Stony paused for a moment, and, drawing a bottle from the back of his bunk, took a long drink.  Then his eyes wandered to Ryder again, and he went on: 

’When I came to I was alone.  I crept a little further from the edge of the cliff, and lay down again.  I was pretty badly knocked about; my nose was bleeding freely.  Presently, moving my hand, I struck a knife—­his knife!  It was closed.  I opened it, looking at the long blade.  The idea had already formed in my mind.  I smeared the blade with blood, and dropped the knife, open as it was, over the cliff, being careful that it should fall on the ledge about twenty feet below.  Then I smeared blood upon the brink, tore a scrap from my coat, and left it there, throwing the coat with the hat into the sea.  I was never seen in Chisley again.  I walked all that night.  In London I read of the arrest of Done on a charge of murder.  They had found my hat and my coat and the knife.  The girl had told her story.  Done was condemned to death; and then I stowed away in an Australian boat, and was allowed to work my passage out I thought Richard Done had been hanged till I saw him that night at the camp in the Bush.  The man sitting there is Richard Done.’

Stony fell back upon his grimy pillow again, and was silent; his eyes were fixed upon Ryder, but at that moment he had more to fear from Jim, who looked down upon him, fierce with disgust, his fingers itching to be at the thin neck of the brute.

‘Let us get out of this!’ he gasped.

‘Have you no questions to ask?’ said Ryder quietly.

’None, none!  And when I think of what this dog has brought upon me and mine I feel murderous.’

Ryder left the tent without another word, and Jim followed him.  As they walked away, Done was stirred with deep sympathy for his companion.  Ryder’s reiteration of the words, ‘I have been in hell!’ recurred to him.  He felt that there were years of suffering and a fathomless hatred behind the phrase, and his blood ran hotly.

‘I wonder you have not killed that man!’ he blurted after a few minutes’ silence.  ‘I regret ever having raised a hand to prevent it.’

‘I needed him,’ answered Ryder.

‘You intend to establish your innocence?’

For the first time that night a smile moved Ryder’s stark lips—­a hard, mirthless smile.

‘No,’ he said; ‘where’s the use?’

‘How is it you are free?’ asked Jim with surprise.  This view had not occurred to him before.

They were standing between the stunted and twisted gums.  The Bush here was spare and dwarfed, and the moonlight shone clearly upon Ryder’s face.

‘I am an escaped convict!’ he replied

A bitter curse leapt from Done’s tongue.  He felt himself bound to this man by a common wrong, a wrong that had clouded with misery the greater part of their two lives.

‘You may be retaken,’ he said.

‘I may, but I do not think it likely.’