Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/45

 back. And, again, this much she knew even better: that she would have felt no safer out shooting with her father than here and now under the eye of this privily armed man.

So she led him through the soft sand between pine and hop-bush; and the moon peeped over one shoulder now, and now the other, until at last it shone with startling brilliance on white palings, and on a granite column in the midst of them, broken as a tree by the wind.

"A grave!" said Irralie's companion. But the girl said nothing. And when she looked at him his head was bare.

Indeed the unexpectedness of the spot and its memorial compelled an unpremeditated awe; nor could a stranger or a sweeter place have been chosen for the repose of human ashes. Homestead and outbuildings were alike beyond sight and sound. Here was no music but that of the constant cricket and the wind among the trees; and here, for days or for weeks together, no eyes save those of heaven itself. Companion of a thousand