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“Then where is she?”

“I dunno. How am I to know? She left him three or four years ago. She was in Sydney last time I heard of her. It ain’t no affair of mine, anyways.”

“And is there any woman about the place at all, driver?” inquired a professional wanderer reflectively.

“No—not that I knows on. There useter be a old black gin come pottering round sometimes, but I ain’t seen her lately.”

“And excuse me, driver, but is there anyone round there at all?” enquired the professional wanderer, with the air of a conscientious writer, collecting material for an Australian novel from life, with an eye to detail.

“Naw,” said the driver—and recollecting that he was expected to be civil and obliging to his employers’ patrons, he added in surly apology, “Only the boss and the stableman, that I knows of.” Then repenting of the apology, he asserted his manhood again, and asked, in a tone calculated to risk a breach of the peace, “Any more questions, gentlemen—while the shop’s open?”

There was a long pause.

“Driver,” asked the Pilgrim appealingly, “was them horses lost at all?”

“I dunno,” said the driver. “He said they was. He’s got the looking after them. It was nothing to do with me.”