“But you have not been like this?”
“Not since I have been at the Bluff, sir. When I came up the country to be Mr Dillon’s servant I was almost constantly alone. They used to send me my rations now and then. It was a very solitary life.”
“How lonely!”
“Yes, sir—lonely,” said the man, with a tinge of bitterness in his tones; “but it had its advantages. There was no Brookes.”
Nic started and looked keenly in the man’s face; but he frowned and turned hastily away, as if angry at what he had said.
“I must be getting back to the sheep, sir,” he said hurriedly. “They are terribly weak, foolish things, always catching some disease. I hope you will get your bird home safely, sir. I should skin it directly. Things so soon go bad out in this hot place.”
He turned away in among the trees; and Nic walked off with his gun over his shoulder, very thoughtful as he picked his way in and out among the bushes, till, feeling hot, he rested his gun against a bough, and sat down in the shade of one of the thick-foliaged, huge-trunked trees which seemed an exception to the rest—so many being thin-leaved and casting very little shade.
He had laid his specimen carefully down upon the grass, and was gazing at it without seeing any of its beauties, when a sudden thought struck him, and he sprang up to carefully reload his gun and place it before him.
“Mustn’t forget that,” he muttered. “Never know what may happen.”
He sat down again in the pleasant shade to inspect his trophy; but once more he did not see it, for the convict’s face filled his mind’s eye, that lowering, sun-browned, fierce countenance which lit up at times with a smile that was sad and full of pain, and at others was so bright that the deep lines in the man’s face faded, and he became attractive.