across the fire at the stranger; "what I'm as sure of as
that I'm sitting here? It's that that nigger I caught at my hut, that
day, was her nigger husband! He'd come to fetch her that time; and when
she saw she couldn't get away without our catching her, she got the
cartridges for him!" Peter paused impressively between the words. "And
now she's gone back to him. It's for him she's taken that ammunition!"

Peter looked across the fire at the stranger, to see what impression his
story was making.

"I tell you what," said Peter, "if I'd had any idea that day who that
bloody nigger was, the day I saw him standing at my door, I'd have given
him one cartridge in the back of his head more than ever he reckoned
for!" Peter looked triumphantly at the stranger. This was his only
story; and he had told it a score of times round the camp fire for the
benefit of some new-comer. When this point was reached, a low murmur
of applause and sympathy always ran round the group: tonight there was
quiet; the stranger's large dark eyes watched the fire almost as though
he heard nothing.

"I shouldn't have minded so much," said Peter after a while, "though no
man likes to have his woman taken away from him; but she was going to
have a kid in a month or two--and so was the little one for anything I
know; she looked like it! I expect they did away with it before it came;
they've no hearts, these niggers; they'd think nothing of doing that
with a white man's child. They've no hearts; they'd rather go back to a
black man, however well you've treated them. It's all right if you get
them quite young and keep them away from their own people; but if once
a nigger woman's had a nigger man and had children by him, you might as
well try to hold a she-devil! they'll always go back. If ever I'm shot,
it's as likely as not it'll be by my own gun, with my own cartridges.
And she'd stand by and watch it, and cheer them on; though I never gave
her a blow all the time she was with me. But I tell you what--if ever I
come across that bloody nigger, I'll take it out of him. He won't count
many days to his year, after I've spotted him!" Peter Halket paused.
It seemed to him that the eyes under their heavy, curled lashes, were
looking at something beyond him with an infinite sadness, almost as of
eyes that wept.

"You look awfully tired," said Peter; "wouldn't you like to lie down and
sleep? You could put your head down on that stone, and I'd keep watch."

"I