Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/256

Rh with us, and when on one occasion he found that his master during a period of illness could fancy no food so much as wild ducks, he would scour the bush far and wide in order to procure them for him. If our good savage had heard of ducks being seen on a pool within a few miles of our house, he would make his appearance in a breathless state of excitement, begging us to give him the gun, with which he would hurry away to secure the prize. His complacency at success found vent in little patronizing observations addressed to the birds themselves, whilst he sat on his own especial log of wood by the fire-side, and picked his share of their bones in the kitchen.

These happy days were brought to an end by our making the unlooked-for discovery that savages, equally with civilized people, have their game laws, and that by these Khourabene was prohibited from shooting for us any longer. He surprised us one evening by entering the room with tears streaming down his face, and repeatedly sobbing out the words, "Father and mother, I must hook it away!" he explained, in his strange mixture of Australian and cockney dialects, that the other natives had had an indignation-meeting to discuss his audacity in daring to bring us game off their land (Khourabene's "settlement" in the parochial phraseology of home being in another district), and that they had threatened to spear him if he continued to do so. We tried to comfort him, and in our ignorance of native customs treated the matter lightly, but he continued to cry bitterly, and bidding us good-bye he disappeared.

At first we were disposed to fancy that he had been a