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They had been making a picnic with Lady Latimer and her party that day, and were just returning when the young Musgraves appeared. The dinner was served in a room looking upon the garden, and afterward the company walked out upon the terraces, fell into groups and exchanged news. My lady had already enjoyed long conversations with Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Sir Edward Lucas, and she now took Mr.
Yarloo saw their glance, and repeated, in a hopeless voice: "Me think they walk longa Musgraves." "What time they go?" asked Mick, thinking that Yarloo must have made a mistake. "What time they start walk?" The boy pointed to the western horizon and then shut his eyes, meaning that the others had started out directly it was dark after sunset last night.
He began to talk of white men: of the way in which they had invaded the country and driven the natives back and back till now a mere handful of them survived in such places as the Musgrave Ranges. But the hated white men were never satisfied. They wanted the Musgraves too. They wanted the gold which was there.
It was a brilliantly clear day, and when the sun rose the range of mountains ahead of them seemed to be only a day's ride away. But at the end of the second day, when the packs were pulled off near a water-hole, the Musgraves did not look to be any nearer.
The white man stood up. He had no tools with which to work at the boulders for specimens to take away with him when he escaped. But here was gold, some of which could easily be hidden on his person to prove, to anybody who might doubt his story, that he alone of all men had solved the mystery of the Musgraves and had returned again to the haunts of men of his own colour.
Chaps used to go there after gold, but so few of them came back that they chucked it and left the place alone. The Musgraves have got a bad name." Mick Darby did not know that everything he said had a very personal application to one at least of his companions. The words of his father's note kept ringing in Sax's ears: "In difficulties. Musgrave Ranges. In difficulties.
Colonel Musgrave since the remainder of his house-party had already breakfasted raised his fine eyes toward the chandelier, and sighed, as Pilkins demurely closed the dining-room door. Leander Pilkins butler for a long while now to the Musgraves of Matocton would here, if space permitted, be the subject of an encomium.
He was thinking of the six miles yet before him, and as home grew nearer his spirits sank. Dimly he remembered the sad things that waited his homecoming. Wat made him a parting speech. "Gude e'en to ye, Cousin Sim. Ye've been a kind man to me the day. May I do as weel by you if ever the fray gangs by the Cleuch. I had a coo o' yours in pledge, and it was ane o the beasts the Musgraves speared.
"If it isn't a rude question, what are you doing here?" Noel's eyes laughed across at him gaily through the blue spectacles. "I should have thought you might have guessed that I'm spending a night or two with the Musgraves, but I am under a solemn oath to return to Max by noon on Friday in order to have another dose of some infernal stuff with which he is peppering my eyes.
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