Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/312

302 Gwyneth!" he cried between his teeth, urging his reeking steed, mad in sympathy with himself, to leap ravines and dash through blinding scrub; now rattling down the fern-tree gully, now swimming the swollen mountain torrent, again dashing up the almost vertical pile of slippery boulder.

The sun had set. Beside a dismal lagoon, in which the frogs were croaking as though all that world were theirs, stood, in a low gorge beneath the hills, a lonely splitter's hut. Travers sprang from his steed, white with the sweat of a twenty miles ride. With a trembling hand the young man opened the rude shutter that served for a window.

Stretched on a bunk, clad in crimson shirt and moleskin trousers, the outcast lay asleep—a revolver on the table beside him, a gun in the corner at his head. Travers stole into the bark-hut across the earthen floor, and took the revolver from the table. As he reached over to seize the gun Malduke sprang up. Travers leaped towards the door. The trapper, trapped at last, stood at bay. He was ashen pale. His eyes glared with fear and rage as he stood facing his foe. He saw that for the moment his assailant was mad.

"At last I have you," cried Travers. "Powder and shot are too good for you. One of us will never leave this hut alive. Coward! You need not tremble so. There, my own hands shall settle you, not your miserable tools." He threw the arms far into the bush. Then, keeping his eye on the object of his frenzied hate, he barred the door with its great cross-piece of wood.

"Now, craven, defend yourself!" In the middle of the hut, illuminated only by the ghastly moonlight, the two met. Wildly for each other's throats they struggled. Malduke was the heavier; Travers more agile and