Page:Over the Sliprails - 1900.djvu/155

 look at the cow-yard. The younger trooper lingered behind.

“I’ll try and get them up the gully on some excuse,” he whispered to Mary. “You plant the hide before we come back.”

“It’s too late. Look there!” She pointed through the doorway.

The other two were at the logs where the fire had been; the burning hide had stuck to the logs in places like glue.

“Wylie’s a fool,” remarked the old trooper.

Jack disappeared shortly after his father’s arrest on a charge of horse and cattle-stealing, and Tom, the prodigal, turned up unexpectedly. He was different from his father and eldest brother. He had an open good-humoured face, and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures—one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the family—came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one or two—in Mary, perhaps.

“Cheer up, old woman!” cried Tom, patting his mother on the back. “We’ll be happy yet. I’ve been wild and foolish, I know, and gave you some awful trouble, but that’s all done with. I mean to