and sniffed the air. They cantered forward.

Beyond the foot-hill, where a little sandy creek ran out of the ridges, there were three trodden, bloody patches in the grass; and on each were fresh-torn fragments of hide, bones with the flesh ripped from them, the scattered entrails and grinning head of a mutilated beast. Round each were broken spears. In the soft creek sand was a crowd of human tracks of all sizesprints of broad, naked feet with spreading toes.

The black troopers dismounted and swarmed about the offal like hounds loosed on a trail. Townshend stood alone, and leaned his forehead against the horse's neck. He thought of his quiet, well-kept cattle-his pride and only wealth-tearing over the country in a panic; of all his patient work undone, and there was murder in his heart.

Brown stayed with the troopers till they had made their report to him. Then he came to Townshend with a broken spear-butt in his hand. "Got 'em," he said, and tapped the notched end of the spear; "here's the Western trade-mark; they haven't seen our tracks; think we troopers are away the other side of sundown. Settle the business before dark. Will you go or stay? I shall let loose"-he jerked his thumb behind him; the troopers were waiting and watching hungrily for the word to mount-"the dogs. It won't be pretty."

Brown's blue eyes were stone-hard, wide and set; in the hands of this man, vengeance would be driven home; but Townshend felt no touch of pity as he looked about him at the wantonness, and abroad, where panic must be spreading like a plague among his herd. "I'll come," he said, and mounted. Brown gave the word; the blueshirted troopers spread away into the scrub, bending in their saddles, tacking across and across with a ferocious in

tentness to pick up the trail. The white men rode behind.

The tracks were plain reading in the loose soil of the foot-hills; on the stony rises the troopers went afoot, still following the line of march by signs invisible to the whites. By noon they found where the cattle-killers had camped the night before, on a ridge above a solitary little rocky pool. There was damning evidence in lumps of charred and wasted meat about the ashes of the fires, and the column pushed on.

The ground became stonier, and the hills closed in about them; it grew choking hot, and though they moved among a wilderness of trees, each tree stood up lank and scant-leaved, barely flecked with shadow about its foot, so that the men toiled in broad sunshine. The ride became a crawl; the black troopers and the white one never spoke, never flagged, but tracked, and watched ahead with the nervous, tireless energy of terriers on the scent.

Townshend was left a stranger to this centredness of purpose, and misgiving touched him; abstracted, and with nameless doubts upon him of this mission of slaughter to which he had set his hand, he looked about him and ahead at the naked hungry wilderness of sterile granite and gray sapless trees all throbbing to the cruel sun, and a fear and doubting of he knew not what possessed him. The unflinching Brown and his wardogs had somehow become foreign to Townshend. Like a stab in the throat, a conviction seized him that something was amiss with his wife. But he kept his place doggedly, abreast of the soldierly, unpitying Brown.

At last the horses were left, tied and close-hobbled, in what seemed like a last little amphitheatre of soil, and the troop went on afoot, carrying nothing but their arms and water-bags. The trail led them into the jaws of a narrow gorge, a very chaos of granite

bowlders that seemed, as they lay all red and quaking in the intolerable glare, as if about to dissolve and run down into a torrent of molten lava. Townshend's boots scorched him; the march resolved itself into an eternity of effort to climb noiselessly upward among the burning stones, and to gulp down enough scalding air to save his bursting heart. Then he felt Brown's hand upon him and looked up. The troop was halted; every head was lifted and aslant. Three hundred yards onward the barren ridges were cleft-it was the gully-head, and beyond the cleft, kites were wheeling and crying in the dazzling blue. As they looked and listened, a clear human sound broke out above the piping of the birds; it was a girl's laughter, and ended in a high note of pleasure. At a sign from Brown, every trooper unslung his carbine and loaded, and each put a spare cartridge between his teeth. Then, in extended line, they crept on again like cats.

Townshend lagged in a fury of compunction. The only sound of the enemy had come to him as a girl's laugh; yet Brown, as he turned to beckon the squatter into line, had the light of battle and a savage triumph in his seablue eyes. Townshend crept forward, and swore to himself no trigger should be drawn here.

No watch had been set. The blacks had passed the rocky crown, whence they must have seen their danger, and were cosily camped on a little patch of soil below. From between two tall boulders Townshend could see the whole company as if he looked from a gallery over a floor beneath. There must have been thirty little smouldering fires or white ash-heaps. Each fire apparently denoted a family party; by each was a little gunyah of boughs, and in each gunyah were the elders of the party. Many were coiled up in sleep, and many of the sleepers' heads were

gray; some were tending scraps of meat among the ashes; some were chipping patiently at the manufacture of wooden things and crooning softly to themselves; some sat in idle content; round about the tree nearest to each gunyah were the weapons of that party; and hung to the tree were grimy belongings, among which in every case were rudely hacked lumps of raw meat. And among the spaces of the camp a dozen naked, lithe-limbed boys darted and played like swallows. As Townshend watched, the same ripple and call of laughter he had heard before broke from a gunyah at some antic of the smallest player.

As Townshend took in the scene his hatred melted, he forgot his mission, he looked with a kindly hunger of curiosity and purely human interest. The soldier in him died; the lust for vengeance faded into mere pity. Where was the ruthless enemy that had lurked beneath that threatening smoke-pennon? Here, in the hollow of his hand, and he saw-what?

A brawny savage sat cross-legged and happy at the nearest gunyah; a woman slept beside him, and against her sat a small picaninny, who gazed out solemnly at the players. In a flash, Townshend seemed to see with the man's eyes. He was full-fed; here was food for the moment and for the morrow, killed in fair hunt-what did he know of the white man that had brought the cattle there, and was a trespasser? Here was his wife, curled in sleep beside him; he could see his big boy lusty at play; the smell of the wood-smoke was sweet; doubtless the police with their rifles were far away; the world was very well; he would doze awhile-he put out a hand and stroked the picaninny's shoulder.

Then Townshend remembered his errand, and came out of his dreaming with eyes of horror. Brown caught the look and read it for the nervousness of

a man at his first killing; he sent back a flinty smile. Townshend crept to him and whispered-"Brown! for God Almighty's sake-is this your fighting?they're helpless, man!"

"So are your cattle, old chap. Steady's the word. I know your feelings-you'll be all right when you think it over. Stand by."

"You shall not"-Townshend jumped to his feet-"I'll-"

It was the signal to fire.

The echoes of the hills bellowed in return to a volley from the rifles, and then wailed an answer to the yell that broke up from the camp.

The blacks ran for life, empty-handed, in sheer brute terror, without a sound, leaping from stone to stone. The troopers followed, reloading as they

ran.

But one old man, as he leapt to his feet, seemed to turn giddy; he clutched forward blindly with his hands, then fell across a heap of ashes and embers, and lay still; he sent up a white cloud as he fell. One of the boys was hit in full career at play; he crawled a pace or two, dragging a shattered leg, then lay down in the open, and a crimson stain spread round him.

Of the nearest group that Townshend had been watching, the man fell forward quietly on his face and hardly moved, the gin started up to run with the rest, but turned, and Townshend could see the look in her eyes as she put one hand to her side and stretched the other towards the picaninny. The child ran to her; she sank down and knelt by him; he clambered up her shoulders and sat astride her neck, clasping his hands about her forehead, ready to be lifted up and carried off. But the mother did not rise; still she sank till the picaninny was left standing. The woman crawled by inches till she could touch the dead man's head. At last she lay outstretched; the fingers of one hand were twisted in

the man's hair-the other arm was curled about the picaninny sitting by her shoulder.

At the first volley Brown had run with the troopers; Townshend saw the revolver-muzzle smoking in his hand. He watched without moving till all but the picaninny lay still. The dropping shots and the shouts of the troopers gradually ceased, and Townshend was left in silence, except for a tiny wailing from the picaninny, who plucked at his mother's fingers and beat softly on her body.

Townshend drew near the child unheard; the rocks and trees swam before him; he put out a foot to save himself from falling; the picaninny heard him and ceased his crying, and looked round.

The two gazed at one another in a long moment of silence; then the child stood up and held two tiny hands, orange-colored on the palms, above his head, in token of unarmed surrender. Townshend sat down before him and sobbed as men sob-dry-eyed.

The two were still facing one another when Brown came in sight, unheard by either. He was filling his pipe and called out heartily, "Feel sick, old chap? Lots do, first go off. Be all right when you get a-hallo! now what blasted nigger shot this gin?"

Brown had noticed the picaninny's dead mother, and had not observed Townshend's silence and his aged and narrowed face. The picaninny cowered down and clung about the neck of the dead woman as Brown came towards him.

Then the officer made a tour of the deserted camp, examined the bodies as he filled and lighted his pipe, and called out to Townshend cheerful remarks on what he noticed, and broken accounts of the pursuit of the blacks down the gorge. To follow and "disperse" niggers, all in open day, was, he exulted, a "record." Townshend an

swered nothing, but sat and gazed at the picaninny.

One by one the black troopers gathered in. They were in great glee; they came and stood or sat about Townshend and the child as a centre of interest. The picaninny cowered closer against the dead body; when a trooper came near he glared at the man like a hunted beast; his head flattened like a snake's.

"Wake up,. Jep!" said Brown, and slapped Townshend on the shoulder. You'll call this a fine day's work some day when you have broken the youngster in for a stockman."

"It's paying dear for labor, Brown." "Rot, man! Do you remember how you felt when you found your cattle mauled, and thought of the consequences?"

"I remember."

"There will be no more of that, then; you'll bless this day's work inside a fortnight."

"I shall be ashamed of this day as long as I live."

Brown flourished his pipe impatiently. "If I didn't know your pluck, Jep, and that you were upset for a minute, I should call that croaking. That's the sort of rot, begging your pardon, that stands in the way of conquest."

Townshend held out a hand towards the picaninny and the dead parents. He tried to repeat the word-it stuck in his throat.

The child ran to Townshend and closed its little fists round two of the fingers held out towards him. Brown swore vehemently at a trooper for laughing.

Townshend stooped down and stroked the picaninny's shoulder; it was velvety soft, and he made no resistance when the white man lifted him in his arms. When the party moved away towards the horses, the child looked back once at his mother and gave his monotonous little cry, then settled him

self confidently against Townshend's shoulder. He would let no other touch him.

On the previous night Barbara Townshend had retired in a happy exhilaration. In the inspiring presence of the young police officer she freshened, glowed, expanded like a rose in sunshine. In bed she even cried a little, quietly, not at all in bitterness, or in longing for the irrevocable past that had been awakened suddenly; but in sorrow for her strange unlovingness, and with a healing sense of fortitude upon her. The tears refreshed her; they came to prove the strictured soul was stirring wholesomely again within her. Hope had revived; the future beckoned; life on Oontoona was no more to be a crushing affair that called merely for endurance. She planned, penitently, many healthful resolutions that the suffocating cloud upon her life and love-so happily dispersed-was to descend no more.

Then, as she was drifting happily into slumber, the men's voices reached her, and her heart went cold when she heard vaguely of blood and blacks and cattle-spearing. But she shrank from starting upon this more hopeful chapter of her life, that was to date from this night, by showing foolish fears-she was to be a real helpmeet to her husband now-and so, when he came and stood above her and kissed her hair, she was not asleep, but fighting down the impulse to cling about his neck and tell him she was wildly, horribly afraid.

She heard no more, but lay throttling. the terror that had so suddenly replaced her new-found happiness. In the very effort to keep herself rigid in thought and limb, lest she should play the coward, she slept and woke no more until the morning.

Jasper's note, the quietness about the homestead, and the stockman's clumsy

and mysterious manner, began a strange day for Barbara. The muteness that had lain so long upon her had broken up; she was full of longings and wild fears, and insupportable restlessness. The empty vastness out of doors drove her within; she was no sooner in the house than she could have screamed out in terror; for her fear persuaded her that, through the long grass and ambushed in the river-bed, pitiless, uncouthly weaponed savages were closing in upon the homestead. And so, round and about, her nameless terrors hunted her.

It was high noon; she had eaten nothing, and was bending distractedly above the poor little bundle of sewing, listening abroad; full of sympathy for the dumb Barbara of yesterday, who had engaged in such pitiful futility; and yet wringing a sweet prophecy from it, too, and fingering the baby-clothes longingly-when she heard a distant rushing in the grass, and many great moanings, and felt the earth tremble.

When the stockman came and called her, he found no trembling, frightened girl, but a woman, steady and serene, armed with her husband's rifle; the thimble was on one of the fingers that were round the rifle-stock as she stood as if on guard, above the dainty litter of her sewing.

She came with him to the stockyard, and even helped him to put up the rails upon fifty terrified cattle that were surging and huddling there-panting, foaming, hollow-flanked and terrordriven, like the wing of a routed army. Several beasts had smears of blood upon their ribs; and in one corner a young cow had fallen. Her eyes were glazing in death; six inches of a jagged broken spear protruded from her ribs, and her calf stood off and bellowed frantically to her. Barbara-large-eyed and very white, but very firm-looked on while the stockman ended the brute's agony with a knife thrust in her neck.

"Who is it?" a strange voice answered him. "Something's pinned quite tight round my head."

He put his hand upon her forehead, then round her neck and drew her towards him. "Come, Barbara, it's Jasper, you know. And it's all right."

She came to him and he saw her in the dimness, looking for an instant wild and strange. Then, as though in the depths of her something had looseened, broken and melted, he saw the Barbara he had known aforetime. She clung to him sobbing and crying passionately.