He sat in the sun with his face hidden in his hands. His heart had filled with prayer, his eyes with tears; he dug his knuckles into them, and missed the bloodstone signet-ring that he had worn since his father's death. There had been no time for an engagement ring, but Nan was to wear this one until they met again. And she had given him one of hers--a ruby, a diamond, and a sapphire--that jammed in the middle of his little finger nail; but he was to wear it day and night about his neck instead, on a tiny lanyard that she had plaited for it out of her own warm hair. Denis could not trust himself to look at it yet; he could only press the ring to his heart until it hurt, as holy sinners press the scapular, but that was enough to nerve him. He could even smile as he remembered the absurd injunction which had accompanied this sweet talisman. Still smiling he looked down again through the sunshine upon the empty bay; but now the first thing Denis saw was a separate shadow on the grass. "Cheer up, mister! All board! It's getting on for fifty knots to Melbourne, and the Lord knows how many bells!" Jimmy Doherty was standing over him, and his dark skin beamed as he rolled the nautical phrases on his tongue. Denis got up without a smile. "Don't remind me of the sea, Jimmy; help me to forget about it. And as for Melbourne, we shall never see it to-night." "Sha'n't we though!" "What! Fifty miles between midday and midnight?" "It's not so much, and I've got us a lift half-way." "But we can't afford that, Jimmy." A shifty grin from Doherty betrayed a sort of guilty pride in his arrangements. "I've got it for love, mister, from a hawker as only wishes he was a-goin' all the way, for the honour and glory o' carryin' a gent that's done what you've done and got himself in all the papers." Denis was divided between natural satisfaction and annoyance. "Very well, Jimmy, and I congratulate you; but, once and for all, never another word about that unless you're asked! We're mates now, remember; I might as well brag of it myself. Besides--but it's a bargain, isn't it?" Mr. Doherty said he supposed it must be; but for once his spirit was under a cloud, for he had appointed himself sole minstrel of his hero's praises, foreseeing both honour and profit in the employment; but on reflection the embargo only made him think the more of Denis, and his first care was to whisper it in the hawker's ear. The hawker was waiting with his wagon outside an inn in Moorabool Street, and Denis was relieved to find the man less palpably impressed by his exploit than Jimmy had represented him. He was a little flint of a fellow, sharp but surly, who accepted an eight-penny glass of porter with a nod and drained it without removing his eyes from the sailor's face. But in a mile or so his tongue loosened, as the trio sat abreast under the wagon's hood, and the scattered buildings of the budding town melted into the unbroken timber of the bush track.