There had been hot weather since the body had been deposited in the shallow grave, and the crevices among the piles of bluestones had been filled by the wind with the yellow stalks of decayed grass.  Nosey walked round his own particular pile, and inspected it closely.  He was pleased to find that it showed no signs of having been touched since he raised it.  It was just like any of the other heaps of rocks around it.  He had, at any rate, given Baldy as good a funeral as circumstances would permit, better than that of many a man who had perished of hunger, heat, and thirst, in the shelterless wastes of the Never-Never Land, “beyond Moneygrub’s farthest run.”  Nosey and the weather had done their work so well that for the next fifteen years no shepherd, stockman, or squatter ever gave a second look at that unknown grave.  The black snake coiled itself beneath the decaying skeleton, and spent the winter in secure repose.  The native cat tore away bits of Baldy’s clothing, and with them and the yellow grass made, year after year, a nest for its young among the whitening bones.

Everything, so far, had turned out quite as satisfactorily as any murderer could expect.  Nosey had been game to do his man, and he had done him well.  Julia was prudent enough to hold her tongue for her own sake; it was unlikely that any further search would be made for the lost shepherd; he had been safely put out of sight, and not even Julia knew where he was buried.

Nosey began to have a better opinion of himself than ever.  Neither the police nor the law could touch him.  He would never be called to account for putting away his brother shepherd, in this world at any rate; and as for the next, why it was a long way off, and there was time enough to think about it.  The day of reckoning was distant, but it came at last, as it always does to every sinner of us all.

Nosey resigned his billet, and went to Nyalong.  He lived in a hut in the eastern part of the township, not far from the lake, and near the corner of the road coming down from the Bald Hill.  Here had been laid the foundation of a great inland city by a bush publican, two storekeepers, a wheelwright, and a blacksmith.  Another city had been started at the western side of Wandong Creek, but its existence was ignored by the eastern pioneers.

The shepherd soon began to forget or despise the advice of his wife, Julia; his tongue grew loose again, and at the bar of the inn of the crossroads his voice was often heard loud and abusive.  He felt that he had become a person of importance, as the possessor of a secret which nobody could discover.  What he said and what he did was discussed about the township, and the chief constable listened to every report, expecting that some valuable information would accidentally leak out.