A moment later we had entered the room, and I was being introduced to a tall, slim youth of perhaps eight-and-twenty years of age. His height could not have been much under six feet two, his face was devoid of beard or moustache, and boasted a somewhat vacuous expression, which a single eye-glass he wore continually only served to intensify. He spoke with a lisp and a drawl, and if one could judge by his own confessions, seemed to have no knowledge of any one thing in the whole system of the universe. In less than five minutes' conversation I had struck the bed rock of his intelligence, to use a mining phrase, and, while I had small doubt of his good nature, was not at all impressed by his sagacity. His station, Yarka, was, so Jim informed me later, a grand property, and carried a large number of cattle. This success, however, was in no sense due to Chudfield's exertions. To quote his own words, he "left everything to his overseer, a German, named Mulhauser, don't-cher-know, and didn't muddle things up by shoving his spoke in when it was no sort of jolly assistance, don't-cher-know. Cattle farming was not exactly his line, and if he had to pay a chap to work, well, he'd make him work, while he himself sat tight and had a jolly good time with continual trips to town and friends up to stay, and all that sort of thing, don't-cher-know."
After dinner we sat in the verandah and smoked our pipes until close upon ten o'clock, when Mrs. Spicer bade us "Good-night" and retired to her own room, as on the previous evening. After she had left us, there was a lull in the conversation. The night was perfectly still, as only nights in the Bush can be; the moon was well above the roof, and in consequence the plain below us was well-nigh as bright as day. The only sound to be heard was the ticking of the clock in the sitting-room behind us, and the faint sighing of the night-breeze through the scrub timber on the hills behind the house. And here I must make a digression. I don't think I have so far explained that in front of the house there was an unkempt garden about fifty yards long by thirty wide, enclosed by a rough Bush fence. In an idle sort of way I sat smoking and watching the rails at the bottom. The beauty of the night seemed to exercise a soothing influence upon the three of us. Jim, however, was just about to speak when Chudfield sprang from his chair, and, pointing towards the fence, at which only a moment before I had been looking, cried, "What's that?"
We followed the direction of his hand with our eyes, and as we did so leapt to our feet. Being but a sorry scene-painter I don't know exactly what words I should employ to make you see what we saw then. Scarcely fifty yards from us, seated upon a white horse, was a tall man, with a long grey beard, dressed altogether in white, even to his hat and boots. In his hand he carried a white stock-whip, which he balanced upon his hip. How he had managed to come so close without making a sound to warn us of his approach was more than I could understand; but this much was certain, come he did. The time, from our first seeing him to the moment of his wheeling his horse and riding silently away again, could not have been more than a minute, but all the same we were able to take perfect stock of him.
"Follow me," shouted Jim, as he rushed down the steps and ran towards the gate at the bottom of the garden. We followed close at his heels, but by the time we reached the fence the Phantom Stockman had entirely disappeared. We stared across the moonlit plain until our eyes ached, but not a sign of the apparition we had seen rewarded us.
"That is the third time he has been up here since I have had the place," said our host, "and each time he has vanished before I could get close enough to have a good look at him."
"What beats me was the fact that his horse made no sound," remarked the Honourable Marmaduke, "and yet the ground is hard enough hereabouts."
"Wait here till I get a lantern," cried Spicer. "Don't go outside the fence, and then you won't obliterate any tracks he may have made."
So saying he hastened back to the house, to return in about five minutes carrying in his hand a large lantern. With its assistance we carefully explored the ground on the other side of the fence, but to no purpose. There was not a sign of a horse's hoof to be seen.
"Well, this beats cock fighting," said the Honourable, as Jim blew out the light and we turned to walk back to the house. "This is Hamlet's father's ghost with a vengeance, don't-cher-know. I shall be glad whenever he takes it into his head to pay me a visit at Yarka. I'm afraid in that case my respected parent would see me in England sooner than would be quite convenient to him."
To this speech Jim replied never a word, nor did I think his remark worth an answer. Once in the verandah we separated, bidding each other good-night, Jim to go to his own room, the Honourable to take possession of the sofa in the sitting-room, upon which a bed had been made up for him, and I to my own dormitory. I saw Jim turn down the lamp in the passage and heard him blow it out as I shut my door. Then I undressed and jumped into bed.