without thinking. When he turned, there was only a cloud of dust
down the track.

. . . . .

The teacher taught that school for three years thereafter, without a hitch.
But he went no more on Universal Brotherhood lines. And, for years
after he had gone, his name was spoken of with great respect by the Maoris.




New Year's Night



It was dark enough for anything in Dead Man's Gap -- a round, warm,
close darkness, in which retreating sounds seemed to be cut off suddenly
at a distance of a hundred yards or so, instead of growing
faint and fainter, and dying away, to strike the ear once or twice again
-- and after minutes, it might seem -- with startling distinctness,
before being finally lost in the distance, as it is on clear, frosty nights.
So with the sounds of horses' hoofs, stumbling on the rough bridle-track
through the "saddle", the clatter of hoof-clipped stones and scrape of gravel
down the hidden "siding", and the low sound of men's voices,
blurred and speaking in monosyllables and at intervals it seemed,
and in hushed, awed tones, as though they carried a corpse.
To practical eyes, grown used to such a darkness, and at the nearest point,
the passing blurrs would have suggested two riders on bush hacks
leading a third with an empty saddle on its back -- a lady's or "side-saddle",