"Listen!" He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear, "I'm a
MOVING OFF!"

"Moving off?"

"Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't you
hear?--there! listen!"

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.

"It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent. They've been here all night.
I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the old man to
move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the
door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why
don't they quit?"

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further
traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so
much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious
feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them
briefly what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:

"Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock--all gone--gone, gone
for the hides and hoofs," and he groans bitterly.

"There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and
perhaps the family are safe by this time," says the coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to