CHAPTER XLIV.
HOW MARY HAWKER HEARD THE NEWS.
Troubridge's Station, Toonarbin, lay so far back from the river, and so entirely on the road to nowhere, that Tom used to remark, that he would back it for being the worst station for news in the country.

So it happened that while these terrible scenes were enacting within ten miles of them, down, in fact, to about one o'clock in the day when the bushrangers were overtaken and punished, Mary and her cousin sat totally unconscious of what was going on.
But about eleven o'clock that day, Burnside, the cattle dealer, mentioned once before in these pages, arrived at Major Buckley's, from somewhere up country, and found the house apparently deserted.
But having coee'd for some time, a door opened in one of the huts, and a sleepy groom came forth, yawning.
"Where are they all ?" asked Burnside.
"Mrs.Buckley and the women were down at Mrs.Mayford's, streaking the bodies out," he believed.

"The rest were gone away after the gang." This was the first that Burnside had heard about the matter.

And now, bit by bit, he extracted everything from the sleepy groom.
I got him afterwards to confess to me, that when he heard of this terrible affair, his natural feeling of horror was considerably alloyed with pleasure.

He saw here at one glance a fund of small talk for six months.