I had to hurry off and leave him. “We all,” I suppose, meant himself and his ghosts.
I ran down between the two rows of pines and reached the road just as the coach came up. I found the publican from Ilford aboard—he was taking a trip to Sydney. As the coach went on I looked up the clearing and saw the hatter standing straight behind the fire, with his arms folded and his face turned in our direction. He looked ghastly in the firelight, and at that distance his face seemed to have an expression of listening blindness. I looked round on the dark bush, with, away to the left, the last glow of sunset fading from the bed of it, like a bed of reddening coals, and I looked up at the black loom of Aaron’s Pass, and thought that never a man, sane or mad, was left in such a depth of gloomy loneliness.
“I see you’ve been yarning with him yonder,” said the publican, who seemed to have relaxed wonderfully.
“Yes.”
“You know these parts, don’t you?”
“Yes. I was about here as a boy.”
He asked me what my name might be. I told him it was Smith. He blinked a while.
“I never heard of anyone by the name of Smith in the district,” he said.
Neither had I. I told him that we lived at Solong, and didn’t stay long. It saved time.
“Ever heard of the Big Brassingtons?”