Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/89

 smiling. "Of course, if you say it was as bad as all that, I must take your word for it. But—who on earth did you imagine I was?"

"Stingaree!"

"I thought so! It occurred to me when you showed me that grave in the pines."

"Oh, I was an idiot. It makes me feel hot whenever I think of it; and yet I'm the better for telling you the worst. It was the old clothes and the revolver and all that. Can you possibly understand? "

"Easily," said Fullarton, reassuringly. "There's only one thing I can't fathom."

"What's that?"

"Why on earth you didn't promptly tell your people!"

There was a pause. They had entered the plantation, but at its southerly extremity; the stock-yards and out-buildings lying to the north. Very faintly in the distance, they could catch the high notes of the fiddler from Hay, with an occasional chord from the piano. But this was only while Irralie paused.