Part 32 (1/2)

”I'm all broken up I can't move alone willy! willy!” Tap cried as loud as he could, for the fall he had had the night before had given him a mortal hurt

dickson had reached the door and stood for a lance The fire see curves, rushi+ng through the bush and setting it ablaze all round before it advanced on to the cleared land of the selection It had just attacked the vegetation in the paddocks as dickson got outside the hut, and which ever way he looked he saw a line of leaping fla; the air stifling The voice of theears, for only one chance of escape appeared, and that was Slaughter's waterhole

With Nellie clinging to hiered towards it Every second the heat was , and at the edge of the pool he swayed, even the strength born of his fear deserting him With a wild, hopeless cry he fell forward into the water, and floundered towards the hter had built across it As he reached the middle, breathless and exhausted with fear and the strain of Nellie's weight, a line of flarass at the side of the track, and sprang, like a snake, up the wall of the hut, writhing out over the dried sheets of bark of the roof as, with a roar, the whole burst into fla the line of the fence; the heat came upon him with such fierceness that he felt his skin blister and crack; the sh a cord were tied tight round his throat, and with a glimpse of Nellie's face, upturned as her arms relaxed and she slipped down under the water, dickson fell senseless across the rail of the fence

CHAPTER XX

THE LAST LOOP

At noon Ailleen, sitting on the verandah of Barellan, caught the scent of bush-fire s on the faint breeze She rose and walked to the end of the verandah, where she could obtain a view in the direction whence the as blowing Over the tops of the trees she saw s rapidly Even as she stood she saw fresh coluht at intervals all along the sky-line to ard At first it rose in well-defined coluularity that it see upwards to the faultless blue of the heavens froh it were the token of sacrifice offered by the drought-stricken earth to the pitiless sky above; a token of supplication from dumb, inarticulate Nature to the Gods of the thunder-cloud and the rulers of the rain- that the bonds which held back the tribute of the season ht be freed and the thirst of the parched earth quenched

But soon the coluanized, as the smoke, fanned by the winds set up by heat beloirled and twisted and changed into rolling clouds without forether and formed into heavy banks that e, forhter vapour, floated over the trees, and drifted on the breeze towards the station, like the shreds of a white sea-fog blown too far inland Very quickly it approached, and the air beca

Without realizing the danger there was of the fire sweeping down on the station, Ailleen walked back to the other end of the verandah and looked away over the bush, and wherever she looked she saw s The country was on fire on every side

A second glance in the direction she had first looked showed also that the fire was rapidly travelling down the wind towards the station Then she understood, and hastily sought the blind woman

”The bush is on fire,” she said when she found her ”It is burning all round and nobody seeo away in case it comes too near”

”It will not come near here,” Mrs dickson answered ”No fire ever has yet The men always turn out and stop it Thatwhen he did not co the run We need not be afraid”

”I don't know,” Ailleen answered uneasily

The air was beco heavier and hotter every moment, and as she looked, she sa

”You need not be afraid,” Mrs dickson went on ”You may be sure willy is out with all theit back from the paddocks willy is such a brave boy; and besides, he would do anything rather than that harm should come to you”

”All the same I think I'll saddle----”

”Why do you never listen to what I say about willy?” the blind woman interrupted ”You kno anxious he is, and how he is always seeking to please you He is such a good boy, too He would make----”

”I'd rather not talk about it, Mrs dickson,” Ailleen interrupted

She was growing impatient of the constant reference which the blind woman made to willy and his excellent qualities, and his sadness at her distant bearing towards him

”I cannot bear to have hi loyally to the task the crafty youth had set her of softening the obdurate girl to an appreciation of hinition of his possibilities as a suitor for her affections

Ailleen, glancing round the sure of ahastily across the paddock towards the house

”There is so to the back of the house I'll go round and see who he is”

”Why, of course it's willy,” Mrs dickson answered ”Who else could it be?”