LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 233, 9 March 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

NAVVIES’ TALES. THE PINK HEATH. (From the Australian Journal.) It is many years since the following events occurred, and I do not suppose that many of my readers will be able to recall them; but I do not think that a case has since been heard of in Victoria that created an interest so entirely general and absorbing while it lasted. It happened in the Western District, at a place then, and still called Narraburra, a cattle station adjoining a small township of the same name. Narraburra was owned by a Mr Edgar, a widower, with one only child, a daughter, named Minnie, who was the heroine in this sad tragedy. Minnie Edgar was eighteen years old, and a fine healthy girl, though not perhaps handsomer than any other lively country girl of her class. She was good tempered and kind to those employed on her father’s station, and a general favorite with all classes, and at the same time almost the idol of her quiet parent. Well, one day, Minnie having told the old woman who had been cook and housekeeper before her mother’s death, that she was going down to catch John, the mailman, at the boundary-fence road, hastily put on her hat, and ran down across the home paddock like a deer. She never returned. Hour after hour passed, and Mr Edgar returned from .one of the out-stations, but Minnie came not back; at at last the whole station was alarmed, and every man of it on horseback in search. In vain all. Minnie Edgar never returned. Nor could any trace of her be discovered.

There was a pretty little wooden police station but a few miles distant, and two men stationed at it, but they could find no trace or tidings of the lost girl, any more than could the unprofessional searchers. One only had seen her after she left the homestead and that was John, the mailman. But as you will hear his account in the course of my story, I need not give it here. We had at' that time a man named Dan Scully in the detective force at Melbourne, and it is a name remembered to this day as that of one of the acutest men who has ever carried a card in these colonies. He was a strange character, was Dan, and a puzzling one to a stranger, with some of the oddest peculiarities of manner, natural and affected, that one could imagine. Dan was, of course, an Irishman, but that did not prevent him from being one of the quietest seeming men you could come in contact with. And he was, to look at, stupid and absent-minded to such a degree that it required no great stretch of imagination to fancy him half idiotic. On his keenest scents he wore the aspect of a weakminded individual, absorbed in some silly personal investigation, or of one half asleep, just as he chose to arrange it, and many a criminal has this apparent stupidity put off his guard, to his own destruction. So it was Dan Scully who was selected to proceed to the scene of Minnie Edgar’s loss, and to investigate this Narraburra mystery ; and, riding a good horse, and wearing a plaitv dark tweed suit, Dan at last dismounted a t the door of Mr Edgar’s homestead. It so happened that no one but the old cook was at home on his arrival, but that was a matter of very little consequence to honest Dan. He was used to making himself at home under all circumstances, and having led his horse into the stable, took off the saddle and bridle, hunted up the feed and hay, and made the animal comfortable before he looked around him at all.

While tumbling over some bags of chaff for the purpose of getting at some oats in the corner of an outhouse, Dan nearly fell over an old-looking, grizzled rough terrier dog that lay coiled up on some hay, and who whined piteously when he was disturbed. Dan was fond of dogs, and you may depend on it that no good man or woman ever lived who was not fond of them ; and how well the faithful creatures recognise their friends in the very first glance at a kindly face ! ‘ Hallo, old fellow ! what’s up with you ?’ said Dan, quietly, as he stooped down and removed a bag he had let fall on the poor animal. “Not able to get up, eh ? Why you are bad, poor chap. ’ The dog tried to rise, and wagged his tail as he looked up into his new friend’s face ; but the poor animal seemed to have lost the use of his hind quarters, and \ aiuly attempted to struggle up. Dan Scully had been a good deal accustomed to dealing with dogs, and he examined the animal gently to satisfy himself that his complaint was a hurt in the back. The bone was not broken, but there was evidence of a violent blow in one spot, where the poor creature could not bear the lightest touch without whining. Dan spoke kindly to the suffering dog, and took the tin which stood on the ground near him away in his hand to find fresh water with which to replenish it; and when he had found it and returned, he watched the quadruped lap it gladly, with a bright and intelligent smile that his two-footed acquaintances very rarely saw upon the countenance of Dan Scully. By this time Jane the housekeeper had become aware that a stranger was making himself very much at home in the stableyard, and she was standing at the kitchen door watching him, when at length the detective coolly walked across the yard, stepped past her into the kitchen, and took possession of the first empty seat that presented itself.

Jane was rather puzzled. She was a middle-aged woman, with the evident effects of a great grief in her pallid, colourless face. She was not a nervous woman by any means, but as she watched Dan remove his hat and pass his thick fingers through a quantity of rough black hair, as he stared vacantly at the tins on the opposite wall, she didn’t half like it.

* Did you want to see Mr Edgar, sir ?’ she asked, anxiously; and Dan turned his lacklustre eyes on her without seeming to understand the question. *Mr Edgar is not at home, sir ; we don’t expect him till evening. ’ ‘Time enough,’ said Dan, absently, as he got up to hang his hat on a nail over his head ; ‘ meantime, I’ll thank you for something to eat.* Of course Jane set about getting him something to eat; and it would have been a strange study for an onlooker to see with what apparent ease Dan set her to talk of her lost darling, and how carelessly he listened to the whole story, though the tears were dropping on the white tablecloth long before Dan had finished his meal.

* A sweeter girl never lived, nor a better,’ she said, * and she was just the same to me as though she was my own. Mine were the first arms she ever lay in, and mine were the last eyes that ever looked on her in this house. Yes, it was just about this very time that she ran in here to me, poor dear, looking for her hat to run down to catch Jack the mailman. You can see him coming down the hill a good half hour before he gets to our boundary road. Look, there’s Jack now, ’ and the woman pointed from the door to the figure of a man on horseback trotting quietly down the distant track. Dan lifted his hat from the nail, put it on his head, and without one word walked through the passage, out the front door, and down the paddock in the direction of the boundary fence. He had been a good listener to Jane, and asked a few questions, and when he left the house he followed, almost step by step, the path taken by Minnie Edgar as she left her home. Down across the paddock until it skirted the bush, and then Dan crawled through the three-rail fence into the scattered bush where Jane had told him that the young girl was so fond of going, and from whence she was so fond of bringing the bunches of pink heath, that still decorated the parlour at the homestead.

But Scully did not penetrate the forest; he kept near the fence, only making himself acquainted with the general lay of the ground, as he hastened to the boundary fence to intercept John the mailman, to whom he was anxious to speak. John was a steady-going old chap, who trotted along quietly on his strong horse, not at all hurrying himself in his delivery of Her Majesty’s mails, and caring very little indeed about the complaints not unfrequently made about his tardiness. When he saw a stranger get through Edgar’s fence and stop in the middle of the road, as if waiting for him, he pulled up in nearly the same spot he had been wont to do when Minnie Edgar came flying to meet him, with her glossy hair tossing about, and her rosy cheeks flushed with running. * Did you want to speak to me, sir V he asked.

‘Yes, 5 said Dan, ‘ you are John the mailman, aren’t you ?’ ‘ That’s what they call me —yes.’ ‘ Just take a look at that, will you?’and Dan handed his well-guarded card for John’s inspection. ‘ Oh, I see ! You’re here about this poor girl. Ah, I’m afeard she’ll never turn up, never. Yes, yes, I was the last as seen her alive, as far as is yet known.’ ‘Just tell me all about it,’ said Dan; ‘ that’s to say, if you have time. Tell me what clothes she had on, and all you can remember.’

‘Aye, aye. I’ve told the story often enough, and I never pass this corner without thinking of her pretty face. Many a shilling I’ve had to drink her health because I’d wait a minute or two if I saw her coming. I’m blest if I don’t think she used to write five or six letters every week.’ ‘ Was it to bring you a letter she came that last day ?’ asked Dan. ‘lt was so; and she had on a little white hat with a blue ribbon on it, and a light print dress, and she laughed as she gave me the letter, for it had a great blot of ink right in the middle of it; she had been in such a hurry, she said.’ * Do you remember the address ?’

* Lord bless you, yes ! I saw it too often to forget it in a hurry. The letters was always to a “Miss Anna Latham, 94, Bark street, Hotham,” a young lady as was a schoolmate, I believe, and as used to come to Narraburra on a visit every summer regular.’ Dan made a note of this address, and with an adroit question set John’s tongue agog again. ‘Yes, she went straight back again, as far as I could see her, for I looked back as I crossed the creek bridge, and I seed her dress a-flying in the Creek Bush. She was a great one for flowers, and sometimes had a rare bit of fun when old Towzer would start a ’possum in one of them old stumps. Now I think on it, I wonder what’s become of old Towzer. ’

‘ls Towzer an old grey terrier ? I saw him up at the homestead. Was Towzer with the girl that last day ?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied the madman, thoughtfully. ‘ I don’t remember seeing him, but he might be, for all that, for he is a great dog for the bush. I’m blest if I ever gave it a thought before, but now I think on it, I’m a’most sure I heard Towzer barking when I looked back from the bridge.’

Dan went home from his interview with the mailman, as quiet and stupid-looking as ever ; but he went straight to the stable, resaddled his horse, and led him into the yard. Just as he was going to mount, Jane come out and wonderingly asked if he was not going to wait for Mr Edgar’s return, and when Dan said no, asked again what name she should mention to her master. ‘ I’ll tell him all about it when I come back,’ replied Scully, as he mounted and rode away. It was two or three days before he returned, and much curiosity had been evinced at the station of Narraburra as to his business. On the third day, about dinner-time, Mr Edgar was standing listlessly on the verandah of his house, looking restlessly at every point of the compass in succession, as if waiting the return of his child, and every now and then abruptly addressing a young man who leaned against the pillar of the verandah near him.

This young man was soft-looking, and fair haired. His slight moustache and silky whiskers were of a light shade of brown, his eyes large and grey. His features were good, though rather delicate for a man, but he was of a hue so pallid and so worn-looking, as to suggest some great grief—a restless mind and sleepless night. His figure was slight, but firmly built, and he was dressed in breeches and boots, as one accustomed to the saddle.

‘ Is she never coming !’ at last burst from the bereaved father. *My God, it is a month now—this very day—since she left. I would forgive her, though ’twould be hard, even if she brought a husband with her. If you, Fred,’ and he turned his fierce, wild eyes on his companion, ‘if you had been Minnie’s husband, this would never have happened !’ The young man’s eye fell beneath the terrible gaze, and his white lips grew rigid, as he answered, ‘lt was not my fault that I was not, sir. ’ 'No; I know it was your wish, as it was mine, Fred, but you frightened her with your vehemence. You must have done ; you should have had more patience. ’

To be continued.