“Woman’s a mysterious crea-a-tion, I’ve aye held, since she first walkit in the gairden o’ Eden,” quoth the Sergeant impressively. “Either of the Lawless girls would have died for him—and gloried in it. Kate, that was his ruin, wild and undeesciplined as she was, but for the poison that Dayrell insteeled into her, wad ha’ laid her head on the block to save his. Puir Tessie did die for him, as ye may ca’ it, for she went into Melbourne Hospital when the fever was at its fiercest, and cried that they should give her the warst cases. The puir sick diggers and sailors called her ‘The Angel of the Fever Ward,’ and there she wrought, and wrought, day after day, and night after night, until she catchit it hersel’, and so the end came. The doctors and the ither attendants said she hadna the strength to strive against it.”
“A jewel of a girl!” quoth the Englishman; “why didn’t he marry her?”
“She wouldn’t marry him,” said the Sergeant. “She kenned he was promised to his cousin, a great leddy frae the auld country, who came all the way to Australia to find him, and she said he must keep his troth.”
“Women seem to differ in Australia much as they do elsewhere,” mused the stranger.
“And what for no?” queried the old trooper; “there’s bad and good all over the world—men as weel’s women—and the more you see of this country, the more you’ll find it oot. If they’re born unlike from the start, they’re as different from one another as your cob (as ye ca’ him) frae ‘Little-River-Jack’s’ Keewah that can climb like a goat, or from Middleton’s auld ‘Slavey’ that can gallop twenty miles before breakfast, or draw a buggy sixty miles a day at a pinch. But if we get talking horse, we’ll no quit till cockcraw.”
CHAPTER III
“You will tell us about Dayrell, Sergeant?” said Mr. Blount. “Is it a tale of mystery and fear?”
“It was God’s judgment upon the shedding of innocent blood,” said the Sergeant solemnly; “they’re in their graves, the haill company, the betrayer and the betrayed. The nicht’s turned dark and eerie. To say truth, I wad as lieve lay the facts before ye, in the licht o’ day. It’s a dark walk by the river oaks, and a man may weel fancy he hears whisperings, and voices of the deid in the midnight blast. I’m at your sairvice ony day before ye leave Bunjil, but I’ll be makin’ tracks the noo, wi’ your permeession, sir, and my thanks to ye. Gude nicht!”
The veteran had made up his mind, and wrapped in a horseman’s cloak such as the paternal Government of Victoria still serves out to the Mounted Police Force, he marched forth into the night. The landlord parted from him on the verandah, while Blount walked up and down for an hour, watching a storm-cloud whelming in gathering gloom the dimly outlined range, until the rain fell with tropical volume necessitating a retreat to the parlour, where the logs still sent out a grateful warmth. “The old man must have missed that downpour,” he said. “He was wise to depart in good time.”