hs in Toorak."

Spicer lowered his voice.

"There was a man once shot dead in this one. Bushrangers!"

"When was that?"

"Oh, well, it was before my time."

"Ten years ago?"

"Ten to twenty, I suppose."

"Ten to twenty! Why, my good fellow, there was a blackfellows' camp in
Collins Street, twenty years ago! Corrobborees, and all that, where the
trams run now."

"I'm hanged if there were," rejoined Spicer warmly. "Not twenty years
ago, no, nor yet thirty!"

"Say forty if it makes you happy. It doesn't affect my argument. You
don't expect me to bolt out of this verandah because some poor devil
painted it red before I was breeched? What shall it profit us that
there were bushrangers once upon a time, and blacks before the
bushrangers? The point is that they're both about as extinct as the
plesiosaurus----"

"Kill whose cat?" interposed the storekeeper in a burst of his peculiar
brand of badinage. "He's coming it again, Ives; you'll have another
chance of showing off, old travelling-rug!"

"And all you've got to offer one instead," concluded Bethune, "besides
the subtleties of your own humour, is a so-called turkey the size of a
haystack, that'll ram its beak down your gun-barrel if you wait long
enough."

The Rugbeian laughed outright, and Spicer gained time by insulting him
while he rummaged his big head for a retort worthy of Bethune; it was
worthier of himself when it came.

"You want adventure, do you? I know the place for you, and its within
ten miles of where you sit. Blind Man's Block!"

"Reminds one of the Tower," yawned Bethune.

"It'll remind you of your sins if ever you get bushed in it! Ten by ten
of abandoned beastliness; not a hoof or a drop between the four fences;
only scrub, and scrub, and scrub of the very worst. Mallee and
porcupine--porcupine and mallee. But you go and sample it; only don't
get too far in from the fence. If you do you may turn up your toes; and
you won't be the first or the last to turn 'em up in Blind Man's Block."

"What of?" asked Bethune sceptically.

"Thirst," said Spicer; "thirst and hunger, but chiefly thirst."

"In fenced country?"

"It's ten miles between the fences, and not a drop of water, nor the
trace of a track. It's abandoned country, I'm telling you."

"But you could never be more than five miles from a fence; surely you
could hit one or other of them and follow it up?"

"Could you?" said the storekeeper. "Well, you try it, and let me know!
T