"Go away, Mrs. Growler! What nonsense! Where can we go to?"
"The mill would be nearest, ma'am, and we should be safe there. I'm sure Mrs. Medlicot would take us in."
"Why should you not be safe here?" said Kate.
"That wretched Chinese hasn't gone and left us for nothing, miss, and what would we three lone women do here if all them Brownbies came down upon us? Why don't master come back? He ought to come back; oughtn't he, ma'am? He never do think what lone women are."
Mrs. Heathcote took her husband's part very strongly, and gave Mrs. Growler as hard a scolding as she knew how to pronounce. But her own courage was giving way much as Mrs. Growler's had done. "We are bound to stay here," she said; "and if the worst comes, we must bear it as others have done before us." Then Mrs. Growler was very sulky, and, retreating to the kitchen, sobbed there in solitude. "Oh, Kate, I do wish he would come," said the elder sister.
"It is so desolate, and he may be so far off, and we couldn't get to him if any thing happened, and we shouldn't know."
Then they were again silent, and remained without exchanging more than a word or two for nearly half an hour. They took hold of each other, and every now and then went to the kitchen door that the old woman might be comforted by their presence, but they had no consolation to offer each other. The silence of the bush, and the feeling of great distances, and the dread of calamity almost crushed them. At last there was a distant sound of horse's feet. "I hear him," said Mrs. Heathcote, rushing forward toward the outer gate of the horse paddock, followed by her sister.
Her ears were true, but she was doomed to disappointment. The horseman was only a messenger from her husband--Mickey O'Dowd, the Irish boundary rider.
He had great tidings to tell, and was so long telling them that we will not attempt to give them in his own words. The purport of his story was as follows: Harry had been to Boolabong House, but had found there no one but the old man. Returning home thence toward his own fence, he had smelled the smoke of fire, and had found within a furlong of his path a long ridge of burning grass. According to Mickey's account, it could not have been lighted above a few minutes before Heathcote's presence on the spot. As it was, it had got too much ahead for him to put it out single-handed; a few yards he might have managed, but--so Mickey said, probably exaggerating the matter--there was half a quarter of a mile of flame. He had therefore ridden on before the fire, had called his own two men to him, and had at once lighted the grass himself some two hundred yards in front, making a second fire, but so keeping it down that it should be always under control. Before the hinder flames had caught him, Bender and Jacko had been with him, and they had thus managed to consume the fuel which, had it remained there, would have fed the fire which was too strong to be mastered. By watching the extremities of the line of fire, they overpowered it, and so the damage was for the moment at an end.
