"I left my camp one morning and strolled across the run to the place where Karl had been watching. He had selected the top of a steep bluff that jutted out into the river and that, on the landward side, overlooked a great extent of the run. As I climbed up the range I shouted to him repeatedly, but, as there was no answer, I concluded he was sleeping, and so walked quietly on till I came out on the top. There were the smouldering remains of his fire, the billy in which he had boiled his tea, his blanket lying as he had left it, but Karl himself was not there. I shouted again and looked about me, and then something made me start. "It was his gun lying on the ground. I picked it up, and saw that it had been discharged. There was blood upon the stock, and stuck to the hammer was a wisp of coarse yellow hair. Amazed, and filled with a sudden cold sensation of fear, I examined the ground about me. I saw grass and bushes trampled and broken as though there had been a struggle on the spot. I saw splashes and blots of blood here, there, and everywhere. And then something prompted me to look over the cliff. What I saw nearly caused me to fall, so horribly did my heart leap in my throat. Down below there, on the cruel rocks, head downwards on the beach, lay his body. Dead he was, you could see that from the top. Poor Karl! "I rushed down through the gully on the left, and made my way to where he lay. His head was broken by the fall, but there were horrible wounds besides upon his throat and limbs, gaping, torn, and deep, too plainly the marks of some fierce beast's teeth. And as I knelt beside the body, weeping, stupified, agonized by the horror of the thing, a fancy crept into my poor brains that I had been a witness of that scene upon the bluff the night before; when nought but the moon was there to see, with the creek singing through the bush in the gully, and the river-tide sweeping along below. "I fancied I saw him sitting moody and despairing by the fire. And up through the thick jungle of the gully comes stealing the great yellow body of that dreadful brute, that devilish cur that had first ruined him and now meant to kill him. I saw it spring upon him as he sat, with fangs gleaming and savage eyes of fire. I saw the flash of his gun, the swinging blow, the curse of the man, and the growl of the dog. I could fancy the ferocious joy upon the face of the half-maddened man as he grappled with his foe. I saw the hard, fierce struggle—glistening teeth opposed to flashing steel. And then I saw him conquer, but—only to seize the ponderous brute, to hurl it from the cliff far into the river, and, staggering, wounded to the death, overbalancing, to fall headlong himself.