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Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10333, 29 April 1899, Page 3

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k En-mo Dtsok, » mi Aaoos. f / "So long, mother." {'. "So long, Alfle. Where to this trip?" I "Up Sydney side." 1 "And you are going shearing, my boy." f "My word! Goin* t' find dad, an' -get a I job, an' bring home hecjps an* heaps, o' money." The youngster waved his hand, and hitched *up lus swrff with a professional twist of tho shoulders, and the mother sighed deeply as she gazed after her baby boy trotting down the paddock "playing dad." He was a sturdy round-limbed little * fellow of six, brown-eyed end brown of face, i her darling and her one companion. and comfort on the lonely, selection. Alf had a tiny swag at his back, carried a blackened billy in his hand, and on his head was an old felt hat of his father's. The boy, having no child companion, amused himself day after day "playing dad." Sometimes he took his toy "tommyhawk" on his shoulder, and was a great man going splitting or clearing; at others, he made himself a swag, and went off on the w»ll-*by as far as tho bottom of the paddock, shearing, he said. Alf Hunt, the elder, had been absent for some months amongst the stations in Western New South Wales. The selection needed money; it demanded much labour, and gave the young couple little in return for their hard work. These shearing trips were necessary, and although Hunt hated to leave lus wife and boy* he went because needs must when a certain club-footed per- - sonage holds the ribbons. "So long, mother!" Mrs Hunt heard the boy's voice calling as she returned 1 to her work within the house, praying in her heart that the son might never be called upon to perform in earnest the roles that he loved best in play. -The mother delighted to think of-the settlement as a smiling, well-stocked farm in the days to come, when Alf would be a man, and f>he prayed the hard, lonely hours that had been hers might never fall to the lot of the wife of her boy. Mrs Hunt was tall and dark, delicatelooking for a selector's wife; but for all that a strong, spirited woman, who did her duty with a certain pride and with an abiding belief in the better times coming. Her world contained no people of interest apart from Alf the father and Alfie the son, and the hardest day was never wholly without sunshine because of the little lad she loved to serve, and whose education was the pleasure of her spare moments. Many a crumpled, ink-stained letter had Alf written to Dad in those square print capitals she taught him to trace, and which cantered over the paper like a drunken and dissolute alphabet. It was more than an hour later when Mrs Hunt thought it time for the "shearer" - to be returning. She went to the door, and looked down the paddock, expecting to see him under the old lightwood "camping." The boy was not there. He was nowhere In sight A chill fear struck to the mother's heart, and she hastened to the creek, calling Alfie's name as she ran. No answer came back to her, and no'trace of the child was to be seen. Mrs Hunt ran. from one point to another, calling in a piteous voice, and her fear grew upon ncr as she ran. She searched every . nook where he might have hidden from her in play; and then, after an hour had been spent, and when the shadow of the range lay like a bad omen on the land, she abandoned herself to the awful belief that, her boy was bushed: One poor hope returned, and down the Winding cart track between the great gums . the raced to the house of the nearest neigh- " pour, a mile and a half away. , . It was a oHcrtracted woman that broke into Uanagan's kitchen with the fierce cry:— "AMe! AJfie! Is he here? Oh, for the love of God, say-he is here!" j - y Managan took her gently by the arms. •Whist, Mrs Hunt, ma'am, said be,, in an anxious voice. "Sure the -boy ain't' here, but he'll be well, ma'am; he'll be well." . - "Ho is lost. Quick, quick! On! be i quick—he is lost, and the night's coming

A minute later One of Managan's boys was cantering about the district on, "an ; amwed cai't horse, calling out, the settlers., ■* "Mrs Hunt*e. hoy's at the . "creek fork!" '' :,;>"-* >■ ;" ' ' Tho news travelled with electric speed, ' and although the time seemed interminable to the anguished mother, in less than half an hour a party had started out in. one ,', direction", and, before an hour hod-sped three other parties were beating the bushlan'.l towards several points. ';, The men Waarched through the night, > and Mrs Hunt sought with the foremost, • and in the dark recesses of the,bush on the slope of the range, her voice was heard j • calling the boy's name in accents that wrung •very heart. • I At daybreak she was back at the house, | , ' driven by the wild hope that he . had .'". f . wandered home, or that the search had ' ■.*: been successful in another direction. Her : (- skirt hung in ribbons, her. face was lacerl ited by tho dry twigs in the scrub, and her £' thick, black hair fell about her shoulders, > strongly accenting the pallor of her h-md- " tome face, tragic in its agony, * ■ £ ■ - One man htftWoimd All's little swag, but ~-. nothing had been seen of the boy. There : "' was some hope in the discovery, and the <- mother started off again at the head-of •aother party, 1 refusing meat and drink, sus-.- -.'>••- tanned only by the fierce hope to which she , dung.'

The scorch was prolonged throughout that k dreadful day,, a day of furnace heat, and i of unspeakable agony to Mrs Hunt, who recalled a score of true stories —stories

v '. she had told her boy— o$ brave men per- -,' ishing in the bush and on the widespread £ tins, leaving nothing for the world to ow their poor bones- by but a sad or •'"■-•" irimly jocund message scratched on a billy- ; VScl; or some beloved trmket Sha. never' '!■■:'■ spoke throughout that long struggle, and to the men she looked, in her "rags and her_ i wildness. like ah incarnation of the desola-' tion of the range. Through the next day and the next nigbt . 'they .searched, and the *eearch was cont ; ■'• thmed with e-jual vigour, even when the ■'" only hope left was that they might find the little body for Christian burial. The search was vain.- At the, end of ten days when Hunt.returned (called home by a letter that seemed to burn dry the very - wou-spring of hope and joy within his heart), and found his wife raving in the delirium of brain fever, no further sign of his lost son had been discovered. Mrs Hunt was nursed back to health, and henceforward the -mother and father spent one Sunday afternoon after another , for a year or more seeking the remains of their boy. It seemed that every foot of , country within five miles of their house had been searched over again and again, but the boy had disappeared completely, mysteriously, so mysteriously, indeed, that there , were those in the district who called in eld world superstitions to account for the loss, said talked of banshees and elves. Others believed the boy had been carried off, and might yet be returned to his mother, upon whom this sorrow had fallen heavily. Hunt never forgot his boy, and wherever bis- work led him his quest was always before him, and he looked.into every hollow tree he passed and under every bush, in the hope of discovering some trace of the lost one. One day, nearly two years later, Hunt found a stray horse he had been seeking in a small gorge running into the range., After securing the animal, the man's attention was drawn to a big stringy bark. At , some time someone, probably a sportsman camping near, had stripped a great sheet of bark from the tree, and on the grey, smooth butt two or three sets of initials were carved. After examining these, Hunt's eye was attracted.to the bark at his. feet This had been warped by the heat of the sun into a perfect tube about five feet long and nine or ten inches in diameter. It was something protruding from this pipe that riveted Hunt's attention. He stooped to examine it more closely, and discovered portion of a child's shoe. Hunt ' knelt down, impelled by a sudden fierce emotion, and, seizing the tube, tore open the rotten bark. Then, in spite of the hope that was in his heart, he threw himself back with an exclamation of horror at the sight that presented itself. Cradled in one half of the bark lay the body of a child, a queer, mummified little body. Under the head was an old felt hat, which Hunt recognised as his own, but which was not necessary to convince him that at last he had found bis boy.

. The father, looking down upon the ! pathetic, wee skeleton, understood why the long search had been vain. The boy had lain himself upon,the fresh sheet of bark, and had died there. Then the bark, curled by a scorching sun, had wrapped itself over the small body, and nature had provided a winding-sheet. One tiny hand was thrown above the head, the long fingers still clutching the handle of a black billy. Hunt seized the billy, and examined it closely, with J eyes almost blinded by unaccustomed tears. There were deep scratches on the bottom, and- the man read in large capitals three words: ■ v "So long v mother."