All this was very queer, but Old Cranky was so very queer that Harry didn’t think much of it, coming from him. But when Harry told Donald about it, Donald looked very suspicious, and said,
“Anyhow, when we’ve a chance, we’ll go and see whether there is a W on the cross. Where is Old Cranky?”
“I left him yarning away in the horsebreaker’s hut,” answered Harry; but when the boys strolled down there, they found that Old Cranky had left the station without coming up as usual to the house. Two days afterwards he came back, and as soon as he saw Harry he called out,
“There, I knowed I was right. I’ve been all through yon gully, and there’s no more a grave in it than there is in the back o’ your hand. You goo an’ look again—I’ll goo with you, if ye like.”
But when the boys did go back to the gully, it was without Old Cranky. They were not exactly afraid of him, but still they preferred the old snake-charmer’s room to his company in such a place. They thought they could ride almost straight to the grave, but from top to bottom, and from side to side, they rode through and through the gully without finding again the broken fence and crumbling cross.
“We couldn’t have been dreaming, Donald, could we?” asked Harry.
“Nay, lad,” answered Donald, “but we shouldna hae let that auld scoon’rel get the start of us. We’ll not see him at Wonga-Wonga again, in a hurry, I’m thinkin’.”
But Old Cranky did turn up again there in a few weeks’ time, and chuckled greatly when he heard of the boys’ unsuccessful hunt. That was his last visit to Wonga-Wonga. A short time afterwards he was found dead in the Bush, with his dogs standing over him, and his tame snakes wriggling about him. He had died of old age merely, and was buried in the Bush in which he had spent the greater part of his life. Old Cranky had been the “oldest inhabitant” in that part of the colony; and when he was gone, people began to rake up old stories of the old convict times in which he had figured. One day a settler, to whose father Old Cranky had been assigned, was dining at Wonga-Wonga, and telling us what he remembered of the old lag.
“Had your father one Wilson?” asked Donald.
“Well, really, he had so many, and it’s so long ago, that I can’t remember,” said the gentleman.