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20TOR, L:1 PX AND TILDEY FOUNDATIONS.

MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1905.

THE TOLL OF THE BUSH.

CHAPTER XXXI.

ALTHOUGH Geoffrey Hernshaw had steeled himself to the point of enduring events with an impassive countenance, it is not improbable that he was glad of the plausible excuse to absent himself from the wedding which was to be found in the continually arriving reports of disaster from the settlement. The sympathetic captain of the steamlaunch which carried subsidiary mailstreams from a dozen points on the river had offered him transport to the creek, promising, moreover, to stand by for any settlers who having lost their homes and possessions desired to seek refuge in the county township.

Although it was after ten o'clock when the boat arrived at its destination, a gleam of gum-torches on the little rickety wharf showed that their coming was not unexpected, and many were the blessings rained down on the head of the skipper who had not deserted them in their hour of need.

"Is that you, Geoffrey?" asked a shy, pleasant voice, as the young man ceased from assisting in the task of getting a large family and some miscellaneous bundles safely stowed on the deck of the little craft. The voice was so pleasant, and such a No. 550.-VOL. XCII.

friendly turn was given to his Christian name, that Geoffrey's sore heart was touched even while he wondered.

"Why, of course, Lena. How stupid of me not to guess! Where's Robert? Good heavens! have you been burnt out too?"

"No, no; we're all safe. The fire went on and left us; but Robert hadn't had any sleep for ages, what with fighting the fire for ourselves and other people. He was just worn out, poor boy; so after tea I got him to take off his boots for three minutes, and he's been asleep ever since."

"And what are you going to do here?"

"You have just done it for me. Those were my brothers and sisters you carried on to the boat, and that was my mother you took the bundles from."

"Is that so? I thought there was something angelic in the faces of those youngsters, and this shows how a good action may be its own reward.”

The bustle on the wharf ceased presently; the last bundle, animate or inanimate, was put aboard. The captain stood stretching his legs by the gangway, chatting with the menfolk on their experiences, and regretting that he could not spare a few hours to run up and give them a hand. Snatches of their conversation

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floated to Geoffrey and Lena as they stood on the land-end of the wharf, waiting the departure of the boat.

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"Mark Gird hadn't been dead three hours." 66 'Well, anyway, it's a strange thing that all the years he lay dying there was not a serious"Don't know how the idea got going, but the bushmen believed in it-" "One death since; yes, but that was fire-well, it may be nonsense, but the feeling comes over you at times and you can't get rid of it."

"I should have mentioned your loss, Lena. It was terrible, but it was heroic. No man could meet a more honourable end than to die a great death in the cause of humanity."

Lena put out her hand and pressed her brother-in-law's fingers, at once gratefully and restrainingly. "Please say no more, Geoffrey," she said;

"God alone knows the secrets of that dreadful night"; and quick to grasp a hidden meaning in her words, Geoffrey was silent.

The little group stirred and parted. The captain stepped across the gangway, blew his whistle, and amid a chorus of good-byes the black hull slipped away into the darkness.

Lena shook her torch into brighter flame and turned towards the track. "What a terrible thing life is!" she said, with a seriousness that contrasted strangely with her sweet face and few years; "and yet every now and then you seem to see the finger of God intervening, as though to prevent it from being worse. Is it as He would have it? Or has He also to wrestle with a Power nearly as great as Himself?"

"Men have thought so, Lena; they have founded their religions on that hypothesis. But come, this is only the night, and to-morrow the sun will shine again. Give me the torch.

Did the fire get down here?" "No; the wind was off the water.

But all the lovely Bush between the road and Bald Hill-do you remember?"

"Yes, indeed.”

"Ah! but you had only known it a few years. There is nothing left

but the black trunks. Doesn't it seem sad? And I had known it all my life."

"Where else did it go?"

"It began just beyond Mr. Beckwith's. You can hardly see where the house stood now. Then it spread to Flotter's, and they lost everything too. It missed Green's place, except the Bush near the front; but it crossed the road there, and spread right along in front of us. You never saw such a sight; and if the wind hadn't been in our favour, and the house so far back from the road, it must have shrivelled up where it stood. The fence was alight in a dozen places at once, and at last we had simply to let it burn and run for our lives, the heat was so terrible. After that the fire seemed just to leap through the settlement. It crossed back to the riverside and burnt out the Finnertys and Robinsons. Mrs. Robinson saved herself and the Finnerty children in the cattle-tank, and now the men are going about the settlement with their arms round one another's necks, the best friends in the world. It made a clean sweep of everything right down to Girds' Bush, and there for the moment it stopped."

Lena stopped also, and pushing open the charred and twisted remnant of the picket-gate, led her brotherin-law toward the house. At scattered points around fires gleamed, where fallen logs, long since buried in vegetation, were being slowly consumed. Under the close-drawn screen of the night monstrous smokewreaths crawled, fading spectrally as they receded from the glowing arch

of conflagration in the west. At intervals a clot of flame showed above the tree-tops, the sky lightening and darkening like a winking eye.

Leading the way softly into the house, Lena turned up the lamp and indicated a seat on the sofa. "I will just go and have a peep at my boy," she whispered, "then we can tell one another all the news."

When she returned she brought some sheets and hung them on a chair before the fire. "He hasn't

moved," she said. "He was just dying for a sleep. He has done wonders, and the settlers have said such nice things to me about him."

"Robert is not one to spare himself," Geoffrey said.

Lena busied herself in preparing food for her guest, then with housewifely care she turned the sheets, and at last came and sat down beside him.

Geoffrey had watched her movements with contented eyes, and a relaxing of the tense self-repression under which for months he had existed. The grace and beauty of the young wife were delightful to witness; but it was her kindness, her thoughtfulness for others, her complete self-unconsciousness which warmed his heart towards her. So, though in his acute distress of mind he had desire neither for food nor speech, he accepted both from his brother's wife with a pathetic gratitude.

"I thought it very likely you would come through to-day," Lena said, as she took her seat,

and so

I tidied your room in readiness."

"Yet I received Robert's note and

knew that you at least were all right."

"It was not on account of what was happening here that I expected you," Lena said wistfully.

Geoffrey shrank as from the touch

ing of a raw wound; even that tender sympathy was as yet unbearable. "You were telling me about the Girds," he said quickly. did you

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"Mark Gird is dead, know? He died on Tuesday night. Dr. Webber was there from the township and told us on Wednesday morning. The fire was burning then, and whether any one went to see poor Mrs. Gird or not I don't know. And after that no one could get there by the track, because the fire was all round."

"I thought you told me it stopped at Gird's Bush ?"

"Yes; but, if you remember, their section only begins half-way down the track, and the strange thing is, that it stopped dead short there when there was nothing to prevent it going on."

"They say that Bush-fires do behave in that unaccountable way at times, crossing apparently impossible gaps, and checking at nothing at all."

"Well, everybody thinks this is particularly strange," said Lena; "and they are saying that the fire will not cross the boundary so long as Mr. Gird's body remains there."

Geoffrey smiled at her earnestness. "That is framing a theory to account for facts with a vengeance," he said. "And has no one been through to the house yet?"

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Oh yes; Robert and some others were there this morning. You can get through now quite easily. The body is to be brought out to-morrow evening. I am going there in the morning myself. Poor Mrs. Gird!" added Lena, her eyes brightening with unshed tears. "It seems cruel that she who was always ready to help others should in her own trouble have been left quite alone."

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"That appears to have been unavoidable, and I hardly think she would have had it otherwise could she

have chosen. There are some people to whom it is difficult to offer an acceptable sympathy, and I doubt if I should have found a word to say to Mrs. Gird."

'Well, I don't think the men said much. They took up some planks with them and made a coffin, and they decorated the outhouse with palm-leaves and fern-fronds and put a sprig of kowhai over the door, and left him alone. Mrs. Gird made them some tea, and asked after every one, and seemed quite cheerful, Robert said." Geoffrey was silent awhile. "Where is the fire now?" he asked at length.

"Where isn't it?" returned Lena. "It has gone right along the road and crossed at half a dozen places into the big Bush. Then it is working back towards the upper settlement on this side, and unless it is checked somewhere they will have to fire the beautiful Bush behind the school-house to save the building. Robert would have been there now if I hadn't persuaded him to take a few minutes' rest." Lena looked smilingly at her brother-in-law.

"Happy Robert!" said he.

"Now it is your turn to tell me the news," said Lena, lowering her eyes. "We hear that Wairangi is so full that people are camping out on the beach."

"That is so far true that the natives have а camp under the Christmas trees."

"And Eve will be married tomorrow?"

"Yes."

Lena stroked her hands nervously. Her old childish awe of her husband's brother was not quite extinct, but the worship of one man gives a woman confidence in dealing with others. "We hoped it would never come off," she said at last; "we

hoped you would prevent it."

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"Some day, perhaps."
"Tell me now."

He looked into the fair, sympathetic face and found it irresistible. And after the first effort, when once

He

the gates of reserve were fairly broken down, the task proved less difficult than he had anticipated. told his story with a certain plainness and an absence of comment from his tones which were perhaps remarkable enough. Shades of anger and bitterness there may have been, but a quick intelligence is a stern disciplinarian, and from the taint of self-pity the tale was wholly free. For all emotion his voice betrayed he might have been relating the story of another man; yet the bare facts were sufficiently unkind, and Lena's tender heart was moved to pity.

"What a cruel thing!" she exclaimed, gazing at him with tearful. eyes. "And oh, Geoffrey, the pity of it if nothing can be done to put it right!"

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and challenging an investigation of the facts. He never replied."

Lena sat looking at the lamp, the expression of her face changing momentarily. Presently she gave a little shiver. "I was once very unkind to Robert for a long while," she said. "I thought it would be best for him to give me up, but I made him miserable, and ah, how miserable I made myself! How my heart did ache! How hard and terrible the world seemed then! Do you think she may be suffering like that?"

"God forbid !" Geoffrey said fervently. "But ask yourself, Lena," he added a moment later, 66 whether it is likely. You loved Robert, but I have no assurance that she ever cared for me. Could she have done this thing if she had? Look into your own heart and answer me."

"Yes," said Lena after a pause, "it is possible. In a moment of insane jealousy a woman could do that." "And stand to it?"

"She could be held to it."

"Even supposing the thing had been true, why should she be jealous of the past?"

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'Why should one be jealous of the future, of the present,-why at all?"

"Yes, that was well said. After all, there is no justice in demanding that her feelings should be different from my own in the same circumstances."

He was silent after that, and Lena, searching vainly through the maze for a loophole of escape, was silent also.

The following day the brothers were up before daylight. Early as they were, Lena had the fire burning and breakfast ready for them when they appeared; and after breakfast, as it was possible they might not find time to return in the middle of the day, she cut them some lunch with

her own housewifely hands. More was to depend on this precaution than any of the three at that time imagined.

Through the long morning hours and until midway in the afternoon the fierce conflict raged round the upper settlement. Not only were the school-house and newly erected Wesleyan church in danger, but also the homes of a dozen settlers, who, ere the day was well advanced, found themselves surrounded by a zone of fire. The danger to most of them lay in the conflagration spreading through the dry grass, and more than half the available labour had to be devoted to thrashing out the insiduous, all but invisible menace from this source. For the rest there was the herculean task of holding the monster in check in the Bush itself. A track was selected cutting through the arm of Bush which projected into the settlement, and from this point the undergrowth was fired and again thrashed out. No water was available had it been possible to use it, and the only weapons of the defenders were branches of young tea-tree continually renewed. The phenomenally dry season had withered the undergrowth to the point when it was only necessary to drop a lighted match to arouse a conflagration. A hundred times it seemed that the fires of their own making must break away from them and become their masters in place of their servants; but scorched. and suffocating, with labouring breasts and aching arms, the band stood heroically to its work, and in the end the victory was theirs. The mighty conflagration sweeping up towards them suffered a sudden check. For awhile it licked at the lofty foliage and sought to sweep over what it could no longer undermine, but in half an hour the danger had passed and the settlement was saved.

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