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262 "And fancy keeping a butcher waiting, Mr. Hallett, and for us poor beggars who don't sell a hundred head in the year! I couldn't trust Sam Shehan to soothe his wounded feelings."

"A butcher, Lady Waveryng, is the aristocrat of the bush," explained Jem Hallett. "We all bow down to him. Good luck to you, Trant! But what do you want with your paltry free-selection sales, and your partner Colonial Secretary of Leichardt's Land? It's incongruous."

Elsie laughed. Wasn't everything incongruous? She was thinking so while Trant pressed her hand and tried to put some meaning into his good-bye. ... The interlude was over. She went back upon her own foolish fancies. Yes, there they were, sitting side by side on that dead gum tree, all different types, all collected from different ends of the earth, and yet all so curiously linked together. Was she not beside the man who was to be her husband? And on her other side, touching her very skirt, was the man she loved. Oh, yes, she loved him, she loved him—If he would but take her in his arms now—before them all—as he had taken her that night, and press upon her lips kisses as hot and passionate, would she resent the kisses? Would they not seem very life of her life? ... Now there came a move. Ina called softly to Frank. She wanted to ask him a question, and he got up and went round to her, and then involuntarily as it were, and as though each had been tortured and oppressed by that other presence, Blake and Elsie turned to each other.

What was it that made his eyes so strange to-night? What spirit of recklessness and passion and wild yet restrained impulse leaped out of them, and kindled in her a well-nigh overmastering emotion? He seemed to draw a little closer to her, and then to check himself. The shouts grew louder and wilder. The gleaming forms went faster. The red lights became lurid. The acrid barbaric odour intensified. Elsie felt giddy and faint. She half rose in an unsteady swaying movement. Blake's arm touched her. They were at the very end of the log. He had risen and