The Old Humpey, as it was called, had creepers overgrowing its roof, a nesting-place for frogs, lizards, snakes--and Lady Bridget, brave enough for doughty deeds, could never overcome her terror of horned beasts and reptiles.

McKeith's office, where he entered branding tallies and posted the station log, was in the Old Humpey, and two or three bachelor bedrooms opposite the wing with kitchen and store.

But Lady Bridget lived chiefly in the new house--less picturesque with its zinc roofing and deficiency of green drapings, but, being built on sawn lengths of saplings, more or less fortified against snakes.

In front there was a great vacant space between the ground and the floor of the house--pleasant enough in summer, when a gentle draught could find its way through the cracks between the boards, but cold in winter, though the northern winters were not sharp enough or long enough for this to be a serious discomfort.
Nor, when Lady Bridget slept alone in the new house, did she mind much the dogs and harmless animals that couched under the boards, they gave her a sense of companionship.

But there was a herd of goats--some of them old and with big tough horns--which McKeith had started in his bachelor days to provide milk when, as sometimes happened, the milch cows failed; also to furnish savoury messes of kid's flesh--a pleasant change from the eternal salt beef varied with wild duck.