You’re a man, and I’m a helpless girl. They turned me out! My mother’s dead, and my brothers gone away. Look! Look here!” pointing to a bruise on her forehead. “The woman did that. My own father stood by and saw it done—said it served me right! Oh, my God!”
“What woman? Tell me all about it.”
“The woman father brought home! … I want to go away from the bush! Oh! for God’s sake take me away from the bush! … Anything! anything!—you know!—only take me away from the bush!”
Bob and his mate—who had been roused—did their best to soothe her; but suddenly, without a moment’s warning, she sprang to her feet and scrambled to the top of the rock overhanging the camp. She stood for a moment in the bright moonlight, gazing intently down the vacant road.
“Here they come!” she cried, pointing down the road. “Here they come—the troopers! I can see their cap-peaks glistening in the moonlight! … I’m going away! Mother’s gone. I’m going now!—Good-bye!—Good-bye! I’m going away from the bush!”
Then she ran through the trees towards the foot of Long Gully. Bob and his mate followed; but, being unacquainted with the locality, they lost her.
She ran to the edge of a granite cliff on the higher side of the deepest of the rocky waterholes. There was a heavy splash, and three startled kangaroos, who had been drinking, leapt back and sped away, like three grey ghosts, up the ridge towards the moonlit peak.
