attacked by persons concealed in the thick
timber near Wild Horse Creek, at the edge of Bargo Brush. In the
confusion that ensued the prisoner escaped. It was at first thought that
Walsh was fatally injured, but our latest report gives good hope of his
recovery.

'We shall be agreeably surprised if this be the end and not the
commencement of a series of darker tragedies.'

Chapter 33

A month's loafing in the Hollow. Nothing doing and nothing to think of
except what was miserable enough, God knows. Then things began to shape
themselves, in a manner of speaking. We didn't talk much together; but
each man could see plain enough what the others was thinking of. Dad
growled out a word now and then, and Warrigal would look at us from time
to time with a flash in his hawk's eyes that we'd seen once or twice
before and knew the meaning of. As for Jim, we were bound to do
something or other, if it was only to keep him from going melancholy
mad. I never seen any man changed more from what he used to be than
Jim did. He that was the most careless, happy-go-lucky chap that ever
stepped, always in a good temper and full of his larks. At the end of
the hottest day in summer on the plains, with no water handy, or the
middle of the coldest winter night in an ironbark forest, and we sitting
on our horses waiting for daylight, with the rain pouring down our
backs, not game to light a fire, and our hands that cold we could hardly
hold the reins, it was all one to Jim. Always jolly, always ready to
make little of it all. Always ready to laugh or chaff or go on with
monkey tricks like a boy. Now it was all the other way with him. He'd
sit grizzling and smoking by himself all day long. No getting a word out
of him. The only time he seemed to brighten up was once when he got a
letter from Jeanie. He took it away into the bush and stayed hours and
hours.

From never thinking about anything or caring what came uppermost, he
seemed to have changed all on the other tack and do nothing but think.
I'd seen a chap in Berrima something like him for a month or two; one
day he manned the barber's razor and cut his throat. I began to be
afraid Jim would go off his head and blow his brains out with his own
revolver. Starlight himself got to be cranky and restless-like too. One
night he broke out as we were standing smoking under a tree, a mile or
so from the cave--

'By all the devils, Dick, I can't stand this sort of thing much longer.