Before we went away father and Starlight had some terrible long talks, and one evening Jim came to me, and says he—
'What do you think they're up to now?'
'How should I know? Sticking up a bank, or boning a flock of maiden ewes to take up a run with? They seem to be game for anything. There'll be a hanging match in the family if us boys don't look out.'
'There's no knowing,' says Jim, with a roguish look in his eye (I didn't think then how near the truth I was), 'but it's about a horse this time.'
'Oh! a horse; that alters the matter. But what's one horse to make such a shine about?'
'Ah, that's the point,' says poor old Jim, 'it's a horse worth talking about. Don't you remember the imported entire that they had his picture in the papers—him that Mr. Windhall gave 2000 Pounds for?'
'What! the Marquis of Lorne? Why, you don't mean to say they're going for him?'
'By George, I do!' says Jim; 'and they'll have him here, and twenty blood mares to put to him, before September.'
'They're all gone mad—they'll raise the country on us. Every police trooper in the colony'll be after us like a pack of dingoes after an old man kangaroo when the ground's boggy, and they'll run us down, too; they can't be off it. Whatever made 'em think of such a big touch as that?'
'That Starlight's the devil, I think,' said Jim slowly. 'Father didn't seem to like it at first, but he brought him round bit by bit—said he knew a squatter in Queensland he could pass him on to; that they'd keep him there for a year and get a crop of foals by him, and when the “derry” was off he'd take him over himself.'