McKeith paused, and the dark look came upon his face.

'And Leura-Jimmy?' put in Bridget.

'Oh, he was a fine, big fellow--plausible, too, and could speak pidgin
English--he was never weaned from his tribe, and he was a treacherous
scoundrel at heart. . . . As a precautionary measure, my father forbade
the blacks to come up to the head-station. But Jimmy fell in love with
the eldest of the half-caste girls. She encouraged him at first, then
took up with one of the stock-boys. . . .

'It was the bunya season again, and the girls' old tribe, under their
King Mograbar--a devil incarnate in a brute--I sent him to Hell
afterwards with my own hand and never did a better deed'--McKeith's
brown fists clenched and the fury in his eyes blazed so that he himself
looked almost devilish for a moment. His face remained very grim and
dour as he proceeded.

'Jimmy had got to know through the half-caste girl about our ways and
doings, and he made a diabolic plot with King Mograbar to get the
blacks into the house. . . . Every living soul was murdered . . .surprised
in their sleep . . . My father . . . my mother . . . my
sisters . . . God! . . . I can't speak of it. . . .'

He got up abruptly, jerking his long legs, and went to the further end
of the veranda, where he stood with set features and brows like a red
bar, below which staring eyes were fixed vacantly upon the avenue of
bunya trees in the long walk of the Botanical Gardens across the river.
But they did not see those bunya trees. What they saw was a row of
mutilated bodies, lying stark along the veranda of that head-station on