other men drink—his own breath being sweet as a baby’s—the matter would be delivered into Ormond’s hands very promptly.
“Ask Murray if Roddy is the only fellow likely to get the horrors without drink,” suggested Lou; but he gave no explanation whatever when Fysh demanded it.
It was in the next week that Murray determined to go up to the All Alone and call on Jimmie—quite privately and artlessly—to elicit information. He had drawn blank on forty-two counts already, and only the last extremity would have made him insult Ted Douglas by questions where he mustered with his fellows out back on the ranges.
Night caught Murray in the flax-gully where the first blink of Jimmie’s light showed on the spur, and he stumbled up through scratching matakuri and Wild Irishman, jerked the door-latch, and cast his swag on the mud floor.
“I’m wanting a feed and a shakedown, Jimmie,” he said, “for I can’t make Lachlan’s camp to-night.”
Jimmie was squatted by the fire with his little pinched face solemn. But he kicked the sticks together in haste, slung the billy, swept packages of rabbit-skins out of the half-cask chair, and set Murray in it. And there was no hint of fear in his welcome.
“Took in over this job, I was,” he said, sway-
