making her way through Boul Boul to the Lakes' entrance, and thence intending probably to go to the Mission Station, when she was overtaken by the murderers of Paddy, and cut down from behind by a blow of a tomahawk, and then secreted in the manner described.
Such is the story current among the blacks, and it seems to be highly probable. The two men, Charley and William, were certainly the last persons known to be with the deceased, and one, if not both, is capable of perpetrating the greatest atrocities.
No traces of Paddy were ever found. I expect he was too carefully pegged down in the Lakes ever to come to light before the conger eels disposed of him. But one of the blacks thought he had found Paddy's bones. It was thus: He had, he said, been down at the edge of the Lakes (on the opposite side to where Kitty was found), and had climbed up a tree to look in a hole, to ascertain if a 'possum were there. He heard a strange whistle. 'Hallo,' he said, 'name that?' The whistle was repeated. The blackfellow—Tanko-willun—looked all round about. At last he looked down on the ground, on the opposite side of the tree to that on which he had climbed up. The whistle was repeated again. 'Ko-ki! Bring' (Hallo! bones). The whistle was again heard. Tanko-willun climbed down the tree, and looked at the bones, 'Ko-ki! Bringa Kurni' (Hallo! blackfellow's bones). Then he know what it all meant—it was his brother (cousin) Paddy whistling to him to tell him where his bones were lying. He said it must be so, because 'He know 'em that one whistle belonging to Paddy.'
I believe he thought the whitefellows very stupid when a medical man who examined them said they were blackfellow's bones, but must have been lying exposed many years.
Whatever might have been the fate of Paddy Policeman, that of Kitty could scarcely be matter for doubt. Her life seems to have been a chain of tragical events. When a small child, her tribe were hunted by the whites in revenge of the murder of a stockman, 'Dan,' at the Murray River, and a bullet which passed through and wounded her mother also broke poor Bolgan's thigh. She was always afterwards lame, and hence her English name—Hopping Kitty. Her father was shot, and she herself carried off by Tommy. Her captor was shot when she was rescued by her relatives, and, finally, she fell a victim, there can be little doubt, in the revenging of an old blood feud."
END OF FIRST VOLUME.
