t train, I suppose?'

'By the last train.'

'Got a mate with you?'

'No.'

The new-comer stared, and said 'Hm!' doubtfully. He looked from the
other man's pale, clean-shaven face to his white hands.

'New to this kind of game, ain't you? he asked, at length.

'For a year or two,' the other answered.

'I spotted the trail you made from the platform,' said the new-comer. 'I
seen something had been dragged away. I was bound to follow.' There was
a part apology in his tone, as if he knew himself unwelcome. 'You might
have been Indians,' he added, 'or any kind of riff-raff.'

'Quite so,' said the man of the camp. 'Not many of 'em hereabouts, I
suppose?'

'One or two in a year, perhaps. And harmless, what there is of 'em; but
as thievish as a set of jackdaws.'

'You in charge of the station?' asked the man of the camp, looking
composedly down the canon and sipping at his tea.

'Yes, I'm in charge.'

'Alone?'

'Alone? Yes.'

'Fond of being alone?'

'Yes.'

'So am I.'

'All right.' The man in the moleskin trousers and the shapeless hat
laughed, lounged indeterminately for a minute, rolled his quid in his
cheek, spat, wiped his bearded mouth with the back of a sunburnt hand,
and laughed again. 'There's room enough for both of us. Good-night,
mate.'

'Good-night'

The keeper of the station strolled away with a backward glance, and the
man of the camp sipped his tea and stared straight before him. The sound
of the retreating footsteps had died away, when the Solitary raised a
powerful voice and cried, 'Hillo!'

'Hillo!' came the answer, so muffled by the trees that it sounded as if
from a considerable distance. The two men walked towards each other and
met face to face. They had exchanged a greeting of good-night together,
but the sun had some two hours to travel before it set upon the plains.
Here it was out of sight already behind a monstrous hill, and although
the dome of the sky was one translucent quiet splendour, dusk lay in the
shadow of the mountain and the nearer shadows of the sombre pines.

'I want to ask you,' said the camper-out, 'if you're a teetotaler?'

'No,' said the station-keeper, 'not in particular.'

'Any whisky about here just now?'

'A gallon,' said the station-keeper; 'new in yesterday. Like a tot?'

'No.'

The word was snapped out savagely, and the station-keeper said 'Oh!'
like an astonished echo.

'It's not at all unlikely that I may ask you for some,' the camper-out