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Our meal being quickly despatched, he bade us farewell and again sallied forth, to let his sheep out of their pen; when the hut-keeper asked us if we were inclined to stop a while, or go on to the captain's. We, of course, expressed a wish to set off at once, and begged him to show us the way.
The hut-keeper was a rough-looking fellow, and the captain fully expected to find the shepherd the same description of person. The sheep having been folded, the shepherd entered the hut.
There was a bed-chamber boarded off for the owner, a refinement not very often indulged in, and a bunk at one end of the general room, for the hut-keeper. The cheery voice of the proprietor addressing his dogs announced his return. The two settlers were merry and contented, in spite of misfortunes. Johnstone had also been compelled to boil down.
More promising materials for a tragedy could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak: "At Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he slept."
Haast, a German who is making a geological survey of the province, sleeps upon the opposite one; my bullock-driver and hut-keeper have two bunks at the far end of the hut, along the wall, while my shepherd lies in the loft among the tea and sugar and flour. It was a fine morning, and we turned out about seven o'clock.
My object was to obtain a few of these heads, which the hut-keeper, who was the only inmate, instantly gave, along with an unsolicited history of his own life. In the early part we instantly discovered that this loquacious personage was, what he afterwards mildly confessed to be, a government man, in other words a convict, sent out of course, according to the usual story, through mistake.
The fourth man was the hut-keeper, a wicked-looking old villain, who was baking bread. Frank looked at the sleepy young man with the parrot, and said to himself, "There's a bad case." He looked at the flash, yellow-haired young snob who was smoking, and said, "There's a worse." He looked at the villanous grey-headed old hut-keeper, and said, "There's a hopeless case altogether."
She was in a terrible position; her husband, and the other man for whom she acted as hut-keeper, had both gone out with their flocks some hours previously, and there was nobody about but a poor half-witted lad, who hung about the place doing odd jobs. She was a resolute woman, and made up her mind how to act, in far less time than it takes me to set it down on paper.
They were caught like birds in a trap. No hope! no escape! Nothing left for it now, but to die red-handed. He dashed into the house with the old hut-keeper and shut the door. The black lad ran up to a little rocky knoll within two hundred yards of the house, and, hiding himself, watched what went on. He saw the bushrangers ride up to the door and dismount.
I am the hut-keeper; and my mate, the shepherd, had just penned the sheep and made all snug for the night, when I caught sight of the glare of your fire.
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