But Mary knew exactly where she was on this path made by the naked feet of aborigines connecting their camp with the homestead, a path first formed more than sixty years ago. Gradually the blackness waned to become faintly luminous, and when her eyes became accustomed to the night light, she continued along the path she was unable to see but on which she was guided by the shapes of familiar trees.

She had walked slowly for five minutes when a ruddy glow illuminating the trees ahead indicated the camp. Presently she was able to see the red eyes of several banked fires and one that burned brightly before a humpy constructed with bags andcanegrass. On either side of this fire stood an aboriginal. Its roseate light revealed further rough humpies but no other inhabitants of the camp.

He who stood with his back to the humpy was short of stature. His body was thick with good living, but his legs were astonishingly thin. His hair and straggly beard were white, and the look of him belied the power he held over the entire Kalchut tribe. Nero was an autocrat.

The other man Mary also instantly recognized. In his elastic-sided riding boots he stood six feet in height, with his arms folded across his white cotton shirt, now all steaming from the heat of the fire. The sight of him made Mary Gordon falter in her slow walking. He was Jimmy Partner for whose return with her son she had been waiting.

In heaven’s name why was he talking to Nero at this hour? Nine o’clock is a very late hour for aborigines to be outside their humpies. To be sure, only Nero was outside now in the rain, but something most unusual must have happened for Jimmy Partner to have come to the camp at nine o’clock at night, and in the pouring rain, and to have got Nero to come out of his humpy to talk with him in the light of a replenished fire.

It is doubtful if any woman in all this wide district of western Queensland knew the aborigines better than did Mary Gordon.