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Once or twice she heard the measured tramp of feet in the streets below, as a regiment was moved from one quarters to another. England was at war with Germany, they told her. But the intelligence did not interest Janie much at first. That empires should battle for supremacy concerned her very little till she remembered Nosey's late calling.
"'E turns horf o' the main track t' other side the ram-paddick; through the Patagoniar; leaves hall gates hopen; fetches Nosey's place harter dark; houts file, an' hin with 'is mob, an' gives 'm a g-tful. Course, 'e clears befo' mo'nin'; an' through hour Sedan Paddick, an' back to Boottara that road. 'Ow do Hi know hall this? ses you?" "Ah!" said I wisely. "Well, I must be"
Now Nosey Browne and Jorrocks were old friends, and Nosey's affairs having gone crooked, why of course, like most men in a similar situation, he was all the better for it; and while his creditors were taking twopence-halfpenny in the pound, he was taking his diversion on his wife's property, which a sagacious old father-in-law had secured to the family in the event of such a contingency as a failure happening; so knowing Jorrock's propensity for sports, and being desirous of chatting over all his gallant doings with "The Surrey," shortly after the above-mentioned day he dispatched a "twopenny," offering him a day's shooting on his property in Surrey, adding, that he hoped he would dine with him after.
At the proper moment he carefully removed the white sheet, and the skeleton was exposed to view, with everything replaced in the position in which it had been found under the rocks in the Rises. Nosey's face grew livid as he eyed the evidence of his handiwork; Julia threw up both hands, and exclaimed: "Oh! there's poor Baldy that you murdered!"
It may have been that she was conscious of a certain amount of pride in Nosey's voluntary outlawry for her sake; and she was glad enough to have someone to sit with her on visiting days and tell her about the outside world she was never to see again.
He was seen by a man who knew him entering the Rises, and going away in the direction of Nosey's hut, and then for fifteen years he was a lost shepherd. In course of time it was ascertained that he had called at Nosey's hut on his way home. He had the lost sheep on his mind, and he could not resist the impulse to have another word or two with Nosey about them.
Baldy went over to Nosey's hut one evening when the blue smoke was curling over the chimney, and the long shadows of the Wombat Hills were creeping over the Stoney Rises. Julia was boiling the billy for tea, and her husband was chopping firewood outside. "Good evening, Julia," said Baldy; "fine evening." "Same to you, Baldy. Any news to-day?" asked Julia.
"Well," hiccuped old Tom, "so I will but speak plain English as I do." "That I'll be hanged if he does," said Tom to me. "In half an hour more I shall understand old Nosey's Latin just as well as his plain English, as he calls it."
Not for a moment did she realise the furrows that she was ploughing in Nosey's amiable soul. Other girls walked out on their Sundays. The possession of a young man even a fishmonger's errand-boy on twelve bob a week was a necessary adjunct to life itself.
He beckoned to his stepfather, who was rather deaf, to come and look at what he had found. The man came, took up the skull, and examined it. "I'll be bound this skull once belonged to Baldy," he said. "There is a hole here behind; and, yes, one jaw has been broken. That's Nosey's work for sure' I wonder where he is now."
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