Next day we all sat about, looking more down on our luck, dad said, than any day since we’d “turned out.” Then Starlight told him about him and Aileen, how they’d made it up to be married some day or other. Not yet, of course; but if he could get away by Melbourne to some of these places—the islands on the Pacific coast, where vessels were always sailing for—he didn’t see why his luck shouldn’t change. “I have always thought your daughter,” he says to father, “one of the grandest women I ever met, in any degree, gentle or simple. She has had the imprudence to care for me; so, unless you have some well-grounded objection—and I don’t say you haven’t, mind you, I should if I were in your place—you may as well say you’re contented, and wish us luck!”

Father was a long time before he said anything. He sat there, looking very sullen and set-like, while Starlight lit a cigar and walked quietly up and down a few paces off.

Dad answers at last. “I don’t say but what other lads would have suited better if they’d come off, but most things goes contrary in this world. The only thing as I’m doubtful of, Captain, is your luck. If that’s bad, all the trying and crying won’t set it right. And it’s great odds as you’ll be caught or shot before the year’s out. For that matter, every one of us is working for Government on the same road. But the gal’s a good gal, and if she’s set her fancy on you I won’t block her. You’re a pair of dashed fools, that’s all, botherin’ your heads with the like at a time like this, when you boys are all more likely to have a rope round your necks than any gal’s arms, good or bad. Have your own way. You always managed to get it, somehow or other, ever since I knowed ye.”

After this father lit his pipe and went into the cave.

By and by he comes out again and catches the old mare.

“I ain’t been out of this blessed hole,” he says, “for a month of Sundays. I’m dead tired of seeing nothin’ and doin’ nothin’. I’ll crawl over to old Davy’s for our letters and papers. We ain’t heard nothing for a year, seems to me.”