I heard Aileen sigh to herself. She said nothing for a while; and then old Crib began to growl. He got up and walked along the track that led up the hill. Father stood up, too, and listened. We all did except. Starlight, who appeared to think it was too much trouble, and never moved or seemed to notice.

Presently the dog came walking slowly back, and coiled himself up again close to Starlight, as if he had made up his mind it didn’t matter. We could hear a horse coming along at a pretty good bat over the hard, rocky, gravelly road. We could tell it was a single horse, and more than that, a bare-footed one, coming at a hand-gallop up hill and down dale in a careless kind of manner. This wasn’t likely to be a police trooper. One man wouldn’t come by himself to a place like ours at night; and no trooper, if he did come, would clatter along a hard track, making row enough to be heard more than a mile off on a quiet night.

“It’s all right,” says father. “The old dog knowed him; it’s Billy the Boy. There’s something up.”

Just as he spoke we saw a horseman come in sight; and he rattled down the stony track as hard as he could lick. He pulled up just opposite the house, close by where we were standing. It was a boy about fifteen, dressed in a ragged pair of moleskin trousers, a good deal too large for him, but kept straight by a leather strap round the waist. An old cabbage-tree hat and a blue serge shirt made up the rest of his rig. Boots he had on, but they didn’t seem to be fellows, and one rusty spur. His hair was like a hay-coloured mop, half-hanging over his eyes, which looked sharp enough to see through a gum tree and out at the other side.

He jumped down and stood before us, while his horse’s flanks heaved up and down like a pair of bellows.

“Well, what’s up?” says father.

“My word, governor, you was all in great luck as I come home last night, after bein’ away with them cattle to pound. Bobby, he don’t know a p’leecemen from a wood-an’-water joey; he’d never have dropped they was comin’ here unless they’d pasted up a notice on the door.”

“How did you find out, Billy?” says father,“and when’ll they he here?”

“Fust thing in the morning,” says the young wit, grinning all over his face. “Won’t they be jolly well sold when they rides up and plants by the yard, same as they did last time, when they took Dick.”

“Which ones was they?” asks father, fillin’ his pipe quite business-like, just as if he’d got days to spare.