"I have no strength," muttered Mr Meadows feebly; "but I have still my eyesight, and I may be able to play the spy. Why are they not here? They have gone on too far; but if they hear the firing, they will soon return." He passed through the dense undergrowth, and then stopped short, for he had hit upon a well-marked track, which looked as if the grass had been trampled down by footprints to and fro. "Strange," he said, "that it should fall to the weakest of the party to discover this. I'll go on; but not in the guise of warfare;" and he leaned his gun against a tree, and toiled patiently along the track. No easy task, for it led up and up, along the valley side, higher and higher; each few steps giving a view over the tops of the trees just passed. "Not the way taken by the gallant young man," he muttered, "for not one of the branches he was to have broken, has met my eye. It is plain that I have not struck upon his track; but I may be able to report good news to our friends on my return." Once more came the faint, muffled sound of a gun; and collecting his fast-flagging energies, Mr Meadows pushed on, until breathless, and with bleeding hands and knees, he stood looking down with astonishment into a little rocky amphitheatre, strewn with provisions and the plunder taken by the convicts from the Moa's Nest. He stepped down, for the place appeared to be quite forsaken, and vainly tried to make out the cause of its being untenanted, when, looking round, he started with dismay; for half-seated, half-lying, with his back to the rocks, was the form of a human being, but so disfigured, that it seemed impossible for life to exist in such a ruin. But life was there; for, to the clergyman's horror, he saw that the man was engaged with a knife in his left hand, slowly and deliberately trying to back off his right at the wrist. For a few moments, Mr Meadows could not speak; then, hurrying up, he arrested the man, exclaiming, "Surely, friend, that operation cannot be necessary?" "Let it be--let it be," was the answer, in a strange, muttering voice, which came from the mutilated face. "It's a vile hand--a bad hand, stained with crime." It required but little effort to wrest the knife from the convict's hand; and then, binding a handkerchief round the bleeding wrist, Mr Meadows gazed, shuddering, in the man's face, as his head fell back, and he fainted. "He cannot live through those injuries," muttered the clergyman. And leaning forward, he dropped a little brandy from the flask he carried between the man's lips, when, after a few minutes, he revived, and spoke in a more collected way. "Is any one there?" he asked. "Yes; there is one here," was the reply. "Come back to finish your work, I suppose?" said the man hoarsely; and he raised his arms, as if to protect his head, but only to drop them directly. "Where are your companions?" "Companions--companions?" said the wounded man inquiringly. "Who, then, are you?"