at dawn but the HOP-HOP of the Wallabies, and the funny noises of
opossums, and the crying of the curlews and native dogs--dingoes we
call 'em. . . . Well, there! I won't bother you with all that--though,
truly, I tell you, it's the nearest touch with the Infinite I'VE ever
known. . . . Lord! I remember the first night I camped right in the
Bush--me rolled in my blanket on one side of the fire, and Leura-Jim
the black-boy on the other. And the wonder of it all coming over me as
I lay broad awake thinking of the contrast between London and its
teeming millions--and the awful solitude of the Bush. . . . I wonder
if your blood would have run cold as mine did when the grass rustled
under stealthy footsteps and me thinking it was the blacks sneaking us
--and the relief of hearing three dismal howls and knowing it was
dingoes and not blacks.'

'I'd have loved it' murmured Bridget tensely. 'Go on, please.'

'Well, I've got to come to the tragedy. It began this way through an
act of kindness on our journey up. We were going through the
bunya-bunya country not far from our station, when out of the Bush
there came a black gin with two half-caste girls, she ran up and
stopped the buggy and implored my mother's protection for her girls
because the Blacks wanted to kill and eat them.'

'O . . . oh!' Biddy made a shuddering exclamation.

'Didn't I say the Blacks hadn't everything on their side--I ought to
explain though that in our district were large forests of a kind of
pine--there's one in this garden,' and he pointed to a pyramidal fir
tree with spreading branches of small pointed leaves spiked at the
ends, and with a cone of nuts about the size of a big man's head,