"Of our getting into debt. Things seemed to go from bad to worse from that time, and mother had to borrow a lot of money from old Mr. Crosby, of Brisbane. He was a friend of father's, and said that he would advance money on the run, but that mother must mortgage it to him. He said it was merely a form, and that mother might trust so old a friend not to take advantage of it, if at any time a difficulty arose about paying the interest on the money we had borrowed. So she signed all the papers."
"Well! has there been any difficulty?"
"Yes, from the very first. He cheated poor mother, who didn't know anything of business, most shamefully, and gets interest twice as high as he fairly ought. It has crippled us for years. We could not fence the farther stations, we haven't been able to buy new stock, and many a time mother would have been unable to produce the yearly interest-money if old Macleod had not been here to help her with one of his clever plans."
"What a shame! What an old thief that Mr. Crosby is. And to think of mother having all this trouble, and never saying a word to anybody."
"She didn't want to trouble us. I'm not sure that Margaret has not known since she came back from Brisbane. But things have come to a climax now. The price of wool has gone down lower than ever, and our last shearing hardly realised enough to cover the working expenses of the run. Mother wrote to tell Mr. Crosby how it was, and that she hoped to be able to pay him next year; but this has just given him the very opportunity he wanted, and he is down on to us at once."
"What can he do?"
"Why, sell Wandaroo straight off. Don't you see, he lent us money on the security of the run, and if we can't pay the interest he can sell everything right over our heads?"
"Sell Wandaroo!" said George, in a voice of the utmost astonishment and grief. "But it is ours. We were born here. I could live nowhere else. Oh, I love it so, Alec."
"So do I, so do we all," said the elder brother, in a pained but steady voice; "but he has the law on his side, and he can rob us of everything—for it is robbery."
"Has he said that he will not wait?"