“Hot, indeed!” said Harry. “It’s killing work for men, and then all for no good! To think that men, creatures that call themselves men, should do such a thing as this! It breaks one’s heart.” He had paused as he spoke, leaning on the great battered bough which he held, but in an instant was at work with it again. “Do you stay here, Mr. Medlicot, with the men, and I’ll go on beyond where you began. If I find the fire growing down, I’ll shout, and they can come to me.” So saying, he rushed on with a lighted bush torch in his band.
Suddenly he found himself confronted in the bush by a man on horseback, whom he at once recognized as Georgie Brownbie. He forgot for a moment where he was and began to question the reprobate as to his presence at that spot.
“That’s like your impudence,” said Georgie. “You’re not only trespassing, but you’re destroying our property willfully, and you ask me what business I have here. You’re a nice sort of young man.”
Harry, checked for a moment by the remembrance that he was in truth upon Boolabong run, did not at once answer.
“Put that bush down, and don’t burn our grass,” continued Georgie, “or you shall have to answer for it. What right have you to fire our grass?”
“Who fired it first?”
“It lighted itself. That’s no rule why you should light it more. You give over, or I punch your head for you.”
Harry’s men and Medlicot were advancing toward him, trampling out their own embers as they came; and Georgie Brownbie, who was alone, when he saw that there were four or five men against him, turned round and rode back.
“Did you ever see impudence like that?” said Harry. “He’s probably the very man who set the match, and yet he comes and brazens it out with me.”
“I don’t think he’s the man who set the match,” said Medlicot, quietly; “at any rate there was another.”