The men went to the nearest magistrate and informed him that the shepherd was missing.  A messenger went to the head station.  Enquiries were made at the township, and it was found that Baldy had been to Nyalong the previous day, and had left in the evening carrying two bottles of gin.  This circumstance seemed to account for his absence; he had taken too much of the liquor, was lying asleep somewhere, and would reappear in the course of the day.  Men both on foot and on horseback roamed through the Rises, examining the hollows and the flats, the margins of the shallow lakes, and peering into every wombat hole as they passed.  They never thought of turning over any of the boulders; a drunken man would never make his bed and blanket of rocks; he would be found lying on the top if he had stumbled amongst them.  One by one as night approached the searchers returned to the hut.  They had discovered nothing, and the only conclusion they could come to was, that Baldy was taking a very long sleep somewhere—­which was true enough.

Next day every man from the neighbouring stations, and some from Nyalong, joined in the search.  The chief constable was there, and as became a professed detector of crime, he examined everything minutely inside and outside the two huts, but he could not find anything suspicious about either of them.  He entered into conversation with Julia, but the eye of her husband was on her, and she had little to say.  Nosey, on the contrary, was full of suggestions as to what might have happened to Baldy, and he helped to look for him eagerly and actively in every direction but the right one.

For many days the Rises were peopled with prospectors, but one by one they dropped away.  The chief constable was loath to leave the riddle unsolved; he had the instinct of the sleuth-hound on the scent of blood.  He had been a pursuer of bad works amongst the convicts for a long time, both in Van Diemen’s Land and in Victoria, and had helped to bring many men to the gallows or the chain-gang.  He had once been shot in the back by a horse thief who lay concealed behind the door of a shepherd’s hut, but he secured the horse thief.  He was a man without nerves, of medium height, strongly built, had a broad face, massive ears, wide, firm mouth, and strong jaws.

One night after the searchers had departed to their various homes, the chief remained alone in the Rises, and leaving his horse hobbled at a distance, cautiously approached Nosey’s hut.  He placed his ear to the outside of the weatherboards, and listened for some time to the conversation of Nosey and his wife, expecting to obtain by chance some information about the disappearance of the other shepherd.  Nosey was in a bad temper, swearing and finding fault with everything.  Julia was prudent and said little; it was best not to say too much to a man who was so handy with the family axe.  But at last she made use of one expression which seemed to mean something.