We weren’t sorry to have a little excuse to stop quiet at home for this month. We couldn’t have done no good by mooching about, and ten to one, while the chase was so hot after all that were sup posed to have had a hand in rubbing out Hagan and his lot, we should have been dropped upon. The whole country was alive with scouting parties, as well as the regulars. You’d have thought the end of the world was come. Father couldn’t have done a better thing for himself and all of us than get hit as he did. It kept him and us out of harm’s way, and put them off the scent, while they hunted Moran and Burke, and the rest of their lot for their lives. They could hardly get a bit of damper out of a shepherd’s hut without it being known to the police, and many a time they got off by the skin of their teeth.

Chapter XL

CHAPTER XL

At last father got well, and said he didn’t see what good Aileen could do stopping any longer in the Hollow, unless she meant to follow up bush-ranging for a living. She’d better go back and stay along with her mother. If George Storefield liked to have ‘em there, well and good; things looked as if it wasn’t safe now for a man’s wife and daughter, and if he’d got into trouble, to live peaceable and quiet in their own house. He didn’t think they need be afraid of anyone interfering with them for the future, though. Here dad looked so dark that Aileen began to think he was going to be ill again. We’d all start and go a bit of the way with her next clay—to the old stockyard or a bit farther; she could ride from there, and take the horse back with her and keep him if she liked.

“You’ve been a good gal to me,” he says to her; “you always was one; and your mother’s been a good woman and a good wife; tell her I said so. I’d no call to have done the things I have, or left home because it wasn’t tidy and clean and a welcome always when I came back. It’s been rough on her, and on you, too, my gal; and if it’ll do her any good, tell her I’m dashed sorry. You can take this trifle of money. You needn’t boggle at it; it’s honest got and earned, long before this other racket. Now you can go. Kiss your old dad; like as not you won’t see him again.”