"I will do you justice, Childee, but I must do justice to the other
side too. Of course, neither of you will be satisfied, but that
cannot be helped."

His perfect knowledge of their language, the pains he took to sift
all matters brought before him to the bottom, had rendered the young
officer very popular among the natives. They knew they could get
justice from him direct. There was no necessity to bribe underlings:
he had the knack of extracting the truth from the mass of lying
evidence always forthcoming in native cases; and even the defeated
party admired the manner in which the fabric of falsehood was pulled
to pieces. But the main reason of his popularity was his sympathy,
the real interest which he showed in their cases, and the patience
with which he listened to their stories.

Bathurst himself, as he rode homewards, was still thinking of the
case. Of course there had been lying on both sides; but to that
he was accustomed. It was a question of importance--of greater
importance, no doubt, to the villagers than to their opponent, but
still important to him--for this tract of land was a valuable
one, and of considerable extent, and there was really nothing in the
documents produced on either side to show which ditch was intended
by the original grants. Evidently, at the time they were made, very
many years before, one ditch or the other was not in existence; but
there was no proof as to which was the more recent, although both
sides professed that all traditions handed down to them asserted
the ditch on their side to be the more recent.

He was riding along the road through the great jungle, at his horse's