rned in the sand. Finally the horse
became so much afraid that Stobart was obliged to dismount and tie it
to a tree while he followed the tracks on foot. He had only a little
farther to go before he too saw what his horse had already seen--a
naked white man staggering round and round in a small clearing among
the trees.

The man took no notice when Stobart appeared. He was quite
unconscious. The drover shouted, but there was no more response than
if the desert silence had remained unbroken. By the tracks of his
shuffling bare feet he must have been drawing that terrible circle for
several hours, while the pitiless sun beat down on his unprotected
head. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and was dark-coloured and
swollen, his head jerked forward loosely with each stride, and his
tottering legs were bent almost double at the knees. If he sank just a
little lower, his hanging hands would touch the ground, and he would
crawl over the burning sand like any other dying beast, round and
round, round and round, for nothing but utter exhaustion would stop
that parade of death.

Boss Stobart stood directly in the path of the shambling figure. It
came on unheeding, with glazed eyes and spent senses, and bumped into
the drover as if the hour had been pitch-dark midnight instead of a
summer afternoon. Stobart caught it before it fell, and laid the limp
body down very gently and looked into the man's face. He uttered an
exclamation of amazement. It was Patrick Dorrity, a man whom he had
seen only a few months before, cooking on Tumurti Station.

Pat Dorrity and Stobart were old friends. Pat had a fondness for a
spree and had consequently never risen above the level of a casual
station cook, wandering about in this capacity over the huge area of
the north, where his friend the drover, who did not have the same
weakness, had gone on earning the confidence and respect of every
stock-owner in the country, till he was now a shareholder in more than
one prosperous station property.

But bushman friendships are not based on bank balances, and the two had
remained good friends. As a proof of this, the last time they had met,
Pat had told the drover about a gold-mine he knew of in the Musgrave
Ranges. At first Stobart laughed at the old Irishman, for there were
as many reputed gold-mines in the Musgraves as there were men who had
gone after them and not come back. But gradually Pat had won him over,
for in the veins of eve