Free The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough

of the valley. When at last she stumbled upon the spot she could see the logic behind the site, for a gargantuan landslide had strewn boulders and rocks in a kind of ramp from top to bottom of the cliff, thus decreasing the sheerness of the drop. Standing at the commencement of the track, she could just glimpse it twisting back and forth across the landslide in a series of zigzags; a perilous descent, yes, but not an impossible one for a cart like John Smith’s.
    However, she was far too timid to venture down, not from fear of falling but from fear of walking into John Smith’s lair. Instead, she struck off into the bush on top of the ridge along a narrow path that might have been made by animals going to water. And sure enough, as time went by a sound of running water gradually overpowered the omnipresent sound of the trees talking in that faint, plaintive, fatigued speech gum trees produce on calm days. Louder and louder was the water, until it became a bewildering roar; then when she came upon the stream, it offered her no answer, for though it was quite deep and wide, it was sliding along between its ferny banks without a flurry. Yet the roar of rushing water persisted.
    She turned to the right and followed the river, inside her dream of enchantment at last. The sun glanced off the surface of the water in a thousand thousand sparks of light, and the ferns dripped tiny droplets, and dragonflies hovered with rainbow-mica wings, and brilliant parrots wheeled from the trees of one bank to the trees of the other.
    Suddenly the river vanished. It just fell away into nothing, a smoothly curving edge. Gasping, Missy drew back quickly, understanding the roar. She had come to the very head of the valley, and the stream which had cut it was entering it in the only way possible, by going down, down, down. Working cautiously along the brink for a good quarter of a mile, she came to a place where a great rock jutted far out over the cliff. And there, right on its end, legs dangling into nothingness, she sat to watch the waterfall in awe. Its bottom she could not discover, only the beautiful untidy tangle of its flight through the windy air, and a rainbow against a mossy place on the cliff behind it, and a chilly moistness that it exhaled as it fell, like a cry for help.
    Several hours slipped away as easily as the water. The sun left that part of the ridge. She began to shiver; time to go home to Missalonghi.
    And then where her path joined the road leading down into John Smith’s valley, Missy met John Smith himself. He was driving his cart from the direction of Byron, and she saw with surprise that the cart was laden with tools and crates and sacks and iron machinery. Somewhere was a shop open on Sunday!
    He pulled up at once and jumped down, smiling broadly. “Hello!” he said. “Feeling better?”
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “I’m glad to catch you like this, because I was beginning to wonder if you were still in the land of the living. Your mother assured me you were when I called, but she wouldn’t let me see for myself.”
    “You came to see how I was?”
    “Yes, last Tuesday.”
    “Oh, thank you for that!” she said with fervour.
    His brows rose, but he didn’t attempt to quiz her. Instead, he left his conveyance where it was, and turned to walk back with her towards Missalonghi.
    “I take it there was nothing serious wrong?” he asked after some minutes during which they just paced along together without speaking.
    “I don’t know,” said Missy, recognising the emanations of pity and sympathy his obviously healthy being was giving off. “I have to see a doctor in Sydney quite urgently. A heart specialist, I believe.” Now why did she say it like that?
    “Oh,” he said, at a loss.
    “Whereabouts exactly do you live, Mr. Smith?” she asked, to change the subject.
    “Well, further around in the direction you’ve just come from is a waterfall,” he said, not at all reticently, and in a tone of voice which