EAR DICK,—I have at last a few hours to myself, during which I can sit down quietly, here in my room, which overlooks the Botanical Gardens and ‘our beautiful harbour,’ and write to my relatives and friends.
“I was very glad to get your letter yesterday, and learn that you are all well up to date. As for myself, I am pretty well, thank you. After getting rid of the ophthalmic troubles which seized upon my eyes whilst I was lying ill in the fly-pestered north, I went to Brisbane, where, of course, I got low fever. My trip to Melbourne,—Smelbourne the Bulletin calls it, and rightly,—which is the dirtiest if the most go-ahead city in Australia, however, set me up and fattened me, but also gave me typhoid fever. It was only a slight touch, however, and the return voyage to Sydney has put me on my legs again.
“Since last I wrote I have pretty well arranged all my affairs on this side of the water, and you may expect to see me in New Zealand before very long. I may as well run over the chief items of interest that have eventuated since I last wrote, before setting forth for your edification the outline of the scheme that I shall probably adopt for carrying out my uncle’s idea of ameliorating the condition of the Australian aborigines.
“In accordance with my uncle’s half-expressed wish, in the letter of instructions which I discovered at his grave, I have made my respected friend and adviser, Mr. Winze, a quarter proprietor in the marvellous ‘Golden Cliffs,’ and he has started for the north to superintend the erection of the chlorination plant at the Mount, where already a small village has sprung up in the desert round the ‘doctor’s’ no longer lonely resting-place.
“Glory is still staying with her friends in Brisbane, and I am starting by to-morrow’s boat to interview her upon a very particular subject, the result of which confabulation I will communicate to the ‘Mater’ next mail.
“I have gathered no information which tends to throw any fresh light upon the terrible occurrence at Agate Creek. I was so long laid on the shelf at the shepherd’s hut at Borbong run that the perpetrators of the crime—if a crime was committed—upon the night of the storm had ample time to hide all traces of it. At any rate, when I revisited the site of the camp amongst the rocks, there was not the slightest indication of anything wrong having taken place there.
“Giles’s body, as you know, was found, and so was Morth’s. The latter, a police officer, was drowned trying to swim his horse across the creek after a fugitive black fellow. The former probably met with his death in a similar manner. I cannot think that Giles intended to attack us, having, as I have ascertained, received my letter previously; besides there were too many witnesses about. I rather expect that Giles and Morth’s party mistook our camp for that of some Myall natives. It is by no means the first time such a mistake has occurred in the colony. And cannot we see the finger of Fate in all this? The sins of the father, Giles, visited upon the child, my poor little friend Don. I miss the little fellow tremendously.
“The people in the neighbourhood of Murdaro keep very close about the affair, as all the powerful squatters round had a hand in the ‘rounding-up’ party that destroyed Billy’s villager friends, and with little doubt our camp as well. It would be a very risky work to attempt an investigation. To tell the truth, also, I have not pushed for an inquiry into the matter for fear of something turning up that might prove an extra source of pain to Glory, who has been fearfully cut up, poor girl, as it is, with the double loss of her father—of whom she was very fond—and her brother, to whose return home she was looking forward with so much pleasure.
“Glory is supposed to be under the impression that it was the flooded state of the creek that caused the loss of the père et fils; but I am afraid the poor girl has an inkling of the dreadful truth, or rather what I take to be the truth.