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Nobody either at headquarters or anywhere else could say definitely why Major McLean resigned from the military forces of the Commonwealth and buried himself on his own little station-property near Blackfish Bay.

On his return from India he had accepted the adjutancy of a mounted infantry regiment. Then on the outbreak of the South African War he had volunteered for active service. He fought bravely throughout the war, and returned with a slight wound and the D.S.O. Soon after his return he sent in his papers and retired to his station, Caringal, a few miles from Blackfish Bay, on the New South Wales coast.

One boundary fence of Caringal ran down to Yarralla, where Mrs. Linton, a widow, lived with her charming daughter Leonie, and another of the major's boundaries just touched Mindaroona, where Mrs. Hesseltine and her son Harold were very companionable neighbours.

It was a delightful spring morning, and the major's forty-third birthday, as he walked across the Mindaroona paddocks to make an early call on Mrs. Hesseltine.

Grace Hesseltine, plumper than of yore but still decidedly attractive, and like all very fair women carrying her years lightly, sat on the verandah of the substantial homestead sewing.

"How early you are this morning, Major," she said with a bright smile as she advanced with outstretched hand. "I suppose you are looking for Harold again."

"Of course I am," replied the major with a frank grin. Since old Simon Hesseltine had departed ten years before for a region where the Shearers' Union could trouble him no more, the major had been a very constant visitor at Mindaroona.

"The boy has gone out for a ride with Leonie Linton," said the attractive widow, resuming her sewing and motioning to her visitor to take the vacant chair beside her. "But they'll be back for lunch. What's the programme for to-day?"

"Well, to tell you the truth," said the major apologetically, "I was going to suggest a little holiday trip. I want to take a run down to the ironworks at Shaleville to see how they are getting on with the new plant there. It occurred to me that you might all like to come with me."

"Oh, how jolly!" said Mrs. Hesseltine delightedly. "We'll take the big car and have afternoon tea out of doors. It will be a regular picnic. You'll stay to lunch here, of course?"

"Thanks awfully," said the major, lighting a cigarette and puffing at it contentedly. The companionship of the gracious woman beside him was very pleasant, and he took a genuine interest in her handsome son, who intended to devote himself to a military career. The major often said to himself that if he had ever had a son he would have wished that son to be just like Harold Hesseltine.

"Here they come," exclaimed Mrs. Hesseltine suddenly, pointing out across the big home paddock, "and racing again, of course."

The major looked and saw two little clouds of dust travelling fast side by side. Presently two figures on horseback emerged and the drumming of hoofs came faintly to the ears of the watchers. Side by side the riders swept along at top speed, and as they pulled up their mounts, laughing and excited, just outside the white paling fence, the major loudly called, "Dead heat!"

Dismounting quickly, Harold helped Leonie to alight, and together the good-looking pair came towards the verandah, as Mike, the rouseabout, led away the steaming horses.

"Miss Linton beat me home by a neck, sir," said Harold, saluting the major, "but there was really nothing between us."

"Wasn't there though?" said Mrs. Hesseltine, with a significant glance at the major. "Well, I'm surprised to hear it."

The flush that flew to Leonie's cheeks was wonderfully becoming. In the excitement of the gallop her fair hair had escaped from under her hat and was flowing over her shoulders. Her eyes were fairly aglow with light. "I believe he pulled the black horse and let me win, Mrs. Hesseltine," she exclaimed; "wasn't it mean of him?"

"Ah, my dear," said the widow, letting her eyes rest affectionately on the tall young fellow beside her, "in Harold's eyes a woman must always be first." And then she whispered to the major, "If the occasion ever arose he would give up everything for a woman. I am sure of that. And I believe you would do the same yourself, major."

But the major did not answer. He was thinking of a certain day twenty years before in India, when he made up his mind to give up everything—his position, his career, his life's work—for a woman, and when she had saved him from the necessity by freeing him voluntarily from the encumbrance of herself. He had never seen her since. Every effort to trace her had failed. He did not even know whether she still lived or not, and the uncertainty had clouded his whole life.

The voice of the frank young fellow, whose face so curiously called up vague fleeting recollections of those dim past days, broke in upon the major's reverie. "What are we going to do to-day, sir?" he asked; "I feel fit for anything."

The major explained his idea of a visit to the ironworks at Shaleville. He would be delighted if Mrs. Hesseltine, Miss Linton, and Harold would accompany him.

The suggestion was received with warm applause, and after lunch the four started off in the big motor-car for Shaleville, the prosperous little town that had sprung up around the great ironworks that had been built over a coal-mine by a long-sighted capitalist of a past generation.

Mrs. Hesseltine and Leonie Linton picked up their skirts and trod daintily as they walked down the main street, and turning in at last through a gate in the high paling fence, entered the area covered by the ironworks. The major walked in front to pilot them and Harold brought up the rear.

The day had turned bitterly cold and there was a feeling of snow in the air, for Shaleville, with its encircling rampart of hills, was nearly 4,000 feet above sea-level.

As the four visitors entered the gate a young workman passed them carrying a bar of iron on his shoulder. He wore a rough brown jersey, moleskin trousers, and heavy boots. His face was so thickly grimed with coaldust that his features were quite indistinguishable. He took in the whole party with one swift glance, and then hurried on in front of them and vanished into the works.

"That's a smart young fellow," said the major to Mr. Blunt, the grizzled old foreman who had been deputed to show the party round. "Born and bred to the work, I suppose."

The old foreman was very deaf, but after the major had shouted the remark in his ear three or four times he began to understand.

"No," said Mr. Blunt; "we get a lot of the lads locally, but as a matter of fact that young chap's a stranger. Comes from t'other side of the Murray, I fancy. He came here looking for a job only last week, an' I put him on at the fishplates—punching holes in 'em, y' know. We'll get down there presently and see 'im at work. These 'ere are the puddling furnaces."

As the visitors stepped into the first huge open shed further conversation became impossible, owing to the roar of the furnaces and the banging of the big steam-hammers.

Leonie clutched Harold's sleeve nervously as the guide halted in front of one of the furnaces where a grimy and perspiring toiler stood puddling the molten metal with a long iron bar.

"Ye needn't be afraid, missy," remarked the guide encouragingly. "It's for all the world like making butter. 'E jest goes ahead churnin' with that there iron bar, and presently the iron forms itself inter a big lump, wot we calls a puddled ball, an' that's the butter. You'll see it come out in a minute."

As he spoke the operator threw the door of the furnace fully open and hooked out a huge glowing cannon ball from the blinding sea of liquid iron. It dropped upon a small trolley and was quickly wheeled by an impish urchin to where a grimy giant clad in armour and with his face protected by a visor stood in front of the steam-hammer. The giant transferred the lump to his anvil and banged and squeezed it with his mighty hammer, while large flakes of fire fell all round him and the molten fiery juice of its impurities dripped from the puddled ball.

"Isn't it terrifying," said Leonie, gripping Harold by the arm and getting a reassuring squeeze of the hand from her protector. "I shouldn't like to think that any one I was fond of had to work in this weird place."

"It's man's work though, isn't it, Leonie?" said Harold, through the roar of the furnaces and the dull thud, thud of the falling hammer. "I can't help admiring a fellow who takes on work like this. It's a bit different from selling ribbons behind a counter, anyhow."

But the foreman was moving on, and they had to follow him, picking their way carefully among the glowing fragments that lay about the ground in every direction.

They saw the puddled ball much reduced in size by the loss of the impurities that had been banged out of it. It was placed in the rolling mill—a series of gigantic mangles differently shaped and grooved, which worked in the centre of a long iron roadway furnished with rapidly revolving rollers.

"Ye see," roared the grizzled guide through the deafening din of the mills, "we puts her in like this,"—he pointed to the red-hot flattened mass of the long-suffering puddled ball, which was just entering upon a further stage of treatment—"and she comes out like that."

The red-hot mass was placed on the iron roadway, where it was speedily caught by the revolving rollers and hurried forward to the ordeal of the monstrous mangle. And as the visitors gazed they saw it transformed under their eyes into a long thin red-hot snake, which shot out from under the mangle and sped along the iron roadway on the other side, to be cut and cooled in due course into convenient lengths of wrought bar-iron.

"Oh, what an appalling squeeze!" laughed Mrs. Hesseltine, throwing an arch look at the major. "It positively makes one feel a pang of pity for one's poker, to think that it must have gone through the same ordeal."

"At least, if it wasn't the same ordeal it was another as like it as two p's," retorted the major quizzically, "since that's the happy little letter you are so fond of."

And then he possessed himself of the lady's arm under the pretext of preventing her from slipping into the fatal embraces of the rolling mill. Mrs. Hesseltine did not withdraw her arm. The major was certainly a very satisfying person to be with.

And she caught herself wondering why he did not possess himself of her arm more often, and why, since he obviously admired her, he so seldom allowed himself to overpass the rigid bounds of ordinary acquaintanceship. This was a thought that had often troubled the charming chatelaine of Mindaroona. And it persisted in obtruding itself even in the midst of this noisy din of whirring, clanking, screeching machinery. Why did the major stop short just when her instinct told her that he felt most drawn towards her? He was the most perplexing middle-aged bachelor she had ever met. Most of them wanted to make love to her on sight. And then the widow began to be conscious of a vague apprehension—she could hardly analyse it—concerning the major's early life, which he hardly ever talked about.

All this flashed through her brain as she walked along beside the major, paying no attention whatever to the old foreman in front of them, even when he expatiated on the many merits of the new steel-furnace and pointed out the big ingots of steel that were being reheated and then passed through the rolling-mills, to emerge in the form of red-hot girders, channeling, fishplates and various other kinds of useful hardware that were being sawn into convenient lengths by a methodical buzz-saw, which screeched without intermission over its task.

Mrs. Hesseltine found metal more attractive in her own thoughts—which were mainly about the major—than in the "stupid old iron-works," which were merely useful as a back-ground.

Suddenly, just as they paused in front of the punching-machine, which was boring holes in red-hot fishplates under the supervision of the extremely grimy-faced young workman who had passed them near the entrance, Mrs. Hesseltine found herself confronted by a paralysing though unspoken question. It was this: Was there any reason—anything in the major's past life—which prevented him from proposing to her? That he was a bachelor she had always supposed. But after all, what solid justification had she for such a supposition?

As the question flashed through Mrs. Hesseltine's brain, she looked up, and found herself staring straight into the eyes of the young workman, who, according to the foreman, had only recently come to Shaleville from "t'other side of the Murray."

The young workman's gaze was positively disquieting. There seemed to be almost a hint of menace in it. And his face was quite preposterously grimy. It almost looked as though he had blackened it with coaldust on purpose. None of the other workmen were nearly so dirty.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Hesseltine, nervously clutching the major's arm. "That young fellow gave me quite a start."

"There's nothing wrong about him that I can see," whispered the major reassuringly. "A very decent young fellow, I'm sure. Just watch him at his work for a minute."

The party of visitors paused in front of the punching-machine and watched the young workman, who had a boy to assist him. Armed with a big pair of pincers, the man seized a red-hot fishplate, swung it into place, and then pulled a lever which brought down a row of punches that went through the iron as though it was cheese, and dropped the punched out cores on the ground beneath. The boy, who also wielded a pair of pincers, grasped the finished article and stacked it with the others. And so the work proceeded with monotonous iteration, varied only by the occasional jamming of a fishplate in the punching-machine and the consequent necessity of pulling it out again with the pincers and reinserting it straight.

"Really I must get out into the open air," said the widow abruptly. "The heat and the noise in here have made me feel quite faint." She passed her hand across her forehead with a gesture of weariness that did not escape the notice of the alert major, and he hurried her forward at once.

Leonie ran up to see what was the matter, and taking Mrs. Hesseltine's disengaged arm, helped the major to support her until they emerged from the machinery-shed and stood once more in the open air.

But if the mistress of Mindaroona had looked back she would have seen a very peculiar little incident. She would have seen the preternaturally grimy-faced young workman at the punching-machine desist from his work for a moment to run after Harold, tap him on the back, and thrust a piece of paper into his hand. Then she would have seen the young workman place his finger on his lip with an imperative appeal for silence, and go back to the punching-machine, where an open-mouthed urchin stood gaping at him with a red-hot fishplate in his pincers.

Harold opened the note and read it with a puzzled brow. When he had finished it he crushed it up in his hand, thrust it into his pocket, and ran after the major, Mrs. Hesseltine, and Leonie.

He found them discussing some point of evident importance with Mr. Blunt, the foreman.

"Askin' your pardon, sir," Mr. Blunt was saying to the major, "but your good lady hasn't seen the galvanising bath yet. It's one of the most interesting things we do 'ere an' I'm sure she orter see it before she goes."

"I wish the man wouldn't persist in calling me your good lady, Major," said the widow testily, "and I wouldn't go to see his old galvanising bath for a hundred pounds. I wish he'd go and drown himself in it. I want to get out of this and go home. Can't you explain that I'm feeling ill?"

"Mrs. Hesseltine is not very well to-day," shouted the major desperately, "and she would like to postpone the rest of the inspection until some other day."

Mr. Blunt nodded as though he understood, but it was all a bluff. "Ye see, mum," he continued, demonstrating with lifted forefinger in front of the exasperated widow, "we puts the ingots of spelter—that's lead, tin, and such-like—with a little sal ammoniac inter the galvanising bath. Then we puts in a steel sheet, plain or corrugated, an' out she comes with a beautiful mottled sheen, like wot you 'ave seen, no doubt, on your own station. They calls it galvanised iron, mum—but that's a mistake, if you'll excuse me for saying so. There ain't a square yard of galvanised iron in the country. It's all galvanised steel now, an' very useful too fer making churches, coalsheds, buggy-houses, or any little thing like that about the place."

"For goodness' sake, make him stop, Major." The handsome widow was almost crying by this time.

"If you wouldn't mind showing us the way to the gate, Mr. Blunt," said the major, "we would be extremely obliged to you. We really must be going now."

Mr. Blunt wagged his head comprehendingly and led the way through more machinery. "Would you mind askin' your good lady not to step in that 'ole?" he murmured confidentially, after they had walked about a quarter of a mile; "it's full of 'ot slag. That's the black skin on the top. Very deceptive, that 'ot slag. It come out of the pot that they filled when they tapped the steel-furnace. They drawed off the steel, ye see, into them moulds, and this 'ere slag was left be'ind."

The molten stone bubbled up yellow and fiery through the cracks in the black skin that covered it, and Mrs. Hesseltine trod carefully among the red-hot pitfalls that beset her path. She was desperately tired, her head was aching, and the recollection of the face of the grimy young workman at the punching-machine troubled her seriously.

When Mr. Blunt solemnly produced a pair of blue spectacles and bade her put them on in order that she might gaze unharmed into the dazzling interior of the steel-furnace, Mrs. Hesseltine flatly refused. Indeed, she went on strike. "I-I-I thought you were ta-ta-taking me to the ga-ga-gate," she sobbed to the major; "and I'm simply dying for a cuh-hup-hup of tea."

So the party retreated in good order towards the main gate, and the major covered the retreat and fought a rearguard action with Mr. Blunt, who displayed prodigious valour in dodging about among pools of burning slag, in his desire to cut off the retirement and compel the visitors to do their duty without shirking.

"My dear, it's very interesting," said Mrs. Hesseltine to Leonie as she dabbed her pretty little nose with something concealed in her lace-edged handkerchief, "but nothing would induce me to go into the place again. Why, it's positively terrifying."

"Yes, but it's beautiful too," said Leonie thoughtfully, with a backward glance towards the dark stalwart figures suddenly bathed in glowing light as a furnace-door was opened, and the cascade of fire that played round the man in armour as he stood before his hammer. "It's the beauty of power and effort and peril—something that we women can see from afar but never take part in."

"My dear Leonie, you're getting quite poetical," said Mrs. Hesseltine. "It's most reassuring. I was beginning to think that you had very little sentiment in your nature. Come along, Harold; we'll be very late getting home as it is."

"I—I'm afraid I'll not be able to go back with you, mother," said Harold hesitatingly. "I have to see a man here, a little later, on particular business."

"Oh, nonsense, my dear boy! What business can you possibly have in the township? Don't be so absurd."

"Really, mother, I must ask you to excuse me just this once. I'll borrow the superintendent's car and get one of the men to drive me home later on in the evening."

"What rubbish, Harold!" said Mrs. Hesseltine testily. "There can be no possible reason why you cannot come home with us now."

Harold fidgeted and reddened, but he remained obstinate. "I'm very sorry, mother," he said finally, "but I really cannot go back with you now."

Mrs. Hesseltine looked sharply at the young fellow and then at the major.

Leonie looked at Harold too. Clearly she was puzzled, but she could no more interpret the boy's refusal to go back to Mindaroona than she could interpret the frowns of Mrs. Hesseltine or the obvious dissatisfaction of the major. All the frank enjoyment of the outing was over, and a vague feeling of mutual distrust descended like a chilly mist upon the party.

Afternoon tea was achieved amid brief banalities, and it was a relief to all when the big motor-car drew up at the side of the main street and took in Mrs. Hesseltine, Leonie, and the major.

"I shall expect you home to-night, Harold," said Mrs. Hesseltine frostily, just before the car drove away; "and please remember that I shall be sitting up for you. You'll be able to borrow the manager's car for the run out. Goodbye."

Leonie gave Harold a chilly nod, and the car sprang forward, leaving Harold standing at the side of the street waving his embarrassed adieux.

The major was gloomy and depressed during the journey home. He found his thoughts recurring first to Harold and then to the woman whom he had married twenty years before, and who had vanished so utterly from his ken. When would that horrible uncertainty be cleared up? His liberty of action was completely fettered by his anxiety.

He fell to wondering whether an important step that he had recently taken would clear up the mystery.