I handed in the
swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through
the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the
partitioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had been
lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by some
timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last; and
there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.

We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put
the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the
stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire
to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I
hadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in
it like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer it
grew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw
a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a
weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with
the billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and
meat with clasp-knives.

'I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, 'but this is the "whare"* where the
murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was
to come along now and look in he'd get scared.' Then after a while he
looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched
his ear, and said, 'That looks very much like a blood-stain under your
stool, doesn't it, Jim?'

* 'Whare', 'whorrie', Maori name for house.

I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the
fire--it was too hot.

I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave
would have minded--he'd knocked round too much in the Australian Bush to
mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was more
than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he'd mistook
him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer.

Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two
stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked
comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in
particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting
up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and
a black cat