in a pack-strap, clambered into his saddle, and chirruped an order to the unreined pack-horses. They answered with the quick lift of feet to a trot, and passed down the creek-bed, to take, by low and winding ways, the desolate track to the Dome where it sat on the edge of the world with a scarlet wreath of sun-rays over its snow.
It is not every man who dares be alone with Nature. For Nature is God, and man, very often, is of himself and the devil. Lou Birot knew this with the absolute certainty of a man who discovers a thing first-hand; and because he knew it he loathed the great merciless silences, and the dark secret gullies, and the terrible purity of the uplifted snow-mountains that no touch of man could subdue nor smirch.
The smell of heat was in the air before dawn. The burden of it was on the shelterless hills ere ever the fog was torn from the crests. Across the broken miles of shingle-tops it made mirage of cabbage-tree and swaying toi-toi beside still water; and more than one man halted with his stick on the grating shingle to curse it, and to curse the sheep pelting by above him, and to trudge steadily on with lips that cracked when he whistled his dogs.
To the lay understanding a man’s conscience is his only goal on the hills. The expert knows that he no more dare burk his fair labour there than in the branding-yards with the full sta-
