LITMIR.BIZ

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round the bend of the hill and galloped up the path. His horse was white with foam, and as he drew up before the steps he shouted wildly, —

      'The flood is coming down the valley. Fly for your lives.'

      My father only laughed – a little scornfully, I thought – and said, in his odd, mocking voice, —

      'No flood will touch us here, my friend, but if you are anxious to do humanity a service, you had better hasten on and warn the folk in the township below us. They are in real danger!'

      Long before he had finished speaking, the man had turned his horse and was galloping down the track, as fast as he had come, towards the little cluster of houses we could discern in the hollow below us. That young man was Dennis O'Rourke, the eldest son of a Selector further up the valley, and the poor fellow was found, ten days later, dead, entangled in the branches of a gum tree, twenty miles below Barranda Township, with a stirrup iron bent round his left foot, and scarcely half a mile from his own selection gate. Without doubt he had been overtaken by the flood before he could reach his wife to give her the alarm. In consequence, the water caught her unprepared, she was never seen again, and only one of her children escaped alive; their homestead, which stood on the banks of the creek, was washed clean off the face of the earth, and when I rode down that way on my pony, after the flood had subsided, it would have been impossible to distinguish the place where it had once stood.

      But to return to my narrative. O'Rourke had not left us five minutes before the rumbling had increased to a roar, almost like that of thunder. And every second it was growing louder. Then, with a suddenness no man could imagine who has never seen such a thing, a solid wall of water, shining like silver in the moonlight, came into view, seemed to pause for a moment, and then swept trees, houses, cattle, haystacks, fences, and even large boulders before it like so much driftwood. Within a minute of making its appearance it had spread out across the valley, and, most marvellous part of all, had risen half way up the hill, and was throwing a line of yeast-like foam upon our garden path. A few seconds later we distinctly heard it catch the devoted township, and the crashing and rending sound it made was awful to hear. Then the noise ceased, and only a swollen sheet of angry water, stretching away across the valley for nearly a mile and a half was to be seen. Such a flood no man in the district, and I state this authoritatively, had ever in his life experienced before. Certainly I have not seen one like it since. And the brilliant moonlight only intensified the terrible effect.

      Having assured himself that we had nothing to fear, my father ordered me off to bed, and reluctantly I went – only to lie curled up in my warm blankets thinking of the waters outside, and repicturing the effect produced upon my mind by O'Rourke's sensational arrival. It was the first time I had ever seen a man under the influence of a life-and-death excitement, and, imaginative child as I was, the effect it produced on my mind was not one to be easily shaken off. Then I must have fallen asleep, for I have no recollection of anything else till I was awakened in the middle of the night by the noise of people entering my room. Half-asleep and half-awake I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and blinking at the brightness of the candle my father carried in his hand. Old Betty was with him, and behind them, carrying a bundle in his arms, stalked a tall, thin man with a grey beard, long hair and a white, solemn face. His clothes, I noticed, were sopping wet, and a stream of water marked his progress across the floor.

      'Take James out and put the child in his place,' said my father, coming towards my bed. The man advanced, and Betty lifted me out and placed me on a chair. The bundle was then tucked up where I had been, and, when that had been done, Betty turned to me.

      'Jim,' she said, 'you must be a good boy and give no trouble, and I'll make you up a nice bed in the corner.' This was accordingly done, and when it was ready I was put into it, and in five minutes had forgotten the interruption and was fast asleep once more.

      As usual, directly there was light in the sky, I woke and looked about me. To my surprise, however, for I had for the moment forgotten the strange waking of the night, I found myself, not in my own place, but on a pile of rugs in the corner. Wondering what this might mean, I looked across at my bed, half-expecting to find it gone. But no! There it stood, sure enough, with an occupant I could not remember ever to have seen before – a little rose-leaf of a girl, at most not more than four years old. Like myself she was sitting up, staring with her great blue eyes, and laughing from under a tangled wealth of golden curls at my astonishment. Her little pink and white face, so charmingly dimpled, seemed prettier than anything I had ever seen or dreamed of before; but I did not know what to make of it all, and, boy-like, was inordinately shy. Seeing this, and not being accustomed to be slighted, the little minx climbed out of bed, and, with her tiny feet peeping from beneath one of my flannel night-shirts, came running across to where I lay. Then standing before me, her hands behind her back, she said in a baby voice – that I can hear now even after twenty years, —

      'I'se Sheilah!'

      And that was my introduction to the good angel of my life. Five minutes later we were playing together on the floor as if we had been friends for years instead of minutes. And when Betty came into the room, according to custom, to carry me off to my bath, her first remark was one which has haunted me all my life, and will go on doing so until I die.

      'Pretty dears,' she cried, 'sure they're just made for each other.'

      And so we were!

      It was not until some time later that I learnt how it was that old McLeod and his baby daughter came to be under our roof that night. This was the reason of it. The man and his wife, it appears, were but new arrivals in the colony, and were coming out our way to settle. They were finishing their last day's stage down the valley when the flood caught the bullock dray, drowned his wife and all the cattle, and well-nigh finished the father and child, who were carried for miles clinging to a tree, to be eventually washed up before our house. My father, standing in the verandah, heard a cry for help, and waded out into the water just in time to save them. Having done this he brought them up to the house, and, as there was nowhere else to put her, I was turned out and Sheilah was given my bed.

      Next morning a foaming sea of water cut us off from the township, or what few houses remained of it, and for this reason it was manifestly impossible that old McLeod could continue his journey. I remember that poor, little motherless Sheilah and I played together all day long in the verandah, as happy as two birds, while her father watched us from a deep chair, with grave, tear-stained eyes. In the death of his wife he had sustained a grievous loss, from which somehow I don't think he ever thoroughly recovered.

      Three days later the water fell as rapidly as it had risen, and as soon as it had sufficiently abated, McLeod, having thanked my father for his hospitality, which I could not help thinking had been grudgingly enough bestowed, took Sheilah in his arms, right up from the middle of our play, and tramped off, a forlorn black figure, down the path towards the township. As far as the turn of the track, and until the scrub timber hid her from my gaze, I could see the little mite waving her hand to me in farewell.

      That week McLeod purchased Gregory's farm on the other side of the township, and installed himself in the house on the knoll overlooking the river, taking care this time to choose a position that was safely out of water reach. Once he had settled in, I was as often to be found there as at my own home, and continued to be Sheilah's constant companion and playmate from that time forward.

      And so the years went by, every one finding us firmer friends. It was I who held her while she took her first ride upon the old grey pony McLeod bought for the boy to run up the milkers on. It was I who taught her to row the cranky old tub they called a boat on the Long Reach; it was I who baited the hook that caught her first fish; it was I who taught her the difference in the nests in the trees behind the homestead, and how to distinguish between the birds that built them; in everything I was her guide, philosopher and her constant friend. And surely there never was so sweet a child to teach as Sheilah – her quickness was extraordinary, and, bush-bred boy though I was, it was not long before she was my equal at everything where strength was not absolutely required. By the time she was twelve and I sixteen, she could have beaten any other girl in the township at anything they pleased, and, what made them the more jealous, her beauty was becoming more and more developed every day. Even in the hottest sun her sweet complexion seemed to take no hurt, and now the hair, that I remembered curling closely round her head on the morning

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