f hour passed--the sort of half hour that is as long
as an hour in the places where days are as long as years, and years hold
about as much as days do in other places.

The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild for a
moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor, rested his
elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands, and
came back to life gradually.

He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar, and
formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words--

'Put up a drink?'*

* 'Put up a drink'--i.e., 'Give me a drink on credit', or
'Chalk it up'.

She shook her head tightly and went on reading.

He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress
signals with hand, eyes, and mouth.

'No!' she snapped. 'I means no when I says no! You've had too many last
drinks already, and the boss says you ain't to have another. If you
swear again, or bother me, I'll call him.'

He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his
swag, and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily. Then he blinked round,
whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round,
through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again. He turned and
started through to the back-door.

'What the devil do you want now?' demanded the girl, interrupted in her
reading for the third time by him. 'Stampin' all over the house. You
can't go through there! It's privit! I do wish to goodness you'd git!'

'Where the blazes is that there dog o' mine got to?' he muttered. 'Did
you see a dog?'

'No! What do I want with your dog?'

He whistled out in front again, and round each corner. Then he came back
with a decided step and tone.

'Look here! that there dog was lyin' there agin the wall when I went
to sleep. He wouldn't stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn't
dragged. He's been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn'ter lost
him for a fiver. Are you sure you ain't seen a dog?' then suddenly, as
the thought struck him: 'Where's them two chaps that was playin' cards
when I wenter sleep?'

'Why!' exclaimed the girl, without thinking, 'there was a dog, now I
come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps.
Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.'

He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness.

'What sort of a dog was it?'

Dog described; the