ightn't have noticed. It was common
enough to have a black boy or a half-caste with a lot of travelling
cattle. Father had not shown up much. He had an old pea-jacket on, and
they mightn't have dropped down to him or the three other chaps that
were in it with us; they were just like any other road hands. But about
there being warrants out, with descriptions, in all the colonies, for a
man to be identified, but generally known as Starlight, and for Richard
and James Marston, we were as certain as that we were in St. Kilda, in
a nice quiet little inn, overlooking the beach; and what a murder it was
to have to leave it at all.

Leave the place we had to do at once. It wouldn't do to be strollin'
about Melbourne with the chance of every policeman we met taking a
look at us to see if we tallied with a full description they had at
the office: 'Richard and James Marston are twenty-five and twenty-two,
respectively; both tall and strongly built; having the appearance of
bushmen. Richard Marston has a scar on left temple. James Marston
has lost a front tooth,' and so on. When we came to think of it, they
couldn't be off knowing us, if they took it into their heads to bail us
up any day. They had our height and make. We couldn't help looking like
bushmen--like men that had been in the open air all their lives, and
that had a look as if saddle and bridle rein were more in our way than
the spade and plough-handle. We couldn't wash the tan off our skins;
faces, necks, arms, all showed pretty well that we'd come from where the
sun was hot, and that we'd had our share of it. They had my scar, got in
a row, and Jim's front tooth, knocked out by a fall from a horse when he
was a boy; there was nothing for it but to cut and run.

'It was time for us to go, my boys,' as the song the Yankee sailor sung
us one night runs, and then, which way to go? Every ship was watched
that close a strange rat couldn't get a passage, and, besides, we had
that feeling we didn't like to clear away altogether out of the old
country; there was mother and Aileen still in it, and every man, woman,
and child that we'd known ever since we were born. A chap feels that,
even if he ain't much good other ways. We couldn't stand the thought of
clearin' out for America, as Starlight advised us. It was like death
to us, so we thought we'd chance it somewhere in Australia for a bit
longer.

Now where we put up a good many drovers from Gippsland used to stay,
as they b