Mary and the station girls and one or two visitors were sitting under
the old verandah. The Jackaroo was there too, so I felt happy.
It was the girls who used to bring the chaps hanging round.
They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night.
Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station:
he was a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy:
it was reckoned that there was foreign blood in him.
He went by the name of Romany. He was supposed to be shook after Mary too.
He had the nastiest temper and the best violin in the district,
and the chaps put up with him a lot because they wanted him to play
at Bush dances. The moon had risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky
where we were. We saw Romany loom up, riding in from the gate;
he rode round the end of the coach-house and across towards where we were --
I suppose he was going to tie up his horse at the fence;
but about half-way across the grass he disappeared. It struck me
that there was something peculiar about the way he got down,
and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.

`What the hell's Romany trying to do?' said Jimmy Nowlett.
`He couldn't have fell off his horse -- or else he's drunk.'

A couple of chaps got up and went to see. Then there was that waiting,
mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark
and nobody knows what it is. I went over, and the thing dawned on me.
I'd stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had
forgotten all about it for the moment. Romany had no idea of the line,
and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows
and scraped him off his horse. He was sitting on the grass,
swearing in a surprised voice, and the horse looked surprised too.
Romany wasn't hurt, but the sudden shock had spoilt his temper.