"Here, you come inside," Marmot said quickly. "You come inside, and hold yourself together."
"Why, what's wrong?"
"Come up here, lad; there's news for you to hear," some one called from the verandah; and Tony, undecided and uneasy, got out of the saddle and walked on to the verandah where the men were still standing.
Marmot waved him to the tobacco-box.
"Godson's dead," he said.
"And buried," Smart added, with pardonable pride, for he was the local undertaker as well as saw-miller.
Tony, sitting on the tobacco-box, gazed at them open-mouthed.
"It was sudden—it's curled Cold-blood Slaughter clean up," Cullen put in as further explanation.
"And Yaller-head—she's gone to Barellan," another man, wishing to have some share in the proceedings, put in.
It was the last remark which brought Tony to his feet.