Thrice Armed by Harold Bindloss — Read

The evening was cool and clear. Anthea Merril and Jimmy followed an Indian path that wound through the primeval bush. On the one hand a great, smooth-scarped wall of rock ran up far above the trees that clung about its feet into the wondrous green transparency, but the light was dying out down in the hollow where towering fir and cedar clustered. They were great of girth and very old, and beneath them there was silence and solemnity.

Jimmy, who carried his companion's sketching materials, went first to clear the dew-wet fern away, and the girl walked behind him silently; but this was not because there had been any change in her attitude toward him. Indeed, a certain camaraderie had grown up between them during the few days they had spent fishing and wandering in the bush, and there was, after all, nothing astonishing in this, for Jimmy was guilty of no presumption, and social distinctions, which are, indeed, not very marked in that country, do not count for much in the wilderness. Still, that camaraderie had been a revelation to him, and he was uneasily aware that during the rest of his life he would look back upon the time when he had been Miss Merril's guide and attendant.