Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/208

196 Macdonald's Hole in the moonlight a great basin in the mountains, where "Starlight" and the Marsdens used to ride, and hide sometimes for months together, in Robbery Under Arms, and where thousands of tourists will go some day. All along the Western line I saw old roads and tracks where I came droving as a boy, and old camps where I camped; and the ruins of one old Halfway House, dismal and haunted, in the heavy scrub, where my old chum Jack Barnes and I had a glorious spree one time; and Gerty—but never mind that; and lonely, deserted old roads, where I carried when I grew up, and often tramped beside the bullocks or horses, and spouted Gordon's poetry till it lifted me, and wished to God that I could write like that, or do something, or break away from the life that was driving me mad. And it all made me feel very dismal now and hopeless, and I hated the Bush worse than ever, and made up my mind to take Mary and the children out of it, just as soon as I could get rid of the station. I'd take the first reasonable offer that came.

Mary slept, or pretended to sleep, most of the time, and I kept the children quiet. I watched her face a good deal, and tried to persuade myself that she hadn't changed much since the days when I had courted her at Haviland; but somehow, Mary and the girl I got to love me years ago seemed very different. It seemed to me as if—well, as if I'd courted a girl and married a woman. But perhaps it was time and distance—or I might have changed most. I began to feel myself getting old (forty was very near), but it had never struck me that Mary would feel that way too.