He sat for some time, and was beginning to think that he would like a smoke, so he got out his knife preparatory to cutting tobacco.
The hut stood at the top of a lone gully, stretching away in a vista, nearly bare of trees for a width of about ten yards or so, all the way down, which gave it the appearance of a grass-ride, walled on each side by tall dark forest; looking down this, our hutkeeper saw, about a quarter of a mile off, a horseman cross from one side to the other.
He only caught a momentary glimpse of him, but that was enough to show him that it was a stranger.

He neither knew horse nor man, at least judging by his dress; and while he was still puzzling his brains as to what stranger would be coming to such an out-of-the-way place, he heard the "Chuck, kuk, kuk, kuk," of an opossum close behind the hut, and started to his feet.
It would of course have startled any bushman to hear an opossum cry in broad day, but he knew what this meant well.

It was the arranged signal of his gang, and he ran to the place from whence the sound came.
George Hawker was there--well dressed, sitting on a noble chestnut horse.

They greeted one another with a friendly curse.
As is my custom, when recording the conversation of this class of worthies, I suppress the expletives, thereby shortening them by nearly one half, and depriving the public of much valuable information.
"Well, old man," began Hawker, "is the coast clear ?" "No one here but myself," replied the other.

"I'm hut-keeping here for one Bill Lee, but he is away.