One night early in December, Arabella burst into Missy's room with singular abruptness. Missy had said good-night to the others and was very nearly in bed, but she had not seen Arabella, who had been out all the evening. Evidently she had only now come in. She was breathing quickly from hurrying up-hill; and there was a light in her countenance which Missy noticed in due course.

"Missy," she began, as abruptly as she had entered, "do you remember the day you first came, and we showed you that group of you all taken when you were quite little?"

Missy nodded in the looking-glass. She was busy with her fringe.

"Well," continued Arabella, "you said red came out light, talking of your hair. Do you remember that?"

"Red came out light? No, I can't say I do."

"You must, Missy! You were speaking of your hair in that group———"

Missy flourished a brave bare arm. "Now I see. My poor old carrots! Of course they came out light; they couldn't come out red, could they?"

"No; but I'm told that red comes out black—that's all."

Missy faced about in a twinkling. Her bare arms went akimbo. She was pale.

"So that's what excited you, eh?" she cried derisively; yet it was only in the moment of speaking that she perceived that Arabella was excited at all.

"I'm not excited, Missy!"

"No?"

"Not a bit," said Arabella, as she gave herself the scarlet lie from neck to forehead. This amused Missy.

"Then what is it?" said she at last, with a provoking smile which the other could not meet. "Is it only that you're just dying to bowl me out? All right, my dear, we'll put it down to that. Only take care I don't bowl you out too—take very good care that I don't find out something about you!"

Arabella had the pale face now.

"Take very extra special good care," continued Missy, nodding nastily, "that I haven't found out something already!"

"Have you?"

The hoarse voice was unknown to Missy, and the frightened face seemed a fresh face altogether. She read it in a moment, and was laughing the next.

"Of course I haven't, my good girl!"

"O Missy!"

"Just as if you'd done anything you'd mind being found out! No, my dear, I was only having a lark with you; but you deserved it for having one with me. Now as to my hair in that photograph——"

"Oh, but of course I believe you, Missy, and not—and not the person who told me different."

"Now I wonder who that was?" said Missy to herself; but aloud—"That's a blessing! And now if you'll let me go to bed, my dear, we'll neither of us think any more of all this tommy-rot that we've been talking."

Nevertheless she herself thought about it half that night. And a variety of vague suspicions crystallised at last into a single definite conclusion.

"She has a man on," muttered Missy to her pillow. "That's what's the matter with Arabella."

Her mind was fully made up before she slept.

"I must find out something about it; what I do see I don't like; and I've just got to take care of Arabella."

Forthwith she set herself to watch. It was first of all necessary to become really intimate with Arabella. The latter's addiction to personal catechism, to name one thing, had kept Missy not a little aloof hitherto. Now, however, in the nick of time, this weakness passed away, and with it this barrier. There were no more questions asked obviously for the sake of doubting or discrediting the answer. On the other hand, about some things Arabella was as inquisitive as ever; especially to wit, Missy's love affairs. Curiously enough, this was the one point on which Missy was markedly reticent, for very good reasons of her own; but she had no objection to discussing with Arabella the general subject of love. She noted the fascination this had for her companion. When the latter came to speak of her male ideal, from the point of view of his appearance, Missy noted much more. "He has a black moustache and very dark eyes," said she to herself. "That's the kind I trust least of all!" She knew something about it, evidently.

A tiny incident, however, which happened when Missy had been some five or six weeks at the farm, told her more than Arabella had done, directly or indirectly, in any of their conversations. The girls were in the room with Mr. Teesdale, who was looking on the chimney-piece for a lost letter, when he exclaimed suddenly:

"What's got that meerschaum pipe, Arabella?"

"Which one was that, father?" was the only answer, in a suspiciously innocent voice.

"The one I picked up by our slip-rails the night I took Missy back to Melbourne. It belonged to yon man I told you I met on the road. I was saving it in case I ever set eyes on him again."

"Oh, that one!" cried Arabella; then, after a pause, she added, with a nonchalance which Missy for one admired: "I gave it back to him the other day."

"To whom?"

"Why, the man that lost it!"

"You gave it back—to the man that lost it?" cried David, in the greatest surprise, while Missy became buried in the Argus of that morning. "Dear me, where have you seen him, honey?"

"In the township."

"In the township, eh? Now what sort of a man was it that you saw in the township? Tell me what he was like."

"Like? Oh, he had—let's see—he had very dark eyes; oh, yes, and a dark moustache and all; and he was very—well, rather handsome, I thought him."

"Ay, that's near enough," said Mr. Teesdale, greatly puzzled; "quite near enough to satisfy me that he's the same man; but how in the world did you know that he was? That's what I can't make out!"

"Why, he told me himself, to be sure!"

"Ay, but how came he to speak to you at all? That's what I want to know."

"Then I'm sure I can't tell you," said Arabella, with a toss of her head, not badly done. "I suppose he saw where I came from, and I dare say he'd been leaning again' our slip-rails that night he lost his pipe. Anyhow, he asked me whether I'd found one, and I said you had, and he described the one he'd lost, and I knew that must be it. So I came back and got it for him. That was all."

Mr. Teesdale seemed just a little put out. "I wonder you didn't say anything about it at the time, my dear," said he, in mild remonstrance.

"Me? Why, I never thought any more of it," the young woman said, with a slightly superfluous laugh. "I—you see that was the first and last I'd seen of him," added Arabella, as if to end the discussion; but her father had not finished his say.

"I'm glad it was the last, however—I am glad of that!" he exclaimed with unusual energy. "Why? Because, my dear, little as I saw of him, I didn't like the cut of that man's jib. No," said Mr. Teesdale, letting his eyes travel through the window to the river-timber, and shaking his head decidedly, as he sat down in his accustomed seat; "no, I didn't like it at all; and very sorry I should have been to think a man of that stamp was coming here after our Mary Jane!"

And Missy said never a word; but neither word, look nor tone had escaped her.

Her eyes were very wide open now. Arabella went out more evenings than one, but never, it appeared, on two consecutive evenings; so the man was not living in the district. And Missy said so much the worse; he was not merely passing his time. To clinch matters, the unhappy girl began to hang out signs of sleepless nights and perpetual nervous preoccupation by day; signs which Missy alone interpreted aright.

At length, a little before Christmas, there came a night when Arabella kissed them all round and went off to her room much earlier than usual. And the fever in her eyes and lips was noted by Missy, and by Missy alone.

It was a night of stars only. The moon by which Missy had killed her one native cat, and nursed an infant opossum, had waxed and waned. The night, when Mr. Teesdale took a breath of it last thing, looked black as soot. Twenty minutes later, the farmhouse was in utter darkness; not a single ray from a single window; and so it remained for nearly two hours.

Then suddenl............