armth.

"You don't take my meaning," the superior youth pursued. "It's a
question of personality."

"A bit more personal than you think," was the dark rejoinder.

"How do you mean?"

Melvin's tone had altered in an instant.

"I know too much about him."

"At first hand?" the youth asked, with bated breath.

"Double first!" returned the other, with a muddled glimmer of better
things.

"You never knew him, did you?" whispered Oswald.

"Knew him? I've been taken prisoner by him," said the whim-driver, with
the pause of a man who hesitates to humiliate himself, but is lost for
the sake of that same sensation which Oswald Melvin loved to create.

Mrs. Melvin was in the back room, wistfully engrossed in an English
magazine sent that evening from Bishop's Lodge. The bad blood in the son
had not affected Dr. Methuen's keen but tactful interest in the mother.
She looked up in tolerant consternation as her Oswald pushed an unsavory
bushman before him into the room; but even through her gentle horror
the mother's love shone with that steady humor which raised it above the
sphere of obvious pathos.

"Here's a man who's been stuck up by Stingaree!" he cried, boyish enough
in his delight. "Do keep an eye on the show, mother, and let him tell me
all about it, as he's good enough to say he will. Is there any whiskey?"

"Not for me!" put in the whim-driver, with a frank shudder. "I should
like a drink of tea out of a cup, if I'm to have anything."

Mrs. Melvin left them with a good-humored word besides her promise. She
had given no sign of injury or disapproval; she was not one of the
wincing sort; and the tremulous tramp was in her own chair before her
back was turned.

"Now fire away!" cried the impatient Oswald.

"It's a long story," said the whim-driver; and his dirty brows were knit
in thought.

"Let's have it," coaxed the young man. And the other's thoughtful
creases vanished suddenly in the end.

"Very well," said he, "since it means a drink of tea out of a cup! It
was only the other day, in a dust-storm away back near the Darling, as
bad a one as ever I was out in. I was bushed and done for, gave it up
and said my prayers. Then I practically died in my tracks, and came to
life in a sunny clearing later in the day. The storm was over; two coves
had found me and carried me to their camp; and as soon as I saw them I
spotted one for Howie and the other for Stingaree!"

The narrative went no farther for a time.