to
gaffin' and flash talk; and money must be got to sport and pay up if
they lose; and the stock all ramblin' about and mixed up, and there's a
temptation to collar somebody's calves or foals, like we did that first
red heifer. I shall remember her to my dying day. It seems as if I had
put that brand on my own heart when I jammed it down on her soft skin.
Anyhow, I never forgot it, and there's many another like me, I'll be
bound.

The next morning Jim and I started off home. Father said he should stay
in the Hollow till Starlight got round a bit. He told us not to tell
mother or Ailie a word about where we'd been. Of course they couldn't
be off knowin' that we'd been with him; but we were to stall them off
by saying we'd been helping him with a bit of bush-work or anything we
could think off. 'It'll do no good, and your mother's quite miserable
enough as it is, boys,' he said. 'She'll know time enough, and maybe
break her heart over it, too. Poor Norah!'

Dashed if I ever heard father say a soft thing before. I couldn't 'a
believed it. I always thought he was ironbark outside and in. But he
seemed real sorry for once. And I was near sayin', 'Why don't ye cut the
whole blessed lot, then, and come home and work steady and make us all
comfortable and happy?' But when I looked again his face was all changed
and hard-like. 'Off you go,' he says, with his old voice. 'Next time I
want either of you I'll send Warrigal for you.'

And with that he walked off from the yard where we had been catching our
horses, and never looked nigh us again.

We rode away to the low end of the gully, and then we led the horses
up, foot by foot, and hard work it was--like climbing up the roof of a
house. We were almost done when we got to the tableland at the top.

We made our way to the yard, where there were the tracks of the cows
all round about it, but nothing but the wild horses had ever been there
since.

'What a scrubby hole it is!' said Jim; 'I wonder how in the world they
ever found out the way to the Hollow?'

'Some runaway Government men, I believe, so that half-caste chap told
me, and a gin [*] showed 'em the track down, and where to get water and
everything. They lived on kangaroos at first. Then, by degrees, they
used to crawl out by moonlight and collar a horse or two or a few
cattle. They managed to live there years and years; one died, one was
killed by the blacks; the last man showed it to the chaps that passed
it on to