Fifty-Two Stories For Girls Part 60

What were they doing now?

It sounded on the roof of the counting-house. O G.o.d! they were never going to make an entrance that way!

Sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe. The sound went on persistently.

Kate's face was hidden in her hands. Was she praying? thought Cicely.

Then she, too, lifted up a silent prayer for help in their time of need.

Kate's voice whispering in her ear aroused her. "Come," she breathed.

And with one accord, without a question, the three followed her silently.

The room beyond the counting-house was up a narrow flight of stairs. It used to be called by Kate, in derision, "Father's observatory." Through a small pane of gla.s.s in this room she could see the roof of the counting-house.

Sawing away at the wooden structure upon which he was perched sat Wolfgang himself, whilst the man beside him was busily engaged in removing the thatch piece by piece.

Kate waited to see no more. Raising her rifle to her shoulder she fired--fired straight at the leading bushranger.

She saw him stagger and roll--roll down the sloping roof, and fall with a dull thud to the ground below.

She could only lean against the wall, and hide her face in her trembling hands. Was he dead? Had she killed him? Or had the fall off the house completed the deed?

She felt a hand on her arm. Becky was standing beside her. "Give me the rifle," she breathed. "I can load it."

With a faint feeling of surprise at her heart, Kate handed her the weapon with fingers slightly unsteady. She received it back in silence, and mounted to her place of observation again.

Wolfgang's companion was crouching. His att.i.tude struck Kate disagreeably. His back was turned to her. What was he looking at?

She strained her eyes, and descried, galloping at the top of his speed, Black Bounce, and on his back was Phil Wentworth. Behind him at breakneck pace came six of the shearers--tall, brawny men, the very sight of whom inspired courage.

Wentworth's rifle was raised. A shot rang through the air. Then another.

And yet another. Bang! bang! bang! What had happened?

Kate, straining her eyes, only knew that just as the manager's rifle went off, the bushranger on the roof had fired at him, not, however, before Kate's shot disabled him in the arm, thus preventing his aim from covering the manager.

"Thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d, we are saved!" she cried.

And now that the danger was over, Kate sank down upon the floor of the "observatory," and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Becky--her bravery returning as the sound of horses' hoofs struck upon her ear--slipped from the room, leaving Mrs. Grieves and Cicely to play the part of consolers to her young mistress.

It appeared that a trumped-up story, purporting to come from one of his friends in the towns.h.i.+p, had caused Phil Wentworth to go there that morning, and that on his way he overtook Sam Griffiths, who grumpily asked him why he should have been ordered to the towns.h.i.+p when his hands were so full of work at home. This led the young manager to scent something wrong, and telling Griffiths to follow him home quickly he rode straight back to the shed, and getting some of the shearers to accompany him, made straight tracks for the house.

Mrs. Grieves and Cicely had by this time had as much as they cared for of bush life, and very shortly after announced that the Australian climate did not suit either Cicely or herself as she had hoped it might, and that they had made up their minds to return to England.

"I hope they intend to take their silver away with them," said the manager when Kate told him.

She replied with a laugh, "Oh yes, I don't believe aunt would think life worth living if she had not her silver with her."

Poor Aunt Grieves! the vessel she travelled by had to be abandoned before it reached England, and the silver she had suffered so much for lies buried in the sands of the deep.

As for Kate, she subsequently took Philip Wentworth into partners.h.i.+p, and he gave her his name.

BILLJIM.

BY S. LE SOTGILLE.

Nestling in the scrub at the head of a gully running into the New.a.n.ga was a typical Australian humpy. It was built entirely of bark. Roof, back, front, and sides were huge sheets of stringy bark, and the window shutters were of the same, the windows themselves being sheets of calico; also the two doors were whole sheets of bark swung upon leathern hinges.

The humpy was divided into three rooms, two bedrooms and a general room.

The "galley" was just outside, a three-sided, roofed arrangement, and the ubiquitous bark figured in that adjunct of civilisation.

In springtime the roof and sides of this humpy were one huge blaze of Bougainvillaea, and not a vestige of bark was visible. It was surrounded by a paling fence, rough split bush palings only, but in every way fitted for what they were intended to do--that is, keep out animals of all descriptions.

In the front garden were flowers of every conceivable hue and variety, from the flaring giant sunflower to the quiet retiring geranium, and stuck to old logs and standing dead timber were several beautiful orchids of different varieties. Violets, pansies, fuchsias and nasturtiums bordered the walks in true European fas.h.i.+on, and one wondered who had taken all this trouble in so outlandish a spot.

At the back of the humpy rose the Range sheer fifteen hundred feet with huge granite boulders, twice the size of the humpy itself, standing straight out from the side of the Range, giving one the idea that they were merely stuck there in some mysterious manner, and were ready at a moment's notice to come tumbling down, overwhelming every one and everything in their descent.

On the other three sides was scrub. Dense tropical scrub for miles, giving out a muggy disagreeable heat, and that peculiar overpowering smell common, I think, to all tropical growth. No one could have chosen a better spot than this if his desire were to escape entirely from the busy world and live a quiet sequestered life amongst the countless beautiful gifts that Dame Nature seems so lavish of in the hundred nooks and corners of the mountainous portion of Australia. In this humpy, then, hidden from the world in general, and known only to a few miners and prospectors, lived d.i.c.k Benson, his wife, and their daughter Billjim. That is what she was called, anyway, by all the diggers on the New.a.n.ga. It wasn't her name, of course. She was registered at Clagton Court House as Katherine Veronica Benson, but no one in all the district thought of calling her Kitty now, and as for Veronica--well, it was too much to ask of any one, let alone a rough bushman.

The name Billjim she practically chose herself.

One evening a digger named Jack L'Estrange, a great friend of the Bensons, was reading an article from the _Bulletin_ to her father, and Kitty, as she was then called, was whiling away the time by pulling his moustache, an occupation which interfered somewhat with the reading, but which was allowed to pa.s.s without serious rebuke.

In this article the paper spoke of backblocks bushmen under the generic soubriquet of Billjim. And a very good name too, for in any up-country town one has but to sing out "Bill" or "Jim" to have an answer from three-fourths of the male population.

The name tickled Kitty immensely, and she chuckled, "Billjim! Billjim!

Oh, I'd like to be called that."

"Would you though?" asked her father, smiling.

"Yes," answered Kitty; "it's a fine name, Billjim."

"Well, we will call you Billjim in future," said d.i.c.k; and from that day the name stuck to her. And it suited her.

She was the wildest of wild bush girls. At twelve years old she could ride and shoot as well as most of us, and would pan out a prospect with any man on the New.a.n.ga.

She had never been to school, there being none nearer than Clagton, which was some fifteen miles away, but she had been taught the simple arts of reading and writing by her mother, and Jack L'Estrange had ministered to her wants in the matter of arithmetic.

With all her wildness she was a good, kindly girl, materially helping her mother in the household matters, and all that flower garden was her special charge and delight.

Wednesday and Thursday of every week were holidays, and those two days were spent by Billjim in roaming the country far and wide. Sometimes on horseback, when a horse could be borrowed, but mostly on her own well-formed feet.

She would wander off with a shovel and a dish into the scrub, and, following up some gully all day, would return at night tired out and happy, and generally with two or three grains of gold to show for her day's work. Sometimes she would come back laden with some new orchid, and this she would carefully fix in the garden in a position as similar as possible to that in which she had found it, and usually it would blossom there as if it were thankful at being so well cared for.