"You'll come round and see us again, will you ?" So Frank fares back to Toonarbin, wondering where Lee has gone.

But Black-hair goes back into the hut, and taking his parrot from the bedplace, puts it on his shoulder, and sits rubbing his knees before the fire.

Yellow-hair and the hut-keeper are now in loud conversation, and the former is asking, in a loud, authoritative tone (the neat man being outside), "whether a chap is to be hunted and badgered out of his bed by a parcel of -- -- parsons ?" To which the Hut-keeper says, "No, by -- --! A man might as well be in barracks again." Yellowhair, morally comforted and sustained by this opinion, is proceeding to say, that, for his part, a parson is a useless sort of animal in general, who gets his living by frightening old women, but that this particular parson is an unusually offensive specimen, and that there is nothing in this world that he (Yellow-hair) would like better than to have him out in front of the house for five minutes, and see who was best man,--when Black-hair, usually a taciturn, peaceable fellow, astonishes the pair by turning his black eyes on the other, and saying, with lowering eyebrows,-- "You d----d humbug! Talk about fighting him! Always talking about fighting a chap when he is out of the way, when you know you've no more fight in you than a bronsewing.

Why, he'd kill you, if you only waited for him to hit you! And see here: if you don't stop your jaw about him, you'll have to fight me, and that's a little more than you're game for, I'm thinking." This last was told me by the man distinguished above as "the neat man," who was standing outside, and heard the whole.
But Frank arrived in due time at Toonarbin, and found all there much as he had left it, save that Mary Hawker had recovered her serenity, and was standing expecting him, with Charles by her side.

Sam asked him, "Where was Lee ?" and Frank, thinking more of other things, said he had left him at the hut, not thinking it worth while to mention the circumstance of his having been called out--a circumstance which became of great significance hereafter; for, though we never found out for certain who the man was, we came in the end to have strong suspicions.
However, as I said, all clouds had cleared from the Toonarbin atmosphere, and, after a pleasant meal, Frank, Major and Mrs.Buckley, Sam, and Charles Hawker, rode home to Baroona under the forest arches, and reached the house in the gathering twilight.
The boys were staying behind at the stable as the three elders entered the darkened sitting-room.