Now there was nothing but wet grass between the gun-room window and the river-timber; and that way lay the Dandenong Ranges; therefore it was clearly Missy's way—until she stopped to think.

This was not until she had very nearly walked into the Yarra itself; it was only then that she came to know what she was doing, to consider what she must do next, and to recall coherently the circumstances of her last and final expulsion from the farmhouse of the Teesdales. Already it seemed to have happened hours ago, instead of minutes. The hat and jacket she had snatched up from the sofa were still upon her arm; she put them on now, because suddenly she had turned cold. Another moment and she could not have said on which arm she had carried them, she had carried them so short a time. Yet the deathly face and the deathlier voice of Mrs. Teesdale were as a horror of old standing; there was something so familiar about them; they seemed to have dwelt in her memory so long. But, indeed, her mind was in a mist, through which the remote and the immediate past loomed equally indistinct and far away.

The mist parted suddenly. One face shone through it with a baleful light. It was the dreadful face of Mrs. Teesdale.

"Dying!" exclaimed Missy, eyeing the face judicially in her mind. "Dying? Not she—not now! She may have been dying; but she won't die now. No, I've saved her by dragging her off her deathbed to curse me and turn me out! I've heard of folks turning the corner like that. She was right enough, though. You can't blame her and call her unkind. The others are more to blame for going on being kind to one of my sort. No, she'd better not die now, she'd much better leave that to me."

Her mind was in a mist. She tried to see ahead. She must live somewhere, and she must do something for her living. But what—but where?

There was one matter about which she had not spoken the truth even now; neither to Arabella, nor to John William, nor to Mr. Teesdale himself. That was the matter of her new home in the Dandenong Ranges, where she said she had been so happy, they didn't know! It was no home at all. She was particularly wretched there. She had stayed on with one object alone; now that this was accomplished there would be no object at all in going back. She had not intended ever to return, when leaving; but then her intentions had gone no further than the paying back to Mr. Teesdale of the twenty pounds obtained from him once upon a time by fraud. This had been the be-all and end-all of her existence for many months past. It was strange to be without it now; but to go back without it, to that farm in the ranges, would be terrible Yet go somewhere she must; and there was the work which she could do. They would give her that work again, and readily, as before; they would overwork her, bully her, speak hardly to her—but clothe her decently, feed her well, and pay her ten shillings a week, all as before. She must do some work somewhere. Then what and where else?

Her mind was in a mist.

She saw no future for herself at all, or none that would be tolerable now. If she had dreamt once of unanimous forgiveness at the farm—of getting work there in the kitchen, in the cow-shed—that dream had come to such utter annihilation that even the memory of it entered her head no more. And she wanted no work elsewhere. So why work at all? She had done enough. Rest was all she wanted now. It was the newborn desire of her heart; rest, and nothing more.

And here was the river at her feet; but that thought did not stay or crystallise just yet.

Before it came the thought of Melbourne and the old life, which parted the mind's mist with a lurid light. That old life need not necessarily be an absolutely wicked one. There were points about that old life, wicked or otherwise. It had warmth, colour, jingle and glare, abundant variety, and superabundant gaiety. But rest? And rest was all she wanted now—all. And the mist gathered again in her mind; but the river still ran at her feet.

The river! How little heed she had taken of it until this moment! She had watched without seeing it, but she noted everything now. That the rain must have stopped before her banishment from the house, since her dry clothes were dry still; that overhead there was more clear sky than clouds; that the clouds were racing past a sickle moon, overwhelming it now and then, like white waves and a glistening rock; that the wind was shivering and groaning through the river-timber, and that it had loosened her own hair; that the river itself was strong, full, noisy and turbulent, and so close, so very close to her own feet.

She stooped, she knelt, she reached and touched it with her fingers. The river was certainly very cold and of so full a current that it swept the finger-tips out of the water as soon as they touched it. But this was only in winter-time. In summer it was a very different thing.

In summer-time the river was low and sti............