"Well, say on; but you needn"t dismount."
"Yes, I"ll speak better down here."
Findlayson sat up on top of the fence, and at once opened fire by telling Archie he had fallen in love with Elsie, and had determined to make her his wife. Archie certainly was taken aback.
"Why, Findlayson," he said, "you"re old enough to be her father."
"A" the better, man. And look here, I"ve been squatting for fifteen years, ever since there was a sheep in the plains almost. I have a nice little nest egg at the bank, and if your sister doesna care to live in the Bush we"ll tak" a hoose in Sydney. For, O man, man, Elsie is the bonniest la.s.sie the world e"er saw. She beats the gowan [mountain daisy]."
Archie laughed.
"I must refer you to the lady herself," he said.
"Of course, man, of course--
""He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the test To win or lose it all.""
So away went Findlayson to put his fate to the test.
What _he_ said or what _she_ said does not really concern us; but five minutes after his interview Archie met the honest Scot, and wondrously crestfallen he looked.
"She winna hae me," he cried, "but _nil desperandum_, that"ll be my motto till the happy day."
The next fortnight was in a great measure given up to pleasure and sport. Both Branson and Bounder received their baptism of fire, though the great Newfoundland was wondrously exercised in his mind as to what a kangaroo was, and what it was not. As to the dingoes, he arrived at a conclusion very speedily. They could beat him at a race, however; but when Bounder one time got two of them together, he proved to everybody"s satisfaction that there was life in the old dog yet.
Gentleman Craig never appeared to such excellent advantage anywhere as in ladies" society. He really led the conversation at the dinner-table, though not appearing to do so, but rather the reverse, while in the drawing-room he was the moving spirit.
He also managed to make Findlayson happy after a way. The Scotchman had told Craig all his troubles, but Craig brought him his fiddle, on which he was a really excellent performer.
"Rouse out, Mr Findlayson, and join the ladies at the piano."
"But, man," the squatter replied, "my heart"s no in it; my heart is broken. I can play slow music, but when it comes to quick, it goes hard against the grain."
Nevertheless, Findlayson took his stand beside the piano, and the ice thus being broken, he played every night, though it must be confessed, for truth"s sake, he never refused a "cogie" when the bottle came round his way. Towards ten o"clock Findlayson used, therefore, to become somewhat sentimental. The gentleman sat up for a wee half hour after the ladies retired, and sometimes Findlayson would seize his fiddle.
"Gentlemen," he would say, "here is how I feel."
Then he would play a lament or a wail with such feeling that even his listeners would be affected, while sometimes the tears would be quivering on the performer"s eyelashes.
At the end of the fortnight Findlayson went to Brisbane. He had some mysterious business to transact, the nature of which he refused to tell even Archie. But it was rumoured that a week or two later on, drays laden with furniture were seen to pa.s.s along the tracks on their way to Findlayson"s farm.
Poor fellow, he was evidently badly hit. He was very much in love indeed, and, like a drowning man, he clutched at straws.
The refurnishing of his house was one of these straws. Findlayson was going to give "a week"s fun," as he phrased it. He was determined, after having seen Archie"s new house, that his own should rival and even outshine it in splendour. And he really was insane enough to believe that if Elsie only once saw the charming house he owned, with the wild and beautiful scenery all around it, she would alter her mind, and look more favourably on his suit.
In giving way to vain imaginings of this kind, Findlayson was really ignoring, or forgetting at all events, the sentiments of his own favourite poet, Burns, as impressed in the following touching lines:
"It ne"er was wealth, it ne"er was wealth, That bought contentment, peace, or pleasure; The bands and bliss o" mutual love, O that"s the chiefest warld"s treasure!"
His sister was very straightforward, and at once put her brother down as a wee bit daft. Perhaps he really was; only the old saying is a true one: "Those that are in love are like no one else."
It was the last month of winter, when early one morning a gay party from Burley New Farm set out to visit Findlayson, and spend a week or two in order to ""liven him up," as Harry expressed it.
Bob was not particularly fond of going much from home--besides, Winslow and he were planning some extensions--so he stopped on the Station. But Harry went, and, as before, when going to the kangaroo hunt, Gentleman Craig was in the cavalcade, and of course Rupert and Elsie.
It would have been no very difficult matter to have done the journey in a single day, only Archie was desirous of letting his brother and sister have a taste of camping out in the Bush.
They chose the same route as before, and encamped at night in the self-same place.
The evening too was spent in much the same way, even to singing and story-telling, and Craig"s lullaby to Baby, when she and Elsie had gone to their tent.
Morning dawned at last on forest and plain, and both Harry and the brothers were early astir. It would have been impossible to remain asleep much after daybreak, owing to the noise of the birds, including the occasional ear-splitting clatter of the laughing jacka.s.ses.
Besides, towards morning it had been exceedingly cold. The first thing that greeted their eyes was a thorough old-fashioned h.o.a.r frost, the like of which Archie had not seen for many a year. Everything gleamed, white almost as coral. The gra.s.s itself was a sight to see, and the leaves on the trees were edged with lace. But up mounted the sun, and all was speedily changed. Leaves grew brightly green again, and the h.o.a.r frost was turned into glancing, gleaming, rainbow-coloured drops of dew.
The young men ran merrily away to the pool in the creek, and most effectually scared the ducks.
The breakfast to-day was a different sort of a meal to the morsel of stiff damper and corned junk that had been partaken of at last bivouac.
Elsie made the tea, and Etheldene and she presided. The meat pies and patties were excellent, and everyone was in the highest possible spirits, and joyously merry.
Alas! and alas! this was a breakfast no one who sat down to, and who lives, is ever likely to forget.
Have you ever, reader, been startled on a bright sunshiny summer"s day by a thunder peal? And have you seen the clouds rapidly bank up after this and obscure the sky, darkness brooding over the windless landscape, lighted up every moment by the blinding lightning"s flash, and gloom and danger brooding all round, where but a short half hour ago the birds carolled in sunlight? Then will you be able, in some measure, to understand the terribleness of the situation in which an hour or two after breakfast the party found themselves, and the awful suddenness of the shock that for a time quite paralysed every member of it.
They had left the dismal depths of the forest, and were out on the open pasture land, and nearing Findlayson"s house, when Craig and Archie, riding on in front, came upon the well-known bobtailed collie, who was the almost constant companion of the squatter. The dog was alive, but dying. There was a terrible spear-gash in his neck. Craig dismounted and knelt beside him. The poor brute knew him, wagged his inch-long tail, licked the hand that caressed him, and almost immediately expired.
Craig immediately rode back to the others.
"Do not be alarmed, ladies," he said. "But I fear the worst. There is no smoke in Findlayson"s chimney. The black fellows have killed his dog."
Though both girls grew pale, there were no other signs of fear manifested by them. If Young Australia could be brave, so could Old England.
The men consulted hurriedly, and it was agreed that while Branson and Harry waited with the ladies, Archie and Craig should ride on towards the house.
Not a sign of life; no, not one. Signs enough of death though, signs enough of an awful struggle. It was all very plain and simple, though all very, very sad and dreadful.
Here in the courtyard lay several dead natives, festering and sweltering in the noonday sun. Here were the boomerangs and spears that had fallen from their hands as they dropped never to rise again. Here was the door battered and splintered and beaten in with tomahawks, and just inside, in the pa.s.sage, lay the bodies of Hurricane Bill and poor Findlayson, hacked about almost beyond recognition.
In the rooms all was confusion, every place had been ransacked. The furniture, all new and elegant, smashed and riven; the very piano that the honest Scot had bought for sake of Elsie had been dissected, and its keys carried away for ornaments. In an inner room, half-dressed, were Findlayson"s sister and her little Scotch maid, their arms broken, as if they had held them up to beseech for mercy from the monsters who had attacked them. Their arms were broken, and their skulls beaten in, their white night-dresses drenched in blood. There was blood, blood everywhere--in curdled streams, in great liver-like gouts, and in dark pools on the floor. In the kitchen were many more bodies of white men (the shepherds), and of the fiends in human form with whom they had struggled for their lives.
It was an awful and sickening sight.
No need for Craig or Archie to tell the news when they returned to the others. Their very silence and sadness told the terrible tale.
Nothing could be done at present, however, in the way of punishing the murderers, who by this time must be far away in their mountain fastnesses.
They must ride back, and at once too, in order to warn the people at Burley and round about of their great danger.