ut when
he meets his picket that nobody like us two has passed, he'll come back
and try the Drovers' Track."

"He didn't suspect," insisted the girl.

"We'll bank on that, then," said Dick, "--if we can find a bush or a
ditch to hide in."

The faint path they were following here reached the lowest point of the
depression which hid them from the road and from the cottage by whose
back door they had left it, and soon began to rise.

The ascent, as they topped it, proved, however, to be concerned merely
with crossing a spur, below which the path wound about the edge of a
bowl-shaped hollow, rimmed and lined with dark-green, close-cropped
grass; and at the bottom lay a tiny tarn.

So steep were the sides that a broad band of green was reflected to the
eyes bent down upon the still water. And this circle of mirrored green,
embracing a disc of the sky's azure, stared up at them like a pupil-less
blue eye.

"Oh!" exclaimed Amaryllis, "it's a sapphire set in emerald!"

Down a winding path, vague as a wrinkle on a young face, and worn, said
Amaryllis, by ghostly hoofs of departed sheep, they crept to the pool's
edge.

They sat on a little irregular terrace, a few feet above the water, and
Dick, taking the cup from his flask, and having dipped, tasted, rinsed
and filled again, passed it to Amaryllis.

"Good water," he said, watching her drink. Amaryllis smiled on him as
she finished, and plunged into the ample pocket of Mrs. Brundage's skirt
for her chocolate. She broke off a lump and gave him the cup to fill
once more.

"It's lovely water," she said, munching; then poured out half the water
he had given her. "But I'm going to spoil yours," she went on, and
poured in brandy till the cup almost brimmed. "Just obey meekly for
once."

"That's easy," said Dick.

"For brandy, or for me?" asked the girl.

But Dick was drinking.

"Now lie down along the ledge. Be quick. I can't enjoy my chocolate till
you do."

He looked at her with heavy eyes.

"I must," he said. "The brandy's finished me."

Without rising, he drew up his legs to the terrace level, stretched them
out, said: "Wake me, if the chocolate makes you sleepy," and rolled full
length on his left side.

"Lift your head a little, and I'll spread a bit of my skirt under it.
There's plenty of it," said Amaryllis, shifting towards him as she sat.

She got no answer. He was dead asleep.

Five minutes she gave him to sink deeper into the unknown, while she