I hope you will get your bird home safely, sir.

I should skin it directly.
Things so soon go bad out in this hot place." He turned away in among the trees; and Nic walked off with his gun over his shoulder, very thoughtful as he picked his way in and out among the bushes, till, feeling hot, he rested his gun against a bough, and sat down in the shade of one of the thick-foliaged, huge-trunked trees which seemed an exception to the rest--so many being thin-leaved and casting very little shade.
He had laid his specimen carefully down upon the grass, and was gazing at it without seeing any of its beauties, when a sudden thought struck him, and he sprang up to carefully reload his gun and place it before him.
"Mustn't forget that," he muttered.

"Never know what may happen." He sat down again in the pleasant shade to inspect his trophy; but once more he did not see it, for the convict's face filled his mind's eye, that lowering, sun-browned, fierce countenance which lit up at times with a smile that was sad and full of pain, and at others was so bright that the deep lines in the man's face faded, and he became attractive.
"It's queer," said Nic to himself.

"One minute you regularly hate the fellow, and feel half afraid of him; the next you quite like and feel as if it would be nice to know more about him.

No, it wouldn't: he's a convict, and they warned me about him." Nic became very thoughtful, and though his lovely Blue Mountain parrot, the object of his morning's walk, was close to his side, he did not glance at it, and the beautiful birds the convict had mentioned were for the time forgotten.