red from the room and
turned up washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table. I used to keep
an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room. I straightened
up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief got too dirty,
and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash, I'd slip down to the
river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day, and rub it up to
look as if it hadn't been washed, and leave it on my table. I felt
so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack, till one
morning he remarked casually--

'I see you've made a new mash, Joe. I saw the half-caste cook tidying
up your room this morning and taking your collars and things to the
wash-house.'

I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day, and I had such
a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning to look the
hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down.

It was the evening before Anniversary Day. Jack and I had put in a good
day's work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a
yarn with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along
by the fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the
bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and big Jim Bullock the
fencer, and one or two others. Mary and the station girls and one or
two visitors were sitting under the old verandah. The Jackaroo was
there too, so I felt happy. It was the girls who used to bring the chaps
hanging round. They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night.
Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station: he was
a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy: it was
reckoned that there was foreign blood in him. He went by the name of
Romany. He was supposed to be shook after Mary too. He had the nastiest
temper and the best violin in the district, and the chaps put up with
him a lot because they wanted him to play at Bush dances. The moon had
risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky where we were. We saw Romany
loom up, riding in from the gate; he rode round the end of the
coach-house and across towards where we were--I suppose he was going to
tie up his horse at the fence; but about half-way across the grass he
disappeared. It struck me that there was something peculiar about the
way he got down, and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.

'What the hell's Romany trying to do?' said Jimmy Nowlett. 'He couldn't
have fell off his horse--or