The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

All doubt about what the newcomers were was solved before we reached the river; so we sat and watched the scene so venerable and ancient--the patriarchs moving into the desert, to find new pasture-ground.

First came the cattle lowing loudly, then horsemen, six or seven in number, and last, four drays came crawling up the pass.

Suddenly James dashed forward with a shout, and when I came up with him, wondering, I found myself shaking hands, talking and laughing, with Major Buckley and Tom Troubridge.

They told us all the news as we rode with them to the drays, where sat Mrs. Buckley,--a noble, happy matron, laughing at her son, as he toddled about busy gathering sticks for the fire. Beside her sat Mary, looking sad and worn, with her child on her lap, and poor old Miss Thornton, glancing uneasily round.

Mary sprang up, burst into hysterical weeping. I saw how his big heart yearned to comfort his old sweetheart in her distress, as he took the child of his rival to his bosom.

"Is nobody going to notice me or my boy, I wonder?" said Mrs. Buckley. "Come here immediately, Mr. Stockbridge, before we quarrel."

Soon we were all restored to our equanimity, and laying plans for future meetings.

Next morning, with many hearty farewells, and having promised to spend Christmastide with them, I turned my horse homewards, and went my solitary way. Jim was going on with them to see them settled.

IV.--Father and Son

There is a long period of dull prosperity coming to our friends. Go on two years. See Baroona, the Buckley's place, now. That hut where we spent the pleasant Christmas-day is degraded into the kitchen, for a new house is built--a long, low house, with deep, cool verandas all round, already festooned with passion flowers, and young grape-vines.

Mary and Miss Thornton had stayed with the Buckleys till good Cousin Tom had got a house ready for them--a charming house covered with creepers, and backed by huts, sheep-yards, and all the usual concomitants of a flourishing Australian sheep-station. This is Toonarbin, where Mary Hawker is living with her son Charles as happy and uninteresting an existence as ever fell to the lot of a handsome woman yet. The old dark days seem like a bad dream. She had heard of her husband's re-conviction and life sentence--finally death, and George Hawker is as one who has never lived.

So sixteen years rolled peacefully away, until Tom Troubridge returned from a journey up country with news of a great gang of bushrangers being "out." He had actually sat hob-nob with the captain in a public house, without knowing it. But his servant, William Lee, an ex-convict, knew him, and told them that the great Captain Tonan, with whose crimes the whole country was ringing, was George Hawker himself. Mary's terrible fear that father and son might meet made her ill and delirious for weeks; Tom and his trusty servant kept watch, then heard from a passing cattle-dealer that the gang had been "utterly obliterated" by Captain Desborough, the chief of police--but the captain had escaped.

Things went on quietly for two months, and no one thought about bushrangers--but Mary, at her watch up at the lonely forest station--till one morning Lee's body was found dead in his hut, with a pistol lying near with "G. Hawker" scratched upon it. A messenger was sent post haste to fetch Desborough and his troopers, who came, declared the country in a state of siege, and kept us all staying at Major Buckley's.

We were sitting merrily over our wine one day, when hasty steps came through the house. The bushrangers had attacked a station not far off, killed the owner, and were now riding towards Captain Brentford's, the major's nearest neighbour and old friend. Captain Desborough rose with deadly wrath in his face. The laughing Irishman was gone, and a stern, gloomy man stood in his place. But the villains had done their work of destruction before we reached Garoopm, and gone off to the mountains.

"We shall have them in the morning," said Desborough. "More particularly as they have in their drunken madness hampered themselves in the mountains."

We started before daybreak; each man of us armed with swords and pistols, and every man knew the use of his weapons well.

As we entered the mouth of the glen to which we were bound, one of the most beautiful gullies I have ever seen, I turned to the man beside me. Conceive my horror at finding it was Charles Hawker! I said fiercely, "Get back, Charles! Go home! You don't know what you're doing, lad."

He defied me. I was speaking to him again when there came a puff of smoke from the rocks overhead, and down I went, head over heels. A bullet grazed my thigh, and killed my horse; so that during the fight that followed, I was sitting on a rock very sick and very stupid.

"They've set a watch," said Captain Desborough. "They'll fight us now; they can't help it, thank God!"

Then, under the beetling crags, the bushrangers turned like hunted wolves, and stood at bay. Now the fight became general and confused. All about among the ferns and flowers men fought, and fired, and cursed. Shots were cracking on all sides, and two riderless horses were galloping about neighing.