Page:Australian Emigrant 1854.djvu/146

124 "'Where did you stow him?' inquired the deformed one.

"'Outside' was the reply; 'and now I think on it, I should have put him out of sight: I'll do it at once.' He left the hut for a few moments, and returned with his hands smeared with blood.

"I need not tell you I slept no more for that night, and that I left as early as I could the next morning without exciting suspicion. Not far from the hut I passed a heap of bark, a little pool of blood stood near it which had trickled from some object—I had little doubt what that object was—hidden underneath.

"Very soon after leaving, I was fortunate in meeting with the settler to whom the hut belonged, in which I had slept, and I told him of the conversation I had overheard, and my impression that some dark deed had been committed. We returned together, and I could see that my sudden re-appearance took the inmates quite by surprise. The master asked a few common-place questions, to which it struck me the answers were unsatisfactory and confused.

"Without further hesitation I led him to the heap of bark, underneath which, I had little doubt, lay the victim of a barbarous deed. As the horrible mystery was being revealed, I was not surprised to find the two men narrowly observing our motions from the hut, but when the removal of the last sheet of bark was accompanied by a loud roar of laughter from the owner of the station, I was considerably flabbergasted.—Oh murder! murder!" he cried, 'I shall die o'laughing—why it's an old man sure enough.' There indeed lay the body, but it was of an old man kangaroo—a regular boomer: there was a gash across the throat and one fore arm was broken. Didn't I feel uncommonly small at the 'dreadful revelation.' So the murder was out. Now for the moral," said Dodge, assuming