Page:Short Stories (1912).djvu/71

64 They played together in Australia years afterwards, and he often spent an hour telling her of the old life on the Palmer River. They did well, made money and came back to London, where things prospered for them both, until one awful November day when she said she "felt gray"—and for three months doctors watched her hanging between life and death. Every night on his way to the theatre he would look up into the murky London sky and pray God for her life. And God was very good and listened, and he thanked God from his heart. It was soon after this that things got so bad, and they came across a man they had known in the Colonies and all got to talking gold.

"I know where there's gold," said Hen.

"Where?"

"Up on the Palmer."

"Palmer's abandoned years ago."

"So was Bendigo once."

"How do you know gold's up there?"

"I've seen it."

"But it's all worked out."

"I don't think so."

And they looked over Dr. Jack's latest geological map and found no reef marked where Hen said there was gold.

"There's a fortune up there." Hen put his finger on a spot that lay about twenty-six miles to the southeast of Maytown.

"Why don't you go and get it if you're so sure?"

And the man laughed.

And the "Chicken" sighed.

And the "Hen" folded up the map and put it way.

But a few weeks later, at the "Stores," he and she were buying a few cheap necessaries for some one who was going into the tropics.

"I want a pillow of some sort—anything will do," said Hen.