and that we might have shown the troopers a bit of really wild country, but Sam didn't see the fun."
Elsie did not answer. "What is the matter?" he said. "You look as if you had seen a ghost."
"I have seen a ghost," she replied. "Never mind. Don't speak to me for a bit. I want to think."
And just then silence became compulsory, for the track was too narrow and broken for them to ride any more together.
The sun had set when they reached the border of the scrub, where Sam Shehan and the half-castes had already lighted the camp fires.
CHAPTER XXXI.
"CAMPING OUT."
"It puts me a little in mind of a view from the Chabet Pass Algeria," said Lady Waveryng, "if you could imagine a coach road here."
"Not the least in the world," said Trant, bluntly. He did not now say "My Lady," having got over his first awe, being one of those persons who, too obsequious at a distance, figuratively speaking, become familiar to ill-breeding when the social barriers are at all lowered. Lady Waveryng looked at him a little haughtily, but did not reply to him, only saying, as she turned to Elsie, "It is wild enough for anything, anyhow."
Yes, certainly, it was wild enough for anything. The mountains rose so close that the sense of size was lost—Mount Luya and its spurs to front and right, the jagged peaks of Mount Burrum barring the horizon on the left, so that they seemed in a cul-de-sac closed in by gigantic walls. Behind them were the forest wolds broken by volcanic-looking hills sparsely covered with hoary gums, and in places with nothing but the weird jagged speared grass-trees, with here and there a great lichen-grown rock or cairn of grey
