Then Jimmy started to peg out the 'possum skins, while Jack went to look for a missing pony. Mary was left to milk all the cows, and feed the calves and pigs.
Shortly after dinner one of the children ran to the door, and cried:
"Why, mother -- here's three mounted troopers comin' up the gully!"
"Oh, my God!" cried the mother, sinking back in her chair and trembling like a leaf. The children ran and hid in the scrub.
Mary stood up, terribly calm, and waited. The eldest trooper dismounted, came to the door, glanced suspiciously at the remains of the meal, and abruptly asked the dreaded question:
"Mrs. Wylie, where's your husband?"
She dropped the tea-cup, from which she had pretended to be drinking unconcernedly.
"What? Why, what do you want my husband for?" she asked in pitiful desperation. SHE looked like the guilty party.
"Oh, you know well enough," he sneered impatiently.
Mary rose and faced him. "How dare you talk to my mother like that?" she cried. "If my poor brother Tom was only here -- you -- you coward!"
The youngest trooper whispered something to his senior, and then, stung by a sharp retort, said:
"Well, you needn't be a pig."
His two companions passed through into the spare skillion, where they found some beef in a cask, and more already salted down under a bag on the end of a bench; then they went out at the back and had a look at the cow-yard. The younger trooper lingered behind.
"I'll try and get them up the gully on some excuse," he whispered to Mary.
"You plant the hide before we come back."
"It's too late. Look there!" She pointed through the doorway.
The other two were at the logs where the fire had been; the burning hide had stuck to the logs in places like glue.
"Wylie's a fool," remarked the old trooper.
III.
Jack disappeared shortly after his father's arrest on a charge of horse and cattle-stealing, and Tom, the prodigal, turned up unexpectedly.
He was different from his father and eldest brother.
He had an open good-humoured face, and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety.
He had two natures -- one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal.
A taint of madness ran in the family -- came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one or two -- in Mary, perhaps.
"Cheer up, old woman!" cried Tom, patting his mother on the back.
"We'll be happy yet. I've been wild and foolish, I know, and gave you some awful trouble, but that's all done with.
I mean to keep steady, and by-and-bye we'll go away to Sydney or Queensland.
Give us a smile, mother."
He got some "grubbing" to do, and for six months kept the family in provisions. Then a change came over him. He became moody and sullen -- even brutal. He would sit for hours and grin to himself without any apparent cause; then he would stay away from home for days together.
"Tom's going wrong again," wailed Mrs. Wylie. "He'll get into trouble again, I know he will. We are disgraced enough already, God knows."
"You've done your best, mother," said Mary, "and can do no more.
People will pity us; after all, the thing itself is not so bad as the everlasting dread of it. This will be a lesson for father -- he wanted one -- and maybe he'll be a better man."
(She knew better than that.) "YOU did your best, mother."
"Ah, Mary! you don't know what I've gone through these thirty years in the bush with your father. I've had to go down on my knees and beg people not to prosecute him -- and the same with your brother Tom; and this is the end of it."
"Better to have let them go, mother; you should have left father when you found out what sort of a man he was; it would have been better for all."
"It was my duty to stick by him, child; he was my husband.
Your father was always a bad man, Mary -- a bad man; I found it out too late.
I could not tell you a quarter of what I have suffered with him. . . .
I was proud, Mary; I wanted my children to be better than others. . . .
It's my fault; it's a judgment. . . . I wanted to make my children better than others. . . . I was so proud, Mary."
Mary had a sweetheart, a drover, who was supposed to be in Queensland.
He had promised to marry her, and take her and her mother away when he returned; at least, she had promised to marry him on that condition.
He had now been absent on his latest trip for nearly six months, and there was no news from him. She got a copy of a country paper to look for the "stock passings"; but a startling headline caught her eye:
IMPUDENT ATTEMPT AT ROBBERY UNDER ARMS.
----
"A drover known to the police as Frederick Dunn, alias Drew, was arrested last week at ----"
