and the men and maids would dance.  The arrangement suited everybody.  The drovers started back with the cattle, Donald helped the shepherds to gather the sheep, and put them on the way, and then he rode after the cattle.  The track led him past a grove of dense ti-tree, on the land now known as the Brewery Paddock, and about a hundred yards ahead a single blackfellow came out of the grove, and began capering about and waving a waddy.  Donald pulled up his horse and looked at the black.  He had a pair of pistols in the holsters of his saddle, but he did not draw them:  there was no danger from a blackfellow a hundred yards off.  But there was another behind him and much nearer, who came silently out of the ti-tree and thrust a spear through Donald’s neck.  The horse galloped away towards Glengarry’s bridge.

When the drovers saw the riderless horse, they supposed that Macalister had been accidentally thrown, and they sent Friday to look for him.  He found him dead.  The blacks had done their work quickly.  They had stripped Donald of everything but his trousers and boots, had mutilated him in their usual fashion, and had disappeared.  A messenger was sent to old Macalister, and the young man was buried on the bank of the river near McClure’s grave.  The new cemetery now contained three graves, the second being that of Tinker Ned, who shot himself accidentally when pulling out his gun from beneath a tarpaulin.

Lachlan Macalister had had a long experience in dealing with blackfellows and bushrangers; he had been a captain in the army, and an officer of the border police.  The murder of his nephew gave him both a professional and a family interest in chastising the criminals, and he soon organised a party to look for them.  It was, of course, impossible to identify any blackfellow concerned in the outrage, and therefore atonement must be made by the tribe.  The blacks were found encamped near a waterhole at Gammon Creek, and those who were shot were thrown into it, to the number, it was said, of about sixty, men, women, and children; but this was probably an exaggeration.  At any rate, the black who capered about to attract young Macalister’s attention escaped, and he often afterwards described and imitated the part he took in what he evidently considered a glorious act of revenge.  The gun used by old Macalister was a double-barrelled Purdy, a beautiful and reliable weapon, which in its time had done great execution.

The dairy business at Greenmount was carried on at a continual loss, and Glengarry resolved to return to Scotland.  He sold his cows and their increase to Thacker and Mason, of Sydney, for twenty-seven shillings and sixpence per head; his house was bought by John Campbell.  On the eve of his departure for Sydney in the schooner ‘Coquette’ (Captain Gaunson), a farewell dinner was given by the Highlanders at the Old Port, and Long Mason, who had come from Sydney to take delivery of the cows on behalf