Then the trolly continued its course.
"I doubt if they will be back before the sun goes down, if they don't go a little quicker," Mr. Gillet said; "it is lunch-time now."
They were in a great grassed paddock that at one end fell abruptly down to the ravine and swamp lands known as "Duck Water."
A belt of great trees made a shade at one side, and along the other was the barbed-wire fence that showed they had not got away from the Yarrahappini estate even yet: higher up was the lonely bark hut of one of the stockmen.
They went up in a body to speak to him before he joined the bullock team, and to view his solitary dwelling.
Just a small room it was, with a wide fireplace and chimney, where hung a frying-pan, a billy, a cup, and a spoon. There was a bunk in one corner, with a couple of blue blankets on it, a deal table and one chair in the middle of the room. Over the fire-place hung a rough cupboard, made out of a soap-box, and used to hold rations. From a nail in the low ceiling a mosquito-net bag was suspended, and the buzzing flies around proclaimed that it held meat. The walls were papered with many a copy of "The Illustrated Sydney News", and "The Town and Country Journal"; there was a month-old "Daily Telegraph" lying on the chair, where the owner had laid it down.
A study in brown the stockman was, brown, dull eyes; brown, dusty-looking hair; brown skin, sundried and shrivelled; brown, unkempt beard; brown trousers of corduroy, and brown coat.
His pipe was black, however—a clay, that looked as if it had been smoked for twenty years.
"Wouldn't you like to be nearer the homestead?" Meg asked. "Isn't it lonely?"
"Not ter mention," the brown man said to his pipe or his beard.