‘Our breakfast,’ he said.  ’Fat ‘n young.’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘A lagoon half a mile up the creek.  Four shots, four duck.’  He touched his revolver.

‘But Nature doesn’t provide plucked birds for our benefit.’

‘Skinned an’ cleaned ’em at the water.’

The teamsters were not averse to boiled duck and broth for breakfast, and the two billies were soon steaming on the camp-fire, while the company yarned and smoked.  It was nearly ten o’clock, and all hands were thinking of taking to their blankets for the night, when a sixth man came quietly through the trees, unobserved until his greeting disturbed them.  Done had to turn on his side to look at the newcomer, a handsome, beardless man in the garb of a digger, but much more scrupulous in the matter of cleanliness and fit than the majority.

‘I did not like the society at the Rest,’ he said, ’and walked on, looking for quieter company.’

‘Make yourself at home,’ answered Mike.  ‘There’s tea in the pannikin, an’ there’s grub in the dilly-bag.  You’re not carryin’ traps.’

’No.  Sent everything ahead but this ‘possum rug.  Thanks for—­’

He ceased speaking.  His face had been composed, almost colourless; into it there sprang an expression of amazement, which deepened into an animal ferocity shocking to see.  The mouth twitched spasmodically, the eyes caught the glare of the flame, and glowed with a catlike lustre.  Surprised, Done turned in the direction of his glance, and discovered the man Stony crouching on the other side of the fire, his weak, tremulous hands stretched out before him, his face gray as ashes and convulsed with horror.  Glaring at the stranger, he lifted his hands, thrusting the vision from him, and a cry of terror burst in his throat, as the man sprang at him, bearing him to the ground as a tiger might have done, groping fiercely at his throat with iron fingers.  Stony lay on his back; his enemy, kneeling on his body, choking him, bent his face down, and cried fiercely: 

’It is you, then?  I am not mistaken!  You know me, you dog, and you know that I mean to tear the heart out of you!’

Releasing his grip on the flesh, he wrenched at Stony’s shirt, ripping it at the neck.

‘Help!’ gasped the prostrate wretch.  ‘For the love of God, help!’

‘There’s your brand—­your brand, Peter!’ He thrust his face into Stony’s again, and all the hate that a face can carry and that a voice can convey was betrayed in his expression and his words.  ’Do you know what I have endured, Peter?  Do you know what I have suffered?’

Clutching at Stony’s throat again, he bored his knee into the body under him, his arms became rigid with the power of his grip, and Stony lay choking, clawing feebly at the other’s sleeves, his face distorted into a hideous caricature.

The other men stood about, watching, the Australians reluctant to interfere in a quarrel they did not understand.  It was Done who seized the stranger, tearing him off his victim, and then Mike and a teamster laid hands upon him, while Stony was writhing and panting on the ground.  The digger offered no resistance; he seemed unconscious of everything but his hatred and his vengeance, and his eyes never moved from Stony.