And with that he walked off from the yard where we had been catching our horses, and never looked nigh us again.

We rode away to the low end of the gully, and then we led the horses up, foot by foot, and hard work it was—like climbing up the roof of a house. We were almost done when we got to the tableland at the top.

We made our way to the yard, where there were the tracks of the cows all round about it, but nothing but the wild horses had ever been there since.

“What a scrubby hole it is!” said Jim; “I wonder how in the world they ever found out the way to the Hollow?”

“Some runaway Government men, I believe, so that half-caste chap told me, and a gin showed ‘em the track down, and where to get water and everything. They lived on kangaroos at first. Then, by degrees, they used to crawl out by moonlight and collar a horse or two or a few cattle. They managed to live there years and years, one died, one was killed by the blacks; the last man showed it to the chaps that passed it on to Starlight. Warrigal’s mother, or aunt or something, was the gin that showed it to the first white men.”

A black woman.

CHAPTER VII

It was pretty late that night when we got home, and poor mother and Aileen were that glad to see us that they didn’t ask too many questions. Mother would sit and look at the pair of us for ever so long without speaking, and then the tears would come into her eyes and she’d turn away her head.

The old place looked very snug, clean, and comfortable, too, after all the camping-out, and it was first-rate to have our own beds again. Then the milk and fresh butter, and the eggs and bacon—my word! how Jim did lay in; you’d have thought he was goin’ on all night.

“By George! home’s a jolly place after all,” he said. “I am going to stay ever so long this time, and work like an old near-side polersee if I don’t. Let’s look at your hands, Aileen; my word, you’ve been doing your share.”

“Indeed, has she,” said mother. “It’s a shame, so it is, and her with two big brothers, too.”

“Poor Ailie,” said Jim, “she had to take an axe, had she, in her pretty little hands; but she didn’t cut all that wood that’s outside the door and I nearly broke my neck over, I’ll go bail.”

“How do you know?” says she, smiling roguish-like. “All the world might have been here for what you’d been the wiser—going away nobody knows where, and coming home at night like—like-.”

“Bush-rangers,” says I. “Say it out; but we haven’t turned out yet, if that’s what you mean, Miss Marston.”