She passed another clearing, and presently came to a small homestead in a stringy-bark hollow below a great gap in the ridges--“Deadman's Gap”. The place was called “Deadman's Hollow”, and looked like it. The “house”--a low, two-roomed affair, with skillions--was built of half-round slabs and stringy-bark, and was nearly all roof; the bark, being darkened from recent rain, gave it a drearier appearance than usual.
A big, coarse-looking youth of about twenty was nailing a green kangaroo skin to the slabs; he was out of temper because he had bruised his thumb. The girl unstrapped the parcels and carried them in; as she passed her brother, she said:
“Take the saddle off for me, will you, Jack?”
“Oh, carnt yer take it off yerself?” he snarled; “carnt yer see I'm busy?”
She took off the saddle and bridle, and carried them into a shed, where she hung them on a beam. The patient old hack shook himself with an energy that seemed ill-advised, considering his age and condition, and went off towards the “dam”.
An old woman sat in the main room beside a fireplace which took up almost the entire end of the house. A plank-table, supported on stakes driven into the ground, stood in the middle of the room, and two slab benches were fixtures on each side. The floor was clay. All was clean and poverty-stricken; all that could be whitewashed was white, and everything that could be washed was scrubbed. The slab shelves were covered with clean newspapers, on which bright tins, and pannikins, and fragments of crockery were set to the greatest advantage. The walls, however, were disfigured by Christmas supplements of illustrated journals.
The girl came in and sat down wearily on a stool opposite to the old woman.
“Very little, Mary, very little. Have you seen your father?”
“You might wonder. What's the use of worrying about it, mother?”
“Most likely. Worrying yourself to death won't help it!”
The old woman sat and moaned about her troubles, as old women do. She had plenty to moan about.
“I wonder where your brother Tom is? We haven't heard from him for a year now. He must be in trouble again; something tells me he must be in trouble again.”
“Why do you worry about it, mother? What's the use?”
“I only wish I knew. I only wish I knew!”