'So we might as well have stayed where we were, Jim.' Jim gave a kind of groan. 'Still, when you look at it, isn't it queer,' I went on, 'that they should only spot Starlight and leave us out? It looks as if they was keepin' dark for fear of frightening us out of the country, but watching all the same.'
'It's this way I worked it,' says father, rubbing his tobacco in his hands the old way, and bringing out his pipe: 'they couldn't be off marking down Starlight along of his carryin' on so. Of course he drawed notice to himself all roads. But the rest of us only come in with the mob, and soon as they was sold stashed the camp and cleared out different ways. Them three fellers is in Queensland long ago, and nobody was to know them from any other road hands. I was back with the old mare and Bilbah in mighty short time. I rode 'em night and day, turn about, and they can both travel. You kept pretty quiet, as luck had it, and was off to Melbourne quick. I don't really believe they dropped to any of us, bar Starlight; and if they don't nab him we might get shut of it altogether. I've known worse things as never turned up in this world, and never will now.' Here the old man showed his teeth as if he were going to laugh, but thought better of it.
'Anyhow, we'd made it up to come home at Christmas,' says Jim; 'but it's all one. It would have saved us a deal of trouble in our minds all the same if we'd known there was no warrants out after us two. I wonder if they'll nail Starlight.'
'They can't be well off it,' says father. 'He's gone off his head, and stopped in some swell town in New Zealand—Canterbury, I think it's called—livin' tiptop among a lot of young English swells, instead of makin' off for the Islands, as he laid out to do.'
'How do you know he's there?' I said.
'I know, and that's enough,' snarls father. 'I hear a lot in many ways about things and people that no one guesses on, and I know this—that he's pretty well marked down by old Stillbrook the detective as went down there a month ago.'
'But didn't you warn him?'
'Yes, of course, as soon as I heard tell; but it's too late, I'm thinking. He has the devil's luck as well as his own, but I always used to tell him it would fail him yet.'
'I believe you're the smartest man of the crowd, dad,' says Jim, laying his hand on father's shoulder. He could pretty nigh get round the old chap once in a way, could Jim, surly as he was. 'What do you think we'd better do? What's our best dart?'
Father shook off his hand, but not roughly, and his voice wasn't so hard when he said—