A little later Ben returned to the main road on a fresh horse. He
turned towards Gulgong, and rode hard; past the new bark provisional
school and along the sidings. He left the news at Con O'Donnell's
lonely tin grocery and sly-grog shop, perched on the hillside--("God
forgive us all!" said Con O'Donnell). He left the news at the
tumble-down public-house, among the huts and thistles and goats that
were left of the Log Paddock Rush. There were goats on the veranda
and the place seemed dead; but there were startled replies and
inquiries and matches struck. He left the news at Newton's selection,
and Old Bones Farm, and at Foley's at the foot of Lowe's Peak, close
under the gap between Peak and Granite Ridge. Then he turned west, at
right angles to the main road, and took a track that was deserted
except for one farm and on every alternate Sunday. He passed the
lonely little slab bush "chapel" of the locality, that broke
startlingly out of the scrub by the track side as he reached it; and
left the news at Southwick's farm at the end of the blind track. At
more than one farm he left the bushwoman hurriedly looking up her
"black things;" and at more than one, one of the boys getting his
bridle to catch his horse and ride elsewhere with the news.

Ben rode back, through the moonlight and the moon-shadow haunted
paddocks, and the naked, white, ringbarked trees, along Snakes Creek,
parallel with the main road he had recently travelled till he struck
Pipeclay Creek again lower down. He turned down the track towards the
river, and at the junction left word at Lowe's--one of the old
land-grant families. The dogs woke an old handy man (who had been
"sent out" in past ages for "knocking a donkey off a hen-roost"-as
most of them were) and Ben told him to tell the family.

At Belinfante's Bridge across the Cudgegong Ben struck a big camp of