"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."
"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 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."
"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.
"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.