“Very hot, sergeant. We had to work uncommonly hard to do it as well as we did.”
“It was not a nice Christmas game, Sir, was it?”
“Eh, me!” said Mrs. Medlicot. “There’s nae Christmas games or ony games here at all, except just worrying and harrying, like sae many dogs at each other’s throats.”
“And you think nothing more can be done?” Harry asked.
“I don’t think we shall catch the men. When they get out backward, it’s very hard to trace them. He’s got a horse of his own with him, and he’ll be beyond reach of the police by this time to-morrow. Indeed, he’s beyond their reach now. However, you’ll have got rid of him.”
“But there are others as bad as he left behind. I wouldn’t trust that fellow Boscobel a yard.”
“He won’t stir, Sir. He belongs to this country, and does not want to leave it. And when a thing has been tried like that and has failed, the fellows don’t try it again. They are cowed like by their own failure. I don’t think you need fear fire from the Boolabong side again this summer.”
After this the sergeant and his man discreetly allowed themselves to be put to bed in the back cottage; for in truth, when they arrived, things had come to such a pass at Gangoil that the two additional visitors were hardly welcome. But hospitality in the bush can be stayed by no such considerations as that. Let their employments or enjoyments on hand be what they may, every thing must yield to the entertainment of strangers. The two constables were in want of their Christmas dinner, and it was given to them with no grudging hand.
As to Nokes, we may say that he has never since appeared in the neighborhood of Gangoil, and that none thereabouts ever knew what was his fate. Men such as he wander away from one colony into the next, passing from one station to another, or sleeping on the ground, till they become as desolate and savage as solitary animals. And at last they die in the bush, creeping, we may suppose, into hidden nooks, as the beasts do when the hour of death comes on them.