so long
the only vegetation we have seen, are gone; and the little sienite
peak, the last symptom of a water-bearing country, has disappeared
behind us. The sandhills still roll away towards the setting sun, but
get less and less elevated. The wild fowl are still holding their
mysterious flight to the north-west, but I have not wings to follow
them. Oh, my God! if I only knew what those silly birds know. It is
hopeless to go on, and, I begin to fear, hopeless to go back. Will it
never rain again?

"Afternoon.--My servant Hawker, one of the convicts assigned to me by
Government, died to-day at noon. I had got fond of this man, as the
most patient and the bravest, where all have been so patient and so
brave. He was a very silent and reserved man, and had never complained,
so that I was deeply shocked on his sending for me at dinner-time, to
find that he was dying.

"He asked me not to deceive him, but to tell him if there was any truth
in what the gaol-chaplain had said, about there being another life
after death. I told him earnestly that I knew it as surely as I knew
that the earth was under my feet; and went on comforting him as one
comforts a dying man. But he never spoke again; and we buried him in
the hot sand at sundown. The first wind will obliterate the little
mound we raised over him, and none will ever cross this hideous desert
again. So that he will have as quiet a grave as he could wish.

"Eleven o'clock at night.--God be praised. Heavy clouds and thunder to
the north.--"

So this poor workhouse-bred lad lies out among the sands of the middle
desert.

Chapter XLIII

ACROSS THE SNOW.

Hawker the elder, as I said, casting one glance at the body of his son,
whom he knew not, and another at Captain Desborough, who was just
rising from the ground after his fall, set spurs to his noble chestnut
horse, and, pushing through the contracted barriers of slate which
closed up the southern end of the amphitheatre where they had been
surprised, made for the broader and rapidly rising valley which
stretched beyond.

He soon reached the rocky gate, where the vast ridge of schist,
alternating with the limestone, and running north and south in high
serrated ridges, was cut through by a deep fissure, formed by the never
idle waters of a little creek, that in the course of ages had mined
away the softer portions of the slate, and made a practicable pass
toward the mountains.

He picked his way with difficul