Then the black boy slipt down from his lair like a snake, and stole towards the house. All was still as death. The door was open, but, poor little savage as he was, he dared not enter. Once he thought he heard a movement within, and listened intently with all his faculties, as only a savage can listen, but all was still again. And then gathering courage, he went in.
In the entrance, stepping over the body of the dead bushranger, he found the poor old white-headed hutkeeper knocked down and killed in the first rush. He went on into the parlour; and there,—oh, lamentable sight!—was Cecil; clever, handsome little Cecil, our old favourite, lying half fallen from the sofa, shot through the heart, dead.
But not alone. No; prone along the floor, covering six feet or more of ground, lay the hideous corpse of Moody, the cannibal. The red-headed miscreant, who had murdered poor Lee, under George Hawker's directions.
I think the poor black boy would have felt in his dumb darkened heart some sorrow at seeing his kind old master so cruelly murdered. Perhaps he would have raised the death-cry of his tribe over him, and burnt himself with fire, as their custom is; but he was too terrified at seeing so many of the lordly white race prostrated by one another's hands. He stood and trembled, and then, almost in a whisper, began to call for Mrs. Mayford.
"Missis!" he said, "Miss Ellen! All pull away, bushranger chaps. Make a light, good Missis. Plenty frightened this fellow."
No answer. No sign of Mrs. Mayford or Ellen. They must have escaped then. We will try to hope so. The black boy peered into one chamber after another, but saw no signs of them, only the stillness of death over all.
Let us leave this accursed house, lest, prying too closely, we may find crouching in some dark corner a Gorgon, who will freeze us into stone.
The black lad stripped himself naked as he was born, and running like a deer, sped to Major Buckley's before the south wind, across the plain. There he found the Sergeant, and told him his tale, and the Sergeant and he broke in on us with the terrible news as we were sitting merrily over our wine.