“Then why isn’t young Heathcote to swing?” demanded Jack.
“There is such a thing as intent, you know. When Heathcote lighted the fire, where would the fire have gone if he hadn’t kept putting it out as fast as he kept lighting it? On to his own run, not to yours. And where would the other fire have gone which somebody lit, and which nobody put out, if he hadn’t been there to stop it? The less you say against Heathcote the better. So Nokes is off, is he?”
“He ain’t here, anyways,” said Joe. “When the row was over, we wouldn’t let him in. We didn’t want him about here.”
“I dare say not,” said the sergeant. “Now let me go and see the spot where the fight was.”
So the two policemen, with the two young Brownbies, rode away, leaving Boscobel with the old man.
“He knows everything about it,” said old Brownbie.
“If he do,” said Boscobel, “it ain’t no odds.”
“Not a ha’porth of odds,” said Jerry, coming out of his hiding-place. “Who cares what he knows? A man may do what he pleases on his own run, I suppose.”
“He mayn’t light a fire as’ll spread,” said the old man.
“Bother! Who’s to prove what’s in a man’s mind? If I’d been Nokes, I’d have stayed and seen it out. I’d never be driven about the colony by such a fellow as Heathcote, with all the police in the world to back him.”
Sergeant Forrest inspected the ground on which the fire had raged, and the spot on which the men had met; but nothing came of his inspection, and he had not expected that anything would come of it. He could see exactly where the fire had commenced, and could trace the efforts that had been made to stop it. He did not in the least doubt the way in which it had been lit; but he did very much doubt whether a jury could find Nokes guilty, even if he could catch Nokes. Jacko’s evidence was worth nothing, and Mr. Medlicot might be easily mistaken as to what he had seen at a distance in the middle of the night.
All this happened on Christmas Day. At about nine o’clock the same evening the two constables reappeared at Gangoil, and asked for hospitality for the night. This was a matter of course, and also the reproduction of the Christmas dinner. Mrs. Medlicot was now there; and her son, with his collarbone set, had been allowed to come out on to the veranda. The house had already been supposed to be full; but room, as a matter of course, was made for Sergeant Forrest and his man.
“It’s a queer sort of Christmas we’ve all been having, Mr. Heathcote,” said the sergeant, as the remnant of a real English plum-pudding was put between him and his man by Mrs. Growler.
“A little hotter than it is at home, eh?”
“Indeed it is. You must have had it hot last night, sir?”
“Very hot, sergeant. We had to work uncommonly hard to do it as well as we did.”
“It was not a nice Christmas game, sir, was it?”
“Eh, me!” said Mrs. Medlicot. “There’s nae Christmas games or ony games here at all, except just worrying and harrying, like sae many dogs at each other’s throats.”
“And you think nothing more can be done?” Harry asked.
“I don’t think we shall catch the men. When they get out backward, it’s very hard to trace them. He’s got a horse of his own with him, and he’ll be beyond reach of the police by this time tomorrow. Indeed, he’s beyond their reach now. However, you’ll have got rid of him.”
“But there are others as bad as he left behind. I wouldn’t trust that fellow Boscobel a yard.”
“He won’t stir, sir. He belongs to this country, and does not want to leave it. And when a thing has been tried like that and has failed, the fellows don’t try it again. They are cowed like by their own failure. I don’t think you need fear fire from the Boolabong side again this summer.”
After this the sergeant and his man discreetly allowed themselves to be put to bed in the back cottage; for in truth, when they arrived, things had come to such a pass at Gangoil that the two additional visitors were hardly welcome. But hospitality in the bush can be stayed by no such considerations as that. Let their employments or enjoyments on hand be what they may, everything must yield to the entertainment of strangers. The two constables were in want of their Christmas dinner, and it was given to them with no grudging hand.
As to Nokes, we may say that he has never since appeared in the neighbourhood of Gangoil, and that none thereabouts ever knew what was his fate. Men such as he wander away from one colony into the next, passing from one station to another, or sleeping on the ground, till they become as desolate and savage as solitary animals. And at last they die in the bush, creeping, we may suppose, into hidden nooks, as the beasts do when the hour of death comes on them.
XII
Conclusion
The constables had started from Gangoil, on their way to Boolabong, a little after four, and from that time till he was made to get out of bed for his dinner Harry Heathcote was allowed to sleep. He had richly earned his rest by his work, and he lay motionless, without a sound, in the broad daylight, with his arm under his head—dreaming, no doubt, of some happy squatting land, in which there were no free-selectors, no fires, no rebellious servants, no floods, no droughts, no wild dogs to worry the lambs, no grass seeds to get into the fleeces, and in which the price of wool stood steady at two shillings and sixpence a pound. His wife from time to time came into
