"About two months ago," I replied. "He was camped at that time in the
Dead Man's Bend, at the junction of Avondale and Mondunbarra."
"When are you likely to see him again?" asked the boundary man. "But, of course, you can't tell. It's a foolish question. I don't know what's come over me to-night."
Ignorance is bliss, in that instance, poor fellow! thought I, glancing out at the weirdly beautiful moonlight; and I replied, "Most likely I'll never see him again. These wool-tracks, that knew him so well, will know him no more again for ever. He's gone to a warmer climate."
"That decides it!" muttered the lunatic, swaying on his seat, whilst he clutched the edge of the table.
"Alf! Alf!" I remonstrated; laying my hand on his shoulder. He shrank from the touch, and immediately recovered himself. "Let me explain, I continued soothingly. "He has gone four or five months' journey due north, in charge of three teams loaded with lares and penates and tools, and cooking utensils, and rations, and other things too numerous to particularise, belonging once to Kooltopa, but now to a new station in South-western Queensland. Hence I say he's gone to a warmer climate. Not much of a joke, I admit."
"And what's—what's become of Kooltopa?" asked the boundary man, panting under his effort at self-control.
"Old times are changed, old manners gone; a stranger fills the Stewart's throne," I replied, with real sadness. "Kooltopa's sold to a Melbourne company, and is going to be worked for all it's worth. And I'm thinking of the carrier, coming down with the survivors of a severe trip, and the penniless pedestrian, striking the station at the eleventh hour. These people will miss Stewart badly.
For the guest flies the hall, and the vassal from labour,
Since his turban was cleft by the infidel's sabre."
"Whose turban?" asked Alf, with a puzzled look.
"Stewart's. I spake but by a metaphor. As with Antony, 'tis one of those odd tricks that sorrow shoots out of the mind."