Having passed through the house, I went into the kitchen to obtain from Betty, who still constituted the female element of our household, some provender for the day. This obtained, I saddled my horse, strapped a quart pot on to my saddle, mounted, and rode off. As I passed the front of the house I heard my father call to me to stop, but I did not heed him, and rode on down the track to the ford, thence, through the township, to McLeod's selection.
And now a few words about the latter's homestead—the house which has played such a prominent part in my life's drama. I think I have already told you that it stood on the top of a small rise about a quarter of a mile above the river and looked right up the valley over the township roofs, just in the opposite direction to ours. In the twelve years that McLeod had lived there he had added considerably to it—a room here and there—till it had grown into a rambling, disconnected, but charming, old place, overgrown with creepers, and nestling in a perfect jungle of peppermint trees, gums, oranges and bamboos. The stockyard, for the selection carried about five hundred cattle and a couple of thousand sheep, was located at the back, with the stables and Sheilah's poultry-yard; and it had always been one of my greatest pleasures to be allowed to go down and give the old man a hand with his mustering or branding; to help Sheilah run up the milkers, or to hunt for eggs in the scrub with her when the hens escaped and laid outside.
Reaching the slip panels I jumped off and tied my horse to the fence; then went up the shady path towards the house. Bless me! how the memory of that morning comes back as I sit talking now. The hot sun, for it was the middle of summer, was streaming through the foliage and dancing on the path; there was the creeper-covered verandah, with its chairs and old-fashioned sofa inviting one to make oneself at home, and, last but not least, there was Sheilah standing waiting for me, dressed in her dark green habit and wearing a big straw hat upon her pretty head.
'You're late, Jim,' she said, for, however much she might spoil me, Sheilah always made a point of telling me my faults, 'I've been waiting for you nearly half-an-hour.'
'I'm sorry, Sheilah,' I answered. 'I could not get away as soon as I expected.'
I did not tell her what had really made me so late; for somehow, even if I did think badly of my father myself, I had no wish that other people should do so too.
'But I am forgetting,' she continued, 'I ought first to have wished you many happy returns of the day, dear old Jim, and have scolded you afterwards.'
'Somehow I never seem to take offence however much you scold, Sheilah,' I said, as we left the verandah and went round by the neat path to the stables.
'Then it's not much use my trying to do you any good, is it?' she answered with a little laugh.
We found her pretty bay pony standing waiting at the rails, and when she was ready I swung her up into the saddle like a bird. Then mounting my own horse, off we went down the track, through the wattle scrub, across the little bubbling creek that joined the big river a bit below the township, and finally away through the Mulga towards the mountains and the Blackfellow's Cave.