Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/297

 pumpkin―it must have weighed forty pounds. 'I spoilt one of his best bumps with the tomahawk. I had to hit him twice, but it's no use crying over spilt milk.' Here he drew a heavy shingling-hammer out of the bag and wiped off with his sleeve something that looked like blood. Malachi had been edging round for the door, and now he made a rush for it. But the skull-fancier was there before him.

'Gor-sake you don't want to murder me!' gasped Malachi.

'Not if I can get your skull any other way,' said Bricky.

'Oh!' gasped poor Malachi―and then, with a vague idea that it was best to humour a lunatic, he continued, in a tone meant to be off-hand and careless―'Now, look here, if yer only waits till I die you can have my whole skelington and welcome.'

'Now, Malachi,' said the phrenologist sternly, 'd'ye think I'm a fool? I ain't going to stand any humbug. If yer acts sensible you'll be quiet, and it'll soon be over, but if yer'

Malachi did not wait to hear the rest. He made a spring for the back of the hut and through it, taking down a large new sheet of stringy-bark in his flight. Then he could be heard loudly ejaculating 'It's a caution!' as he went through the bush like a startled kangaroo, and he didn't stop till he reached the station.

Jimmy Nowlett and I had been peeping through a crack in the same sheet of bark that Malachi dislodged; it fell on us and bruised us somewhat, but it wasn't enough to knock the fun out of the thing.