as she passed them by. The sun had set, as far as Long Gully was concerned.
The old horse carefully followed a rough bridle track, which ran up the gully
now on one side of the watercourse and now on the other;
the gully grew deeper and darker, and its sullen, scrub-covered sides
rose more steeply as he progressed.

The girl glanced round frequently, as though afraid of someone following her.
Once she drew rein, and listened to some bush sound.
"Kangaroos," she murmured; it was only kangaroos. She crossed
a dimmed little clearing where a farm had been, and entered a thick scrub
of box and stringy-bark saplings. Suddenly with a heavy thud, thud,
an "old man" kangaroo leapt the path in front, startling the girl fearfully,
and went up the siding towards the peak.

"Oh, my God!" she gasped, with her hand on her heart.

She was very nervous this evening; her heart was hurt now,
and she held her hand close to it, while tears started from her eyes
and glistened in the light of the moon, which was rising over the gap ahead.

"Oh, if I could only go away from the bush!" she moaned.

The old horse plodded on, and now and then shook his head
-- sadly, it seemed -- as if he knew her troubles and was sorry.

She passed another clearing, and presently came to a small homestead
in a stringy-bark hollow below a great gap in the ridges -- "Deadman's Gap".
The place was called "Deadman's Hollow", and looked like it.
The "house" -- a low, two-roomed affair, with skillions --
was built of half-round slabs and stringy-bark, and was nearly all roof;