‘You are a good fellow, Rockley,’ said Mr. Bowerdale, smiling; ‘and I thank you, Mr. Effingham; but I can’t alter my arrangements, though I feel strangely tempted to do so. I have had a fit of the blues all the morning. Liver, I suppose—too much excitement. But I make a point of always carrying a thing through.’
‘Take your own way,’ grumbled Rockley. ‘Well, I must be off, St. Maur. Effingham, did you forget about the pack-saddle? It’s a strange thing nobody can remember anything but myself. St. Maur, I beg to thank you and these gentlemen for their most pleasant entertainment. Come and see me at Yass, all of you, when you stop land-buying, or it stops you. Good-bye, Bowerdale; I can’t help thinking you’re a d——d fool.’
So the worthy and choleric gentleman departed, with his surplus steam not wholly blown off. All the way back he kept exploding at intervals, with remarks uncomplimentary to his unconvinced friend, who left by the Rebecca, which, with crew, captain, and passengers, was never more heard of.
On the following morning Mr. Rockley and Wilfred rode forth along the Sydney road, then far from macadamised, and chiefly marked out by dray-ruts and a mile-wide trail made by the overlanders. Mr. Rockley rode one stout cob and led another. Wilfred bestrode an ambling black horse of uncertain pedigree, and led the grey filly, upon whose reluctant back he had managed to place a pack-saddle with their joint necessaries.
CHAPTER XXV
BOB CLARKE ONCE MORE WINS ON THE POST
The homeward-bound horsemen had no difficulty about the road, well marked as it was by the travelling stock. There was also, as now, a mail service from Sydney. They met the mailman about half-way. He was riding one horse and leading another; he had often to camp out without fire, for fear of blacks. In due time they reached the site of the border town of Albury, on the broad waters of the Murray, all unknowing of the great wine-cellars its grapes were yet to fill, with reisling, muscat, and hermitage in mammoth butts, rivalling that of Heidelberg. Much less did they forecast the iron horse one day to rush forward, breathing woe and disquiet to the shy dryad of the river oaks, by the gleaming stream and the still depths of the reed-fringed lagoons.
Rude were the ways by which they travelled from the Murray to the Murrumbidgee River, by way of Gundagai, the great meadows of which were then undevastated by flood. Thence to Bowning, and so on to Yass, in which city the travellers were greeted with enthusiasm. The next morning saw the younger far on his way to The Chase.
What a change had taken place since the exodus—that memorable departure! But one little year had passed away, and what a transformation!
With the season everything had changed; all Australia was altered. Life itself was so different from that day when, half-despairingly, they rode behind their famished cattle, and turned their faces to the wilderness.