“H’m! looks devilish like it.”

“I say, Heron.”

“What?”

“I wonder what he’d say if he heard us, eh?”

“Shut up, man; go to sleep!”

“I say! The ideal white man—‘a possible enemy and a certain nuisance.’”

“For Heaven’s sake, man, shut up! They’ll hear you sniggering. Good-night!”


Two.

It was a dark night and still—the stillness that often precedes a thunderstorm. The clouds were banked up thick, and only here and there on the outer fringes, where cuts in the hills gave a glimpse nearer the horizon, was there a faint lighting of the gloomy canopy.