a while; and he
shut up too all the time.'

'D'ye want to have us all took the same as last time?' growls father.
'Women's never contented as I can see. For two pins I wouldn't have
brought them this way at all. I don't want to be making roads from this
old crib to the Hollow, only I thought you'd like one look at Dick.'

'We must do what's best, of course,' said poor Aileen; 'but it's
hard--very hard on us. It's mother I'm thinking of, you know. If you
knew how she always wakes up in the night, and calls for Dick, and cries
when she wakes up, you'd try to comfort her a bit more, father.'

'Comfort her!' says dad; 'why, what can I do? Don't I tell you if we
stay about here we're shopped as safe as anything ever was? Will that
comfort her, or you either? We're safe today because I've got telegraphs
on the outside that the police can't pass without ringing the bell--in
a way of speaking. But you see to-morrow there'll be more than one lot
here, and I want to be clean away before they come.'

'You know best,' says Aileen; 'but suppose they come here to-morrow
morning at daylight, as they did last time, and bring a black tracker
with them, won't he be able to follow up your track when you go away
to-night?'

'No, he won't; for this reason, we shall all ride different ways as soon
as we leave here. A good while before we get near the place where we all
meet we shall find Warrigal on the look-out. He can take the Captain in
by another track, and there'll be only Jim and I and the old dog, the
only three persons that'll go in the near way.'

'And when shall we see--see--any of you again?'

'Somewheres about a month, I suppose, if we've luck. There's a deal
belongs to that. You'd better go and see what there is for us to eat.
We've a long way and a rough way to go before we get to the Hollow.'

Aileen was off at this, and then she set to work and laid a clean
tablecloth in the sitting-room and set us down our meal--breakfast, or
whatever it was. It wasn't so bad--corned beef, first-rate potatoes,
fresh damper, milk, butter, eggs. Tea, of course, it's the great drink
in the bush; and although some doctors say it's no good, what would
bushmen do without it?

We had no intention of stopping the whole night, though we were tempted
to do so--to have one night's rest in the old place where we used to
sleep so sound before. It was no good thinking of anything of that kind,
anyhow, for a good while to come. What we'd got to