Everything was now ready, and, when Dad carried in the side-boards of the dray and placed them on boxes for seat accommodation, the clergyman awaited his congregation, which had collected at the back-door. Anderson stepped in; the rest followed, timid-looking, and stood round the room till the clergyman motioned them to sit. They sat and watched him closely.
"We'll now join in singing hymn 499," said the parson, commencing to sing himself. The congregation listened attentively, but did n't join in.
The parson jerked his arms encouragingly at them, which only made them the more uneasy. They did n't understand. He snapped his arms harder, as he lifted his voice to the rafters; still they only stared. At last Dad thought he saw through him. He bravely stood up and looked hard at the others. They took the hint and rose clumsily to their feet, but just then the hymn closed, and, as no one seemed to know when to sit again, they remained standing.
They were standing when a loud whip-crack sounded close to the house, and a lusty voice roared:
"Wah Tumbler! Wah Tumbler! Gee back, Brandy! Gee back, you----!----!!----!!!"People smiled. Then a team of bullocks appeared on the road. The driver drawled, "Wa-a-a-y!" and the team stopped right in front of the door.
The driver lifted something weighty from the dray and struggled to the verandah with it and dropped it down. It was a man. The bullock-driver, of course, did n't know that a religious service was being conducted inside, and the chances are he did n't much care. He only saw a number of faces looking out, and talked at them.
"I've a ---- cove here," he said, "that I found lying on the ---- plain.
Gawd knows what's up with him--I don't. A good square feed is about what he wants, I reckon." Then he went back for the man's swag.
Dad, after hesitating, rose and went out. The others followed like a flock of sheep; and the "shepherd" brought up the rear. Church was out.
It gathered around the seeming corpse, and stared hard at it. Dad and Dave spoke at the same time.
"Why," they said, "it's the cove with the bear-skin cap!" Sure enough it was. The clergyman knelt down and felt the man's pulse; then went and brought a bottle from his valise--he always carried the bottle, he said, in case of snake-bite and things like that--and poured some of the contents down the man's throat. The colour began to come to the man's face. The clergyman gave him some more, and in a while the man opened his eyes.
They rested on Dad, who was bending benignly over him. He seemed to recognise Dad. He stared for some time at him, then said something in a feeble whisper, which the clergyman interpreted--"He wishes you--" looking at Dad--"to get what's in his swag if he dies." Dad nodded, and his thoughts went sadly back to the day he turned the poor devil out of the barn.
They carried the man inside and placed him on the sofa. But soon he took a turn. He sank quickly, and in a few moments he was dead. In a few moments more nearly everyone had gone.
"While you are here," Dad said to the clergyman, in a soft voice, "I'll open the swag." He commenced to unroll it--it was a big blanket--and when he got to the end there were his own trousers--the lost ones, nothing more. Dad's eyes met Mother's; Dave's met Sal's; none of them spoke. But the clergyman drew his own conclusions; and on the following Sunday, at Nobby-Nobby, he preached a stirring sermon on that touching bequest of the man with the bear-skin cap.
