OURLADY OF THE PLAIN.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VII, Issue 2, 1 November 1902, Page 108

OURLADY OF THE PLAIN.

t LITTLE dust-demon lifted itself lazily from the white cross-track, beaten out yesterday by the passing of a thousand sheep, and fled across the tussock with intent to reach the purple hill-shapes that hung on the horizon. But the dead heat ca.ught it to smother it with the coming night ; and resistlessly the slow silence over-crept the plain and lay there.

Crandeck's saddle-grip tightened ever so little with the sharp tightening of his heart-cords, and he whistled through parched lips. For the power-charged stillness that fell away to the four wide corners where strange winds lived was unlovely to him, and unholy, and full of secretiveness. It was the sea without life,, or movement, or regard. It was the empty beginning of the world before man moved over the face of it. And more truly than all, it was the far rimless, mysterious country- that had clogged his feet through the dreams of many years, and he knew very certainly that it promised evil.

There was •evil in the wild, sensuous smell of flax-swamp that rose to windward ; and in the clump

of stiff, wide-headed cabbage-trees that whispered together behind with a feverish tapping of dead fronds on bare grey trunks ; and in the tussock that rolled out eternally before the stumbling hoofs, turning livid where the heavy sky stooped to meet it on the edge of the earth.

There had been yellow tussock below Harton through the slow day's grilling, and molten sky above ; but he shook the stoop from his shoulders, and looked over the waste with the pride of the naturalized colonial. Then he began to say things such as were to Crandeck an utter weariness of the flesh and blatantly idiotic.

" She's a young country, I grant you, but she's got the biggest future of all Australasia. Canterterbury mutton and beef— and— l tell you, Crandeck, I've my own idea about cropping these plains. Surface-ploughing first season, with "

" Oh, darn !" muttered Crandeck, clacking his stirrup-irons wearily. He had no desire whatever to lay hands on the great unturned wealth of this dumb world. It was for Harton and the men of his breed to make New Zealand for

the golden days to come, and for Crandeck himself—*' I am a sojourner, even as all my fathers were— not," he said ; " an' I don't like it, Har ton. I'll serve my year to Jamison because the pater has paid my premium— then I'll go away very swiftly, and never come back. I don't want to farm this ocean-farm. By Jove ! I'd sooner dig up the New Forest with a toothpick ! So there's my mind for you on that point. An' how much darker is it goin' to get before it's done, eh ?" Harton blundered into a smudge that was low manuka-scrub, and out into another that was swordedged Spaniard. Then he soothed his mare into jaded submission to the unkindly will of things, sniffed the air that was suddenly tainted with the harshness of brine, and remarked that a sea-fog was coming up. " When it will most certainly be darker than the hithermost pit, so we'll push along while there's any perspective left. Then I reckon we will have to wait." " Wait— here ! What for ? Day ?" " Our lady ; she'll be lighting up directly. ■ Look out, Crandeck ; there's a dry creek !" Crandeck followed through the stony unpleasantness with mixed ideas regarding the Virgin Mary, and stars and moons — or an occasional comet. " Our who ?" "' Jamison's daughter," Harton's thick voice softened. " Our Lady of the Plain, and the only woman for thirty-odd miles round, bar Jamison's housekeeper. You knew this, Crandeck ?" " The only woman !" said the man from England." " Great heavens above ! The only woman !" Harton's saddle creaked., He was gathering himself fdr direct speech. " She's only a baby yet, bless her ! There are ten or a dozen fellows always knocking: about Jamison's station, but—" " I understand. All of 'em hate each other with an abiding hatred, and follow her round on their

knees. I shall indubitably do livewise." " Hope you will." Harton's tone was grim, " and you'll get lammed on the head with a shovel, or whatever' s handiest. Our Lady is muscular. But —er — Crandeck, I wanted to say — that is — she doesn't know anything aabovet — cr — that sort of thing yet, you know, and we don't want her to. But if you're the man that's going to wake her out of her childhood, and— cr — make her unhappy, by the Lord Harry, you'll have the lot of us on to you ! It's just as well to warn you — cr — " " You always had a nice way of putting things," said Crandeck, slowly. " I should call you a tactful man, Harton, and I mean to talk to your Lady of the Plain as much as I jolly well please. When is that deuced light coming, anyway, and what is it ? Hold up, you brute !" " Lantern from a flagstaff on Jamison's hill. For the benefit of straying Israelites who used to peg out in Jamison's waterholes. There she goes ! Keep it a bit more to starboard, and come along." The red eye drew them through the night by its steady, unwinking glare ; Harton, biting his beardcorners in newly- awakened trouble, and Crandeck, saddle-worn and sulky to the verge of curses. A low-browed house reared itself blackly, and yellow streaming lights ate up the dark round many men speaking an uncouth language that was entirely genial and full of welcome. In the following hours Crandeck learned that this talk was the shibboleth of the sheep-farmer and the run-holder. He watched some half-score lean, eager faces through the blue reek of tobacco smoke, the while he ached in all his softly nurtured young body, and doubted that the wisdom gained in a year's cadetting on Jamison's station would over-pay for the raw newness of a life lived on the level of strenuous fact.

For the speech of these men ran up and down the land as they hammered out the power of this strong country to be, and told of lawless deeds and the summary justice that came after, in straight words and very forcible. A clean-faced boy, who owned some forty thousand acres of freehold, commanded the attention of the thickening smoke-reek. " A dashed cattle-puncher, I tell you. He nailed forty of my calves, and banged 'em along with his own mob 'fore I could get on his trail. What ? Certainly I'd know them, bang or no bang, though he swore they were his by all his gods, the brute ! So I swore — " " I'll be bound you did, Tony," murmured Verenin, opening an eye. " Tony, Tony ! come out— quick. I've chased that weka into the koromiko bush by the tin fence, and you've got to catch him. Tony —is he asleep in there, boys ?" Jamison pulled out his pipe. " Lassie, come here. Harton and Crandeck haye — " Our Lady came to the window with darkness behind her, and smiled on Crandeck. " Did they give you any tea ? Whisky and pipes ? Oh, how silly ! You'll have a head in the morning, you know. Vie always has a head when he comes back from Christchurch. You do, Vie, and it makes you shockingly cross, too. Wasn't he cross coming up, Crandeck ?" There's never any sense in telling too much truth," said Payne ; " has no one taught you that, my Lady ?" " You learnt instead," said Our Lady, underbreath. " I heard of it —no, it wasn't Tony or Dad. But I'm going to speak to you in the morning. Letters ? Oh, who for ? Wish some one would write me a letter !"■ " I will, if you like," said Verenin. " You shouldn't laugh ; I can. I won an essay prize at school once."

" I 'spect they judged by weight 'stead of reading that year," said Our Lady, with demure eyes on the bulky one. " Hurry up, Tony. No, you shan't have a gun. You shot three chickens last time. Wait till I call for him. We-ka-a !" The night where the young moon walked took them both, and later, Crandeck went' to his bed and was mystified. For the wide frank plains that had cradled Our Lady in freedom belonged to no world in which he had part, and the shadow of its silence lay on him with a horrible familiarity. But in the grey-domed eternity of his dreams, swathed cabbage-trees stood in ranks behind a girl's figure that ran through the night, and called on a name that was his own. And he followed her unswervingly until Harton came and threw brushes at him and three boots, because it was breakfasttime. Jamison's acres lay bare to the welter of sunlight and to all the winds that blew. For fences were not, neither crops nor trees ; and kennelled boundary-dogs strung off the invisible line that severed the runs throughout the plains. Our Lady made this matter clear to Crandeck when she came out to watch him sinking a post-hole, and to explain the uses of a " bar " in clayey soil. Crandeck grew speedily blistered about the hands and the nape of the neck, and Our Lady sat under a sparse manuka bush, and laughed at him with clear, unabashed eyes. " You'll learn ; and everything worth learning hurts a bit— or it's not worth it.— Q.E.D. Tony taught me that." " The logic or the fact ?" Then Crandeck struck a stone that knocked a cotfner off the spade, and swore under breath. " I think I found out the fact myself. Had to, you knov/. Dad won't let me ride with a saddle, and I had awful croppers before I could sit a young 'un. And Vie taught me to shoot with swan-

shot 'cause he said a girl ought to be as plucky as a man. And then there's the plain — " she flung out her arms to the golden tussock that ran in resistless following waves to the distance of her world — " it hurts when it's lonely and grey in the evenings, and crying out things that I can't quite understand, though I listen and listen. But it tells me lots. How to bear pain, you know ; and what to say to the boys when they ask me for advice ; and how to manage Pint-o-Beer Dick when Dad gets angry and wants to thrash him."

" Good Lord," said Crandeck, standing upright with wrath on his forehead. " What sort of a lifewhy doesn't your father send you to a school or a — a — anywhere out of this confounded desolation. It's no place for a girl."

" If you say another word," said Our Lady, with her eyes straight and hard on Crandeck, " I'll thump you very much, Crandeck. It's no business of yours. I love the plain better than anything — except Dad, and I'll never go away from it. It's beautifuller than Revelations, because its more than only words. And the tussock is like the sea of glass in Heaven, and when the mountains are all purple and scarlet and green they are like God's throne, and — and you're a beast, Crandeck."

Crandeck stared

" If Heaven isn't livelier than this place there's not much inducement for a man to become a Christian," he said. "I'd advise you not to try and make a convert by illustrating the Bible with your little corner of the world."

" I don't want to forgive you for that," said Our Lady, standing her ground with quivering lips ; "but I'll have to, because I called you a beast. I'll even tell you that you'd better put a bucket of water into that hole to soften it a bit. You're making a horrid mess of it."

" Thank you," said Crandeck, humbly, and went to the pump.

But he curbed his tongue through the days that came after, and played rounders and cricket with Our Lady, and hid his eyes carefully from her angrily-smothered tears when Tony brought his violin out into the full moonlight, and the very far ends of earth listened where the stars shone.

And the mantle of the rouseabout, and one who must obey fell on Crandeck' s shoulders and chafed him. He learnt the inner mechanism of the thing that Jamison called work, and covered himself with shame by patiently sifting merinos and Lincolns into one and the same yard when Jamison had set him to drafting.

" An' that red-headed shepherdman o' yours grinned at me," he told Our Lady. " Said I'd got a lot to learn about sheep. Wish I'd asked him the origin of Jason's '"Golden Fleece," anyway."

" You don't know yourself," said Our Lady, serenely. She was of necessity driving the lumbering tipdray through the stone-choked creeks and the unhandy litter of low scrub ; for Crandeck wrought unrestfully with the clumsy, widemouthed tin of water, and the couple of stark sheep that slanted stiffly down with desire to upset it, and so guarded the three-days' meal for the boundary dogs.

" Don't I ?" he retorted. " Jason got his " Golden Fleece " from the Jews, like many an unlucky beggar since. I, too, was fleeced of all my gold in my college days." " You must have been an excessively mild sheep," said Our Lady, and laughed. " Cut off a forequarter of your relative for Rage. He's a most awfully hungry dog. And throw it on the far side of his kennel, or he'll go for you while you're filling his water-tin."

Crandeck hacked scientifically at the red-blue rawness, and poured water without undue haste. Our Lady watched approvingly under her lashes.

" You're not a funk," she said ; and I don't think you're stupid

either. I believe I'll like you, Crandeck."

Crandeck looked at the browned, thin face and grave dark eyes, and the small, firm mouth ; but the spell of the wide, dun plain was, as always, entirely hateful to him, and with the taste of it in his mouth, he answered her.

" It's confoundedly good of you, but I think you'll have to be quick about it. I mean to get away from here as soon as I decently can. It — it haunts me, this place. It's been alive before — and I was alive with it. You'll say I am talking abject rot, but— but — "

" Yes ?" she said ; " tell me. You mean that it's dead now, and that's why you don't like it ?"

" Something of that sort, I suppose ;" Crandeck cast wildly for words of sense. "In this real thing it is beastly flat— and lonely —and silent, and— and unheeding, y'know. I've seen it before in dreams, or — cr — mind's eye, or something, and I always hated it infer — very much. It hasn't got an edge to it," he said, wrinkling his eyes in attempt to see it clearly ; " just clouds. But I know there's something beastly waiting behind them for me, and I know I'll see it some day. In the reality, probably."

"I'm part of the plains," said Our Lady, seriously ; " and I promise you that if I ever come into yotir dreamland, I'll pull away the clouds and let you see what's behind. It's easier to face anything if you know what it is, isn't it ?"

Crandeck did not find it necessary to tell her that she was already an indissoluble part of the whole.

" Infinitely. But you may not always be here."

" I shall," said Our Lady, dragging away a handful of star- white manuka blooms as the dray crashed through the bushes. " When I die I mean to be buried up under the flagstaff, where I light the lantern at nights. Then the plain can talk to me all the time, and p'raps I'll Vqi,. VII.— No. I.—B.

be better able to understand what it says. I'll come to you, though, if you can make me hear. But you'll have to shout loud, for there'll be such lots of interesting things to think of. Don't forget." " No." said Crandeck ; " I won't forget."

But when the day came for him to remember, the evilly-sweet scent of the wild manuka came too, and helped the memory. And in the added knowledge of the time it hurt him, as Our Lady had promised that all knowledge hurts the learner.

" And if you see the horrid thing in the flesh— oh, there's Tony. Shout, Crandeck ! Shout loud. I want him."

Our Lady bore on the green-hide reins, and under the flare of unshaded sun, jthe black smudge on horizon took' substance, and grew the shape of\a ridden horse.

Crandeck shouted without result until Our Lady stood on the seat beside him, and put her hands to her mouth so that her cry went out into the yellow ripple of distance.

The rider wrenched his horse about slowly.

" Doesn't seem in much of a hurry to see you," remarked Crandeck.

" He isn't," said Our Lady, composedly. "He knows he's in for a jolly good scolding."

Crandeck' s eyebrows went up

"By Jove ! Does he let you wig him— what's he been doing ?" " I don't think," said Our Lady, with dignity, " that you've any right to ask those sort of questions, and Fm very sure you're not going to get an answer. This is between Tony and me. And when I lecture you I won't tell the universe either. Well, Tony ; Fm going to walk back with you." Tony's half -broken colt sneered away from the cart in wrath, and Tony sat still, and frowned at the distant sparkle of roofs beyond the heat-quivered trail.

" Too far, Fm afraid ; and— er— l

want to see your father — I'm — er — in a hurry." " Dad's over at Kaiti Creek. It's no good, Tony. Drive on, Crandeck. You'll have to finish feeding the dogs by yourself." Tony's clear boy-face reddened as she dropped to the tussock. " Well —if you will, I suppose you will. But you won't like it, My Lady. I'm not sorry, and you're not going to make me sorry." " You can clear, Crandeck," said Our Lady ; and Crandeck cleared with an inward amazement and an exceeding indignation that led him to ask straight questions of Harton on the very next day, when the answers super-added puzzlement and disgust.

Harton explained very simply that the inwardness of the wild young lives on the plains was known to Our Lady, both through the large, sweet wisdom that comes not with prayers nor fasting, and through the mouths of the men who came to her in their trouble of soul. " Pint-o'-Beer " Dick was an Honorable, and a honeless drunkard in his own right, and Payne's desire for this world's dross had stripped the title of honest man from him before he came over seas. But they stood to the pride of their manhood before Our Lady, and in her innocence she judged her "boys" lives by her own straight standard of rig-hit and wrong, and incidentally held them from much unconsidered evil.

"Why not ?" demanded Harton— he was re-boarding the side of a cowhouse, and his words came in sections—" It can't smirch her— anything we'd tell her. What ? Some bad lots, of course— but we shut 'em off pretty quick. An' there are. times when a fellow needs the sort of help— 'nother man's no good— and, by George, she knows how to touch us up when we deserve it !"

It was becoming clear to Crandeck that— man being certainly made for hearth-love and the tending of a wife— it was natural that

•he should desire to take Our Lady away from this place, and to hedge her about with woman's gear, and the all- abiding serenity of an English life. He did not know this until he learnt that these other men considered that they held a claim to her. " It's — it's iniquitous," he said ; it's — cr — Jamison's a fool. She ought to be shielded from all this sort of thing. In England — " " Don't talk piffle," said Harton, driving a nail home with a steady ponderous stroke ; " and don't come to me for comfort if you let out those sort of ideas on Our Lady. We can't get along without her, and she can't get along; without us. So you'd best take those sheep of yours and be off home, young man. It'll be a snorter of a night." Crandeck was filled with dividing thoughts as he tailed his halfdozen strayed sheep over the grey, crawling sea of wind-beat tussock, where the nor'-wester boomed and shrieked through the raw red autumn sunset. He hated the plain and the life of it beyond words ; and he hated the hidden horror that waited hira —somewhere — somehow — in conjunction with it. Then he called himself a fool, and swore at his stiffened fingers and dust-brimmed eyes when they refused to help him give life and light to his pipe. "It's an unholy place," he said ; " and she loves it. But she will have to love me more." And he set himself- to the teaching of Our Lady while the winter smote the whole present universe into a tingling vigour of frosty life, and made of the hills a gleaming crystal dazzle that took strange unearthly shapes under the white moon. Crandeck learnt much regarding the grubbing of turnips, and the straining of wire-fencing, and all the unspeakable weariness of life on a sheep-station. He did some fair shooting in the ice-crisped flaxswamps when the westing was red

sunk to pale green and opal, and the grey duck and heron came in to squabble about house-rents with blue-breasted, angular pukaki. He also wrote Home letters very often, and managed to deduct his voyage past and to be from the year of his bond to Jamison. But he did not discover the one all-powerful thing which would have given him a ' lover's command over Our Lady, and neither did he know that he lacked it. She shot with him on occasional evenings, and helped him stalk wekas and a stray wild pig through the manuka and tawhina scrub. And without doubt she was an excellent shot. " You wiped my eye twice today," he said, in the disgust that is lawful for a man at such times ; and he swung the string of duck discontentedly. There were two brace of teal among them, and they had fallen to Our Lady's gun. She climbed the little hill whereby the track led past the flagstaff to the house, and the bite of the clear air brought the red to her cheeks, and a laugh to her mouth. " Doesn't it make you feel like a god or a demon?" she said;-" to have the power over life and death, you know — even if it's only exampled by something you kill to eat." " There's one god who shoots to wound — with a bow and arrow," said Crandeck, with suddenly parched lips. " Did you ever hear of him ?" "Of course ; Vie taught me mythology. And he binds up the wounds with true lover's knots— which come undone quicker than any other. They are worst of all —except Granny's knots— oh, and Dad's ' must nots,' when he doesn't want me to do a thing. Take the ducks down to the kitchen, Crandeck ; I'm going to light the lantern."

No man dare lay hand on that flagstaff if it was not} Our Lady's will, and Crandeck slid over the frost-stiff tussock until he bumped

into Harton with a force that unbalanced his temper. It was growing to dusk among the cabbage- trees and rows of seeded gums that circled the house. Harton gripped Cr an deck's shoulder, and spoke low with a gasp. " Where is she ?" "Go and look for her," said Crandeck, freeing himself sulkily. " Shut up and listen then." Harton's keen ear had caught the rattle of the rope through the sheave as Our Lady lowered the lantern. " Jamison's dead. Shot himself over on our boundary-line. He's— he — didn't you know how things were going with him. Good God, man ! Didn't you know ? If you'd given me a hint I could — I might have saved — " He was sobbing in his throat as a man sobs under the sudden grip of a numbing wound. But Crandeck knew that his sorrow was not for Jamison, and the knowledge irritated him. " I can't tell her," he said, " I can't— can't ! She'd hate me if I brought her sueh — oh, my poor little darling, my poor little girl." " No ; I suppose I'll have to tell her," said Harton, tonelessly. " You won't tell her that he— ?" " D'you think I'm a brute ? By all — " Harton's sudden fury dropped from him. "Go on in, Crandeck. Tony's there, and Payne, but you might be able to help — " They did not ask him questions when he brought Our Lady back to the house. Neither did they ask when they sat round the unlighted little room with its jovial comfort dumbly broken to the root of it by dim light of the dead man's chair. By virtue of a half-sheet of pap-3r run over in Jamison's unaccustomed scrawl the disentanglement of this thing had fallen on Harton. He smoked many pipes there with Our Lady's face before him in the darkness, and his brows furrowed over his sunken eyes. A quick, free step came down the

passage, and a door banged. Tony sprang up. " Great Scott ! Where's she oif to ? It's freezing hard !" He dragged the heavy table-cloth away with him; and ran out with it into the night. From the uncurtained window Crandeck saw him overtake a dark shape that blotted the starshine on the tussock hill, and increase its bulk by the winding of it in many folds of cloth. " You didn't give hor time to light the lantern,'' he sc.id ; " and she's gone to do it now. Wonder she can think of such things tonight. But, of course, Jamison wasn't such a tremendously good father to her." Payne had lit a candle that he might read the " Field ;" Harton looked at Crandeck in the light of it. "If you want to break her heart you'll say that to her. The lantern was Jamison's idea. Isn't that enough for you ?" But it was given to Tony to possess clearer insight, and Our Lady, understanding, spoke to him out of her full heart. " I mustn't forget the plain, Tony ; not even for Dad. It would know, you see ; and it's always been so good to me — and I love it so. Go away, Tony dear, and leave me just by myself. I can — understand better up here, and--and — oh, Tony, Tony, please go away." There was a solemn purity in the cold, still night, where the dried scrub cracked under the smiting frost, and in the soft, direct blaze of the Southern stars that drew the eye up from the world's rim to the mighty hithermost dome of the seventh heaven. It oppressed Tony and gave him fear, but he had the wisdom to know that it was best for Our Lady.

" Harton will come for you directly— he's going to stay a few days to see about— cr — things, you know, and Crandeck is to do his work at Balclutha. He thought

you'd rather not see him first, dear ; but if — " Our Lady lay face down among the frozen spines of the tussock, and she gave him to understand that she did not desire the presence of Crandeck, nor of any other man in all the world. So the slow days dragged themselves into the past, and closed down the week with a cold, inkblack night and a mad lashing of rain on the roof. Harton! and Crandeck had sifted patiently through the seeds of Jamison's sowing, and had found many things that were ill therein. Therefore, Harton had called a meeting at Balclutha, and he told Our Lady's " boys " all that was necessary for them to know. " There^s not a dashed penny left, and the station and stock will have to go to pay part of the debts. I thought— l suppose we can make up the rest between us, eh, you fellows ?" " You bet," said Verenin, stolidly ; " but what about Our Lady ?'' " Don't believe she's a relative in the world. I don't know, unless — unless we send her to a boardingschool. She's only eighteen." There was a groan of mixed derision and pain. " Our Lady ! Harton, you cruel beast ! Fancy ruling her into a dame-school. Besides, we can't manage without her." " I think you'll have to — now ; can't you see that things must be different ?" " Suppose you'll marry her to some one — or to yourself," said Payne with a sneer, and Harton got to his feet. " Suppose you'd better shut up," he said sharply. Then he looked at the others. " We'll keep, the home-block and Mrs Rooney, and Our Lady shall live there till we see how things turn out. And no man shall say a word of marriage to her or bother her in any way unless he gets the consent of the rest. We're all in this, and we're all answerable for her, eh ?"

" Right— o," said " Pint-o'Beer '•' Dick, " Our Lady is ours in trust, and we'll take care of her — bless her ! And you'll have the sale soon, Harton ? There'll be a slump in sheep when they begin to send 'em down from the back country." Tony and Harton bought the land that the boundary-dogs had guarded, and gave them new places whereon to beat white, flint-hard circles from the level yellow. But all the plain was Our Lady's birthright, and she ran through the familiar ways of fern and scrub and cabbage-tree, and lighted the lantern for those strayed on the tracks that had passed to others, and so won through the bitter, solemn winter in the frost-bound silences to the sweet mutter of the spring wind, and the, leagues of loosened yellow tossing to blue horizon. Jamison's death had cast the bonds from Crandeck, but he waited still with Harton, until the sparseness of Our Lady's life lashed him beyond control, and he braved the assembly to tell them what he would do. " I mean to marry her if she will," he said ; " and I'll take her away from this place. It's an evil life for a girl, and — and I'll take her away from it. I don't care a hang what you fellows think about it, but it is only right that you should know first. You have done so much for her." Verenin swore in stolid fashion. " I'm d d if you're going to patronize us for it," he said. " She is Our Lady. But she ought to go —though, God knows, we will miss her." Harton stood at the window staring on the blue far hills where the flushed sunset moved. "Yes," he said slowly ; " it's not a life for a girl. She stays out half the night talking to the wind and the cabbage- trees and things. I've heard her ; and the girlhood has gone out of her. She must go — and it must be you, Crandeck.

We are all anchored here, and also — but does she love you, man ?" Crandeck was grasping the chairback, and his face was set. It is not an easy thing for a man — more especially an Englishman— to bare his soul before other men. But he recognized their right. " I don't know ; I think she, will. She is so lonely, and— and I have waited — ' ' " It's best for her ;" Harton spoke thickly ; " but, by Heaven, if you're not good to her, Crandeck — " "It will take all you can give to make up for the old life," said Tony, wisely. Verenin opened and shut his fist reflectively. " She's ' Our Lady," he said again ; " and we'll be worse than mothers-in-law on to you, Crandeck-" " Pint-o'-Beer " Dick saw the humorous side of this and laughed, whereat Crandeck swung round in wrath, and flayed him with hard words, thereby relieving his feelings immensely. But it was Harton who rode over to Jamison's the following day, and spoke with Our Lady, for he knew her child-heart too well to think that Crandeck could win it by storm. He found her in the patch of manuka-scrub beyond the creek, and she raised grave eyes from her half-plaited stock-whip at his coming. " You haven't been over for nearly a week, Vie. Why don't you ? None of you come as often as you used to — and I'm so lonely." Harton was ever clumsy at words, but his love for Our Lady had taught him much. " Better not, dear. We'd give all we've got to make you happy, and — and to take care of you. But there's only one way — one way, one of us can do it, dear." " Yes ?" she asked, wearily. Words were hard to come at. " If— we all love you, My Lady,

and you know it— if one of us married you, dear." Our Lady's hands gripped on the rough flax, and her eyes frightened Harton. " I— oh, no, no ! Not that ! Never that ! Oh, Vie— please don't make me marry you, Vie !" Harton smiled a queer, twisted little smile. "It is Crandeck, dear. He has loved you for a long while, and he wants to give you a happier life. We all think that it is best for Our Lady." She looked through the knotted, scant manukas into her world that she loved, and the sorrow on her still face hurt Harton's soul. " Do you ? Tony, and " Pint-o'-Beer " Dick and Mrs Rooney — and all of you ?" " Yes ; and your father. I know he would have wished it, dear. Crandeck is a real good fellow — '" Our Lady stood up. " I will try," she said ; "but I can never love Crandeck like I do the plain, and I am not sure that you are right in thinking it best, Vie. Oh, it will hurt ; but tell him I'll try, Vie." " He'd sooner hear that from yourself," said Harton, and departed. So Our Lady gave her free word to Crandeck, and would have taken it back when she knew the whole of its meaning, but that Crandeck would not. " I told you that I hated the place and the beastly hidden thing in the dream-part df it," he said ; " and I'm not going to wait here till its time is ripe. It might mean danger to you, dear heart ; I seem to believe it does in my dream sometimes, and I'm blessed if I'll chance it any longer. So we'll go back to England, my own little love, and we'll be awfully happy, and not hear the wind calling out of those unspeakably dreary mountains any . more." Our Lady drew back from his kiss.

"Do you think you quite under-

stand ?" she asked. "I am part of the plain, and it is part of me. It is alive, and it talks to me, and I love it — better than I shall ever love you, Crandeck. I'll go with you because they all tell me there is — there is no other way. But it will be calling to me in the night, Crandeck ; and I shall listen— and want to come back — always — always. Do you quite understand ?" " No, I don't, and I don't want to. You are a fanciful little lady, my sweetheart, and you will learn to love quick flesh better than dead earth. I'm going to teach you — and it'll be one of the things that don't hurt in the learning." But Tony knew better. He told Harton so as they rode home through j the night, past the southeastern corner of what had been Jamison's boundary, with the warm breath of the light nor' -west in their faces. " Crandeck' s a good enough sort of chap— but wood and iron can't assimilate, Harton, and we ought to have known it before. The plain is not even good arable land to him, and to her — neither of us know a tithe of what it is to her !" " What in thunder are you driving at ?" " Have inanimate things soulpower over humans ?" " Bah !" said Harton ; " you're talking drivel." But he smoked in painful thought until Tony jerked his colt back on its haunches with a quick hand dropped to the other man's bridle-rein, " Listen ! That's her singing. Good Heavens ! An' she's a full four miles from the house !" Harton, peering with screwed eyes past the bare grey trunks of cabbage-trees, saw Our Lady's young, earnest face clear •to the moon, and heard her words in the broad silence of the plain that listened to her.

" Good-bye, good-bye, dear wind of the red dawn and the evening ! Good-bye, mountains — and smell of the flax— and the trampling nor'-

westers. It is all done with and dead— Dear ; did you know— did you know ? No more yellow tussock for me ; no more of the nights that we love — Dear ; did you know — did you know ? Oh ! why did you teach me to love you ? Good-bye ! Good-bye ! Good-bye !"

" She's mad. I'm going to put a stopper on this," stammered Harton, preparing to descend.

",No, I'm dashed if you do ,;" Tony wheeled and led the horses away with a strong hand. " Let her alone. She'll belong to Crandeck to-morrow, and — and — and a jolly good thing, too ! Did you see her face ? She never looked like that for Crandeck. Tony — what is it ? What does it mean ?"

"It means," said Tony, huskily, " that we are fools, and don't understand. And we can't understand. She's just learnt what the love of a man for a woman is, and it can't touch her, because — because she learnt something bigger first."

" Something — bigger ? You don't —know ?"

" No," he said, unsteadily, " I don't know. But it is. How much do we know about anything, after all ? She knows more — and this d d plain knows more. Look at it, Harton."

Harton looked where the mighty bulk of it lay spread to the moon, with the great, regular movement of wind-stirred, whitened tussock, like breath that quickened the chest of a giant, _ and the stillness that is not placid, but tingling with curbed waiting about him. And, for the first time, the threatening, unexplainable strength of the land that was old and wise beyond the knowledge of men, came down on him, and startled him.

" It's— it is the very devil," he said. " Thank the Lord she's going away to-morrow. Come on, Tony."

He shook out the reins and went home at the gallop. But every sod that the hoofs cut from the

turf seemed to sob at him in dumb live pain, until he loathed Tony for his words, and went to pace his room the night through ; threshing out the limitations beyond which no human thought may stray with certainty, and finding no comfort therein.

Tony brought Our Lady a crown of white manuka-flowers for her marriage-day ; and the sun was blazing and jubilant over a golden earth, and a blue sky, and a little group of men on the wide verandah surrounding a white frock that was Our Lady being married to Crandeck.

But when the Presbyterian parson, from forty miles away, had said all the " Amens," and Crandeck stooped to kiss his wife before all her " boys," the strong, assertive scent of the manuka irritated him to inexplicable jealousy.

" Take it off, sweetheart. You've nothing more to do with the plain and its belongings. You're mine now— mine, and nobody else's. Do you hear ?"

" Confound you," said Verenin ; " you needn't rub it in like that ! He's so cocky, you fellows—" " An' you'll write to us sometimes, My Lady ? And I'll let you know how that turnip crop on the swamp turns out."

" You've got my folks' address all right ? Nottingham— shut up, Tony ! Do you want to do all the gassing yourself ?"

Payne^ brought up his four-in-hand with a whirl and a scatter of shingle and turf beyond the verandah, and Tony held Our Lady's hands very tight after he had helped her in. " I'll look after the light. Be a brave girl, dear, and Crandeck will bring you back some day." " Yes," she answered. But Tony turned away from her eyes, and choked over the shout that went with a burst shoe of Mrs Rooney's after the four-in-hand as Payne let out the whip. By reason of a long day's work

it was nine of the following evening hefore Tony rode over the two miles of tussock and swamp-flax to light Jamison's lantern. The dead manuka-wreath lay on the wooden verandah where Crandeck had flung it, and Tony's eyes were troubled as he climbed the little hill through the restless, windy dark. At foot of the flagstaff he stumbled, and fell over something soft that gave to his weight without sound. He felt it with his hands. Then he knelt upright, and spoke to the march of triumphant wind that was the voice of the plain. Well— you've got her at last !

■N^s'lSkSl

You needn't make such a row about it, need you ?" The spurred boots that brushed the tussock over the hill-crest were Crandeck' s, and it was Crandeck who said : " Where is she ? I know she's here. She left me — give her to me, Tony." Tony lit the lantern, and strung it half-mast. But he did not speak, and Crandeck asked no questions. For, according to her promise, Our Lady had pulled away the clouds that rimmed the land of his dream, and behind them he saw her lie dead in the night under the flicker of Jamison's lantern.