Part 78 (2/2)

Buckley now and then looked anxiously at her husband, and Alice cast furtive glances at her father. The rest took no notice of our silence and uneasiness, little dreaming of the awful cloud that was hanging above our heads, to burst, alas! so soon.

I was sitting next to Mary Hawker that evening, talking over old Devon days and Devon people, when she said,--

”I think I am going to have some more quiet peaceful times. I am happier than I have been for many years. Do you know why? Look there.”

”I shuddered to hear her say so, knowing what I knew, but looked where she pointed. Her son sat opposite to us, next to the pretty Ellen Mayford. She had dropped the lids over her eyes and was smiling. He, with his face turned toward her, was whispering in his eager impulsive way, and tearing to pieces a slip of paper which he held in his hand.

As the firelight fell on his face, I felt a chill come over me. The likeness was so fearful!--not to the father (that I had been long accustomed to), but to the son, to the half-brother--to the poor lost young soul I had seen last night, the companion of desperate men. As it struck me I could not avoid a start, and a moment after I would have given a hundred pounds not to have done so, for I felt Mary's hand on my arm, and heard her say, in a low voice,--

”Cruel! cruel! Will you never forget?”

I felt guilty and confused. As usual, on such occasions, Satan was at my elbow, ready with a lie, more or less clumsy, and I said, ”You do me injustice, Mrs. Hawker. I was not thinking of old times. I was astonished at what I see there. Do you think there is anything in it?”

”I sincerely hope so,” she said.

”Indeed, and so do I. It will be excellent on every account. Now,” said I, ”Mrs. Hawker, will you tell me what has become of your old servant, Lee? I have reasons for asking.”

”He is in my service still,” she said; ”as useful and faithful as ever.

At present he is away at a little hut in the ranges, looking after our ewes.”

”Who is with him?” I asked.

”Well, he has got a new hand with him, a man who came about a month or so ago, and stayed about splitting wood. I fancy I heard Lee remark that he had known him before. However, when Lee had to go to the ranges, he wanted a hut-keeper; so this man went up with him.”

”What sort of a looking man was he?”

”Oh, a rather large man, red-haired, much pitted with the small-pox.”

All this made me uneasy. I had asked these questions, by the advice of d.i.c.k, and, from Mrs. Hawker's description tallying so well with his, I had little doubt that another of the escaped gang was living actually in her service, alone too, in the hut with Lee.

The day that we went to Mirngish, the circ.u.mstances I am about to relate took place in Lee's hut, a lonely spot, eight miles from the home station, towards the mountain, and situated in a dense dark stringy bark forest--a wild desolate spot, even as it was that afternoon, with the parrots chattering and whistling around it, and the bright winter's sun lighting up the green tree-tops.

Lee was away, and the hut-keeper was the only living soul about the place. He had just made some bread, and, having carried out his camp-oven to cool, was sitting on the bench in the sun, lazily, thinking what he would do next.

He was a long, rather powerfully-built man, and seemed at first sight, merely a sleepy half-witted fellow, but at a second glance you might perceive that there was a good deal of cunning, and some ferocity in his face. He sat for some time, and was beginning to think that he would like a smoke, so he got out his knife preparatory to cutting tobacco.

The hut stood at the top of a lone gully, stretching away in a vista, nearly bare of trees for a width of about ten yards or so, all the way down, which gave it the appearance of a gra.s.s-ride, walled on each side by tall dark forest; looking down this, our hutkeeper saw, about a quarter of a mile off, a horseman cross from one side to the other.

He only caught a momentary glimpse of him, but that was enough to show him that it was a stranger. He neither knew horse nor man, at least judging by his dress; and while he was still puzzling his brains as to what stranger would be coming to such an out-of-the-way place, he heard the ”Chuck, kuk, kuk, kuk,” of an opossum close behind the hut, and started to his feet.

It would of course have startled any bushman to hear an opossum cry in broad day, but he knew what this meant well. It was the arranged signal of his gang, and he ran to the place from whence the sound came.

George Hawker was there--well dressed, sitting on a n.o.ble chestnut horse. They greeted one another with a friendly curse.

As is my custom, when recording the conversation of this cla.s.s of worthies, I suppress the expletives, thereby shortening them by nearly one half, and depriving the public of much valuable information.

”Well, old man,” began Hawker, ”is the coast clear?”

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