Page:Short Stories (1912).djvu/73

66 Weeks after, when he got her first letter, which was written the day he left, he read through dim eyes.

"My Hen-mother—I couldn't see anyone—I just locked my door—and threw myself down on my bed—and buried my face in the pillow—and then I thought of your poor old head on the horrid flock pillow—and my heart broke. . . ."

He had an old photograph of her he always carried, and, sitting in his tent at the Laura River thousands of miles away, he looked at it and kissed the beautiful face it pictured to him.

Time went on. Fortune seemed turning for them both. She had one or two good offers in London and wrote out, "Don't worry, my Hen, about me. If the piece is a success I shall be all right." And it was a success.

And he wrote home to her, "I am in luck. I found the old spot where I camped years ago and broke the stone. The country is wild, unutterably wild and lonely. There is nothing within miles of me. I am absolutely alone. I have worked on the reef, which is a very fine one, and shows gold freely. It is on the top of a spur, and the other day I was fossicking in the gully below when I came across some nice little pieces of gold. But it is lonely—lonely—lonely—beyond words."

Months went by until one day she received a cable from Reuter and her heart stood still. She trembled and hesitated to open it for it was from Australia. What had happened?

She shut herself up and turned the key in the door, then knelt down by the desk where she kept all her letters and murmured, "God grant there is nothing wrong!" Then she opened the envelope and read the cable.

"Maytown.