edy
afoot.

The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As
he did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised
itself in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man
heard the sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralysed.

The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and
his angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the
plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her
basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing rod
she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at
the head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was
sure, and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground
beside the man.

He was like one who has been projected from one world to another, dazed,
stricken, fearful. Presently the look of agonised dismay gave way to
such an expression of relief as might come upon the face of a reprieved
victim about to be given to the fire, or to the knife that flays. The
place of dreams from which he had emerged was like hell, and this was
some world of peace that he had not known these many years. Always one
had been at his elbow--"a familiar spirit out of the ground"--whispering
in his ear. He had been down in the abysses of life.

He glanced again at the girl, and realised what she had done: she had
saved his life. Whether it had been worth saving was another question;
but he had been near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in
him had shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony of fear. He
staggered to his feet.

"Where do you come from?" he said, pulling his coat closer to hide the
ragged waistcoat underneath, and adjusting his worn and dirty hat--in
his youth he had been vain and ambitious and good-looking also.

He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of
one who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from
the first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now
stood was not a real world.

She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered repugnance said:

"I come from a camp beyond"--she indicated the direction by a
gesture. "I had been fishing"--she took up the basket--"and chanced on
you--then." She glanced at the snake significantly.

"You killed it in the nick of time," he said, in a voice that still
spoke of the ground, but w