le, and prosecuted trespassers and thieves; and, his luck
being wonderful, he soon added to the enormous fortune he had made in
mining, while Andrew Gordon died impoverished. When he died, old Bully
gave the management of the stations to his sons, and contented himself
with finding fault. But one dimly-remembered episode in his career was
talked of by the old hands around Kiley's Hotel, long after Grant had
become a wealthy man, and had gone for long trips to England.

Grant, in spite of the judgment and sagacity on which he prided himself,
had at various times in his career made mistakes--mistakes in station
management, mistakes about stock, mistakes about men, and last, but not
least, mistakes about women; and it was to one of these mistakes that
the gossips referred.

When he was a young man working as Mr. Gordon's manager, and living with
the horse-breaker and the ration-carrier on the out-station at Kuryong
(in those days a wild, half-civilised place), he had for neighbours Red
Mick's father and mother, the original Mr. and Mrs. Donohoe, and their
family. Their eldest daughter, Peggy--"Carrotty Peg," her relations
called her--was at that time a fine, strapping, bush girl, and the
only unmarried white woman anywhere near the station. She was as
fair-complexioned as Red Mick himself, with a magnificent head of red
hair, and the bust and limbs of a young Amazon.

This young woman, as she grew up, attracted the attention of Billy
the Bully, and they used to meet a good deal out in the bush. On such
occasions, he would possibly be occupied in the inspiriting task of
dragging a dead sheep after his horse, to make a trail to lead the wild
dogs up to some poisoned meat; while the lady, clad in light and airy
garments, with a huge white sunbonnet for head-gear, would be riding
straddle-legged in search of strayed cows. When Grant left the station,
and went away to make his fortune in mining, it was, perhaps, just a
coincidence that this magnificent young creature grew tired of the old
place and "cleared out," too. She certainly went away and disappeared so
utterly that even her own people did not know what had become of her;
to the younger generation her very existence was only a vague tradition.
But it was whispered here and muttered there among the Doyles and the
Donohoes and their friends and relations, that old Billy the Bully, on
one of his visits to the interior, had been married to this undesirable
lady by a duly a