y selection. "Old Cold-blood's a man of
eddication, and eddication, you take my tip, is the joker in a hand like
this. The old man's right. This ain't our game. We've got our hands full
watching how things go. There's a breeze coming up from somewhere, and
we're best under shelter. Leave them as wants it to take up the
running. Old Cold-blood and the Three-mile ain't our dart."

Ignorant of the commotion his reappearance had created at the store,
Slaughter rode on his way to his selection, from which he had been
absent for a couple of weeks. Barber, before leaving (for the West, as
he told Slaughter at the time, but in reality to lead the raid on the
miner's gold at the constable's cottage), had promised to send a message
to Slaughter to a small township on the north of Birralong, giving him
full particulars as to the whereabouts of the woman whose wrong-doing
was the foundation of their mutual hate. Slaughter had set out for the
northern township at the appointed time, and found a letter awaiting him
from Barber; but instead of containing the information promised, it told
how Barber and his three companions had been attacked at night by wild
blacks, how two of the party were killed, and the others so badly
wounded that they were returning by slow stages to the Three-mile for
rest. The letter concluded by asking Slaughter to ride out to meet them,
as should either break down, the other would not be able to render him
any assistance. This Slaughter had done, meeting Barber and Tap on the
road from the West. They were not travelling quite so slowly as the
letter might have led Slaughter to believe, neither was the condition of
their wounds so serious as the letter implied; but Slaughter neither
expressed nor manifested surprise. It may have been that the presence of
the black-browed Barber awakened memories of a bygone period before his
life was scarred by transverse currents of bitterness; it may have been
that his appearance roused the latent hatred he entertained for the
woman who had crossed and marred his path after those happier years; it
may have been some evil influence the man exhaled, and which affected
his companions;--but immediately he was thrown in contact with Barber,
there came to Slaughter's eyes a dull glow unpleasant to see and as
forbidding as it was foreboding. Matters of everyday note escaped him or
were unheeded; inaccuracies of fact, contradictions of statement, were
alike ignored; only did Slaughte