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"We had best meet somewhere else, and " Barber glanced round. If he had given way to Slaughter he was not going to allow any one else to override him. "Are you boss of this game or am I?" he said quickly; and Tap held back. "You ride straight back to Barellan," he added to Dickson.
Ailleen, seeing him coming, met him with some water, and between them they bathed his head and hands until there was some sign of returning vitality. But consciousness was longer in reviving, and Slaughter still lay insensible when a rescue party from the men who were fighting the fires pressed through the lines and reached Barellan.
Nellie Murray, as a matter of fact, had thrown out hints, not by any means too obscure, to the effect that if he hastened to Barellan he might find Ailleen enjoying the society of Dickson to the exclusion of all else. That had been the reason of his haste; that had been the reason of his precipitate action when he found she was alone fearing that at any moment Dickson might appear.
Scarcely had Ailleen, obedient to the elder woman's wish, reached it, when she saw a horseman come through the gate from beside which she had first seen Barellan. He rode rapidly towards the house, and as he approached her heart gave a leap, for she recognized first the grey horse, and then its rider. He saw her as she came up, and waved his hand.
Another tale there was of a coach stuck up on the old main road beyond the boundary fence, when the mail was burned, and one of the passengers, being shot, fell with his head in the fire, and lay there till the Lady of Barellan, riding down the road in the morning, found him, and the remainder of the company bound to the trees and gagged.
It was the last remark which brought Tony to his feet. "Sit down, lad; sit down," Marmot explained. "We had to break it gently lest it scared you. Sit down and have a smoke. We're all with you." On the verandah of Barellan Mrs.
Shut out from the world by her blindness, she was still further isolated by the circumstances under which she was situated at Barellan.
He was only a youngster of sixteen, but he was one among the many of Ailleen's admirers, and the price of his accompanying his sister was that he should have the enjoyment of Ailleen's company all the way to Barellan and back.
A slim hand-rail ran from a corner of the verandah to the clump three hundred yards away, and round the trees a high three-rail fence was built, with a gate where the hand-rail met it, and no one of the station ever went there save the Lady of Barellan; for it was a strange fancy, born of the fever that had followed the loss of her sight, some said, that she had of going there, feeling her way by the hand-rail, and staying there alone and silent, musing.
"I don't know what you mean, Nellie," she said quietly. "I wondered why you never came out to see me I understand now. I don't think I need say any more." She turned away and went to where her horse was standing, and, mounting it, rode away back to Barellan without looking again where Nellie and Dickson stood.
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