“Hallo! Dick. You here! Why, I thought you were away up tea-planting in Assam.”

“And I thought you were comfortably settled down on the ancestral acres by this time.”

“No such luck. The ancient cousin is still very much to the fore. Has taken to himself a new wife in fact, and a new lease of life along with her. She has presented her doting husband with a very fine heir; and, well, of course, after that little Willie was nowhere, and departed for pastures new.”

“Make your fortune, eh! Made it?”

“Of course. Money-making game riding tracks on Jinfalla! Made yours?”

“Money-making game riding tracks on Nilpe Nilpe.”

The two men looked at each other, and laughed. In truth, neither looked particularly representative of the rank and aristocracy of their native land. The back blocks are very effectual levellers, and each saw in the other a very ordinary bushman, riding a horse so poor, the wonder was he was deemed worth mounting at all. Both were dusty and dirty, for the drought held the land in iron grip, and the fierce north wind, driving the dust in little whirls and columns before it, blew over plains bare of grass and other vegetation as a beaten road.

Around them was the plain, hot and bare of any living creature, nothing in sight save a low ridge bounding the eastern horizon, a ridge which on closer inspection took the form of bluffs, in most places almost inaccessible. Overhead was the deep blue sky, so blue it was almost purple in its intensity, with not a cloud to break the monotony. Sky and desert, that was all, and these two Englishmen meeting, and the shadows cast by themselves and their horses, were the only spots of shade for miles.

“Sweet place!” said Guy Turner, looking round. “Warmish too. Wonder what it is in the shade?”

“In the shade, man. There ain’t any shade, unless you count the shadows of our poor old mokes, and mine’s so poor, I ‘ll bet the sun can find his way through his ribs. I ‘ve been in the sun since daybreak, and I reckon it is somewhere about boiling point.”

“I suppose it must be over 1600. What the dickens did you come out for?”

“Well, seeing it’s been like this for the last three months, and is likely to go on for three more, as far as I can see; it ain’t much good stopping in for the weather; besides there’s this valuable estate to be looked after. But to-day I rode over for the mails.”

“What, to the head-station?”

“Lord, no! The track to Roebourne passes along about twenty miles off over there, and I get the boss to leave my mail in a hollow tree as he passes.”

“Trusting, certainly. There ‘s some good about this God-forsaken country.”

Dick Stanesby, or, to give him his full name, Richard Hugh De Courcy Stanesby, shrugged his shoulders scornfully.

“Evidently, Dick, that mail wasn’t satisfactory. Has she clean forgot you, Dick, the little white mouse of a cousin, with the pretty blue eyes? She was mighty sweet on you, and———”

But there was a frown on Dick’s usually good-tempered face. He was in no mind to take his old chum’s pleasantry kindly, and the other saw it, and drew his own conclusions therefrom.

“Chucked him over, poor beggar, I suppose. Hang it all! Women are all alike; once a man’s down, he’s forgotten,” but he did not speak his thoughts aloud. He looked away across the sweltering plain, and said casually,

“Where do you hang out, old man?”

Stanesby pointed east in a vague sort of manner, that might indicate South Australia, or far distant New South Wales.

“Got a shanty on the creek there,” he said laconically.

“Creek, is there a creek? The place looks as if it hadn’t seen water since the beginning of the world.”

“Oh, there’s a creek right enough. I believe it’s a big one when it rains, but it hasn’t rained since I ‘ve been here, and there ain’t much water in it. Just a little in the hole opposite the hut. The niggers say its permanent. Springs, or something of that sort.”

“Niggers! That’s what I ‘ve come over about. They’ve worried the life out of us on Jinfalla. Taken to spearing the cattle, and the men too if they get a chance. Old Anderson thinks we ought to have some ‘concerted action,’ and settle the matter once for all.”

“H’m. Wipe ‘em out, I suppose he means?”

“It’s what a squatter generally means, isn’t it, when he talks about the blacks? Sounds brutal, but hang it all, man, what the devil is a fellow to do? They ‘re only beasts, and as beasts you must treat ‘em. Look here, there was a young fellow on our run, as nice a boy as you ‘d wish to see—his people were something decent at home, I believe, but the lad had got into some scrape and cleared out, and drifted along into the heart of Western Australia here. He was riding tracks for old Anderson about two hundred miles to the west there. He didn’t come in last week for his tucker, so they sent word for me to look him up.”

“Well?” for Turner paused, and drew a long breath.

“Well—same old nip, of course. His hut was burnt, and he and his hutkeeper—I tell you, Dick, it won’t bear talking about—he was a lad of twenty, and the hutkeeper was an old lag, might have been seventy to look at him, but when I found their bodies down by the creek, I couldn’t tell which was which.”

“It’s bad,” said Stanesby, “very bad. What did you do?”

“Buried ‘em, of course, my mate and I, and shot the first buck we came across skulking in the bush. What would you have us do?”

“It’s all bad together,” said the other man, with an oath. “The blacks about here are tame enough if you let ‘em alone, but these young fellows get meddling with their women, and—well——”

“That ‘s all very well, but you didn’t find a mate too ghastly a corpse to look at, or you wouldn’t take the matter so coolly. You ‘d have done just as I did. Something must be done, old man, or the country won’t be habitable.”

They had been riding along slowly, side by side, one man eager, anxious, interested, the other evidently with his thoughts far away. The mail he had got that morning was stuffed into his saddlebags, and the news it brought him made him think longingly of a home in far-away England, a creeper-covered house, and a cosy room with a bright fire, and the rain beating pleasantly on the windows. Rain—he had not seen rain for three long years. Always the hard blue sky and the bright sunshine, always the dreary plain, broken here and there by patches of prickly bush and still more thorny spinifex, always the red bluffs marking the horizon, clean cut against the cloudless sky.

Habitable? Such a country as this habitable? It had given him bread for the last three years, but—but—he felt burning in his pocket the letter summoning him home—telling of the death, the unexpected death, of his young cousin, that made him master of that pleasant home, that filled his empty pockets. What did anyone ever dream of living in such a country for—driving the unlucky niggers back and back? What need for it? What need? Far better leave it to the niggers, and clear out altogether.

Had Gladys forgotten? He wondered. The little white mouse of a cousin, as Turner called her, who had cried so bitterly when he left, and even now answered his letters so regularly, those letters that had come to be written at longer and longer intervals as home ties weakened, and the prospect of seeing her again slowly died away. Had she forgotten—had she? She looked like the sort of woman that would be faithful—faithful—well, as faithful as any one in this world could be expected to be, as faithful as women always are to their lovers in distant lands. Turner had been sweet there once too, curious he should meet him just now; he had forgotten her surely, or he would never have referred to her so casually. Yes, Turner had forgotten, and yet he had been very bad too—strange how completely a thing like that passes out of a man’s life. Could he take up the broken threads just where he left off—could he? So sweet and tender as she was, so quiet and restful. There was that other one, who loved him after her fashion too, but—pah, it was an insult to Gladys to name her in the same breath—she—she—The country was not habitable—a doghole unfit for a European; what was Turner making such a song over the niggers for?

“Old man,” said Turner, he had been telling to unlistening ears the tale of how the blacks had speared, in wanton mischief, a mob of two hundred cattle on Jinfalla, not fifteen miles from the home station, “old man, you see it would be just ruination to let this go on. Either they or we must clear out. We can’t both live here, that’s certain.”

“Always the same old yarn wherever the Englishman goes, always the same old yarn. Poor niggers!”

“Well, what’d you have?” said the other warmly; “something’s got to be done.”

“I ‘m going to cut it all.”

“What?” Turner stopped his horse and looked his companion full in the face. “Cut it all?”

“My cousin ‘s dead.”

“John Stanesby?”

“John Stanesby.”

“And Heyington ‘s yours?”

“And Eastwood too.”

“Good Lord!”

There was silence for a moment. Then Turner said again:

“You can marry Gladys Rowan now.”

“Yes.”

Then he added, as if as an afterthought, “If she ‘ll have me.”

“No fear of that,” said Turner with a sigh. Then he turned to his old chum, and stretching over laid a kindly hand on his arm, “I congratulate you, old chap.”

“Thank you.” And they rode on in silence, the one man thinking bitterly that if ever he had cherished a spark of hope of winning the woman he had loved he must give it up at last, the other trying to realise the good fortune that had come to him.

And an hour ago he had been as this man beside him—only one little hour ago!

“How far do you reckon it to the head-station? Fifty miles?”

“Fifty? Nearer eighty I should say.”

“Then I guess I ‘ll put up at your place. How far’s that?”

“About ten miles.”

“All right. Lead on, master of Heyington.”

To refuse a man hospitality in the bush—such a thing was never heard of, and, though Stanesby said no welcoming word, it never occurred to Turner to doubt that he was more than welcome.

“It’s right out of your way.”

Turner stared.

“Good Lord! What’s ten miles, and we haven’t met for years. I must say, old chap, you don’t seem particularly pleased to see an old chum.”

“I—they ain’t so plentiful I can afford to do that. No, I was thinking of going in to the station with you.”

“Right you are, old man, do you? Only we’ll put up at your place for the night—my horse’s pretty well done—and go on in the morning.”

Stanesby said nothing, only turned his horse’s head slightly to the left. Save the red bluffs away to the east there was nothing to mark the change of direction. There was no reason apparently for his choosing one direction rather than another.

They rode in silence, these two who had been college chums and had not met for years. Possibly it was the one man’s good fortune that raised a barrier between them. It was not easy for Turner to talk of present difficulties and troubles when, as Stanesby said, he was going to “cut it all”; it was not easy for him to speak of bygone times when the other man was going back to them, and he would be left here without a prospect of a change. And Stanesby said nothing, he could only think of the great difference between them; and yesterday there was nothing he would have liked better than this meeting with his old friend, which to-day fell flat. No, he had nothing to say. Already their paths lay wide apart.

An hour’s slow riding brought them to the creek Stanesby had spoken of. There was no gentle slope down to the river, the plain simply seemed to open at their feet, and show them the river bed some twenty feet below. Only a river bed about twenty yards wide, but there was no water to be seen, only signs, marked signs in that thirsty land, that water had been there. Down where the last moisture had lingered the grass grew green and fresh, and leafy shrubs and small trees and even tangled creepers made this dip in the plain a pleasant resting-place for the eye wearied with the monotony of the world above it.

“By Jove!” cried Turner, surprised.

“Told you so,” said his companion, “but it ain’t much after all. Fancy calling that wiry stuff grass in England, and admiring those straggly creepers and shrubs. Why we wouldn’t give ‘em house-room in the dullest, deadest corner of the wilderness at home.”

“Lucky beggar!” sighed the other man. “But you see they ‘re all I ‘m likely to have for many a long year to come. Hang it all, man, I bet you ‘d put that shrub there, that chap with the bright red flower, into your hot-house and look after him with the greatest care, or your gardener would for you.”

“It’d require a d——d hot house,” said Stanesby laconically, wiping his hot face.

They did not descend into the bed of the creek, the ground was better adapted for riding up above, and a mile further along they came upon a large blackfellows’ camp stretched all along the edge of a water-hole.

“The brutes,” said Turner; “bagging the water of course.”

“They ‘d die if they didn’t, I suppose. This, and the hole by my place is the only water I know of for forty miles round. After all they were here first, and if I had my way they’d be left to it.”

“All very well for you to talk,” grumbled Turner. “Do they look worth anything?”

Certainly they did not. The camp was a mere collection of breakwinds made of bark and branches, more like badly-stacked woodheaps than anything else, and the children of the soil lay basking in the sun, among the dogs and filth and refuse of the camp, or crouched over small fires as if it were bitter cold. The dogs started up yelping, for a blackfellow’s dog doesn’t know how to bark properly, as the white men passed, but their masters took no notice. A stark naked gin, with a fillet of greasy skin bound round her head, and a baby slung in a net on her back, came whining to Turner with outstretched hands. She had mixed with the stockkeepers before, and knew a few words of English.

“Give it terbacker along a black Mary. Budgery{1} fellow you,” but he pushed her away with the butt end of his whip.

“My place’s not above a mile away now,” said Stanesby, as they left the precincts of the camp behind them.

“I wouldn’t have those beggars so close, if I were you. Some fine morning you’ll find yourself—”

“Pooh! They’re quite tame and harmless. I ‘ve got a boy from them about the place, and he’s very good as boys go. Besides, I ‘m off as soon as possible.”

     1 Means “good.”
 

“Well, I bet you the man who takes your place thinks differently.”

“Very likely.”

“Got a decent hutkeeper?”

“What? Oh yes. Pretty fair.”

Clearly Stanesby was not in the mood for conversation, and Turner gave it up as a bad job. It was about two o’clock now, the very hottest hour of the day, and all nature seemed to feel it. Not a sound broke the stillness, not the cry of bird or beast, nothing save the sound of their horses’ hoofs on the hard ground was to be heard.

“By Jove!” said Turner, “this is getting unbearable. I vote we get down and shelter for a spell under the lee of the bank.”

For all answer, Stanesby raised his whip and pointed ahead.

“There ‘s the hut,” he said. “Better get on.”

It was hardly distinguishable from the surrounding plain, the little hut built of rough logs, and roofed with sheets of bark stripped from the trees which grew in the river-bed. Down in the creek there was a waterhole, a waterhole surrounded by tall reeds and other aquatic vegetation which gave it a look of permanence, of freshness and greenness in this burnt-up land. But that was down in the creek, round the hut was the plain, barren here as elsewhere; no effort had been made to cultivate it or improve it, and the desert came up to the very doors. The only sign of human life was the refuse from the small household—an empty tin or two, fragments of broken bottles, and scraps of rag and paper, only that and the hut itself, and a small yard for horses and cattle, that was all—not a tree, not a green thing. The bed of the creek was their garden, but it was not visible from the house; its inmates could only see the desolate plain, nothing but that for miles and miles, far as the eye could see. So monotonous, so dreary an outlook, it was hardly possible to believe there was anything else in the world, anything but this lonely little hut, with, for all its paradise, the waterhole in the creek below.

Turner said nothing. It was exactly what he expected; he lived in a similar place, a place without a creek close handy, where the only water came from a well, and undiluted, was decidedly unpleasant to the taste. No, in his eyes Stanesby had nothing to grumble at.

The owner of this palatial residence coo-eed shrilly.

“Jimmy; I say, Jimmy!”

A long, lank black boy, clad in a Crimean shirt and a pair of old riding breeches, a world too big for him, rose lazily up from beside the house, where he had been basking in the sun, and came towards them.

Stanesby dismounted and flung him his reins, Turner following suit.

“All gone sleep,” said Jimmy, nodding his head in the direction of the hut, a grin showing up the white of his regular teeth against his black face.

“Come on in, Turner.”

The door was open and the two men walked straight into the small hut.

It was very dark at first coming in out of the brilliant sunshine, but as Turner’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, he saw that the interior was just exactly what he should have expected it to be. The floor was hard earth, the walls were unlined, the meagre household goods were scattered about in a way that did not say much for his friend’s hutkeeper, a shelf with a few old books and papers on it, was the only sign of culture, and a rough curtain of sacking dividing the place in two, was the only thing that was not common to every hut in all that part of Western Australia.

“Howling swell, you are, old chap! Go in for two rooms I see.”

The curtain was thrust aside, and to Turners astonishment, a girl’s face peered round it. A beautiful girl’s face too, the like of which he had not seen for many a year, if indeed, he had ever seen one like it before; a face with oval, liquid dark eyes in whose depths a light lay hidden, with full red pouting lips, and a broad low brow half hidden by heavy masses of dark, untidy hair, which fell in picturesque confusion over it. A beautiful face in shape and form, and rich dark colouring, and Turner started back too astonished to speak. Such a face! Never in all his life had he seen such a face, and the look turned on his companion was easy enough to read.

“Come here, Kitty,” said Stanesby in an unconcerned voice. “I want some dinner for this gentleman.”

Then she stepped out, and the illusion vanished. For she was only a half-caste, beautiful as a dream, or he who had not seen a woman for many a long day—he never counted the black gins women—thought so, but only a despised half-caste, outcast both from father’s and mother’s race.

Not that she looked unhappy. On the contrary, she came forward and smiled on him a slow, lazy smile, the smile of one who is utterly contented with her lot in life.

“Whew! So that ‘s our hutkeeper, is it?”

“Dinner, Kitty.”

The girl took a tin dish from the shelf and went outside. She walked well and gracefully, and Turner followed her with his eyes.

“By Jove!” he said, “talk about good looks. Why, Dick, you—”

“Hang it all, man,” said Stanesby. “I know well enough what you ‘re thinking. The girl is good-looking, I suppose, for a half-caste. The boss’s sister, old Miss Howard, found her among the tribe, a wild little wretch, and took her in and did her best to civilise her; but it wasn’t easy work, and the old lady died before it was done.”

“And you ‘re completing the job?”

Stanesby shrugged his shoulders.

“I saw her, of course, when I went in to the head-station, which wasn’t very often, and I suppose I told her she was a good-looking girl. She mayn’t understand much, but she understood that right enough, trust a woman for that. Good Lord! I never gave her a second thought, till I found her at my door one night. The little beggar had had a row with ‘em up at the house and came right off to me. It wasn’t any use protesting. She might have done worse, and here she ‘s been ever since. But she’s got the temper of a fiend, I can tell you, and it ain’t all skittles and beer.”

The girl entered the room and Stanesby began turning over his mail letters, making his companion feel that the subject had better be dropped between them. He had explained the girl’s presence, he wanted no comments from his old friend.

He filled his pipe and sat down on the only three-legged stool the hut contained, watching his friend seated on a box opposite and the girl passing in and out getting ready the rough meal. She was graceful, she was beautiful, as some wild thing is beautiful, there was no doubt whatever of that. Her dress was of Turkey red; old Miss Howard had had a fancy for dressing all her dark protegées in bright colours, and they had followed in her footsteps up at the station, and Turner mentally appraising the girl before him, quite approved her taste. The dress was old and somewhat faded, but its severe simplicity and its dull tints just set off the girl’s dusky beauty. Shoes and stockings she had none, but what matter? any touch of civilisation would have spoiled the picture.

Stanesby apparently took no notice of her, but began to read extracts from his letters and papers for his companion’s benefit. He was hardly at his ease, and Turner made only a pretence of listening. He could not take his eyes from the girl who was roughly setting out the table for their meal. “The temper of a fiend,” truly he thought it not unlikely, judging by the glances she threw at him whenever she took her eyes from Stanesby. She could hardly have understood what he read, but she listened intently and cast angry glances every now and then on Turner. He and these letters, she seemed to feel, were not of her world, they were taking this man away from her. Yes, he could well believe she had the temper of a fiend. But she said nothing. Her mother had come of a race which from time immemorial had held its women in bondage, and she spoke no word, probably she had no words in which to express her feelings.

The table was laid at last, and a piece of smoking salt beef and a great round damper brought in from outside and put on it.

“Dinner,” said the girl sullenly, but Stanesby went on reading, and paid no attention, and Turner felt himself watching to see what would happen next. He caught only snatches of the letter, just enough to know it was a description of a hunt in England, of a damp, cold, cloudy day, of an invigorating run—the contrast struck him forcibly—the stifling, hot little hut, and the jealous, half-savage woman standing there, her eyes aflame with anger at the slight she fancied was put upon her.

She stole over and touched Stanesby lightly on the arm, but he shook her off as he would a fly and went on reading calmly.

The other man watched the storm gather on her face. She stood for one moment looking, not at Stanesby but at him; it was very evident whom she blamed for her lover’s indifference; then she stretched across to the table and caught up a knife. Her breath was coming thick and fast and Turner never took his eyes off her, in between her gasping breath he heard his friend’s voice, slow and deliberate as ever, still telling the tale of the English hunting day, still reading the letter which put such a world between him and the girl standing beside him. Then there was a flash of steel, Turner felt rather than saw that it was directed at him, and, before he even had time to think, Stanesby had sprung to his feet and grasped her by the arm.

“Would you now? Would you?” He might have been speaking to a fractious horse. Then as Turner too sprang to his feet and snatched the knife from her hand, he flung her off with an oath.

“You little devil!” He sat down again with an uneasy laugh, and the girl with an inarticulate cry flung herself out of the open door. In all the half hour that had elapsed, she had spoken no word except when she called them to their dinner; but in that inarticulate moan the other man seemed to read the whole bitterness of her story.

“I told you,” said Stanesby, he seemed to feel some explanation or apology were necessary; “I told you she had the temper of a fiend. I hope she didn’t hurt you, old man?”

“No, no. She meant business, though, only you were too quick for her. But I say, old man, it isn’t well to have a good-looking young woman fix her affections on you in that ardent manner. There’ll be the devil to pay, some day.”

The other laughed, and then sighed.

“I tell you it was no fault of mine,” he said.

“Come on and get something to eat. There’s whisky in that bottle.”

Virtually he had dismissed the subject; with the disappearance of the girl he would have let the matter drop, but he was not at his ease, and his old chum was less so. It was all very well to talk of old times, of college days, of mutual friends, each was thinking, and each was uncomfortably conscious that the other, too, was thinking, of that dark-eyed, straight-limbed young savage who had forced her personality upon them both, and was so far, so very far, removed from the world of which they spoke. There was another thing too, a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl, as different—as different as the North Pole from the Equator—each had loved her, to each she had been the embodiment of all earthly virtues, and each thought of her as well, too—the one man bitterly. Why should this man, this whilom friend of his, have everything? And the other man read his thoughts, and unreasoning anger grew up in his heart against his old chum. It has nothing whatever to do with Dick Stanesby’s hutkeeper, of course, nothing whatever; but it is nevertheless a fact, that these two old friends spent what should have been a pleasant afternoon, devoted to reminiscences of old times and a renewal of early friendship, in uncomfortable silence. The monthly mail, which Stanesby had brought in, contained many papers, and after their meal they lighted their pipes and read diligently, first one paper and then another. At first they made efforts at conversation, read out incidents and scraps of news and commented thereon, but as the afternoon wore on, the silence grew till it became difficult to break it. The sunlight outside crept in and in through the open doorway. There were no shadows because there was nothing to cast shadows, save the banks of the creek down below the level of the plain and the red bluffs, thirty miles to the eastward. But the sun stole in and crossed the hard earthen floor, and stole up the wall on the other side, crept up slowly, emphasising the dull blankness of the place. So did the sun every day of the year, pretty nearly; so did he in every stockkeeper’s hut on the plains of Western Australia; but to-day he seemed to Turner to be mocking his misery, pointing it out and emphasising it. Such his life had been for the last three or four years; such it was now; such it would be to the end. He could see no prospect of change, no prospect of better things: always the bare walls and the earthen floors for him; unloved, uncared for he had lived, unloved and uncared for he would die. And this man beside him—bah! it would not bear thinking of. He pushed back the stool he had been sitting on, and strolling to the door looked out. Nothing in sight but the black boy, who wasn’t a boy at all, but a man apparently over thirty years of age, lolling up against the verandah post, like one who had plenty of time on his hands.

Stanesby got up and joined him. The hot wind that had blown fiercely all day had died down, and now there hardly seemed a breath of air stirring. It was stupid to comment on the weather in a place where the weather was always the same, but Turner felt the need of something to say, so he seized on the well-worn topic.

“It’s getting a little cooler, I think.”

“Confound it, no.”

Stanesby looked round discontentedly. The untidy, uninviting remains of their midday meal were still on the table, pushed aside to make room for the papers they had been reading; it gave the place a dishevelled, comfortless air, which made its dull blank-ness ten times worse.

Turner noticed it, but he did not feel on sufficiently good terms to rail at his friend’s hutkeeper, as he would have done in the morning. He only shrugged his shoulders meaningly when Stanesby called out,

“Boy! I say, Jimmy, where’s the girl?”

Jimmy turned lazily and showed his white teeth.

“Sit down along a creek, you bet.”

“Go and fetch her.”

Jimmy showed his white teeth again, and grinned largely, but he did not stir.

“My word! Baal{1} this blackfellow go.”

“Much as his life is worth, I guess,” said

     1 Means “not, no.”
 

Turner grimly, “judging by the specimen of her temper the young lady gave us this afternoon.”

Stanesby muttered something that was hardly a blessing under his breath, then he caught up his hat and went down the bank to the waterhole. The other man felt more comfortable in his absence. He sat down, lighted his pipe, and taking up the paper again, began to read with fresh interest.

Half an hour passed. The sun sank below the horizon, gorgeous in red and gold, and Turner watched the last rosy flush die out of the western sky. Darkness fell, and he sat on smoking and thinking sadly, till his comrade loomed up out of the gloom.

“Is that you, Stanesby?” he called out.

“Who the devil should it be?” Then remembering his hospitality, “Why you Ye all in the dark! Why didn’t you light a candle!”

The girl did not make her appearance, and Turner did not comment on her absence. Stanesby said nothing. He lighted a candle, and calling Jimmy to his assistance, began clearing the table and washing up the dirty plates and pannikins. Turner offered to help, but was told ungraciously that two were enough, and so went on smoking and watched in silence. He did not feel on intimate enough terms to comment; but he knew well enough Stanesby had gone out to find the gir............