ey left Yerlo station ten
days ago, and this is what it had brought them to.

"It's no good wearing ourselves out in the heat of the day," said
Anderson, "wait till evening and we'll do twice as much."

"Which way?"

"South-east, I think. If we can only hold out we ought to fetch Gerring
Gerring Water. As far as I know this must be Tamba salt lake, and if
so--"

"Karinda's just to the north there."

"A hundred and twenty miles at the very least and not a drop of water
the whole way. No, that's out of the question, old man; our only hope
lies in reaching Gerring Gerring."

"And you don't see much probability of our doing that?"

"Well, we can try."

He felt a great pity, this older man, for the lad--he called him a lad
for all his four-and-twenty years--doomed to die, nay, dying at this
very moment, in the prime of his manhood. They could but try, he said
over and over again, they could but try.

And then as they rested they fell to talking of other things--talked of
their past lives and of their homes as neither, perhaps, had ever talked
before.

"My old mother 'll miss me," said Charlie Helm with a sigh, "though Lord
knows when she'll ever hear the truth of the matter."

"Umph, I don't know, but I guess if we do peg out, it'll be some
considerable time before they can read the store account over us. Have
you got any paper about you?"

"Not a scrap. We can leave a message on the salt though."

"It'll be blown away before to-morrow. Who do you want to write to? Your
mother? That girl?"

Helm turned his face away. The man had no right to pry into his private
concerns.

"Write to your mother, lad, write to your mother by all means. Mothers
are made of different clay to other women; but don't you bother about
the other. Women are all alike, take my word for it. It's out of sight
out of mind with all of them. But write to your mother."

"Some one may pass this way," pondered the younger man, hardly heeding
his words. "It's just worth trying," and he lay silent while Anderson
talked on or rather thought aloud.

"It's of the boy I'm thinking," he said. "The poor helpless little one.
He never throve since his mother died. She didn't go much on me, but the
boy was everything to her though he was a cripple. Well--well--if I were
only certain he was dead now it wouldn't be half so hard. He'd be better
dead, I know, but I couldn't think it before; he was all I had, and
the last time I saw him he put up his li