“But they can’t scent him out.”
“Nay; but they can smell him out with their eyes and run him down. Bound to say, if I set our three to work, they’d find the poor lad.”
“They are very keen and observant.”
“Keen, Master Nic? Ay! It’s a many years now since I shaved; but if I took to it again I shouldn’t use rayshors, sir, but blackfellows’ sight. Steel’s nowhere to it.”
“But how do you know they didn’t catch him?”
“I sent Damper and Rigar to see the fun, and they came back to me grinning, and told me.”
“But did Mr Dillon set his blacks to work tracking?”
“Ay, that he did; but it strikes me they didn’t want to find the poor chap. It’s like this, you see, Master Nic. Yes’day morning, as soon as our three found out, from Brooky’s face looking like a bit o’ unbaked damper, and his tied-up head, that he’d been having it, they asked me how it was, and I told ’em. Next minute I goes into the cow-shed to see what the noise was, and them three chaps—for they’re just like little children—there they were, with jyned hands, having a crobbery sort o’ dance.”
“Why?”
“Why, sir? Just because they were precious glad that Brooky had found his master. They didn’t say so, but I knew. You don’t suppose, because a chap’s face is black, he likes to be hit with sticks, and kicked, and sneered at. They’re little children in big black bodies, master; but they like the man who shares his damper and mutton with ’em and never gives ’em a dirty word a deal better than him as treats ’em as if they was kangaroos.”