“Poor child!” murmured the woman; “perhaps he couldn’t help it, Jacob.”
“Um,” said Jacob. “I thought you said it wuz a native cat arter the fowls?”
“Well, I wuz frightened, an’ I thought you wuz goin’ to whale me.”
“How were you goin’ to cook them chickens?”
“You wasn’t! What, then, goin’ to sell ’em?”
“My God, Jacob,” exclaimed the farmer’s wife, “the poor boy’s starving! Can’t you see the wolfish look in his eye?”
Tom glared and looked as famished as he could.
“Look ’ere,” cried the farmer, “where is this cove Smith’s place on the Richmond?”
“It’s about Lismore,” said Tom, readily, “at the beginning of the Big Scrub. Ain’t you ever been there?”
“No,” said the farmer, still keeping a firm grip of the pirate’s coat collar, “an’ I doubt if you ’ave either. How did you get down to Lismore?”
“I got lilly-pillys outer the bush, an’ berries, an’ I uster pull corn cobs an’ roast ’em over a fire an’ uster get a drink of milk at the dairy farms in the mornin’.”
“Ah! Weren’t the police looking for you in Lismore?”
“I dunno. I never went into the town. I stayed in the scrub till it was dark an’ then I got acrost the bridge an’ sneaked on to a boat that wuz goin’ out to Sydney. I meant to go right down in ’er, but they found me out an’ put me off at Woodburn, an’ I walked acrost an’ sneaked on the punt at Chatsworth, an’ kem on this side of the Clarence. I been prowlin’ about the bush ever since.”
“Why didn’t you go into the towns and look for work or something?”
“Because I wuz waitin’ for it to blow over. I thought my boss up there above Lismore might put an advertisement in the paper or set the police onter me.”
“Hum,” said the farmer. “It’s either a true bill, or your the cleverest voting liar outer gaol at the present moment.”
“I ain’t no liar,” protested the pirate: “I ain’t. An’ its true, every word.”
“You ain’t goin’ to give me up?” asked Tom, anxiously. “I say, mister, don’t give a cove up.”
“Don’t!” pleaded Tom; “please _don’t_. Look, I won’t never shake any more fowls, I won’t. Only I don’t want to ’ave to go back to that Smith up there above Lismore, an’ get knocked about.”
The farmer’s wife was regarding the culprit with pity.
“I’m nearly dead,” he murmured woefully; “I’m empty as a ’oller log.”