he moonlight on the moving boughs; there
was a good breeze blowing now. I got down to a more level track, and
was making across a spur to the main road, when "pat-pat!" "pat-pat-pat,
pat-pat-pat!" it was after me again. Then I began to run--and it began
to run too! "pat-pat-pat" after me all the time. I hadn't time to look
round. Over the spur and down the siding and across the flat to the road
I went as fast as I could split my legs apart. I had a scared idea that
I was getting a touch of the "jim-jams", and that frightened me more
than any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a few times, and
saved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell slithering
on to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I'd broken both
my wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking and
listening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn't hear nor
see anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when
"pat-pat!" it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a half
altogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile to
the camp, and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up
in my throat. I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. The
footsteps stopped, then something about the hat touched my fingers, and
I stared at it--and the thing dawned on me. I hadn't noticed at Peter
Anderson's--my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old hat
of the style that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose
ribbon ends, three or four inches long, from the band behind. As long
as I walked quietly through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails
didn't flap, but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were
still according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat
on the brim. And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being
tight on my head, the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw
sounded loud of course.

'I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool
down, and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had a long
drink of water.

'"You seem to be a bit winded, Dave," said Jim Bently, "and mighty
thirsty. Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"

'I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my
bunk, and had a good rest.'

The Loaded Dog.

Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony
Creek in search of a rich