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sir.’
    â€˜Good,’ Eyre told him. ‘And next time, don’t come jumping out at me like a ghostly golliwog.’
    Yanluga laughed, and raised both hands like a demon’s claws. ‘You be careful of Koobooboodgery, sir, the night spirit.’
    â€˜You be careful of yowcheroochee, the box on the ears,’ Eyre retorted; and smiled to himself as Yanluga rustled quickly off into the golden wattles again and disappeared towards the house.
    Eyre felt much more cheerful now, and spread out the blanket on top of the crisp, curled-up bark from thesurrounding gum-trees. He hummed to himself the chorus from ‘Country Ribbons’.
    â€˜
In her hair were country ribbons, tied in bows of pink and white
…’ and uncorked the bottle of Madeira and took a mouthful straight from the neck to warm himself up.
    Over his right shoulder, the moon had risen over the distant undulating peaks of the Mount Lofty Range, and Mount Lofty itself, the mountain the Aborigines called Yureidla. The dogs over at the new flour mill began to yip and howl again; but probably because there were dingoes around, hunting for Mr Cairns’s poultry.
    He thought of the morning he had first seen Charlotte, seven months ago, when her father had brought her down to the wharf to watch the unloading of pumping machinery from England. It had been a bright, busy day, with a fresh wind blowing across the mouth of the harbour; and Eyre had been supervising the loading of a ripe-smelling cargo of raw wool, bound for Yorkshire, with the stub of a pencil stuck behind one ear, and his scruffiest britches on.
    His fellow clerk Christopher Willis had nudged him, and said, ‘What do you think of that, then, Eyre, for a prize ornament?’
    Eyre had raised one hand to shield his eyes from the sun; and had stared at Charlotte in complete fascination. She was small, white-skinned, and angelically pretty, with blonde curls straying out from the brim of her high straw bonnet. At first she had appeared almost too doll-like to be true, especially the way in which she was standing so demurely beside her father in her pink fringed shawl; but when she turned and looked towards Eyre he saw that she had a mouth that was pouty and self-willed and a little petulant; the mouth of a spoiled little rich girl who needed taming as well as courting. The sort of girl who could benefit from being put over a chap’s knee, and spanked.
    â€˜Well, well,’ Eyre had remarked, and grinned across the wharf at her and winked.
    â€˜That’s not for you, Master Walker,’ Christopher hadchided him. ‘That’s Lathrop Lindsay’s only and unsullied daughter; and he’s keeping her in virginal isolation until royalty comes to Adelaide, or at the very least a duke; or an eligible governor, not like poor old George Gawler.’
    â€˜She scarcely looks real, does she?’ Eyre had murmured. ‘And by all the stars, look, she’s smiling at me.’
    â€˜Scowling, more like, if she takes after papa,’ Christopher had told him. ‘Lathrop Lindsay’s temper is one of the hazards that they warn settlers about, before they embark from Portsmouth; that, and the heat, and the death-adders, and the tubercular fever.’
    â€˜No, no, she’s definitely smiling at me,’ Eyre had insisted, and had ostentatiously doffed his hat, and bowed.
    â€˜Who’s that impudent ruffian?’ he had heard Lathrop demanding, in a voice like a blaring trumpet. ‘You! Yes,
you
, you scoundrel! Be off with you before I have you thrashed!’
    Eyre hadn’t seen Charlotte for several weeks after that; although he had bicycled out several times to Waikerie Lodge, where the Lindsays lived, and sat on the wroughtiron seat across the road in the hope of catching a glimpse of her, occasionally smoking one of his brandy-flavoured cheroots, or eating an apple.
    That was why it had been such a stroke of good fortune when