Now Deringham may have been right, and he may equally have been wrong; for, while Alton of Somasco had doubtless inherited something from the generations of land-holders who had gone before him, the man animated by a single purpose who has grappled with untrammelled nature, subduing the weaknesses of his body, and bearing hardship, peril, and toil, not infrequently attains to something of the greatness which is the birthright of humanity, and not confined to the English gentleman.

Alice Deringham, however, smiled ironically at her father.  “Did you expect anything else from him?” she said.  “I wonder how long it will be before he comes back again.”

Deringham did not answer her, but there was a curious look in his face, and he seemed to shiver.  It was, however, very cold, and the rain drove into the verandah.

It was ten days later and the little party, clearing a path for the horses through a chaos of fallen trunks and thickets, had made with difficulty some six or eight miles a day, when Alton was awakened one night by the trampling of the beasts.  He sat up in his blankets and listened intently, but could only hear the hoarse roar of a river and the little cold breeze moaning in the pines.  A man new to that region would have lain down again, but Alton had taught himself to understand a little of the nature of the beasts that worked for him, and when he heard another movement crept to the tent door.

Looking out he could see the pines lifting their spires of blackness against the night where they followed the ridge of a hill.  That was on the one hand, but on the other they rolled, vague and blurred, down into a vast hollow from which the mist was drifting.  The sound of the river rose reverberating from its profundity of shadow, for it had cost the party most of a day to climb to the height they had pitched the camp upon.  There was but little light overhead, though here and there a star blinked fitfully, and Alton shivered again, for it was very cold and but little past the hour when man’s vitality sinks to its lowest.

Raising himself a trifle he listened again with ears that could distinguish each component of the nocturnal harmonies.  No one but a bushman could have heard them, but to those who toil in the stillness of that forest-shrouded land the silence is but the perfect blending of musical sound.  There was the faintest of crisp rattles as the withered needles shook down from a twig, and then a sigh and a whisper along the dim black vault above, as though a spirit hovered above the sleeping earth.  Alton heard, and knew it was not the wind, for the little breeze had paused while the river made it answer in subdued antiphones.  He had dwelt in close contact with the soil he sprang from, and there were times when he felt his nature thrill in faint response to the life there is in what the men of the cities deem inanimate things.