"Ay, or if I had only spoken to him! He must have got there yesterday morning. Likely he had heard the cocks crowing at your place before daylight, and was making for the sound, only that the light beat him, and he gave it best five minutes too soon."
"Ah! we're poor, helpless craythurs, Tammas! But A s'pose A betther see
Misther Spanker at wanst?"
"No," I replied; "you stay and do what you can. I'll ride back, and see
Mr. Spanker. How far is it to where that swag is on the fence?"
"About—well, about seven mile, as the crow flies."
"Better have it here. Now we'll catch the horses. Come on, Mary!
Take her on your back, Rory; we must hurry up now."
I have already exceeded the legitimate exactions of my diary-record; but the rest of the story is soon told. Mr. Spanker, as a Justice of Peace, took the sworn depositions of Ward, Andrews, Rory, and myself. In the man's pockets were found half-a-dozen letters, addressed to George Murdoch, Mooltunya Station, from Malmsbury, Victoria; and all were signed by his loving wife, Eliza H. Murdoch. Two of the letters acknowledged receipt of cheques; and there was another cheque (for £12 15s., if I remember rightly) in his pocket-book, with about £3 in cash. He was buried in the station cemetery, between Val English, late station storekeeper, who had poisoned himself, and Jack Drummond, shearer, who had died—presumably of heart failure—after breaking the record of the district. Such is life.
CHAPTER III
FRI. NOV. 9. Charley's Paddock. Binney. Catastrophe.
What fatality impelled me to fix on the 9th, above all other days in the month? Why did n't I glance over the record of each 9th, before committing myself by a promise to review and annotate the entries of that date? For, few and evil as the days of the years of my pilgrimage have undeniably been, the 9th of November, '83, is one of those which I feel least satisfaction in recalling. Moreover, I incur a certain risk in thus unbosoming myself, as will become apparent to the perfidious reader who hungrily shadows me through this compromising story. But it may be graven with a pen of iron, that, at my age, no man shirks a promise, or tells a fib, for the first time; and so, "Sad, but Strong"—-the family motto of the Colonnas, that offshoot of our tribe which settled in Italy in the year One—I answer to my bail.
One reservation I must make, however. For reasons which will too soon become manifest, it is expedient to conceal the exact locality of the unhappy experience now about to be disclosed; but I think I shall be on the safe side in setting forth that it was somewhere between Echuca and Albury.