pass on away from them, right across Harry’s pastures and Harry’s fences.  If such were the case, he would have quite enough to do to drive his sheep from the fire, and it might be that many of them also would perish in the flames.  The catastrophe might even be so bad, so frightful, that the shed and station and all should go; though, in thinking of all the fires of which he had heard, he could remember none that had spread with fatality such as that.

He found Karl Bender in his hut asleep.  The man was soon up, apologizing for his somnolence, and preparing tea for his master’s entertainment.  “It is not Christmas like at home at all; is it, Mr.  ’Eathcote?  Dear, no!  Them red divils is there ready to give us a Christmas roasting.”  Then he told how he had boldly ridden up to Boolabong that morning, and had seen Georgie and Boscobel with his own eyes.  When asked what they had said to him, he replied that he did not wait till any thing had been said, but had hurried away as fast as his horse could carry him.

“I’ll go up to Boolabong myself,” said Harry.

“My word!  They’ll just about knock your head off,” suggested Jacko.

Karl Bender also thought that the making of such a visit would be a source of danger.  But Heathcote explained that any personal attack was not to be apprehended from these men.  “That’s not their game,” he said, arguing that men who premeditated a secret outrage would not probably be tempted into personal violence.  The horror of the position lay in this—­that though a fire should rise up almost under the feet of men who were known to be hostile to him, and whose characters were acknowledged to be bad, still would there be no evidence against them.  It was known to all men that, at periods of heat such as that which was now raging, fires were common.  Every day the pastures were in flames, here, there, and every where.  It was said, indeed, that there existed no evidence of fires in the bush till men had come with their flocks.  But then there had been no smoking, no boiling of pots, no camping out, till men had come, and no matches.  Every one around might be sure that some particular fire had been the work of an incendiary, might be able to name the culprit who had done the deed; and yet no jury could convict the miscreant.  Watchfulness was the best security, watchfulness day and night till rain should come; and Heathcote calculated that it would be better for him that his enemies should know that he was watchful.  He would go up among them and show them that he was not ashamed to speak to them of his anxiety.  They could hear nothing by his coming which they did not already know.  They were well aware that he was on the watch, and it might be well that they should know also how close his watch was kept.  He took the German and Jacko with him, but left them with their horses about a mile on the Boolabong side of his own fence, nigh to the extreme boundary of the Debatable Land.  They knew his whistle, and were to ride to him at once should he call them.