ireplace, all burn
to pieces. No come home last night. I b'lieve shot 'em old man longa
gully.'

'Come along, boys,' says Starlight, jumping into his saddle. 'The old
man might have been hit. We must run the tracks and see what's come of
the governor. Four to one's big odds.'

We skirted the hut and kept out wide till Warrigal cut the tracks, which
he did easy enough. We couldn't see a blessed thing. Warrigal rode along
with his head down, reading every tuft of grass, every little stone
turned up, every foot of sand, like a book.

'Your old fader run likit Black Gully. Two fellow track here--bullet
longa this one tree.' Here he pointed to a scratch on the side of a box
tree, in which the rough bark had been shivered. 'Bimeby two fellow more
come; 'nother one bullet; 'nother one here, too. This one blood drop
longa white leaf.'

Here he picked up a dried gum leaf, which had on the upper side a dark
red spot, slightly irregular.

We had it all now. We came to a place where two horses had been tied to
a tree. They had been stamping and pawing, as if they had been there a
goodish while and had time to get pretty sick of it.

'That near side one Moran's horse, pigeon-toes; me know 'em,' says
Warrigal. 'Off side one Daly's roan horse, new shoes on. You see 'um
hair, rub himself longa tree.'

'What the blazes were they doing hereabouts?' says Starlight. 'This
begins to look complicated. Whatever the row was, Daly and he were in
it. There's no one rich enough to rob hereabouts, is there? I don't like
the look of it. Ride on, boys.'

We said nothing to each other, but rode along as fast as Warrigal could
follow the line. The sky, which was bright enough when we started,
clouded over, and in less than ten minutes the wind rose and rain began
to pour down in buckets, with no end of thunder and lightning. Then it
got that cold we could hardly sit on our horses for trembling. The sky
grew blacker and blacker. The wind began to whistle and cry till I could
almost swear I heard some one singing out for help. Nulla Mountain was
as black as your hat, and a kind of curious feeling crept over me, I
hardly knew why, as if something was going to happen, I didn't know
what.

I fully expected to find father dead; and, though he wasn't altogether
a good father to us, we both felt bad at the notion of his lyin' there
cold and stiff. I began to think of him as he used to be when we were
boys, and when he wasn't so out and out hard--a