It was light, and compressible into a very small compass. The sole was composed of emu feathers, matted together with a dull red coagulated substance. The upper part was a sort of network of small plaited strands crossed and recrossed. This curious shoe was extremely crude in shape, being exactly alike at both ends.
'Why, Ted, this is hair!' cried Stella, after examining the net closely, and touching the plaited strands, which had still a dull gloss.
'Ah! only a woman's hair. How strangely wicked this shoe begins to look! Not a scrap of difference between the heel and the toes--and yet one could tell it is meant for a shoe; and it looks as if it would keep well on the foot. Let me see how it would look.'
Stella quickly slipped off her own shoe and put on the aboriginal one.
'Put it off! put it off! I can't bear to see it on you,' cried the young man vehemently.
But the girl merely laughed, and walked a few steps, and found that this curious covering for the foot, though much too large, yet clung to it with strange tenacity.
'Do you know that it is the most unlucky thing you could do?' said the young man quite gravely.
'Really!' said Stella, smiling at the sombre tone of conviction in which he spoke. 'Well, give me my own shoe, Ted. No--I can put it on.'
Ritchie half reluctantly returned the pretty little bronze shoe with its silver buckle and dainty bow, and then took up the aboriginal one.
'Now, do you know what this is called, and what it is used for?' he said, holding it at full length on his outspread palm.
'No; but I am dying to know, for I never before heard that any of our blacks made any attempt at shoeing themselves. Could they walk far in a thing of that kind?'
'Far enough for their purposes, I dare say,' returned Ritchie grimly. 'That is a Kooditcha shoe, and a black fellow never puts a pair of them on except when he steals at night upon an enemy to kill him.'
'Oh, Ted, are you making that up to give me what you call a "curly half-hour"?'
'Oh, but you've not heard all yet. Do you see that reddish stuff holding the feathers together? Well, that is human blood.'
'How horrible! I wish I had not put it on,' said the girl, with a little shiver. 'It really has an assassin-like look, and such strange sombre tints.'