e on the bushranger, who was once more
stooping over his beloved _Australasian_, helped himself enormously from
the gallon jar.

"And now for a siesta," yawned Stingaree, rising and stretching himself
after the meal.

"Hear, hear!" croaked Vanheimert, his great face flushed, his bloodshot
eyes on fire.

"I shall camp on the shady side of my tent."

"And I'll do ditto at the other."

"So long, then."

"So long."

"Sweet repose to you!"

"Same to you," rasped Vanheimert, and went off cursing and chuckling in
his heart by turns.

It was a sweltering afternoon of little air, and that little as hot and
dry in the nostrils as the atmosphere of a laundry on ironing day.
Beyond and above the trees a fiery blast blew from the north; but it was
seldom a wandering puff stooped to flutter the edges of the tents in the
little hollow among the trees. And into this empty basin poured a
vertical sun, as if through some giant lens which had burnt a hole in
the heart of the scrub. Lulled by the faint perpetual murmur of leaf and
branch, without a sound from bird or beast to break its soothing
monotone, the two men lay down within a few yards, though out of sight,
of each other. And for a time all was very still.

Then Vanheimert rose slowly, without a sound, and came on tiptoe to the
other tent, his right hand in the pocket where the bandanna handkerchief
had been but was no longer. He came close up to the sunny side of the
tent and listened vainly for a sound. But Stingaree lay like a log in
the shade on the far side, his face to the canvas and his straw sombrero
tilted over it. And so Vanheimert found him, breathing with the placid
regularity of a sleeping child.

Vanheimert looked about him; only the ring of impenetrable trees and
the deep blue eye of Heaven would see what really happened. But as to
what exactly was to happen Vanheimert himself was not clear as he drew
the revolver ready cocked; even he shrank from shooting a sleeping man;
what he desired and yet feared was a sudden start, a semblance of
resistance, a swift, justifiable shot. And as his mind's eye measured
the dead man at his feet, the live man turned slowly over on his back.

It was too much for Vanheimert's nerves. The revolver went off in his
hands. But it was only a cap that snapped, and another, and another, as
he stepped back firing desperately. Stingaree sat upright, looking his
treacherous enemy in the eye, through the glass in which, it seemed