'Pardon my interrupting you,' he said, 'but before we proceed any further let me tell you once and for all that I will have none of my brother's provisoes. Whatever threats, stipulations, or offers he may have empowered you to make, I will have nothing whatsoever to do with them. I washed my hands of my family, as you know, many years ago, and if you had not come now to remind me of the unpleasant fact, I should have allowed myself to forget even that they existed. You know my opinion of my brother. I have had time to think it over, and I see no reason at all for changing it. When we were both younger he ruined my career for me, perjured himself to steal my good name, and as if that were not enough induced my father to back him up in his treatment of me. Go back to them and tell them that I still hate and despise them. Of the name they cannot deprive me, that is one consolation; of the money I will not touch a sixpence. They may have it, every halfpenny, and I wish them joy of it.'

'But have you thought of your son, the little fellow I saw in the township, and who conducted me hither?'

'I have thought of him,' replied my father, sternly, 'and it makes no difference to my decision. I desire him to be brought up in ignorance of his birth. I am convinced that it would be the kinder course. Now I'll wish you a very good evening. If you have any papers with you that you are desirous I should sign, you may send them over to me and I will peruse them with as little delay as possible. I need not warn you to be careful of what you say in the township yonder. They know, and have always known me, as Marmaduke Heggarstone here, and I have no desire that they should become aware of my real name.'

'You need not fear. I shall not tell them,' said Redgarth. 'As for the papers, I have them in this bag. I will leave them with you. You can send them across to me when you have done with them. I suppose it is no use my attempting to make you see the matter in any other light?'

'None whatever.'

'In that case, I have the honour to wish your lor—I mean to wish you, Mr Heggarstone, a very good evening.'

As he spoke I heard him buckle the straps of his portmanteau, and then I slipped noiselessly down the passage towards the kitchen. A moment later his step sounded upon the gravel and he was gone.

On the Thursday following he left the township, and we saw no more of him. Whatever his errand may have been, never once during his lifetime did my father say anything to me upon the subject, nor did I ever venture to question him about it. Perhaps, as he said, there is something behind it all that I am happier in not knowing. So far as I have ever heard such skeletons are generally best left in undisturbed possession of their cupboards.

After that we resumed the same sort of life as had been our portion before his arrival.

This monotonous existence continued undisturbed until the time of the great flood, which, as I have said before, is even remembered to this day. It occurred at the end of a wet season, and after a fortnight's pouring rain, which continued day and night. Never was such rain known, and for this reason the ground soon became so thoroughly saturated that it could absorb no more. In consequence the creeks filled, and all the billabongs became deep as lakes.

In order to realise what follows you must understand that above the township, perhaps a couple of miles or so, three creeks joined forces, and by so doing formed the Cargoo River, on the banks of which our township was located. There had been heavy rain on all these creeks, and in consequence they came down bankers, united, as I have just said, and then, being penned in by the hills and backed up by the stored water in the billabongs, swept down the valley towards the township in one great flood, which carried everything before it. Never shall I forget that night. The clouds had cleared off the sky earlier in the evening, and it was as bright as day, the moon being almost at the full. I was having my supper with old Betty in the kitchen when suddenly I heard an odd sort of rumbling in the distance. I stopped eating to listen. Even to my childish ears the sound was peculiar, and as it still continued, I asked Betty, who was my oracle in everything, what she thought it meant. She was a little deaf, and suggested the wind in the trees. But I knew that this was no wind in trees. Every moment it was growing louder, and when I left the kitchen and went through the house to the front verandah, where I found my father standing looking up the valley, it had grown into a well-defined roar. I questioned him on the subject.

'It is a flood,' he answered, half to himself. 'Nothing but water, and an enormous body of it, could make that sound.'

The words were scarcely out of his mouth before a man on horseback appeared round the bend of the hill and galloped up the path. His horse was white with foam, and as he drew up before the steps he shouted wildly,—

'The flood is coming down the valley. Fly for your lives.'

My father only laughed—a little scornfully, I thought—and said, in his odd, mocking voice,—

'No flood will touch us here, my friend, but if you are anxious to do humanity a service, you had better hasten on and warn the folk in the township below us. They are in real danger!'

Long before he had finished speaking, the man had turned his horse and was galloping down the track, as fast as he had come, towards the little cluster of houses we could discern in the hollow below us. That young man was Dennis O'Rourke, the eldest son of a Selector further up the valley, and the poor fellow was found, ten days later, dead, entangled in the branches of a gum tree, twenty miles below Barranda Township, with a stirrup iron bent round his left foot, and scarcely half a mile from his own selection gate. Without doubt he had been overtaken by the flood before he could reach his wife to give her the alarm. In consequence, the water caught her unprepared, she was never seen again, and only one of her children escaped alive; their homestead, which stood on the banks of the creek, was washed clean off the face of the earth, and when I rode down that way on my pony, after the flood had subsided, it would have been impossible to distinguish the place where it had once stood.

But to return to my narrative. O'Rourke had not left us five minutes before the rumbling had increased to a roar, almost like that of thunder. And every second it was growing louder. Then, with a suddenness no man could imagine who has never seen such a thing, a solid wall of water, shining like silver in the moonlight, came into view, seemed to pause for a moment, and then swept trees, houses, cattle, haystacks, fences, and even large boulders before it like so much driftwood. Within a minute of making its appearance it had spread out across the valley, and, most marvellous part of all, had risen half way up the hill, and was throwing a line of yeast-like foam upon our garden path. A few seconds later we distinctly heard it catch the devoted township, and the crashing and rending sound it made was awful to hear. Then the noise ceased, and only a swollen sheet of angry water, stretching away across the valley for nearly a mile and a half was to be seen. Such a flood no man in the district, and I state this authoritatively, had ever in his life experienced before. Certainly I have not seen one like it since. And the brilliant moonlight only intensified the terrible effect.

Having assured himself that we had nothing to fear, my father ordered me off to bed, and reluctantly I went—only to lie curled up in