e opposite side of the river bed and close under the bank were
growing two or three heavy ti-trees, and here, just as the sun had set,
he halted, again unsaddled, and after lighting a fire, began to scoop
out a hole with his quart pot in between the roots of the trees. For
some minutes he worked on with energy, then he stopped and listened,
and Bob, too, turned his head inquiringly, for he also had heard the
sound--it was only the cry of a beast, but it seemed so near that
Harrington ceased his digging and stood up to look.

Not a hundred yards distant he saw, by the light of the now brightly
blazing fire, four gaunt steers and a skeleton heifer, staggering and
swaying over the river sand towards him in their weakness and agony of
hunger and thirst The poor creatures had seen the man and the horse!
As they toiled towards the light of the fire, a dreadful, wheezing
moan came from the parched throat of the leading steer as it laboured
pantingly over to something human--something it associated with water,
and grass, and life, and presently the wretched animal, with one last
effort, fell in its tracks almost at Harrington's feet. It lay there
quiet enough for a minute or two, with lean, outstretched neck and one
horn buried in the sand, its fast glazing eye turned to the man, and
seeming to say, "Give me water or death."

Harrington, wrought up and excited to the last pitch, flung himself upon
his knees, and placed his cheek against that of the dying steer, and a
sob burst from his bosom.

"O God, if there is a God! have mercy upon these Thy dumb creatures who
suffer such agony."

He stepped up to his horse, took his revolver out of the pouch, and then
a merciful bullet ended the sufferings of the thirst-stricken animal at
his feet.

"Steady, Bob, old man! Steady there!" he said brokenly, "I may have to
do the same to you before long." And then, tearing off a long piece of
dried ti-tree bark from one of the trees, he thrust it into the fire.
Then, with the blazing torch in his left hand, and his pistol in his
right, he tramped over the sand to the remaining cattle, and shot them
dead one by one.

Then back to his digging again. A drink of thick, muddy water for his
horse, and then with a dull sense of misery in his heart he led Bob up
the bank and began the last stage of his ride home--home to his anaemic,
complaining, shallow-brained wife and the weakly children who, instead
of being the consolation of his life in h