‘When Tthulajerra was reached it was nearly sunset; so a camp was organised for the night. Mr. Bothwell fully expected to run his quarry to earth before the next sunset. Unless Hutkeeper separated from the tribe they were sure of him. It was unlikely that the deer would leave the herd. Blacks prefer to fly and to fight in company; they dread solitary journeyings. Two camps were formed―one for Bothwell and myself; the other, at about fifty yards distant, for the troopers. ‘That camp scene, before the moon rose, was one only to be found in a new land. The Paroo, unlike the Warrego, is not famed for heavy timber; still immense eucalypti border lagoons like the Tthulajerra. After our spare and simple meal I felt indisposed to sleep. I lighted my pipe, and, stretched on my rug, lay long in thought and reverie. The blazing camp fires illumined the silent giants of the wilderness from root to topmost branch. In the firelight the smooth white bark of the limbs and stem had a deathlike appearance, in keeping with the gruesome feelings naturally engendered by a “man-hunt.” I could scarcely restrain myself from peopling the ghastly outspread limbs with hundreds of victims. I thought I saw before me the African “death-tree,” while the black figures of the naked troopers, flitting from fire to fire, favoured the illusion. They seemed to be awaiting the fall of the hideous fruit, and the furnishing forth of the feast. Mr. Bothwell, not being anything beyond a very practical and efficient Government officer, had gone to sleep. He was a good doer, and sleeping was no trouble to him. When the moon rose the morbid fancies were dispersed, and as the last dark form sank down seemingly into the earth I slept. ‘After catching and destroying Hutkeeper about five hundred times, and being murdered by that relentless savage in every conceivable manner, I awoke, about 4 a.m., to find that a thick impenetrable fog lay nearly o’er “wood and wold.” I replenished the dying fire, and not feeling inclined to sleep more, sat silent and brooding till the fog lifted, and one by one the shrouded forms came forth from the shadowy veil, like lost years through the mists of memory.’ ‘And yet people say there is no romance in a new country!’ exclaimed Mr. Neuchamp, who, the best of created listeners, from his largely developed gift of sympathy, had eagerly drunk in every word, so manifestly enjoying the narration that Brandon, an imaginative and poetical though generally reserved man, had been unconsciously stimulated into a fuller development of the surroundings of his weird tale than under ordinary circumstances he would have thought possible. ‘No poetry? No dramatic position? What a picture for an artist: a solitary figure in that gray silent dawn, by a dim smouldering fire; the careless savage troopers; the tranquil officer, calm but remorseless as a Roman centurion!’ Brandon continued, musingly―