"Who has been hanging about the camp whispering and moaning?" asked Spicer. "Why, you duffer, we've only just come down from the Homestead. You must be either drunk or dreaming."
"Dreaming be hanged!" he said. "I tell you that there's been some one moaning like old —— round this 'ere camp ever since dusk!"
"Moaning like your grandmother," said Spicer, descending from his saddle and tying his horse up to a tree near by. "I want you to go up to the house and camp there. Mrs. Spicer is all alone, and I think she may be frightened. We'll look after the cattle."
When he had gone we stretched ourselves beside the fire on the blankets we found there and fell to yarning.
I can see the whole scene now. Owing to the heavy clouds mentioned above, it was as dark as the inside of your hat, with not a gleam of light in the whole length and breadth of the sky. Ruford had stirred up the fire before he left us, and the flames were roaring upwards, when suddenly there came a long, peculiar moan from the scrub behind us that brought us up into a sitting posture like one man. We looked in the direction whence it seemed to come, and saw there, standing in the full light of the fire, a tall, thin man, of about fifty years of age. He had white hair and a long grey beard. He was dressed, even to his riding boots, in some white material, and he carried a stock-whip in his hand. His face was as pale as death and infinitely sad, and he seemed to be looking from one to the other of us as if he did not know which to address.
We were both struck dumb with astonishment, until Spicer, raising himself on his elbow, shouted,—
"Hullo, my man! Where do you hail from?"
Then the figure faded away into the darkness as quietly as it had come, and you can just imagine how we stared.
"Well, this beats all the other manifestations into a cocked hat," cried Spicer, and seizing a burning stick and bidding me follow with another, he dashed into the scrub in the direction we supposed the stranger to have taken.
For upwards of twenty minutes we searched high and low, in every possible hiding-place within fifty yards of the camp, but without success. Not a single trace of our mysterious visitor could we discover. Then we returned to the fire and lay down again.