Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/325

 began to recollect that they'd thought all along that the ghost wasn't Joe's ghost―even when they thought that it was really Joe that was killed there.

'Then, again, there was the case of Brummy Usen―Hughison I think they spelled it―the bushranger; he was shot by old Mr. S, of E, while trying to stick the old gentleman up. There's something about it in a book called 'Robbery Under Arms,' though the names is all altered―and some other time I'll tell you all about the inquest, and digging the body up for inquest and burying it again. This Brummy used to work for a publican in a sawmill that the publican had; and this publican and his daughter identified the body by a woman holding up a branch tattooed on the right arm. I'll tell you all about that another time. This girl remembered how she used to watch this tattooed woman going up and down on Brummy's arm when he was working in the saw-pit―going up and down and up and down, like this, while Brummy was working his end of the saw. So the bushranger was inquested and justifiable-homicided as Brummy Usen, and buried again in his dust and blood stains and monkey-jacket.

'All the same it wasn't him; for the real Brummy turned up later on; but he couldn't make the people believe he wasn't dead. They was mostly English country people from Kent and Yorkshire and those places; and the most self-opinionated and obstinate people that ever lived when they got a thing into their heads; and they'd got it into their heads that Brummy Usen was shot while trying to bail up old Mr. S, and was dead and buried.

T