gratulate you on your victory—saving your presence. Mr. Frank Hallett, but I'm not altogether at one with the squatterarchy, as you know. I'm half a Liberal in Australia—was an out-and-out one in England, which comes to the same thing."
Captain Macpherson laughed in his breezy way. When not in harness he was a rather happy-go-lucky person, though he was grim and daring enough on the trail. "Your partner, he's down there, isn't he?" and Captain Macpherson nodded cheerily to Trant, "How de do? Yes, he was most obliging, was Mr. Trant. Showed us all about, and gave my men fresh horses; put us on a wrong scent, too, with the best intentions in the world. That was a most harmless and respectable horse-breaker, Trant, that we followed like grim death across the border."
"So I heard afterwards," said Mr. Trant, imperturbably. "But he sounded uncommonly like Moonlight."
"Tell me about the Baròlin Fall," said Elsie.
"It is worth seeing, I can tell you, Miss Valliant, but you have to work your way through a bunya scrub to get to it. And there's a funny thing. None of the black trackers will go near the place. You'd have thought a year or two in the Native Police would have cured their superstition, but my theory is that the Australian nigger is only beaten by the West Indian for sheer terror of what he thinks is the supernatural."
"No one seems to know where the fall comes from," said Hallett. "They say that it's the lake on the top of Mount Luya, which was once the crater of an extinct volcano, and has worked underground to the precipice."
"'Tis a big body of water," said Captain Macpherson. "You were asking if the place is a cul-de-sac. You might have nicked a bit out of the mountain for all the outlet there is. It's a sheer precipice on each side of you, with a waterfall at the end of it."
"I want to go there," said Elsie. "Mr. Hallett, remember that you have promised to get up a picnic, and that we are to camp out for a night."
