Working away at the knots and buckles, the chin-strap slipped, the jaw fell, and the gleaming teeth showed in such an awful grin that I involuntarily stepped back. Now the hat tumbled off, revealing the features of a young man with coal-black hair and moustache, and beard flecked with spots of dry white foam. Even at its best, I should have called it a hard, cruel face. It was simply hideous now. As I stood irresolutely staring, a voice behind me made me jump. It was the woman. ‘Here,’ she said, as with trembling fingers she essayed to loosen the dead grasp on the reins, ‘I’ll help you. He was a real bad un! But he couldn’t scare me when he were alive, an’ I aint goin’ to let him do it now. See’ (pointing to the cut on her forehead), ‘this is the last thing he done. Slip your knife through them reins,’ she continued. ‘He’s had a fit, or a stroke o’ the sun, an’ he’ll never slacken his grip, no more’n he would my throat if he could ha’ got hold on it. He was my husband; an’ jealous of his own shadder. But I never minded much till he took to knockin’ me about. I couldn’t stand that. So I cleared with Jim yonder.’ By this, we had undone the saddle and breast-plate straps with which the man, feeling himself mortally struck, and wishful to avoid falling off and lying there to rot in that wild scrub, had, in perhaps his last agony, tied himself to the saddle. And between us we let him slide gently down on to the sand, whilst the horse shook itself, sniffed unconcernedly at the body, and wandered away to the others. For a while she stood gazing on the thing as it lay there with stiffly curved legs and upturned glassy eyes. Then she smiled a little out of a white face, set hard with horror and detestation, saying,— ‘After all, perhaps, he thought a lot of me!’ And, going to the tent, she returned with a blanket, and carefully spread it over the corpse. Then, as the man came up with the horses and began to saddle them, she said, holding out her hand,— ‘So long! an’ many thanks. You’ve bin a real right bower. We’re a-goin’ into the Bridge, an’ we’ll send the traps out, all square an’ fair. So long! agen.’ ‘So long, mate!’ shouted the man, with a tremor in his voice lacking in the woman’s. And then they rode away, two dark shapes against the moonlit scrub. ‘Died by the visitation of God,’ said the Coroner’s Jury. ‘Served him damned well right!’ said the district generally, who knew the story. But travellers along the Maranoa track make a point of giving ‘Dead Man’s Camp’ a very wide berth. THE SHANGHAI-ING OF PETER BARLOW. ‘Yes, Peter, no doubt they’re a couple of fine colts, and should make good steppers. I hope you’ll have them well broken in for the drag by the time I return. Then, with the other pair of browns, they ought to turn out about the smartest four-in-hand in the district.’ ‘Goin’ away, sir?’ asked Peter Barlow, Head Stockman and Chief of Horse at Wicklow Downs.