Basil and Annette

Basil looked round. The heavens were luminous with vivid colour, the birds were flying busily to and from their nests, nature's myriad pulses throbbed with gladness. To him it was the best, the brightest of days. But this sad woman before him was pale and worn; there were traces not only of exhaustion but of hunger in her face.

"You are hungry," said Basil.

"Don't mock me," said the woman, in no gracious tone; "let me rest."

"If you follow this track," persisted Basil, "the way I have come, you will see the Home Station. They will give you breakfast there."

For a moment the woman appeared inclined to accept his kindness she made a movement upwards, but almost immediately she relinquished her intention.

"No," she said, "I will wait."

He was loth to leave her in her distressful plight, but her churlish manner was discouraging.

"Will you not let me help you?"

"You can help me," said the woman, "by leaving me."

He had no alternative. "If you think better of it," he said, "you can obtain shelter and food at the Home Station." Then he passed on to the river.

A stranger was there, already stripping for the purpose of bathing. Scarcely looking at him, Basil was about to remove to a more retired spot when he observed something in the water which caused him to run to the man, who was removing his last garment, and seize his arm.

"What for?" demanded the stranger.

He spoke fairly good English, as did the woman who had declined his assistance, but with a foreign accent. He was brown, and thin, and wrinkled, and Basil saw at once that he was not an Englishman.

"I presume you have not breakfasted yet," was Basil's apparently inconsequential answer to the question.

"Not yet," said the stranger impatiently, shaking himself free from Basil's grasp. "Why do you stop me? Is not the river free?"

"Quite free," said Basil; "but instead of eating you may be eaten."

He pointed downwards, and leaning forward the stranger beheld a huge alligator lurking beneath a thin thicket of reeds. The brute was perfectly motionless, but all its voracious senses were on the alert.

"Ugh!" cried the stranger, beginning to dress hurriedly. "That would be a bad commencement of my business."

He did not say "thank you," nor make the slightest acknowledgment of the service Basil had rendered him. This jarred upon the young man, who stood watching him get into his clothes. They were ragged and travel-stained, and the stranger's physical condition was evidently none of the best; but his eyes were keen, and all his intellectual forces were awake. In this respect Basil found an odd resemblance in him to the alligator waiting for prey in the waving reeds beneath, and also a less odd resemblance to the woman he had left lying in the shadow of the gum-trees.

"You have business here, then?" asked the young man.

"I have-important business. Understand that I answer simply to prove that I am not an intruder."

"I understand. Is the woman I met on my way a relative of yours?"

"What woman?" cried the stranger, in sharp accents. "Like you in face, and bearing about her signs of hard travel."

"Did she speak to you? Why do you question me about her? By what right?"

"There is no particular right in question that I can see?" said Basil. "I spoke to her as I am speaking to you, and asked if I could serve her."

"And she!"

"Was as uncivil as yourself, and declined my offer of assistance."

"She acted well. We are not beggars. For my incivility, that is how you take it. You misconstrue me."

"I am glad to hear it. You seem tired."

"I have been walking all day and all night, and all day and all night again, for more days and nights than I care to count I have done nothing but walk, walk, walk, since my arrival at this world's end."

"Have you but just arrived?"

"Yes, but just arrived, wearied and worn out with nothing but walking, walking, walking. Is that what this world's end was made for?"

If the stranger had not Stated that he had important business to transact, and had there not been something superior in his speech and deportment to the ordinary tramp with whom every man in the Australian colonies is familiar, Basil would have set him down as a member of that delectable fraternity. Notwithstanding this favourable opinion, however, Basil took an instinctive dislike to the man. He had seen in him an odd likeness to the alligator, and brief as had been their interview up to this point, he had gone the length of mentally comparing him now to a fox, now to a jackal-to any member of the brute species indeed whose nature was distinguished by the elements of rapacity and cunning.

"Have you far to go?" he asked.

"No farther," replied the stranger, with an upward glance at Anthony Bidaud's house, one end of which was visible from the spot upon which they were conversing.

"Is that your destination?" inquired Basil, observing the upward glance.

"That," said the stranger, with a light laugh, "is my destination, if I have not been misinformed."

The laugh intensified Basil's dislike; there was a mocking sinister ring in it, but he nevertheless continued the conversation.

"Misinformed in what respect?"

"That is M. Bidaud's house?"

"It is M. Bidaud's house."

"M. Anthony Bidaud?"

"Yes."

"Originally from Switzerland."

Basil's hazard of the stranger's precise nationality now took definite form.

"As you are," he said.

"As I am," said the stranger, "and as Anthony Bidaud is."

"You are right in your surmise. He is from Switzerland."

"My surmise? Ah? He has a fine estate here."

"He has."