A few days after Sojur Jim had related to me the story told above, one evening, at dusk, a swagman entered the camp and asked the cook for a piece of meat and some bread. Instead of eating it at once with the accompanying offered drink of tea, he turned away, and, a few minutes later, we saw his fire burning brightly a little further along the lagoon, the banks of which formed our resting-place for the night. Evidently, as [134] ]the men remarked amongst themselves, our visitor was a ‘hatter.’
Next morning, when Sojur Jim was called out to take his flock, he was missing. His blankets and few belongings still lay as he had arranged them in the tent the night before, ready for turning in; and I at once ordered a search to be made.
It was of very short duration. Just in front of the swagman’s fire, in the shallow water of the lagoon, we found the two bodies. The stranger’s throat was grasped by Jim’s fingers in a vice-like clutch, that, even in death, we long strove in vain to sunder. When parted at last, and we had washed the slimy mud from the features of the dead traveller, a truly villainous countenance was disclosed to view; the huge mouth, low, retreating forehead, and heavy, thick-set jaws, all betokened their owner to have belonged to the very lowest order of humanity.
But what struck me at once was that the nose, which was of great size, had, at one time, been knocked completely over to the left side of the face, and as we straightened the body out, it could plainly be seen that one leg was much shorter than its fellow.
. . . . . . . . . .
Was this, then, indeed ‘Number Three,’ and had Sojur Jim’s vengeful quest, his vow of bitter retaliation, ended at last? I believed so. But, as I gazed down upon the poor, scarred dead clay of a wasted and ruined life lying there, now so calm and still, all its fierce desires and useless repinings, all its feverish passions [135] ]and longings for dread retribution at rest, forcibly came to my mind the words of the sacred and solemn injunction—‘Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.’
[136]
]FAR INLAND FOOTBALL.
‘Frightfully dull, isn’t it?’ said the Doctor.
‘Dull’s no name for it,’ said the Clerk of Petty Sessions; ‘this is the awfullest hole I ever was in.’
‘Never knew it so bad,’ chimed in the Chemist and the Saddler, who were on this frosty night drinking whisky hot in the snug parlour of the Shamrock Inn in the little township of Crupperton.