The black means to inform Miss Giles, whom he submissively calls Marmie, or Mistress, that he goes to look for a number of bullocks—branded with the station mark of O B 3, which he calls “oberthree”—which have wandered on to the next run.
“You tell big fellow lie, Carlo!” exclaims Glory excitedly. “You take letter; you take book-a-book alonger station.”
Click, click, click! The black hears the ominous, metallic rattle of the chambers of a revolver, as the fair hands thus emphasize the demand that follows:—
“Miss Lileth give you book-a-book for Inspector Puttis. Give it to me!”
The unfortunate native hesitates for a moment, not knowing which way to retire from out of range of the two fires between which he finds himself: the terrible retribution that will fall upon him if he proves false to “Missee Lillie’s” orders threaten him on one flank; on the other is the present danger of being shot if he does not surrender what he had strict injunctions to deliver into the police-officer’s own hands at Bulla Bulla station.
The native mind, till trained to think after the European fashion, cares little for the morrow. So Carlo, wisely and quickly, decides to escape the near danger, come what may afterwards, and holds out a white envelope towards Glory beneath the faint starlight.
The little white fingers take the note; and, retiring a few yards so as not to frighten the horse, a match is lit, and the “fair highwayman” examines her plunder. Yes, it is the letter she wants.
“You sit down here, Carlo,” Glory says, “till I come back. If horse want walk about, walk up and down,” waving her hand explainingly. Then, giving the black a piece of money, she disappears. Ten minutes afterwards Carlo has the letter returned to him by the “little Marmie,” and is soon flying over the spear-grass plains in the direction of the next station. Glory returns to her room, by means of the open window, as she left it, and exhausted with her bold adventure soon falls asleep.
If any sharp-eyed detective had, about this time, examined one of the dining-room windows near to which Miss Mundella had written her letter, he would have found a slightly greasy spot upon one of its panes; and, if worthy of his noble profession, he would have been led by a process of induction to surmise that this mark had been caused by the nasal organ of some smallish person, who had been engaged not long before in what may be correctly termed as “prying into the room.”