d when he faced Marmot a few hours earlier.
The man saw--and stopped.

"Go on," Slaughter cried, with a savage energy.

"I only talk to a mate I can trust," the man answered. "I didn't come
here because it's your hut. We struck it on the road, and called in for
a boil of the billy, and finding no one in, borrowed what we wanted.
Seeing it's yours, and we ain't welcome, we'll move along. If the taint
of Kate Blair in both our lives don't make us mates, why, it's so long
to you and----"

He saw the lips press closer together and the frown grow deeper as
Slaughter heard the name again, and he went on--

"But maybe you're friends with her now, friends with the"--he laughed,
not too musically--"the woman who well-nigh hanged you."

The taunt let loose the rage and fury that had been gradually growing in
Slaughter's mind; let loose from his restraint all the passionate
emotions stirred and re-stirred by the events of the day; and before the
storm of fierce denunciation to which he gave vent, one of the two men
quailed, and strove to edge nearer the door. The black-browed man stood
still, watching Slaughter as he raved, with an evil smile lurking round
the corners of his thin lips.

When, from sheer exhaustion, the enraged Slaughter paused for a moment,
he had his words ready.

"Good," he said. "You've not forgotten. More have I. Now that I know
you, I'll tell you. I'm going back to make things square. Will you join
me?"

Slaughter looked at him, his rage still rankling and burning.

"Going back?" he said. "Back? What! back to Sydney?"

The man laughed.

"Sydney!" he exclaimed. "Why, you fool, she's not in Sydney. She left
there nearly thirty years ago. She's here--or hereabouts."

Slaughter, quivering, staggering, trembling, clutched at his throat as
he heard the words.

"Here!" he shouted. "Here, within reach of me, when I----"

"Hereabouts, I said," the other exclaimed roughly. "Keep your wits, and
listen."

The interruption checked his words, but could not check the red fury
that was surging through Slaughter's overstrung brain. The man who, in
the presence of Ailleen's sorrow, had been gentle and soft-hearted, was
now, in the presence of the full force of embittered memory, swayed only
by one impulse, conscious only of one thing. Hate, an unreasoning
madness of hate, was upon him, and to soothe that hate, to satisfy the
craving it engendered, the object of it, sacrificed as a victim, was
alone capable.