The morning was delightful as he rode on, now in the full sunshine, now in shade; and the feeling of exhilaration which came over him seemed to be shared by his horse, which began to dance about and strain to get away for a swift gallop.
A word or two always checked it, and the beautiful creature, whose satin skin glistened in the sunshine, playfully tossed its head and ambled on.
“Nobody can have imagined which way I was coming,” thought Nic; and then, “Bother the old flour!” he said, half aloud; “how it works through the bag! Why, Sorrel, your back will be as white as my knees. Woa!”
The nag stopped short, and Nic stood at the edge of a glade dotted with clumps of acacia in full bloom, everything seeming to be covered with tiny golden balls.
“Why, you two wretches, how dare you come hunting?”
Nic sat like a statue among the trees watching, as he saw the two collies suddenly come into sight about five hundred yards away and then run among the low growth for which they were making.
“Well, it won’t matter,” he said. “They can’t tell tales. But they may come again and show some one the way. I’ll send them back.”
He pressed his horse’s sides, and walked it toward where the dogs had disappeared, putting up a flock of the tiny zebra paroquets, which flew a little distance to another tree.
“Poor fellows! I should like to give them a good run,” he said to himself; “but it’s best not. I suppose I’m doing something very unlawful, but the law did wrong to that poor fellow, and I feel as if I must help him. Oh, what a thick-headed noodle I am not to have thought of it before! Why, I remember quite well now all he said about it. Hullo! what are those? They must be the great hawk parrots old Sam talked about. Bother the birds! I’ve got something else to think of to-day. Why, there goes another of those great iguana things! Where did the dogs go?”
He had ridden on slowly, startling bird and lizard, and completely lost trace of the collies, when all at once he heard a smothered growl in a dense patch close at hand.