An Outback Marriage, page 139 by Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson
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ny hope we might ever have had of settling this case."
But Blake, as he rode homewards, felt that he had lost for ever a much higher hope. He had played for a high stake on two chances. One of them had failed him. There remained only the chance of pulling Peggy's case through; and he swore that if hard work, skill, and utter unscrupulousness could win that case, it should be won.
CHAPTER XXII.
A NURSE AND HER ASSISTANT.
While they were waiting for the great case to come on a sort of depression seemed to spread itself over the station. The owner was mostly shut up in her room with her thoughts; the old lady was trying to comfort her, and Ellen Harriott, with sorrow always at her heart, went about the household work like an automaton. No wonder that as soon as breakfast was over all the men cleared out to work on the run. But one day it so happened that Carew did not go out with the others. The young Englishman was a poor correspondent, and had promised himself a whole quiet day to be spent in explaining by letter to his people at home the mysterious circumstances under which he had found and lost Patrick Henry Considine. Ellen Harriott found him in the office manfully wrestling with some extra long words, and stopped for a few minutes' talk. She had a liking for the young Englishman, and any talk was better than to be left alone with her thoughts.
"These are bad times for the old station, Mr. Carew," she said. "We don't know what is going to happen next."
Carew was not going to haul down the flag just yet. "I believe everything 'll come all right in the long run, don't you know," he said. "Never give up first hit, you know; see it out--eh, what?"
"I want to get away out of this for a while," she said. "I am run down. I think the bush monotony tells on women. I don't want anyone to fall sick, but I do wish I could get a little nursing to do again--just for a change. I would nurse Red Mick himself