to scrape the sap off, and eat
it with satisfaction, if not with relish--white box I think the trees
were.)

Ben must have broken into a canter as he reached the level, as indeed
his horse's tracks showed he did, and the horse must have blundered in
the smoke, or jumped too long or too short; anyway, his long slithering
shoe marks were in the sap on the log, and he lay there with a broken
leg and shoulder. He had struck it near the stump and the sharp edge of
an outcrop of rock.

There was more breakneck riding, and they got a cart and some bedding
and carried Ben to Anderson's, which was handiest, if not nearest, and
there was more wild and reckless riding for the doctor.

One got a gun, and rode back to shoot the horse.

Ben's case was hopeless from the first. He was hurt close to that big
heart of his, as well as having a fractured skull. He talked a lot of
the selections and old John Tierney, of the old bark school; and the
Never-Never country with Jack--and, later on, of the present. "What's
Ben sayin' now, Jim?" asked one young bushman as another came out of the
room with an awestruck face.

"He's sayin' that Jack Denver's dead, killed ridin' home from the races,
an' that the funeral's to-morrow, an' we're to roll up at Talbragar!"
answered the other, with wide eyes, a blank face and in an awed voice.
"He's thinkin' to-day's yisterday."

But towards the end, under the ministrations of the doctor, Ben became
conscious. He rolled his head a little on the pillow after he woke, and
then, seeming to remember all that happened up to his stunning fall, he
asked quietly:

"What sort of a funeral did Jack have?"

They told him it was the biggest ever seen in the district.

"Muster bin more'n a mile long," said one.

"Watcher talkin' about, Jim?" put in another. "Yer talkin' through yer
socks. It was more'n a mile an' a half, Ben, if it was er inch. Some of
the chaps timed it an' measured it an' compared notes as well as they
could. Why, the head was at the Racecourse when the tail was at Old--"

Ben sank back satisfied and a little later took the track that Jack
Denver had taken.

WANTED BY THE POLICE

Could it have been the Soul of Man and none higher that gave spoken and
written word to the noblest precepts of human nature? For the deeper you
sound it the more noble it seems, in spite of all the wrong, injustice,
sin, sorrow, pain, religion, atheism, and cynics in the world. We
make (or are sup