House in the Timberwoods

HOUSE IN THE TIMBERWOODS Joyce Dingwell

Dinah had urgent reasons for wanting to go to Australia, and she jumped at the chance of a job in New South Wales, even if it meant supervising three unruly "brats" in the back of beyond. Despite their antagonism, she felt fairly confident of holding her own with the children. At least they were less of a problem than her employer, Timber Marlow, whose scathing manner revealed only too clearly his contempt for all women.

ONE THE advertisement attracted through its utter unattractiveness. "WANTED: PERSON TO SUPERVISE CORRESPONDENCE LESSONS FOR LOCATION REMOTE, ASPECT LONELY, THREE CHILDREN; ENTERTAINMENT NIL, REMUNERATION INADEQUATE FOR TIME AND FRUSTRATION, PUPILS BRATS. APPLY MARLOW, TALLWOODS, WARRIGAL, NEW SOUTH WALES." New South Wales ... her fingers that held the sheet of newspaper trembled slightly. That was where Kevin was ... that was where she was to have gone. Deliberately, analytically, she checked the words once more. "WANTED: PERSON TO SUPERVISE CORRESPONDENCE LESSONS ." No stipulation as to sex, she noted, no specification as to capability. ''LOCATION REMOTE . . The end of the world, thought Dinah, could not prove too remote for her just now. "ASPECT weeks?

LONELY

..Could there be loneliness after these last few

"ENTERTAINMENT NIL, REMUNERATION INADEQUATE, PUPILS BRATS ..Of these last Dinah said aloud and with bitter conviction, "They couldn't matter, they couldn't matter at all." She crossed over to the window-seat, sat down and looked at the paper again. I'm mad, she told the sheet of newsprint, if I'm really thinking what I suspect I'm thinking ... this is an old edition, eight weeks old; by this time the position is filled, the successful applicant settled in. I'm two months behind.

All the same, something despairing urged inside of her, it is an unattractive notice, it could have failed to lure a bidder, it might still be vacant, and it's in New South Wales. The paper went down on Dinah's knee. She stared unseeing at the scene outside. I could go, she thought feverishly, I could go as I planned all along. No one here need know about it; there need be no little notes of tactful condolence, no telephone enquiries as to how "dear Dinah" is standing up to it, no sympathetic eyes as I shop in the town, most of all no swansong to Aunt Sarah's, Aunt Mildred's and Aunt Emily's dreams. She looked down on the garden below, but seeing It this time. It was an overcrowded garden. That was the main reason the three aunts were looking forward to a country niche. "Six green thumbs between us," Aunt Sarah had laughed once to Dinah, "and no space left to show what we can produce." "It will be different. Aunty, when I go out to Australia to Kevin and you move to the hills." "I rather fancied the lake country," Aunt Mildred had suggested. "A fold of the downs," Aunt Emily had proposed. The three of them had argued amicably over it. They did everything amicably, her dear old aunts, even their arguing. They were growing quite aged now. Too aged soon for gardening? For that country niche? Unconsciously Dinah fumbled for and retrieved the sheet of newspaper that had enfolded the Delft jug, the jug which was to have accompanied her, as a Wedding gift, to Australia, and no longer need go now that Kevin had changed his heart and their plans. Too old? she asked a little fiercely. Never. They must have, they simply must have that country house. She looked beyond the crammed garden to the picket fence.

One of the raggy suburban lilacs, for want of space, was wasting most of its sweetness on the pavement outside. Dinah noted it despairingly, thought again, as she always thought, Why did Daddy make such a foolish will? then looked back at the paper in her hand. But instead of "wanted" she saw in memory that last testament of her father, William Venness. "To my sisters Sarah, Mildred and Emily in gratefulness for the love I know they will give my daughter Dinah," it had read, and then it had named an ample sum. Not an extravagant sum, for Father had been by no means rich, but a nice sum, a round sum, a sum sufficient to permit six green thumbs to expand their greenness, sufficient for that house in the hills* or the lakes, or the downs,.. but also an entailed sum. ". . . Such amount not to be payable," had stipulated the foolish will, "until the fledgling has left the nest." Marriage, of course, was what Father had meant, and marriage had seemed rather remote in small, suburban Lilac Hill where there was little young life at all. Then all at once, rather like sunrise she had thought rapturously at the time, like spring, like birds singing, there was Kevin, and she was in love, so the fledgling would leave the nest, weddings, or so Dinah innocently had believed, being the natural follow-up for two people who cared for each other as she and Kevin cared. Kevin Sandley had come down to do a term with the big engineering company in the next town. He was tall and fair and very good looking - and the moment the two of them had met they had known - or had Kevin thought he had known ... or had it not even been thought, but just a small-town diversion on his part? And what, thought Dinah now, did it matter which?

By the end of his term they were engaged and the aunts were beginning to argue amicably over the hills, the lakes, the downs. "Funny old girls," Kevin had commented once. "Why didn't they rusticate before?" "It was the foolish will," Dinah had told him. "Daddy left them a sum, but it was not payable until the fledgling left the nest." She had smiled at his obvious puzzlement and explained, "I was the fledgling, of course." Not smiling back, Kevin had agreed, "That was a foolish will." "Yes, they could have been away years ago." "I didn't mean your way, Dee, I meant the stupidity of your father leaving any of his money to them. We could have used that. . . ." Odd, thought Dinah now, this was the first time since Kevin had said it that she had remembered those words. Later that evening her fiance had asked her how she was financially placed. "The firm are sending me to Australia, Dee." "Australia! Oh, Kevin, how marvellous. When do we leave?" He had twisted a strand of her soft ash hair round his finger into a curl and watched it straighten again as soon as he let go. "You want a permanent, my pet." "I look awful with curls, I have the straight-hair sort of face." "Well, your hair's certainly straight," he had conceded, and. let the soft floss fall.

She had felt somehow inadequate. She had decided anxiously that she would have a perm if he wanted it, the right face or not. "Kevin, when?" she had asked. "Australia, I mean." "I go in three weeks. I go to New South Wales." "And when... I mean... well..." "When can you come, is that it, Dinah?" She had nodded, but she had not spoken, simply waited for him to say. He had taken his time. "Well, it all depends on you, Dee. You see . , he had hesitated another moment."... I couldn't bring you out, dear, you'd have to come yourself." He had meant money, of course. At the time she had wondered for a quick flash what Kevin did with his money - he was a top-ranking engineer - but loyally the flash had passed. "I'll have enough," she had told him readily. He had approved the readiness . . . had he also marked it down in his mind? "Good girl! Dee ...?" "Yes, darling?" "I wonder ... I wonder, could you help me a little before I go?... You see, I'll be up against a lot of expense.. "Doesn't the firm finance you out?"

"I didn't mean that, I meant when I got to Sydney and set about finding us a house." A house. All her brief doubts had dissolved like mist in the sun. She saw Kevin looking for the house, finding the house, their house. "Oh, Kevin," she said. She had hugged him, knowing as she did that she loved him more than ever ... and she had given her fall quarter's allowance that came regularly out of her fetter's and mother's estates. He had written when he had reached Sydney, telling her how difficult to obtain and how dear the places were, hinting for more help. She had sent it. The next time he had not hinted, he had asked, and she had sent it again. The fourth time she had put the draft in the envelope thai taken it out, oddly, curiously, with no reason she knew of for doing so but just taking it out. For fun, she had thought, for a practical joke I'll tell him there's no money left. Meanwhile her boxes were being packed, her gown being made, Aunt Emily piping sugar lovers' knots and candy rosebuds for the cake that also was to travel out. ... And then Kevin's letter had come. How many such letters had been written since time began? she had wondered vaguely . . . "All a mistake" . . . "good friends" ... "better to come to an agreement now"... "always remember you fondly, Dee." Yes, thought Dinah, almost without feeling, you'll remember my quarterly allowances, Kevin. And then she had cried, because, for

all the blankness of feeling, she knew she still loved him in the same sunrise, springtime, bird-singing way. The wedding presents had been rolling in by then. Mostly small unimportant gifts from girl friends, thank goodness, who, because she was going right away, had chosen for sentiment rather than value. She had been glad of that. She would have hated to return each gift and explain. But the aunts had dipped deeply into their slender resources. There was a lovely Japanese print, a tooled leather attache-case, a blue Delft jug. The jug was the one she had been unpacking. For days she had wondered how she could tell the aunts the news, then she had decided to lay their gifts silently before them. She knew that they would understand. But she knew, too, that the country house would be pushed bade to where it had been before, that they would have to take their six green thumbs to the crowded garden again. Oh, darlings, I can't deprive you, her heart sorrowed, and yet what else can I do? There is no other way out. She glanced at the page again, at the unattractive offer. When Kevin had gone to Australia, to New South Wales, she had ordered Sydney papers and read them assiduously. She had wanted to know all about her future home. But, she thought wryly, she had never read this page. More unaware than aware of what she was doing, Dinah got up from the window-seat and crossed to her little bureau. There was air-mail equipment there, stationery, stamps. She had written every day to Kevin.

Briefly she wrote across the thin blue sheet. She said, "Dear Sir or Madam" . . . "read your advertisement" ... "realize several months have gone by" ... "possibly the situation is still unfilled or not filled satisfactorily" ... "perhaps you could place me"... "would you answer yes or no." She licked round the edges, folded it up, wrote the address^ ran down to the box between their own and the next house knowing she would catch the mail. It was all over, consulting her watch, in seven minutes flat. When she came back to the house, she heard the aunts in the drawing-room. They were taking tea, and there was a cup poured for her. "Dinah, we've practically decided," beamed Aunt Sarah. "It's a sort of compromise, dear, a tiny bit of the three," announced Aunt Em. "Not hills, lakes and downs, Aunties, that's impossible." "Some of them in the distance," Aunt Mildred said. 'The only thing," regretted Aunt Sarah, "is that you won't be here to visit us. But perhaps some day ... Kevin gets quite good money, I should think." Dinah said dully, "Yes." She listened to their schemes, she wondered if she should still go upstairs and bring down their presents before they planned too much, if she should forget about the letter she had impulsively written, impulsively despatched. But she was a coward. Either that

or she loved them too dearly. She simply stopped on in the drawingroom, nibbling cake, sipping tea, listening to their dreams . .. ... And ten days later she was there again, the news still unbroken. Aunt Mildred saying, "Dinah, dear, have you fixed that date yet when you sail?" Aunt Sarah, hearing the doorbell, bustled off and came back at once with an important-looking envelope. "A cable, from Australia. Kevin must be getting impatient, dear." Dinah accepted the envelope, tore it open. She wondered how she did it so calmly, and then she thought, It's because I have no feeling left. The office of origin on the top of the cable said Warrigal. There was her name, Venness, no initial, no Miss, but then she had not put Miss when she had written her application, simply B. Venness. She had scrawled briefly "read your advertisement" ... ''perhaps you could place me"... "would you answer yes or no." This cable did answer it. It answered it as succinctly and barely as possible. "Is Sarah right? Does Kevin want you to come soon?" begged Aunt Emily romantically . . . Aunt Em was the sentimental aunt. Dinah was silent a moment, then she looked up from the Warrigal cable and said, "Yes."

TWO "VENNESS, Blair Avenue, Lilac Hill, London. Yes. Marlow, Tallwoods, Warrigal, New South Wales." A cablegram of thirteen words and twelve of them names and addresses. But it didn't matter because in the middle was the allimportant "Yes". Yes, we can place you: yes, we will have you; yes, Aunts, you can go ahead with your plans; yes, Dinah, you can go ahead with yours; yes, yes, yes. It seemed all at once to Dinah that the aunts must hear the hysterical voice rising within her. She folded the cablegram^ put it in her pocket and looked around. The old ladies were nodding lovingly at her. They were quite unruffled, so they could not have heard. "When, dear?" asked Aunt Sarah. "Soon - next week." As she said it Dinah knew she must make that come true. "Next week! But the ship - " "I'm flying, Aunts." It would be expensive, it would drain her resources, but it would get her away at once. She escaped up to her room at last, hearing the country house being lovingly brought out again. Opening her cablegram, she studied it once more. So there was a position waiting for a supervisor of correspondence lessons for three children, the location remote, the aspect-lonely, the

salary inadequate, the pupils brats. So much, anyway, was confirmed in that bare unadorned "Yes". She went out to the hall phone and rang the airlines office. They found they could include her in Wednesday's departure, but she must please report in at once. She went in the next morning after drawing out all her money. With the quarterly allowance she had not sent Kevin she should have just enough. By late afternoon she had completed everything; she even had the tickets in her hand. That night Mildred said, "Rome ... Singapore ... ail those exciting places. Dinah, aren't you thrilled?" Odd, but she still felt nothing, only urgency, urgency to get away before anything was known. "Of course," she had assured them. "As thrilled as you are with your country niche." They all came to see her off, some of her friends as well. The cake and the dress accompanied her in separate parcels. Try as she had, Dinah had not prevented the aunts from seeing to that. "But dear, you'll need them at once, they simply can't come later by ship." The plane door had closed, the engines had whirred* the craft had moved forward. A thrill had cut into Dinah's lethargy, the brief soaring thrill of one's first experience of wings. She had turned to wave to Aunt Sarah, Aunt Mildred, Aunt Emily, but the aunts had gone - or rather she had gone. She was in the air. She had left. Someone across the aisle laughed at her obvious surprise. She turned to smile ruefully in return. It was a man whom she had

amused, tall, fair, rather like Kevin in a way, only this mouth was wider, the eyes bluer, around the eyes the smile crinkles were more evident, and there still remained some of the rather endearing freckles of youth. He was pleasant and friendly and she warmed to him at once. She laughed back. By coffee they were sitting together, by luncheon they knew each other's names. 'Don't say what everyone does, that Dinah is for a cat," she warned him lazily, the motion of the plane soothing her, the last few weeks of worry seeming for a while dim and far away. "I could say the same, only substitute a dog. My name is Jock." "I like Jock, but it is a dog, a big shaggy dog." "I like Dinah, but it is a cat, a nice sleek cat." She had looked enquiringly at him. "Don't you like fluffy cats?" "No, I don't." "Girls with fluffy hair?" Jock Ferrell - she had learned the Ferrell part first - said earnestly, "I like your hair - soft, silken." Dinah said, remembering Kevin, "You mean straight." It was not until the last day of the journey that they abandoned trivialities, often absurdities, and came to facts. "You never said where you were bound, Dinah." "New South Wales."

He had grinned at that. "It's a big place. Can't you be more explicit?" "If it's a big place, I doubt if you'll know about this place. It's remote, it's lonely, entertainment is nil." "And its name?" "Warrigal," Dinah said. Jock Ferrell had stared at her, then laughed. "Coincidences and all that," he marvelled. "I certainly know Warrigal. I live in its valley - we call it Hop Valley . . . and Warrigal is the mountain that either smiles or scowls on us all day." "Then - then you might know the Marlows —" "Marlow? There's only one there now. Yes, I know Timber." "Timber ...!" She stared at Jock as Jock had stared at her. "There's another name," he explained, "probably long forgotten. He's just Timber Marlow of the Warrigal down our way." "Tell me about it." , He told her, but when he finished she could not have said much of what he had related. She was still tired for all the relaxation of the last few days. Her final week at Lilac Hill had been chaotic, her departure enervating; this journey, though wonderfully luxurious, was not unlike a kaleidoscope of never-ceasing mirrors and colours, or a whirlpool of which she was the vortex, she thought. "So when we put down at Mascot you still have another journey, Dinah," Jock Ferrell was relating. "You take either a local plane or the Warrigal Mail. The train is fairly central,

but the plane has to put down some miles out because of the range. Most of us patronize the railway for that reason. Warrigal is near the Victorian border, it's as close to Melbourne as it is to Sydney, really." He paused, then enquired of her, "Which way appeals, Dinah, plane or train?" "Which way are you going? And, Jock, are you in timber, too?" He answered the last question first. "I'm in the valley beneath Warrigal Mountain; I just told you, Dinah." He grinned and added, "I'm a hop-man." "Hop-man?" "I garden hops. Most of Australia is too warm for hops, but it's a cool corner down at Warrigal and we boast a pretty big picking." "Oh." She paused a moment, then asked, "And - and Timber Marlow, is he a hop gardener as well ?" "Timber Marlow is on the timbered range itself, as his name implies. Unfortunately" - his eyes were regretful as he answered her first question now - "I'm not returning immediately Dinah, otherwise I'd deliver you to Timber's door." "The three children . . Dinah ventured next, a little nervously. "Pete, Keith and Andy." "Are those their names?" Boys, she thought to herself. Jock nodded. "Are - are they brats?"

Jock obviously wanted to talk about his hop-garden, but he paused long enough to admit an honest "Yes". Dinah decided to be resigned about it all "Well, I can't say I wasn't warned," she shrugged. "What does Warrigal mean, Jock - is it an aboriginal name?" "It isn't just a name, Dinah, though of course you'd know that." "I'm afraid I don't." "You don't know what a warrigal is?" "Should I?" "You should at Tallwoods, it's dingo ground there." "Dingo? Isn't that a species of wild dog?" Jock Ferrell nodded. "When you get to Tallwoods you'll find yourself in a world offences… dingo fences to keep the dogs out." "Are they savage?" "Maybe, if you cornered one, which would be very unlikely. They're a sheep hazard, you see." "But are there sheep at Tallwoods, at a timber centre ?" "No, but they wander in occasionally from Plateau, which is sheep terrain. Plateau is on the western side of the mountain as opposed to Hop Valley on the east. It's to Plateau that the train plies. Officially there is no Plateau, no Hop Valley, the name Warrigal covers all. However, we locals use the tags for convenience. Think of it as a

triangle, Dinah, with Warrigal Mountain the highest point and the exact centre, and Tallwoods, or should I say Timber Marlow, the king of the castle in the middle of us all." Dinah did not comment on the "king". She asked, "Do you have any sheep in the valley ?" '"I have hops, a little tobacco, a few cows, but no sheep and therefore no dingoes. Also Timber Marlow keeps his fences in perfect order, which helps considerably. He might get a dingo from Plateau occasionally, but we would never get one from him." Dinah tried to listen, but her mind began to rove. Where is Kevin? she found herself thinking. The last she had heard, he had been in Sydney. How was she to explain, when she wrote to the aunts, her very remote address? Remote from Sydney... from everywhere, it appeared. "So which way do you think you'll go, then?" Jock Ferrell was asking her. "The plane or train, Dinah, which appeals?" She answered hopefully, "Possibly he - Mr. Marlow - might meet me." Without any consideration of the matter at all, Jock Ferrell corrected knowledgeably, "Oh, no, Timber won't." She longed to ask Jock about this man who seemed so definite a character, so much the king of the castle, but again she was discouraged, as discouraged as she had been by that unadorned "Yes" in the cablegram, discouraged now by Jock's confident reply to her suggestion that her future employer might meet her of "Oh, no, Timber won't."

The last leg of the journey was finishing. In half an hour, the hostess announced, they would be putting down. Dinah began collecting things. Apart from her light luggage there was very little - she had gathered few journey mementoes - but there were two parcels; a gown, a cake. If only, she thought longingly, aeroplane windows opened like train windows, then she could have thrown her two parcels right out. That was what she wanted to do more than anything else just now, to throw the wretched packages away, forget them, begin uncluttered again. "Jock," she asked eagerly, "what sort of train is Warrigal's?" "Well, it's not exactly the Spirit of Progress," apologized Jock. "You mean - just a train?" "I'm afraid so." "Then it will do." He grinned appreciatively at that. "I like the old type myself, Dinah; I expect it's something left over from my youth. We looked for grunt and puff then, not air-conditioning. Lode, would you like me to wire Timber you're on your way when we put down?" She considered that. "Can I get a conveyance from this Plateau which is realty Warrigal station?" He smiled. "We are remote, but we do have a hire-car, my girl,"

As the belt-fastening instructions were being flashed on the screen, as the plane wheels came down, Jock said shyly, "I'm glad you're going that way - overland, I mean. It will give you a fair idea of the country, my country; it will let you see how lucky I am, how lucky you could be -1 mean - well, if- when He flushed boyishly and looked appealingly at her. "Yes," she said politely, not paying much attention. All she was thinking of now was an open window in a train and an unwanted cake, a hated dress. They parted on the tarmac. "It's not good-bye, of course, I'll see you in Warrigal. You'll be all right, now, Dinah; a taxi to Central Railway and tonight's train. No difficulty in getting a seat, it's not a crowded line." "Not the Spirit of Progress," she smiled. "I'm glad of that." She came out of Clearances and looked around her. Jock had told her it was early summer now in Australia ... ''warm in Sydney, still cool down our corner," he had grinned. Mascot was a vast airport, she found a little ruefully, more an indifferent busy world than a welcoming journey's end. And it was certainly warm. Although it was not a crowded line, she found, when she called at the railway ticket office, that there were no sleeping berths left. She accepted a window seat thankfully, then wait down into the city to fill in the intervening hours. At seven-thirty the Warrigal Mail departed. Hers was not a full carriage. Apart from a garrulous old lady, there was only one other passenger beside herself, a man. He was tall, broad, so bronzed he appeared almost dark- skinned, even Indian. He did not talk at all. He read his paper and, when he finished that, he went into the corridor and smoked a pipe. Every

time Dinah opened her eyes through the night she saw him in the corridor leaning against a window, his pipe between those big teeth that appeared so much whiter against the Indian brown of his skin. He looked, she thought, like a brave, like a warrior. He seemed every inch a chief. The little old lady dozed and chattered, chattered and dozed. Once, when she seemed to go right off to sleep, Dinah struggled with the window. Now I'll get rid of you, she said to the cake. The man in the corridor came in. Without speaking, he crossed and leaned over her and effortlessly raised the window a bare inch. "Thank you." She wanted it up much more than that - she wanted it up the width of one one-tier wedding cake; besides, she could never throw the thing out while he was there. "You could have asked," he answered tersely. Feeling childish, she huddled in the corner and closed her eyes, pretending oblivion. Evidently not wanting to smoke as the women slept, the man got up and went outside once more. Now was her chance; she grabbed it at once. She knelt determinedly on the seat and struggled more forcefully with the window than before. He came back into the compartment and said, "What's wrong with you, can't you make up your mind?" ''Yes... I mean..." "Up or down?" "Up." "You had it up before."

"Not enough." "You were shivering." "I -1 wanted to throw something out." "That," he remarked laconically, nodding his head to a , notice, "is not advised." "I-" "Up or down, madam ?" "Oh ... down," Dinah said. At eight o'clock they drew into Warrigal... or Plateau, as Jock had said. Dinah did not look out at Jock's beloved country; she simply collected her rug, her coat, her bags ... left the parcels where they were. With a little luck, she thought, she could abandon them unnoticed. But luck was not to be hers. The little lady, too, was alighting. She made a careful elderly check to see that nothing at all was left behind. "Your parcels, dear, or are they yours, Mr. - er-?" "Not mine." Dinah said quickly, "Not mine," as well. "They must be yours," persisted the old lady. "They are yours; I particularly remember now you had two parcels as well as your bags."

She poked at them with her umbrella and suddenly they were balancing perilously, then falling down. The dress was all right, but not the other package. It not only fell, it burst out of its wrapping. Aunt Emily certainly had wrapped it carefully, but it had travelled thousands of miles since then. The icing, the sugar lovers' knots, the candy rosebuds, were strewn over the floor. "Why, it's a cake ... a wedding cake ..." The little lady looked excitedly, then sympathetically at Dinah. "Oh, you poor dear!" "It's nothing... I mean... it doesn't matter... that is..." "Just as well," came the man's cool voice, "because it's certainly beyond repair." Relatives were claiming the old lady; Dinah looked at the cake and then at the man. She looked appealingly. "What can I do?" "Nothing, I'm afraid. It's a dead loss." "The mess, I mean. Can - can I clean it up ?" "Leave that to the railways. I've no doubt they can conjure up a broom - or even a railway dog if necessary." He seemed totally uninterested as to why she was carrying a cake; he was simply gathering up his own belongings. A tag on his own portmanteau caught her eye, and Dinah stiffened. Oh, no, it couldn't be ... Fate could not be as cruel as that. It was bad enough to arrive at this unknown place without arriving so ridiculously, ridiculous in his eyes, she thought.

He saw the direction of her gaze, and he nodded idly. "Yes, I'm Marlow of Tallwoods," he drawled in a rather bored tone. "I ascertained earlier," his voice was even cooler, even more bored as he nodded to her own tagged case, 4
"It needed servicing, so I hopped the train instead. I never stand round waiting for things to be done. Throw your belongings there, but don't throw them on my bag. I don't want it treated .like that cake." "I must explain, Mr. Marlow." "That's what you'll not do. You had a cake, now you haven't, there it ends. Why you brought a cake, whether it was in the hope of future use or simply because it had lost its purpose but you had no option other than to keep it beside you, I am not interested. Understand?" "But-" He paused, his hand on the door. "Let's get this straight. Miss Venness; you brought a cake with you. Very well, that's your business. Some people bring hot water bottles, magazines, you brought a cake. Will you get in, please." She obeyed silently. He got in the other side and switched on the ignition. "Did you anticipate a woman?" she ventured presently. "I expect I gave as much thought to your 'D. Venness' as you did to my 'Marlow'," he said, moving the car off. "Then that was rather a great deal. I wondered very much until Jock Ferrell enlightened me on the plane." She glanced at him, but saw no change of expression, "He knew you," she said superfluously* His reply did not come for a few minutes - indeed they had covered quite a length of ground - but when it did come it was the essence of smug self-satisfaction, she thought. He answered carelessly, "Of course."

The king, she found herself thinking contemptuously, the king of the castle. Biting her lip, she turned her attention to the country around them. Obviously by the number of sheep this was Plateau on the west side of the mountain as opposed to Jock's Hop Valley to the east. Jock had said Plateau was sheep terrain. She asked the man beside her and he answered, "Yes." It was wide country, it was rolling, it was mostly clear of growth; but in the dent of every hillock trees gathered, making dim blue shadows in the unfolding green-gold of the grass. "It's lovely." The man at the wheel did not comment. It irritated Dinah. She turned round to look at him. He must have sensed her censure, for he announced shortly, "I am a range-man, Miss Venness." "That doesn't prevent you," she remarked presently, 'from seeing beauty elsewhere." "Who said I saw beauty anywhere?" he returned evenly. "When I remarked that I was a range-man, I meant simply that, it ended there." "Like the cake," she suggested succinctly. "Exactly." He dropped the car into a lower gear. "In other words, Full Stop," he said. The lower gear, she soon found, was to climb a mountain that seemed all at once to loom steeply above them. "Warrigal Mountain," he told her. He did not speak any more because the sharp curves and resultant restricted visibility took all his attention until they reached the top.

Suddenly, almost unbelievably, the aspect altered. On the way up Dinah had seen only bends and beyond them more bends, but now she found that the rolling terrain of Plateau had changed to cliffs, peaks, vast deep valleys, huge isolated rocks, gorges above which waterfalls splayed in a silver mist. "I never thought," she said awed, a little breathlessly, "it would be like this." For answer the man drew up the car. At her nervous glance he reassured her. "This is my private road, there will be no one coming along." He took out cigarettes, not his pipe this time, and offered her one. "Scared?" he asked. She realized that she was shaking a little, and hoped he had not noticed. "Of what, Mr. Marlow?" she returned. "Well, not of me, I trust, in spite of the fact" - he actually smiled for the first time since they had met - "that I have recently taken delivery of and am now carefully transporting a very dangerous weapon." "A gun?" "No." "Is there something else that could alarm me?" "Possibly. It's an axe." "An axe? Do axes need careful transportation?"

"This one does. It's a very special axe." "How is it special?" He said with an assurance she found quite maddening. "Because it's for me, of course," She smoked for a moment, then suggested lightly, "I suppose that its purchase was why you travelled especially to Sydney, Mr. Marlow. An axe of the sort you would require couldn't be bought locally." "It couldn't be bought in Sydney either, it had to be imported there. I went to pick it up." "Don't tell me," her voice baited him, "that you failed to travel abroad for it ?" "On this occasion I trusted the overseas firm I deal with to see to my wants. They know my likes and dislikes through previous personal transactions. Oh, yes" - his voice was baiting now - "although a range-man, I have at times been out of my own woods. No, Miss Venness, when I enquired 'Scared?' I mean - all this." He lifted his big arm from the wheel and indicated the rugged scene beneath. She stared down a long moment and then she admitted, "I do feel humbled." She listened to him as he pointed out the trees around them. He did it laconically, almost as though it did not matter to him. He was a strange man, she thought. "Blackwoods, sassafras," he indicated. "That tall lad over there is an ash, but further down there's a eucalypt even taller; the boy's touching three hundred feet."

In time Dinah was to discover that Timber Marlow always spoke of his trees like this, but just now she was more interested in pinpointing herself, not delving into the vagaries of character of this distinctly odd man. "Where is Tallwoods ?" she asked. "In the middle of the forest. It's a long way yet. I told you the location was remote." "You said, too," she reminded him, "that the aspect was lonely." "It is lonely." "It's also," she said simply, "the most beautiful place I've seen." He was silent at that. If he was pleased, he did not show it. He drew her attention to the nearer musk trees and tree ferns, fallen trunks covered with lichens and mosses and "old man's beard". "It's a world of trees," she marvelled. "Is that why you're called Timber?" "My living is timber," he answered shortly. After a moment he added, "Australia's wood is all hardwood. Did you know that?" "No." "Then you know now . . . and you draw your own conclusion." "What do you mean?" "I am a hard man. No doubt you have gathered that impression already. I'm like the wood here that earns me my living. I'm hard like my trees, hard timber, Miss Venness."

It was warm in the estate wagon; she unbuttoned her coat a little. "Meaning, Mr. Marlow?" she asked. "I've been thinking that, in spite of my first explanation that there would be no explanations, it might be wiser after all to get everything clear at once. You understand ?" "No, I don't. Will you explain, please ?" "By all means. Briefly, it's this: don't get any wrong ideas." "Wrong ideas?" "That cake," he said, then shut his lips. She flushed hotly, realizing his absurd implication. "You can't be So ridiculous as to believe I would bring a cake out here with some definite intention in view," she flung furiously. He was lighting his pipe again now. He had put away the cigarettes. If she wanted another one - and just at that moment she did, quite badly; anything, she thought, to cloak her embarrassment - she wasn't going to be asked, it appeared. Angrily she demanded, "Explain yourself." He puffed for a moment. "Isn't that for you to do?" She considered sullenly, then promised recklessly, "Very well, I shall... but not until you elaborate on your words. You said just now that we should get everything clear in case of wrong ideas. What do you mean by that?" "Isn't it obvious?" "It is not. Mr. Marlow, what do you mean by 'wrong ideas'?"

He tapped out his pipe. "I'll be brief. Here is Australia; unlike most countries in the world, unlike your own country, there is a shortage of women, a surplus of men. It varies in different districts. In some Sydney and Melbourne suburbs the averages, indeed, are occasionally reversed, but down in the Snowy Authority, around the Broome Pearling, on the uranium cuts at Mary Kathleen, the numbers run very low for females and very high for males." "And how," she asked with a composure she did not feel, "do the averages run in Warrigal?" "They vary again. On Plateau and Hop Valley the women can lord it a little, but here in the range, on numbers anyway, the woman is top dog." "Not top warrigal? Top dingo?" "I see the lady knows a little of the country to which she has escaped so hastily.'' "What makes you think I escaped hastily?" "I am giving you the benefit of escaping hastily," he drawled in return. "After the evidence of that cake, I'm afraid I find it the only alternative to your having come out here deliberately with one express goal in view." "And the goal?" she asked, determined to make him say it. "Marriage," he obliged. She paused a second time. "Counting ten" she supposed he was calling it.

"You don't really think I came to Australia, to Warrigal, so sure of myself that I even brought along a cake and a dress." "Oh, you have a dress, too. I wondered what was in the other parcel." Dinah bit her lip but said nothing. "No," he admitted presently, "I don't really think it. But the improbable sometimes happens. Just to make sure, I'm having everything out now." "Go ahead, Mr. Marlow." Her voice was amazingly calm. "Wrong ideas," she prompted him, and she even managed a chill smile. He did proceed, seeming to find nothing distasteful in bald words. "Very well," he complied. He narrowed his eyes on her, then warned, "You'll find Tallwoods no happy hunting ground, Miss Venness." "You really mean you'd see to that." The king of the castle, she thought again, ruling his subjects, telling them what and what not to do. "Yes, I would," he came coolly back. She was silent a moment. "It may disappoint you," she announced at last, "to learn that that doesn't dismay ... or even interest... me in the least." "Your statement," he returned succinctly, "smacks strongly of bitter experience. Like to tell me the sad tale ?" She answered forcibly, "I would not."

"Sorry, you're obliged to. You made a pact that you would enlighten me after I had elaborated, remember? I admit I did not want to know it in the beginning, but on second thoughts I have decided it might be wise. Come now, you made a promise, perhaps a regretted one, but still a promise, and I demand to know." "But-"she tried to evade. "I'm waiting." "This is preposterous -" He put up his hand and stopped her. "An explanation, not an argument... The explanation of a cake - and a gown." How had she been so foolish as to agree to tell him? But for the fact that she could see, even this soon, that he was a man of dominance, of authority, she would not have complied with him now. And yet, she thought a little drearily, why not? All at once the exquisite relief of telling it all to someone, anyone, and having done with it, was too blessed to resist. In a tone so calm that it amazed her she told this hard man, as he described himself, this Red Indian, as she thought, the story of Kevin from the beginning to the end. Could woman ever relate a more bitter more humiliating tale? she thought. She anticipated a sympathetic nod, perhaps a word of consolation, even a quiet but understanding glance. She got none. ; Of all the things he could have uttered, he said, "A jilt, eh?" and put the key in the ignition once more. If she had disliked him before, she hated him now. She had reached down to the bottom of her pride, or so she had thought. But still she had been mistaken; he had found for her a deeper depth still.

He did not say anything after that "A jilt, eh?" he simply kept his attention on the road. Although they were still on the crest, the track turned devious bends and climbed and descended and climbed again at a rather frightening rate. At last there came a climb longer and higher than the others; they must be on the very summit of the summit, Dinah thought. The trees were all big "lads" here, so big they seemed to scrape the sky, so dense there seemed no room for anything but their leaves. But there was room it appeared . . . There was room for a low, wide, oiled-timber house, the timber as dark red-brown as the red-brown man beside her, the place built as he was, for strength. She stared at the building rising unexpectedly at the end of the thicket of trees, another thicket beginning where it finished, a thicket behind it, a thicket in front, one solitary house in a world of soaring green. She turned slightly and looked at him in enquiry. "Tallwoods," he said. He had stopped the estate wagon the better for her to see the place in its entirety. As her eyes roved round she realized it was very large. The verandas themselves could have housed a small army, and on to the verandas opened numbers of glass doors. There were quite a few chimneys, and probably they would be needed. This was one of the state's cool corners, and artificial fires would not be tolerated here in this world of wood. There were not as many outhouses as she would have considered necessary to cater for such a substantial building. He must have read her thoughts, for he said, waving one arm, "I've kept the house aloof

and grouped all the contributing erections along that track. The barn, the loft, the fuel supply, the machine house, the tool depository, the home sawing - " "Home sawing?" "You didn't think," he said jeeringly, "I'd mix my domestic wood with my work ?'' "I really didn't know," she admitted. "I didn't know how big your work would be." For answer he said shortly, "It's big." "And where is the mill?" she asked. She added a little uncertainly, "Is that the right name for it?" "It will do. It, too, is along that track." Dinah looked and saw that to reach the track one first had to open several gates. Then she noticed that the house was gated from the side also, and she remembered Jock Ferrers reference to a world offences. "Dingoes?" she asked, nodding to the barriers. "Yes," he said. He had started the wagon again. They came to die nearer gate and he braked once more. They sat for a few moments in absolute silence. "Well?" he said irritably at length.

She looked round at him, surprised, wondering what he meant. She decided he must expect some comment on Tallwoods so she said politely, "It's a very nice place." "Good lord." He uttered it as though he would have liked to have said something much stronger. "Haven't you ever been out of London?" he snapped. "Yes." "In the country?" "Yes." "Ever met up with any fences?" "Of course." "Fences have gates?" "Presumably." "Presumably they didn't," he corrected, presumably the country you knew had meadows and buttercups and romantic stiles for romantic females. But this is not the country you knew, this is the country you are to know - if you last long enough." "I don't understand you, Mr. Marlow." "Then understand this: here the passenger gets out and opens the gate, then closes it again. That's a law." "Your law?" "The gate, please."

She got out sulkily, annoyed with herself that she had not anticipated such a task. "I suppose," she said over her shoulder, "the law would be on my side, too, if I were doing the driving and you were riding." "You will not be driving," was all he said in return. When she had closed the gate, she did not come back to the wagon. It was not far to the house, and she decided to walk. Once again he had other ideas, however. When she did not return at once, he put an imperative finger on the horn and fairly blasted her across to him. "For the love of Mike, get in," he glowered. "No need to foot it." "It's no distance." "Get in. Mrs. Sullivan likes to do things the right way, she'll be affronted. Poor Sully, it's not her fault that so far no supervisor has stayed." It was not very encouraging, thought Dinah, obeying him a second time; indeed, nothing was encouraging about this post - the isolation, the unsympathetic employer, the dingo fences, the fact that there had been employees before and all had fled. She wondered about the children. She liked children, liked them very much, even allowing for any possible brat qualities, so there, anyway, was hope. As they drew up at the shallow steps on to one of four stone verandas, a middle-aged woman came out. "Mrs. Sullivan, my housekeeper," said Timber Marlow. "Sully, this is Miss Venness."

Dinah shook hands with the woman, who immediately began asking her anxiously if she was tired and would she like tea, or whether she'd prefer first to wash, or perhaps if she "Sully, be quiet," broke in Marlow furiously. "She stays or she doesn't stay, but we don't pander to her on our knees, we don't lick her boots." "Shoes," said Dinah quietly. Mrs. Sullivan took absolutely no notice of him; indeed, she might not have heard. "I have your room ready," she beamed. "It looks real nice." Dinah smiled back at her, liking her at once, feeling that here, anyway, there was hope. "Then you did expect a female?" "Of course, dear, Mr. Marlow said so." Dinah turned enquiringly to the man. "My writing?" she asked. He shook his head. "Only a woman," he returned, "would be so presumptuous as to think she could snare a job two months late." "Well, I did, didn't I?" "Yes, you're a woman." For the briefest of disconcerting moments his eyes met hers. To her annoyance she turned her own glance away. What was there about this great insolent man that discountenanced her when she wanted so much to appear cool and poised and collected, what was there about his reddish- brown eyes that was so different from other eyes of that hue? She pondered, and decided it was the lack of warmth in them. Reddish-brown, she always had found, was an encouraging colour, the colour of rich

wood. His, perhaps, were the colour of Australian hardwood. She did not know these Australian trees yet, but he had told her that he was the same as they, tough, durable; "hard timber" he had said. '"Only because the others gave in first," he said stubbornly, One thing, thought Dinah, that is something you would never do, give in first, give in at all. She hunched her shoulders at him, determined to be as unheeding as the obviously seasoned Sully. She turned to follow Sully to her room, but as she did so the view of the valley caught her eye. He came and stood beside her, watching her eyes leave the nearer panorama of cliff and rock and tree and splaying waterfall to rest on the wood-dense valley that opened presently and became smiling gardens of hop, with a lazy river winding a; crooked course throughout. "If you could walk to the horizon," he told her, "you would meet the sea. This corner is south-east in location." "That would be the Pacific?" He nodded. "The calm, the peaceful, the tranquil... it's just as well something is tranquil around here." "Yes," she said in ready agreement, "it is just as well." He raised his brows at that, but she did not notice. She was still gazing outward. "If you call aloud, the acoustics are remarkable," he stated. "You can be heard down to the foot of the mountain." "Is there an echo?" "Yes."

"And on Plateau side," she asked, "the scenery you dislike -" "You misquote me. I merely stated I was a range-man, not a sheepor hop-man." She did not argue that, she simply asked him if there, too, he had arranged for a clear view. He nodded. "Trees can be overpowering. I keep enough for protection but remove enough to let in the sky." "And the valley and the plain," she said. "I can see now what Jock Farrell meant when he said king of the castle. Jt is that, isn't it?" "What is?" he asked in that irritatingly, intentionally abstruse manner of his. "Tallwoods, the king of the castle." "Can a thing of wood be king? I rather think" - he was taking out his pipe - "that Ferrell said that of me, and that's what you are thinking as well." She flushed a little. "Do you mind?" "Let the dirty rascal think what he likes, all the dirty rascals. No need to look so incensed. I'm only remembering, like you, the old nursery rhyme." But he wasn't, of course; he was being deliberately rude again. No wonder nobody had ever stopped on at this place. Before she could be rude back to him he shrugged. "We won't pursue it, Miss Venness. Mrs. Sullivan is waiting to show you to your room."

Dinah turned and went. When she reached it at the end of the passage, opening like all the rooms with a glass door on to a veranda, she called out aloud in pleasure. It was raftered as was the rest of the house, and the timber, too, had been left in its natural state; it was also charmingly furnished and draped. She put her things down on the bed and told Mrs. Sullivan that she would wash quickly and then come out for the tea than she guessed was already prepared. She was glad she did so, not only for herself and her appetite that was now quite considerable, since breakfast had only been railway tea and toast, but for Mrs. Sullivan, who had spread the table lavishly with home-made cake and scones. There is nothing more disappointing, Dinah knew, than catering for a supposedly hungry guest who turns out to have no hunger at all. Marlow had not waited for the guest. He was munching at the hot scones. However, he did rise when Dinah came into the room. He drank two cups of tea before he asked what seemed to Dinah a distinctly odd question for a father to ask after he had eaten, drunk, read his mail, and presumably checked up on several things around the house. He said, "Sully, where are the kids?" Mrs. Sullivan looked worried. "I told them not to go, I distinctly told them. I said you were coming, I said Miss Venness was coming - " "That," drawled Marlow, "undoubtedly clinched die disappearing act."

He turned lazily to Dinah. "You see what you're up against. Even before they meet you they dislike you so much that they vamoose." Dinah said in a voice she intended to be bright and cheerful, "We'll soon remedy that." "Oh, no, 'we' won't. If 'we' go about it that way we'll find ourselves battling more than ever. Don't underestimate these youngsters, my girl; although fiends they're not fools." The scones were delicious, but Dinah put down the half she had intended conveying to her mouth. Apart from rankling from that sarcastic "my girl" of his, she was rankling at her own stupidity at using such a fatuous phrase as "we"... "We" will do this or that. She knew she must sound like a hideously over-bright "Nannie", managing, cheerful, objectionably arch. She saw his bland knowledge of her self-annoyance in his bantering eyes, and she felt more angry still. Fortunately he did not pursue the topic. Nor did he enquire any more as to the whereabouts of the children. Without apology he got up from the table, crossed to another table and there tenderly, as though it was a Delft jug, or something equally precious, thought Dinah, began unwrapping the new axe. She kept her eyes deliberately away from him and his new tool, and ate and drank steadily. She believed he would take the hint that she was not at all interested - but she believed wrongly. Enthusiastically, even boyishly, if a great Red Indian of a man could evince boyishness, he crossed to the table and said, "Look at it. Look at that hickory. Look at that forged steel. It's a honey. It's a song."

Irritation at her own bad choice of phrase just now made her snappish with him. "Does an axe sing?" she asked sarcastically. "Of course." He stared at her a moment. "It has music of movement, music of contact. A clean bite of an axe is a symphony in itself." She looked down at the tool and shuddered. "I could never couple beauty with mutilation." "Mutilation?" "That's what an axe stands for, doesn't it? It never builds, it only destroys." "It builds a house," he said. "Only after it destroys a growing thing. But perhaps you find pleasure in destruction. Some people do. They like cutting or pruning or poisoning or keeping in check, that's their only pleasure in green things. I do believe you like destroying trees." She had not meant to say all that - and she had not been prepared for the instant change in him. The boyishness was wiped out. Tightly, silently, he took back the axe, put it in its box, took up the box and left the room. Mrs. Sullivan said, "My dear, he loves his trees; it's not like that at all." "He loves his axe." "Yes, but -"

Mrs. Sullivan either could not explain herself or promptly had forgotten the subject, for she said almost at once, "Oh, dear, where have those children gone?" Dinah had a feeling that one of them might have returned. She had an odd sense of being watched for a few moments, and once she felt sure she heard movement in the house* It went past the room where they sat at tea and up the passage where her own room was situated. Presently she felt sure she heard it return again. "It's a wonder," she remarked to Mrs. Sullivan, "that Mr. Marlow didn't stipulate a man for the children." Mrs. Sullivan said, "But why, Miss Venness?" Dinah, who had been going to say "Because they're boys", changed it to "Because they're brats". Boys, she had found, often reacted more favourably to women than did girls, but brats would surely indicate a man's hands. However, he, Timber Marlow, had stipulated no sex. "Brats is what the advertisement said," she told Airs. Sullivan, and the housekeeper gave a sad nod. "Yes, they're difficult," she admitted, "but I suppose it can only be expected in a way." "In what way, Mrs. Sullivan?" Dinah was unashamedly curious. But once more Mrs. Sullivan either could not explain herself or had forgotten what she had said. Dinah was to find later that it was the latter, that it was forgetfulness on Sully's part. She fluttered from subject to subject, never rested, never brooded. And that, Dinah was to find, was why she alone of many housekeepers, for there had been a procession of housekeepers as well as supervisors, had stayed on.

"A man would have been more suitable," puzzled Dinah aloud. "Oh, no, I don't think so, dear." "For three boys!" "They're not three boys." "Not - but Jock said - I was told they were Pete, Keith and Andy." "So they are, but Keith, one of the twins, is Keitha, and a girl." Mrs. Sullivan was buttering a huge heap of scones. "They'll be starved when they come in," she remarked. "Yes, a girl. Peter is a lad, I don't mind telling you, but that Miss Keith is the driving force. As for Andrew - " Her face softened and she began piling jam on the buttered scones. "Their mother - ?" Dinah hated probing like this, but to do a job one must know something, and she knew nothing about this place and people she had come to, nothing at all. "Keitha resembles her," said Mrs. Sullivan busily. She piled the scones on to a plate. Dinah waited for more information, but it was typical of Mrs. Sullivan that already she had forgotten the question, and the small information she had given, that Keitha resembled her mother, was not much help, since Dinah had not seen the child at all. And then she was seeing her. She was marching grandly into the room where they sat, a rather tall and slender, insolent-eyed youngster, about ten years old, Dinah

judged, followed by another ten-year-old only a degree less insolent-eyed than she was, and behind them both another and smaller boy, more anxious than insolent but advancing all the same. Mrs. Sullivan squealed, "Keitha, where have you been, what are you wearing?" but Dinah never said a word. She knew now that she had heard movement - it had been movement to her room ... to a parcel laid carelessly and unthinkingly beside her bag upon the bed. But the open impudence and brazen impertinence necessary to boldly open a personal package took a lot of accepting. For a moment she believed she could nor accept it, then determinedly, unfalteringly, even though it cost her a supreme effort, she looked the girl reflectively up and down and remarked, "You make a very nice bride, Keitha ... I presume I'm right in believing you are dressed up as that?" "You should know," came back the small girl struttingly. "Isn't it your dress?" "You should know," returned Dinah promptly. "You found it in my room, didn't you?" "Isn't it your dress?" This time Dinah actually did count ten as Timber Marlow earlier this morning had supposed her. When she finished she said, with a calmness that was the last thing she felt, "Yes, Keitha, it is my dress." "The name," the child informed her pertly, "is Keith."

"That may be what you prefer to be called, but the name is Keitha, isn't it?" The girl looked at Dinah with a coldness so nearly adult that it was hard to credit that she was only ten. Her next words, however, satisfied Dinah that she was very young indeed. "I'm really a boy," she swaggered, "I'm not a girl at all, I'm only pretending I am. I'm a boy the same as Pete and Andy are boys, and my name is Keith." "Keith Miranda," taunted her twin Peter. "Ever heard of a boy called Miranda ? Miranda's her -I mean his - second name.'' He gave a jeering laugh that ended in a pained howl, for Keitha had leapt upon him and begun punching, kicking and scratching with such whirlwind energy that his slightly superior male strength was no match in return. Mrs. Sullivan only had eyes for the dress. "You'll tear it... you'll ruin it.... Stop it at once!... oh, Miss Venness, you won't have any gown left." That, thought Dinah resignedly, was a previous idea, but never did I think of actual destruction like this. She watched the children roll over, Pete's fist in Keitha's mouth, Keitha, womanlike, clutching his wiry brown hair. "Leggo!" "Give in!" "Take that!" "How do you like your eggs cooked now?" "Admit you're beat."

Bang, kick, scratch, wham, yelp. In the middle of it all came the loud rent. Not just a fraying tear but a great severing rent from neck to hem. Peter collapsed one side with his portion of white diaphanous material, Keitha the other side with hers. Andy began to weep. The, boy twin got to his feet, sobered. The girl still sat on the floor, sobered too, but sullen and determined to brave it out. "It's dreadful, it's really dreadful," wailed Mrs. Sullivan. Dinah said, "Get to your feet at once, Keitha." Keitha replied, "The name is Keith." "Get to your feet and put the dress on the table." "Which half?" Keitha retorted smartly. "Such a beautiful dress," persisted Mrs. Sullivan, "such a really lovely gown." "It's a wedding dress," said Keitha with a smirk. She got to her feet and threw her half on the table. Now that she no longer wore the dress, she could have been taken for the boy she apparently yearned to be; she wore jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was urchin-cropped. Leaning against the table, she regarded Dinah with unfriendly brown eyes. "A wedding dress," she repeated. Then she asked impertinently, "How come?"

"That," replied Dinah evenly, "was a mistake of mine, just as you going to my room and opening my parcel was a mistake of yours. We all make mistakes. I've made one, you've made one, we'll leave it at that this time." "Why," persisted Keitha, "did you bring out a wedding dress?" "Women," stated Dinah, "do these things, Keitha. It's the instinctive womanhood in them. You, too, have that womanhood in you, otherwise you wouldn't have dressed yourself up in that gown." That hit home, Dinah observed with satisfaction, the fact of Keitha's instinctive womanhood. The girl reddened dully, then pointed out balefully that Pete had dressed up, too; he was her bridesmaid, so he was a woman as well. Dinah turned and looked at Peter, whose gown had not come to grief. To her relief it was none of hers but one of Mrs. Sullivan's, old, fortunately, very voluminous, and an extremely poor fit. Its colour, too, did not suit him; she could think of better hues for a tough ten-year-old boy than a very feminine pink. She began to laugh. That helped considerably... but only with the boys. Keitha began to laugh, too, but not after she remembered herself. Instantly then she set her small lips in a hard determined line. "Did you bring it out in case you might be able to marry someone at Tallwoods?" she inquired cheekily. "Because if you did, Timber wouldn't have let you. He hates marriage." She gave a sneering little laugh. It did not surprise Dinah to hear his daughter call Mr. Marlow Timber. She believed she would have been more surprised if the

child had said Father or Dad. It did not surprise Dinah either to hear her knowledgeably announce her father's matrimonial views. The family relations in this household were all wrong, she thought concernedly; not only was there obviously trouble between Marlow and his wife, but their children were well aware of that fact, and not encouraged to keep it to themselves. "Did you?" the girl was persisting. "Did you bring it out for that?" "Don't be absurd." "Well, you must have expected to marry someone. Do English girls bring along a wedding gown just in case?" "What makes you so certain it is a wedding gown?" Thank goodness, thought Dinah, there are no lovers' knots, no orangeblossom, nothing to prove it's anything else save a festive white dress. Then as Keitha, momentarily floored again, did not answer, she went on, "Ball-dresses don't necessarily have to be a colour; they, too, are often white." The girl had pushed her hands into her jeans pockets. She was beaten, but like her father, Dinah thought, she would never give in. "You'll be out-of-date in that down here," she remarked with deliberate unkindness. "They wear long skirts, never floppy formals like that." "I won't be out-of-date, will I?" Dinah reminded her, "because I won't be wearing it now." The smallest child, Andy, approached a step. He was like the others and yet he was different. "Will you have something else to wear?" he said anxiously.

"Yes, darling." Dinah spoke impulsively, suddenly grateful for the little boy's concern, and instantly Keitha laughed derisively at Andy, and Pete joined in. "Little? darling, dear little darling," they jeered. Andy flushed, but he did not step away from Dinah as she thought he might. "Yes, I have a collection of long skirts too," she said, for Keitha's as well as Andy's benefit. "Then they won't be much use," declared Keitha promptly. "You just told me they wear them here." "At the sheep ball at Plateau, but no one at Tallwoods goes." "I didn't intend going with anyone at Tallwoods." Really, thought Dinah, annoyed with herself, I'm bickering just as though I am a child myself. "Then who would you go with? You have to have a partner." "Someone else might ask me." "Who? Who do you know at Warrigal?" The adult thing would be to close the conversation, but perversely Dinah said, "I know Mr. Ferrell." "Jock Ferrell?" First Timber, now Keitha. This child was quite precocious, thought Dinah. "Jock's from Hop Valley," Keitha remarked with enthusiasm. "They have dances there during the picking' - for a moment her eyes lost their impudence and glowed with warm excitement. "The girls wear cotton dresses and any New

Australians there for the season do their national dances. I saw some once ... oh, it was fun v. . there were violins playing gipsy tunes ... the men leapt right into the air and clicked their fingers... the girls had red ribbons in their hair..." "Tell me more," said Dinah encouragingly. "There's nothing more," replied Keitha sullenly, and she Wheeled on her heel and went to the door. For a moment she hesitated, then turned. "When are you going to tell Timber?" "Tell Mr. Marlow what ?" "What I did to your dress." "I'm not going to tell." The child stared hopefully a moment, then her lip curled. "If you think it'll do any good sucking up to me, it won't," she declared. "If you don't tell him I will." "Then don't bother," declared Dinah. "I'll tell him straight away myself." She crossed the room and went on to the veranda. She was aware that Keitha watched her, not as serene about things as she would have liked Dinah to infer. "You'll get a wallop, sure thing, Keith," declared Pete cheerfully. "You'll get one yourself. You dressed up too." "Not in her dress, only in Sully's,"

"You did half the tearing." "I didn't, I only held on and you tugged." Coming along the track from the contributing outhouses was the tall figure of Timber Marlow. Dinah went down the steps. "I just wanted to report to you that the second of the packages is no longer usable," she told him. "There was an accident." "Is this another way of telling me to cut a good thick stick and lay it on some deserving young hides?" Evidently, thought Dinah, Timber Marlow had no illusions about his children. The "brats" in his advertisement had not been included merely to attract attention, something that she, as an advertisement copy-taker, had often found done. "No, it isn't," she answered. He looked at her shrewdly. "If you're going to start off defending them, then you'll be cutting a stick for your own back." "I'm not defending them, but I don't want interference so early, please. Let us begin peacefully at least." "By the look of what you have in your hand, 'piece' is right." Marlow's tone was grim. "I'm asking you to disregard it," Dinah said urgently. He considered a moment, then shrugged. "I shouldn't, but I'll concede this once. After all, it is a solution to the second of your problems, isn't it, the disposal of an unwanted

dress. What do you intend doing with the hated remnants? Not making dolls' clothes, I trust; there's no one who uses such things in this house." "I've gathered that already . . . Mr. Marlow - " Dinah hesitated. "Yes?" "Keitha ..." His mention of dolls' dresses, which to Dinah meant femininity, determined her to speak to him about his daughter's complete lack of any feminine trait. She felt somehow that it should be discussed. "Yes?" His voice was impatient and she flinched a little. Now that she had decided to broach the subject, she realized she did not know what to say. "It doesn't matter," she retreated lamely. He nodded. "Good. I have no desire to debate any of the children. They are here at Tallwoods, they have to be fed, they have to be educated, there it ends." "Perhaps that's why it doesn't end there." "What do you mean?" "Perhaps your attitude to them is why they are what they are." His brows had met. "Miss Venness, please understand I am not interested in the children. I am not indifferent to them; their drain on my pocket and time and equanimity prevents that. But interested I am not, kindly remember that. And now, if you're quite sure you want the dress subject closed without any 'hurt feelings' on their part, shall we dispose of these ruins once and for all?"

He had leaned over and taken the thing from her. She found herself following him down the ribbon of clearing to the end of the summit and standing on the little look-out on which she had stood an hour or so before. "Good-bye to a dress," said Marlow. He glanced sideways at her. "Good-bye to another period as well?" She did not reply, and after a moment he shrugged, "As a matter of fact it's possible you might see the gown again. There are bowerbirds down there. I've no doubt they'll pounce on your dress to decorate their bower. Bowers are hard to find, but I have done it upon occasion. The birds have a predilection for things blue, and presumably you included something of that colour in your outfit as well as something old, new and borrowed. Isn't that according to the rhyme?" "You're well up in rhymes, Mr. Marlow." He shrugged again. "The rhyme is probably fancy, but a bowerbird's preference for blue is not fancy, so mind your eyes, Miss Venness." Dinah was- surprised that he knew the colour of her eyes. His demanded attention, for never had she seen such a definite redbrown, but hers were simply and unremarkably blue. , They had turned from the landing and were climbing to the house again. Mrs. Sullivan came out on the veranda and called that lunch was on. This time all the family was present. Timber sat down at one end of the table, Dinah was told to sit at the other. The twins, either by inclination or order, were separated, one sitting with Mrs. Sullivan, the other with small Andy. The meal began. Marlow continued the subject of the dingo, and Dinah listened with fascinated interest. Reaching for bread, she saw Keitha eyeing Peter significantly, and

alerted even this early in their acquaintance, Dinah tucked away the sly glance for later examination. After lunch Marlow asked her if she would care to walk along to see the mill. "They're not milling today, so there won't be any rasp to spoil the serenity of the bush, nor any red dust to change the colour of your hair." His red-brown eyes estimated her hair, just, she thought, a little abashed, as at some time he must have estimated the colour of her eyes. "Is it far ?" She was thinking that she should unpack. "A fair step down to the actual cut. The bullock teams bring the cut up the mountain to the mill, and after milling the train or the road hauliers take over from there." "Train?" "Timber train. We have a private line into Plateau. I told you" - he was packing his pipe - "that Tallwoods was big." "Bullock team, timber train, haulier," she marvelled - and then she frowned. "But why do the trees have to be hauled up to the mill? Why aren't they done at once?" He looked at her as though she was some stupid child. "How do you think these trees are cut in the beginning?" "Why, by the mill in some way, I expect." "Very clever. We take the mill down the gorge and arrange it against each tree." Somewhere Dinah heard Keitha giggle. She felt herself go red.

"No, we use that tool of mutilation of yours, the axe. It's done by hand - by arm, really- under-arm. On second thoughts, I won't take you today, I'll take you tomorrow. There's a valley of eucalypts labelled off. You'll see how a skilled woodcutter goes to work." "You?" she asked boldly. "No, not me. I have other things to do. However, I can under-cut with any of them." I believe you think you could do anything with any of them, thought Dinah, irritated as ever by his self-confidence, you're the king of the castle just as Jock Ferrell said. She watched the man swing away along the track, then turned to find the twin Peter by her side. "Miss Venness." "Yes, Peter?" "Are you scared of the dogs?" "I like dogs." "I mean the dogs, the warrigals, Miss Venness." "I've never encountered one. I don't believe I'd be afraid." "I would be. I'm afraid now. Last week Mrs. Sullivan found one in the house." "In the house!" "Yes - a savager, too, he'd been blooded. Know what that means?" "No, Peter."

"It means he'd tasted blood. I reckon he was after more Wood." Peter licked his lips. "Well, I don't expect he'd find any sheep in here," said Dinah cheerfully. "He mightn't be after sheep," Pete reminded her darkly. "Human blood would taste as good, I guess." Dinah left him to do her unpacking, thinking with a smile that it was unlucky for the twins that she had reached for bread just in time to see that sly glance. Unlucky for the twins, but not unlucky for her. The dingo pelt behind her bedroom door was stretched so realistically over the large teddy bear that for a moment, in spite of her preparation, Dinah caught her breath. , Then she bent down and picked up the bear and carried him out to the veranda. The twins were sitting - waiting? - on the step. "Andy's bear?" she asked brightly. Keitha said promptly and quick-wittedly, "Why yes, and he shouldn't have done that, the naughty little fellow. Dressed him up to frighten you, I mean. That's a fresh pelt, and you know what'll happen now, don't you?" "No," Dinah said. "Its mate will come crying after it.., probably outside your window." Dinah considered tackling Keitha over her calm allotment of blame to little Andy, but changed her mind. "Oh, well, back to my unpacking," she said.

She had hung the last dress, filled the last drawer: the sun was gone, the room was quickly filling with shadows. Down the passage Mrs. Sullivan was clattering dishes for dinner, when she heard the eerie cry. It was as mournful and as terrifying as Jock Ferrell had said. Though prepared again, once more she was momentarily startled. Then, taking up her water phial, she crossed quickly to the window and threw the contents out. "Shoo ... get,.. away ... psst, dog ... skit..." There was a faint gasp, a cry cut short, a light scamper. Dinah smiled. When the dinner-bell rang they all assembled at the table again: Marlow at the top, Dinah at the bottom, Mrs. Sullivan with Peter and his hair was slicked damply across his forehead, Andy with Keitha - and there was water still dripping down her neck.

THREE DINAH awoke to a pearl-cool morning. Outside her window (where yesterday evening two "dingoes" had howled threateningly with an unfortunate result) birds were asking other birds about their spring adventures. Their twitterings reached almost deafening proportions^ but Dinah loved the noise. Tallwoods always would be loud with birdsong like this, she supposed, because here was a world of trees. There was a knock and Mrs. Sullivan came in with a cup in one hand and a nosegay of wild flowers in the other, "Andy picked them." "That was dear of him." • Mrs. Sullivan said, "He's a dear little boy." "Yes, I've noticed that." Dinah hesitated, longing to ask questions but feeling: that the morning was too beautiful to probe. Besides, Mrs. Sullivan, being Mrs. Sullivan, probably would wander off the subject before anything was really explained and so leave Dinah more in the air than before. So instead she asked about the flowers. "What are they, please?" "Heath, Early Nancy, Traveller's Joy," tabulated Mrs. Sullivan. "Have your tea, dear, and then the bathroom will be empty. Breakfast in half an hour." Breakfast proved an all-present meal the same as yesterday's meals, with Mr. Marlow at the head of the table, Dinah at the foot, the children and Sully two each side again. It was also, quailed Dinah, who was a tea-and-toast breakfast- eater, a very large meal. After the oatmeal came substantial platters of

bacon and eggs, and any hope of escaping such stoking was quashed instantly by Timber Marlow reprimanding Andrew (if such a kindly voice could be termed reprimand - Why, puzzled Dinah, was he so much softer with this little boy?) and drawing his attention to how Miss Venness was eating up. After that she simply had to deplete her plate and even consume an extra slice of toast. She decided she would corner Mr. Marlow as soon as the meal was over and tell him she could not continue to eat such a lot. He cornered her first, however. "Miss Venness, if you'll follow me I'll give you a broad idea of what passes for lessons in this place." Without waiting for a response he strode down one of the wide stone verandas and Dinah found she had to run to keep up. A schoolroom of sorts had been set in a sunny corner. There were three desks hewn out of a lovely native wood, and an even lovelier grained table. "Why, they're beautiful," Dinah said enthusiastically. "Made here," he told her. "At Tallwoods?" "Yes." "You have a craftsman, a very fine craftsman among you, Mr. Marlow." "Yes," he agreed without hesitation, "me."

Instantly the praise died in Dinah. This man was so steeped in abominable self-satisfaction that she could not bring herself to add any more applause. The king, she thought contemptuously, the king of Warrigal; I wonder if ever he has cut and carved himself a throne. Aloud she said coolly, "A pity the smallest desk is so little. Andrew will soon outgrow it." He did not answer for a moment, quite a long moment, then he said almost harshly - had he read her contemptuous thought about the king on a throne? - "No, Andrew won't.'' It was no use arguing with him, no use pointing out that small children always grow bigger, because he would not have given in; he would never give in, she had found that out almost upon her arrival here. "May I look at the Instruction Manual?" she asked instead. He waved to the table. "Education by Correspondence as practised by the Educational Department of New South Wales " she murmured aloud. She turned over the sheets, fascinated. "But this is very goods very comprehensive, most attractive." He nodded calmly. "Educational experts all over the world are agreed about that. It's considered a quite excellent system. What the child loses in competition he gains in friendly cooperation and encouragement. When he does go off to school as most correspondence children do in the aid, it's seldom necessary to have him repeat a class, as you might well expect. He is more frequently on a par with his new schoolmates. Sometimes he is even more advanced."

Dinah was very interested in this last. "Have you personally known of any such child ?" she asked. "Yes," said Timber Marlow, "myself." She glanced up quickly to surprise any teasing quirk in his reddishbrown eyes, but there was none. He looked back at her and his expression was matter-of-fact. He was, she thought with irritation, surely the most self-satisfied person she had ever met. To conceal her disgust she returned to the lessons once more. "Keitha and Peter don't appear to be on the same level," she remarked. "There is no rule I know of to say twins must be." There wasn't, she knew that, but it still was more usual for two tenyear-olds to run fairly equal educationally than not. The superiority in his voice, too, irked her. She said a little acidly and with vast feminine satisfaction, "The girl is more advanced." "Temporarily only. She absorbs quicker but loses quicker as well. At the end-of-term tests he will outpace her. But then that is only right, of course." Dinah glanced up at him. "You don't believe in women having brains?" "Correction, Miss Venness. I don't even believe they have them." "But - but that's ridiculous." Dinah had flushed indignantly. "Why, even this is proof,"' she asserted, tapping the girl's lesson books. "Keitha is a grade higher and yet the same age."

"Surface smattering only. Like all women, young or old, there's only the froth at the top." Dinah had turned to Andrew's manuals. There were plenty of things she would have liked to have flung back at Marlow, but even this early she had learned that his was the proverbial dude's back, and any verbal weapon of hers would prove only as telling as a thimble of water. The smaller boy's lessons she found quite charmingly attractive. "Andy -" she said a little hesitantly, wanting to enquire about the youngest child, not knowing where to begin. He did not give her any opportunity . . . deliberately? she asked of herself, for he certainly appeared to brush her half- query definitely aside. "That is all now, Miss Venness. Ring the bell" - he indicated a small silver chime - "and drag them in. They can work till morning tea, play around, then work again till lunch." Morning tea and lunch reminded her of another meal, a past meal. Breakfast. Timidly, absurdly timidly, she thought with annoyance, she said, "Mr. Marlow, I can't be an example to Andrew to eat up." "You will," he said with maddening imperturbability. "I don't like big breakfasts, I - " "You will," he said again, then he added, "up here." Once more she realized the futility of argument, so she asked instead, "How long do the children study after lunch?" "I've given them to understand that it all depends on how much they've got through in the morning," he replied. "I know normal school proceeds well into the afternoon, but you can't expect a child

to glue its nose into a book for too long a period in a place like Tallwoods." As he spoke he half turned and stared out and down. Dinah turned with him. She saw the dreamy pinnacled mountains in a blue swimming distance, a world of timbered peaks, and below the fiats of hop-gardens caught in a tangled skein of river. "No," she agreed softly, "you can't expect that here." He looked at her, a little surprised, even hesitated a moment, then without another word he walked off. Dinah rang the silver bell at once. The class came unwillingly, but it did come. Apparently Mr. Marlow had forewarned them about that. Oh, well, Dinah shrugged as she perceived the laggard pace, children came unwillingly to school all over die world. After all, what small bird prefers a cage to an unbarred world? Peter was doing geography, Keitha was on history. "Australian history," she said pertly. "What period?" asked Dinah. "You wouldn't know if I told you; you'd only know the War of the Roses and the Tudor Kings. It's Bass and Flinders." To her surprise and delight a long-forgotten date came to Dinah. "They explored the coast of Australia in the Tom Thumb," she said, "in 1795." "Was it? I mean Keitha scowled and put her nose in her book. Peter asked, "Miss Venness, what is the capital of Norway?" "You have an atlas there, look it up."

"You helped Keitha, Miss Venness." "She did not so," exploded Keitha, taking her nose out of the book. "I knew about Bass and Flinders and Tom Thumb and 1795 all the time." "You didn't." "I did!" "You didn't." "I did!" "Quiet," called Dinah to them both, and to Peter, "I'm not telling you. Look it up." "She's not telling you," informed Keitha succinctly, "because she doesn't know herself." "She knew about Bass and Flinders." "Well, she doesn't know about Norway." "One more word from either of you and you can do extra time this afternoon," said Dinah. Two noses this time went hurriedly down into their books. Dinah crossed to Andrew. He looked tip and gave her a smile. "I'm just into running writing," he informed proudly. "I like it better than standing still writing, Miss Venness." "She wouldn't know that either," Keitha softly observed to herself or to anyone who could hear it.

"So you have decided to study this afternoon after all, Keitha," Dinah observed in her turn, and Keitha bit her lip. Dinah was glad when the morning break arrived, glad, too, for all her qualms about too much food, for the steaming pot of tea Mrs. Sullivan brought, and once again the fresh scones. The housekeeper sat and ate with her while the children quickly drank their milk and disappeared rowdily around the house. "Keitha is difficult," Dinah ventured. She hoped this time that Mrs. Sullivan might give her some information other than Keitha's resembling her mother, but Mrs. Sullivan only said, "Yes, she is ... I remember when poor Miss Banks was here ... What was I saying, dear?... Have another scone." When Dinah rang the bell the laggards returned once more. The class went quietly for an hour, then Keitha broke the calm. "Miss Venness," she said deliberately, "aren't you rather overstepping yourself?" "What do you mean, Keitha?" "I'm Keith." "What do you mean, Keitha?" "The advertisement," pointed out the girl. "Timber's advertisement asked for someone to supervise correspondence lessons." "Well?" "You're trying to be a teacher."

Patiently Dinah said, "A teacher teaches, a supervisor supervises. Don't you know what supervising means ?" "Of course." "Then tell me." "It means - it means - well, it doesn't mean interfering like you're doing." "Here is the dictionary, Keitha, look it up. You might tell us all that it says, please." The girl looked as though she would not obey, but she must have thought again, for she took up the big red volume. She found the word after an impudent search that took much longer than it should. "Well, Keitha?" "To inspect, to direct," said Keitha sulkily. She shut die book with a bang. "You're teaching Andy, though, I saw you just then, and that's not what you're here for. I read Timber's ad, it said-" "Yes, it said that," nodded Dinah significantly, "among other things." She was thinking of that terse (and true, in Keitha's instance) "Pupils brats". Keitha flushed, knowing what she meant, and returned to her book. At lunch, all present once more, Timber Marlow asked of Dinah, "How did it go?" She hesitated only very briefly. "Fairly well for a first day." "A first day! . . . You mean you see no reason why the children should be called back this afternoon? They have worked well? They

have not done or said anything to make an excursion down to the tree-felling a cancelled treat?" Again the barest hesitation, three small faces that had lit up at Timber's mention of the tree-felling looking anxiously into hers. "No, nothing," said Dinah. She had weighed up an issue in that moment of hesitation. Would she win by firm discipline or would she win by kindly example ? . . . But it appeared she would win neither way, not this time, anyhow. As they rose from the table and scrambled out to get into their jeans Keitha hissed softly, and for one pair of ears alone, "Sucking up again ... I told you it wouldn't be any good, didn't I ? You'll get so tired of us, like Miss Banks and Mrs. Venables and old Drewy and the rest, that you'll rush off just like them." "The next time, Keitha," said Dinah firmly, "you will work in the afternoon." "Then you'll have to stop with me to supervise." "I won't mind that." "Well," said Keitha with deliberate rudeness, pausing long enough to look Dinah up and down, "I will."

Dinah stood where Keitha had left her, feeling all at once very inadequate. How was she ever to come on tolerant, let alone friendly, terms with this prickly, tindery child?

Marlow's first words after the meal, too, were scarcely encouraging. He crossed to where she still stood following the Keitha onslaught and said irritably, "Hurry up, Miss Venness, we can't wait all day." "I'm ready when you are, Mr. Marlow." "In that dress?" "What's wrong with the dress?" "It should be pants for the valley. Haven't you any slacks?" "Yes, but-" "Then put them on." Still Dinah hesitated. The slacks she had brought from England had been bought primarily for social shipboard life, for lounging in her and Kevin's home later on. They were velvet and finely tailored. They were definitely not the tough knockabout tweed or denim one presumably would require here. "I see." Marlow's lips had thinned. "You don't want to waste an exclusive cut on our crude air." "It's not that," she protested. "It's supply that they're velvet, light grey-" "As I said. Miss Venness, too exclusive for our crude air." He looked her up and down. "You still can't go down the valley like that. Any tough skirts?" His brows had met in one dark line. "I can see, Miss Venness, that' you will have to renew your wardrobe. Clothes suitable for Sydney will not be suitable here."

Yes, she felt like saying, but how long will I be here? Ask your daughter, Mr. Marlow, and see what she says to a purchase of denim jeans and tough skirts. He was looking contemplatively at her now. "Wait here," he said. He wheeled round and was back in a short time. Over his arm was a pair of brown jodhpurs. "Try them on for fit." She looked at him questioningly. "Mrs. Marlow's," he drawled. "She's taller than you, but I think you could make them do." In her bedroom she tucked in and folded over and found he was right; she could make them do. To her chagrin all her blouses were feminine ones to match the feminine skirts. She would have to renew her wardrobe as he had said. She was holding a pink linen without enthusiasm against her when a khaki shirt came hurtling through the door. From the passage he called, "May as well go die whole hog, Miss Venness," She thought with a grimace, buttoning the shirt on, that he could have said it in better words. Luckily she had suitable shoes. She had brought brogues from England for the garden she hoped she would have in her new home. She laced them up, then stood and regarded herself in the mirror. She looked trim and boyish, and Mrs. Marlow's clothes, if not a good fit, were certainly not bad. She stared at her straight ash hair, blue eyes, fair skin, and wondered what the woman looked like to whom these clothes belonged. She wondered where she was... why she was not with her husband and children ... if she was ill... if she had left them... if she was coming back. It gave her an odd feeling to wear another woman's apparel, especially Mrs. Marlow's apparel. Ate. Marlow, the wife of that man...

"Ready?" he called from the passage, and she turned from the mirror and hurried out. He looked at her briefly, but she was aware that for all the brevity he missed nothing at all. Keitha missed nothing, either. "You're wearing my mother's clothes." "And you're wearing Pete's," put in Timber Marlow laconically. "I give you one minute to put on your own jeans." "They're light green. Boys don't wear light green trousers.'* "You're a girl," he told her stonily. "Half a minute is gone. In smother thirty seconds we leave, and unless you're dressed as you should be dressed, in your own jeans, Keitha, in a girl's jeans, you'll stay behind." "Oh, Timber, I--" "Twenty seconds left." Keitha was off like a shot. "Come on," directed Marlow, "she'll catch up." They started along the track. After a few yards Andy slipped one little hand in Dinah's, one in Timber's. Pete concealed himself behind a bordering bush and leapt on Keitha as she came running from the house. They rolled together in the dirt, and when they rose the girl's jeans were the same colour as the boy's, earth-brown. Timber Marlow glanced at Dinah. "Well, aren't you going to reprimand them ?"

"It's not my prerogative," she replied, remembering Keitha's add remarks on the advertisement he had inserted. "I was signed on as a supervisor of lessons." "This is a lesson." "Not a correspondence lesson," she reminded him. She hesitated, then ventured, "I think, too, perhaps on this first occasion, that that…' He shrugged her appeal away before she could finish it. "Please yourself. Miss Venness. So long as they don't get in my hair I don't care how they behave." That was the trouble, she thought, walking beside him, his patent indifference to his children. She wondered why he kept them here at all. There must be good boarding schools in which they could be placed. She said so aloud. "They stay here," he answered briefly, "in case she returns." In case she returns ... It must be their mother he was referring to, his wife, Mrs. Marlow, the woman whose clothes she now wore. Again Dinah wondered what this woman was like. Mrs. Sullivan had said Keitha resembled her. She looked at the child. Slim, tall, graceful in an artless way, dark brown eyes. Keitha would make a beautiful woman one day. Was Mrs. Marlow beautiful now ? They had passed the homestead outhouses, the barns, the lofts, the garages, the petrol pumps, the tool depository, machine shed, the domestic wood supply.

Another few yards brought a row of small chalets, built of old timber again, each with its own brick chimney. "The men's quarters," said Timber Marlow. "Do they have their wives with them?" "I pride myself that we have exceptional conditions here at Tallwoods, which means that men are anxious to work here; which means, finally, that I am in the fortunate position of being able to pick and choose my hands." Marlow paused to pack and light his pipe. He did it very deliberately. "I pick unmarried men," he said. From a larger building than the rest a feather of blue smoke was wreathing into the sky. "That's Cooky's castle," said Marlow. He half turned to her. "As well as the king, the cook must have a castle, Miss Venness.'' Rounding a bend, they came upon the sawmill. It was in operation and the air was red with flying dust, the serenity of the bush pierced with the rasping rhythm of machine music. They stood watching it in silence. A bullock team, twelve strong, came up the steep slope drawing massive logs. The mill dealt with the logs at once and then distributed them, some to waiting hauliers in huge semi-trailers, some to the timber train, puffing and panting at the mill edge. "The train goes into Plateau," said Timber Marlow, "and the logs are conveyed by ordinary rail-truck from there.'' "Why two sources of distribution ?" she asked him. He shrugged his great shoulders under the red tartan lumber jacket he wore. "I told you before, Tallwoods is big," he said. They saw the little train push off along a narrow gauge to Plateau. "You can go with it one day," said Marlow. "There's enough room

with a squeeze in the cabin for you and the three nips. To them a trip in the timber train is the treat of treats." "What about the timber trucks ?" "They, too, attract, but Puffing Billy has the edge on Panting Sam. Billy is the tram, Sam any one of the haulage trailers." "Do the trailers pant ?" "With a heavy load up these timbered peaks I should say they do," said Marlow dispassionately. He told her of the mountain tracks flattened by grinding wheels, the cursings of the drivers over rough steep stretches, quite as vociferous as the time-honoured cursings of the bullocky driving the bullocks up from the felling. "Now," he concluded, "we'll go down to the felling if you're ready, Miss Venness." The children had disappeared. Timber Marlow stopped, cupped his mouth and called "Cooee!" His echo came back at once, and soon afterwards the children's cooee in response, repeated instantly once more in echo. "It's the walls of these cliffs that do it," Timber told Dinah. "In some places here I've heard it echo seven times." They were descending quite rapidly now. Rounding a bend of the track, they could see the children far ahead in that swimming blue haze that seemed part of this mountain, according to what Dinah had been told of every Australian range. They had come to a halt by a huge eucalyptus. Two men were standing on a rigging some seven or eight feet from the tree base and were evidently taking a spell after a cut. One was a few feet higher than the other and on the opposite side. Both cuttings were

equally deep in incision and the timber glowed creamy and wet where the axes had bitten in. "Is it safe?" asked Dinah, looking up at the great tree with a little shiver. "We won't go any further," said Marlow. He called, "Come back, "Pete, Keitha, Andy; go no further than where I stand now." When they had obeyed and toed the line, Dinah admitted, "I really meant for those men - I mean, they mightn't know which way the tree will fall." He gave her one of those swift, incredulous, contemptuous looks that he had given her before. "You don't really thinkthat? These men are well aware where it will fall. In fact they could tell you to the inch." He pointed to a wedge between the two levels of rigging slanted indicatively. "The tree will go that way," he said. The men had taken up their axes again. Dinah noticed they both wore black athletic singlets, and that when they began to cut, their muscles rippled with the rhythm of the axe. They used under-arm, and each stroke was a telling stroke. Great chunks of wood fell to left and right. It was like ballet in a way, she thought fascinated, it was so fluid, so graceful. In her ear, as up at the mill, Timber Marlow said, "Australians are equal to anyone in the world as hewers of wood. They're so well thought of that many have been called to Malaya, Sumatra, the jungles of Paraguay." They watched the cut deepen. The younger man of the two, a man as tall and broad as Timber, loosely built, with thick black unruly hair that fell over his brow and a faintly rakish air, glanced towards

Dinah, and then quietly, almost imperceptibly but tellingly increased his pace. The older man, lean, not very big but obviously wiry, kept stolidly on at the same quiet speed. "That's Woody Glenner," said Timber, and his voice had a suddenly affectionate note. "Woody's getting on now, but he won't be pensioned off. He's been a great axeman in his time. He holds a record of fourteen tons of wood felled, cut and loaded between sunup and sundown. Hence his name." "Just as you are Timber?" "Yes," Timber Marlow said. Dinah was observing the older muscles of the smaller man that were beginning to jerk now instead of move rhythmically. Evidently Glenner had noticed the younger man's pace and increased his own, and was finding it hard to keep up. "I think he's tiring," she said more to herself. Timber Marlow was frowning. He looked at the younger man's cut and then at Glenner's. "Tell them to stop," appealed Dinah, beginning to weary over the older cutter, "Give Mr. Glenner a break." "I can't do that." "Why?" "You can't tell an axeman who has been a champion that he's not keeping up. There's no hurry. That's our policy here at Tallwoods. It's as you said on the way down, we take no count of hours. Young

Mathieson knows that, too, but he's showing off. The fool should have more sense." The cut went on. Dinah could see that sweat shining on Glenner's brow, his increasing difficulty in breathing. "Stop them," she said. Marlow took no notice of her, but she could see by his clenched hands that he was angry. He made a cursory signal to someone on the other side of the doomed tree, and a middle-aged, bespectacled man, wearing a hat pulled down over his eyes, carrying a sheath of papers and balancing a pencil on one ear - evidently a tally clerk or an overseer, she thought - came round and across to them. "What's going on, Ben?" Timber Marlow demanded. "We're not running a contest. Call a halt." "Pd rather you do it if we must. Timber. Old Woody's touchy. He wouldn't like to be rested in front of young Mathieson like that." "Math will have to go. I don't care for behaviour of this sort." The overseer hunched his shoulders helplessly. "He's a good cut." "So was Glenner." "He's better than Glenner was. I'd say" - the overseer's mouth twisted speculatively - "that he's the best axe we've seen around these parts." "Is that your opinion - or Mathieson's ?" "Well" - again the speculation - "well, a bit of both," Ben admitted it with a wry grin. "We'll see about Mr. Mathieson and his opinions." Timber Marlow had stepped forward, his mouth set.

The overseer caught his arm urgently. "Don't be in a hurry, Timber." Marlow turned and looked autocratically at him. "And why?" There was a brief pause, then - "Mathieson's a good worker," said Ben. "Is that what you're really trying to tell me?" "No." The overseer reddened slightly. "He's a bad enemy," he said instead. "He's been pushed off every lumber camp for this sort of thing." He waved towards the felling that was now reaching exhibition proportions, the exhibition of youth against age, and youth, abundant, contemptuous youth, was winning hands down. "We go smoothly enough," resumed the man Ben, "if there's no one about. Math works normally then, but give him an audience, especially - " His glance fell apologetically on Dinah and his voice trailed off. He finished awkwardly, "He doesn't care who he cuts down to size when there's someone to applaud." "He'll never cut Glenner to size, that man's too big in every way for him." Timber's voice was grim. "Get Mathieson's pay ready, Ben. I'll stop this right now and send him off at once." "You'll make an enemy." "I can handle that." "He's bad medicine, Timber. He's young and strong and badtempered, and he knows he's the best axe in Warrigal." Timber Marlow's lip curled. Tall as he was, he seemed to grow taller. "He knows that, does he? Well, I'll take him on under any

condition; undercut, overcut, he can set the stage, at any time at all." The dominant chin was thrust forward, the reddish-brown eyes sparked. The king, Dinah thought again. She watched intrigued as Marlow approached the great tree and held up his hand. Glenner stopped at once. For a while he just stood and breathed hard, then he removed a handkerchief from his neck and moped at his brow. The younger man kept on. "Stop!" called Marlow, and his voice held a warning. Mathieson deliberately undercut again, pretending not to hear, A great chunk of wood missed the man beneath by a bare inch. The tree was moving slightly. It was only a breath of a movement, but Dinah could feel it in the air. Mathieson cut again... again... there was a poised stillness in the tree, a wary stillness, a stillness than even a new chum like Dinah could not misunderstand, then a shiver, then a definite sway. "Away, Glenner," called Marlow imperiously, and the older man abandoned the rigging and jumped nimbly to the ground and ran. Mathieson took his time, however. He was on the off-side. He wiped his brow first, shouldered his axe, then he leapt as well. Dinah heard someone's voice call "Timber!" and knew it was not her employer who was being addressed; she saw a flurry of brandies, heard a deafening collision, and the great tree was down. The leaves had not stopped shivering as Marlow crossed to the younger axeman.

"All right, Mathieson," he said with a quietness she knew must be very difficult for him at this moment. "Collect your pay." "What's wrong, boss? Tree's down, isn't it?" "I said collect your pay." The young man did not move. He looked insolently back at Marlow. Their eyes were on the same level, Dinah observed. "Don't like your pet boy being shown up as the old crock he is now - that it, boss?" For a moment Dinah believed there would be a fight. She saw Timber Marlow step forward again, she saw Mathieson stand his ground. "You're fired, Mathieson." "Don't want a good axeman ?" "I don't want one of your sort." "You'll never get a better cutter." Mathieson took out a packet of cigarettes and deliberately lit one. "Not anywhere," he said with a sneer. The man he addressed understood instantly. "I can cut you any time," Marlow said levelly. "Just keep that in mind. Math." "Yeah, and who'll be helping you?" Again the closed fist, the tight restraint. "Collect your dues, Mathieson." "O K, sir."

Mathieson turned insolently away, pausing a deliberate moment half-way round to look at Dinah. He took his time over it and she flushed. He stood very straight, a really magnificent figure, the equal of Marlow in every way except that he had the advantage of several years, she thought. He would be about her own age, a little more, perhaps a little less, but he was young, and the glint in his eyes told her he knew it and was pleased. "If you want someone to really chop your firewood, miss,'' he smiled, "you know where to come." Marlow had stooped and taken up the man's axe at his impudent words. He raised his shoulder and with a swift strong underarm he threw the axe suddenly forcefully forward and it bit deeply into a nearby eucalyptus. '"Gather your belongings and go," he flung almost as he had flung the man's axe. Mathieson turned and looked at Marlow instead of Dinah now. There was no scorn in him as there had been for Woody Glenner, contempt as he had flashed the overseer when Marlow had told Ben to have his money made up, but direct enmity and hate. He would be, judged Dinah shrewdly, an entirely vicious young man. He turned back and went to the tree and removed the axe. He examined it at length, he even ran his finger along the edge. "Still sharp enough to show a few people I know how to cut," he said almost lazily. He looked around at Marlow again, one eyebrow raised. "I'll take you up on that any time you like, Mathieson," Marlow came back. "I'll be waiting, sir. Bring the lady to watch. It should be an education to her. Besides," stretching himself, every muscle, every

sinew it seemed, "I like to have a rooter, and youth always sticks to youth." He laughed and once more looked Dinah up and down. "It'll be worth seeing," he grinned. "Your pay will be ready at the office," called Marlow. "Go up, Ben, and tell them to tally Mathieson's dues." "Marlow's dues will do later on," drawled the young giant. "I'll be seeing you, limber, and you can collect them then." With a swing of his hips and a confident stride he went calmly along the track up to the mill. The twins, who had watched the scene wide-eyed, lost interest and scuttled down into the bush. Timber Marlow went across to Woody Glenner, placed a hand on his shoulder and began to talk. Andy put his little palm in Dinah's and asked, "Can we go home now, Miss Venness?" and, because Ben was returning, too, the three of them set off up the steep track. "I'm Ben White," said the man. "Call me Ben, everyone does. You're Miss Venness." "Yes," said Dinah. "You are the tally clerk? The overseer?" "General offsider," grinned Ben. The grin died away. "That" - he nodded back to the felling - "was a bad show, Miss Venness." "How bad, Ben?" "Remains to be seen. I can tell you this, though; the way he mutilated that tree didn't do it any good."

"Are trees cut differently from that?" "At Tallwoods they are, Miss Venness. In some camps they lay into trees in such a manner that each falls upon its neighbour and takes it with it. It saves labour, especially in hilly country. I've seen them fall like ninepins until a mountainside looks like die aftermath of a tornado." Ben shook a sad head. "Timber - I mean Mr. Marlow, works differently?" The man stopped in his tracks. "To Timber," he said simply, "a tree is a life." He started walking again. "I've seen valleys in my time covered to a depth of thirty feet witfi the debris of branches, but at Tallwoods even a splinter has to be explained." Andy saw the disappearing tail of a mountain pheasant and raced after it. "What else was bad about that show?" Dinah asked. "Clem Mathieson. You must have seen that for yourself." Dinah nodded. "I didn't care for him. But why," she looked puzzled, "did Tallwoods accept such a man in first place?" "A rush order came in; it entailed a whole valley of eucalypts." White rubbed his chin. "That'll mean it a day's planting next week. When a tree goes, Timber immediately replaces it. It's the old life story in a way; someone dies, someone is born, a tree is cut, a tree is planted. That's why Tallwoods differs from most lumber camps. They deal in extinction, he deals in posterity, in a thousand years" Ben's voice was proud - "there will still be Marlow trees."

Dinah stopped and looked behind her. She saw the soaring red gums, the iron-barks and black-butts, the dark ash, the acacias, all vanishing into the heavens like the beanstalks of the fairy-tale, she sniffed their clean sweet tang. In a thousand years, her mind echoed Ben, there still will be all this because of one man. She turned back to the track and started to climb again with Ben. "Clem Mathieson was signed on when the rush order came in, was that it?" "Yes, we couldn't cope without extra hands. Sid Morris, our clerk, is a new chum. He didn't know Math's reputation, he put him on the pay-roll." "Neither you nor Mr. Marlow cancelled that?" Ben shrugged. "You have to give a man a go." "Why did Mathieson leave his last camp?" "He'd quarrelled. He quarrels wherever he works." "Was I" - Dinah reddened slightly - "the cause of this afternoon's episode?" "Partly," admitted Ben cheerfully. "Math has an eye for a pretty girl, that's well known. But the bigger reason," Ben wait on, "was pay." "Pay? But wouldn't Mr. Marlow - Tallwoods - give reasonable wages?" Dinah was thinking of her own remuneration that had been handed over in advance and had proved, unlike the advertisement's warning, very adequate indeed. "Timber pays top wages, but he doesn't pay bonuses."

"Bonuses?" "For the number of frees felled. There's a reward for clean cutting, a straight fall, an unblemished surface, but Clem Mathieson would be no candidate for that." "So he would have gone anyway, you think?" "If he didn't go himself. Timber would have managed it. You can't put a destroyer and a creator together, Miss Venness, they just don't mix." They were nearing the top. Ahead of them they could see Mathieson stuffing notes into a wallet and thrusting it into his pocket. Evidently he had got in before Ben could, and had told the clerk that he was sacked. The young axeman approached a departing haulier and apparently asked for a lift out of the lumber camp, for the driver nodded for him to climb in. As the semi-trailer panted off, Mathieson gave a derogatory salute to the overseer, then putting his fingers to his lips he blew Dinah a kiss. "Well, that's that, and a good riddance," said Ben cheerfully. He sighed. "I only wish it was the end of Math." "You don't think it is?" The overseer shook his head. "For all the chips that feller spreads, he never loses the one on his shoulder. No, it isn't the end, Miss Venness. He hates Timber and he doesn't really intend to back out like this." Dinah was introduced to Sid Morris, a young eager man about her own age, obviously pleased to see someone of the opposite sex.

"Reckon I won't go down the valley again today," decided Ben White. "I'll go home to my chalet and have a doze." It occurred to Dinah that Marlow must be a very unusual employer. Only rarely did bosses give the option of early closing to their employees. She said so, and was surprised at Ben's surprise at her words. "Didn't you see at once he was something different?" Yes, thought Dinah sarcastically, I saw he was a king. A rather exhausted Andy caught up with them. "That pheasant," he said, "it ran, and ran." "Must have been a male," explained Ben, "they're more timid. It's the heritage of fear, Miss Venness. In the early days males were hunted more than females. You can tame a female. The children have one that comes and feeds near the house." He glanced at her questioningly as he mentioned the children, said to Andy, "Reckon I saw a lyre-bird flit round that musk just then. Run and see was I right." Then, as the little boy did so, he turned and asked, "How is it going ,Miss Venness?" "Well - " said Dinah. Ben grinned. "I understand." "Well, I don't." Here, thought Dinah, should be someone who could explain to her. "Ben," she asked, "why are the children so - so impossible? Not Andy, of course, but the twins. Is - is it me?" "Couldn't be you particularly, considering you're the seventh to look after them to date." "Then why? Why, Ben? Why are they like that?"

"Could be plain cussedness, Miss Venness. Some kids are naturalborn fiends." But Dinah could not accept that. She still felt there was something else. "Perhaps they would sooner be at school," she remarked. She had often thought this. "Possibly." Ben scratched his head. "It seems unlikely, though. They love Tallwoods, every leaf of it, and they're mad on Timber, as you can see." "Timber Marlow," said Dinah with conviction, "is certainly not 'mad' on them." "Oh, come now, Miss Venness - " "I mean it. I - I've never seen anyone more indifferent to children." Not just indifferent to children but indifferent to his children, she thought. No father should be like that. "Indifferent!" defended Ben. "Then why does he insist upon keeping them here beside him? Young ruffians like that? I tell you it's been no picnic for him, Miss Venness. Every time a new governess - " "Supervisor," corrected Dinah. "Every time a new supervisor has come, Timber has gone through the old worry all over again." Dinah stopped and turned round and looked at the man. "Ben," she said directly, "Timber Marlow doesn't care two hoots about those children, so why does he keep them with him up here?"

"I think you're wrong." "I'm right. But I'm also puzzled. Why must the children stay on ?" "Could be," said Ben awkwardly, "her." "Her?" "Mrs. Marlow. I suppose he thinks - hopes - believes that if the children are here she'll come back in time ... It happens, doesn't it? Mothers come to their young..." Ben's voice grew hard, his face hard as well. "Yes, it happens with people, but never with birds or animals," he observed. "They don't go off like that." "Ben., I — " Dinah had been going to say, "Ben, I wish you'd tell me everything," but they had rounded the corner to the row of chalets, and the feather of smoke from Cooky's castle was now a substantial plume. "Stew's on," grinned Ben. He took off his hat. "See you later, Miss Venness." Regretfully Dinah said, "Good-bye, Ben." Andy caught up again and took her hand. "It wasn't a lyre-bird after all." He walked in silence a few yards. "Do you like mountains, Miss Venness?" "Very much, Andy. Do you?" "No, I like grass." "There's grass here, darling."

There was, too, not much of it because everywhere there were trees, but in front of Tallwoods, and round the chalets there were small lawns, as large as could be spared, and neatly cut. "Not that grass, but big grass." "Do you mean tall grass, Andrew? The reedy grass that grows around rivers, the high ribbon grass of plains ?" "No, big grass, like at Plateau, grass as far as you can see, Miss Venness. That's what I like." "Pastures," murmured Dinah. "What is pastures?" "Paddocks... fields, Andy, like at Plateau." "Big grass," Andy nodded. He looked thoughtful. "And you call it that?" "Yes, pastures." Dinah smiled at him. "You know, like in the Bible, Andy." Already the little boy's simple correspondence lessons had introduced scripture, she had found. "Tell me," Andy begged. " 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.'" "Yes, I've heard that, but I always thought it was green parsley." Andy's voice was excited. "And all the time," he marvelled, "it was big grass like at Plateau." "Yes, darling, pastures."

"Pas-pastures," Andy said. Together they reached the house. Mrs. Sullivan called "Dinner in twenty minutes," and Dinah realized she was ready for it. Timber Marlow had been right: eating was different "up here." She saw the twins approaching the house and called out to them to wash. Probably they answered her, more probably again it was a pert answer, but she was too far away to hear. "You, too, Andy," she said. "Yes, Miss Venness." Thank goodness for Andy, she thought, as she went to her room to take off Mrs. Marlow's shirt and jodhpurs and put on a dress. It was a pretty dress, one of her trousseau dresses, a gay cotton satin with yellow knots of flowers. She saw Keitha's eyes on it as they assembled for dinner. Timber was not there, but she knew he had returned. He was probably showering and would stride along later to take his usual head-of-thetable place. For an unguarded moment Keitha looked at the dress and her eyes betrayed her. The eternal Eve, smiled Dinah inwardly; you can try to stifle the instinct, but it still is there. Keitha saw her watching and tossed her head. Pete said impulsively, "That's nice, Miss Venness," then remembered, glanced at his twin, and said no more. It was true, as Mrs. Sullivan had declared, decided Dinah, that Keitha was the driving force. She evidently did not drive Andrew, however, The little boy stood and beamed. "You're pretty, Miss Venness."

She laughed back at him. "As pretty as big grass?" "As pas-tures," he said carefully. "It's the first time I've seen yellow forget-me-knots,'' remarked Keitha, looking at the knots of flowers. Timber came in. Dinah had thought he might be depressed or moody after the valley episode, but he seemed in good spirits. "You didn't find the expedition tiring, Miss Venness.*" "I loved it." Dinah paused. "Also," she said, "it was very enlightening." He was helping himself to potatoes. He glanced up. "In what way?" he demanded. She knew what he meant; she knew what he wanted from her; he wanted to know her reaction to his reaction to Clem Mathieson. And how had she felt about that reaction, she asked erf herself, how had she felt about Timber Marlow's dominant, masterful, "I'm-thebetter-man" display? Aloud she murmured, "It was enlightening because it was educational. I've never seen trees cut" - her eyes dropped hurriedly to her plate - "or - dealt with before." "You must complete the education. I'll have a haulier take you with him as far as the highway; you can take the timber train into Plateau as I promised at the mill." At that last, the three children yelled in a thrilled voice, "Puffing Billy." Dinah smiled at Timber. "Can they come, too?"

"Yes. It'll be a squeeze in the cabin, but Meldrum won't mind. The mill's operating again tomorrow, so the four of you can travel to Warrigal station on Billy and come back on the return trip." "Oh!" Keitha, Peter and Andy breathed. Timber added warningly, "Lessons attended to satisfactorily beforehand, of course." Mrs. Sullivan had removed the meat dishes and was passing round the sweet. She gave Keitha a dish to be handed to Dinah, but the child adeptly substituted the dish for her own and when the next dish came gave it to Dinah instead. Well, that was nothing, thought Dinah ... the first dish that was to have been hers might have been slightly larger, and all children adored jelly and creamTimber never took sweets. Dinah had discovered that already. Instead he excused himself, took up the large brown pot of tea and a cup and saucer and sat on the veranda, drinking and checking Ben White's tallies, until the teapot was empty and the tallies complete. Tonight, however, he did not get up. He seemed inclined to linger and talk. It was worrying somebody. Keitha obviously was very concerned. She was fidgeting and looking uneasily at the sweet and then at the teapot and then at Timber. "Shall I put your chair to the edge of the veranda?" she asked him. "What for?" "For - for a better view, Timber," It really was not right, thought Dinah, for a child to address her father as "Timber" like that. "I don't sit and look at a view, I sit and tally," Timber answered shortly. "You know that."

"Then - then shall I put the chair against the wall? It would be more sheltered." "What is all this?" The man's reddish-brown eyes had turned suspiciously on the little girl. "I - I want to be a help." "Well, be a help by not fussing." "Aren't - aren't you going out on the veranda? Not at all?" "Not at all." "You're not - not having jelly?" Keitha could not have betrayed herself more surely, thought Dinah, if she had tried. The man's eyes had narrowed. "Tonight I feel like some jelly. In fact, I fancy Miss Venness's plate of jelly. Miss Venness, do you mind?" Dinah's polite "No" and Keitha's agitated "Yes" came out in the same instant. In the next instant Timber had the dish before him and was taking up a spoon. It did not take long for Timber to find out why Keitha looked so unhappy. The first dip of the spoon un-jellied the frog. It was quite a large frog, very green, very glossy. Its hands were neatly crossed as though in supplication, and it was firmly set right in the middle of the sweet. "Your doing, I presume?" Timber looked at Keitha and his voice was ice.

"Mrs. Sullivan set the jellies on the tank-stand," said the little girl anxiously. "I see, and the frog jumped around until, he made sure he had found Miss Venness's dish." Andy was crying. "Did the jelly kill it?" he sobbed heart- brokenly. He was a soft little boy. Keitha, not wishing to be considered a murderess as well, answered, "No, it was a dead frog, you little mutt." Dinah thought that if anything she. would have preferred a live frog, or at least one that drowned afterwards, not one already dead by the time it reached the jelly. She glanced up at Timber. His brows had met. He was really furious. He was looking at Keitha with a speculative eye. Quickly the child read her punishment. She was very perceptive, Dinah thought. "Can't I be walloped instead, Timber ?" she appealed. "No, you can stay at home tomorrow. The others will go in Puffing Billy to Plateau, but you will remain here." "Timber, I-" "Quiet, Keitha." The big man brushed aside her pleas with a wave of his hand. "And now outside, all of you. I don't think" - pushing away the dish - "any of us feel like jelly tonight." Mrs. Sullivan had got up and gone to the kitchen. The children had hurried off. Dinah looked across at Marlow.

In a shocked voice she said, "Just now Keitha asked you to thrash her. Surely - surely you never do a thing like that?" "I've done it," he said casually, "upon occasion, but then I saw what a big joke it was. These youngsters are the same as our timber here, hard and tough." Dinah said mechanically, "As you said you were," He corrected, "As I am." She rose and. went to the door, suddenly unable to face him. What sort of a man was this, she thought, who judged, who rebuked, who punished, who disciplined, who did everything a father was supposed to do, it seemed - but who did not love? He had risen and crossed the room too. He stood behind her. "Don't be so scandalized, Miss Venness, it was no case of child cruelty; indeed, Miss Bainton, Number Four in our procession of supervisors, resigned in disgust." "But why - " Dinah began. She wanted to say "But why do you persist in keeping the children here when you don't care about them?" then remembered she had said that before. She had said it and he had answered, "They stay here in case she returns." He had meant Mrs. Marlow, he had meant his wife. The children meant nothing to him other than a lure to bring back their mother. Did he still love her so very much? But it could be revenge that whetted his determination to have her once more at Tallwoods. Yet those reddish-brown eyes, though they often grew furiously angry, never once had suggested to Dinah retaliation, or reckoning, or a sullen paying- off of old scores.

It must be love. She would not have thought him capable of it, but what other explanation could there be than love? "You asked me something, Miss Venness?" "No." "Correction, please. You distinctly began to enquire 'But why-?'" "I did, but I remembered I had asked the question before." "And received an answer?" "Yes." He nodded his head. She waited a moment, then said, "I think, if you'll excuse me, I'll go and correct the children's lessons." "You've had a hard first day?" "No - no, I wouldn't call it that" "Easy, then?" "Well, perhaps not easy, either." "We'll put it down to 'enlightening' then, shall we? That is what you reported earlier. Will 'enlightening' do?" His red-brown eyes were meeting her blue. They were not angry now; they were taunting, baiting, they were deriding her. Dinah bowed stiffly and moved past him to go round to the "Schoolroom". "You haven't answered me, Miss Venness. Will 'enlightening' do?"

Dinah said formally, "Yes, Mr. Marlow, anything you wish."

FOUR DINAH had anticipated a very sullen Keitha at lessons the next morning, an insolent Keitha aware that, however bad her conduct might be, she could not be punished more than she was being punished now. The boys, of course, were on their best behaviour. Was not a trip to Plateau in Puffing Billy at stake? Keitha, however, surprised her. She had her nose in her history and when Dinah spoke to her, the child looked up with a start. "Is it Bass and Flinders again, Keitha?" "No, the Rum Rebellion." Keitha's eyes were sparkling. She did not take after her father, thought Dinah, his eyes sparked, not sparkled, and they were red-brown, not all brown like the girl's. None of the children resembled their father, though at times she believed she caught a faint glimpse in little Andy, small and delicate though he was, as opposed to toughness in Timber Marlow. The sparkle in Keitha's eyes encouraged her. "It sounds interesting. Won't you tell me?" "Well, this Governor King, he tries to stamp out the Rum Traffic, and - " Keitha remembered herself and shut up like a clam. With a sigh Dinah turned her attention to the boys. There was no supervising to be done there. Peter, tongue out, was doing mapping, Andy, tongue in his cheek as though it was a toffee, was practising running writing.

Dinah picked up a catalogue she had found in the living-room. She had decided that the position of supervisor meant, just that, in which case Mr. Marlow should not object to her doing some reading of her own as the children worked. She had determined to spend her first salary on some suitable clothes. She simply could not carry on with the pretty but inessential (Warrigal inessential) wardrobe she had bought with her from Lilac Hill. She turned pages and made notes. She saw that someone else had made notes before her. The children's mother? With curiosity she observed Mrs. Marlow's - it must be Mrs. Marlow, Mrs. Sullivan was not the catalogue type - taste. It was not her own, Dinah's taste. It ran to the showy and flamboyant, there was a preference for daring and tightly moulded lines. She marked down jeans of stout denim, sailcloth shirts, a wool cap to pull well over the ears when the wind blew coldly through the trees, bight warm scarves. After a while she was aware that Keitha had stopped perusing the Rum Rebellion. Her eyes were not on Dinah though, they were on the catalogue. The eternal Eve, Dinah thought to herself again. She had turned several pages. The leaf now was one of girls' dresses, some befrilled, some plain, all prettily coloured to entice sales. It would be odd, smiled Dinah, if she "reached" Keitha this way, the way of one woman to another, through the age-old medium of clothes. "Which one do you like?" she asked casually, holding up the catalogue. "That one."

That one was a plain pale lemon, nicely cut, deftly tucked, a very good selection for a ten-year-old. This child did not have her mother's taste. Dinah decided to risk a rebuff. "This is your mother's book." "I know." "I hope you don't mind my borrowing it." Keitha shrugged. "You see," said Dinah, "I must get more suitable things if I remain here." She waited for some acid comment. Instead Keitha said helpfully, "You haven't put a windjacket down. I would if I were you." So encouraged that she found herself actually trembling, Dinah obediently wrote down "windjacket". She looked up. "Keitha," she appealed impulsively, "can't we be friends?" She had spoken too quickly. Like a small snail at a finger on its back, the child was retreating into her shell again. "Why?" she flung from inside the protective shell. "It's easier than being enemies. At first I thought it was me you disliked." "How do you know it isn't?"

"I feel it isn't I'm right, aren't I?" "If you mean do I like you, I don't." "Not liking and disliking are two different things. You may not like me, but you don't dislike me." "I do dislike you. I've disliked every one of you; Miss Bainton, Miss Brewster, Miss Drury, Mrs. - " "But not me any more than the rest?" ."Well - " Keitha's lip came out and stopped out. She evaded her glance. "Keitha, what is it, dear? Don't you want to have your lessons at home? You want to go to boarding school at Sydney or Melbourne, is that it?" "I want to go - we want to go, Pete and I, away from Warrigal." "But you love Warrigal." Keitha said, and in some curious way there was childish tragedy in the words, "We don't want to be here." "I don't want to be here, either," proffered Andy, looking up from his writing. This was too much for Dinah; she had come to consider Andy her ally. "Darling, you do." "No, I don't either. I want to be where there's pastures," Andy said. "But you like Tallwoods, Andy?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Venness." "And I'm sure Keitha and Peter do, too." "Why are you so sure? We don't have to be like Andy," put in Keitha. "It's usual for sisters and brothers to be alike." "But he's not, he's only a half," informed the girl, and her nose went back into her book. Andy returned to his writing, Dinah to her catalogue, but she looked at skirts and blouses attractively presented and did not see them. "He's only a half," she heard again. This, then, must be the explanation she wanted. The woman Timber Marlow desired back was only the twins' stepmother. Admittedly Keitha had said "Mother" on several occasions, but stepchildren presumably would be ordered to address a stepmother as that. Apparently the twins did not like Timber's second wife. That often happened. That was why they wanted to escape before, if, she came back. Had their own mother died? Did they resent the present Mrs. Marlow taking her place? Then why had Andy's mother gone? When had she gone? Where had she gone? Was she coming back? Dinah turned with relief when Mrs. Sullivan bore down with tea and gingerbread. "This is lovely," she praised, and then with hopeful cunning, "Is Mrs. Marlow, too, a good cook?" "My goodness, no, but you don't have to be a good cook for this kind of gingerbread. It's called Hurry-up Cake. It's just two cups of flour, one of-"

Dinah said to herself, "That's for probing, my girl," and she stifled a laugh. At lunch Timber asked, "Anything bad to report, Miss Venness?" "Nothing at all. Keitha, too, has done a good morning's work." She might not have spoken, she thought ruefully. Keitha darted her a sulky resentful glance, a glance that said only too clearly, "Sucking up again," and Marlow did not comment at all. His brows were raised a little, but it was clear that he had no intention of reconsidering Keitha's punishment. Keitha herself patently did not expect reconsideration. When lunch was over she disappeared with a book. Diziah could see her at the window as they left, however, an# her heart wait out to the wistful small face. "You couldn't - " she began to Marlow, who was going down to the felling again. Either he, too, had seen the face, or he guessed Dinah's trend. "No, I couldn't," he said at once. They walked for a while. "I might add, Miss Venness," remarked Timber, "that to admonish a child and then withdraw admonishment is not as advised by child guidance experts." "But surely a - surely the one in control of the child cm follow an instinct," Dinah stuck out. She had been going to sey "But surely a child's father" - but this man did not deserve that title, he was father in name only, she thought.

Timber Marlow declared adamantly, "These children are hardwood, Miss Venness." "Andy, too?" He was silenced a moment. "Andy is different," he said. Why was Andy different, not so much in himself, but in the affections of Timber? Dinah wondered. Was it because Andy's mother had been nearer Timber's heart? If so, why had she gone? Had she been like little Andrew, soft, gentle, easily bruised, vulnerable? Had this hardwood man driven her away? They passed the outhouses, the men's chalets, they heard the raucous note of the mill, and between its strident music the puff and blast of Billy panting noisily while he was loaded up with logs. In a few minutes the load was ready. Dinah was introduced to Jim Meldrum, who was childishly pleased to have three passengers into Warrigal, then she climbed in, Andrew and Peter beside her. Andrew pulled the bell, and Puffing Billy moved importantly away up the hill. Instantly Dinah knew why the little timber train had been christened Puffing Billy. From the mill it was only a hundred feet to the summit, but the small railroad seemed to climb almost vertically, and Billy, la his gigantic efforts, panted and puffed. Dinah looked behind her and was scared at first, then the panorama of peaks, some cutting the sky with serrated edges, some rounded and soft, all orchid blue in that strange enchanted Australian way, made her forget her fear.

"Oh, it's beautiful." "I like the other side," said Andy. "You can look down on the pastures." Andy was at home with the new word now. . Dinah thought of Keitha missing all the fun and remarked regretfully upon it to Keitha's twin. "She got what she had coming to her," said Pete stolidly. "But you must be sorry, Peter." "I'm not. I told the little mutt to cut the frog up in legs and' arms, not leave it whole like that . . . Look, Miss Venness, there's Plateau." Dinah stared enraptured. Enraptured, too, was little Andy, his hand hot and tight in hers. It was fertile grassland, even as a new chum she could see that, even though, too, an over- radiant sun had burned much of the green pastures to shining gold. Puffing Billy slid down cautiously, but as soon as they were on the fiat Jim opened the throttle, and the little train, in spite of its load, jeered at the miles. Billy came to a standstill at the end of his narrow gauge at one of the sidings. A freight train was waiting on the normal gauge on the other side of the siding, and at once a crane began lifting and lowering the logs into their new transport. They all watched with interest, but it appeared it would be a long job, in which case, Jim Meldrum said, perhaps Miss Venness would care to look around the town. Dinah remembered the town from the day of her arrival and could not show much enthusiasm.

She stood irresolute, and at that moment Peter called out excitedly, "The mail's coming in!" "It comes in the morning," said Dinah, recalling her own embarrassed arrival still not a week ago. She wondered which of the many railway dogs dozing or roving lazily around the dusty station had eaten her cake. "This is the Melbourne train," said Peter. "It comes three afternoons a week and the Sydney Mail comes every morning. Let's watch her, Miss Venness." The engine came to a halt and a few passengers alighted. Perhaps because she had been thinking of her wedding cake, for a moment when she saw the third passenger Dinah thought of Kevin. Then she remembered someone like Kevin, only more friendly, bluer of eyes, wide smile crinkles round those eyes, freckles left over from boyhood. "Jock!" she called. He came across instantly, beaming his delight at seeing her again. "Dinah, this is wonderful. It's always good to come home, but to be greeted by you makes it better still." "The greeting was not intentional," she smiled. "The children and I came in with Jim Meldrum on Puffing Billy. It was grand." He had her hands in his. "This is grand." Reluctantly he let her hands go. "How's it been, Dinah?" "It's too early to say, Jock." She hesitated. Mrs. Sullivan was too bemused to tell her, she had missed her opportunity with Ben, but here was someone who could and would explain, she thought. But

not just now, it seemed. Peter and Andy had tired of watching the Mail and had come to her side. "Hullo, Mr. Ferrell," they chorused. "Hullo, boys. Where's the third member of the family?" "She put a frog in Miss Venness's jelly and Timber wouldn't let her come." Jock's brows were raised. "Not very nice for either the frog or Miss Venness." "The frog was dead before it went in, it didn't drown," put in Andy anxiously. "The silly mutt," said Pete, "left it whole, head, legs and hands." He added contemptuously, "Girls!" "Look," said Jock Ferrell to Dinah, "I don't know whether that frog has put you off, but could you do with a cup of tea?" She could, but she looked round dubiously at the sparse main street. "There is a shop," he assured her. "Not much on the outside, but Mrs. Makin makes a good brew. There'll be ices as well for the kids." The mention of ices made it impossible for Dinah to refuse. The boys were looking at her eagerly; she could not deny them. Anyway, she did not want to refuse for herself. The frog had not put her off. Tea sounded heavenly. She also wanted Jock's company. In a desert of men either too busy or too indifferent, Jock seemed an oasis. She smiled, "That will be nice."

They left the railway station and wandered along the street. Jock was right. Mrs. Makin's was not very attractive, but once inside it was friendly and bright, and the tea that appeared almost at once was piping hot. The boys scraped their dishes regretfully with their spoons, Jock drained the teapot - did all Australians do that? - then they said good-bye to Mrs. Makin and went back to the statical. Suddenly Dinah remembered that Jock Ferrell had just returned from overseas. "How will you get home?" she asked him. He grinned. "I haven't been away all that time," he reminded her. "One doesn't have to be absent very long these days of air travel. I left my car at the garage when I set off. Most of us do that." "Yes," she said, "Mr. Marlow did." He glanced hopefully at her. "Dinah, why don't you come back by road with me?" She hesitated, so he went on. "I'll drop you right at Tallwoods' door on my way." Still Dinah hesitated. She wondered what Timber Marlow might think of that. Whatever his father might think, little Andrew was enthusiastic. "Please, Miss Venness, if you go by road you go right through the pastures. Oh, please, Miss Venness." "What about you, Peter ?"

Peter said he would sooner return on Billy. Jock said quickly, seeing Dinah begin to hesitate again, "It would be all right, Meldrum's a good man." In the end she agreed, returned to the siding and told Jim Meldrum how she was travelling back, told Peter to be a good boy and do what Mr. Meldrum said, and climbed, with Andy, into Jock's car. Jock's car was also on wagon lines, but it was not as big and expensive as Marlow's. It was very comfortable, however, and Andrew went happily to the back, where he could peer on either side and discover which pastures were the best. "When are your days off, Dinah?" "Why, I don't know." She hadn't thought about days off. Working conditions had been so easy at Tallwoods, it had not occurred to her to question Mr. Marlow regarding her off-time. She said so now, but Jock answered that even idyllic conditions must include certain days just to oneself. "When you have yours," he said, "you must come down to the gardens." "How will I get there?" Jock pulled up in front of the stone veranda, opened the , door, hauled out Andy, took Dinah's hand. There was no one around, yet Dinah felt sure that someone - Timber Marlow? - was sitting just inside the french windows, She could not see him, but she sensed he was there. If he was, he did not come out.

"Good-bye, Dinah, and find out about those days off. I'll give you a ring. Good-bye, young feller." "Good-bye, Mr. Ferrell." "Good-bye, Jock," Dinah said. She watched the wagon swing round, watched Jock get out at the gate, open, drive through, then shut the gate again. "Can I scoot down to the mill to see if Mr. Ferrell's car beat Puffing Billy?" asked Andrew. A voice from the french windows - so there had been someone there - called, "Puffing Billy's back, Andy, he beat you. You can run down though if you like." As soon as the child was gone, Timber Marlow came to the window and beckoned her in coldly. "Why did you return by car?" "Mr. Ferrell asked me, he asked us all. Pete was not keen, - but Andy was very enthusiastic." "Don't make the child your excuse.'* She turned at that. "I had no intention of making anyone my excuse. I had no intention of offering an excuse." "Then you'd better reconsider. When I gave you permission to take the boys into Plateau, I naturally expected you to bring them back." "I did. I mean-" "You mean you brought half of them back."

"I particularly instructed Mr. Meldrum to keep his eye on Peter and I told Peter to be good." "You told a child who you know is not a usual child, who you know is an exceptionally naughty, daring, maddening, fiendish little delinquent, to be 'good'. What milksop stuff is this, Miss Venness?" Dinah stared at the man. It seemed to her an inordinate fuss over a self-reliant lad who had the supervision of an adult, anyway, and who had done the trip a score of times before. She said as much. "Meldrum's no match for that urchin," stormed back Timber. "You had no right to leave him. You should have returned the way you went." "If the child, if all the children had had proper parental control they wouldn't be urchins," came back Dinah. He did not have the grace to be ashamed. He said, "Well, they haven't had it, and they won't. But that doesn't alter the fact that you left Peter at Pleateau to return in any way he liked." "I did not. I left him to return as he went, in the cabin of the timber train." "He returned," drawled Timber Marlow with deceptive laziness, "on the cowcatcher instead. He came all the way along the plain on the cowcatcher, up the mountain, over and down to the mill. Meldrum told him to get inside, but he couldn't drive the train and hold him as well. That was your job, Miss Venness, but you found it too much." "I didn't find it too much, I…' "Then you found Ferrell's company more attractive, is that it?"

"Mr. Marlow, I think we should have an understanding. I was signed on here as supervisor of lessons. How long do these lessons last?" "Oh, that old query again, eh? Once out of the schoolroom, is your task done? The answer is no, Miss Venness. If you let children run mad the moment classes are over, you may as well have no classes at all." "In that case," she said coldly, "we'd better come to some arrangement concerning my time off. I believe I'm entitled to that." "You are, and you shall receive it. Every Saturday and Sunday and a day of your own choice through the week." He paused. "You may tell Ferrell that.'' The sarcasm in his voice was biting. It was a horrible feeling, too, knowing you had been tried and found wanting as obviously she had. She said, "Is Peter home ?" "Peter is home and in his room. He will not be out at dinner, though. Indeed, he won't be anywhere where he will be required to sit down. Now, perhaps, you'll sing a different song from 'proper parental control'." "I didn't mean control like that, I meant love... and understanding. You appear to have neither, Mr. Marlow.," "I have not. Do you find that 'enlightening' ?" Timber waited for a moment, then added, "But so long as I have enlightened you regarding your duties, I will be satisfied. For the present, anyway. The next time, if there is a next time, return all the children, no matter how many devoted swains want to return you."

"And not by cowcatcher?" put in Dinah impudently, deliberately. "Not unless Peter wants to receive again what he just got." "That would scarcely punish me, would it ?" "I don't know . . . women are reputedly soft-hearted. You may suffer, you may not." He sounded as though he didn't particularly care. "That's all, Miss Venness, you may go." It was he who went, however. He turned on his heel and strode out to the veranda, down the steps, and along towards the mill. For a moment Dinah stood quite still, then she heard a noise in the corner and wheeled round. Keitha was sitting on a stool. She had a book face-down on her lap. She must have been sitting there all along. Evidently she hadn't intended to eavesdrop, for her eyes were surprised and wide. And they were something else. They were sympathetic. Dinah never had anticipated reaching Keitha through fellow- feeling, but that was what she found now, if fleetingly, in those Childish brown depths. "Wow!" exhaled Keitha graphically. "Didn't half blow a fuse, did he? I tell you, Miss Venness, when Timber loses his temper, he explodes."

FIVE BREAKFAST next morning was a rather disgruntled affair, everybody, with the exception of Sully and Andy, annoyed with someone else . . . Timber with Dinah and Peter, Dinah with Timber and Peter, Peter with Timber and Dinah, Keitha, still rankling from the frog episode, annoyed with all three. As supervisor of lessons, Dinah, in the schoolroom afterwards, decided it was her prerogative to change the lessons around. She had found by now that, left to their own devices, Keitha would have done history all the time. Peter geography. Andrew was no trouble. He was at that age and stage when all lessons are presented equally attractively and accepted equally amiably, even disliked sums when administered in the form of little pictures not undesirable to small young brains. The twins, however, were a problem. They scowled when Dinah gave history to Peter and geography to Keitha. Dinah took up the Correspondence Teaching Manual and paid no attention to their glares. At length Peter's baleful looks could not be ignored. She put the Manual down and said, "It's no use going on like that, Peter. Any punishment you received was your own fault." "You should have told me not to ride on the cowcatcher." "Would you have obeyed me?" Peter had the honesty not to claim that he would. He put his nose back into the history book, finding, unlike his twin, nothing exciting in either Bass and Flinders or the Rum Rebellion.

He was not finished, however. He mumbled behind the pages, "You should have said 'you can't go', that's what. You know how bad me and Keitha are. We're fiends." "Keitha and I," said Dinah. And then she asked reasonably, "Why? Why are you fiends? The very fact that you are aware that you are naughty proves to me that you could be good. Why do you go to such pains to do everything you know you should not?" Peter seemed inclined to discuss it, but Keitha promptly scotched that. "You got what was coming, Pete," she said judiciously. "If you wanted to travel back on the cowcatcher, you should have jumped off before Timber found out. Jim Meldrum wouldn't have pimped." "That's not the right way to look at it," intervened Dinah rather weakly, but feeling she must not let such connivance go unchecked. The two children gave her a look that assured her they recognized her weakness, and all three returned to their books again. Lunch brought further doldrums. In view of Keitha's bad behaviour, in view of Peter's, in view of the lessons Timber Marlow felt sure were not being done - was he chiding her now, asked Dinah? - there would be a continuance of classes that afternoon. Altogether it was a most unsatisfactory day. Even when afternoon lessons were over, the twins walked, not raced off, and Dinah saw them no more till dinner that night. Timber was not present at the table, but his absence, surprisingly enough, keeping in mind the displeasure in which he currently held the three of them, did nothing to brighten the meal.

After it was over, it was time for Andy's bed, and when it came to the twins' moment half an hour later they went off without their customary protests. This was what I wanted, Dinah admitted ruefully to herself, a nice compliant silence at the zero hour of eight p.m., and now that I have it, I'd much sooner their combined wails. She took up the beaten-leather writing attache-case that one of the aunts had given her, and went into the front lounge. She had not written home yet, but all along she had carried with her the disquieting knowledge that she must - and soon. Her aunts would worry if she did not contact them within a reasonable period. Up till now they would be smiling sentimentally at each other, and wondering if "dm Dinah" was married yet, how her dress had looked, how her cake had cut. "I don't know how the dress looked and I can't say how the cake cut, but I can tell you I'm not married nor going to be," said Dinah to the notepaper, but she knew as she said it that that was what she must not write... not yet. "Darling Aunts," she began, then looked round the room. What was she to say? How was she to say it? Eventually she wrote: "Darling Aunts, The above address, Warrigal, is not Kevin's and my home. Some time ago we decided not to hurry things* There's plenty of time. This country, I've found, takes little stock of hours. Here at Tallwoods there is even a vine called Wait-a-While." "I am very well and quite contented. Do write and tell me you are, too . . . well and contented in your little house with its hills, lakes or downs, or, as Aunt Emily said, a tiny bit of all' three."

- Dinah sent personal messages and put her pen down. Best . to keep it flimsy like that, she judged. Actually she had; told no lies. Certainly a jilt could be described as a decision "not to hurry things", and "plenty of time" need not suggest to the aunts that she and Kevin were finished forever. Forever? . .. With sudden honesty she asked herself would it still be forever if Kevin walked in at this moment and knelt beside her and put out his arms ? She tried to And an answer, but it would not come. Only that same sort of blankness she had known when Kevin's letter first had arrived was there. The blankness could mean an indifference to Kevin - or it could mean that a torch still burned in spite of everything. Fogged up, unsure as she was now, she simply could not tell. She was so absorbed in herself that she did not hear Marlow enter the house. He stood regarding her from the lounge threshold a long moment, then he came right into the room. "Am I intruding?" "How could you be," she pointed out, "when this is your corner?" He did not comment on that. He sat down and began filling his pipe. "Kids still wallowing in a mud of misery?" "Yes," "It'll do'em good." Dinah in her turn did not comment on that. "Writing letters?"

"A letter," she told him, aware as she said it of a flood of relief just to speak openly, "to my aunts, telling them where I am." His brows had lifted steeply. "They didn't know?" "They were aware I was coming to Australia, of course." He was poking at his pipe. Entirely without warning he looked hard at her and demanded almost brusquely, "Miss Venness, why did you come to Australia ?" The question took her by surprise. It seemed such an odd enquiry from someone who had availed himself of her services as he had ."Why - why, to work here, of course." His glance returned to his pipe. "That's a bit thick," he said presently. "You'll have to do better than that, my girl." "What - what do you mean, Mr. Marlow?" He put the pipe right down, folded his arms across his great chest, then looked deliberately at her. "You were jilted," he stated baldly. "I have said so," she admitted frozenly. "You were to come out here to marry the man, but at the eleventh hour he wrote and said he didn't want you," he continued ruthlessly. Miserably Dinah agreed, "Yes." "But you still came." "I had to. I had to get away." She paused. "You see, my aunts-"

He was waving an authoritative hand. "I believe," he said laconically, "you told that tale before." "It wasn't a tale, it was the truth. Their happiness depended on my independence. Getting away was the only thing to do." "Getting away to Australia?" he asked significantly. "To where your ex-fiance was ?" "It had to be Australia." Again the raised brows. "Not Africa?" the man suggested. "Not Canada? Not somewhere, anywhere, where you would have no chance of meeting your exfriend once again?" "I-" "Let me express my opinion of it all, Miss Venness, the opinion of a disinterested - but by no means hoodwinked - onlooker. You came out to Australia for one of two possible reasons, revenge... or love." She stared at him, horrified, but before she could speak he went calmly on. "First of all let us take revenge." His voice, considering the vile things it was saying, was amazingly cool. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and all that. Tell me, Miss Venness, is the answer there?" "It is not." Her own voice trembled. "I knew my aunts would never let me depart without actually seeing me off. They are elderly, but they are by no means decrepit. What I mean by that, Mr. Marlow, is that I would have had no chance of telling them I was coming to

Australia and then taking a Transatlantic plane, making a beeline to Kenya, going south to Johannesburg instead. I can assure you the three of them can all read and write." She might just as well not have interrupted, for quite imperturbably, very serenely, he went on in his hateful analytical voice. "If it was not revenge, then it was love? There is no pride in love, they say, and surely a wedding dress and a wedding cake in the luggage of a let-down female exhibit no pride. Am -I to assume then that it betrays at the same time a persistent, if unencouraged and unrequited, element of love?" He was vile. She would listen no longer. She stood up. He stood up at once with her. "Sit down, Miss Venness," he ordered, "and don't be a fool." "I-" "Look here, I'm only stating these things for your own preparedness, things that anyone must think under the circumstances; as he, this ex-fiance of yours, will also think when he learns that you've followed him out." "I didn't follow him." "No, you saw my utterly unattractive advertisement and thought it was too good to miss." His voice was sarcastic. Again before she could protest he said, "I repeat, I am not saying all this from personal feelings, but in the feeling that others will take this same viewpoint, in which case you had best be ready." "How - how do you mean?" "I mean this fellow will undoubtedly find you again."

"Kevin - never. He's finished with me." "Don't be absurd. His ego will be flattered, he'll be around you like a bee round honey. You're not" - laconically - "uncomely, you know." She reddened. For a moment there was silence. Then she said foolishly, "He wouldn't know where to look." "Don't be ridiculous, your aunts will tell him." "Kevin doesn't write to the aunts." "They would have written to him. A young woman one has nurtured from tender childhood is not relinquished to new hands without an anxious letter, without an affectionate reminder to continue the loving care." "Kevin would ignore such a letter. He's finished, I tell you." "Kevin would promptly write back, and in an entirely new strain. I might not know Woman, Miss Venness, but I do know Man. In the distance you forfeit attraction. Oh, yes, I know absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, but availability is a much stronger lure. You weren't available any longer for your friend in distant England, my dear." "But I was coming out," she blurted. "Coming out is not being on the spot. Then add to your new availability the flattering knowledge that you've chased him- " "I didn't chase him." "You say that, but does he? Would other people? Add those two together, the availability and the - "

"The chase," said Dinah bitterly. He bowed his head. "Then garnish finally with the recollection that you were a remarkably personable young woman - " Dinah rose from her seat again. "Am I to dither at that or simply say thank you?" she asked. She picked up her attache- case and turned to go. "I'm sorry you're taking it that way," he drawled. "What other way can I take it?" she flashed back. "You could be grateful to me for my warning that undoubtedly your lost love one day will present himself at your - at my doorstep. Perhaps, though" - his eyes were sharp - "I could use a better word than warning. Warning suggests the ominous, and I don't believe, Miss Venness, that the appearance one day of your ex-fiance would mean the ominous to you." The room was going round her. She felt for the arm of the chair and held it for steadiness. After a moment she said, "I don't understand you.'' "I think you do. I believe in your heart you're not so sure of yourself as you would like to be. I believe that if your ex- fiance walked in now - " ... Knelt beside you, put out his arms, finished Dinah to herself, the ashes would not be white but red., .the fire would not be. dead. She became aware that he was looking at her curiously. She felt that he knew what she had thought. His next words told her he had. "You're not sure, are you, child? Your pride urges you to forget, but your heart falters."

"I - I. - " In her agitation she dropped the case. The two of them bent to pick it up at the same time. Their eyes were level and a few inches apart, blue eyes, red- brown. For a moment they looked at each other and Dinah had the odd feeling that everything that had gone before this moment was tumbling away from her ... that this was a beginning. A beginning of what ? They straightened. He had reached the case first and now he handed it across to her. "Thank you " she blurted with an incoherency that annoyed her. She wheeled round and went to the door. "Good night, Mr. Marlow," she said.

SIX DOMESTIC life at Tallwoods, Dinah told herself the next morning, followed the general pattern of Warrigal itself: it was either up or down. Yesterday everyone and everything had seemed down, as deep down as the deep valleys between the steep hills. But today they were all on a pinnacle. The ascent came suddenly through Timber Marlow, when, sitting down to breakfast, he breezed cheerfully, "Well, kiddies, care to crawl out pf that dark morass? Miss Venness, would you? Would everyone like a holiday this morning to come down to watch die planting of the new trees?" There was a yell of assent. It was like a magic wand waved over them all, marvelled Dinah. One minute scowls, resentment, a feeling of being ill done by, and the next smiles and gratitude and anticipation for what lay ahead. Evidently it was quite a treat to watch the tree-planting. The children chattered excitedly and Mrs. Sullivan promised, "I'll pack a large hamper, you'll get hungry down there." Dinah climbed into Mrs. Marlow's jodhpurs and shirt again - she had sent away for more suitable clothes but did not expect them for some days - and assembled with the children and the hamper on the front steps. She had anticipated that they would walk, as they had walked to the felling, and she looked dubiously at the size of the picnic wherewithal. Presently, however, there was a chug of an engine, and Timber Marlow came round the corner in a Land-Rover. He packed the

hamper and the children in the back seat, and waved to Dinah to seat herself in the front. They were travelling along a narrow track, only wide enough for one vehicle, only negotiable by a high-powered engine such as the Land-Rover possessed. On either side of them were tall trees. They spread a velvet darkness and the wind in them sang in a high prolonged pitch, as though its notes had been trapped in the soaring leaves. Now and then an overflow from one of the waterfalls trickled deeply across the down-slope, but the Land- Rover plodded through unconcerned. Then all at once the trees stopped, the down-slope stopped. They were not at the bottom of the range but in the valley of one of the contributing smaller hills, and over and across the unfolding surface spread the nursery of trees. Dinah looked with delight at the brave little fellows, row upon row of them, young but upthrusting already, pushing towards the sun. Timber explained, "They're yearlings." "They were sown here ?" "Yes, in drills. They were sown very thickly, since a large proportion of seeds never germinate." "Do you buy the seeds?" "We prefer to gather them from the parent tree. We pick and choose the plump, full kernels. Seedlings produced from immature seed are unlikely to survive." "And then?" asked Dinah, still gazing enchanted at the little trees.

"Moist but not wet soil, a sandy blanket, protection when they germinate from drought, wind, rain and vermin, and" - he took out his eternal pipe - "a prayer." "A prayer?" "Nature is fairly lavish in seed provision," he drawled, "but not so lavish in its development." "This valley looks successful enough.'' "Yes, it has done well." Timber opened his door and went round and opened hers. The children had tumbled out on arrival and raced down the valley. "They always adopt a tree," the man explained, "transplant it, tend it, and call it their own." He looked at her. "Would you like a tree?" "Oh, yes." She answered before she thought how foolish that would be. Trees were not a matter of weeks, months, a year, they were a matter of decades ... lifetimes. . . generations. They descended the gentle slopes. "These trees are mountain ash," said Timber Marlow. "Pick yourself a young uprising chap." Dinah chose, and watched the man make a deep spade thrust. He had laid wet bagging ready, and the root ball came out whole, rounded and undisturbed, and went instantly into the soaking hessian. "You'd better mark it, either in your mind or better still on one of its twigs," Marlow advised.

Dinah tore her pink handkerchief and tied a knot on a slender sprig of green growth. The children were selecting their trees and marking them, Peter with a shoelace, Andy with some green string, Keitha with some white material that seemed somehow familiar. The child looked up from her task, saw Dinah's eyes cm her, and reddened. Dinah remembered how Timber Marlow had remarked, when she had thrown away her wedding dress that first day at Tallwoods, that a bower bird probably would pounce cm it. The bower bird's name was Keitha, smiled Dinah to herself. A second Land-Rover had arrived. Men got out with spades and wet hessian, and began to work by Timber's side. They worked as he did, carefully, adeptly, speedily. Within an hour the valley was bare. The trees were packed carefully in trailers that had been pushed between the rows, the trailers shoved up to the track again and hooked on to the Land-Rovers. "We don't waste time once we've dug the fellers," said Timber to Dinah. "We get them in again at once. Round the kids up. Miss Venness, and get back in the Rover." Dinah called "Peter, Keitha, Andrew", and they all climbed in, and Timber started off once more, the trailer of trees dragging behind them, the second Land-Rover with its load behind again. When the Rover came to its halt it was in a saucer between two heights. Across the saucer and up both slopes holes had already been dug some feet apart. The men got to work at once. Dinah watched the careful insertion of the root ball, the assiduous care with which the young tree was set the same depth as it had grown in the nursery, the depression round the plant to collect moisture for

protection in summer months. She looked for a pink bow, then planted her own tree in one of the holes. By the time the children had found and planted their trees, the transplanting was nearly done. She could hardly believe that in so short a while a valley had been robbed, another Valley endowed. "Is it now that we say that prayer?" she asked of Timber Marlow as he straightened his back after the last tree was done. "We say them from beginning to end," he answered a little grimly. "Sometimes I think there are endless enemies against forests. Too much sun, not enough sun, too much rain, not enough rain, too much wind, too much weed, too much vermin; sometimes too much spite and vengeance and human bad seed." "What do you mean ?'5 she asked, puzzled. He was taking out his pipe again. "I hope I never have to show you, Miss Venness. I can understand the course of hate, I know hate myself, but never when the course takes in the wanton destruction of a green living thing." "But - but that doesn't happen ?" "It has," he shrugged. He looked over the valley, over the beautiful and symmetrical rows of little trees. "Let's give it a prayer, shall we?" he said, and he grew silent. Dinah was silent with him. When he moved away, however, she did not move for a while. Here was a strange man, she was thinking, a man who was as hard and tough to the core as these trees when they reached maturity, but who could find time to stop for a prayer.

"Aren't 'you coming, Miss Venness?" he called a little brusquely. "Where?" she asked, wondering if now they were to begin the process all over again. "Lunch," he said, and nodded down the valley to where the men had built a fire and were boiling a battered black billy. "Can't you smell the brew?" he grinned. It was Dinah's first experience of Australian bush tea and it was something she never would forget. You would not have believed, she thought, that such a smoky-looking liquid could taste so ambrosial. Hot, sweet and black she drank it, and was won over. "What is it," she asked, "that makes it taste like this ?" "Gum twigs to boil the water," said Timber, "gum smoke to put a flavour in it that you never get in a sitting-room, and from a silver tea service. Here, get this into you while it's hot." "This" was a piece of damper one of the men had made, topped with a slab of butter Mrs. Sullivan had packed and a thick slice of home sausage. Dinah ate and ate again. She had never been so hungry. When the last crumb was eaten, when the billy was drained, the men lay under the trees, the children wandered off, so after a while Dinah lay back, too. She was soon aware that Timber Marlow was stretched beside her. Through her half-closed lids she saw the great height and bulk of him, but not his face. He had put his wide-brimmed felt hat over that. She thought he slept, and she nearly slept as well. It was the repletion in her, she decided, the heat of high noon, the sweet balm of the drying gum fire, the mountain-fragrant air, the children's distant voices ...

When he spoke, she gave a start. "Sorry, did I wake you?" he asked. "I wasn't asleep, I was just drifting. What did you say, Mr. Marlow?" "I said I'm glad you're seeing all this before you see Ferrell's corner. On the way back, I'll show you a few things more. I don't want Hop Valley to win you over without a little competition from up top." "You mean from the king's castle," she said drowsily. "The king of the castle and the dirty rascal, remember ?" "I remember. I expect you thought that was unforgivable of me. It was, too. I like Ferrell really." Marlow's voice, too, was lazy. "Is Hop Valley very lovely?" asked Dinah conversationally. He came right awake at that. "Why otherwise," he answered promptly, still from under the hat, "am I so anxious to show you around here first ?'5 She opened her eyes and looked at him, wondering what his expression was now under that concealing brim. "I really don't know," she answered. "Why are you so anxious, Mr. Marlow?" He pushed the hat right oft and looked back at her. His red- brown eyes had a quizzical expression. He simply stared at her a long moment and then he said, "It's Tallwoods, of course. I can't stand anyone thinking they can offer competition there."

A little acidly she corrected, "By Tallwoods you mean yourself, don't you? You are Tallwoods. Which means you can't countenance competition, Mr. Marlow." The red-brown eyes had narrowed keenly. "In what?" he demanded at once. "For what prize? What is it that Ferrell and I are competing for, Miss Venness ?" She was annoyed and puzzled that she reddened as she did. There was no reason for her to be disconcerted, but she was. "I meant that you are the mountain and he is the valley," she stammered, "and the mountain believes a valley is a lesser thing." He said the only thing she knew Timber Marlow would say in answer. "It is." There was a short pause. "Nevertheless," he resumed, arms behind his head now, hat thrown aside, "you must find all that out for yourself. You can go tomorrow." This was too much. He had told her she could choose her own relaxation day and now he was allotting a day of his own choice. "I shan't go tomorrow," she decided. "Sorry, Miss Venness, but the arrangements have been made." She sat up, quite angry now. He sat up, too. "I rang Ferrell that you would come down to the Valley with the first hauling load in the morning," he informed.

"You-you what?" "You heard me," was all Timber's reply. She sat very still, holding with the greatest difficulty to her temper. This man was a dictator, a demagogue, she thought. "You - you had no right to do that." "You wanted to go, didn't you?" "I wanted to go in my own chosen time, Mr. Marlow, and you gave me to understand I could do that." "You can next week, all the weeks after, but on this occasion it was my right to tell you when." "How do you mean ?" He had taken out the pipe and now he pointed the stem at her. "You made a slavedriver of me to Ferrell, Miss Venness. You told him I gave you no time off." "I said nothing of the sort, I -" He ignored her as though she had not opened her lips. "For my own protection then I had to allot you a day off at once. I rang this morning. Ferrell wanted to collect you, but I said no." " You said no!" She stared at him in rage and disbelief. He looked steadily back and inclined his dark head. "Look," he pointed out sharply, "I had already been belittled as an employer. Did you believe I'd be further belittled by making him

come up and fetch you? Fetch the unfortunate maiden imprisoned in the castle and unable to get away? Kept under lock and key working her fingers to the bone?" Without warning he took up one of her hands to inspect it. Furiously she drew it back. "I won't go with the haulier." "It's quite comfortable." "I won't go!" she insisted. "I believe you will. There is only one other alternative, you see." "Then I'll go that way." "That way is for me to drive you, which I will if you insist, in spite of the fact that it will be a grave wastage of my time." "I won't go at all." "Ferrell expects you." "Jock will understand," she persisted. "Will he? He'll only understand that I'm the demanding Shylock that you've already cunningly suggested to him; pound-of-flesh Marlow, he'll think." "Don't be so ridiculous." "Don't you be so ridiculous, Miss Venness, as to think I won't insist on you going down to Hop Valley tomorrow. You'll go, my girl, even if I drive you, as I warned, myself." A little wildly she said, "No, I'll travel with the haulier."

"I thought so." He nodded calmly. "I even told Blair. Wilf can pick you up on the return journey. Ferrell will drive you from his gardens as far as the crossroads and you can return with the up-trailer from there." "All worked out," she snapped sarcastically. "You've just seen what system does with a valley of trees; it works with other things as well," he returned. "And other people?" "What people?" "Women," she, said sarcastically. Then she flung intentionally and daringly, "Wives." He was good at managing everything and everybody else, she was thinking, but obviously he had never managed his children's mother. He did^ not answer that. He looked steadily at her, a long moment, and once more she was annoyed at her rising flush. She knew she should not have said what she had. "Will there be room in the truck for the five of us ?" she asked hurriedly. "Who are the five?" "The driver, the children, myself." "It's your day off, the children don't go." "But they'd want to go. They love the valley. Andrew particularly loves it, Mr. Marlow." "They stay behind," he said.

"But-" He was getting to his feet. He put down a lazy hand and drew her up. Further down the valley the men were returning to their LandRover. "What is this, Miss Venness?" he demanded suddenly and harshly. "Is it safety in numbers you're after, or do you feel that keeping a man dangling by surrounding yourself with a pack of frustrating brats will whet his appetite and so hurry the pretty affair?" "You - you're the most abominable man I've ever met!" "So long as I am on understood man it's all I care about at this moment. The children do not go. You do go. You go with Blair, you return with Wilf. All serene, Miss Venness ?" "I-" "All serene?" "Yes," "Good." He gave her a maddening grin, even a paternal shoulder pat, put two fingers in his mouth and emitted a shrill whistle, and from somewhere beyond the tall trees the children appeared. On the way up he stopped to show her the "platypusery". "That is actually its name," he nodded. "The kids and I have created an artificial burrow and an artificial river diverted from one of the creeks. Get some worms, Pete, and see if we can entice Splash out." But Splash, with his duck's bill, furry body and webbed feet, was a shy eater. All Dinah saw was a distant glistening eye and much mud.

"Next time, perhaps," Timber said. When they reached the top, they evened up Splash's bad performance with a visit from Fairy, the children's pheasant, who came to them for spoils from the hamper, and who actually nibbled from Andy's hand. Fairy was brightly banded so that she looked as though she wore bracelets. She stood delicately on tiptoes, stretching her graceful neck, and her colour shone in the afternoon sun. It was a charming performance and a charming scene ... the day had been completely successful from beginning to end. Timber Marlow could not have presented his side of the picture of Warrigal in more attractive sets. For all the beauty, however, Dinah was still seething. As she thanked her employer for the day's outing, her tone was reluctant, and the reluctance showed. It made it no better for her that he noticed her unwillingness and raised those hateful supercilious brows above those taunting red-brown eyes and gave his amused grin.

Dinah had hoped that planting trees side by side, drinking bush tea together, peering into a dark pool for a duck-billed platypus, feeding Fairy little picnic crumbs, might have resulted in a certain camaraderie between the children and their supervisor. She almost thought it had until Timber Marlow broke the news at breakfast the next morning that Miss Venness was having a day in Hop Valley, but that they, the children, were remaining here. Andy merely looked wistful, Peter bitterly disappointed, but Keitha was really incensed.

"Why can't we go ? We won't be any trouble." "I just told you, Keitha, Miss Venness goes, you remain here." "But-" "Enough, miss." Timber finished his meal, threw down his napkin, and pushed away his chair. "Blair will toot you in half an hour, Miss Venness," he said. When he had gone, Dinah faced three pairs of eyes, wistful, disappointed, furiously angry. "There's pastures in Hop Valley," regretted Andy. "Blair's the nice driver," despaired Pete, "who always lets me hold the wheel." "Hop Valley," choked Keitha, and she could say no more. Dinah wanted to assure them that this was their father's doing, not hers, that given her way they ail would have gone along. She could not do that, however. It did not seem quite loyal to her to sympathize with these children against their parent, even though in her heart she knew sympathy was there. With a little sigh because of the see-saw of amicability that was right down to earth on her side again, Dinah went in and dressed. She came out at Blair's toot, pulling a short middy coat over her blouse and skirt. She tied a handkerchief peasant-wise over her head, waved to the watching children and received only one wave, Andy's, in return, and went down to the semitrailer. It was very roomy in the cabin, there would have been ample space for them all.

Blair cleared Tallwoods' private track, then started down the paved public road. Dinah wondered what to call him. Was Blair his Christian name or surname? As she thought it over he said, "If you're cold, Miss Venness, there's a rug there." "How do you know my name?" she asked, availing herself of the rug. He grinned at that. "A mountain of men and one eligible woman. How wouldn't we know it, do you think?" "Another thing" - he negotiated the huge semi-trailer round a tortuous bend - "there's been a few bets on you, so we had to have your name." "Bets?" she queried. "Australians bet on a fly on the wall, didn't you know that? This speculation was whether you'd stop on at Warrigal or not." A warning notice: "SLOW DOWN: SOUND HORN" slackened their pace, and Blair's long linger found and rested on the alarm until the curve was behind them again. "Six before you, Miss Venness," he said, "so the odds are against you. I took a long shot, however. I had my money on you. Be a good girl and earn me some extra dough." Dinah could not help laughing. For a moment she thought of trying to pump him as she had tried to pump Mrs. Sullivan.

Blair, however, carried the bulk of the conversation and there was no opportunity to fit any probing in. They were descending steeply now. Dinah thought of the return trip and asked a little nervously if the trailers had trouble in ascending this range. "They're highly-powered. Have to be. Everything in this corner has to be strong." "Strong and tough," Dinah said. They were nearly at the bottom. One of the tangled skeins of the river she had seen from Tallwoods met them and flowed along with the curves of the road. "The kids come down with me sometimes and have a picnic here," said Blair. "One of the up-men takes them back with him in the afternoon." She looked at the clear water, the little reaches of white beach, and decided to ask Timber if she could go with the children one day soon. It might bring back the camaraderie she believed she almost had won yesterday, and then lost. They were now through the Valley and on to the flats. The great semi-trailer, lumbering along the meandering, river- bordered road, passed little homesteads, cows almost chest- deep in lush grassland, fields of sunflowers, plantations of something she could not recognize, and which Blair said was tobacco. Almost at once her attention was attracted by gardens with networks of overhead wires. "The hops," nodded her driver. "And if you look as far as you can along the road, you'll see another road join it. That's the crossroad."

He drove a few minutes, his eyes strained. "And your chauffeur, Miss Venness," he announced, "is already there." Jock got out of his estate wagon as the trailer halted. The men exchanged a few words, Blair accepted a cigarette, then he started off again. "Wilf passes here at four sharp," he called as he went. "I'll deliver her back," promised Jock Ferrell. As soon as the truck turned, along with the river, around the next bend, Jock smiled at Dinah and gave her a light kiss. It was such a friendly happy kiss she knew she could not reproach him. She climbed into the wagon beside him and they setoff. No wonder, thought Dinah, looking with enchantment around her, Timber Marlow had seen competition in Hop Valley, and been anxious to display the beauties of "up top". This was smiling country, sweet, peaceful, drowned in its petals of yellow sunflowers, singing with the rippling gurgle of its skein of streams. They turned presently into a long curved drive bordered with poplars. The house at the end of the drive was old and mellow brown. "Perhaps I should have told you," said Jock, leaning across her and unlatching the wagon door, "that I'm here on my own." "You don't run this place alone?" He smiled. "No, I have three permanents in the hop-gardens and tobacco plantation, and old Thomas does the chooks and two cows. I

really meant the house itself, Dinah; I have no housekeeper, I do for myself. It was my parents' house. They are English but they emigrated out here. When my sister married during a trip home, they went back to live in England again so as to be close to her. They have visited me twice since, and when we met on the plane I was returning from a visit to them." He helped her out, and remarked, "They're still one visit up on me, but I'm hoping that my next won't be too far distant, and that when I go I can show them my - wife." "Well, I hope that, too, Jock," said Dinah encouragingly. "Do you?" he said, hesitated a moment, then invited her, "Come and see the house." Inside was a little shabby, but it was the attractive mellow shabbiness of old age. Good things had been bought to start with, thought Dinah, and rather than lose, the house had improved with the years. She wandered from corner to corner, charmed with the quiet simplicity, the accent on comfort. She was standing at die muslindraped window .... Who kept the curtains so white and crisp? she wondered ... watching a frog on the sill outside who had hopped up and then stayed on in porcelain immobility, when Jock called her to lunch. One glance at the deftly-laid table left her no query as to the drapes. Jock had done them, of course. This cloth was as white and crisp as the muslin, and on it were a dish of pink ham, a bowl of tossed salad, a pyramid of strawberries, jugs of cream. "Everything is lovely, Jock," she praised.

"I wanted it to be. I wanted you to see what a useful man about the house I would make." His eyes sought hers. When they had finished eating, Dinah suggested doing the dishes. "Thomas will do that." "Then you'll spoil your reputation of managing alone." "I never wanted that reputation," he said seriously. "I have no ambition to keep it. Like to hear more on that theme, Dinah ?" "No," she answered in a hurry once more, "not now." They wandered outdoors again. At once Dinah was sharply aware of the Warrigal Range. "Yes," nodded Jock, "it haunts us, it dominates us, wherever we turn it's there. Down here, too, Dinah, one is more conscious of the sky, framed as it is by those encircling heights." They stood for a while, then moved further afield. "Come and I'll show you how I would find enough money to go back to England next year and take along my new bride," said Jock, and he took her arm in his. The hop-garden was an intriguing place. It consisted of vast networks of intricately strung wires, supported by a forest of twentyfoot-high poles which extended over acres of rich flat. "That's the overhead trellis system," Jock explained, pointing to the ingenious lacing and bracing, criss-crossing and patterning of wires. "The hop is a Jack's beanstalk for growth. It can climb sixteen feet in as many days."

"The picking is in autumn, isn't it? I might apply for a job," laughed Dinah. "You'll have to pick a hundred pounds for two pounds," Jock warned her. He was silent a long moment. "Thinking of abandoning Tallwoods, Dinah?" he queried at length. "I believe Tallwoods might abandon me," she replied. "Anything wrong?" "No, but-" Before she could go on, he said hopefully. "Well, if that happens, I have another scheme for you." He looked at her closely. "And it has nothing," he said succinctly, "to do with canteens or hops." His hand was on her shoulder, lightly but intentionally. She knew he was going to say something else, and she bent quickly to pick a stem of bitter-grass. When she straightened she saw that he had decided to abide by her wish this time, and that he was looking at his watch. "That's been the quickest five hours of my life, Dinah," he said ruefully. "We'll have to push off now, if you're to be picked up by Wilf at four." When they reached the crossroad, Dinah said, "It might have been your quickest five hours, Jock, but I can assure you it's been my most pleasant." He looked at her eagerly; it seemed this time that he would speak whether she liked it or not, and she was sorry she had put her appreciation in just those words. Then there was the distant lumbering of a semi-trailer, the nearer sounding of a horn, and Wilf, as big and brawny and friendly as Blair had been, was pulling up,

opening the door, accepting a cigarette, calling "So long, Ferrell," at the same time as Dinah called "Good-bye, and thank you, Jock." They spun along the flat by the meandering river, they passed the children's picnic spot, they started to ascend. Wilf was as voluble as Blair had been, and as impossible to pump which reminded Dinah that she had not pumped Jock; the day had gone too fast. Wilf let her out at the first gates, waving aside her thanks and grinning. "Only girl, bar old Sully, in fifteen miles, and you thank we, Miss Venness." Dinah waved to him and walked towards the house, At the second gate she had an odd feeling that something was wrong. It was absurd, it had no foundation, and yet the unpleasant feeling persisted. Somewhere, something had gone wrong. She hurried her steps. Peter? Keitha? Andrew? - At the thought of Andy she knew a strange foreboding, almost a presentiment. Not realizing it, she began to run. She ran straight into someone, into Timber Marlow. Head down, blind with unreasonable agitation, she had not seen him standing in her path. He had put his hands out to break the impact, and they were cool on her arms, and for a while they held her there. "What's the hurry. Miss Venness?" he demanded. "Don't tell me Jock Ferrell frightened you so much you ran away?" She was breathing unevenly. Although the man's cool words had assured her there could have been nothing tragic happening, nevertheless the odd foreboding, the presentiment, still was there. And it was still Andy... little gentle Andy....

"Andrew ..." she whispered. "What about Andrew?" "I had a feeling... I thought something seemed wrong ... I thought of him." "Andrew is well." She let out a little sigh of relief. "And Keitha? Peter?" "The same." "Then - then I imagined it all. I'm sorry, Mr. Marlow." She went as though to escape from his hands. He still held her, however. "It appears," he said drily, "we have a Sybil, not a Dinah, in our midst. Where did you get that sixth sense. Miss Venness?" "Then something is wrong?" "Not with the children, not with any of us." Her eyes questioned him at once, and he answered almost expressionlessly. "The trees," he said. "Not - not the little new fellows?" Unconsciously she had adopted his name for tie yearlings. "Yes, Miss Venness."

"But it hasn't been too hot or too cold or too windy." "There was another hazard, remember? Vengeance, spite, human bad seed." "You mean-" "Yes, I mean they're all dead." "But-but how-?" The man shrugged. "The valley in which we planted them is not just around the corner, remember. After planting it's not necessary to look them over more than once or twice a week. Naturally we would not look them over the very next day - any lumberman would be well aware of that." "Any lumberman - ?" echoed Dinah questioningly. He did not answer her question. He said brusquely, "Come and see for yourself." They descended the valley in the Land-Rover; they descended in silence this time. i

When Dinah came to the planting she gave a cry; she could not help it. It was like a battlefield. Everywhere lay mutilated little trees, cut, severed, torn up, trampled, not one warrior left undestroyed. They had made such a gallant show, the row upon row of them; one had worn a shoelace, one a piece of green string, one some filmy white material, one a scrap of pink lawn. The little trees, two hundred strong of them, now battered and dead. "Could one man do this?" she disbelieved.

"He had yesterday after we left; he had today." "Do - you think it was one man?" The answer was unadorned. "Yes." "Do you think you know the man?" Again the unadorned answer. "Yes." "What will you do. Timber?" She was not aware that she Spoke the name by which everyone, even the children, addressed him. He did not appear to notice either. He stood silent and absorbed. "What will you do?" she said again. For a long moment he did not reply, and looking at his hard, set, ruthless almost cruel face, that Red Indian face, Dinah felt herself shiver. "Nothing," he answered shortly. "Nothing?" The man turned back to the Land-Rover. He had gone a few steps before he added, "Nothing at once." He got into the vehicle and waited for Dinah to climb unaided beside him. They started up the hill. It was not until they reached the stone steps of the house that Timber Marlow finished what he had to say. He said briefly, but not less forcefully for the brevity, "He'll keep."

At no time was there any doubt in Dinah's mind as to whom Timber Marlow had meant when he had flung savagely "He'll keep." Clem Mathieson, of course. Ben White seconded this during the week. She had gone down to watch the felling again, this time by herself. Though she would not have admitted it, there was something that fascinated, enthralled and excited her in that virile, manly, powerful handling of the trees. Ben, hat over his eyes, tally sheet under arm, came and stood beside her. "The trees are going too fast for my liking, Miss Venness. Orders are pouring in, Timber'll be hard put to keep up the equivalent planting - especially after this week's show." "It was bad, wasn't it, Ben?" "Very bad, Miss Venness." "Was it - him?" she asked. "Clem Mathieson? I've no doubt of it." "Then why doesn't Timber do something? Take proceedings?" "The trees are gone. No matter how the proceedings turned out, it couldn't bring them back. Besides, we have no proof." "But we know in our hearts." "We know all right."

"And Mr. Marlow will simply leave it at that?" Dinah had not forgotten Timber's ominous, "He'll keep", but she wanted to hear Ben's version. The man tilted the hat to the back of his head. "Timber will not," was all he said, but like Timber's reply that evening it had an ominous sound. An answer had come from the aunts. It had sounded mildly startled at Dinah's turn of events, but undismayed. "Your letter was readdressed from Lilac Hill to Chilsey Grove, Dinah. We can't believe we have our little home at last." A description followed ... the view of hills, lakes and downs ... the laburnum tree ... the beds already under plants. Then the aunts said: ."We were very surprised to learn you and Kevin were not married yet. Perhaps we would have worried if your letter had not sounded so reassuring, dear, so unmistakably the evidence of a contented and unregretful mind. Oddly enough, we were more at ease than before your letter came, when we were alt on edge so much that we even wrote out to Kevin to tell him to take the very best care of our little girl." - Just what Timber Marlow had foreseen, Dinah recalled, and she shrugged. The next passage made her bite her lip. Then she thought reasonably, What difference could it make whether Kevin knew where she was, or not? For Aunts Sarah, Mildred and Emily wrote: "Soon after your letter arrived, Kevin answered ours to him, the one reminding him to look after our Dinah, and in it he begged for your

present address. We have given it to him, Dinah. It's best for you to be quite certain over everything, darling, and certainty can only be won by facing right up to things, you know that." They returned, as if with relief, to the laburnum and the plants once more. But Dinah returned to the part about Kevin asking and receiving her address. Timber Marlow had said he would, and he had given his reasons. He had been right in the first, but his reasoning had been very wrong. Kevin was not interested any more, would not even be "flattered" by her coming to Australia as Timber had claimed he would, and he would not come to her. She had put the letter down, taken it up again. Why had Kevin asked for her address, though? And if he did come, how was she to handle it? And if he did not come, could she honestly say she did not care? With the letter had arrived her packages of clothes. Intentionally she had opened them in Keitha's presence, hoping once more to win over the little girl. No woman on earth, from tender years to advanced age, is entirely indifferent to clothes, Dinah had thought. It's the eternal Eve in them, and like it or not Keitha is feminine, and willingly or unwillingly she will give in. Keitha did not give in. She gave a quick look, then averted her head. When Dinah glanced at her she saw the little stubborn bottom lip, the obstinate small chin. Ever since the Hop Valley outing, both she and Pete had been as cold to Dinah as upon her arrival. The supervisor was right back, she thought ruefully, where she had begun. She was holding up the new clothes during lessons recess, When Timber Marlow walked down the veranda. "I see your orders have arrived," he commented lazily.

"Just what I wanted, and a good quality. I'm really satisfied." "You sound surprised. What did you expect in this crude country, something fashioned out of a flour bag?" She flushed. "If I sounded surprised, it was because of the more than prompt service, Mr. Marlow." She kept folding, wishing he would walk on. He did not. "How are the children?" "Working well." "I didn't mean that, I meant are they still holding it against you that you went down to Hop Valley and they stayed at home?'' "Well-" she evaded. He looked at her steadily. She knew she had to make a reply. She did by saying brightly, too brightly, "All's well with Andy's little world." "I wasn't including Andy when I said 'the children'. I knew I needn't give his behaviour a second thought." He took out his pipe. "So they're still sulking. Very well, we'll give them more reason to gloom. This afternoon I'm to pick up some apples for Mrs. Sullivan. Be ready to come with me after lunch." She opened her mouth to protest, to reason, to appeal, to cajole, to beg for him to include the children, but as quickly as he had come down the veranda he went.

After lunch she put on her new thick skirt and pulled on a new dark blue blazer. She came out oh the veranda and a few moments afterwards Timber came round in the wagon. She got in and they started off, the gate ritual was accomplished, and presently they were out on the open road. Presently, because this man knew everything she knew herself, because she remembered her relief that night of speaking honestly with him, she told him of the aunts' letter and how they had admitted they had told Kevin her address. He said the only thing she should have known he would say, a cool, casual, unsurprised, "I told you that." She was silent a moment. "You're always right, aren't you, Mr. Marlow?" "Yes, I am." "But you're not right over what else you said," she added a little heatedly, irritated with his calm self-satisfaction. "That the fellow promptly will follow you up here?" "Yes." He put his tongue in his cheek. It gave him a hatefully patronizing look. "Before you make any rash statement, wait and see, Miss Venness. Another thing - " he got it in before she could answer his statement. She looked at him in cold enquiry.

"You're not sure in your own mind," he suggested deliberately, "whether you want him to come, or not. You can't say for certain that if he does not come you won't care." It was almost as though he had read her thoughts, read every word and syllable of them, the thought that had nagged at her as she had put down the aunts' letter. She was sorry now she had told him her news. She had done it to unburden herself, but the burden was still there. Nearing Plateau, he slackened speed, and it became obvious he was going to stop. With a murmured word to her, he got out at the first hotel and strode through to the back courtyard. He returned almost at once. He did this at the other Plateau hotel, then came back once more. They drove out of the small town, and the estate wagon gathered speed and made short time of the miles. Soon they were among the orchards; he chose a small, neat white homestead, then took her in with him to select the fruit. It was cold and fragrant in the apple cellar, and Dinah accepted a nutty red-skin from the orchardist and bit into the white, crisp yet mellowed flesh. The sua came through the iron bars in violet slats, it made a sort of violet nimbus. The sweetness of the apples was everywhere, it seemed almost a caress. Dinah half shut her eyes, feeling a sudden uprush of inexplicable happiness. It was odd, she thought, it was something she could never hope to explain, to express, but all at once she knew a sort of heavenly bliss. She opened her eyes again and saw that Timber Marlow had moved nearer to her, that he was watching her closely. "Seek-No-Further," his lips framed unmistakably - and she knew he was not telling her the name of the apple she held in her hand ... that he was saying something else. ... She looked back at him with a half

question, but he was munching an apple himself now, directing the orchardist, blotting out the violet nimbus with his great frame, taking up the large crate as though it was a slab of butter and carrying it out to the car. In the orchard, Dinah noticed that the apple trees now had leaf buds, that they were like spatters of pale green rain. She drew Timber's attention to them, but he scarcely answered. His thoughts seemed elsewhere. "Are we going home now?" she asked. "Not directly. I'll look in at Windyup." "For more apples ?" He did not speak for a moment. Then he said shortly. "No, for a drink." So that was it. She had felt, when he had stopped at both hotels at Plateau, that there had been more to this afternoon than the purchase of a crate of fruit. He was looking for somebody, and by the hardness to his mouth it could only be one person. She sat back, a little dismayed. What was to happen now? she asked herself. Nothing happened at Windyup, but at Kurrabundi, ten miles out again, he stopped the car once more at the small country inn. "Care for a drink?" "No." "Here the women join the men in the courtyard behind the pub."

He looked at her contemplatively a moment, then got out. "I'll said a waiter." "I don't want anything." He did not answer, but turned and strode into the hall. From somewhere behind the old-fashioned stone building, Dinah could hear a lot of noise. It made her very curious. Almost she felt like changing her mind and racing after Timber after all, just to find out what the noise was all about. She was still pondering over the excited babble, the following silence shattered by a somehow familiar ringing, and then the resultant applause, when a waiter appeared with a glass of lemonade. She accepted it and thanked him. "Not coming in?" he asked. "It's worth seeing, you know." "What is worth seeing?" "It's a wood-chopping contest, miss, you'll never experience anything like an Australian wood chop in all the world." She drank the lemonade quickly, gave the waiter the glass, and followed him through the hotel to the courtyard at the rear. A small crowd had gathered in a circle. A heat was about to start. The waiter gave her a chair to stand on and helped her up. She was just in time to see the starter settling himself with stop-watch and flag to signal the contestants to begin. They differed vastly in height, she noticed, but they did not differ very much in build. They were all thick-chested but narrow-waisted, lean of hip, massive of arm, their hands almost expressive in the looseness of Angers and wrist.

They wore black singlets and white slacks. The stark difference of the black and white was complemented by the silver-sharp gleam of their axes held in readiness for the starter's sign. Here and there along the line a contestant quickly reassured himself of his axe's edge by running cautious fingers over the blade, several held up the head and squinted along the shining length. Dinah's eyes dropped to the individual logs waiting to be cut. They were thick and tough and formidably large. The waiter, who was enjoying her interest, told her with a, wink, "If any of these boys' wives ask them for firewood you can't see them for dust, and I don't mean sawdust, miss. There they go now. Keep your eye on the last starter, he's an up and coming lad." He was indeed. Dinah watched him, fascinated, as his axe flashed through the air and made telling bites into the massive log. He started at twenty, but by the time most of the logs were half through and the contestants reversing their positions on the cutting-blocks, he was reversing with them. He put his final cut in three ahead of the second-best man. Dinah, as excited as she ever had been excited, clapped with the crowd - then feeling a little foolish and conspicuous up on the chair turned to clamber down. Before she could do so, two big "arms lifted her bodily, held her aloft a long, deliberate, ostentatious moment, then placed her on her feet. The hands remained there until she slid from their grasp. She looked up into the eyes of the man she had sensed Timber Marlow really had been looking for this afternoon in spite of his quest for apples. "How do you do, Mr. Mathieson," she said. The man was looking down at her with frank and rather insolent interest. His fleshy face was good-looking in a lax sort of way. The lips were self-indulgent,

she thought, and there was a greediness about the cut of his thick jaw. "So you remember me, Miss Venness." He seemed pleased about that, but Dinah was displeased with herself that she had not been quick enough to feign forgetfulness. However, it was too late now. She saw that he wore the black singlet and white pants of the woodchop contestants. His eyes followed the direction of hers, and he said boastfully, "Yes, I've chopped once, won easily, and now I cut again in the Final. You can put all your money on me, Miss Venness, I'm the best man in these parts." "And how long have you been in these parts, Mathieson?" They both turned round at the voice. Marlow had come as silently as though he had "appeared" there. He had pushed his soft felt hat over one temple and its wider than usual brim almost hid his dark Indian face. You could see only part of the glint of the reddish-brown eyes, the features beneath were hard and stern. He looked directly at the younger man and waited for his reply. Clem Mathieson took out his cigarettes. He took his time in lighting one and his time in answering. "Can't remember rightly. Any particular reason for asking, Marlow?" "Yes, I have a feeling you were in other parts some days ago." "You have?" "I've said so. I happen to have lost a valley of yearling trees."

The younger man's eyes were narrowed behind the cigarette smoke now. "Too bad for you, Marlow," he replied casually, and he exhaled. "Yes, it was bad for me, but it's also going to be bad for someone else." "Anyone particular in mind?" "Yes." "Do I know him?" "You know him all right, Mathieson." Marlow straightened as though wearied of the cross-talk. He seemed to stretch an inch. "Do we argue it here, or would you prefer somewhere else?" he said. There was the sound of activity in the ring. Clem Mathieson picked up his axe. For a moment he hesitated, then he wheeled round to Marlow. "We'll argue it there if you like," and he jerked his thumb. Timber did not answer, and instantly Mathieson jeered, "What's stopping you, Marlow? They'll find another log if you say the word. Is it making a fool of yourself in front of the girlfriend that's keeping you mum?" He turned to Dinah. "He has, the reputation of being a good cut. I wouldn't know myself." Marlow said quietly but tightly, "You'd know if I took you up, Math." "What's to prevent it ?" "I haven't an axe."

"I can set you up, then. I'm always in readiness for an emergency like this. I can't set you up in clothes, though. I doubt" - the thickish lip curled - "if you'd wear mine, anyway. But the axe is there - sir" There was a short silence. Dinah wanted to pull Timber's sleeve and say, "Don't be silly, leave him alone, ignore him, don't take the challenge, it's absurd." For a moment she thought that he felt that way, too, then abruptly he began pulling off his coat, unbuttoning his shirt, taking off his hat. He almost threw the three at her, then turned on Mathieson. "The axe." "Right here." The man handed it across. Marlow ran his fingers quickly over it. There wasn't any time- for close examination, the extra block had been set up for him, the log rolled ready, the men were in place. For an infinitesimal moment, however, he hesitated, almost as though he had discovered something he did not care about, and then the starter was calling the names and the crowd was parting to let the last two contestants through. Dinah did not climb up on the chair this time. She felt a little sick. She heard the signal being given and the axes begin to ring. It was not a handicap, it was an open contest, and the best man would win. The best man, she thought . . . and then she thought of Mathieson, fleshy-faced, thick-lipped, and for a moment she shut her eyes. Then she heard the crowd gasping, and unable to stand apart any longer she posed on her toes to peer between the heads. Two of the seven men had left behind the rest of the contestants as though the other five were not cutting at all. The men were Mathieson and Marlow, and their axes were falling and rising to a

rhythm as though they were only one axe; neither was a stroke ahead, a stroke behind. One side of Mathieson's log was finished now, he was reversing his position. There was a thinnish smile on his lips. Timber had dropped slightly behind. He seemed worried somehow. In another moment Dinah knew why. Without any warning his axe head swung from its handle and spun to the ground. She heard the crowd's "Oh" as it appeared to miss the axeman's foot by the merest fraction of an inch. The contest broke up then. The other contestants, well behind, rested on their axes. Mathieson gave a few desultory strokes, then stopped. He still wore the thin smile. "Bad luck, Marlow. You might have caught up, have managed second-best, even if I was leaving you standing." Timber said nothing. He threw the axe handle to the ground, then he turned and took the clothes that Dinah held out to him. Without waiting to put them on, without an answering word, he walked out of the courtyard towards the estate wagon. Dinah followed him silently, very puzzled. She knew the result of the duel had been disappointing to him, but it seemed strange to her for a man of Marlow's very definite character to accept the enforced defeat without some protest, without a future challenge, without even an examination of the axe that had not only let him down but nearly severed his foot. He was in no mood to be questioned about it, however. She could see that, so she got in silently beside him, and remained silent. He started the engine and was away before any of the crowd could trickle out of the yard. He drove furiously for a mile or so, then more steadily though still quite fast.

She did not dare look at him. She could sense he was in a dark rage. When he stopped the car abruptly a few minutes later she wished she had looked at him, for then she would have seen the pallor around his lips, the sharp lines from nose to mouth that could indicate only one thing, extreme pain. "Do you drive?" he asked sharply. "I have driven, but not a car like this, not country like this." "Drive," he said briefly, and he moved across from the seat behind the wheel. "Mr. Marlow," she blurted, "is anything wrong?" "Just get me home, Dinah; it doesn't matter if you crawl, but do it, there's a good girl." It was the first time he had called her by her name, thrown her any encouragement. It gave her an odd feeling. It also emboldened her to argue. "Shouldn't we see a doctor?" "Drive," he flung, all the appeal gone from him now, only dominance there, and gingerly, carefully, she felt out the controls, and moved the car slowly along the road. She expected him to criticize, but he never said a word. Once or twice she took her eyes from the road and looked at him quickly. The pallor was almost gone, he appeared better, almost normal, but his fingers, she noticed, were so tight that die knuckles above them showed white and drained of blood. As they approached Plateau he directed her to a house. "Wait here," he said, and he opened the wagon door and walked down the short drive.

She got out to look at the brass plate on the gate. "Doctor Feniston," she read. She went up the drive after Marlow. Quietly, deliberately, but determinedly she said, "The doctor will want help removing your shoe, Mr. Marlow." "There's nothing wrong with my shoe." "I know, but there's a lot wrong with the toe under the shoe. That often happens. It's the impact, not the actual cut." She put her finger on the bell and kept it there. "Why didn't you have it attended to at the hotel?" she asked. "And give him the satisfaction of seeing some of what he had planned come off?" "You don't think," she said aghast, "that he did it deliberately, that he wanted to sever your foot?" "What do you think?" he flung back violently. "I felt something was wrong when I handled the axe. Fool that I was, I thought if I questioned it, it might look like a retreat on my part." "So you went on, hoping to win with something you had your doubts about?" "Hoping!" - his lip curled - "I never hope, Miss Venness. I know I'm always the better axe, the better man." As he said it he winced with pain. The king of the castle again, Dinah thought impulsively; would anything ever humble this arrogant, self-satisfied man? Even pain did not humble him, it seemed . . . and pain it must have been, for Dinah saw die doctor's shocked face when between them they removed the shoe. The sock was full of blood and when the sock was cut off the toe was literally hanging. Dinah had to hold right to her self-control not to run from the room.

Marlow sat quite impassive, however, as uninterested in the whole procedure as though it was not being done to him at all. The doctor kept grumbling and berating him as he worked. "Shouldn't have moved from the pub, you fool, Timber ... why didn't you send for me to come, not come to me . . .? You'll have to go straight home, you know, and lie up." "I'll go home, but I won't lie up." The doctor evidently considered further battle, then with a shrug he gave in. "Sit round the veranda, then, and watch Miss Venness teach. If she does a good job at it as she's done helping me sew back a toe that you deserve to lose anyway, you pigheaded fool, it'll be worth it. Miss Venness, if he throws you out, you can apply for a post here." ''You're a bit late, Doc," drawled Timber Marlow. "She's already been signed up for the hops." His head turned to Dinah. "Or did you do better than snare a picking allocation, Miss Venness?" The injury was bound up. Carrying his shoe, Timber Marlow brushed aside offers of help and walked back unaided to the car. He took the driver's seat this time, answering Dinah's timid "I can drive" with a rude and deliberate "Do you think so? I don't." She sat back offended, but it was wasted on the man beside her, for he was concentrating on spinning along the plateau, climbing the mountain, weaving round the twists of Tallwoods' private road as fast as he safely could. He stopped at the gates and she got out and opened them. When he came to the house he got out himself, however; nodding towards the driver's seat, he said tersely, though still not betraying his pain and discomfort, "Put her away, Miss Venness."

She watched him climb to the veranda, proud, straight, unhumbled as ever. He had been defeated this afternoon, but she could see that he was not the loser. And the dissension had not been settled ... the battle was not finished. Of this Dinah was sure.

SEVEN DINAH had not thought that Timber Marlow would take any notice of Doctor Feniston's advice to "sit round the veranda and watch Miss Venness teach." To her surprise, however, the next morning he was there in a chair, with a stool for his foot, a paper to read... but he did not read. He joined in with the lessons, and after a few moments of embarrassment and wishing he would rest up in some other place, Dinah accepted him as she accepted Peter, Keitha and Andy. Indeed, like the children, she began to enjoy his being there. He was a fillip to learning, that much was apparent. The twins vied with each other to do good work, Andy positively glowed in his presence, and Dinah thought ruefully that Mr. Marlow must be assuming that hers was always an easy and pleasant task like this. The three children were devoted to their father, that stood out indisputably. Why, then, puzzled Dinah, returning again to her old theme, did two of them want to leave Tallwoods? Be educated away from here? She was quite certain now that she herself was not the bugbear . . . none of the supervisors had been that. Rather had they been the means towards an end, an end that had not come about for all the twins' deliberate naughtiness. The twins had hoped, by expending supervisor after supervisor, that their father would weary of the process and eventually send them away instead. The scheme had failed. They were still here. Six women had torn their hair in frustration and hurriedly departed, and now the seventh was trying her luck. Would she succeed? Or would she, too, collapsing under the final straw of some childish devilry, follow the others ?

And why, when they obviously loved their father, when they undoubtedly loved their home, did they work so wickedly to bring all this about? However, as each day now became smoother than the day before, as everything seemed more amicable, Dinah began to hope that the situation might be altering after all. Of course, Timber's presence was a talisman against bad behaviour, but all the same the twins did seem more friendly towards her of late. They even made a few tentative gestures to which she made instant response. "I'm winning," she told her reflection jubilantly in the mirror one evening. "They might not yet be up to liking me, but they have accepted me, and that's only a small pace behind. I really believe that, even if Timber was not there watching us, they would be the same as they are now." At the end of the week which was evidently all the resting the patient intended allowing himself, Timber announced his complete satisfaction within the children's hearing. "You've all worked well," he praised. "Do we get a reward?" asked Keitha instantly. "The joy of a job well done should be reward enough, but I'm so pleased with you I will reward you. I'll reward you with tomorrow off." Timber turned to Dinah. "A holiday to a child is the same thrill whether the school is boarding, day, or the corner of a verandah at the very end of the world." "This is not the end of the world."

"You haven't found it so, Miss Venness?" Dinah almost could have said that his voice was eager, but his eyes, as they probed hers, were unrevealing as ever. "The top of the world, perhaps," she amended, a little embarrassed. "Can we go on a picnic on our holiday?" Once again, of course, that was Keitha. "Would you like a picnic?" "Oh, yes, Timber." Keitha was so ready with her assurance that for a brief mistrustful moment Dinah wondered if the good behaviour had had only this picnic in view right from the start. But no, she reproached herself, she must not question the twins' improvement like this. Keitha's eyes were signalling Peter's now. Peter, obedient to the signal, announced, "We want Miss Venness to come as well." Dinah looked quickly to the little girl and Keitha nodded shyly. Flushed with pleasure and a little triumph, Dinah responded, "Thank you, I would like that, too." Little Andy beamed. Only Timber Marlow of the small group remained patently unimpressed. "Everyone seems intent on loving everyone," he remarked sardonically. "What is all this?" Dinah could have shaken him. The first steps to friendship, she thought, are delicate steps, they can't stand any setback, Timber must have seen her annoyance, for he said at once, "Far be it from me to interfere in a new beautiful understanding, however" his voice held unconcealed doubt - "in which case you may have the 'Rover tomorrow, kids, and Miss Venness will drive."

Dinah looked at him in surprise at that. She had not forgotten. his sarcastic retort after they had come from Doctor Feniston's. She had offered helpfully "I can drive", and he had come back quickly "Do you think so? I don't." He grinned now at her look, then shrugged. "You should make allowances for pain, Miss Venness. I happened to be in pain when I spoke like I did." "So you took it out on me?" she asked. "Yes." There was a slight pause. "I think," Dinah told him a little diffidently but very earnestly, "that refusing pain is foolish; it's better to accept, and to accept with it sympathy and loving care." "Is it too late to accept now? And are you applying for the position of caring, by any chance ?" he enquired. She flushed at that. Although she had said the words, she had not meant them as they had sounded. He looked at her with amusement. "Never mind, child," he cheered, "I won't take you up on it. To be frank, your driving passed muster. I have full confidence in your taking the kids tomorrow. No need to worry over licences, either. I rang Warrigal Police, explained that you had driven in the U.K., and got an O.K. in return." When he had gone, the children were still eager and friendly. "Can we go down to Hop River, Miss Venness?" begged Keitha. "Is that the picnic spot I passed on the way to Mr. Ferrell's?"

"Yes," said Peter, "our spot. Do you think you could manage the drive, Miss Venness?" "Of course she could," said Keitha. "Timber thinks so, so she must. Anyway, I think so, too." This was all Dinah needed. That night she did not say to the mirror "I'm winning," she said, "I've won. I'm liked as well as accepted. It's been hard but I've come through in the end." Poor Dinah.

It proved a beautiful morning. Although they were only a few weeks from Christmas, there was none of the heat that Dinah had been given to expect from Australia at Christmas- tide. But of course, it being so elevated, there would seldom be those extreme temperatures here in the range. When Timber Marlow had seen Dinah's cards enclosed in air mail envelopes, his brows had risen. "Christmas crept up on me," she had admitted. "I was too late to post by surface." "That sounds as though time isn't dragging up here at Tallwoods." His eyes as before had probed hers. She had not replied. If she had, she thought, she would have surprised him with her enthusiasm. It's not dragging, she would have said, it's going on wings - magic wings. Especially now that I've won the children at last. As they stored the hamper in the Land-Rover, as they climbed in, her heart was gay.

Mrs. Stillivan waved good-bye and they set off down the track. Peter took over the gate ritual, but at the last gate there was no need for him to climb out and attend to it. Someone else had it open, and he signalled that he would shut it again as soon as they had passed through* "Have a good day," Timber Marlow called. "Good-bye, Timber," they shouted back. Dinah planned secretly, now that her footing with the children was such a firm one, to propose one day that they change that Timber to Father or Dad. They met the main road, and Dinah cautiously descended, taking care to put her finger on the horn whenever a signpost ordered it, edging carefully past the climbing lumber lorries, taking no liberties with the steep turns. Down below them, Hop Valley almost seemed to be made of air. It materialized, however, as they came nearer the bottom. When Dinah caught the glimpse of the little bitten-in white beach and smelled the air of river, cows and broken stems, she knew they were almost there. She slackened speed and did not need Peter's and Keitha's "To the left, Miss Venness" to turn in under the willows and bring the 'Rover to a halt on the grassy bank. The children tumbled out, pleased at the visit of a curious cow, her head framed in leaves, her jaws moving to a measure. Andy touched her reverently. "She has eyes like plums, Miss Venness, and look, she wears a locket." The locket was a cowbell, but Dinah supposed that to a mountain child, shut in by dingo fences, a cow was worthy of a locket.

The twins changed into their swimsuits and were soon splashing in the water. Dinah and Andy contented themselves by paddling at the edge and launching bark boats. When they were all hungry and when it looked by the position of the sun that it must be time for lunch, the picnic hamper was opened, and big sandwiches and huge slabs of cake and bottles of milk disposed of in a very short time. After lunch Dinah rested while Andy resumed his bark launching and the twins explored the beach. Presently they came back in the small boat that Blair had told Dinah they kept in the reeds. Dinah was not concerned for them. She had watched them swimming and had been impressed by their proficiency. She smiled and waved to them and helped Andy load his bark boats with cargoes of cowslips and little twigs. Presently the small tub pulled up on the sand. "Come out for a row. Miss Venness," the twins invited her. Dinah was quite content where she was, but because of the new friendship that was still so young and tender it had to be continually encouraged, she crossed to the craft and allowed herself to be helped in. The twins paddled to the centre and for a few moments the passenger was glad she had been persuaded out. It was really beautiful in mid-stream. As the day had lengthened, the river swallows had come out to hunt and play, and their flight was curved and gleaming as a bright necklace. It was only gradually that Dinah became aware of the roll. Her attention on the swallows, she had not noticed the rising and falling of the banks beneath the swallows until she became aware that she was getting a little wet. She turned her attention to the boat

and the stream, puzzled that there could be a swell where obviously there should not be a swell. Then she saw what the twins were doing. With a rhythmic movement they were changing position from one side of the boat to the other, each change putting more and more weight on the new side so that every roll became a deeper roll still. They did not look at her, their small faces were set and determined and full of that intentional wickedness that she had come to recognize - but had hoped was now a thing of the past. Soon the boat was swaying like a craft in a storm or a canoe down rapids ... on one occasion Dinah felt the shoulder of her blouse slam the water. "Rock and roll and rock and…" Another two inches and the boat would be on its side. Dinah set her lips, as the twins had set theirs. This, she decided, was a sort of water Chicken. They had planned to tantalize her until she called "Stop", until she told them to row ashore where she could get into the car, drive home, pack her things and depart the same way as the other supervisors. Well, she wouldn't do it. She did not believe for a moment that the twins wished to capsize their precious boat, and if it was only a matter of getting her clothes wet, she could last out quite as long as they could. The side of the boat was now at an acute angle; all her blouse was soaked What would have been the ending, who would have given in first, Dinah did not know - never would know, for all at once a scream pierced the air.

It was Andy. Climbing on a rock to watch the procedure, not liking what he saw, fearing there was danger, he flung himself into the water, undoubtedly with the idea of saving Miss Venness. The water was deep beneath the rock, the little boy was a paddler, not a swimmer. That she was little better than a paddler herself did not occur to Dinah until she had taken advantage of the next contrived swell to ease herself overboard and strike out towards the spot where Andy had gone down. Dinah had the ability of only a few strokes. Fortunately the few strokes brought her to beneath the rock, but now she had to tread water, something she had not done before, while she watched for Andy to reappear. He did not reappear. But people always reappeared, they came up twice . . . something kept saying that over and over again in Dinah's agonized mind. Andy still did not surface. Reeds, she thought. Or a submerged log and Andy had bumped his head. He is caught somewhere and is drowned already. Then she saw the little hand. It did not surface entirely, only two Angers came up, small and curled. She grabbed at once. The first time they eluded her, and then they were clutching at the air again, and this time she was not letting the fingers escape, she was taking them in her own, pulling Andy to the top, imprisoning him, supporting him, holding his head above water as she edged to the shore.

By the time she reached it, Peter and Keitha had beached the boat. They were wading out with extended arms. She did not look at them. At that moment she felt she could not trust herself to do that. She knew that this was something they had not intended, she knew the prank had been started merely to provide that final straw to break a supervisor's back, but the way things had eventuated there could have been a very different ending than the saturated, scared but alive little boy she now held in her arms. She said briefly, "Fetch your towels." Silently they did so, silently they handed them over. She stripped Andy and rubbed him with one towel till he glowed, then she wrapped him in the other. He seemed to have no ill-effects. All he remarked was a reproachful, "You shouldn't have rocked the boat and made Miss Venness get wet." The twins' eyes were still round and scared. Keitha said, "How will you get dry?" and she choked a little. "It's quite warm in the sun. I'll sit in it," said Dinah, and she picked up Andy in her arms and found a protected corner on the little beach. The twins followed, still very subdued. They squatted down beside her and stared at her again. While she sat silent, Peter spoke. He said in a quiet little voice, "How well can you swim, Miss Venness?" "Scarcely at all, Peter." "And you dived in and saved Andy."

Dinah thought of how she had eased in with the boat's roll and smiled wryly. Then she looked up and saw Peter looking at her. It was a long deep look ... and it was an unmistakable look. She had only thought she had been winning before, now she saw she had won. Not yet with Keitha, perhaps . . . Keitha was still lost in a wood of doubt and confusion . . . but Peter had cleared the woods arid he would never go back to them. His twin could feel as she liked, but never again, in the treatment of Miss Venness, would Keitha dominate Peter. It had been an ugly minute for Peter when he had watched Miss Venness treading water and reaching for a little white hand that scarcely surfaced, it was a scene he would never shake off. He said nothing more, but Dinah was glad that she had withheld her anger. The episode had accomplished something that tolerance and friendliness had not been able to accomplish . . . and, she saw now, never would have accomplished. She saw, too, that Peter never again would be her enemy. She was wet and uncomfortable, but her spirits had not been higher since she had arrived in Warrigal. Last night she had looked in the mirror and said "I've won", hoping that that was true, but now she knew some of it was true, knew it by the look in a little boy's grave and grateful eyes. I'm halfway there, she realized, really halfway there, and she felt suddenly encouraged and stimulated to start bravely on the second half .

All the way home that afternoon Dinah worried as to how she could by-pass the episode should Timber Marlow, noticing the damp clothes and her own pale looks, happen to enquire. But she - and the twins - were in luck. Mrs. Sullivan, helping to unload the emptied hamper, tut-tutted over the dampness and said vaguely that it was just as well Mr. Marlow had gone to Sydney. "You mean to Plateau, Sully?" "Down to Sydney, Christmas shopping, a sudden decision, and a thing he's never done before. He'll be away two days. Last year he simply ticked off a few articles in the mail catalogue, sent for them, then handed them over on Christmas morning. Run inside, Andy, and put on some dry clothes, there's a good boy. But this year he's planning a tree, no less, and snow on the window with cottonwool and glitter if we don't have a real fall, which, of course, seldom happens in the summer and not much in the winter, even though we are a cool corner. Why, he's almost like a schoolboy with his plans. Years younger. If you ask me, it's you, Miss Venness." "I don't think so," Dinah replied, remembering how Timber had said, "A house walled-in with silver snow, trees silvered over, the blue shadows snows seem to get, even the smell of snow." "I think," she smiled at Mrs. Sullivan, "he's doing it as much for himself." "Well," answered Mrs, Sullivan stoutly, "he never did it before." She took up the hamper and departed up the steps. On the top step she paused. "It's a good thing," she said with vast satisfaction, and went on into her kitchen. Dinah wanted to run after her, to touch her sleeve and say, "Mrs. Sullivan, how can you talk like that when Mr. Marlow has a wife?

Besides, anything he does is only for his children; just as anything I do is only for the children, too, of course." But, the words ready on her lips, her arm half raised to stop Mrs. Sullivan, Dinah suddenly paused. Is everything I do only for the children, she found herself asking oddly; hasn't there always been him somewhere in my mind ? Of course he must be in your mind, he is your employer, her common sense reminded her, but still she paused on the bottom step, curiously aware of something else that as yet was only a fitful glimmer, a ghost of a truth, a fleeting half knowledge. What was it... and why did she feel confused like this ? With an effort she shook off her mood of introspection and marched down to make sure that Andy had changed, that he was suffering no ill-effects. He wasn't. He was as bright as a button. But the twins, she observed later, were very quiet. Had Timber been present, even had he missed the damp clothes and pale looks, their unusual docility would have awakened his suspicions. It was just as well he had gone down to Sydney to Christmas-shop instead. The next morning she set the children to making Christmas gifts for their father. A handkerchief from Keitha, which the little girl, no sewer, worked with clumsy home-bound stitches, a pipe-rack from Peter, a penwiper from Andrew. Keitha had the bright idea of adding an initial to each. She could embroider hers, Peter paint his, and Andy mark his out in pencil. The twins promptly inscribed "T" and Andrew "t". Undoubtedly Andy considered Timber worthy of his proud new "running writing". Dinah looked at the finished handiwork and asked carefully, with the view to suggesting later to the children a future change in their manner of address, "Why 'T' for Timber? Wouldn't another name you and I know please him far better?"

"No," said the twins promptly, "he hates that, Miss Venness." Well, Dinah thought, so much for a good intention. After the gifts were finished and wrapped, the children helped Dinah make baubles for the tree that Mrs. Sullivan had mentioned Timber Marlow had in mind. If he had changed his mind since then, the trinkets could still serve for house decoration, Dinah, decided, doling out crepe paper, glitter and millinery wire. Anyway, it was something for the children to fashion with their own fingers, and busyness is always a good thing. It proved a good thing now. The three painted, cut, stuck and threaded with such enthusiasm that even when it was time to dismiss at the end of lesson periods they still preferred to stay on in the little veranda schoolroom. Jock Ferrell rang her in the afternoon and asked her to a preChristmas party the following evening down in Hop Valley. After some consideration she agreed to go. When she came out in a long primrose dress the next night, both boys were loudly enthusiastic, but the little girl, self- contained once more, did not even glance at either Dinah or the dress. The second half of my progress, realized Dinah ruefully, is going to be much harder than the first. It was a happy evening, she met many friendly people, and it was a change to be away from children. All the same, as Jock drove her home she had a sensation of "coming home". It rather disturbed her for all its pleasantness, its warmth of feeling. Home meant permanency, and here, for her, there was none of that commodity. She thanked Jock and he responded with one of those light kisses for which she could not find it in herself to scold or rebuff him, then she stood and watched him turn die wagon and go back down the drive.

She had brought a key with her, but she did not need it. The door stood ajar, and there was a light in the front lounge that opened into the hall. Timber Marlow was sitting there, his pipe in his mouth. So he had returned. She could not pass him by without greeting him, so she advanced a few steps in the room, suddenly absurdly pleased that she wore a dress that complemented her fairness. A daffodil, Jock had told her tonight. She loosened the shawl round her shoulders and said, "Good evening, Mr. Marlow. Back again, I see." "Good evening, Miss Venness. You too are back, I see." He had risen, and now he sat down again, waving her to a chair. She ignored the gesture. Colour was mounting to her cheeks. She had not liked the way he bad spoken. It was not the words which had been an echo - deliberately - of hers, it was the way he made them sound. "You disapprove?" she asked coolly. "Did I say so?" "It was your tone, Mr. Marlow." "You are oversensitive, Miss Venness." This was no answer at all. Dinah put down her little beaded bag on the small table and turned and faced the man. "Mr. Marlow, there's no need for you to adopt that attitude with me," she stated. "I do my work during the day, and what I do afterwards is scarcely your concern." "It is my concern when you choose my doorstep for a lingering good night kiss."

"I did nothing of the sort!" Dinah was both indignant and angry all the same time. Marlow shrugged indifferently. "Strictly speaking, perhaps not, but I saw no signs of protest on your behalf." He looked just as coolly back at her, one brow hatefully raised. He was being unfair and he must know it. There had been no lingering, and even if there had been it was not his affair. She said so rather incoherently, and when he drawled back lazily, "Quite right, I expect I've spoken out of my turn.. Kindly accept my apology . . . after all, what you do out of school is nothing to do with me", she felt even more incoherent than before. He had got up again to mix some drinks. He turned round and handed one to her. "Sit down, Miss Venness," he said, "and have a nightcap with me." She felt like wheeling round and slamming the door behind her as she went, but she suspected that already she had not shown up very adult, so after a slight pause she complied. "Nice evening?" he asked. "Very. Nice trip to Sydney?" He waved a lazy arm to a pile of parcels. Evidently he had not long returned. "The spoils," he said. She sipped her drink. "It's well," she remarked in icy conversation, "to have enough money to travel three hundred miles to do one's Christmas shopping. Wouldn't the Plateau stores have filled the bill ?"

"At a pinch. However, I had other business to attend to as well, business I could not do in Plateau." He paused. "The children's mother," he explained briefly, and his voice held no expression at all. "Letters can be written," said Dinah stonily. - Why did he always have to refer to his wife in any other way but "my wife"? She had noticed it every time. "Mrs. Marlow" ... "the children's mother" . . . always with that cool distance of tone as though he stood remote from the situation, as though it had nothing to do with him at all. "I have sent her letters," he now said, "but they never prevailed upon her to return." He was looking at Dinah closely. What was in that look? She had the knowledge all at once that he wanted to talk to her... to tell her something... that he was about to begin. Without knowing why she was running away, she put down the drink abruptly and got to her feet. "Goodnight, Mr. Marlow." He had put down his drink and risen, too. Not only risen but advanced a step. He was quite close to her now. For a foolish moment she had the feeling that his face was coming nearer hers ... she saw the reddish-brown eyes ... the Indian red skin... he was as near as Jock had been when he had given her that light good night kiss. Then - "Goodnight, Miss Venness," Timber Marlow replied. The next day was Christmas Eve. In front of the house was one northern climate fir tree, alien among these legion eucalyptuses. It had been planted, and because of the cool climate at Warrigal it had prospered. Timber Marlow announced his intention of using it as

their Christmas tree, and Dinah and the children hung their simple trinkets and the presents they had made for Timber, Mrs. Sullivan, Ben White, those of the hauliers and lumbermen who would be counting Tallwoods their home this Christmas-tide. When the children screamed with delight and Dinah went out to investigate their screams, she stood as delighted as they were. At some time through the day Timber Marlow had wired the tree, and now it stood a fairy thing against the violet blue of the mountain night. "It's lovely," she said, eyes shining. "It makes our humble decorations look out of place." "Actually they are the only things in place," said Timber Marlow by her side. "They are the home touch, the family touch, and family is the only thing that really matters. A family is a structure. If you want the structure to remain whole, you remain a family. Miss Venness." His voice was suddenly sad. Inexpressibly moved, Dinah said simply, "I'm sorry, Mr. Marlow." He looked down at her. The light from the tree flickered over her face. "Are you?" he asked, and his voice all at once was soft - and quite different. For a moment neither of them spoke, then Dinah moved a step away from him. She recalled how she had wanted to run after Mrs. Sullivan, when they had returned from the picnic and when Sully had spoken as she had, and demanded of her, "How can you talk like that when Mr. Marlow has a wife?" Now she wanted to ask the same thing of Timber: whether he had intended that soft look or not, that soft enquiry or not - and he hadn't, of course. It was simply loneliness at Christmas a loneliness

for an entire family, not just children but their mother as well, a loneliness that \vas finding outlet now in a gentle word to her. The step was sufficient for the man. When next he spoke he was his old sardonically amused self again. "Shall we perform the gift ritual now?" he asked. When he opened Keitha's present, he praised the handkerchief in front of the little girl, but to Dinah he drawled, "Not exactly fine seams, are they? She's Lida's daughter there; if she could manage it, Lida never put in a stitch." Ben, who was cutting off the presents, at that moment allied "Miss Venness". Surprised, Dinah went forward. There was a small box and an envelope. The box had an inscription in Peter's writing: "From Keitha, Pete and Andy," and in it was an opal pin, a white opal. It was beautiful. She stood gazing entranced at the lovely glowing thing, then looked up to see Timber Marlow watching her. "Actually I should have chosen a black opal," he said, "a dark foil for a fair lady, but this "- he touched the creamy gem - "reminded me of you." . "It's from the children," she reminded him shyly in her turn. "Yes... the envelope is from me." Silently she opened it, showing surprise, then delight, then decision as she looked at the enclosed cheque. "I can't take this."

"Why not? All the rest" - he waved his hand to include Mrs. Sullivan, Ben, the lumberman - "do. It's a bonus. Everyone here gets a bonus." "Except you?" She was still holding the cheque uncertainly, feeling she should refuse, knowing he would never take it back. "What makes you think I receive no bonus?" he returned. "Perhaps I receive more than you imagine, Miss Venness." When the presents were over, they all sat down at a huge table and had a huge Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, for in Australia, said Timber, on Christmas Day one went on a picnic instead of stopping indoors. "All of us?" shouted the children. "All of us," Timber nodded. He half glanced at Dinah. "The family," he said. They went the next day, Mrs. Sullivan waving indolently from the veranda, and then returning with frank enjoyment to her easy chair, for nothing could have been more remote than the Christmas weather Timber had wanted for Dinah. Snow had never been further away, it was really hot for these mountains, and a time for lounging. They went to the bitten-in bay beneath the willows again, the twins very subdued on arrival, every now and then remembering the last time on this beach and lapsing into silence. At lunch Andy said, "Miss Venness got wet pulling me out, Timber. I went right down to where you told me the tadpoles lived, and only my fingers came up." Timber raised his brows. "What is all this?"

"Nothing much," Dinah evaded. "Just one of those picnic things." "If it wasn't Christmas and the time of goodwill, I might probe further," said Timber, giving the twins a quick searching look. "As it is, and as the heat is, I think I'll nap instead." And so he did, to the twins' and Dinah's relief, until it was time to go home again. Timber put them all off at the veranda steps and drove the estate wagon to the garage. The children ran to their rooms to inspect their Christmas presents once more. Dinah pushed the half-open front door and went into the hall. As she advanced a little lazily, for it was still very warm, someone - a man rose from a seat in the big lounge. "Kevin...!" she said. For a long moment she stood quite still. . . then she found herself moving blindly forward and fumbling desperately for the arm of & chair. In that moment she knew she must have support. Another long moment went by . . . somewhere in the house she heard a clock strike. She felt a pulse in her temple keeping exact, deliberate time. Then the pulse was racing again, but she realized with something of a shock that it was not became of this man but because he had been so far away from her mind - and her heart - that he never might have existed for her at all. It was like walking in on a complete stranger, she thought. The man was regarding her silently, a little resentfully. The girl he remembered had not been like this : she had been a fair, gentle thing, quietly attractive in a soft, understated manner, but she had not been a woman, a woman who was all woman, as she was now.

The mountain climate certainly had given Dinah a brighter colour, she had filled out from the almost spare child she had been. She was more matured - and she was considerably more desirable. He was glad he had come. "Dinah!" He had crossed to her and his arms were on her shoulders. She escaped from him without appearing to do so, and put die width of the room between them. "How are you, Kevin?" she said. Her action tantalized, not discouraged him. He took but his cigarettes and lit one. "Don't go coy on me, darling," he told her with a sneer. "It's a pretty little piece of acting, but it doesn't go with the new Dinah you seem to have grown into. You're a woman now, and it suits you. Besides, you can hardly expect the coyness to be believed when you've followed me twelve thousand miles and half-way round the world." "I didn't, I-" "Don't make excuses. They're not necessary, and, anyhow, I rather like it that way, my dear. Otherwise, why would I be here now?" "Why are you here?" He shrugged. "I'm doing the country territory for the firm for a few months. Part of the southern tour embraces the nearest decent town to Warrigal. I couldn't resist the temptation to see how you were." Kevin exhaled, and his eyes on her full creamy throat frankly complimented her. There was almost a greediness in the look. Dinah was rapidly recovering herself.

"I'm pleased to see you, Kevin," she stated coolly, "and I'm pleased to wish you a happy Christmas. But" - she paused a deliberate moment - "if you will be travelling regularly through Warrigal, I don't want to see you again." "Determined to play catch-me, is that it, my dear? A nice game, too - if it rings true. But it doesn't. Not with those twelve thousand miles on my side of the ledger, my pet." "I want you to go now, Kevin." "Sorry, my girl, but it'll take a little more than that." The eyes were narrowed now, the fullish lips as well. There was a sound at the door. It was so slight that neither of them looked up until they heard the voice. "Interesting," drawled Timber Marlow, and he came right into the room before he spoke again. He did it lazily, even taking time on the way to pull out his eternal pipe and tobacco and to begin to pack in the weed. He must have heard the end of the conversation, for he turned, still outwardly lazy, on Kevin and remarked almost with boredom, "Perhaps it will take more than me, too, sir.'' Kevin was tall, but beside this man he seemed somehow to lose stature. He made an effort, however, to establish himself as Timber's equal. He did it expertly, with sophistication, but something somewhere indicated to Dinah that he was not so sure of himself as before. She thought of the Kevin she had known, self-possessed, smoothly confident, always the right idiom, the right style, possessing the practical art of flattery in its most suave, most effective form. Now he seemed almost callow, standing there. "Marlow, I presume," he said, trying to make a bold stand.

"Yes." Timber in his turn did not deign to presume who Kevin was, he. simply followed the single word with a drawled "Now get going, please." Kevin took out his cigarettes again. It was a deliberate action, but it lost much effect by his fingers, as they made a mull of the first lighting up, being not as steady as they should. "Any reason for kicking me out like this?" he enquired civilly. "Yes, you were just given the reason: the lady wants you to go," "Do you believe that?" Kevin's tone was edged, the smile thin again. Everything about him shouted, "Twelve thousand miles." Timber wasted no more time. "Have you a conveyance?" he snapped. "My car is being serviced at Plateau. I got a lift out by a lumbertruck." "I'll get you one back." "I-" The cool control that Timber had been practising did not falter, but all at once his voice adopted a significantly different tone. "I'm not arguing with you. Get out," he said. For only one moment more did Kevin hesitate. Then, as Timber turned round deliberately and advanced a deliberate step, he retreated without another word. But as he went down the steps, Dinah had a quick glimpse of his face, and she knew that although the matter was finished just now, it was not finished for all time. Kevin was not finished with her. . . he

was not finished with Marlow, either. There would be more to come... much more. She saw Timber Marlow take up the mill phone and speak briefly over the wire. A few minutes later she heard a truck lumber up. The silence became awkward, she simply had to break it. "I'm sorry this has happened," she said inadequately at last. Marlow shrugged his great shoulders as though the subject no longer interested him. "I'm afraid I've made you an enemy, Mr. Marlow/' she persisted. Again the shrug. "I assure you I can cope," Timber said. The truck sped down the drive. Kevin was gone almost as though he had never come. But for how long? .. . And what was Kevin thinking. . .planning'? And what harm could he do to her.. .to this man? "And you" Timber Marlow was asking now, "has he made himself an enemy of yours as well? Or is it as he believes, and as anyone must believe when a woman follows a man twelve thousand miles more a come-hither and not thither as you would like him to infer? A hard-to-get act that invariably pays dividends, the old catch-me routine that gets results? Is it these, Miss Venness?"

EIGHT TIMBER MARLOW never spoke again in that strain. Kevin was not mentioned any more. In the following weeks Jock Ferrell took Dinah out on many occasions, but Marlow voiced no comment as he would have in the earlier days, and those thick brows of his above the reddish- brown eyes were never once raised in sardonic enquiry as they would have been before. Indeed, he seemed blandly uninterested in her ... so much so that Dinah, when alone, found herself rehearsing resignations. She simply could not stop on at Tallwoods under these uncomfortable conditions. It made her smile wryly to remember that the other supervisors had all departed because of the children, in spite of their employer's pleas, but that the seventh supervisor would depart because of the employer, in spite of the children's (two of them, anyway) pleas. Marlow was very considerate, over-polite, so she was the same in return. In fact, one could say there was a wall of polite consideration between them. It was a steeper barrier, Dinah knew, than their antagonism ever had been. The aunts wrote regularly. They were settled in their little home and blissfully happy. They had accepted Dinah's intimation that everything was over for all time between herself and Kevin with surprising calmness. Dinah rather had anticipated trouble there. But - "Although you never actually say so, Dinah, your letters always reassure us. You may not know it yourself, but we truly believe you have found your right niche." So the aunts wrote.

"... You may not know it..." If only she didn't know it, thought Dinah a little achingly. For she had come to love Tallwoods ... Warrigal... this entire beautiful profound range. She did realize it was her niche; she also realized that going away, as of course she must, would cut right into her heart. She kept cm putting the resignation aside, delaying it, trying to find an excuse not to resign at all. Once she even considered accepting what, as a woman, she was well aware Jock Ferrell would ask her very soon, for then, she thought, I would not have to leave this beloved place. She dismissed this consideration instantly of course. Dinah felt very strongly over marriage. It should be between two people who had the affinity to last an infinity, not one who thought he loved, and another who loved a place first and a long way after the place the man. Indeed, there was no love at all really, admitted Dinah, only a deep affection, a friendliness she had never known before, but that was all she had for Jock. She truly believed that that, too, was all he really had for her. He did not know it yet, but one day he would meet someone who would make him realize the fact, and then it could be too late. Oh, no, said Dinah to herself, when I leave Tallwoods I must leave it in every way, not just go down to a valley and look up - and back. It was going to be a short summer. Jock told her that on one of their motor jaunts. "No need to look regretful, though," he grinned. "Hoe in Australia we usually balance out. If winter comes early, you can depend it will go early. If it delays, then it will overlap into spring. This year it will be early. Within a few weeks we'll have autumn on us."

"How can you tell?" Dinah was puzzled as to how one did tell that fall was approaching in a land where nothing fell. "Every man has his own sign. Undoubtedly Timber Marlow knows by the stripping of the bark. I know by my hops, Dinah. Already the globules are growing pendulous. I should say our human influx to the Valley should begin within a week. The pickers like to be well settled before the picking, you know. Yes, by the end of the month my garden will become a canvas i town." "But how will the pickers know to come early?" Dinah asked. "The wind carries the message of hops," shrugged Jock. "That's the only way I can explain it. I've never known a late or early season to trick the pickers yet." He paused. "You'll come down, of course, Dinah?" "I want to, I want to very much." "Then in case the wind doesn't carry you the message, I'll ring," Jock grinned. On the day Jock rang, Timber Marlow went down to Sydney. He went in the morning and Jock rang in the afternoon. "Did the wind bring you the message, Dinah?" he asked. "Canvas Town has established itself in my gardens. My barn is full of families. My verandas are turned into flats, with awning walls between each apartment. There's a dozen caravans, thirty sleeping bags, four hammocks, while two tough souls are dossing on the hard ground, just as Nature built it beneath a tree." "Oh, Jock, the season's begun - " Dinah said excitedly. ''Let me finish about the accommodation, Dinah," interrupted Jock, "everywhere is filled to capacity, but in the house, my house, there is room to spare; a room for you, one for Keitha, and a porch for the boys." He paused a moment. "Will you come?"

Dinah hesitated only briefly. She did not know how Timber would regard an adventure like this. On the other hand, seeing she would be leaving quite soon, anyway, did that really matter? Then there was Keitha. Keitha had never been able to conceal her love of the Valley, the exhilaration that the hop season brought her. Though Dinah had resigned herself to leaving Warrigal, she still longed to leave with all, not two- thirds, of the children's regret. If she gave Keitha this treat, it might break down the child's final barrier, just as Pete had broken his barrier that time when she had fished Andy out of the stream. "We'll come, Jock," she said. To her relief Mrs. Sullivan was all approval. The boys, when she told them, beamed from ear to ear. Keitha just stood dumbfounded. She found words, however, when Dinah began packing. "You want only three things, Miss Venness," she said in a thrilled voice, "your overalls for picking, your pyjamas for sleeping, and a dress with a dancing skirt." They arrived at Jock's garden at dusk. Instantly Dinah understood why the hop season meant enchantment to a small girl. Suddenly the sleepy valley was full of bustling activity. The quiet little community in the shadow of Mount Warrigal had burst into cheerful laughing life. Even the rippling river had its music drowned in a tide of human noise. Bicycles, motor cycles, motor scooters, cars sleekly modern or rattlingly antiquated, even a horse and buggy were crowded into the paddocks beside Jock's hop-gardens. There were tents, caravans, cars turned into beds, beds on the back of lorries,' sleeping bags, old blankets folded up ready for the night under accommodating gums.

"The picking doesn't start till tomorrow," said Jock, meeting them at the gate, "but most of them come early. They like lounging around, gossiping, playing cards, simply taking in everything while they wait." He grinned at Dinah. "I'm glad you came at dusk. In another hour the cooking begins. And what cooking! Germans, Italians, Greeks, Estonians, New Zealanders, all putting on their favourite dish." "Here's your room ... Keitha is next door ... the boys on the porch." They established themselves, then came out to watch dinner being prepared in perhaps a hundred camps. It was dark now, and the little cooking fires shone like glowworms through the trees. From them came a mixture of teasing odours . . . spluttering steaks, fragrant goulashes, spitting sausages, chops and eggs, the exciting foreign smell of garlic, olives, capsicum and spice. "I'm starved," Peter said. They ail ate merrily in Jock's big kitchen. "Meat pie," Jock apologized. "One day I'll have to coax a picker to teach me a continental dish." After they had washed up, they strolled out into the night. The cooking fires were dying now and the air was full of lilac wreaths of filmy smoke. There was a comforting aura of day's end peace. "I suppose it's not always as it is tonight," regretted Dinah. "After they're established and have earned some money, they would push off to Plateau to spend what they've made, I expect."

"This season I've put in a small non-profit canteen, so I'm hoping it will be like this most nights," stated Jock. "I'll get you on to serving tomorrow, Dinah. Have to earn your keep." "I want to, and anyway, it should be fun. Will it take me long to learn?" "No learning at all. The pickers choose their goods, 'tick them up', then their debts are deducted at the end of the hops." He paused. "Listen to that guitar." An Italian picker was strumming a serenade. Presently he added soft words in a dulcet voice. Further along a Bavarian singsong had started .. . a Polish wrestling match . . . two Latvians were boxing in a small ring. Keitha pointed excitedly to a fiddle being tuned up for a dance. In no time the grass square where the fiddler stood was filled with young men whirling girls in cotton dresses. They spun round and round to the gipsy music and clapped and laughed. Keitha hopped from one foot to the other in time and laughed as well. They stood watching a long time, then Jock took them for a tour of the barn "apartments". Each one of the "tenants" begged them in for coffee, and Dinah accepted the Dutch invitation, and sat down and talked to the blueeyed mother and smiling father while their four boys romped with Keitha, Peter and Andy on the floor. Presently Papa clapped his hands for bed, and Dinah so admired the way the boys sped off that she turned and commended the Mama. "My charges," she confessed ruefully, "never obey so fast." The blue eyes laughed. "It is not obedience, it is pyjamas. There are only three pyjama suits, yet four boys. Last one to bed has to wear my pink nightgown."

They all laughed then. The hop-picking started early the next morning. "Best picking," explained Jock, "is before sunrise." It was not hard work, Dinah decided after she had watched the process, but it was consistent... at least it would have to be consistent if one wanted to make a decent wage. All picked . . . Mum, Dad, kids, cousins, aunts. It was not unusual to see a family of five putting hops into a common bin. The pickers were supplied with timber-framed hessian- covered receptacles about the size of a horse trough. That was the only equipment required. The only other essential was a pair of nimble hands. The receptacle was portable, and as they exhausted one point they moved to another place. Dinah tried for a while herself. She found it took a great many leafy little cones to reach a pound. Each one had to be picked individually from the vine, no leaves or stems were allowed to fall into the pickings, and all stray hops that had dropped to the ground had to be retrieved before the bin was shifted to a new position. It was really something to watch a good picker at work. Jock found Dinah one who had tallied five hundred pounds a day last year, and she stood amazed as the supple fingers danced and darted through the thick green leaves of the vine and sent a continuous stream of little hops into the bin. "The value of hops," explained Jock, "is in the small yellow glands, about the size of a pin's head, contained in the inner leaves of the hop cone." "Do you send them away like this?"

"No, they have to be cured into a dry form acceptable to buyers; after being weighed and credited to each picker, the hops are placed in special hessian sacks and taken to the drying kiln. Come and I'll show you. The kids have seen it." Dinah left the children playing with children of perhaps a dozen nationalities, but obviously experiencing no language difficulties at all, and toured the two-storeyed kiln where, on the upper level, the hops were spread in a ten-inch layer on a floor covered with mesh. "The drying floor," Jock said. On the bottom level was a great oilburning furnace which, Dinah was told, reached 140 degrees. Hot air was drawn through for twelve hours, the hops removed to a cooling room and there allowed to cure for four days. "After that," said Jock, "they are pressed into woolpacks and despatched." It was lunch when they came out of the curing barn, and oh, what a lunch these pickers had! Loaves of all sorts of breads, shoulders of mutton, great chunks of sausage, pyramids of lettuce, tomatoes and onions, round cheeses disappeared almost miraculously. There were pints of billy tea to wash it down, bottles of beer kept stone-cool by burying them at; the bottom of the hop bins. For the first time today as they ate and drank there was silence, then quickly it all started all over again, the plucking, the moving, the pulling, the chattering, the snatches of gay song, the- laughter, the noise. Dinah spent an hour in the canteen, "ticking up", holding babies while mothers served themselves, hearing life stories in disjointed English in at least ten different accents. Later she went with Jock, weighing the hops on tripod-supported scales, making a note of the tally, moving to another bin. She stepped back as a tractor lurched over the furrows, drawing a trailer stacked high with hop-filled bags. Muscular arms heaved up yet another bag, and off went the load to the kiln.

All that day, all the next day, there was activity . . . cheerful activity, never rushing, never bustling, just happy energetic life. Jock's canteen had paid dividends. Instead of joining the mad Plateau-trek of a night, his pickers stopped at "home", so woke fresher in the morning. It also made for a more pleasant evening, for where there are two hundred people under the stars someone will sing, will strum, will dance. It was at the end of a dance, Dinah's cotton skirt whirling with the best of them, that Jock said what Dinah had known all along he would say.. . and she said what she knew she must say back. "I think I expected it," he admitted ruefully. "I suppose it was a forlorn hope." "It nearly wasn't," she admitted frankly. "I love Warrigal so much that once I even considered answering 'Yes' if you ever did, Jock, simply to remain here." "But you will remain here," he said, surprised. She looked back at him, surprised in her turn. He seemed about to say something more, but instead he stared intently into her puzzled face, considered a moment, then left it at that. They abandoned Hop Valley the next morning. Jock wanted them to stop to the end, but Dinah was not sure when Timber was expected back. She did not intend deceiving him, indeed her first task would be to tell him what she had done, where they had gone. All the same, she believed they had been away long enough. It was hard to desert that lovely place of fertile flat, rippling river, green-columned forest of hop-garden, and Dinah did not wonder when Keitha's lip went down.

"See you next year," called the pickers cheerfully, and Dinah thought, Where will I be next year? Wherever it is, it will be away from my heart, for here in Warrigal, and I know it now, is my heart. They reached Tallwoods within the hour. Dinah was not too happy to see Marlow sitting on the veranda steps. The children tumbled out and ran to him. Dinah garaged the car. When she came back he was still sitting there. "Good time, Miss Venness?" "Marvellous. I hope you don't mind me having taken the children. I felt it would be an education to them, and I know Keitha was keen." "I don't mind." He sounded as uninterested as he had been before. He paused a deliberate moment. "I'm only sorry for you." He gave a crooked grin. "Sorry?" "Mrs. Sullivan's sister is sick. Sully departed on the noon train to Melbourne and will be away a week." "Oh, I see." Dinah considered a while. "I've no doubt I can cope, if that's what you mean." "No doubt — though it will be more difficult, won't it, with, fever." "With what?" Dinah's eyes were wide. "I had a drink at Plateau before I came on out. The talk there is that there's a scarlet fever outbreak in Hop Valley." Dinah recovered herself. "Perhaps," she said, sounding more brisk than she felt, "but that doesn't indicate ... I really mean . . ." Her

composure deserted her. "The children could miss out," she babbled uncertainly. "Probably, anyway, they've had such a thing before." "They haven't," Timber drawled - and almost with enjoyment, she thought. "It still doesn't mean they have to have it now, Mr. Marlow," she said a little stiffly. Timber Marlow said only three words in return, but obviously their cool enunciation afforded him a great deal of malicious pleasure. Lighting his pipe and regarding her with almost devilish glee through the wreaths of blue smoke he said, "But they have."

And they had. Two of them, anyway. Peter and Keitha. Andy had missed out. Dinah could not credit that two children who had left Hop Valley only an hour ago pink and white and unblemished could now be redfaced and white-mouthed, with bright rashes of scarlet dots travelling progressively downwards from their necks to terminate just above their feet. "But they were well." "They have it mildly. The entire epidemic is mild, I've heard." "How could they get it so quickly?" "It's a short incubation period, only two days. I believe" - drily "you've been away two days."

"Wouldn't there be symptoms ?" "Headache, sore throat, but with a mild attack they might not notice it, especially" - his voice was dry again - "when they were having too riotous a time to notice themselves." "You're blaming me." "Over-sensitive again, Miss Venness. I'm doing no such thing. I'm just being sorry for you, pitying you, that's all, for it will be on your shoulders, Mrs. Sullivan being absent, to nurse them back to health." "I -I said I can cope." "But you meant with the cooking, didn't you?" Again the devilish grin. "I've rung for Feniston. He'll be here soon and he'll tell you what to do." Until the doctor came, Dinah busied herself bustling the children into bed. She put them both in the one room for company ... also to save her feet. Several months supervising the twins gave her no illusions as to what lay ahead of her now. Devils out of bed could never change into angels in bed. Doctor Feniston when he came was not over-alarmed, but he also believed in taking precautions. "Cots for them until I say they can get up, room kept about sixty degrees, liquid diet for a day or so, and then light diet, egg flips, milk puddings and such." "Glug," Peter grimaced. Dinah saw the doctor off, and then set about making the children comfortable. After that she washed assiduously and then transferred Andy's bed to the other end of the house. No need for the little boy

to contract the fever if it could be avoided. And if possible, it must be avoided. Andy was frailer stuff than the twins. He wanted no setback like this. That done, she went into the kitchen. Scarlet fever or not, people had to eat.... Timber Marlow was already there. He was peeling onions and the red-brown eyes were streaming copiously. 'This is not because of the two demons," he stated baldly. "I believe they'll pull through, but because I never could cut an onion without shedding tears." "I'm immune," offered Dinah, "I never cry. Let me cut them." "Not on your life, your territory is in there." Timber jerked his thumb in the direction of the sickroom. ''You're frightened to let me do both?" demanded Dinah indignantly. The man must be a fool not to know she would take every precaution before she handled food. "You're not going to do both," he answered blandly, "for health reasons, your health. Oh, I know you have enough nous to make certain you carry no germs before you come in here, but you're not going to do kitchen duty as well, simply because it Would be too much." "Who'll do it, then?" "I will." He wiped away a tear and looked at her quizzically. "Think I can't, Miss Venness? I assure you I can cut other things besides wood." "But evidently not onions," she said firmly. "Whether I'm out of my territory or not, you must still let me do them, Mr, Marlow. I told you I was immune."

He stood back to let her pass. There was not much room. She brushed him as she went. He followed her and watched. What else are you immune to, Miss Venness?" he asked presently. The question was merely conversational, but somewhere or other she recognized that there was something more to the actual words he spoke. She knew if she turned round now she would meet those redbrown eyes and that they would be searching . . . probing . . . finding out something that she didn't want him to find .. .that she was not sure of yet herself. Jocularly she answered, "Immune to scarlet fever, I hope." There was a moment's silence, and then he bowed. "I hope so too." Dinah cut the onions and handed them across. Two bowls of warm milk when the house smelled of baked hamburger did nothing good for the twins. Dinah looked at Keitha's mutinous face and sighed. It seemed indubitable that the barrier that had come down in Hop Valley was up again. "Mush!" Keitha said. "It's Doctor Feniston's orders." Keitha responded by pushing the bowl aside and turning to the wall. Peter was no better. Dinah, carrying the bowls out, had a feeling it was not going to be an easy week.

Far from easy, it proved a small nightmare. Caging two active, nottoo-sick children must be as hard as caging two young tigers, thought Dinah desperately. She eventually had to resort to locked doors and barred windows, and to soften the blow of the confined space she sent to Plateau for piles of comic books, sticks of plasticine, installed the small wireless, Timber's portable record player, gave out coloured pencils and fill-in books by the score. Yet still it was hard. The twins were live wires. To be kept in bed was pure agony. It was agony for the keeper as well. Also the boy and girl were hearty eaters; they did not take at all kindly to restricted food. They were improving, however. As the rash travelled downwards, the upper rash faded away altogether. It appeared there would be no complications, no skin worries, but just in case, Doctor Feniston decided on three more days in bed. It was the final straw... for both the twins and Dinah. Timber Marlow took one look at both sides, then got into the wagon and raced into town. When he came back he thrust a fresh pile of comics, records, coloured pencils and fill-in books into Dinah's hand. "Try those," he said. He tossed another parcel. "What's this?" "Some game or other." jDinah opened it. "Escape from Peril Island," she read.

It looked a very attractive game. It was well-presented on stiff cardboard. " Tor Children of All Ages'," she murmured. " 'Two to Three Players'." "That means you can participate," grinned Timber. "Three players?" " 'Children of All Ages'," he grinned again. She shrugged. "I shall play... it looks quite fun." .. . And Dinah really thought that at first. She thought it even after three games. You had to travel round Peril Island, and it was astonishing how many hazards there were. Moon Bay, where you had to throw six before you could travel on to Palm Inlet; Lobster Beach where, if you landed right on the beach itself, you had to wait four turns before you set off again. Then right at the end of the cardboard there were Pirates' Den, Begin Again, and it was amazing how easy it Was to land at Pirates' Den, how hard it was to escape it. The twins yelled with glee when Dinah didn't escape it, and Dinah laughed, too, enjoying their fun. It was the first time,, she thought, that Keitha had joined right in as well as Peter. Even at the hoppicking, though she had been much better, still, with Dinah, she had remained a little indrawn. The third time Dinah landed in the Pirates' Den she didn't laugh so much, though the twins did. It seemed that repetition could not dim their enthusiasm for "Peril Island". They loved it, from Mermaid's Cove at the beginning to Harvest Home right at the end. It was astonishing how much they did like it, how much they could take of it at a sitting. It discouraged Dinah, who had a suspicious

feeling that she was starting to go quietly but surely berserk over Peril Island. But every time she felt the symptoms, she made herself think of Crumbs-down-the-back which seemed miraculously to disappear in the thrill of the game. Crumbs? Or Peril Island? she asked herself grimly, and Peril Island won. She bit her lip now and took her turn with the dice. With luck she would throw four and be able to retire from the game and leave the twins to fight it out, but if she threw three it would be Pirates' Den, Begin Again. She closed her eyes, wished desperately, rattled the dice. "Three," yelled Pete delightedly. "Pirates' Den, Begin Again," Keitha said. Dinah got up unsteadily. "No," she said as quietly as she could manage to the children. She crossed the room, unlocked the door, locked it behind her. "No, no, NO," she said. It was lovely, it was almost blessed, to shout. She did not know Timber was there. She had believed he was down at the felling. But he had risen from his seat as she came out and had crossed to her. "Take it easy," he said sarcastically. And when she took a deep breath and endeavoured to, he asked unkindly. "Kids always get you like that?" It was so unfair, so totally unreasonable of him after what she had put up with these last days, that she could have stamped on his feet and shouted at him this time. She must, she thought, have gone berserk.

"Look," he said in a clipped sort of voice, "I don't want you to handle my youngsters in a filthy mood like that. Get out at once. Miss Venness, and swallow a breath of cool - or cooling," his tone sharpened, "air." "I-" "Get out, Miss Venness." "Who will look after them?" "Are they so sick they have to be continually watched?" "No, but they've reached the stage when they quarrel if they're not supervised." "Then I shall supervise," he said grandly. "They'll insist that you join in the game," she warned. " 'Escape from Peril Island, For Children of All Ages'?" Dinah nodded." 'For Two to Three Players', and they prefer three," she warned again. "Good," was all Timber Marlow said. Dinah did not wait for a change of mind. She went out of the house and down the valley. She gulped big rations of cold mountain breeze. She had escaped, she thought almost deliriously, escaped from Peril Island. She laughed for the first time since the twins had opened the board instantly after breakfast today, and it was now four-thirty p.m. She toolk the track to the platypusery. Customary to his habits, Splash made no appearance again. She sat a while by the little pool,

enjoying the quiet, enjoying the bush, enjoying the trees ... simply enjoying release from Crumbs-down-the- back, from Peril Island, from the sickroom, from the house itself. It was a different Dinah who rose to return to duty. She felt almost a giant refreshed. The platypusery was a little off the track. Just as she was about to join the path again, she felt more than saw something pass almost like a shadow across it . . . No, not something, someone. A man. It was all so quick, it could have been imagination. And yet she knew it was not imagination, it was someone, it was a man. It was Clem Mathieson. She sensed that. If Mathieson was here it was not for anything good, that much was certain. She must go straight up and tell Timber at once. On the other hand she was not sure of herself. What sort of a fool would she look if she babbled "I think I saw somebody down by the path to the platypusery just now. I think it could have been Mathieson. But then again I'm not sure." All the same, she had better do it. Not feeling as refreshed now as she had been, Dinah went up the path. As she ascended, the more silly it seemed to her to report something that was possibly foolish imagination on her part. Probably she had bent so long over Peril Island she was having hallucinations, probably it had been a trick of shadow and sun. Nonetheless, she still would have made a report, however silly it sounded, had she not had the reception from Timber she did.

As she entered the house, he almost reeled from the sick-bay. His eyes were hollow, even bloodshot. He looked a desperate man. "Four to safety and I threw three," he said hoarsely. "Pirates' Den -" "Begin Again," finished Dinah at once. They both stared at each other for a long moment. Suddenly they began to laugh. They laughed . . . and laughed. They were still laughing long after Timber had poured stiff drinks for two, pushed Dinah into a chair, sat on a chair opposite and held up his glass. Dinah held up hers. "Six times I played it," he said achingly. "I played it fifteen." "Every time I thought I could withdraw I'd find myself in Pirates' Den." "Begin Again," said Dinah as she had before. They laughed again. "I thought I'd go mad," groaned Timber. "I think I did - a little," Dinah groaned back. They were good moments, those brief, cheerful, almost hilarious moments over the long stiff drinks, laughter rippling between them, dying, spurting up again, soaking them in fellow feeling, in a comforting if slightly crazy sympathy that they had never known before. Hours later, supper over, Andy bedded, the twins settled, with lips twitching and eyes merry, Dinah tossed a gay good night and ran off to her bed.

Around midnight she heard movement in the house. It was not furtive movement, it was open hurried movement, anxious movement, desperate movement, movement not caring how much noise was made. She woke up completely. For someone to be rushing like that there must be something urgent afoot. The children, she thought.. . . She jumped out of bed and reached for her gown. She was turning to run from the room to investigate the noise, when something caught her attention through the window. It was lights. A crimson row of lights. For an absurd moment she thought, Timber has lit up the Christmas tree again. Then she saw it was many trees, not one, Australian eucalyptus, not northern fir, and that they were burning. She saw that the camp had been alerted and already a crowd of men were approaching with dripping sacking, buckets of water, soaking brooms, rakes, every fire extinguisher and hose the place possessed. The lighted trees silhouetted them against the black mountain night. Then in a moment she was thinking of something else . .. somebody else . . . and instinctively she shrank back from joining the crowd outside and doing her bit to help. If she had told Timber about Clem Mathieson, some of this might have been avoided. Fires could start by themselves, she knew that but she knew, too, that this one had not. There were steps outside. Timber Marlow tapped on the door. He opened it and found her already dressed in her gown. "Good, Miss Venness, we'll need you for tea and sandwiches, keeping up fuel for the inner man, all that."

"Of course." She came forward at once. As she went to pass him, he looked at her searchingly. "You're not frightened, are you?" "No." "You're pale." "I-" He patted her shoulder. "There's nothing to be frightened of, Dinah." Again she said, "No." For a moment' they both paused, his eyes still searching. Resolutely she lifted her chin and went straight to the kitchen to Start the allnight supplies. No one would have known from the tilt of that chin how Dinah really felt.

NINE SHE cut up every loaf in the house, a dozen more loaves that Cooky brought from the mess. She buttered the slices, inserted substantial meat fillings. She brewed tea in all the pots and flasks she could find. Between her activities, she found time to run out to the veranda. Never one to take any risk. Timber Marlow had started by safeguarding the house and its occupants. He had had a plough-line cut round the building and a firebreak burned up to it. Every approximate dry twig, all loose-hanging bark and brittle undergrowth had been raked out and burned It was almost as though the house was an island. Escape from Peril Island, Dinah thought with a shudder. It seemed impossible that only seven hours ago she had laughed with Timber over that until the tears had streamed from her eyes. One by one the lumber trucks, semi-trailers and lorries were driven out of reach of the fire should it suddenly spurt to new, uncontrollable life. The Land-Rover and estate wagon went next. Everyone was so calm, seemed to know so surely and exactly what they had to do, it astounded Dinah. When Ben White came up for a cup of tea, she asked him about this, and he nodded a grave head. "One has to handle any fire with composure, Miss Venness, but when it's a mountain fire on a lumber camp one has to have the resource, the ingenuity, the calmness, the preparedness, the decision of a paragon. He" - Ben jerked his head out to the fire - "has all those." "Timber?"

"Who else?" "You've had fires before?" "During the summer and autumn, even though this is more or less a rain forest, fires frequently occur. Timber worked out a procedure right at the outset. Now at the first signs we all get to our allotted posts and stamp out the thing quick-smart." "You think it will be stamped out like that this time?" "Do you think," Ben answered, "Timber would be leaving his family in the house like this if not ?" Dinah fed Ben, fed ten more who came in, black-faced and redeyed, then stole in to look at the twins. Evidently exhausted from an entire day over Peril Island, they were now missing a real life adventure right at their door, something actually happening, not just printed on cardboard, by soundly and unconcernedly lying profoundly in sleep. Andy did not sleep, however. He was kneeling on his window- seat patching the mountainside, split by a row of dancing Crimson lights. "Not frightened, darling?" Dinah whispered. "Oh, no. Miss Venness. Timber's out there." The childish trust touched Dinah. She wished she could feel like that. Perhaps she did. Perhaps it was just her regret that she had not spoken up when she should have that made her feel desolate like this. Another batch of men came in and she left Andy at his window-seat and went to ply more sandwiches, pour more tea.

She did not speak with them apart from asking if their cups needed refilling, if more sandwiches were required, but she listened eagerly as they talked briefly with each other, "The south side's got it bad . . . wind behind it., . it's a furnace. . " "How's the water?" "Tanks are running out. They'll pump from the stream next, of course, but that'll take time." Dinah boiled up for more tea. Around piccaninny daylight Timber Marlow took his break. She did not recognize him at first, then she saw the height and the bulk, and she remembered there was only one at Tallwoods with the physique of this man. His face was not Indian now, it was quite black, his eyes were crimson from the smoke, the ends of his hair were singed. He must have been in the thickest of the fire to get like that. She poured tea and pushed over the sandwiches. She kept back all the questions she longed to ask. He looked weary, terribly weary, but then so did all of the men. He finished and pushed aside his plate. "Feel you can keep up a little longer?" he asked of her. "I'd like to feed them all before they go back to bed." "To bed? You mean ..." "Yes, I mean it's practically over. Cooky could do the meal, I suppose, but he's been in slaving with the rest. He's done more than his share."

"Of course I can do it." Dinah hesitated. "Is - is there much damage?" He shrugged. "More or less." "What do you mean?" she asked anxiously. He shrugged again. "A fire is never a good thing, Miss Venness, only when it wipes out a few snakes. On the other hand a fire in an Australian lumber camp is not always totally disastrous. Australian trees are the most tenacious in the world. You will grieve when you see the blackened trunks, the bare boughs, but within a year those old warriors will be green again. It's the nature of them. They're just tough. Of course, we'll lose some ... we could even lose - though I'm hoping to heaven that we haven't, I've not found time to go down there yet to see - the new nursery we planted to replace the ill-fated last." The new nursery... Dinah's hands poised a moment over a sandwich she was spreading. The new nursery was down beyond the platypusery. She remembered the shadow that had been nothing... someone... that had been a man. "Anything wrong?" Timber asked her. "The children's pheasant," she blurted. "Birds and animals are wise creatures. They seldom stop to argue with-a fire. I have no doubt that Fairy will present herself again tomorrow almost as though nothing had happened." "But it will have happened, won't it?" Dinah's lip was trembling. She could see, almost as though it was lying before her, a valley that had been planted with tender young trees but that now lay blackened and bare. Those little trees, she remembered, die young, upthrusting fellows not tough like the grown-up hardwoods that they, too, would

one day become if only they were spared, but soft, vulnerable things, unable to stand adverse elements, unable to resist fire. Timber was looking at her curiously. He looked a long, probing time. "Don't take it hard," he advised presently. "Fire is ugly, and when it goes it leaves an ugly landscape, but it is surpassable, Miss Venness." "Yes," Dinah said. By the time the men came in again and were fed and sent back to barracks, a few remained to watch and others directed to relieve them in several hours, it was bright daylight. Dinah looked out of the window and caught her breath. Ben's, Andy's and Timber's optimism had not prepared her for the sight that met her eyes. Fire might be surpassable, but it was hard to believe that when you saw a scene like this. It was wretched. Everwhere were charred dead ruins, scorched earth; she knew that as soon as she stepped out of the house the air would breathe of acrid smoke. The fire seemed to have painted the ground with a coat of dusty black; except where the capricious wind had changed its mind and spared a few yards of green, there was not a blade of grass. Timber came and stood behind her. "Actually," he said calmly, "I believe we stand to lose less than we've ever lost before. All this" - he waved his arm - "looks bad, but it's mostly surface. I really mean there is nothing here that a good soaking of rain, a good soaking of sunshine, and several months of resting can't repair," He paused and surveyed the scene again. "I'm very proud of my drill," he admitted, "and I'm prouder still of the drillers. Without pre-arrangement, pre-understanding, pre-direction,

total support and co-operation, Tallwoods could have been burned to the ground. As it is, we've only lost our lawns, two paddocks, the south side, I'm afraid, and affronted a few trees by imposing upon them black mourning for those few weeks until new growth springs up and decks them out in green once more," "The nursery - " she blurted out, and could have bitten her tongue. He had looked probingly at her before, now this look was lancetsharp, "Why do you ask that?" "You - you spoke of it." "Why do you enquire about the nursery when you haven't enquired singly about any other forest aspect?" "I felt... I felt it might have suffered." "What made you feel that?" "I was remembering the other little trees. . . It was no' good, she should not lie to this man. There was something in those reddishbrown eyes that dragged out the truth. "I -1 thought I saw him," she gulped. "Whom did you see?" "I tell you I only thought - " His brows had met together. She had never seen him look so angry before. "Answer me, Dinah."

She said almost piteously, "Math." "Clem Mathieson?" "Yes." "Where?" "In the direction of the new nursery... down past Splash." "You mean the pool where the platypus is?" "Yes." "When?" "Yesterday evening when you sent me out for a walk." "And you never told me - ?" "I tell you I didn't really see him, I only - " "You knew the sort of man he was, yet you still did not think it worth while to report to me." "I tell you-" "And I'll tell you something, Miss Venness, You're either vindictive or a fool." She stared at him, amazed. She had expected anger, but not furious thrusting anger like this. He went savagely on. "You've always disliked me. . . you've made that very obvious . . . but deliberately to let an enemy destroy without giving me even the chance to fight back before the destruction is complete is vindictiveness in its most potent form."

"I didn't," she almost sobbed. "I never thought of it like that." "Then," he said coldly, "you are a fool instead." He whirled round and made for the door. . She called out desperately, "It mightn't have happened ... I still might have imagined it.. . the trees might be untouched." "We'll see," he flung back. She knew long before he returned to the house what he had found down there in the valley. There was no mistaking the meaning of those quick, purposeful steps, the set look on his hard face as he came nearer, the hands clenched so tightly that the knuckle-bones protruded drained and white. He never spoke a word. She saw him pull on his coat. The next moment he had left the house. He flung himself more than walked in the direction of the public road. She puzzled over that at first, then she remembered. All the lumber lorries and cars had been taken there for precaution; they had been parked out of the fire's range. She stood long after he was out of sight, still staring, then she set herself to perform the ordinary tasks one always performed in the morning. It never occurred to her to do the same as the men were doing, the men who had worked, as she had, right through the night, to fall exhausted into bed. Indeed, bedr... and inactivity . . . and retrospection were the last things she wanted now. She had to keep going - or give in. She cooked breakfast and set Andy down. Then she started off with a tray for the twins. She found them up and dressed, noses to the window, eyes like pennies.

"Jings," Pete said. It was no use to scold them,, to hustle them bade to their cots. Something much more exciting than the most exciting hazards of Peril Island had happened during the night. Dinah knew she never would coax diem to a light diet on a tray after this. Anyway, obviously they were past all that. They looked fit and energetic and positively bounding with health. After a meal for four, not two, in the kitchen, she suggested rather hopelessly that they restrict their activities for a while at least to colouring in... plasticine... even Peril Island. She said bravely that if they did that last she would make the third! They didn't hear her. They were only waiting to stoke up before they went out to explore. She tidied up. She went outside and walked a little way and- looked at the black trees. She came back again. The twins came in and gave her a graphic account of the little nursery. "Not a twig left... not a leaf... burned to the ground." "Just scorched earth," Keitha mourned. They packed up some supplies, found Andy, and all went down the valley again. Two hours went by. Dinah dusted a room from which she had removed the black bush-fire residue three times already. But, she thought drearily, it was something to do. She heard the lumber lorries being returned to the mill. The danger must be completely past, she thought.

Some time after Ben White strolled up to the house. Dinah could have fallen on his shoulder and cried. Her rising tension was almost too much to bear. "Ben, where do you think Mr. Marlow has gone?" she almost whimpered. "Timber's left, has he?" Ben stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Could be, Miss Venness," he said presently, "that he's got the same thought inside of him that all of us down there in the camp have got. There's not one man of us gone to bed for all our instructions, for all that we're dead beat. That fire shouldn't have been, that's one thing certain. It's past the season, it hasn't been over-dry of late ... I really mean there's been no true fire hazard. Miss Venness." Ben looked straight at Dinah. "The fire was started," he said. Dinah waited, and Ben went on. "It hasn't been a bad fire, but it could have been. Men could have lost their lives. It's nothing to the credit side of the firebug who inspired it that the men won't be losing even a day's pay." Dinah found words and she said them nervously, "Do - do you know who would start it, Ben?" "Yes. Don't you?" "Mathieson?" White nodded. . "He wouldn't intend to start the big blaze that he did," he admitted reluctantly. "He's not a fool. As a lumberman he'd know that his bread and butter depended on the forest. He'd just set out to destroy the nursery - the same as he destroyed one before."

"And the fire spread ?" "Probably after he had performed the nursery damage and got himself well out of the way." Ben hunched his shoulders and looked at the girl. She looked back at him, shivering a little. "Even though he didn't intend wholesale damage, it's still a wicked and a dreadful thing to have done," she said shakily, "and I only wish that Timber had called in the police instead of - instead of - " She choked a little, thinking of the many distasteful and possible, even probable, things that were intruding into her mind. "Police!" broke in Ben vigorously. "We don't settle things of that sort in that way down here, Miss Venness." Dinah stared at the man, horrified. She only had had suspicion before, now it seemed the suspicion was confirmed. A hundred pictures of violence flashed like the mirrors of a kaleidoscope through her tortured mind. Before she could call out, before she could ask Ben to explain himself, the telephone pealed. It was nearer to Ben than to Dinah... He gave her a quick look, saw her agitation, then took up the receiver himself. The conversation was brief, and she heard Ben's side of it as in a daze . "... Oh, it's you. Timber... Ben here.... You've run him to earth... ? Good man." ". . . Yes, I'll attend to that. . . Yes . . . Yes. Within the hour, Timber." The phone went down.

Ben looked at Dinah. "Where does he keep his axe?" Dinah stared at him stupidly. She had thought of violence before, but her thoughts reached savagery now. "You - you mean - " Suddenly Ben laughed. "No, when I said we settle it our own way down here I didn't mean that way, Miss Venness. Not retribution with an axe but per medium of an axe. Understand? You see Timber has found Mathieson. He's in at Plateau for the Chop this afternoon." "The Chop?" "The Australian Underhand Wood-Chopping Championship, and with it goes a trophy, a racing axe and two hundred and fifty pounds." "What does Timber intend to do?" "Intend to do?" Ben looked at her in surprise. "He means to outchop him, of course. He could lay a complaint to the police, he could have the matter investigated, even an arrest made; he could settle the matter with fists, and let me tell you now, Miss Venness, he can do that as well as chop. But that's not what he wants. Mathieson's recognized as the champ in these parts. The only lasting way to humble him, to be rid of him for all time, is to out-chop him so that he looks a fool. And when that's done, he'll go away like the cur he is, his tail between his legs." "But - but can Timber do that?" Ben paused. It was only the briefest of pauses but Dinah read it at once. Ben wasn't so sure himself.

Their eyes met an understanding moment. "Find his clothes and his racing axe, Miss Venness," Ben said. She knew where the axe was. She had seen him take it out often to file and lubricate it. She showed Ben the cupboard now. He took it out almost reverently. These lumbermen, she thought with a flash of anger, how can they feel like that about an inanimate - not just inanimate but a destructive thing! "He got the axe handle sent out from Philadelphia," Ben was telling her with admiration. "We usually use spotted gum here. It's hickory, special hickory. The head is local, though, forged, steel. .. the very best.. . finely tempered." He placed a careful hand on the edge and stroked it. Then he looked up again. "Find his clothes. Miss Venness." Dinah went down the passage. She paused a moment before she turned the handle of Timber's door. Then she went in. It was a bare room, almost monk-like in its bareness. Oh the narrow bed the man had thrown his discarded lumber jacket. Suddenly, as though compelled, she wanted to lay her cheek upon it... she had a curious longing to kiss it so that the kiss would be waiting there for him when he put it on again. Why - why, I lave him, she thought. "Miss Venness!" called Ben from down the passage. "Coming," she answered, wondering how she managed to reply to him, and she looked around. She found a likely box and lifted a corner of the lid. Yes, this was his gear. She saw the knife-creased, stark white slacks, the white rubbers, black sleeveless singlet. She took up the box and came out of the room and went back to Ben.

"Good," he approved. He glanced at her. "Are you ready?" "Ready?" "Aren't you coming in?" "You mean to - to watch? But would that be right? I mean, do women in Australia go to watch?" Ben's glance was more direct now. "A man would want his woman there," he said. She looked across at the tally clerk, and her lips trembled a little, her eyes were suddenly harassed. Quietly, quiveringly, she said, "But she - Mrs. Marlow is that." "She isn't," Ben returned at once. "She never was." "But-" There were things she wanted to say to this man ... to remind him. She wanted to point out the fact of the children to Ben, Mrs. Marlow's children - and Timbers', Timber's irrespective of whether he cared about his children's mother or not. "She never was," repeated Ben firmly. "It might have looked like that, him always trying to get her up here and make her stay, but it never was like that, not in his heart, Miss Venness. And now" seeing her open her mouth to argue - "we'd better push off." Not only she and Ben were pushing off, the entire Tallwoods' camp was going into Plateau.

The lumber lorries were roaring past, filled with men. Every available conveyance was packed to the hilt. The passengers waved to Dinah as they went. They made a V sign, and grinned. As soon as they reached Plateau, Ben took the clothes and the axe and hurried on ahead. By the time Dinah had reached the courtyard of the hotel, Timber had changed and taken up his position, axe ready, by his log. Suddenly not shy any longer, she pushed through the crowd and stood well out in front. What was it Ben said? "A man would want his woman there." She felt her cheeks burn. For in that moment she was his woman. She knew it was not true, could never be true, for all that Ben had said so, but standing there and meeting his eyes, those red-brown eyes in the Indian-red face, she was his woman ... and her own eyes signalled it to him. "Get ready," called the starter through a microphone, and Timber tensed, then relaxed his fingers, then bent and took up his axe.

There were six contenders. They were all tall, broad, thick men, but Clem Mathieson and Timber Marlow were the tallest, broadest, and thickest of all. They all wore the long white pants, the white boots, the black singlet cut deeply under the arms to allow free movement for rippling muscles. All were very brown except one. He was Indian-red. Ben was at Dinah's side; he, too, must have squirmed through the crowd, a really dense crowd now, for the pickers had come up from Hop Valley for the event. On the other side of the ring Dinah could see the rest of the Tallwoods' men.

Ben was calling out in her ear. He had to call, because the Steward at the microphone was bellowing regulations . . . "Any competitor cutting through his foothold to be disqualified." "Axes must sever logs in two parts, pushing or pulling the log with a foot or hand will disqualify." . . . "No competitor to make any mark with axe before starting" . . . "Competitors to set up their logs so that they finish the contest facing the judge." She looked to the judge, a thin, bespectacled little man one would never have associated with the outdoors, with men like these great wielders of axes now waiting for the starting flag. "Flown down from Sydney," said Ben in her ear. "He judges at the Royal." "The Royal?" "The Royal Agricultural Show, one of the biggest fairs in the world. That man at the end is Crawford ... he won the Royal last year. That's Brent next to him, he's come down from Queensland, they raise good axemen there. Tulloch and Smith are next, both from Gippsland, Victoria. In Gippsland the trees reach four hundred feet." "And then Mathieson and Timber," said Dinah a little troubled. She wished the two men were further apart. The crowd were on their toes. Whenever the voice over the microphone paused, the silence was so sharp one felt it could have been cut, as well as the logs, with those gleaming silver axes. "Don't fret about that," said Ben once more in her ear. "Nothing can happen like it did before." "You mean - the axe that slipped accidentally ?"

"I mean the axe that slipped. This is Timber's axe. Only he has handled it." Ben stopped talking as the voice began again: "In a few minutes the Axemen's Association of Australia shall determine, under the Rules and Regulations of the Royal Agricultural Society, the successful contestant for a Grand Trophy to be held in perpetuity, for a special forged-steel racing axe, for the Title of Australian Underhand Wood-Chopping Champion, and for the prize money of two hundred and fifty pounds." Ben whispered, "Timber will pass that on to tree husbandry; it's an important thing with him." "If he gets it." Ben looked at her quickly. "You're rooting for him, aren't you?" he flashed. "Yes - I mean - " Dinah wanted to tell Ben that she was so tense with nervousness for Timber that she could not bear for victory to be presumed before it was won. She did not tell him, however. She did not have the opportunity. In the poised silence following the prize announcement a loud clear voice, so loud and clear that every syllable was audible, so that it rang as unmistakably as the announcer's, called out, "I'll raise that to double, steward. To any winner save Number 6 block I'll give another two hundred and fifty pounds." Instantly there was an excited babble. Marlow's block was 6. Timber stood as though the words had not been spoken, as though the number was not his. His face never changed expression.

The man at the microphone called, "I'm disregarding that interruption, whoever made it. Keep your side-bets to yourselves, gentlemen. Keep your offer to yourself, sir." The voice said, "It's no offer, it's a promise." "Order!" the microphone came back. "Order, please," but everyone had turned. Everyone but Marlow - and Dinah. She did not need to turn to know that Kevin was standing there, that it was Kevin who had called out, Kevin who would be lucky to have that many shillings, but he had spoken - and the harm had been done, she thought. Whether he had been looking at her as he offered, she could not tell, but she knew he had looked afterwards at Mathieson, for Math now joined his thumb and first finger in a gesture of acknowledgement, and he gave a slight incline of his head. The announcer was warning, "Three seconds, gentlemen. One... two..." The chop began. Timber appeared to be late off the mark. The first uplift of his arm with the axe seemed a deliberate, almost leisurely, lazy act. At once Dinah could see that there were to be six different tempos of cutting. The Queenslander moved fast and short, almost pecked, she thought, but his chips of flying wood were no less considerable for that. The man who had won the Royal had a swinging cut, he was rhythmical to watch. The two Gippslanders bent rather low as they wielded their axes. The four men. were all on par.

The fifth and sixth were a little behind the others. They were still behind when cutting positions were reversed. Mathieson reversed in front of Timber... almost two strokes in front. By this time the other four were five strokes ahead. And then the position altered. Almost as though Math had only been playing with them, doing a cat and mouse, letting them have their heads, the young contemptuous giant with the lazy eyes, the lax lips, the loose-hanging hair, was changing his stroke, accelerating, biting deeper with every cut. The great chunks of glistening white wood fairly flew through the air. He was forging ahead now .. . Dinah could hear the crowd gasping at the way he was leaving the others, even Crawford the Royal champion, far behind. She half turned, and as she" did she found herself meeting Kevin's unwavering, triumphant, reminding stare. Then the gasps of the crowd were hushing. Something was happening. Another contender was leaving the field behind. Timber Marlow did not appear to be cutting quickly, to be biting deeply, as Mathieson was; his face was still expressionless he showed no visible sign of exerting himself, of making any extra effort, but quietly, almost slyly, his log was weakening... weakening almost as fast as Math's log... equally fast now... now attacking faster and deeper than Math attacked, the Philadelphian axe was flailing through the air as though wielded by a machine not a man. And then he was through. The log severed itself in two parts, cleanly, distinctly, indisputably. The axe went down and the winner was facing the judge.

The uproar was deafening. Every man from Tallwoods, and every man belonging to Plateau, to Warrigal, was screaming at- the top of his voice. Dinah was screaming, too, but she did not realize it then. She heard the last axe stop ringing, she heard the announcer calling the name of the champion, and she wondered vaguely what the name before Marlow had been. In the noise and excitement she had missed it. She only knew him as Timber... she would like to know the other, she thought. She saw Timber get down from his block. Quietly, without hurry, apparently without rancour, but with intention in every line of him, he crossed to Mathieson. For a moment all those pictures of violence that had flashed through Dinah's tortured mind like the mirrors of a kaleidoscope were flashing again. Then she saw Marlow take up the other big man, take him up in his strong lean hands, then shake him like a terrier a rat, shake him again and again and again.... Then; the man in his hands still dazed, still stupefied, he turned and reeled him across the ring to Kevin. "Now double up," he flung.

Dinah and Timber came home alone in the 'Rover. All the Tallwoods men were stopping on to celebrate. Dinah was a little glad she would not be on the steep narrow road when their festivities were done. They were in high spirits. With no bounds. They all waved good-bye to Dinah and Timber, cheered them, put up the Victory sign, shouted more applause.

He was claimed by man after man following his triumph, and even though he had not stopped on for the revelry, it was already dark by the time Timber reached the end of the straight stretch of the Plateau road. He changed gear and began the climb. Not until they reached the private track did they smell again last night's fire. It was not so unpleasant now... not so acrid. - Or was it because victory gave it a different air? Victory... yet not happiness. For Dinah, anyway. For a few wild moments she had known a pulsing excitement, a throbbing triumph. Ben had said "A man would want his woman there," and she had been that woman, Timber's woman, but it had only been for a little while and now the moment was gone. She was not his woman. She knew it. He knew it. Someone else stood between.

So it was that when Timber Marlow stopped the car before they reached the steps, and turned and deliberately, quietly, but intentionally took her in his arms and pressed his mouth down on hers; when he strained her to him, all of her, held her as she had never been held before, kissed her urgently, with an aching hunger, with a savagely tender demand, with a declaration that needed no words, she only responded for a moment so brief that the moment might never have existed at all, and then resisted with all her strength. She did not have to resist long. Almost instantly he released hex. She could not see his face in the darkness, and he did not speak at all.

Blindly she climbed out of the car and raced the rest of the way to the house. Seeing no one, looking neither to left nor right, she ran to her room and shut the door. It was still the same room. That seemed odd. Somehow she felt it should be changed, a different room. The girl who faced her in the mirror looked the same girl. But she wasn't the same, she was another person. From now on she would always be another person, Dinah thought. Suddenly she was crying, crying abandonedly, heartbrokenly. Why had it happened ? Why had she come to love a man who could offer nothing, nothing, in return? Why was there Mrs. Marlow? The children? And why, why, even if there was a wife, children, even though he was married, why hadn't she let herself forget all that, forget it as she was forgetting it now, and love him in return?

TEN ANDY died one still, bright winter morning. There was rime on the remnants of grass that had escaped the fire, on. the few brave new blades pushing up from the scorched earth. The sky was an eggshell blue. At breakfast. Timber had said, "By tonight there'll be snow", and Dinah had thought how at last he would have his house walled in with silver snow, trees silvered over, the blue shadows snows seem to get, even the smell of snow, and she was glad that at least there would be something for him. Andy died in the little schoolroom on the veranda. Peter was doing geography, Keitha was doing history, Andy was doing running writing, and he was writing "pastures", which he had just learned. The day before he had come proudly to Dinah with "pass- chores" written in his round, up and down, baby hand. "I've written it, I've written it, see, Miss Venness!" "Why, yes, darling." She had hesitated a moment, hating to discourage the little man, then she had said gently "Only we spell it another way, this way, Andy." She wrote it clearly and he studied it gravely. He nodded his head, not at all discouraged, eager to do it as it should be done. "Tomorrow I'll really write it," he promised. Only he hadn't. He had got only half-way through when he died. It was a tender passing. Like someone falling asleep. It was just as gentle as that.

Only it was not sleep, and when she looked up Dinah knew it. Why did she look up? All at once something was pulling her away from the Manual in which she had absorbed herself while she supervised the children's lessons; it was a curious, seeking, beckoning sense, it searched her out, it compelled her attention ... and when she looked up Andy was gone from them. She said quickly in a voice that never had been steadier, more controlled, "Keitha and Peter, I believe Fairy is waiting' to be fed. She is beyond those bushes, but you'll find her ... and while you're there, find Timber as well, and tell him, please, to come. ..to come at once.** For all its placidity, there must have been something in her tone that never had been there before. The twins rose instantly and obeyed without a word. By the time they had reached the turn of the veranda Dinah had Andy in her arms. Dumbly, blindly, she gathered him to her. Andy could have fainted, have suffered a little blackout, he could have fallen babyishly asleep... but she knew he had died. All at once she was a mother and he was her baby and she was drowning in the rending, aching misery of her loss. The pain was an amputation. It seemed large enough to fill an atmosphere. Suddenly she was caught in paroxysms of grief - that shook and weakened her. Andy lay in her arms, quieted, wrapped in silence, but his little voice promising "Tomorrow I'll really write it" pursued her, caught her, and in a frenzy she was calling aloud, "Timber . . . Timber . . . don't let it be . . . Waken him . . . Timber . . , Timber, why don't you come - ?" "Steady." The big man was by her side. He had come silently. He put his hand to Andy's heart and left it there a long aching moment. Then he took the hand away and placed it on Dinah's shoulder.

"Is he - ?" she whispered. "Yes," Timber said.

It could have been only a moment that they sat dumbly there, but it seined that a world went by. Intrinsically Dinah sensed that during that suspension of time they were no longer two strangers but two halves of a whole. Andy had left them. What happened when little children died? Were they like stars you see fall that seem to go nowhere but you know have really found a place? Why had Andy gone? Why had Andy been always so gentle? Why had Andy loved pastures ?... The little man could never tell her now. But suddenly, blessedly, she knew it wasn't needed. She looked across the child to Timber and knew something perfect and complete, undying and forever, she knew Andy could never be really taken from her... from them. The dreadful sense of emptiness that had assailed her almost like a physical presence diminished. When Timber gently took the dead child in his arms and carried him away, all she thought was something she had read once in a book - "There is a shining." There was a shining now. A small shining, for he had only been a small boy. It was Andy's small star.

A long while afterwards Timber Marlow came out and sat on the veranda beside Dinah. "Mrs. Sullivan is with him," he said.

"Do the twins know?" "I've told them." "How are they, Timber? How did they take it?" The big man drew his hand wearily over his eyes. "I don't know, Dinah. They cleared off," he said. There was a silence, then Timber spoke again. "Andrew was never going to grow up, Dinah; I knew it was to be like this." "Why didn't you tell me?" Timber looked across at her. His eyes were steady. "Because having only a little life, it had to be lived forever. Can you understand?" "You mean, lived as though there was a lifetime, Timber?" He nodded. "It was the only way." There was another silence. "He loved pastures ..." murmured Dinah almost to herself. Anxiously, a little incoherently, she blurted, "Timber, do you think?" then stopped. His reply came at once. He understood instantly. And the words were firm, assured, assuring. "Yes, I know there will be paddocks for Andy in heaven," he said. He rose. Before he left her he paused one more moment. "And I know," he said, "that his dad won't be lonely any more."

Dinah had risen, too, risen at his odd words, her lips framing a question. His dad... ? But Andy's dad was "I must ring Mrs. Marlow," said Timber, and he left her standing there. She looked for the twins, but she could not find them. She knew they would be brokenhearted; they had loved the gentle little boy. She longed to comfort them . . . tell them what Timber had told her, that sometimes people are only loaned to you for a little while, that sometimes it is better that way. Timber's trunk call was a long time getting through. He was still at the phone when Dinah came back from her fruitless search of the house. She saw two shadows in the hall, Keitha's and Peter's. They must have been in their rooms all the time. Either that or they had crept back indoors. Now they were listening to what Timber said over the wire. As she went down the corridor to her own room she heard Timber speak. "Is that Mrs. Marlow?... Is that you, Lida?... have unhappy news. It's Andrew... Yes .... just now... I'll expect you, Lida ... I'll expect you as soon as you can come ..." His voice had risen. There was a harsh, demanding note. Dinah did not hear the rest. She opened her door and shut it again. She did not hear him ring off. And she did not hear the children go.

No one took any notice of the twins not being there at lunch. No one ate lunch. It was put out, then put back again. So was afternoon tea. When they did not arrive for dinner that night, still no one was concerned.

"They'll slip in in the dark," said Timber. "They're crying their hearts out, and it's a good thing. They'll feel better after that." Dinah did not speak. She did not speak when at nine o'clock she went up the passage and peeped in their rooms and they were still not there. Ten o'clock. Dinah ran down the dark path to the chalets to enquire. Ben White was still up. No, the twins had not been with the men. The lorries, she asked, could they stow away on the lorries? Ben shook his head. She begged to use the office phone. She wanted to ring Hop Valley, but she didn't want Timber to hear. Jock Ferrell answered. When he heard Dinah's voice, he spoke eagerly. But the answer was the same for all the eagerness, the twins were not there. It was eleven now. Dinah went back and tapped on Timber's door. He came out to the passage. He looked tired and he looked older. She hated to etch those lines of weariness deeper still as she told him the news. "Not home..." he said. 'They may still come ... they may come when they think we are asleep...." "They'll freeze. It's going to snow any minute. I'll have to look? Dinah." He got his greatcoat and went out. When his footsteps died, Dinah turned all the lights out. It was a desperate hope. She was hoping, as she knew Timber had hoped,

that the children would try to creep in unnoticed, their red eyes unnoticed, their wretched misery, because little Andy was gone, unnoticed in the kindly dark. Twelve o'clock ... one... two ... three.... They did not come. At four o'clock Timber came back. "Are they - ?" he began eagerly. "No," she answered, her spirits falling. "Did you find any tracks?" "No," he answered her. She made tea. Neither of them wanted it, but it was something to do. "Will you rouse the men, Timber?" "The men are searching now. There's not much hope before sunup, but we have to try. You see, it's starting to snow." It was only light snow ... and it was not, Dinah noted with a lighter heart, such a cold night as it could have been. She told this to Timber, and he shrugged. "All right, then, they don't freeze, but where does that get us? We don't find them any quicker... if we find them at all." She stared at him aghast. "You don't mean . . . Timber, what do you mean?" "I mean that this odd grey bush of ours that doesn't appear so treacherous is the easiest, surest and most irrevocable waste of wilds in all the wide world in which a man - or two children - can be lost."

He pushed aside the tea and got up. "Why did they go?" he Said desperately. "Why did they go like that?" Dinah looked steadily back at him. "It was because they heard you when you were ringing," she replied quietly. "They've never wanted their mother here, Timber, that's why they've been so naughty. They hoped, by using up supervisor after supervisor, that in exasperation you would send them away instead. They loved Tallwoods, but they didn't want her. It's hard for you, I know, when you did, but there it is." "I only wanted her," said Timber gruffly, "because I've tried to believe always in a thing called family. I think I told you before, Dinah, that to me it's a structure, an architecture. I kept the three children together because I believed some day she must come back to them." "Was that wise? Oh, I, too, believe in family, but when one parent is unwilling, can't the other give out the love and warmth of two?" "What do you mean?" His eyes were puzzled. "I mean, couldn't the father be father and mother? It has been done." Almost expressionlessly he said, "I don't know where the twins' father is. He was a good match for Lida, it seems and Paul is dead." She stared at him, uncomprehending. Then slowly, it seemed, she saw struggling out to a light. She remembered Timber saying yesterday of Andy, "I know that his dad won't be lonely any more." "Dad…" It was her voice, but she would not have recognized it. "Paul?" she asked.

"My younger brother. Andrew was his - and Lida's - child." He glanced quickly up, disbelief in his face ... incredulity... slow understanding... then a great dawning hope. "But you know all that - " "I don't, I thought you ... I thought the children were yours." "How could you think it - how could you - ? but, yes, it is possible, I expect. . . Always 'Mrs. Marlow' . . . always 'the children's mother'... never the direct word. But surely someone told you?" "No one, Timber." She was silent a moment, then, "Tell me now." "It's not a charming story. I'll tell it as briefly as I can. The twins are Peter and Keitha Grantham. It's a marvel to me you never found that out. Grantham walked out - deservedly or undeservedly, who knows? - when they were babes. Lida never heard of him any more. She divorced him just before Paul met her. Paul was attracted. She is a good-looking woman. They married, then Andrew came. But before his son was born, my brother died. Like Andrew, Paul was never strong. Well, that's all there is." "Tell me, Timber." He shrugged. "I had her here. I had to. Otherwise she would have put the ' kids anywhere she could to be out of her sight. The first two didn't concern me, but Andy did. Because of my feeling for family, I believed with the three together I had something that could not fail to hold her. I didn't want her, Dinah, I despised the woman, but I still believed in family. I believed that even a bad mother was better than no mother at all." Timber looked at her. "I was wrong." "Go on," she urged.

"It was a failure. She was a mother only by circumstance. She had no time for the kids, I even believe she was not above maltreating them when my back was turned. Anyway, whatever she did to them they loathed her. "Still I persisted. Every time she cleared out, I had her back again. The kids were miserable, but still I kept on. God, how could I be so wrong?" "You believed in family," said Dinah simply. She paused, then said gently, "You could still be right, Timber. No mother could stop away now. Not with her baby gone." He turned and looked at her. His eyes were hollow. "I think you heard me ringing today, as the twins must have. A mother can keep away, Dinah. A mother can keep away even when her baby is dead. Lida made it all quite clear. She is never coming back." "Never..." Dinah said.

How many hours had they been talking? . . . Dinah did not realize time till she saw a pale primrose shaft of light pushing under the door. And with it came light to her ... a knowledge of what she must do. She got up. "Where are you going?" He had got up as well, and he stood beside her. "The leap," she said breathlessly, and she told him what she was thinking.

"That time we tagged the new little trees . . . Peter with a shoelace . . . Andy with green string ... I, with a torn pink handkerchief... and Keitha with a remnant of the dress I threw over the look-out, remember? That means she could get down there; that both of them could get down there; it could be their hide-out. Timber, Pm going to call." He came down with her, down to where she had told him he was the King of the castle. He stood as she leaned over, cupped her mouth, and shouted the words. "Come home ... come home ... Lida isn't coming.. . your mother is not coming... never coming... never... never.... Come home.... Come home to us!" "Come home to us," the echo said. Then Dinah turned to him. His arms as they circled round her were tender, gentle, not like that time in the car on the night after the fire. There was no demanding, there was only affirmation... and appeal. "I think I knew I loved you when I first saw you sitting lonely and worried in the Plateau train," he whispered. "I know I loved you when we stood in an apple cellar and there was a violet nimbus round your hair. I said Seek-No-Further, Dinah - but you did." "No." "Jock Ferrell?" "I liked him very much. I still like him. Timber." He considered that, then nodded. "A dozen times I must have tried to tell you, but you stopped me - " he reproached.

"I, too, believe in family," she reminded him simply. "How could I not stop you when I believed someone stood between?" "There was no cause to stop me, there was no one between ... no wife... no children. There are no children now - now that Andy is gone." He paused. "When the twins come - if they come - they go, Dinah, They are nothing to us." "They are something to you," she returned quietly, "something you can't turn your back on, not just because it would not be right, but because somewhere, even though you never arranged it that way, perhaps never wanted it, something has grown, Timber." Her eyes on his were very direct. "I couldn't inflict two kids upon you," he answered, "a ready-made family. I won't do it, Dinah." "Then I must go," she said firmly. "Listen, Timber." Foolish, the thought, how she still did not know his name. "Some time ago I won Peter, it doesn't matter how. But Keitha I never won, and I wanted to, oh, I wanted to. It's still important, so important that unless I do I can't stop on. What's more, I will not stop on, not unless they both come home and belong, not just to you, but to us. They love you. They neither love nor accept me. Unless they do and until they do " She looked at him, and left her words unsaid. Timber saw them first, two crumpled, bedraggled, exhausted, chilled little figures. They reached the top before he could get to them, but even when he did get to them they went right past him ... Keitha as well as Peter . . . Keitha outpacing her twin, her scratched hands outflung. They were running now for all their weariness, they were running fast. And they were running to her ... to her.

For a glorious, unforgettable moment Dinah's eyes met Timber's, and in that silly moment she gave him her answer. Then she turned and held out her arms and hugged two children close. "Dinah!" they cried. "Oh, Dinah, Dinah - " as if she was warmth, Dinah thought almost deliriously, as if she was comfort. As if she was love itself.