Two bachelor brothers, the Blakes, who owned a run not far from Palkara, were close to the window at which the pair sat.
The younger brother it was who had fired the remark inside about losing the great ram for which M‘Pherson had just paid 700 guineas.
. . . . . . . . . .
‘Well, Jack, what passengers to-night?’ asked the overseer of Blake’s Tara Station, as Cobb & Co.’s coach drew slowly up in the pouring rain close to the homestead door.
‘Nary one, bar a cussed ole brute of a ram,’ replied the driver, as he stiffly dismounted, and handed out the mail. ‘I got him at the railway, and I’ve bin more cautious with him than if he’d bin a Lord Bishop [108] ]He’s for M‘Pherson up at Palkara. Hold the light please, Mr Brown, till I see if the beggar’s all serene.’
‘He’s right enough,’ said the overseer, after a glance at the aristocrat, resting luxuriously on pillows, half buried in hay, and with his legs tied by silk handkerchiefs. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘slip inside and have a snack and a drop of hot grog. I’ll stand by the horses.’
‘You’re a Christian, Mr Brown,’ remarked the driver gratefully, as he pulled off his gloves and blew on his numbed fingers. ‘It’s the coldest rain for this time o’ the year as ever I felt.’
Scarcely had his dripping figure entered the open kitchen door, when, from behind a clump of bushes, came two figures bearing something between them. Lifting the ‘Duke’ with scant ceremony out of his couch, they deposited their burden in his place, and after a few whispered words to Brown, still at the horses’ heads, disappeared. Presently the driver returned, and, with a cheery ‘Good-night,’ started the coach rolling once more through the forty miles of mud and water between Tara and Combington.
. . . . . . . . . .
‘Coach in, Edwards?’ asked M‘Pherson the next afternoon as he drove up to the ‘Woolpack,’ accompanied by his friend Park.