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it?”
    “Of course they do. Liang Shih smokes opium—what Chink doesn’t? It doesn’t do them any harm, no more than smoking tobacco. Liang grows the poppies in his garden out on Dorset Downs, along with all the other stuff. Donovan knows all about it.”
    I said, “But that’s illegal. If Donovan knows all about it, why does he let it go on?”
    He grinned. “Arthur likes fresh vegetables.”
    I was silent for a moment. “You mean, if Liang Shih was prosecuted he might go away?”
    “Of course he would. He’d pack up and go and grow his lettuces and poppies somewhere else, and then there’d be nothing but tinned peas in Landsborough. Arthur reckons that it’s more important that the town should get fresh vegetables than that he should go out of his way to persecute one old Chinaman for doing what he’s done all his life and that doesn’t hurt him anyway.” He paused. “Only, if people get to talking about it too much, he’ll have to do something or else lose his job.”
    Right is not wholly right nor wrong completely wrong in the Gulf Country. I said no more about the opium.
    With that, I put Stevie out of my mind. I had more important things to think about, because the dry season wasalready well advanced and I had determined that before the rains came in December and stopped travelling I would visit every family in my rather extensive parish, and hold a service upon every cattle station. That may not seem a very ambitious programme for five months because there are only a hundred and ten families all told, but it meant a great deal of travelling. I did not care to leave Landsborough for longer than a week; I was trying to get the people of the town into the habit of going to their parish church again, and I felt it to be very important that I should be there on Sundays if it were humanly possible. I had no transport of my own, so I had to depend on the mail truck or on lifts in casual vehicles travelling about the area, and these seldom fitted in with my desire to be back in Landsborough every Sunday.
    I worked hard all through the dry that year, and I succeeded in getting to know most of my parishioners. I think they appreciated it, because as time went on I began to get messages more and more frequently asking that I should go back to some family to comfort some dying old woman, or to conduct a funeral service over a new, hastily dug grave, or to baptise a baby. These calls set back my schedule, of course, but I was able to attend to all of them and get to the place where I was needed within two or three days.
    There was another race meeting at Landsborough in September, but I did not go to it. A clergyman can do little in a town that is enjoying a race meeting; his opportunity for service comes at quieter times. It seemed to me that I was better occupied in visiting in the more distant parts of the parish, and I did not bother to return to Landsborough until that Saturday. By then the meeting was over and most of the people had gone back to their stations, but half a dozen station owners and managers had stayed in the town withtheir wives to come to church on Sunday, and that was a great encouragement to me.
    I asked Sister Finlay if she had had Stevie up at the hospital. “No, not this time,” she said. “He was in town for the races, but Liang Shih came in with the vegetables on Friday, and I think he went back with him.” She paused. “He wasn’t looking at all well.”
    I smiled. “I’m not surprised at that.”
    “No …” She thought for a minute. “I believe he’s got something the matter with him,” she said. “I was saying so to Templeton only the other night. He’s got that sort of grey look about him.” She paused. “Dr. Curtis was here with the flying ambulance and I asked him to have a look at Stevie if he got a chance, but they got a call to go to Forest Range on the second day to take an Abo stockman to the hospital at the Curry with broken ribs. I don’t think he ever