ing on his heels, and thumping more crackling skins into a square. “Rafferty contracted from Robertson fur the season, a’ I tuk the tail-end over from Raff. He telled me there was good pickin’s in it.”
“And aren’t there?” Murray was watching him keenly.
“Aren’t there?” Jimmie spat on the grey fur contemptuously. “No, there ain’t! An’ me sweatin’ wi’ trappin’ an’ shootin’ an’ phosphorus—mixin’ me own bloomin’ stuff, too. Look at me hands.”
Murray looked at the deep burns that the frost had turned to living sores, and he looked at the narrow peaked face above. Then he glanced round the little whare. For the place where a man lives tells his character, let his face and speech lie as they will.
There were holes in the sod walls through which past legions of rabbiters had let the moon poke her fingers, uncaring. Jimmie had stuffed each crack with tussock, and cut a wedge for the cranky door. The hut was desolate, dirty and empty. There were sacks in the bunk with the blankets, and no reading anywhere save a newspaper that had been used to wrap fat. All these things were explained by the darkness back of Jimmie’s eyes, and the restlessness of his fingers.
Murray was tender as a woman, for all the stern life that held him. But he balanced the
