"By this time," said Desborough. "He was just dying when I came away."
"Would you mind stopping for a moment, Captain? Now tell me, who was he?"
"Mr. Charles Hawker, son of Mrs. Hawker, of Toonarbin."
He gave such a yell that Desborough shrunk from him appalled,—a cry as of a wounded tiger,—and struggled so wildly with his handcuffs that the blood poured from his wrists. Let us close this scene. Desborough told me afterwards that that wild, fierce, despairing cry, rang in his ears for many years afterwards, and would never be forgotten till those ears were closed with the dust of the grave.
Chapter XLIV
HOW MARY HAWKER HEARD THE NEWS.
Troubridge's Station, Toonarbin, lay so far back from the river, and so entirely on the road to nowhere, that Tom used to remark, that he would back it for being the worst station for news in the country. So it happened that while these terrible scenes were enacting within ten miles of them, down, in fact, to about one o'clock in the day when the bushrangers were overtaken and punished, Mary and her cousin sat totally unconscious of what was going on.
But about eleven o'clock that day, Burnside, the cattle dealer, mentioned once before in these pages, arrived at Major Buckley's, from somewhere up country, and found the house apparently deserted.
But having coee'd for some time, a door opened in one of the huts, and a sleepy groom came forth, yawning.