seemed an exception to the rest--so many being thin-leaved and casting
very little shade.

He had laid his specimen carefully down upon the grass, and was gazing
at it without seeing any of its beauties, when a sudden thought struck
him, and he sprang up to carefully reload his gun and place it before
him.

"Mustn't forget that," he muttered. "Never know what may happen."

He sat down again in the pleasant shade to inspect his trophy; but once
more he did not see it, for the convict's face filled his mind's eye,
that lowering, sun-browned, fierce countenance which lit up at times
with a smile that was sad and full of pain, and at others was so bright
that the deep lines in the man's face faded, and he became attractive.

"It's queer," said Nic to himself. "One minute you regularly hate the
fellow, and feel half afraid of him; the next you quite like and feel as
if it would be nice to know more about him. No, it wouldn't: he's a
convict, and they warned me about him."

Nic became very thoughtful, and though his lovely Blue Mountain parrot,
the object of his morning's walk, was close to his side, he did not
glance at it, and the beautiful birds the convict had mentioned were for
the time forgotten. For he found himself wondering what Leather had
done, and why he had done it; whether he was a very bad man; and
gradually found his head getting into quite a muddle of conflicting
surmises.

"I wish I hadn't let him think I was suspicious," he said to himself.
"He jumped at it directly. I suppose I showed it pretty plainly. But
no wonder! Any one would have felt as I did. To hand over one's gun to
a convict, and give him a chance to point it at you and say, `Now then,
hand over that powder flask and that belt and all your wads.' Of
course, so that he could go off--bush-ranging, don't they call it? Why,
it seemed a mad thing to do.

"And yet I did it," said Nic to himself, after a thoughtful pause; "and
he didn't run off. Why, he acted just as a gentleman would under the
circumstances. I did feel sorry for him. There, I don't care: he can't
be such a bad fellow as old Brookes wants to make out. Brookes is an
old beast! I'd tell him so for two pins."

Nic's thoughts were flowing very freely, and feeling quite excited he
went on:

"He must have done something very bad, and he has been severely
punished; then they let him come out from the gang to be an assigned
servant, and he's trying hard to make up fo