Relief surged like a tide from her heart to her weary mind, to banish the numbing terror. Yet it seemed to draw strength from her legs and she swayed forward and would have fallen had not Jimmy Partner quickly placed his great hands beneath her elbows.

“I tell you Johnny Boss is all right, missus,” he said, now more confidently. “He’ll be back home any minute. We been droving small mobs of sheep away off the Channels all afternoon.”

“Yes, yes!” Mary cried. “But why didn’t you come home and tell me, Jimmy? What are you doing here when you know the dinner’s getting cold and I’m so anxious?”

“Well, missus, I didn’t think. True. This morning we found over beside Black Gate a sign message for Nero from Mitterloo saying he wanted the tribe to go across to Deep Well where poor old Sarah is very crook and looks like dying. So I rode this way home to tell Nero about it, and the tribe’s going off on walkabout first thing in the morning. Better go home, missus. I’m coming now. Perhaps Johnny Boss is there already. Here, let me light the lamp.”

Thank God that that imp was a liar to keep shouting that history repeats itself. Consciously now she noted Jimmy Partner’s flimsy shirt again drenched by the rain.

“You hurry home,” she said with her old time authority over two boys who would regard their bodies as though they were made of wood or iron. “No hat on your head, as usual. No coat; just a cotton shirt over a vest. And standing here in the cold rain.”

“I’m all right, missus. I’ll get me horse and be home before you.”

Nero had vanished inside his humpy and now the dogs were quiet. With the lamplight to give her feet confidence, Mary hurried back along the natural path, feeling the urge to laugh and knowing the emotion for hysteria. Back again at the wire gate she was joined by two dogs as she was fastening it, and she then wanted to cry out her joy, for they were John’s dogs. Over by the harness shed she heard the clink of stirrup-irons and, with the dogs escorting her, she ran across to the dark form of a horse.