sun was pretty high when I woke. When
I looked out there was the old man sitting on the log by the fire,
smoking. What was a deal more curious, I saw the half-caste, Warrigal,
coming up from the flat, leading a horse and carrying a pair of hobbles.
Something made me look over to a particular corner where Starlight
always slept when he was at the Hollow. Sure enough there was the figure
of a man rolled up in a cloak. I knew by the way his boots and things
were thrown about that it could be no other than Starlight.

Chapter 32

I'd settled in my mind that it couldn't be any one else, when he sat up,
yawned, and looked round as if he had not been away from the old place a
week.

'Ha! Richard, here we are again! "Feeds the boar in the old frank?" The
governor told me you and Jim had made back. Dreadful bore, isn't it?
Just when we'd all rubbed off the rust of our bush life and were getting
civilised. I feel very seriously ill-treated, I assure you. I have a
great mind to apply to the Government for compensation. That's the worst
of these new inspectors, they are so infernally zealous.'

'You were too many for them, it seems. I half thought you might have
been nailed. How the deuce did you get the office in time?'

'The faithful Warrigal, as usual, gave me timely warning, and brought a
horse, of course. He will appear on the Judgment Day leading Rainbow,
I firmly believe. Why he should be so confoundedly anxious about my
welfare I can't make out--I can't, really. It's his peculiar form of
mania, I suppose. We all suffer from some madness or other.'

'How the blazes did he know the police were laid on to the lot of us?' I
said.

'I didn't know myself that your Kate had come the double on you. I might
have known she would, though. Well, it seems Warrigal took it into his
semi-barbaric head to ride into Turon and loaf about, partly to see me,
and partly about another matter that your father laid him on about. He
was standing about near the Prospectors' Arms, late on Friday night,
doing nothing and seeing everything, as usual, when he noticed Mrs.
Mullockson run out of the house like a Bedlamite. "My word, that missis
big one coolah!" was his expression, and made straight for the camp. Now
Warrigal had seen you come out just before. He doesn't like you and Jim
over much--bad taste, I tell him, on his part--but I suppose he looks
upon you as belonging to the family. So he stalked the fair and furious
Kate.'

'