his face, in spite
of its disfigurement, was strangely like the face of the stone-like man
opposite.

For a moment they looked at one another across the body of the child,
and then Bob said quietly:

"He never knowed."

"What does it matter?" said Mason gruffly; and, taking up the dead
child, he walked towards the hut.

It was a very sad little group that gathered outside Mason's but next
morning. Martin's wife had been there all the morning cleaning up and
doing what she could. One of the women had torn up her husband's only
white shirt for a shroud, and they had made the little body look clean
and even beautiful in the wretched little hut.

One after another the fossickers took off their hats and entered,
stooping through the low door. Mason sat silently at the foot of the
bunk with his head supported by his hand, and watched the men with a
strange, abstracted air.

Bob had ransacked the camp in search of some boards for a coffin.

"It will be the last I'll be able to--why--do for him," he said.

At last he came to Mrs Martin in despair. That lady took him into the
dining-room, and pointed to a large pine table, of which she was very
proud.

"Knock that table to pieces," she said.

Taking off the few things that were lying on it, Bob turned it over and
began to knock the top off.

When he had finished the coffin one of the fossicker's wives said it
looked too bare, and she ripped up her black riding-skirt, and made Bob
tack the cloth over the coffin.

There was only one vehicle available in the place, and that was Martin's
old dray; so about two o'clock Pat Martin attached his old horse Dublin
to the shafts with sundry bits of harness and plenty of old rope, and
dragged Dublin, dray and all, across to Mason's hut.

The little coffin was carried out, and two gin-cases were placed by its
side in the dray to serve as seats for Mrs Martin and Mrs Grimshaw, who
mounted in tearful silence.

Pat Martin felt for his pipe, but remembered himself and mounted on the
shaft. Mason fastened up the door of the hut with a padlock. A couple of
blows on one of his sharp points roused Dublin from his reverie. With a
lurch to the right and another to the left he started, and presently the
little funeral disappeared down the road that led to the "town" and its
cemetery.

About six months afterwards Bob Sawkins went on a short journey, and
returned with a tall, bearded young man. He and Bob arrived after dark,
and we