She could not stop marveling over the miracle that had taken place. The golden wattle, a native Australian acacia, was in full springtime bloom, producing large fluffy yellow flower heads that were in fact clusters of many tinier flowers, casting green trees and brown bark in gold that shimmered blindingly in the sunlight. The whole world in fact, Hannah thought as she guided her one-horse buggy along the tree-lined lane, seemed bursting with new life and fresh color as the rust-red earth of South Australia gave forth an abundance of emerald-greens, deep sky-blues, and flowers ranging from blood-red to canary yellow. Fields of clover, acres of wheat and corn, and vineyards mantled in lush grape vines all swept away to rolling hills where sheep and cattle grazed, and the occasional red-roofed farmhouse stood beneath the sun. Riding along the road to the clip-clop of her mare's hooves, Hannah heard the wind in the gum trees, many of which she was now able to identify—the spotted gum, the blue gum, the thin-leaved stringy bark, the red flowering gum, and the mountain ash—and they seemed to be whispering, "Come live with us." There was that strange enchantment again, redolent of her encounter with the outlaw Jamie O'Brien eight months ago.
