grandmother; Harry Dale--drowned in the Lachlan; Lucy Brown--Harry's
school-day and boy-and-girl sweetheart--dead; and--and all the rest of
them. Far away, far away--and near away: up in Queensland and out on
the wastes of the Never-Never. Riding and camping, hardship and
comfort, monotony and adventure, drought, flood, blacks, and fire;
sprees and--the rest of it. Long dry stretches on Dead Man's Track.
Cutting across the country in No Man's Land where there were no tracks
into the Unknown. Chancing it and damning it. Ill luck and good
luck. Laughing at it afterwards and joking at it always; he and
Jack--always he and Jack--till Jack got married. The children used to
say Long Gully was haunted, and always hurried through it after
sunset. It was haunted enough now all right.

But, raising the gap at the head of the gully, he woke suddenly and
came back from the hazy, lazy plains; the

Level lands where Distance hides in her halls of shimmering haze,
And where her toiling dreamers ride towards her all their days;

where "these things" are ever far away, and Distance ever near--and
whither he had drifted, the last hour, with Jack Denver, from the old
Slab School.

"I wonder whether old Fosbery's got through yet?" he muttered, with
nervous anxiety, as he looked down on the cluster of farms and
scattered fringe of selections in the broad moonlight. "I wonder if
he's got there yet?" Then, as if to reassure himself: "He must have
started an hour before me, and the old man can ride yet." He rode
down towards a farm on Pipeclay Creek, about the centre of the cluster
of farms, vineyards, and orchards.