'Kate Lawless and I are old acquaintances, perhaps I can hardly say friends. As for you, we may possibly be better acquainted in future. But if you take my advice--that of a well-wisher, little as you may suppose it--you'll stick to your claim, and be careful in your choice of associates.' Before the angry reply, which was rising to his lips, could find utterance, the sergeant struck his charger lightly across the neck with his glove and cantered off, raising his helmet in a half-mocking salute to Kate Lawless. 'Insolent scoundrel,' said Lance, 'if he dares to address me again I'll knock him off his horse. If I was in my own country I'd show him the difference in our positions. But in this confounded country things are turned upside down with a vengeance. But what did he mean by saying you and he were old acquaintances?' 'He be hanged,' said the girl, whose colour and courage had apparently returned. 'We never were nearer friends than to pass the time of day. But he was stationed once on Monaro, where we all lived, and, of course, he came to the place now and then. I think he was a bit sweet upon Tessie, but she couldn't stand him and so he dropped coming to Mountain Creek. He's not worth minding, any road. We'd better finish our walk and get home for tea, I'm thinking.' It was the early summer. The winter had been cold and wet. The Ballarat climate is by no means of that exceptional mildness which the Briton innocently believes to characterise the whole of Australia, making no allowance for widely diverging degrees of elevation and latitude. It had been severe beyond the usual average, wild and tempestuous. But now, all suddenly the delicious warmth of the first summer months made itself felt. Day after day witnessed the riotous growth of pasture and herbage, the blooming of flowerets before the joyous sorcery of a southern spring. Their path lay through the primeval woodland, bordered by an emerald carpet studded with flower-jewels and redolent with balsamic forest odours. As the shadows lengthened and the birds' notes sounded clear and sweet through the evening stillness, the girl's voice, as she told of wild rides and solitary experiences in their mountain home, had a strangely soft and caressing tone. CHAPTER VII