Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/15

 stuck up, and from over the lee of the blazing fire, just as described as a lie once by one of the Bulletin's contributors, and just as I saw it done when a boy, and describe it here as a fact.

Billy said that the other Billy sat down along a op when he saw the dog do that. Billy (the royal one) said he believed his dog belong-it the devil, and he bin borrow poison along-a rabbit poisoner's camp, and bin kill-it. He showed the scalp, for like all truthful men, black or white, he believed truth to be no good at all without undoubted material or written evidence behind it.

They carried Billy under the patchy "shade" of some gidgea, and laid him down and watered him till the grateful ground ceased to steam, and was much darker than the shade.

Billy sat up and told them that this was what they call the Four Lanes, and yonder straight ahead was Shepperton-on-Tems, and over there was Halliford and Sunbury-on-Tems, and that was a backwater of the Terns, with the willers an' watercress an' ole mill and rustic bridge, an', twisting himself round, "there was Shawlton (Charlton) jest round the corner, with Bob Howe's farm first, and the Farmers' Arms, and then the village, with Shawlton House opposite, where yer see them poplers over the hedge, and then Harry Leonard's farm, with Upper Sunbury further on, an' the London Road leadin' to Stains an' Windser Castle an' Hampton Court—an'—an' London and everywheere else for all he know'd." Blue smoke crawled along the ground from the burning off, and he said