ecome a full
member of the warragul tribe, or he would have committed suicide. But
Boss Stobart did not give up hope. The unaccustomed food was beginning
to tell upon his superb health and strength, and as he sat by the
little flame which seemed to get fainter and fainter as daylight
increased, he knew that he could not afford to put off his bid for
freedom much longer.

All at once his listless gaze was arrested. He leaned forward eagerly
and stared at one of the rocky peaks. From where he was sitting, its
outline against the light eastern sky looked exactly like the nose of a
man lying down. It was so perfectly clear that Stobart laughed. But
he was not laughing at its striking resemblance to a man's nose;
certain words of the old Irishman who had been murdered by the blacks
came to him. Pat Dorrity had talked in his sleep a great deal the
first night after the drover had saved him from perishing. The man was
feverish, and the sentences had been jumbled up and meaningless at the
time, but Stobart's memory now recalled certain words which he had
scarcely noticed at the time.

"Man's nose. Man's nose," the old fellow had muttered. "Man's nose
seen looking east. Waterhole on other side. Look out! Look out!"
Then he had become very excited, and such words as blacks and spears
and gold and skulls had been mixed up in hopeless confusion.

The peak which Stobart was now looking at was certainly exactly like a
man's nose, and he was also looking east. One direction was as good as
another to him that morning, and, as his curiosity was aroused, he
forgot about his breakfast and began to climb the hill-side towards the
rocky top. Before he was half-way up the sun shone over the rim of the
mountains, and he was very hot and thirsty when he finally reached the
mass of rock on the summit. He looked down on the other side for the
expected water-hole, but the valley was covered with dense scrub, and
he saw nothing to give him hope of a drink. However, the ranges were
so well watered that he started at once to go down the hill, hoping to
find a spring or rock-hole somewhere in the valley.

He was disappointed for some time. The trees thinned as he reached the
bottom of the hill and gave place to a broad stretch of sand. This
surface showed no sign of water whatever, which was strange, for there
had been several storms in the hills since Stobart had been taken
prisoner, and the steep rocky slopes of the valley wo