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KHOURABENE AN OUTLAW.
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were never contented unless he was escorting them hither and thither to this or that "corobbery." The last sight I had of him he was sitting on the ground, twisting scarlet worsted into fillets for the hair of these two baggages who stood by him overlooking his work. They took no share in winding the worsted, but he had made himself independent of help by stretching the skein from the toe of his right foot to the thumb of his left hand. A few days afterwards we heard that Khourabene was again a fugitive, accompanied by Sarah only. The quondam widow, adorned in her becoming head-dress, had given him cause for jealousy, and he had speared her.

We never saw our wild man again, though he sometimes sent us secret messages, and would have paid us visits on dark nights if we had given him the least encouragement, but to all hints of this kind we turned a deaf ear, lest by his venturing near the town he might fall into the hands of the law. We missed him sadly, and the place did not seem like itself without him; it was some consolation that the police could not find him, and we earnestly hoped that they never might. His faults were those of a savage, and his virtues also; neither was it ourselves only who regretted him. Natives are very kind to their aged relations, in fact Bishop Salvado goes so far as to say that if ever an Australian woman can be called happy, it is when she is old; and Khourabene's outlawry was much deplored by his poor old toothless aunt, who would come creeping up to our fire, and dropping herself and her smoke-dried kangaroo skins down beside it in what looked a very homogeneous heap, would beg for a little list of excisable articles, tea, sugar,