s imperceptibly as shadows lengthen across a lawn in
evening time. The three hunters advanced through the scrub like
snakes moving in their sleep, and never a leaf or twig made comment
on their passage, as they slithered down the morning breeze, inch
by inch, apparently a part of the shadowy earth itself. The
prancing dance of the Native Companions--these birds mate for life
and are deeply and devotedly attached one to another--was drawing
to its close, when death came to them both like a bolt from the
heavens; such a death as one would have chosen for them, since it
left no time for fear or mourning, or grief at separation. Their
necks were torn in sunder before they realized that they had been
attacked, and within the minute their graceful feathered bodies
shared the same fate, as the rest of the pack joined Finn and
Warrigal and Black-tip. There was less of lordly generosity about
Finn's feeding upon this occasion than he had always shown before.
The great Wolfhound realized perhaps that his frame demanded more
of nutriment than was necessary for the support of a dingo, and he
ate with savage swiftness, growling angrily when any other muzzle
than Warrigal's approached his own too nearly.

Less than half an hour later the pack was scrambling and sliding
down the high banks of a river-bed, in the centre of which,
surrounded upon both sides by a quarter of a mile and more of
shingle and hard-baked mud, there was still a disconnected chain of
small, yellow pools of water. The water was of something like the
consistency of pea-soup, but no spring-fed mountain-rill ever
tasted sweeter or more grateful to a thirsty traveller than this
muddy fluid to the palates of the Mount Desolation pack. Finn chose
a good-sized pool, and Warrigal tackled it with him; but when two
youngsters of the pack ventured to approach the other side of that
pool, Warrigal snarled at them so fiercely, backed by a low,
gurgling growl from Finn, that the two slunk off, and tackled a
lesser pool by themselves.

[Illustration: Scrambling and sliding down the high banks of a
river-bed.]

Where the pack drank they rested. As yet their great thirst was
close to them, and the neighbourhood of water seemed too good to
leave. But, in such matters, the memory of the wild folk is apt to
be short. The banks of the river-bed ran due east and west here;
and, though the pack gave no thought to the question, it was a
matter of some importance to each one of the