two finely; and just now, against knowledge of the loneliness that eats to the core of a man, stood the belief that the death and starvation of the old proud-hearted Buggy was Jimmie’s sin alone.
“What’s troubling you, Jimmie?” he demanded suddenly.
Jimmie hesitated. Then he kicked out the wedge, and the door fell open to the night.
“Wouldn’t them blanky ole mountings trouble Ole Nick hisself?” he said.
It was not a world for a man to handle. It was alive with its own strong desolation and its unbroken pride. Peak on glistening peak of everlasting snow; black rugged ridges; slopes pallid with the rain-death that had stripped the earth from them, and reefs of sullen cloud smudging the cold stars. The snarl of the river fighting through its boulders came over the shingle that sloped from the door, and a couple of Paradise duck showed for an instant against the grey breadth of it as they fled down to the lower country for nesting.
“I’d sooner hear silence than that river,” said Murray, and shivered. “It’s ghastly to think you’re the first living man who’s heard its waters go by. I don’t like being so near the beginning of things myself.”
“You’re generally nearer the end,” said Jimmie, tartly. Then his voice changed. “It’s runnin’ past the township thirty-odd mile
