hearth; home, children⁠—all that sort of thing⁠ ⁠… and even time for any of the little social reform schemes you fancied.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of their outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much to her and to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong children⁠—whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them. + 

“The only little social reform I’d have any time for,” she murmured, “would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines.” + 

John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of destroying them. + 

“Then”⁠—he stood up suddenly⁠—“whether I succeed or whether I don’t⁠—whether the scheme goes my way or not⁠—won’t make any difference to you⁠—to us.” + 

“It will make this difference,” Sophie said. “I’m heart and soul in the life here, I’ve told you. And if you do as you say you’re going to⁠ ⁠… instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I’ll have to think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me.” + 

“You mean,” John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and chagrin which rushed over him, “you mean you’re going to take on Henty⁠—that’s what’s at the back of all this.” + 

“I mean,” Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his, “that I’m going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we’ll fight it.” + 

XII + 

“Are you there, Potch?” Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael’s hut, a wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her. + 

Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in his hands. + 

“He’s not here,” he said. + 

His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised, confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety. + 

Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against anyone⁠—a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out of it; and Sophie’s delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she were playing up to him.⁠ ⁠… She had been much more of his world than of the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together. + 

Then Sophie’s cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him. He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch away from Henty.⁠ ⁠… Henty had fallen.⁠ ⁠… Potch would have killed him if they had not dragged him away.⁠ ⁠… Henty was carried in an unconscious condition to Newton’s. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with Potch. + 

Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only imagine.⁠ ⁠… Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which he was not responsible for what he did. + 

Sophie was conscious of Michael’s aloofness from her as she stood in the doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress, which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her in her everyday white cotton frock⁠—as she sat at work at her cutting-wheel, or went about the hut⁠—and now that she stood before him in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain, but could not. + 

Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying and muttering as though he were drunk. But he was not drunk, except with rage and grief, Michael knew. He had lain on his bunk like a log all night, muttering and groaning. Michael had sat in a chair in the next room, trying to understand the madness which had overwhelmed Potch. + 

In the morning, he realised that work and the normal order of their working days were the only things to restore Potch’s mental balance. He roused him earlier than usual. + 

“We’d better get down and clear out some of the mullock,” he said. “The gouges are fair choked up. There’ll be no doing anything if we don’t get a move on with it.” + 

Potch had stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got up, changed his clothes, and they had gone down to the mine together. His face was swollen and discoloured, his lip broken, one eye almost hidden beneath a purple and blue swelling which had risen on the upper part of his left cheek. He had dragged his hat over his face, and walked with his head down; they had not spoken all the morning. Potch had swung his pick stolidly. All day his eyes had not met Michael’s as they usually did, in that glance of love and comradeship which united them whenever their eyes met. + 

In the afternoon, when they stopped work and went to the top of the mine, Potch had said: + 

“Think I’ll clear out⁠—go away somewhere for awhile, Michael.” + 

From his attitude, averted head and drooping shoulders, Michael got the unendurable agony of his mind, his pain and shame. He did not reply, and Potch had walked away from him striking out in a southeasterly direction across the Ridge. Michael had not seen him since then. And now it was early evening, the moon up and silvering the plains with the light of her young crescent. + 

“He says⁠—Potch says⁠ ⁠… he’s going away,” Michael said to Sophie. + 

Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible. Their minds would not accept the idea. + 

Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery. + 

Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town. + 

She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and knelt beside him. + 

“Potch!” she said. + 

He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched beside him. + 

“Potch,” she cried. “Potch!” + 

Potch did not move or reply. + 

“I can’t live⁠ ⁠… if you won’t forgive me, Potch,” Sophie said. + 

He stirred. “Don’t talk like that,” he muttered. + 

After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light of the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic mask of the tragedy which consumed him. + 

“That’s the sort of man I am,” Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady. “I didn’t know⁠ ⁠… I didn’t know I was like that. It came over me all of a sudden, when I saw you and⁠—him. I didn’t know any more until Michael was talking to me. I wouldn’t’ve done it if I’d known, Sophie.⁠ ⁠… But I didn’t know.⁠ ⁠… I just saw him⁠—and you, and I had to put out the sight of it⁠ ⁠… I had to get it out of my eyes⁠ ⁠… what I saw.⁠ ⁠… That’s all I know. Michael says I didn’t kill him⁠ ⁠… but I meant to⁠ ⁠… that’s what I started to do.” + 

Sophie’s face withered under her distress. + 

“Don’t say that, Potch,” she begged. + 

“But I do,” he said. “I must.⁠ ⁠… I can’t make out⁠ ⁠… how it was⁠ ⁠… I felt like that. I thought I’d see things like you saw them always, stand by you. Now I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I’m not to be trusted⁠—” + 

“I’d trust you always, and in anything, Potch,” Sophie said. + 

“You can’t say that⁠—now.” + 

“It’s now⁠ ⁠… I want to say it more than ever,” she continued. “I can’t explain⁠ ⁠… what I did⁠ ⁠… any more than you can what you did, Potch. But I’m to blame for what you did⁠ ⁠… and yet⁠ ⁠… I can’t see that I’m altogether to blame. I didn’t want what happened⁠—to happen⁠ ⁠… any more than you.” + 

She wanted to explain to Potch⁠—to herself also. But she could not see clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain. + 

“You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father,” she said at last. “I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.⁠ ⁠… I thought I was in love with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with me, too.⁠ ⁠… And then over there at the ball something happened that changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me⁠ ⁠… he didn’t ask me to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.⁠ ⁠… He danced with other girls⁠ ⁠… and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls Arthur had danced with⁠ ⁠… so that he would not be ashamed of me.⁠ ⁠… Afterwards I thought I’d forgotten and didn’t care for him any more.⁠ ⁠… Last night he was not ashamed of me.⁠ ⁠… It was funny. I felt that the Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the other ball.⁠ ⁠… I didn’t want to dance with Arthur⁠ ⁠… but I did⁠ ⁠… and, somehow, then⁠—it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball at Warria.⁠ ⁠…” + 

A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it. + 

“Michael says you’re going away?” + 

“Yes,” Potch replied. + 

Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly. + 

“Don’t leave me, Potch,” she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. “I don’t know what will become of me if you go away.⁠ ⁠… I wanted us to get married and settle down.” + 

Potch turned to her. + 

“You don’t mean that?” + 

“I do,” Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words. “I’m afraid of myself, Potch⁠ ⁠… afraid of drifting.” + 

Potch’s arms went round her. “Sophie!” he sobbed. But even as he held her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him. + 

“But you love him!” he said. + 

Sophie’s eyes did not fail from his. + 

“I do,” she said, “but I don’t want to. I wish I didn’t.” + 

His hands fell from her. “Why,” he asked, “why do you say you’ll marry me, if you⁠ ⁠… if⁠—” + 

Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie’s hands. + 

“I’m afraid of him,” she said, “of the power of my love for him⁠ ⁠… and there’s no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with you and Michael for the Ridge.⁠ ⁠… You know I do care for you too, Potch dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful⁠ ⁠… to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and⁠—” + 

Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a thousand tender associations⁠—their home, the quiet course their lives might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself. + 

His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods offered him, even for the moment. And yet⁠—he could not turn from it. Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by⁠—he stirred to the afterthought of her “and”⁠—she wanted the children who might come to them.⁠ ⁠… Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud’s most passionate kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of Sophie’s dress or fingers had. + 

Sophie took his hand. + 

“Potch,” she said, “if you love me⁠—if you want me to marry you, let us settle the thing this way.⁠ ⁠… I want to marry you.⁠ ⁠… I want to be your loving and faithful wife.⁠ ⁠… I’ll try to be.⁠ ⁠… I don’t want to think of anyone but you.⁠ ⁠… You may make me forget⁠—if we are married, and get on well together. I hope you will⁠—” + 

Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his voice. + 

XIII + 

Potch had looked towards Michael’s hut before he went into his own, next evening. There was no light in its window, and he supposed that Michael had gone to bed. In the morning, as they were walking to the mine, Potch said: + 

“He’s back; did you know?” + 

Michael guessed whom Potch was speaking of. “Saw him⁠ ⁠… as I was walking out along the Warria road yesterday afternoon,” he said; “and then at Newton’s.⁠ ⁠… He looks ill.” + 

Potch did not reply. They did not speak of Charley again, and yet as they worked they thought of no one else, and of nothing but the difficulties his coming would bring into their lives. For Potch, his father’s return meant the revival of an old shame. He had been accepted on his merits by the Ridge; he had made people forget he was Charley Heathfield’s son, and now Charley was back Potch had no hope of anything but the old situation where his father was concerned, the old drag and the old fear. The thought of it was more disconcerting than ever, now too, because Sophie would have to share the sort of atmosphere Charley would put about them. + 

And Michael was dulled by the weight of the fate which threatened him. Every day the consciousness of it weighed more heavily. He wondered whether his mind would remain clear and steady enough to interpret his resolve. For him, Charley’s coming, and the enmity he had gauged in his glance the night before, were last straws of misfortune. + 

John Armitage had put the proposition he outlined for Sophie, to Michael, the night before he left for Sydney. He had told Michael what he knew, and what he suspected in connection with Rouminof’s opals. Michael had neither defended himself nor denied Armitage’s accusation. He had ignored any reference to Paul’s opals, and had made his position of uncompromising hostility to Armitage’s proposition clear from the outset. There had not been a shadow of hesitation in his decision to oppose the Armitages’ scheme for buying up the mines. At whatever cost, he believed he had no choice but to stand by the ideas and ideals on which the life of the Ridge was established and had grown. + 

John Armitage, because of his preconceived notion of the guilty conscience Michael was suffering from, was disappointed that the action of Michael’s mind had been as direct to the poles of his faith as it had been. He realised Sophie was right: Michael would not go back on the Ridge or the Ridge code; but the Ridge might go back on him. Armitage assured himself he had a good hand to play, and he explained his position quite frankly to Michael. If Michael would not work with him, he, John Armitage, must work against Michael. He would prefer not to do so, he said. He described to several men, separately, what the proposals of the Armitage Syndicate amounted to, in order that they might think over, weigh, and discuss them. He was going down to Sydney for a few weeks, and when he came back he would call a meeting and lay his proposition before the men. He hoped by then Michael would have reconsidered his decision. If he had not, Armitage made it clear that, much as he would regret having to, he would nevertheless do all in his power to destroy any influence Michael might have with men of the Ridge which might militate against their acceptance of the scheme for reorganisation of the mines he had to lay before them. Michael understood what that meant. John Armitage would accuse him of having stolen Paul’s opals, and he would have to answer the accusation before men of the Ridge. + 

His mind hovered about the thought of Maud Johnson. + 

He could not conceive how John Armitage had come to the knowledge he possessed, unless Maud, whom he was aware Armitage had bought stones from in America, had not showed or sold them to him. But Armitage believed Michael still had, and was hoarding the stones. That was the strange part of it all. How could Armitage declare he had one of the stones, and yet believe Michael was holding the rest? Unless Maud had taken that one stone from the table the night she came to see Potch? Michael could not remember having seen the stone after she went. He could not remember having put it back in the box. It only just occurred to him she might only have taken the stone that night. Jun had probably recognised the stone, and she had told Armitage what Jun had said about it. Jun might have gone to the hut for the rest of the stones, but then Maud would not have told Armitage they were still on the Ridge. Maud would be sure to know if Jun had got the stones on his own account, Michael thought. + 

His brain went over and over again what John Armitage had said, querying, exclaiming, explaining, and enlarging on fragments of their talk. Armitage declared he had evidence to prove Michael Brady had stolen Rouminof’s stones. He might have proof that he had had possession of them for a while, Michael believed. But if Armitage was under the impression he still had the opals, his information was incomplete at least, and Michael treasured a vague hope that the proof which he might adduce, would be as faulty. + 

But more important than the bringing home to him of responsibility for the lost opals, and the “unmasking” to eyes of men of the Ridge which Armitage had promised him, was the bearing it would have on the proposition which was to be put before them. Michael realised that there was a good deal of truth in what Armitage had said. A section of the younger miners, men who had settled on the new rushes, and one or two of the older men who had grown away from the Ridge idea, would probably be willing enough to fall in with and work under Armitage’s scheme. George, Watty, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Cash Wilson, and most of the older men were against it, and some of the younger ones, too; but Archie and Ted Cross were inclined to waver, although they had always been staunch for the Ridge principle, and with them was a substantial following from the Punti, Three Mile, and other rushes. + 

A disintegrating influence was at work, Michael recognised. It had been active for some time. Since Potch’s finding of the big stone, scarcely any stone worth speaking of had been unearthed on the fields, and that meant long store accounts, and anxious and hard times for most of the gougers. + 

The settlement had weathered seasons of dearth, and had existed on the merest traces of precious opal before; but this one had lasted longer, and had tried everybody’s patience and capacity for endurance to the last degree. Murmurs of the need for money to prospect the field and open up new workings were heard. Criticisms of the ideas which would keep out money and money-owners who might be persuaded to invest their money to prospect and open up new workings on Fallen Star, crept into the murmurings, and had been circulating for some months. Bat M’Ginnis, a tall, lean, herring-gutted Irishman, with big ears, pointed like a bat’s, was generally considered author of the criticisms and abettor of the murmurings. He had sunk on the Coolebah and drifted to the Punti rush soon after. On the Punti, it was known, he had expatiated on the need for business men and business methods to run the mines and make the most of the resources of the Ridge. + 

M’Ginnis was a good agent for Armitage, before Armitage’s proposition was heard of. Michael wondered now whether he was perhaps an agent of Armitage’s, and had been sent to the Ridge to prepare the way for John Armitage’s scheme. When he came to think of it, Michael remembered he had heard men exclaim that Bat never seemed short of money himself, although if he had to live on what his claim produced he would have been as hard up as most of them. Michael wondered whether Charley’s homecoming was a coincidence likewise, or whether Armitage had laid his plans more carefully than might have been imagined. + 

Michael saw no way out for himself. He could not accept Armitage’s bribe of silence as to his share in the disappearance of Paul’s opals, in order to urge men of the Ridge to agree to the Armitages’ proposition for buying up the mines. If he could have, he realised, he would carry perhaps a majority of men of the Ridge with him; and those he cared most for would stand by the Ridge idea whether he deserted it or not, he believed. He would only fall in their esteem; they would despise him; and he would despise himself if he betrayed the idea on which he had staked so much, and the realisation of which he would have died to preserve. But there was no question of betraying the Ridge idea, or of being false to the teaching of his whole life. He was not even tempted by the terms Armitage offered for his cooperation. He was glad to think no terms Armitage could offer would tempt him from his allegiance to the principle which was the cornerstone of life on the Ridge. + 

But he asked himself what the men would think of him when they heard Armitage’s story; what Sophie would think, and Potch. He turned in agony from the thought that Sophie and Potch would believe him guilty of the thing he seemed to be guilty of. Anything seemed easier to bear than the loss of their love and faith, and the faith of men of the Ridge he had worked with and been in close sympathy with for so long⁠—Watty and George, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant and Cash Wilson. Would he have to leave the Ridge when they knew? Would they cold-shoulder him out of their lives? His imagination had centred for so long about the thing he had done that the guilt of it was magnified out of all proportion to the degree of his culpability. He did not accuse himself in the initial act. He had done what seemed to him the only thing to do, in good faith; the opals had nothing to do with it. He did not understand yet how they had got an ascendancy over him; how when he had intended just to look at them, to see they were well packed, he had been seduced into that trance of worshipful admiration. + 

Why he had not returned the stones to Paul as soon as Sophie had left the Ridge, Michael could not entirely explain to himself. He went over and over the excuses he had made to himself, seeing in them evidence of the subtle witchery the stones had exercised over him. But as soon as he was aware of the danger of delay, he tried to assure himself, and the appearance it must have, he had determined to get rid of the stones. + 

Would the men believe he had wanted to give the stones to Paul⁠—even that he had done what he had done for the reasons he would put before them? George and Watty and some of the others would believe him⁠—but the rest? Michael could not hope that the majority would believe his story. They would want to know if at first he had kept the stones to prevent Sophie leaving the Ridge, why he had not given them to Paul as soon as she had gone. Michael knew he could only explain to them as he had to himself. He had intended to; he had delayed doing so; and then, when he went to find the stones to give them to Paul, they were no longer where he had left them. It was a thin story⁠—a poor explanation. But that was the truth of the situation as far as he knew it. There was nothing more to be said or thought on the subject. He put it away from him with an impulse of impatience, desperate and weary. + 

When Potch returned from the mine that afternoon; he went into Michael’s hut before going home. Michael himself he had seen strike out westwards in the direction of the swamp soon after he came above ground. Potch expected to see his father where he was; he had seen him so often before on Michael’s sofa under the window. Charley glanced up from the newspaper he was reading as Potch came into the room. + 

“Well, son,” he said, “the prodigal father’s returned, and quite ready for a fatted calf.” + 

Potch stood staring at him. Light from the window bathed the thin, yellow face on the faded cushions of Michael’s couch, limning the sharp nose with its curiously scenting expression, all the hungry, shrewd femininity and weakness of the face, and the smile of triumphant malice which glided in and out of the eyes. Michael was right, Potch realised; Charley was ill; but he had no pity for the man who lay there and smiled like that. + 

“You can’t stay here,” he said. “Michael’s coming.” + 

Charley smiled imperturbably. + 

“Can’t I?” he said. “You see. Besides⁠ ⁠… I want to see Michael. That’s what I’m here for.” + 

Potch growled inarticulately. He went to the hearth, gathered the half-burnt sticks together to make a fire. He would have given anything to get Charley out of the hut before Michael returned; but he did not know how to manage it. If Charley thought he wanted him to go, nothing would move him, Potch knew. + 

“What do you want to see Michael about?” he asked. + 

“Nice, affectionate son you are,” Charley murmured. “Suppose you know you are my son⁠—and heir?” + 

“Worse luck,” Potch muttered, watching the flame he had kindled over the dry chips and sticks. + 

“You might’ve done worse,” Charley replied, watching his son with a slight, derisive smile. “I might’ve done worse myself in the way of a son to support me in my old age.” + 

“I’m not going to do that.” + 

Charley laughed. “Aren’t you?” he queried. “You might be very glad to⁠—on terms I could suggest. And you’re a fine, husky chap to do it, Potch, my lad.⁠ ⁠… They tell me you’ve married Rouminof’s girl, and she’s chucked the singing racket. Rum go, that! She could sing, too.⁠ ⁠… People I know told me they’d seen her in America in some revue stunt there, and she was just the thing. Went the pace a bit, eh? Oh, well, there’s nothing like matrimony to sober a woman down⁠—take the devil out of her.” + 

Potch’s resentment surged; but before he could utter it, his father’s pleasantries were flipping lightly, cynically. + 

“By the way, I saw a friend of yours in Sydney couple of months ago. Oh, well, several perhaps. Might have been a year.⁠ ⁠… Maud! There’s a fine woman, Potch. And she told me she was awfully gone on you once. Eh, what?⁠ ⁠… And now you’re a married man. And to think of my becoming a grandfather. Help!” + 

Potch sprang to his feet, goaded to fury by the jeering, amiable voice. + 

“Shut up,” he yelled, “shut up, or⁠—” + 

The doorway darkened. Potch saw Charley’s face light with an expression of curious satisfaction and triumph. He turned and discovered that Michael was standing in the doorway. Irresolute and flinching, he stood there gazing at Charley, a strange expression of fear and loathing in his eyes. + 

“You can clear out now, son,” Charley remarked, putting an emphasis on the “son” calculated to enrage Potch. “I want to talk to Michael.” + 

Potch looked at Michael. It was his intention to stand by Michael if, and for as long as, Michael needed him. + 

“It’s all right, Potch,” Michael said; but his eyes did not go to Potch’s as they usually did. There was a strange, grave quality of aloofness about Michael. Potch hesitated, studying his face; but Michael dismissed him with a glance, and Potch went out of the hut. + 

XIV + 

The sky was like a great shallow basin turned over the plains. No tree or rising ground broke the perfect circle of its fall over the earth; only in the distance, on the edge of the bowl, a fringe of trees drew a blurred line between earth and sky. + 

Potch and Sophie lay out on the plains, on their backs in the dried herbage, watching the sunset⁠—the play of light on the wide sweep of the sky⁠—silently, as if they were listening to great music. + 

They had been married some days before in Budda township, and were living in Potch’s hut. + 

Sophie and Potch had often wandered over the plains in the evening and watched the sunset; but never before had they come to the sense of understanding and completeness they attained this evening. The days had been long and peaceful since they were living together, an anodyne to Sophie, soothing all the restless turmoil of her soul and body. She had ceased to desire happiness; she was grateful for this lull of all her powers of sense and thought, and eager to love and to serve Potch as he did her. She believed her life had found its haven; that if she kept in tune with the fundamentals of love and service, she could maintain a consciousness of peace and rightness with the world which would make living something more than a weary longing for death. + 

All the days were holy days to Potch since Sophie and he had been married. He looked at her as if she were Undine making toast and tea, cooking, washing dishes, or sweeping and tidying up his hut. He followed her every movement with a worshipful, reverent gaze. + 

Soon after Sophie’s return, Potch had gone to live in the hut which he and his father had occupied in the old days. He had put a veranda of boughs to the front of it, and had washed the roof and walls with carbide to lessen the heat in summer. He had turned out the rooms and put up shelves, trying to furnish the place a little for Sophie; but she had not wanted it altered at all. She had cleared the cupboard, put clean paper on the shelves, and had arranged Potch’s books on them herself. + 

Sophie loved the austerity of her home when she went to live in it⁠—its earthen floor, bare walls, unvarnished furniture, the couch under the window, the curtains of unbleached linen she had hemstitched herself, the row of shining syrup-tins in which she kept tea, sugar, and coffee on shelves near the fireplace, the big earthenware jar for flowers, and a couple of jugs which Snowshoes had made for her and baked in an oven of his own contrivance. She had a quiet satisfaction in doing all the cleaning up and tidying to keep her house in the order she liked, so that her eyes could rest on any part of it and take pleasure from the sense of beauty in ordinary and commonplace things. + 

But the hut was small and its arrangements so simple that an hour or two after Potch had gone to the mines Sophie went to the shed into which he had moved her cutting-wheel, and busied herself facing and polishing the stones which some of the men brought her as usual. She knew her work pleased them. She was as skilful at showing a stone to all its advantage as any cutter on the Ridge, and nothing delighted her more than when Watty or George or one of the Crosses exclaimed with satisfaction at a piece of work she had done. + 

In the afternoon sometimes she went down to the New Town to talk with Maggie Grant, Mrs. Woods, or Martha. She was understudying Martha, too, when anyone was sick in the town, and needed nursing or a helping hand. Martha had her hands full when Mrs. Ted Cross’s fourth baby was born. There were five babies in the township at the time, and Sophie went to Crosses’ every morning to fix up the house and look after the children and Mrs. Ted before Martha arrived. When Martha found the Crosses’ washing gaily flapping on the line one morning towards midday, she protested in her own vigorous fashion. + 

“I ain’t going to have you blackleggin’ on me, Mrs. Heathfield,” she said. “And what’s more, if I find you doin’ it again, I’ll tell Potch. It’s all right for me to be goin’ round doing other people’s odd jobs; but I don’t hold with you doin’ ’em⁠—so there! If folks wants babies, well, it’s their lookout⁠—and mine. But I don’t see what you’ve got to do with it, coming round makin’ your hands look anyhow.” + 

“You just sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea, Mother M’Cready,” Sophie said by way of reply, and gently pushed Martha into the most comfortable chair in the room. “You look done up⁠ ⁠… and you’re going on to see Ella and Mrs. Inglewood, I suppose.” + 

Martha nodded. She watched Sophie with troubled, loving eyes. She was really very tired, and glad to be able to sit and rest for a moment. It gave her a welling tenderness and gratitude to have Sophie concerned for her tiredness, and fuss about her like this. Martha was so accustomed to caring for everybody on the Ridge, and she was so strong, good-natured, and vigorous, very few people thought of her ever being weary or dispirited. But as she bustled into the kitchen, blocking out the light, Sophie saw that Martha’s fat, jolly face under the shadow of her sunhat, was not as happy-looking as usual. Sophie guessed the weariness which had overtaken her, and that she was “poorly” or “out-of-sorts,” as Martha would have said herself, if she could have been made to admit such a thing. + 

“It’s all very well to give folks a helping hand,” Martha continued, “but I’m not going to have you doin’ their washin’ while I’m about.” + 

Sophie put a cup of tea and slice of bread and syrup down beside her. + 

“There! You drink that cup of tea, and tell me what you think of it,” she said. + 

“But, Sophie,” Martha protested. “It’s stone silly for you to be doing things like Cross’s washing. You’re not strong enough, and I won’t have it.” + 

“Won’t you?” + 

Sophie put her arms around Martha’s neck from behind her chair. She pressed her face against the creases of Martha’s sunburnt neck and kissed it. + 

Martha gurgled happily under the pressure of Sophie’s young arms, the childish impulse of that hugging. She turned her face back and kissed Sophie. + 

“Oh, my lamb! My dearie lamb!” she murmured. + 

She recognised Sophie’s need for common and kindly service to the people of the Ridge. She knew what that service had meant to her at one time, and was willing to let Sophie share her ministry so long as her health was equal to it. + 

Mrs. Watty, and the women who took their views from her, thought that Sophie was giving herself a great deal of unnecessary and laborious work as a sort of penance. They had withdrawn all countenance from her after the disaster of the ball, although they regarded her marriage to Potch as an endeavour to reinstate herself in their good graces. Mrs. Watty had been scandalised by the dress she had worn at the ball, by the way she had danced, and her behaviour generally. But Sophie was quite unconcerned as to what Mrs. Watty and her friends thought: she did not go out of her way either to avoid or placate them. + 

When she went to the Crosses’ to take charge of the children and look after the house while Mrs. Cross was ill, the gossips had exclaimed together. And when it was known that Sophie had taken on herself odds and ends of sewing for other women of the township who had large families and rather more to do than they knew how to get through, they declared that they did not know what to make of it, or of Sophie and her moods and misdemeanours. + 

Potch heard of what Sophie was doing from the people she helped. When he came home in the evening she was nearly always in the kitchen getting tea for him; but if she was not, she came in soon after he got home, and he knew that one of these little tasks she had undertaken for people in the town had kept her longer than she expected. Usually he hung in the doorway, waiting for her to come and meet him, to hold up her face to be kissed, eyes sweet with affection and the tender familiarity of their association. Those offered kisses of hers were the treasure of these dreamlike days to Potch. + 

He had always loved Sophie. He had thought that his love had reached the limit of loving a long time before, but since they had been married and were living, day after day, together, he had become no more than a loving of her. He went about his work as usual, performed all the other functions of his life mechanically, scrupulously, but it was always with a subconscious knowledge of Sophie and of their life together. + 

“You’re tired,” he said one night when Sophie lifted her face to his, his eyes strained on her with infinite concern. + 

“Dear Potch,” she said; and she had put back the hair from his forehead with a gesture tender and pitiful. + 

Her glance and gesture were always tender and pitiful. Potch realised it. He knew that he worshipped and she accepted his worship. He was content⁠—not quite content, perhaps⁠—but he assured himself it was enough for him that it should be so. + 

He had never taken Sophie in his arms without an overwhelming sense of reverence and worship. There was no passionate need, no spontaneity, no leaping flame in the caresses she had given him, in that kiss of the evening, and the slight, girlish gestures of affection and tenderness she gave as she passed him at meals, or when they were reading or walking together. + 

As they lay on the plains this evening they had been thinking of their life together. They had talked of it in low, brooding murmurs. The immensity of the silence soaked into them. They had taken into themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was time to go home, Sophie sat up. + 

“I love to lie against the earth like this,” she said. + 

“We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more than specks of dust on the plains⁠ ⁠… under the skies, Potch⁠ ⁠… and yet the whole world is within us.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Yes,” Potch said, and the silence streamed between them again. + 

“I’ll never forget,” Sophie continued dreamily, “hearing a negro talk once about what they call ‘the negro problem’ in America. He was an ordinary thickset, curly-haired, coarse-featured negro to look at⁠—Booker Washington⁠—but he talked some of the clearest, straightest stuff I’ve ever heard. + 

“One thing he said has always stayed in my mind: ‘Keep close to the earth.’ It was not good, he said, to walk on asphalted paths too long.⁠ ⁠… He was describing what Western civilisation had done for the negroes⁠—a primitive people.⁠ ⁠… Anyone could see how they had degenerated under it. And it’s always seemed to me that what was true for the negroes⁠ ⁠… is true for us, too.⁠ ⁠… It’s good to keep close to the earth.” + 

“Keep close to the earth?” Potch mused. + 

“In tune with the fundamentals, all the great things of loving and working⁠—our eyes on the stars.” + 

“The stars?” + 

“The objects of our faith and service.” + 

They were silent again for a while. Then Sophie said: + 

“You⁠ ⁠…” she hesitated, remembering what she had told John Armitage⁠—“you and I would fight for the Ridge principle, even if all the others accepted Mr. Armitage’s offer, wouldn’t we, Potch?” + 

“Of course,” Potch said. + 

“And Michael?” + 

“Michael?” His eyes questioned her in the dim light because of the hesitation in her question. “Why do you say that? Michael would be the last man on earth to have anything to do with Armitage’s scheme.” + 

“He comes back to put the proposition to the men definitely in a few days, doesn’t he?” Sophie asked. + 

“Yes,” Potch said. + 

“Have you talked to Michael about it?” + 

“To tell you the truth, Sophie,” Potch replied slowly, conscience-stricken that he had given the subject so little consideration, “I took it for granted there could only be one answer to the whole thing.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t thought of it. I’ve only thought of you the last week or so. I haven’t talked to Michael; I haven’t even heard what the men were saying at midday.⁠ ⁠… But, of course, there’s only one answer.” + 

“I’ve tried to talk to Michael, but he won’t discuss it with me,” Sophie said. + 

Potch stared at her. + 

“You don’t mean,” he said⁠—“you can’t think⁠—” + 

“Oh,” she cried, with a gesture of desperation, “I know John Armitage is holding something over Michael⁠ ⁠… and if it’s true what he says, it’ll break Michael, and it’ll go very badly against the Ridge.” + 

“You can’t tell me what it is?” + 

Sophie shook her head. + 

Potch got up; his face settled into grave and fighting lines. Sophie, too, rose from the ground. They went towards the track where the three huts stood facing the scattered dumps of the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush. + 

“I want to see Michael,” Potch said, when they approached the huts. “I’ll be in, in a couple of minutes.” + 

Sophie went on to their own home, and Potch, swerving from her, walked across to the back door of Michael’s hut. + 

XV + 

Charley was sitting on the couch, leaning towards Michael, his shoulders hunched, his eyes gleaming, when Potch went into the hut. + 

“You can’t bluff me,” Potch heard him say. “You may throw dust in the eyes of the men here, but you can’t bluff me.⁠ ⁠… It was you did for me.⁠ ⁠… It was you put it over on me⁠—took those stones.” + 

“Well, you tell the boys,” Potch heard Michael say. + 

His voice was as unconcerned as though it were not anything of importance they were discussing. Potch found relief in the sound of it, but its unconcern drove Charley to fury. + 

“You know I took them from Paul,” he shouted. “You know⁠—I can see it in your eyes⁠ ⁠… and you took them from me. When⁠ ⁠… how⁠ ⁠… I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… You must ’ve sneaked into the house when I dozed off for a bit, and put a parcel of your own rotten stuff in their place.⁠ ⁠… How do I know? Well, I’ll tell you.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He settled back on the sofa. “I hung on to the best stone in the lot⁠—clear brown potch with good flame in it⁠—hopin’ it would give me a clue some day to the man who’d done that trick on me. But I couldn’t place the stone; I’d never seen it on you, and Jun had never seen it either. I was dead stony when I sold it to Maud⁠ ⁠… and I told her why I’d been keeping it, seeing she was in the show at the start off. She sold the stone to Armitage in America, and first thing the old man said when he saw it was: ‘Why, that’s Michael’s mascot!’ ” + 

“Remembered when you’d got it, he said,” Charley continued, taking Michael’s interest with gratified malice. “First stone you’d come on, on Fallen Star, and you wouldn’t sell⁠—kept her for luck.⁠ ⁠… Old Armitage wouldn’t have anything to do with the stone then⁠—didn’t believe Maud’s story.⁠ ⁠… But John Lincoln got it. He told me.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I see,” Michael murmured. + 

“Don’t mind telling you I’m here to play Armitage’s game,” Charley said. + 

Michael nodded. “Well, what about it?” + 

“This about it,” Charley exclaimed irritably, his excitement and impatience rising under Michael’s calmness. “You’re done on the Ridge when this story gets around. What I’ve got to say is⁠ ⁠… you took the opals. You’ve got ’em. You’re done for here. But you could have a good life somewhere else. Clear out, and⁠—” + 

“We’ll go halves, eh?” Michael queried. + 

“That’s it,” Charley assented. “I’ll clear out and say nothing⁠—although I’ve told Rummy enough already to give him his suspicions. Still, suspicions are only suspicions⁠—nothing more. When I came here I didn’t even mean to give you this chance.⁠ ⁠… But ‘Life is sweet, brother!’ There’s still a few pubs down in Sydney, and a woman or two. I wouldn’t go out with such a grouch against things in general if I had a flash in the pan first.⁠ ⁠… And it’d suit you all right, Michael.⁠ ⁠… With this scheme of Armitage’s in the wind⁠—” + 

“And suppose I haven’t got the stones?” Michael inquired. + 

Charley half rose from the sofa, his thin hands grasping the table. + 

“It’s a lie!” he shrieked, shivering with impotent fury. “You know it is.⁠ ⁠… What have you done with ’em then? What have you done with those stones⁠—that’s what I want to know!” + 

“You haven’t got much breath,” Michael said; “you’d better save it.” + 

“I’ll use all I’ve got to down you, if you don’t come to light,” Charley cried. “I’ll do it, see if I don’t.” + 

Potch walked across to his father. He had heard Charley abusing and threatening Michael before without being able to make out what it was all about. He had thought it bluff and something in the nature of a try-on; but he had determined to put a stop to it. + 

“No, you won’t!” he said. + 

“Won’t I?” Charley turned on his son. + 

“No.” Potch’s tone was steady and decisive. + 

Charley looked towards Michael again. + 

“Well⁠ ⁠… what are you going to do about it?” + 

“I’ve told you,” Michael said. “Nothing.” + 

“Did y’ hear what I’ve been calling your saint?” Charley cried, turning to Potch. “I’m calling him what everybody on the fields’d be calling him if they knew.” + 

Michael’s gaze wavered as it went to Potch. + 

“A thief,” Charley continued, whipping himself into a frenzy. “That’s what he is⁠—a dirty, low-down thief! I’m the ordinary, decent sort⁠ ⁠… get the credit for what I am⁠ ⁠… and pay for it, by God! But he⁠—he doesn’t pay. I bag all the disgrace⁠ ⁠… and he walks off with the goods⁠—Rouminof’s stones.” + 

Potch did not look at Michael. What Charley had said did not seem to shock or surprise him. + 

“I’ve made a perfectly fair and reasonable proposition,” Charley went on more quietly. “I’ve told him⁠ ⁠… if he’ll go halves⁠—” + 

“Guess again,” Potch sneered. + 

Charley swung to his feet, a volley of expletives swept from him. + 

“I’ve told Rummy to get the law on his side,” he cried shrilly, “and he’s going to. There’s one little bit of proof I’ve got that’ll help him, and⁠—” + 

“You’ll get jail yourself over it,” Potch said. + 

“Don’t mind if I do,” Charley shouted, and poured his rage and disappointment into a flood of such filthy abuse that Potch took him by the shoulders. + 

“Shut your mouth,” he said. “D’y’ hear?⁠ ⁠… Shut your mouth!” + 

Charley continued to rave, and Potch, gripping his shoulders, ran him out of the hut. + 

Michael heard them talking in Potch’s hut⁠—Charley yelling, threatening, and cursing. A fit of coughing seized him. Then there was silence⁠—a hurrying to and fro in the hut. Michael heard Sophie go to the tank, and carry water into the house, and guessed that Charley’s paroxysm and coughing had brought on the hemorrhage he had had two or three times since his return to the Ridge. + 

A little later Potch came to him. + 

“He’s had a bleeding, Michael,” Potch said; “a pretty bad one, and he’s weak as a kitten. But just before it came on I told him I’d let him have a pound a week, somehow, if he goes down to Sydney at once.⁠ ⁠… But if ever he shows his face in the Ridge again⁠ ⁠… or says a word more about you⁠ ⁠… I’ve promised he’ll never get another penny out of me.⁠ ⁠… He can die where and how he likes⁠ ⁠… I’m through with him.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Michael had been sitting beside his fire, staring into it. He had dropped into a chair and had not moved since Potch and Charley left the hut. + 

“Do you believe what he said, Potch?” he asked. + 

Michael felt Potch’s eyes on his face; he raised his eyes to meet them. There was no lie in the clear depths of Potch’s eyes. + 

“I’ve known for a long time,” Potch said. + 

Michael’s gaze held him⁠—the swimming misery of it; then, as if overwhelmed by the knowledge of what Potch must be thinking of him, it fell. Michael rose from his chair before the fire and stood before Potch, his mind darkened as by shutting-off of the only light which had penetrated its gloom. He stood so for some time in utter abasement and desolation of spirit, believing that he had lost a thing which had come to be of inexpressible value to him, the love and homage Potch had given him while they had been mates. + 

“I’ve always known, too,” Potch said, “it was for a good enough reason.” + 

Michael’s swift glance went to him, his soul irradiated by that unprotesting affirmation of Potch’s faith. + 

He dropped into his chair before the fire again. His head went into his hands. Potch knew that Michael was crying. He stood by silently⁠—unable to touch him, unable to realise the whole of Michael’s tragedy, and yet overcome with love and sympathy for him. He knew only as much of it as affected Sophie. His sympathy and instinct where Sophie was concerned enabled him to guess why Michael had done what he had. + 

“It was for Sophie,” he said. + 

“I intended to give them back to Paul⁠—when she was old enough to go away, Potch,” Michael said after a while. “Then she went away; and I don’t know why I didn’t give them to him at once. The things got hold of me, somehow⁠—for a while, at least. I couldn’t make up my mind to give them back to him⁠—kept makin’ excuses.⁠ ⁠… Then, when I did make up my mind and went to get them, they were gone.” + 

Potch nodded thoughtfully. + 

“You don’t suspect anybody?” he asked. + 

Michael shook his head. “How can I? Nobody knew I had them, and yet⁠ ⁠… that night⁠ ⁠… twice, I thought I had heard someone moving near me.⁠ ⁠… The memory of it’s stayed with me all these years. Sometimes I think it means something⁠—that somebody must have been near and seen and heard. Then that seems absurd. It was a bright night; I looked, and there was no one in sight. There’s only one person besides you⁠ ⁠… saw⁠ ⁠… I think⁠—knew I had the stones.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Maud?” + 

Michael nodded. “She came into the room with you that night. You remember?⁠ ⁠… And I’ve wondered since⁠ ⁠… if she, perhaps, or Jun⁠ ⁠… At any rate, Armitage knows, or suspects⁠—I don’t know which it is really.⁠ ⁠… He says he has proof. There’s that stone I put in Charley’s parcel⁠—a silly thing to do when you come to think of it. But I didn’t like the idea of leaving Charley nothing to sell when he got to Sydney; and that was the only decent bit of stone I’d got. Making up the parcel in a hurry, I didn’t think what putting in that bit of stuff might lead to. But for that, I can’t think how Armitage could have proof I had the stones except through Maud. And she’s been in New York, and⁠—” + 

“She may have told him she saw you the night she came for me,” Potch said. + 

“That’s what I think,” Michael agreed. + 

They brooded over the situation for a while. + 

“Does Sophie know?” Michael’s eyes went to Potch, a sharper light in them. + 

“Only that some danger threatens you,” Potch said slowly. “Armitage told her.” + 

“You tell her what I’ve told you, Potch,” Michael said. + 

They talked a little longer, then Potch moved to go away. + 

“There’s nothing to be done?” he asked. + 

Michael shook his head. + 

“Things have just got to take their course. There’s nothing to be done, Potch,” he said. + 

They came to him together, Sophie and Potch, in a little while, and Sophie went straight to Michael. She put her arms round his neck and her face against his; her eyes were shining with tears and tenderness. + 

“Michael, dear!” she whispered. + 

Michael held her to him; she was indeed the child of his flesh as she was of his spirit, as he held her then. + 

He did not speak; he could not. Looking up, he caught Potch’s eyes on him, the same expression of faith and tenderness in them. The joy of the moment was beyond words. + 

Potch’s and Sophie’s love and faith were beyond all value, precious to Michael in this time of trouble. When he had failed to believe in himself, Sophie and Potch believed in him; when his lifework seemed to be falling from his hands, they were ready to take it up. They had told him so. In his grief and realisation of failure, that thought was a star⁠—a thing of miraculous joy and beauty. + 

XVI + 

The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction. M’Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were prepared to accept Armitage’s scheme. The Crosses, while they would not go over to the M’Ginnis faction, had a following⁠—and the group about them was by far the largest⁠—which was asserting an open mind until it heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than against, Armitage’s outline of the new order of things for the Ridge since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and Watty Frost. + 

“Thing that’s surprised me,” Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, “is the numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say. I wouldn’t ’ve thought there’d be so many.” + 

“I don’t like it meself, Pony,” George admitted. “That’s why we’re here. Want to know the strength of them⁠—and him.” + 

“That’s right,” Watty muttered. + 

“Crosses, for instance,” Pony-Fence continued. “You wouldn’t ’ve thought Archie and Ted’d ’ve even listened to guff about profit-sharin’⁠—all that.⁠ ⁠… But they’ve swallowed it⁠—swallowed it all down. They say⁠—” + 

George nodded gloomily. “This blasted talkin’ about Michael’s done more harm than anything.” + 

“That’s right,” Pony-Fence said. “What’s the strength of it, George?” + 

“Damned if I know!” + 

“Where’s Michael tonight?” + 

Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was not among them. + 

“Is he coming?” Pony-Fence asked. + 

George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted, expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking of Michael. + 

“Does he know what’s being said?” Pony-Fence asked. + 

“He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know about it.” + 

“What did he say?” + 

“Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don’t understand Michael over this business,” George said. “He’s been right off his nest the last week or two. It might have got him down what’s being said⁠—he might be so sore about anybody thinkin’ that of him, or that it’s just too mean and paltry to take any notice of.⁠ ⁠… But I’d rather he’d said something.⁠ ⁠… It’s played Armitage’s game all right, the yarn that’s been goin’ round, about Michael’s not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it is, you don’t know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course⁠—but it was here before him.⁠ ⁠… He’s just stoked the gossip a bit. But it’s done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could ’ve⁠—” + 

“Tonight’ll bring things to a head,” Watty interrupted, as though they had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to say next. “I reck’n we’ll see better how we stand⁠—what’s the game⁠—and the men who are going to stand by us.⁠ ⁠… Michael’s with us, I’ll swear; and if we’ve got to put up a fight⁠ ⁠… we’ll have it out with him about those yarns.⁠ ⁠… And it’ll be hell for any man who drops a word of them afterwards.” + 

When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was. + 

Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M’Intosh, the American engineer, on the other. + 

His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage’s plan. + 

John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night. Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats. Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say. + 

Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr. Andrew M’Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date, flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the Armitage Syndicate. + 

Andrew M’Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up in response to Mr. Armitage’s invitation. He was a man of deeds, not words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business, although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage’s proposition; and he gave them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of the reorganisation of the mines, he would work wholeheartedly for the success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the advantages that would entail. + 

The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer’s manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the situation, although he gave very little information they had not already possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and confronted the men again. + 

He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said; but one the success of which would depend on their cooperation. As their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased production would ensure. + 

In a nutshell Armitage’s scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines for £30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage of 20 percent profit on all stones over a certain standard and size. The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr. Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining companies throughout the country. + 

When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been driven to consider Armitage’s offer from their first hearing of it, because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost persuaded by his final exposition. + 

George Woods stood up. + 

George’s strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed situations and men. + 

He realised the impression Armitage’s statement of his scheme, and its bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star had stood for so long, would lie. + 

“Well,” he said, “we’ve got to thank you for puttin’ the thing to us as clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a chance to see just what you’re drivin’ at. But I might say here and now⁠ ⁠… I’ve got no time for it⁠ ⁠… neither me nor my mates.⁠ ⁠… It’ll save time and finish the business of this meeting if there’s no beatin’ about the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all right⁠—your scheme⁠—nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to get out of it than to lose by it.⁠ ⁠… I don’t say it wouldn’t mean easier times⁠ ⁠… more money⁠ ⁠… all that sort of thing. We haven’t had the easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes⁠ ⁠… just when we’re in the worst that’s ever knocked us. But speakin’ for myself, and”⁠—his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the Ridge stood for⁠—“the most of my mates, we’d rather have the hard times and be our own masters. That’s what we’ve always said on the Ridge.⁠ ⁠… Your scheme ’d be all right if we didn’t feel like that; I suppose. But we do⁠ ⁠… and as far as I’m concerned, we won’t touch it. It’s no go. + 

“We’re obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you could have gone another way about getting control here. You may⁠—buy up a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not that I think the boys’d stand for the experiment.” + 

“They wouldn’t,” Bill Grant called. + 

“I’m glad to hear that,” George said. He tried to point out that if Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage’s offer they would be shouldering conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He asked whether a weekly wage to tide them over years of misfortune would compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know how they’d feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth £400 or £500 and got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr. Armitage’s argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could see in Mr. Armitage’s scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for them under Mr. Armitage’s system was three or four pounds a week⁠—and not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age. + 

“We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine,” George said; “that’s worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties.⁠ ⁠… Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and there’s money about again.⁠ ⁠… For the present we’ll hang on to what we’ve got, thank you, Mr. Armitage.” + 

He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words. + 

“Anybody else got anything to say?” Peter Newton inquired. + 

M’Ginnis stood up. + 

He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as he could see. He didn’t see that the men’s ownership of the mines meant much more than that⁠—the freedom to starve. It was all very well for them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish heap. But as far as he was concerned, M’Ginnis declared, he didn’t see the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance of being a millionaire at a minute’s notice; but how many of them were millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down this offer of Mr. Armitage’s. For his part he was for it, and, what was more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it. + 

“If it’s put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr. Armitage’s scheme, we’ll soon see which way the cat’s jumping,” M’Ginnis said. “People’d have the nause to see which side their bread’s buttered on⁠—not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I don’t see why⁠—” + 

“You’re not paid to,” a voice called from the back of the hall. + 

“I don’t see why,” M’Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the interruption, “the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule the roost. What’s wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense⁠—” + 

Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near M’Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round. Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood were heard howling over the din: + 

“Let him alone.” + 

“Let’s hear what he’s got to say.” + 

Then M’Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage’s offer. + 

“And,” he wound up, “there’s the women and children to think of.” At the back of the hall somebody laughed. “Laugh if you like”⁠—M’Ginnis worked himself into a passion of virtuous indignation⁠—“but I don’t see there’s anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin’ to mean to the women and children of this town⁠—what a few of the advantages of civilisation⁠—” + 

“Disadvantages!” the same voice called. + 

“⁠—Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin’ to mean to the women and children of this Godforsaken hole,” M’Ginnis cried furiously. “If I had a wife and kids, d’ye think I’d have any time for this highfalutin’ flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The best in the country wouldn’t be too good for them⁠—and it’s not good enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That’s what I’ve got to say⁠—and that’s what any decent man would say if he could see straight. I’m an ordinary, plain, practical man myself⁠ ⁠… and I ask you chaps who’ve been lettin’ your legs be pulled pretty freely⁠—and starvin’ to be masters of your own dumps⁠—to look at this business like ordinary, plain, practical men, who’ve got their heads screwed on the right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there’s some men here want to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let ’em, I say: it’s a free country. But there’s no need for the rest of us to starve with ’em.” + 

He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour of Armitage and his scheme. + 

“What’s Michael got to say about it?” a man from the Three Mile asked. And several voices called: “Yes; what’s Michael got to say?” + 

For a moment there was silence⁠—a silence of apprehension. George Woods and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised in that moment the power of Michael’s influence; that what Michael was going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done, either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet there was fear in the waiting silence. + 

Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed on the place where Michael sat⁠—Charley’s eager and cruel as a cat’s on its victim, Rouminof’s alight with the fires of his consuming excitement. + 

Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance, those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile. + 

“All I’ve got to say,” he said, “George Woods has said. There’s nothing in Mr. Armitage’s scheme for Fallen Star.⁠ ⁠… It looks all right, but it isn’t; it’s all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage’ll give us anything but that⁠—he offers us every inducement but that⁠ ⁠… and you know how the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to him, they’re worth as much, or more, to us. + 

“Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the mines⁠—at a ‘fair valuation’⁠—put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen Star, might or mightn’t come true. P’raps it would. I can’t say. All I say is, it’s being used to gild the pill we’re asked to swallow⁠—buyin’ up of the mines. There’s nothing sure about all this talk of electricity and water laid on; it’s just gilding. And supposing the new conditions did put more money about⁠—did bring the comforts and conveniences of civilisation to Fallen Star⁠—like M’Ginnis says⁠—what good would they be to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn’t matter to them any more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they’d have their wages⁠—like bullocks have their hay. It’s because our work’s had interest; it’s because we’ve been our own bosses, life’s been as good as it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn’t got interest in his work he’s got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling⁠ ⁠… and how did that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of M’Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a strike in the mines, he’d be saying that to you: ‘Remember the women and children.’ ” + 

Colour flamed in Michael’s face, and he continued with more heat than there had yet been in his voice. + 

“The time’s coming when the man who talks ‘women and children’ to defeat their own interests will be treated like the skunk⁠—the low-down, thieving swine he is. Do we say anything’s too good for our women and children? Not much. But we want to give them real things⁠—the real things of life and happiness⁠—not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we give our women and children the mines as we’ve held them, and the record of a clean fight for them, we’ll be giving them something very much bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The things we’ve stood for are better than anything he’s got to offer. We’ve got here what they’re fighting for all over the world⁠ ⁠… it’s bigger than ourselves. + 

“M’Ginnis says he’s heard a lot of ‘the freedom to starve on the Ridge’⁠—it’s more than I have, it’s a sure thing if he wants to starve, nobody’d stop him.⁠ ⁠…” + 

A wave of laughter passed over the hall. + 

“But most of us here haven’t any fancy for starving, and what’s more, nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don’t say that we haven’t had hard times, that we haven’t gone on short commons⁠—we have; but we haven’t starved, and we’re not going to.⁠ ⁠… + 

“This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we’re down, in a way; but the slump’ll pass. There’ve been slumps before, and they’ve passed.⁠ ⁠… Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn’t be so keen on getting hold of the mines. + 

“And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or syndicate ever made could. Didn’t old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once that he didn’t know a better conducted or more industrious mining community than this one. ‘Why d’y’ think that is?’ I asked him. He said he didn’t know. I said, ‘You don’t think the way the men feel about their work’s got anything to do with it?’ ‘Damn it, Michael,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to think so.’ + 

“And I happen to know”⁠—Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage, who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and crossed under his chin⁠—“that the old man is opposed even now to this scheme because he thinks he won’t get as much black opal out of us as he does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and what taking over of the mines did for opal⁠—and the men⁠—there. This scheme is Mr. John Armitage’s idea.⁠ ⁠… + 

“He’s put it to you. You’ve heard what it is. All I’ve got to say now is, don’t touch it. Don’t have anything to do with it.⁠ ⁠… It’ll break us⁠ ⁠… the spirit of the men here⁠ ⁠… and it’ll break what we’ve been working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don’t let us see which side our bread’s buttered on, as Mr. M’Ginnis says. Let us say like we always have⁠—like we’ve been proud to say: ‘We’ll eat bread and fat, but we’ll be our own masters!’ ” + 

“We’ll eat bread and fat, but we’ll be our own masters!” the men who were with Michael roared. + 

He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam at him, filled with rejoicing. + 

Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not quite decided what he intended to say. + 

“I’m not going to ask this meeting for a decision,” he began. + 

“You can have it!” Bully Bryant yelled. + 

“There’s a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I’m going on up there,” John Armitage continued. “I’m due in Sydney at the end of the month⁠—that is, a month from this date⁠—and I’ll run up then for your answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I think, however, you ought to know⁠—” + 

“That Michael Brady’s a liar and a thief!” Charley cried, springing from his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. “If you believe him, you’re believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows⁠ ⁠… I know⁠ ⁠… and Paul knows⁠—” + 

“Throw him out.” + 

“He’s mad!” + 

The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their height M’Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms. + 

“Let him say what he’s got to!” he shouted. “You chaps know as well as I do what’s been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now. If it’s not true, Michael’d rather have the strength of it, and give you his answer⁠ ⁠… and if there is anything in it, we’ve got a right to know.” + 

“That’s right!” some of the men near him chorused. + 

Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael. + 

“Might as well have it,” Michael said. + 

Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice, told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of corroboration. + 

When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted, Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken everybody, said uncertainly: + 

“Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that Charley Heathfield’s story, as far as I know it, is substantially correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw it, my father said, ‘Why, that’s Michael’s mascot.’ I asked him if he were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the stone.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you. That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof’s opals⁠—the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof’s opals, and had been exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney⁠ ⁠… and also that Michael had possession of Rouminof’s opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she saw Rouminof’s stones on the table of Michael Brady’s hut one evening nearly two years ago. + 

“I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael Brady of having stolen Rouminof’s opals. If he has anything to say, now is the time to say it.” + 

What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody spoke nobody moved. Michael’s friends sat with hunched shoulders, not looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement, the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him. + 

“For God’s sake speak, Michael,” he said. Michael did not move. + 

Then from the back of the hall marched Snowshoes. Tall and stately, he strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear what he would say to it. When Snowshoes reached the top of the hall he turned and faced the men he held up a narrow package wrapped in newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still hovering near the edge of the platform. + 

“Your stones,” he said. “I took them.” And in the same stately, measured fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again. + 

Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but his joy in fingering his lost gems. + 

When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause, Armitage spoke. + 

“I’ve got to apologise to you, Michael,” he said. “I do most contritely.⁠ ⁠… I don’t yet understand⁠—but the facts are, the opals are here, and Mr. Riley has said⁠—” + 

Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as if only a great effort of will drove it from him. + 

“I want to say,” he said, “I did take those stones⁠ ⁠… not from Paul⁠ ⁠… but from Charley.” + 

His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of opals from Rouminof’s pocket and put them in his own. + 

“I didn’t want the stones,” Michael cried, “I didn’t ever want them for myself.⁠ ⁠… It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn’t want him to have them just then.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he had made to Sophie’s mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare himself. + 

Paul had had sunstroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the thing to himself even.⁠ ⁠… He had not looked at the opals except once again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was drifting⁠—how the stones were getting hold of him⁠—and in a panic, knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone. + 

Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but now it was clear. Probably Snowshoes had known all the time he had the stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It was just that slight sound Snowshoes’ moccasins made on the shingle. Exclamations and odd queries Snowshoes had launched from time to time came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken the stones to do just what he had done⁠—and because he feared the influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they should have been returned to Paul long ago. + 

“That’s the truth, as far as I know it,” Michael said. “There’s been attempts made to injure⁠ ⁠… the Ridge, our way of doing things here, because of me, and because of those stones.⁠ ⁠… What happened to me doesn’t matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I’d give anything now if I⁠—if I’d given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn’t⁠ ⁠… and I’ll stand by anything the men who’ve been my mates care to say or do about that. Only don’t let the Ridge, and our way of doing things here, get hurt through me. That’s bigger⁠—it means more than any man. Don’t let it!⁠ ⁠… I’d ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to say what they think about all this⁠—and where I stand.” + 

Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of the hall. + 

When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of forms. With the exception of M’Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted shapes and unlighted countenances. + 

“Well,” George said, “it’s been a bit of a shock what we’ve just heard. It wasn’t easy what Michael’s just done⁠ ⁠… and Snowshoes, if he’d wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn’t have it.⁠ ⁠… At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to stand by the Ridge⁠ ⁠… he’d stand by it at any cost.⁠ ⁠… If there’s a doubt in anyone’s mind as to what he is, what he’s just done proves Michael. I don’t say, as he says himself, that it wouldn’t have been better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away⁠ ⁠… but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael’s concerned? We’ve got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does anybody know a mean or selfish thing he’s ever done, Michael?” + 

No one spoke, and George went on: + 

“Michael’s asked for trial by his mates⁠—and we’ve got to give it to him, if it’s only to clear up the whole of this business and be done with it.⁠ ⁠… I move we meet here tomorrow night to settle the thing.” + 

There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his proposals were forgotten. + 

XVII + 

When Michael got back to his hut he found Martha there. + 

“Oh, Michael,” she said, “a dreadful thing has happened.” + 

Michael stared at her, unable to understand what she said. It seemed to him all the terrible things that could happen had happened that evening. + 

“While you were away Arthur Henty came here to see Sophie,” Martha said. “She hasn’t been feeling well⁠ ⁠… and I came up to have a look at her. She’s been doing too much lately. Things haven’t been too right between her and Potch, either, and that’s her way of taking it out of herself. Arthur was here when I got here, Michael, and⁠—you never heard anything like the way he went on.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Michael had fallen wearily into his chair while she was talking. + 

Martha continued, knowing that the sooner she got rid of her story the better it would be for both of them. + 

“It’s an old story, of course, this about Arthur Henty and Sophie.⁠ ⁠… When he was ill after the ball he talked a good bit about her.⁠ ⁠… He always has⁠ ⁠… to me. I was with his mother when he was born⁠ ⁠… and he’s always called me Mother M’Cready like the rest of you. He told me long ago he’d always been fond of Sophie.⁠ ⁠… He didn’t know at first, he said. He was a fool; he didn’t like being teased about her.⁠ ⁠… Then she went away.⁠ ⁠… He doesn’t seem to know why he got married except that his people wanted him to. + 

“After the ball he’d made up his mind they were going away together, Sophie and he. But while he was ill⁠ ⁠… before he was able to get around again, Sophie married Potch. Then he went mad, stark, starin’ mad, and started drinking. He’s been drinking hard ever since.⁠ ⁠… And tonight when he came, he just went over to Sophie.⁠ ⁠… She was lying on the couch under the window, Michael.⁠ ⁠… He said, I’ve got a horse for you outside. Sophie didn’t seem to realise what he meant at first. Then she did. I don’t know how he guessed she wouldn’t go⁠ ⁠… but the next minute he was on his knees beside her⁠ ⁠… and you never heard anything like it, Michael⁠—the way he went on, sobbing and crying out⁠—I never want to hear anything like it again.⁠ ⁠… I couldn’t ’ve stood it meself.⁠ ⁠… I’d ’ve done anything in the world if a man’d gone on to me like that. And Sophie⁠ ⁠… she put her arms round him, and mothered him like.⁠ ⁠… Then she began to cry too.⁠ ⁠… And there they were, both crying and sayin’ how much they loved each other⁠ ⁠… how much they’d always loved each other.⁠ ⁠… + 

“It fair broke me up, Michael.⁠ ⁠… I didn’t know what to do. They didn’t seem to notice me.⁠ ⁠… Then he said again they’d go away together, and begin life all over again. Sophie tried to tell him it was too late to think of that.⁠ ⁠… They both had responsibilities they’d ought to stand by.⁠ ⁠… Hers was the Ridge and the Ridge life, she said.⁠ ⁠… He didn’t understand.⁠ ⁠… He only understood he wanted her to go away with him, and she wouldn’t go.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him. + 

“He tried to make her,” Martha was saying when he began to listen intently. “He said he’d been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn’t any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to have it.⁠ ⁠… Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it.⁠ ⁠… And Sophie hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate. + 

“She said ‘Yes.’ + 

“ ‘Then you’ve got to come with me,’ he said. + 

“But she wouldn’t go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the Ridge⁠—what the Ridge stood for⁠—she must stay to work for. She’d sworn to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that he wouldn’t let her go on living with Potch⁠—be his wife. That he’d kill her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her.⁠ ⁠… I never heard a man go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite quietly: + 

“ ‘Will you come with me, Sophie?’ + 

“And she said, quiet like that, too, ‘No.’ + 

“He went out of the hut.⁠ ⁠… I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after him. She put out her arms⁠ ⁠… but she couldn’t speak. And if you had seen her face, Michael⁠—She just stood there against the wall, listening to the hoof-beats.⁠ ⁠… When we couldn’t hear them any more, she stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to⁠—to waken her⁠—she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance, Michael.⁠ ⁠… After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she didn’t know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table, and then she went out as though she were goin’ for a walk. I told her not to go far⁠ ⁠… not to be long⁠ ⁠… but I don’t think she heard me.⁠ ⁠… I watched her walking out towards the old rush.⁠ ⁠… And she isn’t back yet.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“It’s too much,” Michael muttered. + 

He sat with his head buried in his hands. + 

“What’s to be done about it?” he asked at last. + 

Martha shook her head. + 

“I don’t know. Sophie’ll go through with her part, I suppose⁠ ⁠… as her mother did.” + 

Michael’s face quivered. + 

“He’s such an outsider,” he groaned. “Sophie’d never give up the things we stand for here, now she understands them.” + 

“That’s just it,” Martha said. “She doesn’t want to⁠—but there’s something stronger than herself draggin’ at her⁠ ⁠… it’s something that’s been in all the women she’s come of⁠—the feeling a woman’s got for the man who’s her mate. Sophie married Potch, it’s my belief, to get away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here. She wants to stay with us.⁠ ⁠… She was kept up at first by ideas of duty and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But love’s like murder, Michael⁠—it must out, and it’s a good thing it must.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And what about Potch?” Michael asked. + 

“Potch?” Martha smiled. “The dear lad⁠ ⁠… he’ll stand up to things. There are people like that⁠—and there’re people like Arthur Henty who can’t stand up to things. It’s not their fault they’re made that way⁠ ⁠… and they go under when they have too much to bear.” + 

“Curse him,” Michael groaned. “I wish he’d kept out of our lives.” + 

“So do I,” Martha said; “but he hasn’t.” + 

Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael. + 

“Where’s Sophie?” he asked. + 

“She⁠ ⁠… went out for a walk, a while ago,” Martha said. + 

At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael, and held them dumb. + 

“Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock,” he said at length. + 

Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear further. + 

“Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went over,” Potch said. “I wanted to tell Sophie myself.⁠ ⁠… They were looking for you in the town, Martha.” + 

“Oh!” Martha got up and went to the door. + 

“He’s at Newton’s,” Potch said. “Which way did Sophie go?” + 

“She went towards the Old Town, Potch,” Martha said. + 

The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse was there⁠—a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She went off down the track to Newton’s, and he struck out towards the Old Town. + 

Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. From the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur Henty. + 

“Sophie! Sophie!” he called. + 

The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He wandered, calling still. Desolation overwhelmed him because he could not find Sophie; because she was in none of the places they had spent so much time in together. It was significant that she should not be in any of them, he felt. He could not bear to think she was eluding him, and yet that was what she had done all her life. She had been with him, smiling, elfish and tender one moment, and gone the next. She had always been elusive. For a long time a presentiment of desolation and disaster had overshadowed him. Again and again he had been able to draw breath of relief and assure himself that the indefinable dread which was always with him was a chimera of his too absorbing, too anxious love. But the fear, instinctive, prophetic, begotten by consciousness of the slight grasp he had of her, had remained. + 

That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in her eyes. + 

“Dear Potch,” she had said, and kissed him. + 

She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.⁠ ⁠… He had done so before.⁠ ⁠… Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had deprived her of some earthliness. + 

He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge, looking for her, his soul in that cry: + 

“Sophie! Sophie!” + 

He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael coming out to meet him. + 

“She knows, Potch,” Michael said. + 

Potch waited for him to continue. + 

“Says nobody told her.⁠ ⁠… She heard the shot⁠ ⁠… and knew,” Michael said. + 

Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at all, Michael said. + 

She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He knelt beside her. + 

“Sophie! Sophie!” he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and anguish in those words. + 

XVIII + 

The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it. The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the night before, but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit, the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wavelike vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty’s death had left everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air. + 

George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O’Mara deputed to take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman, sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as soon as the men were in their places. + 

“This isn’t like any other inquiry we’ve had on the Ridge,” George Woods said. “You chaps know how I feel about it⁠—I told you last night. But Michael was for it, and I take it he’s come here to answer any questions⁠ ⁠… and to clear this thing up once and for all.⁠ ⁠… He’s put his case to you. He says he’ll stand by what you say⁠—the judgment of his mates.” + 

Anxious to spare Michael another recital of what had happened, he went on: + 

“There’s no need for Michael to repeat what he said last night. If there’s any man here wasn’t in the hall, these are the facts.” + 

He repeated the story Michael had told, steadily, clearly, and impartially. + 

“If there’s any man wants to ask a question on those facts, he can do it now.” + 

George sat down, and M’Ginnis was on his feet the same instant; his bat-like ears twitching, his shoulders hunched, his whole tall, thin frame strung to the pitch of nervous animosity. + 

“I want to know,” he said, “what reason there is for believing a word of it. Michael Brady’s as good as admitted he’s been fooling you for goodness knows how long, and I don’t see⁠—” + 

“Y’ soon will, y’r bleedin’, blasted, flyblown fool,” Bully Bryant roared, rising and pushing back his sleeves. + 

“Sit down, Bull,” George Woods called. + 

“The question is,” he added, “what reason is there for believing what Michael says?” + 

“His word’s enough,” somebody called. + 

“Some of us think so,” George said. “But there’s some don’t. Is there anyone else can say, Michael?” + 

Michael shook his head. He thought of Snowshoes, but the old man had refused to be present at the inquiry or to have anything to do with it. He had pretended to be deaf when he was asked anything about Paul’s opals. And Michael, who could only surmise that Snowshoes’ reasons for having taken the stones in a measure resembled his own when he took them from Paul, would not have him put to the torture of questioning. + 

George had said: “It might make a lot of difference to Michael if you’d come along, Mr. Riley.” + 

But Snowshoes had marched off from him as if he had not heard anyone speak, his blue eyes fixed on that invisible goal he was always gazing at and going towards. + 

George had not seen him come into the hall; but when he was needed, his tall figure, white clad and straight as a dead tree, rose at the back of the hall. + 

“It’s true,” he said. “I wanted to be sure of Michael; I shadowed him. I saw him with the stones when he says. I did not see him with them any other time.” + 

He sat down again; his eyes, which had flashed, resumed their steady, distant stare; his features relapsed into their mask of impassivity. + 

M’Ginnis sprang to his feet again. + 

“That’s all very well,” he cried, sticking to his question. “But it’s not my idea of evidence. It wouldn’t stand in any law court in the country. Snowshoes⁠—” + 

“Shut up!” + 

“Sit down!” + 

Half a dozen voices growled. + 

Because of the respect and affection they had for him, and because of a certain aloof dignity he had with them, no man on the Ridge ever addressed Snowshoes as anything but Mr. Riley. They resented M’Ginnis calling him “Snowshoes” to his face, and guessed that he had been going to say something which would reflect on Snowshoes’ reliability as a witness. They admitted his eccentricity; but they would not admit that his mental peculiarities amounted to more than that. Above all, they were not going to have his feelings hurt by this outsider from the Punti rush. + 

Broad-shouldered, square and solid, Bill Grant towered above the men about him. “This doesn’t pretend to be a court of law, Mister M’Ginnis,” he remarked, with an irony and emphasis which never failed of their mark when he used them, although he rarely did, and only once or twice had been heard to speak, at any gathering. “It’s an inquiry by men of the Ridge into the doings of one of their mates. What they want to know is the rights of this business⁠ ⁠… and what you consider evidence doesn’t matter. It’s what the men in this hall consider evidence matters. And, what’s more, I don’t see why you’re butting into our affairs so much: you’re not one of us⁠—you’re a newcomer. You’ve only been a year or so in the place⁠ ⁠… and this concerns only men of the Ridge, who stand by the Ridge ways of doing things.⁠ ⁠… Michael’s here to be judged by his mates⁠ ⁠… not by you and your sort.⁠ ⁠… If you’d the brain of a louse, you’d understand⁠—this isn’t a question of law, but of principle⁠—honour, if you like to call it that.” + 

“Does the meeting consider the question answered?” George Woods inquired when Bill Grant sat down. + 

“Yes!” + 

A chorus of voices intoned the answer. + 

“If you believe Michael’s story, there’s nothing more to be said,” George continued. “Does any man want to ask Michael a question?” + 

No one replied for a moment. Then M’Ginnis exclaimed incoherently. + 

“Shut up!” + 

“Sit down!” + 

Men cried out all over the hall. + 

“That’s all, I think, Michael,” George said, looking down to where Michael sat before the platform; and Michael, pulling his hat further over his eyes, went out of the hall. + 

It was the custom for men of the Ridge to talk over the subject of their inquiry together after the man or men with whom the meeting was concerned had left the hall, before giving their verdict. + 

When Michael had gone, George Woods said: + 

“The boys would like to hear what you’ve got to say, I think, Archie.” + 

He looked at Archie Cross. “You and Michael haven’t been seein’ eye to eye lately, and if there’s any other side in this business, it’s the side that lost confidence in Michael when we were fed-up with all that whispering. You know Michael, and you’re a good Ridge man, though you were ready to take on Armitage’s scheme. The boys’d like to hear what you’ve got to say, I’m sure.” + 

Archie Cross stood up; he rolled his hat in his hands. His face, hacked out of a piece of dull flesh, sun-reddened, moved convulsively; his hair was roughed-up from it; his small, sombre eyes went with straight lightnings to the men in the hall about him. + 

“It’s true⁠—what George says,” he said after a pause, as if it were difficult for him to express his thought. “I haven’t been seein’ eye to eye with Michael lately⁠ ⁠… and I listened to all the dirty gossip that mob”⁠—he glanced towards M’Ginnis and the men with him⁠—“put round about him. It was part that⁠ ⁠… and part listening to their talk about money invested here making all the difference to Fallen Star⁠ ⁠… and the children growing up⁠ ⁠… and gettin’ scared and worried about seein’ them through⁠ ⁠… made me go agin you boys lately, and let that lot get hold of me.⁠ ⁠… But this business about Michael’s shown me where I am. Michael’s stood for one thing all through⁠—the Ridge and the hanging on to the mines for us.⁠ ⁠… He’s been a better Ridge man than I have.⁠ ⁠… And I want to say⁠ ⁠… as far as I’m concerned, Michael’s proved himself.⁠ ⁠… I don’t reck’n hanging on to opals was anything⁠ ⁠… no more does Ted. It’s the sort of thing a chap like Michael’d do absentminded⁠ ⁠… not noticin’ what he was doin’; but when he did notice⁠—and got scared thinkin’ where he was gettin’ to, and what it might look like, he couldn’t get rid of ’em quick, enough. That’s what I think, and that’s what Ted thinks, too. He hasn’t got the gift of the gab, Ted, or he’d say so himself.⁠ ⁠… If there’s goin’ to be opposition to Michael, it’s not comin’ from us.⁠ ⁠… And we’ve made up our minds we stand by the Ridge.” + 

“Good old Archie!” somebody shouted. + 

“What have you got to say, Roy?” George Woods faced his secretary who had been scratching diligently throughout the meeting. “You’ve been more with the M’Ginnis lot, too, than with us, lately.” + 

Roy flushed and sprang to his feet. + 

“I’m in the same boat with Archie and Ted,” he said. “Except about the family⁠ ⁠… mine isn’t so big yet as it might be. But it’s a fact, I funked, not having had much luck lately.⁠ ⁠… But if ever I go back on the Ridge again⁠ ⁠… may the lot of you go back on me.” + 

Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided into his chair again. + 

“That’s all there is to be said on the subject, I think,” George Woods remarked. + 

“Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done⁠—and why he had done it. He’s asked for judgment from his mates.⁠ ⁠… If he’d wanted to go back on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could have been bought. Michael need never ’ve faced all this as far as I can see⁠ ⁠… but he decided to face it rather than give up all we’ve been fightin’ for here. He’d rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him than anything they could give him⁠ ⁠… and that’s why M’Ginnis has been up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of us have a notion that M’Ginnis has been here to do Armitage’s work⁠ ⁠… work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn’t ’ve stood by us, like he’s always done, we’d have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now.” + 

“To tell you the truth, boys,” George went on, after a moment’s hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were too strong for him, “I’ve always thought Michael was too good. And if those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says, all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn’t any plaster saint, but a man like the rest of us.” + 

“That’s right!” Watty called, and several men shouted after him. + 

Pony-Fence moved out from the crowd he was sitting with. + 

“I vote this meeting records a motion of confidence in Michael Brady,” he said. “And when we call Michael in again we’d ought to make it clear to him⁠ ⁠… that so far from its being a question of not having as much confidence in him as we had before⁠—we’ve got more. Michael’s stood by his mates if ever a man did.⁠ ⁠… He’s come to us⁠ ⁠… he’s given himself up to us. He’ll stand by what we say or do about him. And what are we goin’ to do? Are we goin’ to turn him down⁠ ⁠… read him a bit of a lecture and tell him to go home and be a good boy and not do it another time⁠ ⁠… or are we going to let him know once and for all what we think of him?” + 

Exclamations of agreement went up in a rabble of voices. + 

Bully Bryant rose from one of the back forms with a grin which illuminated the building. + 

“I’ll second that motion,” he said, pushing back the sleeve on his left arm. “And his own mother won’t know the man who says a word against it⁠—when I’ve done with him.” + 

Watty was sent to bring Michael back to the meeting. They walked to the end of the hall together; and George Woods told Michael as quietly as he could for his own agitation, and the joy which, welling in him, impeded his speech, that men of the Ridge found nothing to censure in what he had done. His mates believed in him; they stood by him. They were prepared to stand by him as he had stood by the Ridge always. The meeting wished to record a vote of confidence.⁠ ⁠… + 

Cheers roared to the roof. Michael, shaken by the storm of his emotion and gratitude, stood before the crowd in the hall with bowed head. When the storm was quieter in him, he lifted his head and looked out to the men, his eyes shining with tears. + 

He could not speak; old mates closed round to shake hands with him before the meeting broke up. Every man grasped and wrung his hand, saying: + 

“Good luck! Good luck to you, Michael!” Or just grasped his hand and smiled with that assurance of fellowship and goodwill which meant more to Michael than anything else in the world. + 

XIX + 

It was one of those clear days of late spring, the sky exquisitely blue, the cuckoos calling, the paper daisies in blossom, their fragrance in the air; they lay across the plains, through the herbage, white to the dim, circling horizon. + 

Horses and vehicles were tied up outside the grey palings of the cemetery on the Warria road. All the horses and shabby, or new and brightly-painted carts, sulkies, and buggies of Fallen Star and the Three Mile were there; and buggies from Warria, Langi-Eumina, and the river stations as well. Saddle horses, ranged along one side of the fence, reins over the stakes, whinnied and snapped at each other. + 

The crowd of people standing in the tall grass and herbage on the other side of the fence was just breaking up when Sophie and Potch appeared, coming over the plains from the direction of the tank paddock, Sophie riding the chestnut Arthur Henty had left behind her house, and Potch walking beside the horse’s head. Sophie had been gathering Darling pea, and had a great sheaf in one hand. Potch was carrying some, too: he had picked up the flowers Sophie let fall, and had a little bunch of them. She was riding astride and gazing before her, her eyes wide with a vision beyond the distant horizon. The wind, a light breeze breathing now and then, blew her hair out in wisps from her bare head. + 

All the men of Warria were in the sombre crowd in the cemetery. Old Henty, red-eyed and broken by the end of his only son, whom he found he had cared for now that he was dead; the stockmen, boundary-riders, servants, fencers, shearers from Darrawingee sheds who, a few weeks before had been on the Warria board, and men from other stations near enough to have heard of Arthur Henty’s death. None of the Henty women were there; but women of the Ridge, who were accustomed to pay last respects as their menfolk did, were with their husbands as usual. They would have thought it unnatural and unkind not to follow Arthur Henty to his resting-place; not to go as friends would to say goodbye to a friend who is making a long journey. And there was more than the ordinary reason for being present at Arthur Henty’s funeral. He was leaving them under a cloud, circumstances which might be interpreted unkindly, and it was necessary to be present to express sympathy with him and sorrow at his going. That was the way they regarded it. + 

Martha had driven with Sam Nancarrow, as she always did to functions of the sort. No one remembered having seen Martha take a thing so to heart as she did Arthur Henty’s death. She was utterly shaken by it, and could not restrain her tears. They coursed down her cheeks all the time she was in that quiet place on the plains; her great, motherly bosom rose and fell with the tide of her grief. She tried to subdue it, but every now and then the sound of her crying could be heard, and in the end Sam took her, sobbing uncontrollably, back to his buggy. + 

People knew she had seen further into the cause of Arthur Henty’s death than they had, and they understood that was why she Was so upset. Besides, Martha had always confessed to a soft corner for Arthur Henty: she had been with his mother when he was born, had nursed him during a hot summer and through several slight illnesses since then. And Arthur had been fond of her too. He had always called her Mother M’Cready as the Ridge folk did. Old Mr. Henty had driven over to see Martha the night before, to hear all she knew of what had happened, and Ridge folk had gathered something of the story from her broken exclamations and the reproaches with which she covered herself. + 

She cried out over and over again that she could not have believed Arthur would shoot himself⁠—that he was the sort of man to do such a thing⁠—and blamed herself for not having foreseen what had occurred. She had never seen him like he was that night⁠—so strong, so much a man, so full of life and love for Sophie. He had begged Sophie to go with him as though his life depended on it⁠—and it had. + 

If she had been a woman, and Sophie, and had loved him, Martha said, she would have had to go with him. She could never have withstood his pleading.⁠ ⁠… But Sophie had been good to him; she had been gentle⁠—only she wouldn’t go. Neither Sophie nor she believed, of course, he would do as he said⁠—but he had. + 

Martha could not forgive herself that she had done nothing to soothe or pacify Arthur; that she had said nothing, given him neither kindly word nor gesture. But she had been so upset, so carried away. She had not known what to do or say. She abused and blackguarded herself; but she had sensed enough of the utter loneliness and darkness of Henty’s mind to realise that most likely she could have done nothing against it. He would have brushed her aside had she attempted to influence him; he would not have heard what, she said. She would have been as helpless as any other human consideration against the blinding, irresistibly engulfing forces of despair which had impelled him to put himself out of pain as he had put many a suffering animal. It was an act of self-defence, as Mother M’Cready saw it, Arthur Henty’s end, and that was all there was to it. + 

As Sophie and Potch approached the cemetery, people exclaimed together in wonderment, awe⁠—almost fear. + 

James Henty, when he saw them, turned away from the men he was talking to and walked to his buggy; Tom Henderson, his son-in-law, followed him. Although he would have been the last to forgive Sophie if she had done as Arthur wished, even to save his life, old Henty had to have a whipping-post, and he eased his own sense of responsibility for what had blighted his son’s life, by blaming Sophie for it. He assured himself, his family and friends, that she, and she alone, was responsible for Arthur’s death. She had played with Arthur; she had always played with him, old Henty said. She had driven him to distraction with her wiles⁠—and this was the end of it all. + 

Sophie rode into the cemetery: she rode to where the broken earth was; but she did not dismount. The horse came to a standstill beside it, and she sat on him, her eyes closed. Potch stood bareheaded and bowed beside her. He put the flowers he had picked up as Sophie let them fall, on the grave. Sophie thrust the long, purple trails she was carrying into the saddlebag where Arthur had put the flowers she gave him that first day their eyes met and drank the love potion of each others’ being. + 

People were already on the road, horses and buggies, dark, ant-like trains on the flowering plains, moving slowly in the direction of Warria and of Fallen Star, when Sophie and Potch turned away from the cemetery. + 

The shadow of what had happened was heavy over everybody as they drove home. Arthur Henty had been well enough liked, and he had had much more to do with Fallen Star than most of the station people. He had gone about so much with his men they had almost ceased to think of him as not one of themselves. He was less the “Boss” than any man in the back-country. They recognised that, and yet he was the “Boss.” He had lived like a half-caste, drifting between two races and belonging to neither. The people he had been born among cold-shouldered him because he had acquired the manners and habits of thought of men he lived and worked with; the men he had lived and worked with distrusted and disliked in him just those tag-ends of refinement, and odd graces which belonged to the crowd he had come to them from. + 

The station hands, his workmates⁠—if he had any⁠—had had a slightly contemptuous feeling for him. They liked him⁠—they were always saying they liked him⁠—but it was clear they never had any great opinion of him. As a boy, when he began to work with them, to cover his shyness and nervousness, he had been silent and boorish; and he had never had the courage of his opinions⁠—courage for anything, it was suspected. It had always been hinted that he shirked any jobs where danger was to be expected. + 

The stockmen told each other they would miss him, all the same. They would miss that wonderful whistling of his from the camp fires; and they were appalled at what he had done to himself. “The last man,” Charley Este said, “the last man you’d ever ’ve thought would ’ve come to that!” Most of them believed they had misjudged Arthur Henty⁠—that, after, all, he had had courage of a sort. A man must have courage to blow out his light, they said. And they were sorry. Every man in the crowd was heavy with sorrow. + 

Ridge people gossiped pitifully, sentimentally, to each other as they drove home. Most of the women believed in the strength and fidelity of the old love between Sophie and Arthur Henty. But straight-dealing and honest themselves, they had no conception of the tricks complex personalities play each other; they did not understand how two people who had really cared for each other could have gone so astray from the natural impulse of their lives. + 

They recalled the dance at Warria, and how they had teased Sophie when they thought she was going to marry Arthur Henty, and how happy and pleased she had looked about it. How different both their lives would have been if Sophie and Arthur had been true to that instinct of the mate for the mate, they reflected; and sighed at the futility of the thought. They realised in Arthur Henty’s drinking and rough ways of late, all his unhappiness. They imagined that they knew why he had become the uncouth-looking man he had. They remembered him a slight, shy youth, with sun-bright, freckled eyes; then a man, lithe, graceful, and good to look at, with his face a clear, fine bronze, his hair taking a glint of copper in the sun. When he danced with them at the Ridge balls, that occasionally flashing, delightful way of his had made them realise why Sophie was in love with him. They remembered how he had looked at Sophie; how his eyes had followed her. They had heard of the Warria dance, and knew Arthur Henty had not behaved well to Sophie at it. They had been angry at the time. Then Sophie had gone away⁠ ⁠… and a little later he had married. + 

His marriage had not been a success. Mrs. Arthur Henty had spent most of her time in Sydney; she was rarely seen on the Ridge now. So women of the Ridge, who had known Arthur Henty, went over all they knew of him until that night at the race ball when he and Sophie had met again. And then his end in the tank paddock brought them back to exclamations of dismay and grief at the mystery of it all. + 

As she left the cemetery, Sophie began to sing, listlessly, dreamily at first. No one had heard her sing since her return to the Ridge. But her voice flew out over the plains, through the wide, clear air now, with the pure melody it had when she was a girl: + 

“Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar, + 

Le delizie dell’ amor mi dei sempre rammentar! + 

Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà, + 

E fin l’ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!” + 

Ella Bryant, driving home beside Bully, knew Sophie was singing as she had sung to Arthur Henty years before, when they were coming home from the tank paddock together. She wondered why Sophie was riding the horse Arthur had brought for her; why she had ridden him to the funeral; and why she was singing that song. + 

Sophie sang on: + 

“Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volerà, + 

E fin l’ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sarà!” + 

Looking back, people saw Potch walking beside her as Joseph walked beside Mary when they went down to Nazareth. + 

“It’s hard on Potch,” somebody said. + 

“Yes,” it was agreed; “it’s hard on Potch.” + 

The buggies, carts, sulkies, and horsemen moving in opposite directions on the long, curving road over the plains grew dim in the distance. + 

The notes of Sophie’s singing, with its undying tenderness triumphing over life and death, flowed fainter and fainter. + 

When she and Potch came to the town again, the light was fading. Through the green, limpid veil of the sky, stars were glittering; huts of the township were darkening under the gathering shadow of night. A breath of sandalwood burning on kitchen hearths came to Sophie and Potch like a greeting. The notes of a goat-bell clanking dully sounded from beyond the dumps. There were lights in a few of the huts; a warm, friendly murmur of voices went up from them. For weeks troubled and disturbed thinking, arguments, and conflicting ideas, had created a depressed and unrestful atmosphere in every home in Fallen Star. But tonight it was different. The temptations, allurements and debris of Armitage’s scheme had been swept from the minds⁠—even of those who had been ready to accept it. Hope and pride in the purpose of the Ridge had been restored by Michael’s vindication and by reaffirmation of the principle he and all staunch men of the Ridge stood for as the mainstay of their life in common. Thought of Arthur Henty’s death, which had oppressed people during the day, seemed to have been put aside now that they had seen him laid to rest, and had returned to their homes again. + 

Voices were heard exclaiming with the light cadence and rhythm of joy. The crisis which had come near to shattering the Ridge scheme of things, and all that it stood for, had ended by drawing dissenting factions of the community into closer sympathy and more intimate relationship. In everybody’s mind were the hope and enthusiasm of a new endeavour. As they went through the town again, neither Sophie nor Potch were conscious of them for the sorrow which had soaked into their lives. But these things were in the air they breathed, and sooner or later would claim them from all personal suffering; faith and loving service fill all their future⁠—the long twilight of their days. + 