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18 they'll aye crop the fairest flower and make off with it for themselves, caring little enough what lack they leave behind. Ay, old Solomon had the rights of it"—

But just here the major's philosophical mutterings were cut short by the sight of a riderless horse cropping the stunted native grass beside the road, with the reins dangling broken beside her head.

"Oh, you unmannerly brute!" exclaimed he angrily; "you 've flung your master, and now your only concern is to fill your own belly!"

Lightfoot, thus adjured, raised her head, and, whinnying in an apologetic manner, trotted slowly back upon her tracks, and presently stopped beside a tangle of red-leaved blackberry vines and elder bushes half hiding the crumpled body of a motionless man.

"Here we are! Hi, friend! Art hurt?" queried the major rather uselessly, as the man was obviously unconscious. Then, without waiting for a reply, he cautiously dismounted, tied Lightfoot's broken bridle to that of his own steady nag, and, stepping gingerly through the briers, stooped over the unconscious form of the drover and carefully moved the limbs, turned the face to the light, and laid an intelligent finger upon wrist and heart.

"Yes, yes! poor fellow! Grievously hurt, yet not unto death—yes"—

A curious sound compounded of a growl and a whine startled the major from his abstraction, and a footsore and bewildered dog, brushing past his