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'Oh, he was a fine, big fellow plausible, too, and could speak pidgin English he was never weaned from his tribe, and he was a treacherous scoundrel at heart.... As a precautionary measure, my father forbade the blacks to come up to the head-station. But Jimmy fell in love with the eldest of the half-caste girls. She encouraged him at first, then took up with one of the stock-boys....
It passed over the head-station and travelled at a furious rate along the plain. Hailstones fell, as large as a pigeon's egg, and stripped off such leafage as the drought had left. Thunder volleyed and lightning blazed. Part of the roof of the Old Humpey was torn off. The hide-house was practically blown away.
Mrs Gildea sighed as she read, and pictured in her imagination the wild wastes of the Never-Never Land and the rough head-station which was to be Lady Bridget's home. It was the way of the O'Haras to do things first and to consider afterwards whether it were well or ill that they should be done. Many a ruined O'Hara might have fared differently in life's battle had he thought before he acted.
'There's one easy solution of the mystery that doesn't seem to have occurred to you, said McKeith. 'The gin Oola could easily have stolen the key they're cunning as the devil half-castes and as treacherous I know them I've had my own good reasons for not letting one of them inside the fence of my head-station. 'That may be I can only say what I know, and you can form your own opinion.
They had not arrived at the head-station till after dusk, but it had been visible from the plain a long way off, and she had examined it with ardent curiosity through her field-glasses in the clear light of sunset.
She wouldn't have him at any price naturally and I had to give the fellow work outside the head-station to keep him away from her. That was before I went south. Very likely he's been trying it on again, and knew I should have to get rid of him as soon as I came back. 'Why doesn't the woman marry again? McKeith shrugged. 'Too jolly comfortable perhaps or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up.
That drear spectre of drought hung over the Never-Never Land. Lady Bridget stood by the railing of the veranda at Moongarr, looking out for two expected arrivals at the head-station that of her husband, who had been camping out after cattle and of the mailman colloquially, Harry the Blower who this week was to bring an English mail.
But Windeatt is in such a fright of their making another attempt on his head-station that he's pushing the imported shearers on with the shearing for all he's worth, and keeps any man he can get hold of on guard night and day round the house and sheds, while I and my lot have been doing a bit of riding after Unionists.... Now, if you please, we'll have the key of the hide-house, concluded Harris.
But Lady Bridget paid no heed to her letters, and thus it happened that for the time being, she was quite unaware of an event which was of great importance to her. She had been scarcely even distantly conscious of the hue and cry, and general excitement at the head-station, when it was discovered that the prisoner had escaped.
Indeed, the silence and solitariness of the once busy head-station had enticed many of the shyer kinds of birds from the lagoon and the forest. Listening, as he now was, intently, McKeith could hear the gurgling COO-ROO-ROO of the swamp pheasant, which is always found near water and likewise rare sound the silvery ring of the bell-bird rejoicing in the fresh-filled lagoon.
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