“Mr. Crowe, I hopes you remember that I’m a [[290]]widder with five innercent children to keep, and can’t afford to let you fall asleep and burn every drop of ile out of the lamp for a guinea a week, washing included! There now!” [[291]]
THE KANGAROO HUNTER.
CHAPTER I.
THE LOST DRESS.
His hut stood on the border of a vast and unknown tract of bushland, away north. Why he had removed from all traces of his fellows to lead such a lonely mode of life we cannot pretend to explain. All we know is that he was a tall, handsome young fellow, and known to a few of the out-station boundary riders as Bob, the Kangaroo Hunter.
One day Bob had chased a fine old man kangaroo that he had wounded farther than usual into the trackless depths of the bush. As he was returning homeward along the margin of a small lagoon he perceived an article of very fine linen lying on the sand. Our hero came to a dead halt, and stared at the article in question, with as much astonishment as if a white elephant had presented itself in his path. He took up the linen, and the more he examined it the more [[292]]puzzled he became at the discovery. Bob was a capital shot, and could track game like a blackfellow, but the finding of a piece of soft cambric in such a solitary region bothered him completely. After supper he sat and thought over it, but gave it up by-and-by and went to bed.
Somewhere in the dead of night the hunter was awakened by a voice calling him by name. He could not see anything, for it was quite dark, but he felt as if it were some one moving up and down over his bunk, and at the same time a soft, gentle voice repeated, “Bob! Bob! Bob!”
“Here I am,” he answered. “What do you want?”