CHAPTER. II.
AND there were the Channings—old [Harry and his wife, the first married couple engaged on Runnibede, and what a lot of years they must have spent there. Old Harry was killed at last, which was just as well, perhaps, by a kick from a horse while nearly blind with sandy blight—llarry, I mean, not the, horse. And the missus, as he ealled her, died shortly after, but not, I fancy, from anything corresponding with grief at the loss of Harry; and though they were on Runnibede for quite half a century, I don’t suppose either of them were ever further than the bark of a dog from the smoke of the head station, or ever got on the baek of a horse! And Harry, I remember, always counted himself among ‘‘bushmen.’’ Yet, 1 suppose, it would have been hard to class him as anything else, for truly he lived—in a way—and died there—in a rather unusual way, A queer couple if ever there was one, Hired to work for the Gover- nor by Billy Handcock of Drayton, publican, store- keeper, commission agent, and Parliamentarian before separation, the Channiags turned up at Runnibede late one evening on a bullock dray. And how excited and brimful they were of adventures with the blaeks on the way out! So frightened of their lives had they been that I recollect them telling the Gevernor they would stay and work on the station for ever, without pay, rather than face a 24
