"Then there was young Joe Swallow. He was found dead under a burned-down tree in Dead Man's Gully--'dead past all recognition,' they said--and he was buried there, and by and by his ghost began to haunt the gully: at least, all the schoolkids seen it, and there was scarcely a grown-up person who didn't know another person who'd seen the ghost--and the other person was always a sober chap that wouldn't bother about telling a lie. But just as the ghost was beginning to settle down to work in the gully, Joe himself turned up, and then the folks began to reckon that it was another man was killed there, and that the ghost belonged to the other man; and some of them began to recollect that they'd thought all along that the ghost wasn't Joe's ghost--even when they thought that it was really Joe that was killed there.

"Then, again, there was the case of Brummy Usen--Hughison I think they spelled it--the bushranger; he was shot by old Mr S---, of E---, while trying to stick the old gentleman up. There's something about it in a book called 'Robbery Under Arms', though the names is all altered--and some other time I'll tell you all about the digging of the body up for the inquest and burying it again. This Brummy used to work for a publican in a sawmill that the publican had; and this publican and his daughter identified the body by a woman holding up a branch tattooed on the right arm. I'll tell you all about that another time. This girl remembered how she used to watch this tattooed woman going up and down on Brummy's arm when he was working in the saw-pit--going up and down and up and down, like this, while Brummy was working his end of the saw. So the bushranger was inquested and justifiable-homicided as Brummy Usen, and buried again in his dust and blood stains and monkey-jacket.

"All the same it wasn't him; for the real Brummy turned up later on; but he couldn't make the people believe he wasn't dead. They was mostly English country people from Kent and Yorkshire and those places; and the most self-opinionated and obstinate people that ever lived when they got a thing into their heads; and they got it into their heads that Brummy Usen was shot while trying to bail up old Mr S---- and was dead and buried.

"But the wife of the publican that had the saw-pit knew him; he went to her, and she recognized him at once; she'd got it into her head from the first that it wasn't Brummy that was shot, and she stuck to it--she was just as self-opinionated as the neighbours, and many a barney she had with them about it. She would argue about it till the day she died, and then she said with her dying breath: 'It wasn't Brummy Usen.' No more it was--he was a different kind of man; he hadn't s.p.u.n.k enough to be a bushranger, and it was a better man that was buried for him; it was a different kind of woman, holding up a different kind of branch, that was tattooed on Brummy's arm. But, you see, Brummy'd always kept himself pretty much to himself, and no one knew him very well; and, besides, most of them were pretty drunk at the inquest--except the girl, and she was too scared to know what she was saying--they had to be so because the corpse was in such a bad state.

"Well, Brummy hung around for a time, and tried to prove that he wasn't an impostor, but no one wouldn't believe him. He wanted to get some wages that was owing to him.

"He tried the police, but they were just as obstinate as the rest; and, beside, they had their dignity to hold up. 'If I ain't Brummy,' he'd say, 'who are I?' But they answered that he knew best. So he did.

"At last he said that it didn't matter much, any road; and so he went away--Lord knows where--to begin life again, I s'pose."

The traveller smoked awhile reflectively; then he quietly rolled up his right sleeve and scratched his arm.

And on that arm we saw the tattooed figure of a woman, holding up a branch.

We tramped on by his side again towards the station-thinking very hard and not feeling very comfortable.

He must have been an awful old liar, now we come to think of it.

SECOND SERIES

THE DROVER'S WIFE

The two-roomed house is built of round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with split slabs. A big bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the house itself, veranda included.

Bush all round--bush with no horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance. The bush consists of stunted, rotten native apple-trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye save the darker green of a few she-oaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilization--a shanty on the main road.

The drover, an ex-squatter, is away with sheep. His wife and children are left here alone.

Four ragged, dried-up-looking children are playing about the house.

Suddenly one of them yells: "Snake! Mother, here's a snake!"

The gaunt, sun-browned bushwoman dashes from the kitchen, s.n.a.t.c.hes her baby from the ground, holds it on her left hip, and reaches for a stick.

"Where is it?"

"Here! gone into the wood-heap!" yells the eldest boy--a sharp-faced urchin of eleven. "Stop there, mother! I'll have him. Stand back! I'll have the beggar!"

"Tommy, come here, or you'll be bit. Come here at once when I tell you, you little wretch!"

The youngster comes reluctantly, carrying a stick bigger than himself.

Then he yells, triumphantly:

"There it goes--under the house!" and darts away with club uplifted.

At the same time the big, black, yellow-eyed dog-of-all-breeds, who has shown the wildest interest in the proceedings, breaks his chain and rushes after that snake. He is a moment late, however, and his nose reaches the crack in the slabs just as the end of its tail disappears.

Almost at the same moment the boy's club comes down and skins the aforesaid nose. Alligator takes small notice of this, and proceeds to undermine the building; but he is subdued after a struggle and chained up. They cannot afford to lose him.

The drover's wife makes the children stand together near the dog-house while she watches for the snake. She gets two small dishes of milk and sets them down near the wall to tempt it to come out; but an hour goes by and it does not show itself.

It is near sunset, and a thunderstorm is coming. The children must be brought inside. She will not take them into the house, for she knows the snake is there, and may at any moment come up through a crack in the rough slab floor; so she carries several armfuls of firewood into the kitchen, and then takes the children there. The kitchen has no floor--or, rather, an earthen one--called a "ground floor" in this part of the bush. There is a large, roughly-made table in the centre of the place. She brings the children in, and makes them get on this table.

They are two boys and two girls--mere babies. She gives them some supper, and then, before it gets dark, she goes into the house, and s.n.a.t.c.hes up some pillows and bedclothes--expecting to see or lay her hand on the snake any minute. She makes a bed on the kitchen table for the children, and sits down beside it to watch all night.

She has an eye on the corner, and a green sapling club laid in readiness on the dresser by her side; also her sewing basket and a copy of the _Young Ladies' Journal_. She has brought the dog into the room.

Tommy turns in, under protest, but says he'll lie awake all night and smash that blinded snake.

His mother asks him how many times she has told him not to swear.

He has his club with him under the bedclothes, and Jacky protests:

"Mummy! Tommy's skinnin' me alive wif his club. Make him take it out."

Tommy: "Shet up, you little---! D'yer want to be bit with the snake?"

Jacky shuts up.

"If yer bit," says Tommy, after a pause, "you'll swell up, an' smell, an' turn red an' green an' blue all over till yer bust. Won't he, mother?"

"Now then, don't frighten the child. Go to sleep," she says.

The two younger children go to sleep, and now and then Jacky complains of being "skeezed." More room is made for him. Presently Tommy says: "Mother! listen to them (adjective) little possums. I'd like to screw their blanky necks."

And Jacky protests drowsily.

"But they don't hurt us, the little blanks!".

Mother: "There, I told you you'd teach Jacky to swear." But the remark makes her smile. Jacky goes to sleep. Presently Tommy asks:

"Mother! Do you think they'll ever extricate the (adjective) kangaroo?"

"Lord! How am I to know, child? Go to sleep."

"Will you wake me if the snake comes out?"

"Yes. Go to sleep."

Near midnight. The children are all asleep and she sits there still, sewing and reading by turns. From time to time she glances round the floor and wall-plate, and, whenever she hears a noise, she reaches for the stick. The thunderstorm comes on, and the wind, rushing through the cracks in the slab wall, threatens to blow out her candle. She places it on a sheltered part of the dresser and fixes up a newspaper to protect it. At every flash of lightning, the cracks between the slabs gleam like polished silver. The thunder rolls, and the rain comes down in torrents.

Alligator lies at full length on the floor, with his eyes turned towards the part.i.tion. She knows by this that the snake is there. There are large cracks in that wall opening under the floor of the dwelling-house.