much had been along it for many
a year. It takes a good while to wear out a track in a dry country.

The gully widened out bit by bit, till at last we came to a little
round green flat, right under the rock walls which rose up a couple of
thousand feet above it on two sides. On the flat was an old hut--very
old it seemed to be, but not in bad trim for all that. The roof was of
shingles, split, thick, and wedge shaped; the walls of heavy ironbark
slabs, and there was a stone chimney.

Outside had been a garden; a few rose trees were standing yet, ragged
and stunted. The wallabies had trimmed them pretty well, but we knew
what they were. Been a corn-patch too--the marks where it had been hoed
up were there, same as they used to do in old times when there were more
hoes than ploughs and more convicts than horses and working bullocks in
the country.

'Well, this is a rum start,' says Jim, as we sat down on a log outside
that looked as if it had been used for a seat before. 'Who the deuce
ever built this gunyah and lived in it by himself for years and years?
You can see it was no two or three months' time he done here. There's
the spring coming out of the rock he dipped his water from. The track's
reg'lar worn smooth over the stones leading to it. There was a fence
round this garden, some of the rails lying there rotten enough, but it
takes time for sound hard wood to rot. He'd a stool and table too, not
bad ones either, this Robinson Crusoe cove. No end of manavilins either.
I wonder whether he come here before them first--Government men--chaps
we heard of. Likely he did and died here too. He might have chummed in
with them, of course, or he might not. Perhaps Starlight knows something
about him, or Warrigal. We'll ask them.'

We fossicked about for a while to see if the man who lived so long by
himself in this lonely place had left anything behind him to help us
make out what sort he was. We didn't find much. There was writing on
the walls here and there, and things cut on the fireplace posts. Jim
couldn't make head or tail of them, nor me either.

'The old cove may have left something worth having behind him,' he said,
after staring at the cold hearth ever so long. 'Men like him often leave
gold pieces and jewels and things behind them, locked up in brass-bound
boxes; leastways the story-books say so. I've half a mind to root up the
old hearthstone; it's a thundering heavy one, ain't it? I wonder how he
got it here