"Of course! Of course! I told you Desolada was Liberty Hall. Went to bed, eh? I hope she is not really ill. I don't know what I should do without her," and as he spoke Julian observed that, if anything, he was whiter than before. Evidently he was very much distressed at Madame Carmaux's suffering from even so trifling an ailment as a headache.
"I think I'll get on now," Sebastian said, rising from where he was sitting. "If she is laid up I shall have a good deal of extra work to do, I suppose it really is a headache."
"I suppose it is," Julian said, "it is not likely to be much else. She was arranging flowers in a vase when Paz and I returned."
"Was she!" Sebastian exclaimed, almost gleefully; "was she! Oh, well! then there can't be much the matter with her, can there? I am glad to hear that. But, anyhow, I'll go on now. You'll be back by sundown, I suppose. You know it's bad to be out just at sunset. The climate is a tricky one."
"So I have heard you say. Never mind, I'll be back in the evening, or before. Meanwhile I may wander into the woods and shoot a monkey or so."
"Shoot! Why! you haven't got a gun with you," Sebastian exclaimed, looking on the ground and at the mustang's back where, probably, such a thing would have been strapped.
"No, I haven't. But I've always got this," and he showed the handle of his revolver in an inside pocket.
"You're a wise man. Though, if you knew the colony better, you'd understand there isn't much danger to human life here."
"There was yesterday. And Paz has taught me a trick or two. If any one fired at me now I should do just what he did, and, perhaps, I too might find a leaf with a drop of blood on it afterwards."
"You're a cool fish!" exclaimed Sebastian after bursting out into a loud laugh which, somehow, didn't seem to have much of the ring of mirth in it. "Upon my word you are. Well, so long! Don't go committing murder, that's all."