his face, dipping its forked tongue into the hollows of his eyes, penetrating to his heart, and coursing in all his veins.  He was mad to stay there and suffer, when he might slip from the grip of the fiend, and lave his limbs in the pool and drink from the cascade.  Ryder dragged himself from the cave, upsetting the water the half-caste had placed near his bed as he did so.  The water ran over his fingers, but he did not heed it.  Outside he raised himself to his feet with the help of a tree, and, staggering a few paces down the slope, pitched on his face, cutting his mouth badly on the stones.  The wound in his neck opened, and the blood oozed from the bandages, smearing his hands as he dragged himself along.

It was like some wild beast with a mortal wound in its breast slowly crawling to the water to die.  Every few yards he thought the stream was reached and dipping his mouth to drink, cut his lips oh the granite.  He had come to the level ground banking the creek, and was almost at the edge of the basin, when a figure appeared on the brink of the waterfall above him.  The figure looked hardly human, bent down, watching Ryder’s movements in the attitude of a curious ape.

Macdougal sprang down the rocks with an agility in keeping with his apelike appearance, and interposed between the creeping man and the water.

Ryder turned aside, and again Macdougal interposed.  Three times this happened, and the squatter had a grin on his small terrier’s face; he was deriving malicious amusement from the bewilderment of the fever-stricken wretch at his feet.  In his left hand he held a revolver.

Ryder raised a hand, and, clutching Monkey Mack, made an effort to regain his feet.  The other helped him, and clinging to his enemy for support, the outlaw looked at Macdougal.  The latter thrust his face forward, and again there was a red gleam under the shadows of his heavy brows.

‘Ye know me, man,’ he said.

Ryder was staring with eyes in which there was a dawning of consciousness, and, steadying him with one hand, the squatter dipped some water in his hat, and dashed it in the other’s face.

‘Ye know me!’ he said with fierce eagerness.  ’Ye know me!  Man, ye must know me—­Macdougal!  Look at me.  Ay, ye know me well!’

There was recognition in Ryder’s eyes; they were intent upon those of his foe, and, clutching him by the shoulder, Macdougal continued: 

’Well ye know me, and well ye know what I mean to do by ye.  I’m about to kill ye, Mr. Walter Ryder, an’ no harm will come to me for the killin’.  Man, man, but it’s a sweet thing to kill your enemy, an’ to be paid well for the doin’ of it!  Ah, I’m right sure ye know me now.  I would na’ have ye die by another hand, for ’tis me ye wronged most.  I know my wrongs, ye foul villain, an’ it’s in my mind to carry your carrion head to Melbourne for the money they’ve set upon it.  Ye mind me! ye mind me!  Good! good!’