You'll
have to be quiet and obey orders now--that is if a few more years'
life's any good to you.'

The brandy and water fetched him to pretty well, but after that he began
to talk, and we couldn't stop him. Towards night he got worse and worse
and his head got hotter, and he kept on with all kinds of nonsense,
screeching out that he was going to be hung and they were waiting to
take him away, but if he could get the old mare he'd be all right;
besides a lot of mixed-up things about cattle and horses that we didn't
know the right of.

Starlight said he was delirious, and that if he hadn't some one to nurse
him he'd die as sure as fate. We couldn't be always staying with him,
and didn't understand what was to be done much. We didn't like to let
him lie there and die, so at long last we made up our minds to see if we
could get Aileen over to nurse him for a few weeks.

Well, we scribbled a bit of a letter and sent Warrigal off with it.
Wasn't it dangerous for him? Not a bit of it. He could go anywhere all
over the whole country, and no trooper of them all could manage to put
the bracelets on him. The way he'd work it would be to leave his horse
a good way the other side of George Storefield's, and to make up as a
regular blackfellow. He could do that first-rate, and talk their lingo,
too, just like one of themselves. Gin or blackfellow, it was all
the same to Warrigal. He could make himself as black as soot, and
go barefooted with a blanket or a 'possum rug round him and beg for
siccapence, and nobody'd ever bowl him out. He took us in once at the
diggings; Jim chucked him a shilling, and told him to go away and not
come bothering near us.

So away Warrigal went, and we knew he'd get through somehow. He was one
of those chaps that always does what they're told, and never comes back
and says they can't do it, or they've lost their horse, or can't find
the way, or they'd changed their mind, or something.

No; once he'd started there was no fear of him not scoring somehow or
other. Whatever Starlight told him to do, day or night, foul weather or
fair, afoot or on horseback, that thing was done if Warrigal was alive
to do it.

What we'd written to Aileen was telling her that father was that bad
we hardly thought he'd pull through, and that if she wanted to save his
life she must come to the Hollow and nurse him.

How to get her over was not the easiest thing in the world, but she
could ride away on her old pony witho