FullReads

“Then there was young Joe Swallow. He was found dead under a burned-down tree in Dead Man’s Gully–‘dead past all recognition,’ they said–and he was buried there, and by and by his ghost began to haunt the gully: at least, all the schoolkids seen it, and there was scarcely a grown-up person who didn’t know another person who’d seen the ghost–and the other person was always a sober chap that wouldn’t bother about telling a lie. But just as the ghost was beginning to settle down to work in the gully, Joe himself turned up, and then the folks began to reckon that it was another man was killed there, and that the ghost belonged to the other man; and some of them began to recollect that they’d thought all along that the ghost wasn’t Joe’s ghost–even when they thought that it was really Joe that was killed there.

“Then, again, there was the case of Brummy Usen–Hughison I think they spelled it–the bushranger; he was shot by old Mr S—, of E—, while trying to stick the old gentleman up. There’s something about it in a book called ‘Robbery Under Arms’, though the names is all altered–and some other time I’ll tell you all about the digging of the body up for the inquest and burying it again. This Brummy used to work for a publican in a sawmill that the publican had; and this publican and his daughter identified the body by a woman holding up a branch tattooed on the right arm. I’ll tell you all about that another time. This girl remembered how she used to watch this tattooed woman going up and down on Brummy’s arm when he was working in the saw-pit–going up and down and up and down, like this, while Brummy was working his end of the saw. So the bushranger was inquested and justifiable-homicided as Brummy Usen, and buried again in his dust and blood stains and monkey-jacket.

“All the same it wasn’t him; for the real Brummy turned up later on; but he couldn’t make the people believe he wasn’t dead. They was mostly English country people from Kent and Yorkshire and those places; and the most self-opinionated and obstinate people that ever lived when they got a thing into their heads; and they got it into their heads that Brummy Usen was shot while trying to bail up old Mr S— and was dead and buried.

“But the wife of the publican that had the saw-pit knew him; he went to her, and she recognized him at once; she’d got it into her head from the first that it wasn’t Brummy that was shot, and she stuck to it–she was just as self-opinionated as the neighbours, and many a barney she had with them about it. She would argue about it till the day she died, and then she said with her dying breath: ‘It wasn’t Brummy Usen.’ No more it was–he was a different kind of man; he hadn’t spunk enough to be a bushranger, and it was a better man that was buried for him; it was a different kind of woman, holding up a different kind of branch, that was tattooed on Brummy’s arm. But, you see, Brummy’d always kept himself pretty much to himself, and no one knew him very well; and, besides, most of them were pretty drunk at the inquest–except the girl, and she was too scared to know what she was saying–they had to be so because the corpse was in such a bad state.

“Well, Brummy hung around for a time, and tried to prove that he wasn’t an impostor, but no one wouldn’t believe him. He wanted to get some wages that was owing to him.

“He tried the police, but they were just as obstinate as the rest; and, beside, they had their dignity to hold up. ‘If I ain’t Brummy,’ he’d say, ‘who are I?’ But they answered that he knew best. So he did.

“At last he said that it didn’t matter much, any road; and so he went away–Lord knows where–to begin life again, I s’pose.”

The traveller smoked awhile reflectively; then he quietly rolled up his right sleeve and scratched his arm.

And on that arm we saw the tattooed figure of a woman, holding up a branch.

We tramped on by his side again towards the station-thinking very hard and not feeling very comfortable.

He must have been an awful old liar, now we come to think of it.