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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Stingaree, by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung,
+Illustrated by George W. Lambert
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Stingaree
+
+
+Author: E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2008  [eBook #26526]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STINGAREE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Steven desJardins and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 26526-h.htm or 26526-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/5/2/26526/26526-h/26526-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/5/2/26526/26526-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+STINGAREE
+
+by
+
+E. W. HORNUNG
+
+Illustrated by George W. Lambert
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "My name's Stingaree!"]
+
+
+
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+New York 1910
+
+Copyright, 1905, by
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                              Page
+I.      A Voice in the Wilderness                1
+II.     The Black Hole of Glenranald            32
+III.    "To the Vile Dust"                      70
+IV.     A Bushranger at Bay                     98
+V.      The Taking of Stingaree                121
+VI.     The Honor of the Road                  144
+VII.    The Purification of Mulfera            168
+VIII.   A Duel in the Desert                   190
+IX.     The Villain-Worshipper                 215
+X.      The Moth and the Star                  252
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"My name's Stingaree!"                                  Frontispiece
+
+"Any message, young fellow?"                                      66
+
+Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up"         98
+without a word
+
+The gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner            166
+
+Stingaree toppled out of the saddle                              198
+
+The mare spun round, bucking as she spun                         238
+
+Stingaree knocked in vain                                        246
+
+
+
+
+Stingaree
+
+
+
+
+A Voice in the Wilderness
+
+
+I
+
+    "La parlate d'amor,
+    O cari fior,
+    Recate i miei sospiri,
+    Narrate i miei matiri,
+    Ditele o cari fior----"
+
+Miss Bouverie ceased on the high note, as abruptly as string that snaps
+beneath the bow, and revolved with the music-stool, to catch but her
+echoes in the empty room. None had entered behind her back; there was
+neither sound nor shadow in the deep veranda through the open door. But
+for the startled girl at the open piano, Mrs. Clarkson's sanctum was
+precisely as Mrs. Clarkson had left it an hour before; her own
+photograph, in as many modes, beamed from the usual number of ornamental
+frames; there was nothing whatever to confirm a wild suspicion of the
+living lady's untimely return. And yet either guilty consciences, or an
+ear as sensitive as it was true, had heard an unmistakable step outside.
+
+Hilda Bouverie lived to look magnificent when she sang, her fine frame
+drawn up to its last inch, her throat a pillar of pale coral, her mouth
+the perfect round, her teeth a noble relic of barbarism; but sweeter she
+never was than in these days, or at this moment of them, as she sat with
+lips just parted and teeth just showing, in a simple summer frock of her
+own unaided making. Her eyes, of the one deep Tasmanian blue, were still
+open very wide, but no longer with the same apprehension; for a step
+there was, but a step that jingled; nor did they recognize the
+silhouette in top-boots which at length stood bowing on the threshold.
+
+"Please finish it!" prayed a voice that Miss Bouverie liked in her turn;
+but it was too much at ease for one entirely strange to her, and she
+rose with little embarrassment and no hesitation at all.
+
+"Indeed, no! I thought I had the station to myself."
+
+"So you had--I have not seen a soul."
+
+Miss Bouverie instantly perceived that honors were due from her.
+
+"I am so sorry! You've come to see Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson?" she cried.
+"Mrs. Clarkson has just left for Melbourne with her maid, and Mr.
+Clarkson has gone mustering with all his men. But the Indian cook is
+about somewhere. I'll find him, and he shall make some tea."
+
+The visitor planted himself with much gallantry in the doorway; he was a
+man still young, with a single eye-glass and a martial mustache, which
+combined to give distinction to a somewhat swarthy countenance. At the
+moment he had also an engaging smile.
+
+"I didn't come to see either Mr. or Mrs. Clarkson," said he; "in fact, I
+never heard their name before. I was passing the station, and I simply
+came to see who it was who could sing like that--to believe my own
+ears!"
+
+Miss Bouverie was thrilled. The stranger spoke with an authority that
+she divined, a sincerity which she instinctively took on trust. Her
+breath came quickly; she was a little nervous now.
+
+"If you won't sing to my face," he went on, "I must go back to where I
+hung up my horse, and pray that you will at least send me on my way
+rejoicing. You will do that in any case. I didn't know there was such a
+voice in these parts. You sing a good deal, of course?"
+
+"I haven't sung for months."
+
+He was now in the room; there was no longer any necessity to bar the
+doorway, and the light coming through fell full on his amazement. The
+girl stood before him with a calm face, more wistful than ironic, yet
+with hints of humor in the dark blue eyes. Her companion put up the
+eye-glass which he had dropped at her reply.
+
+"May I ask what you are doing in these wilds?"
+
+"Certainly. I am Mrs. Clarkson's companion."
+
+"And you sing, for the first time in months, the minute her back is
+turned: has the lady no soul for music?"
+
+"You had better ask the lady."
+
+And her visible humor reached the corners of Miss Bouverie's mouth.
+
+"She sings herself, perhaps?"
+
+"And I am here to play her accompaniments!"
+
+The eye-glass focussed the great, smiling girl.
+
+"_Can_ she sing?"
+
+"She has a voice."
+
+"But have you never let her hear yours?"
+
+"Once. I had not been here long enough to know better. And I made my
+usual mistake."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"I thought I had the station to myself."
+
+The questioner bowed to his rebuke. "Well?" he persisted none the less.
+
+"I was told exactly what my voice was like, and fit for."
+
+The gentleman turned on his heel, as though her appreciation of the
+humor of her position were an annoyance to him. His movement brought him
+face to face with a photographic galaxy of ladies in varying styles of
+evening dress, with an equal variety in coiffures, but a certain family
+likeness running through the series.
+
+"Are any of these Mrs. Clarkson?"
+
+"All of them."
+
+He muttered something in his mustache. "And what's this?" he asked of a
+sudden.
+
+The young man (for as such Miss Bouverie was beginning to regard him)
+was standing under the flaming bill of a grand concert to be given in
+the township of Yallarook for the benefit of local charities.
+
+"Oh, that's Mrs. Clarkson's concert," he was informed. "She has been
+getting it up, and that's why she's had to go to Melbourne--about her
+dress, you know."
+
+He smiled sardonically through mustache and monocle.
+
+"Her charity begins near home!"
+
+"It need not necessarily end there."
+
+"Yet she sings five times herself."
+
+"True--without the encores."
+
+"And you don't sing at all."
+
+"But I accompany."
+
+"A bitter irony! But, I say, what's this? 'Under the distinguished
+patronage of Sir Julian Crum, Mus. Doc., D.C.L.' Who may he be?"
+
+"Director of the Royal College of Music, in the old country," the girl
+answered with a sigh.
+
+"Royal College of Music? That's something new, since my time," said the
+visitor, sighing also. "But what's a man like that doing out here?"
+
+"He has a brother a squatter, the next station but one. Sir Julian's
+spending the English winter with him on account of his health."
+
+"So you've seen something of him?"
+
+"I wish we had."
+
+"But Mrs. Clarkson has?"
+
+"No--not yet."
+
+"I see!" and an enlightened gleam shot through the eye-glass. "So this
+is her way of getting to know a poor overworked wreck who came out to
+patch his lungs in peace and quiet! And she's going to sing him one of
+his own songs; she's gone to Melbourne to dress the part; and you're not
+going to sing anything at all!"
+
+Miss Bouverie refrained alike from comment and confirmation; but her
+silence was the less creditable in that her companion was now communing
+chiefly with himself. She felt, indeed, that she had already been guilty
+of a certain disloyalty to one to whom she owed some manner of
+allegiance; but that was the extent of Miss Bouverie's indiscretion in
+her own eyes. It caused her no qualms to entertain an anonymous
+gentleman whom she had never seen before. A colder course had commended
+itself to the young lady fresh from London; but to a Colonial girl, on a
+station where special provision was made for the entertaining of strange
+travellers, the situation was simply conventional. It might have been
+less onerous with host or hostess on the spot; but then the visitor
+would not have heard her sing, and he seemed to know what singing was.
+
+Miss Bouverie watched him as he leant over the piano, looking through
+the songs which she had dared once more to bring forth from her room.
+She might well have taken a romantic interest in the dark and dapper
+man, with the military eye-glass and mustache, the spruce duck jacket
+and the spurred top-boots. It was her first meeting with such a type in
+the back-blocks of New South Wales. The gallant ease, the natural
+gayety, the charming manners that charmed no less for a clear trace of
+mannerism, were a peculiar refreshment after society racier of Riverina
+soil. Yet it was none of these things which attracted this woman to this
+man; for the susceptible girl was dead in her for the time being; but
+the desperate artist was alive again after many weeks, was panting for
+fresh life, was catching at a straw. He had heard her sing. It had
+brought him galloping off the track. He praised her voice; and he
+knew--he knew what singing was.
+
+Who could he be? Not . . . could that be possible?
+
+"Sing me this," he said, suddenly, and, seating himself at the piano,
+played the opening bars of a vocal adaptation of Handel's Largo with a
+just, though unpractised, touch.
+
+Nothing could have afforded a finer hearing of the quality and the
+compass of her voice, and she knew of old how well it suited her; yet at
+the outset, from the sheer excitement of her suspicion, Hilda Bouverie
+was shaky to the point of a pronounced tremolo. It wore off with the
+lengthening cadences, and in a minute the little building was bursting
+with her voice, while the pianist swayed and bent upon his stool with
+the exuberant sympathy of a brother in art. And when the last rich note
+had died away he wheeled about, and so sat silent for many moments,
+looking curiously on her flushed face and panting bosom.
+
+"I can't place your voice," he said, at last. "It's both voices--the
+most wonderful compass in the world--and the world will tell you so,
+when you go back to it, as go back you must and shall. May I ask the
+name of your master?"
+
+"My own name--Bouverie. It was my father. He is dead."
+
+Her eyes glistened.
+
+"You did not go to another?"
+
+"I had no money. Besides, he had lived for what you say; when he died
+with his dream still a dream, I said I would do the same, and I came up
+here."
+
+She had turned away. A less tactful interlocutor had sought plainer
+repudiation of the rash resolve; this one rose and buried himself in
+more songs.
+
+"I have heard you in Grand Opera, and in something really grand," he
+said. "Now I want a song, the simpler the better."
+
+Behind his back a daring light came into the moist eyes.
+
+"There is one of Mrs. Clarkson's," she said. "She would never forgive me
+for singing it, but I have heard it from her so often, I know so well
+how it ought to go."
+
+And, fetching the song from a cabinet, she thrust it boldly under his
+nose. It was called "The Unrealized Ideal," and was a setting of some
+words by a real poet then living, whose name caused this reader to
+murmur, "London Lyrics!" The composer was Sir Julian Crum. But his name
+was read without a word, or a movement of the strong shoulders and the
+tanned neck on which Miss Bouverie's eyes were fixed.
+
+"You had better play this yourself," said he, after peering at the music
+through his glass. "It is rather too many for me."
+
+And, strangely crestfallen, Miss Bouverie took his place.
+
+    "My only love is always near,--
+      In country or in town
+    I see her twinkling feet, I hear
+      The whisper of her gown.
+
+    "She foots it, ever fair and young,
+      Her locks are tied in haste,
+    And one is o'er her shoulder flung
+      And hangs below her waist."
+
+For that was the immortal trifle. How much of its immortality it will
+owe to the setting of Sir Julian Crum is a matter of opinion, but here
+is an anonymous view.
+
+"I like the words, Miss Bouverie, but the setting doesn't take me. It
+might with repetition. It seems lacking in go and simplicity;
+technically, I should say, a gem. But there can be no two opinions of
+your singing of such a song; that's the sort of arrow to go straight to
+the heart of the public--a world-wide public--and if I am the first to
+say it to you, I hope you will one day remember it in my favor.
+Meanwhile it is for me to thank you--from my heart--and to say good-by!"
+
+He was holding out a sunburnt hand.
+
+"Must you go?" she asked, withholding her own in frank disappointment.
+
+"Unfortunately, yes; my man is waiting for me with both horses in the
+scrub. But before I go I want to ask a great favor of you. It is--not to
+tell a soul I have been here."
+
+For a singer and a woman of temperament, Hilda Bouverie had a
+wonderfully level head. She inquired his reason in no promising tone.
+
+"You will see at Mrs. Clarkson's concert."
+
+Hilda started.
+
+"You are coming to that?"
+
+"Without fail--to hear Mrs. Clarkson sing five songs--your song among
+them!"
+
+"But it's hers; it has been the other way about."
+
+The gay smile broadened on the swarthy face; a very bright eye twinkled
+through the monocle into those of Miss Bouverie.
+
+"Well, will you promise to say nothing about me? I have a reason which
+you will be the first to appreciate in due season."
+
+Hilda hesitated, reasoned with herself, and finally gave her word. Their
+hands were joined an instant, as he thanked her with gallant smile and
+bow. Then he was gone. And as his spurs ceased jingling on the veranda
+outside, Hilda Bouverie glanced again at the song on the piano and
+clapped her hands with unreasonable pride.
+
+"I do believe that I was right after all!" said she.
+
+
+II
+
+Mr. Clarkson and his young men sat at meat that evening with a Miss
+Bouverie hard to recognize as the apparently austere spinster who had
+hitherto been something of a skeleton at their board. Coldly handsome
+at her worst, a single day had brought her forth a radiant beauty
+wreathed in human smiles. Her clear skin had a tinge which at once
+suggested and dismissed the thought of rouge; but beyond all doubt she
+had done her hair with less reserve; and it was coppery hair of a
+volatile sort, that sprang into natural curls at the first relaxation of
+an undue discipline. Mr. Clarkson wondered whether his wife's departure
+had aught to do with the striking change in her companion; the two young
+men rested mutually assured that it had.
+
+"The old girl keeps too close an eye on her," said little Mr. Hack, who
+kept the books and hailed from Middlesex. "Get her to yourself, Ted, and
+she's as larky as they're made."
+
+Ted Radford, the station overseer, was a personage not to be dismissed
+in a relative clause. He was a typical back-blocker, dry and wiry,
+nasally cocksure, insolently cool, a fearless hand with horse, man, or
+woman. He was a good friend to Hack when there was no third person of
+his own kidney to appreciate the overseer's conception of friendly
+chaff. They were by themselves now, yet the last speech drew from
+Radford a sufficiently sardonic grin.
+
+"You see if she is, old man," said he, "and I'll stand by to collect
+your remains. Not but what she hasn't come off the ice, and looks like
+thoring if you take her the right way."
+
+Ted Radford was a confirmed believer in the rightness of his own way
+with all mankind; his admirable confidence had not been shaken by a long
+succession of snubs in the quarter under discussion. As for Miss
+Bouverie, it was her practice to play off one young man against the
+other by discouraging each in his turn. But this evening she was a
+different being. She had a vague yet absolute conviction that her
+fortune was made. She could have sung all her songs to the twain, but
+for the reflection that Mr. Clarkson himself would hear them too, and
+report the matter to his wife on her return.
+
+And the next night the male trio were strangely absorbed in some station
+happening which did not arouse Miss Bouverie's curiosity in the least.
+They were excited and yet constrained at dinner, and drew their chairs
+close together on the veranda afterward. The young lady caught at least
+one word of which she did not know the meaning. She had the tact to keep
+out of earshot after that. Nor was she very much more interested when
+she met the two young men with revolvers in their hands the following
+day.
+
+"Going to fight a duel?" she inquired, smilingly, for her heart was
+still singing Grand Opera and Oratorio by turns.
+
+"More or less," returned the overseer, without his usual pleasantry.
+"We're going to have a match at a target behind the pines."
+
+The London bookkeeper looked an anxious clerk: the girl was glad when
+she saw the pair alive at dinner. There seemed to be little doing.
+Though the summer was already tropical, there had been plenteous rains,
+and Mr. Clarkson observed in Hilda's hearing that the recent day's
+mustering would be the last for some little time. She was thrown much in
+his company, and she liked Mr. Clarkson when Mrs. Clarkson was not
+there. In his wife's hands the good man was wax; now a mere echo, now a
+veritable claque in himself, he pandered indefatigably to the
+multitudinous vanities of a ludicrously vain woman. But it was soon Miss
+Bouverie's experience that he could, when he dared, be attentively
+considerate of lesser ladies. And in many ways these were much the
+happiest days that she had spent on the station.
+
+They were, however, days of a consuming excitement for the caged and
+gagged nightingale that Hilda Bouverie now conceived herself to be. She
+sang not another note aloud. Mr. Clarkson lived in slippers on the
+veranda, which Hilda now associated chiefly with a stranger's spurs: for
+of the booted and spurred stranger she was thinking incessantly, though
+still without the emotions of an ordinarily romantic temperament. Would
+he be at the concert, or would he not? Would he turn out to be what she
+firmly imagined him, or was she to find out her mistake? Might he not in
+any case have said or written some pregnant word for her? Was it beyond
+the bounds of possibility that she should be asked to sing after all?
+
+The last question was the only one to be answered before the time,
+unless a point-blank inquiry of Mrs. Clarkson be included in the
+category. The lady had returned with a gorgeous gown, only less full of
+her experiences than of the crowning triumph yet to come. She had bought
+every song of Sir Julian's to be had in Melbourne, and his name was
+always on her lips. In a reckless moment Miss Bouverie had inquired his
+age.
+
+"I really don't know," said Mrs. Clarkson. "What _can_ it matter?"
+
+"I only wondered whether he was a youngish man or not."
+
+Mrs. Clarkson had already raised her eyebrows; at this answer they
+disappeared behind a _toupet_ dating from her late descent upon the
+Victorian capital.
+
+"Really, Miss Bouverie!" she said, and nothing more in words. But the
+tone was intolerable, and its accompanying sneer a refinement in
+vulgarity, which only the really refined would have resented as it
+deserved. Miss Bouverie got up and left the room without a word. But her
+flaming face left a misleading tale behind.
+
+She was not introduced to Sir Julian; but that was not her prime
+disappointment when the great night came. All desire for an
+introduction, all interest in the concert, died a sudden death in Hilda
+Bouverie at her first glimpse of the gentleman who was duly presented to
+Mrs. Clarkson as Sir Julian Crum. He was more than middle-aged; he wore
+a gray beard, and the air of a somewhat supercilious martyr; his near
+sight was obviated by double lenses in gold rims. Hilda could have wept
+before the world. For nearly three weeks she had been bowing in
+imagination to a very different Sir Julian, bowing as though she had
+never beheld him in her life before; and yet in three minutes she saw
+how little real reason she had ever had for the illogical conclusion to
+which she had jumped. She searched for the sprightly figure she had
+worn in her mind's eye; his presence under any other name would still
+have been welcome enough now. But he was not there at all. In the patchy
+glare of the kerosene lamps, against the bunting which lined the
+corrugated walls of Gulland's new iron store, among flower and weed of
+township and of station, did Miss Bouverie seek in vain for a single
+eye-glass and a military mustache.
+
+The concert began. Miss Bouverie opened it herself with the inevitably
+thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into
+the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs.
+Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a
+dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted
+her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the
+first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood
+to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his
+wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and
+acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with
+the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous
+stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied,
+extracted solace from the depressed attitude in which Sir Julian Crum
+sat looking down his nose.
+
+The township boasted its score of dwellings, but few of them showed a
+light that evening; not less than ninety of the round hundred of
+inhabitants clapped their hands and mopped their foreheads in Gulland's
+new store. It might have been run up for its present purpose. There was
+an entrance at one end for the performers, and that on the platform
+level, since the ground sloped a little; at the other end was the only
+other entrance, by which the audience were admitted. A makeshift lobby
+had been arranged behind the platform, and thither Mrs. Clarkson retired
+to await her earlier encores; when the compliment became a recognized
+matter of course, she abandoned the mere form of a momentary retirement,
+and stood patiently smiling in the satin ball-dress brought from
+Melbourne for the nonce. And for the brief intervals between her efforts
+she descended to a throne specially reserved on the great musician's
+right.
+
+The other performers did not dim her brilliance by reason of their own.
+There was her own dear husband, whose serious recitation was the one
+entertaining number. There was a Rabbit Inspector who rapped out "The
+Scout" in a defiant barytone, and a publican whose somewhat uneven tenor
+was shaken to its depths by the simple pathos of "When Sparrows Build."
+Mrs. Clarkson could afford to encourage such tyros with marked applause.
+The only danger was that Sir Julian might think she really admired their
+untutored attempts.
+
+"One must do it," she therefore took occasion to explain as she clapped.
+"They are so nervous. The hard thing is to put oneself in their place;
+it's nothing to me to sing a song, Sir Julian."
+
+"So I can see, madam," said he.
+
+At the extreme end of the same row Miss Bouverie passed her unemployed
+moments between Mr. Radford and the wall, and was not easy until she had
+signalled to little Mr. Hack to occupy the seat behind her. With the two
+together she felt comparatively comfortable. Mr. Radford's running
+criticism on the performers, always pungent, was often amusing, while
+Mr. Hack lost no opportunity of advancing his own ideals in the matter
+of musical entertainment.
+
+"A song and dance," said he, again and again, with a more and more
+sepulchral deviltry--"a song and dance is what you want. You should have
+heard the Sisters Belton in their palmy days at the Pav! You don't get
+the best of everything out here, you know, Ted!"
+
+"No; let's hope they've got some better men than you," returned
+Radford, inspired by the quorum of three to make mince-meat of his
+friend.
+
+It was the interval between parts one and two. The platform was
+unoccupied. A cool draught blew through the iron building from open door
+to open door; there was no occasion to go outside. They had done so,
+however, at the lower end; there was a sudden stampede of returning
+feet. A something in the scuffling steps, a certain outcry that
+accompanied them, caused Miss Bouverie and her companions to turn their
+heads; they turned again at as sudden a jingle on the platform, and the
+girl caught her breath. There stood her missing hero, smiling on the
+people, dapper, swarthy, booted, spurred, and for one moment the man she
+had reason to remember, exactly as she remembered him. The next his
+folded arms sprang out from the shoulders, and a brace of long-barrelled
+revolvers covered the assembly.
+
+"Up with your hands, every man of you!" he cried. "No, not the ladies,
+but every man and boy who doesn't want a bullet in his brain!"
+
+The command was echoed in uncouth accents at the lower door, where, in
+fact, a bearded savage had driven in all and sundry at his pistol's
+point. And in a few seconds the meeting was one which had carried by
+overwhelming show of hands a proposition from which the ladies alone
+saw occasion to dissent.
+
+"You may have heard of me before," said the man on the platform,
+sweeping the forest of hands with his eye-glass. "My name's Stingaree."
+
+It was the word which Hilda Bouverie had heard on the veranda and taken
+for some strange expletive.
+
+"Who is he?" she asked, in a whisper that bespoke excitement, agitation,
+but not alarm.
+
+"The fancy bushranger--the dandy outlaw!" drawled Radford, in cool
+reply. "I've been expecting him. He was seen on our run the day Mrs.
+Clarkson went down to Melbourne."
+
+That memorable day for Hilda Bouverie! And it was this manner of man who
+had been her hero ever since: a bushranger, an outlaw, a common robber
+under arms!
+
+"And you never told me!" she cried, in an indignant whisper.
+
+"We never told Mrs. Clarkson either. You must blame the boss."
+
+Hilda snatched her eyes from Stingaree, and was sorry for Mrs. Clarkson
+for the first time in their acquaintance. The new ball-dress of bridal
+satin was no whiter than its wearer's face, which had aged several years
+in as many seconds. The squatter leant toward her with uplifted hands,
+loyally concerned for no one and for nothing else. Between the couple
+Sir Julian might have been conducting without his bâton, but with both
+arms. Meanwhile, the flashing eye-glass had fixed itself on Miss
+Bouverie's companion, without resting for an instant on Miss Bouverie.
+
+"Silence over there!" cried Stingaree, sternly. "I'm here on a perfectly
+harmless errand. If you know anything about me at all, you may know that
+I have a weakness for music of any kind, so long as it's good of its
+kind."
+
+The eye-glass dropped for a moment upon Mrs. Clarkson in the front row,
+and the irrepressible Radford was enabled to continue his say.
+
+"He has, too, from a mouth-organ to a full orchestra, from all accounts,
+Miss Bouverie. _My revolver's in the coat-pocket next you!_"
+
+"It is the music," continued Stingaree, looking harder than before in
+their direction, "which has brought me here to-night. I've come to
+listen, and for no other reason in the world. Unfortunately, when one
+has a price upon one's head, one has to take certain precautions before
+venturing among one's fellow-men. And, though I'm not here for gain or
+bloodshed, if any man of you gives me trouble I shall shoot him like a
+dog!"
+
+"That's one for me," whispered the intrepid overseer, in lower key.
+"Never mind. He's not looking at us now. I believe Mrs. Clarkson's going
+to faint. _You take what I told you and slip it under your shawl, and
+you'll save a second by passing it up to me the instant you see her
+sway!_"
+
+Hilda hesitated. A dead silence had fallen on the crowded and heated
+store, and in the silence Stingaree was already taking an unguarded
+interest in Mrs. Clarkson's appearance, which as certainly betokened
+imminent collapse. "_Now!_" whispered Radford, and Hilda hesitated no
+more. She was wearing a black lace shawl between her appearances at the
+piano; she had the revolver under it in a twinkling, and pressed it to
+her bosom with both hands, one outside the shawl and one underneath, as
+who should hug a beating heart.
+
+"Mrs. Clarkson," said Stingaree, "you have been singing too much, and
+the quality of your song has not been equal to the quantity."
+
+It sounded a brutal speech enough; and to do justice to a portion of the
+audience not hitherto remarkable for its spirit, the ungallant criticism
+was audibly resented in the back rows. The maudlin stockman had indeed
+to be restrained by his neighbors from precipitating himself upon the
+barrels of Stingaree. But the effect upon Mrs. Clarkson herself was
+still more remarkable, and revealed a subtle kindness in the desperado's
+cruelty. Her pale face flushed; her lack-lustre eyes blazed forth their
+indignation; her very clay was on fire for all the room to see.
+
+"I don't sing for criminals and cut-throats!" the indignant lady cried
+out. She glanced at Sir Julian as one for whom she did sing. And Sir
+Julian's eyes twinkled under the bushranger's guns.
+
+"To be sure you don't," said Stingaree, with as much sweetness as his
+character would permit. "You sing for charity, and spend three times as
+much as you are ever likely to make in arraying yourself for the
+occasion. Well, we must put up with some song-bird without fine
+feathers, for I mean to hear the programme out." His eyes ranged the
+front rows till they fell on Hilda Bouverie in her corner. "You young
+lady over there! You've been talking since I called for silence. You
+deserve to pay a penalty; be good enough to step this way."
+
+Hilda's excitement may be supposed; it made her scandalously radiant in
+that company of humiliated men and women, but it did not rob her of her
+resource. Removing her shawl with apparent haste, but with calculated
+deliberation, she laid it in a bunch upon the seat which she had
+occupied, and stepped forward with a courage that won a cheer from the
+back rows. Stingaree stooped to hand her up to the platform; and his
+warm grip told a tale. This was what he had come for, to make her sing,
+to make her sing before Sir Julian Crum, to give her a start unique in
+the history of the platform and the stage. Criminal, was he? Then the
+dearest, kindest, most enchanting, most romantic criminal the world had
+ever seen! But she must be worthy of his chivalry and her chance; and,
+from the first, her artistic egoism insisted that she was.
+
+Stingaree had picked up a programme, and dexterously mounted it between
+hammer and cartridge of the revolver which he had momentarily
+relinquished, much as a cornet-player mounts his music under his nose.
+With both weapons once more levelled, he consulted the programme now.
+
+"The next item, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is another pianoforte
+solo by this young lady. We'll let you off that, Miss Bouverie, since
+you've got to sing. The next song on the programme is called 'The
+Unrealized Ideal,' and the music is by our distinguished visitor and
+patron, Sir Julian Crum. In happier circumstances it would have been
+sung to you by Mrs. Montgomery Clarkson; as it is, I call upon Miss
+Bouverie to realize her ideal and ours, and on Sir Julian Crum to
+accompany her, if he will."
+
+At Mrs. Clarkson's stony side the great man dropped both arms at the
+superb impudence of the invitation.
+
+"Quite right, Sir Julian; let the blood run into them," said Stingaree.
+"It is a pure oversight that you were not exempted in the beginning.
+Comply with my entreaty and I guarantee that you shall suffer no further
+inconvenience."
+
+Sir Julian wavered. In London he was a club-man and a diner-out; and
+what a tale for the Athenæum--what a short cut to every ear at a
+Kensington dinner-table! In the end it would get into the papers. That
+was the worst of it. But in the midst of Sir Julian's hesitation his
+pondering eyes met those of Miss Bouverie--on fire to sing him his own
+song--alight with the ability to do it justice. And Sir Julian was lost.
+
+How she sang it may be guessed. Sir Julian bowed and swayed upon his
+stool. Stingaree stood by with a smile of personal pride and
+responsibility, but with both revolvers still levelled, and one of them
+cocked. It was a better song than he had supposed. It gained enormously
+from the composer's accompaniment. The last verse was softer than
+another would have made it, and yet the singer obeyed inaudible
+instructions as though she had never sung it otherwise. It was more in a
+tuneful whisper than in hushed notes that the last words left her
+lips:--
+
+    "Lightly I sped when hope was high,
+      And youth beguiled the chase;
+    I follow--follow still; but I
+      Shall never see her Face."
+
+The applause, when it came, was almost overwhelming. The bushranger
+watched and smiled, but cocked his second pistol, and let the programme
+flutter to the floor. As for Sir Julian Crum, the self-contained, the
+cynical, he was seen for an instant, wheeled about on the music-stool,
+grasping the singer by both hands. But there was no hearing what he
+said; the girl herself heard nothing until he bellowed in her ear:
+
+"They'll have their encore. What can you give them? It must be something
+they know. 'Home, Sweet Home'? 'The Last Rose'? 'Within a Mile'? The
+first, eh? Very well; it's a leaf out of Patti's book; but so are they
+all."
+
+And he struck the opening bars in the key of his own song, but for some
+moments Hilda Bouverie stood bereft of her great voice. A leaf out of
+Patti's book, in that up-country township, before a roomful held in
+terror--and yet unmindful--of the loaded pistols of two bloodthirsty
+bushrangers! The singer prayed for power to live up to those golden
+words. A leaf out of Patti's book!
+
+It was over. The last poignant note trembled into nothingness. The
+silence, absolutely dead for some seconds, was then only broken by a
+spirituous sob from the incorrigible stockman. There was never any
+applause at all. Ere it came, even as it was coming, the overseer
+Radford leapt to his feet with a raucous shout.
+
+The bushranger had vanished from the platform. The other bushranger had
+disappeared through the other door. The precious pair of them had melted
+from the room unseen, unheard, what time every eye doted on handsome
+Hilda Bouverie, and every ear on the simple words and moving cadences of
+"Home, Sweet Home."
+
+Ted Radford was the first to see it; for by the end of the brief song he
+had his revolver uncovered and cocked at last, and no quarry left for
+him to shoot. With a bound he was on the platform; another carried him
+into the canvas anteroom, a third and a fourth out into the moonlight.
+It was as bright as noon in a conservatory of smoked glass. And in the
+tinted brightness one man was already galloping away; but it was
+Stingaree who danced with one foot only in the stirrup of a milk-white
+mare.
+
+Radford rushed up to him and fired point-blank again and again. A series
+of metallic clicks was all the harm he did, for Stingaree was in the
+saddle before the hurled revolver struck the mare on the ribs, and sent
+the pair flying through the moonlight with a shout of laughter, a cloud
+of sand, and a dull volley of thunderous hoofs. The overseer picked up
+his revolver and returned crestfallen to examine it in the lights of the
+emptying room.
+
+"I could have sworn I loaded it," said he. "If I had, he'd have been a
+dead man six times over."
+
+Miss Bouverie had been talking to Sir Julian Crum. On Radford's entry
+she had grown _distraite_, but at Radford's speech she turned back to
+Sir Julian with shining eyes.
+
+"My wife wants a companion for the voyage," he was saying. "So that will
+cost you nothing, but if anything the other way, and once in London,
+I'll be answerable. I've adjudicated these things for years to voices
+not in the same class as yours. But the worst of it is you won't stay
+with us."
+
+"I will."
+
+"No; they'll want you at Covent Garden before we know where we are. And
+when you are ready to go to them, go you must."
+
+"I shall do what you tell me."
+
+"Then speak to Mrs. Clarkson at once."
+
+Hilda Bouverie glanced over her shoulder, but her employers had left the
+building. Her smile was less roguish than demure.
+
+"There is no need, Sir Julian. Mrs. Clarkson has already spoken to me,
+though only in a whisper. But I am to take myself off by the next
+coach."
+
+
+
+
+The Black Hole of Glenranald
+
+
+It was coming up the Murrumbidgee that Fergus Carrick first heard the
+name of Stingaree. With the cautious enterprise of his race, the young
+gentleman had booked steerage on a river steamer whose solitary
+passenger he proved to be; accordingly he was not only permitted to
+sleep on the saloon settee at nights, but graciously bidden to the
+captain's board by day. It was there that Fergus Carrick encouraged
+tales of the bushrangers as the one cleanly topic familiar in the mouth
+of the elderly engineer who completed the party. And it seemed that the
+knighthood of the up-country road had been an extinct order from the
+extirpation of the Kellys to the appearance of this same Stingaree, who
+was reported a man of birth and mystery, with an ostentatious passion
+for music and as romantic a method as that of any highwayman of the Old
+World from which he hailed. But the callow Fergus had been spared the
+romantic temperament, and was less impressed than entertained with what
+he heard.
+
+On his arrival at Glenranald, however, he found that substantial
+township shaking with laughter over the outlaw's latest and least
+discreditable exploit, at the back-block hamlet of Yallarook; and then
+it was that young Carrick first conceived an ambition to open his
+Colonial career with the capture of Stingaree; for he was a serious
+immigrant, who had come out in his teens, to stay out, if necessary, for
+the term of his natural life.
+
+The idea had birth under one of the many pine trees which shaded the
+skeleton streets of budding Glenranald. On this tree was nailed a
+placard offering high reward for the bushranger's person alive or dead.
+Fergus was making an immediate note in his pocketbook when a hand fell
+on his shoulder.
+
+"Would ye like the half o' yon?" inquired a voice in his own tongue; and
+there at his elbow stood an elderly gentleman, whose patriarchal beard
+hid half the buttons of his alpaca coat, while a black skull-cap sat
+somewhat jauntily on his head.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Fergus, bluntly, for the old gentleman stood
+chuckling gently in his venerable beard.
+
+"To lay a hold of him," replied the other, "with the help o' some
+younger and abler-bodied man; and you're the very one I want."
+
+The raw youth stared ingenuously.
+
+"But what can you know about me?"
+
+"I saw ye land at the wharf," said the old gentleman, nodding his
+approval of the question, "and says I, 'That's my man,' as soon as ever
+I clapped eyes on ye. So I had a crack wi' the captain o' yon steamer;
+he told me you hadna a billet, but were just on the lookout for the best
+ye could get, an' that's all he'd been able to get out o' ye in a five
+days' voyage. That was enough for me. I want a man who can keep his
+tongue behind his teeth, and I wanted you before I knew you were a
+brither Scot!"
+
+"Are you a squatter, sir?" the young man asked, a little overwhelmed.
+
+"No, sir, I'm branch manager o' the Bank o' New South Wales, the only
+bank within a hunder miles o' where we stand; and I can offer ye a
+better billet than any squatter in the Colony."
+
+"Indeed? I'm sure you're very kind, sir, but I'm wanting to get on a
+station," protested Fergus with all his tact. "And as a matter of fact,
+I have introductions to one or two stations further back, though I saw
+no reason to tell our friend the skipper so."
+
+"Quite right, quite right! I like a man who can keep his tongue in its
+kennel!" cried the bank manager, rubbing his hands. "But wait while I
+tell ye: ye'd need to work for your rations an any station I ever heard
+tell of, and I keep the accounts of enough to know. Now, with me, ye'd
+get two pound a week till your share o' the reward was wiped off; and if
+we had no luck for a year you'd be no worse off, but could go and try
+your squatters then. That's a promise, and I'll keep it as sure as my
+name's Andr' Macbean!"
+
+"But how do you propose to catch this fellow, Mr. Macbean?"
+
+The bank manager looked on all sides, likewise behind the tree, before
+replying under his breath: "By setting a wee trap for him! A bank's a
+bank, and Stingaree hasna stuck one up since he took to his trade. But
+I'll tell ye no more till ye give me your answer. Yes or no?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't even write an office hand; and as for figures----"
+
+Mr. Macbean laughed outright.
+
+"Did I say I was going to take ye into the bank, mun?" cried he.
+"There's three of us already to do the writin' an' the cipherin,' an'
+three's enough. Can you ride?"
+
+"I have ridden."
+
+"And ye'll do any rough job I set ye to?"
+
+"The rougher the better."
+
+"That's all I ask. There's a buggy and a pair for ye to mind, and mebbe
+drive, though it's horseback errands you'll do most of. I'm an old
+widower, living alone with an aged housekeeper. The cashier and the
+clerk dig in the township, and I need to have a man of some sort about
+the place; in fact, I have one, but I'll soon get rid of him if you'll
+come instead. Understand, you live in the house with me, just like the
+jackeroos on the stations; and like the jackeroos, you do all the odd
+jobs and dirty work that no one else'll look at; but, unlike them, you
+get two pounds a week from the first for doing it."
+
+Mr. Andrew Macbean had chanced upon a magic word. It was the position of
+"jackeroo," or utility parlor-man, on one or other of the stations to
+which he carried introductions, that his young countryman had set before
+him as his goal. True, a bank in a bush township was not a station in
+the bush itself. On the other hand, his would-be friend was not the
+first to warn Fergus against the futility of expecting more than a
+nominal salary as a babe and suckling in Colonial experience; and
+perhaps the prime elements of that experience might be gained as well in
+the purlieus of a sufficiently remote township as in realms unnamed on
+any map. It will be seen that the sober stripling was reduced to
+arguing with himself, and that his main argument was not to be admitted
+in his own heart. The mysterious eccentricity of his employer, coupled
+with the adventurous character of his alleged prospects, was what
+induced the lad to embrace both in defiance of an unimaginative
+hard-headedness which he aimed at rather than possessed.
+
+With characteristic prudence he had left his baggage on board the
+river-steamer, and his own hands carried it piecemeal to the bank. This
+was a red-brick bungalow with an ample veranda, standing back from the
+future street that was as yet little better than a country road. The
+veranda commanded a long perspective of pines, but no further bricks and
+mortar, and but very few weather board walls. The yard behind the house
+was shut in by as many outbuildings as clustered about the small
+homesteads which Fergus had already beheld on the banks of the
+Murrumbidgee. The man in charge of the yard was palpably in liquor, a
+chronic condition from his general appearance, and Mr. Macbean
+discharged him on the spot with a decision which left no loophole for
+appeal. The woman in charge of the house adorned another plane of
+civilization; she was very deaf, and very outspoken on her introduction
+to the young gentleman, whose face she was pleased to approve, with the
+implied reservation that all faces were liars; but she served up the
+mutton of the country hot and tender; and Fergus Carrick, leaning back
+after an excellent repast, marvelled for the twentieth time that he was
+not to pay for it.
+
+"A teetotaler, are ye?" said Macbean, mixing a third glass of whiskey,
+with the skull-cap on the back of his head. "And so was I at your age;
+but you're my very man. There are some it sets talking. Wait till the
+old lady turns in, and then you shall see what you shall see."
+
+Fergus waited in increasing excitement. The day's events were worthier
+of a dream. To have set foot in Glenranald without knowing a soul in the
+place, and to find one's self comfortably housed at a good salary before
+night! There were moments when he questioned the complete sanity of his
+eccentric benefactor, who drank whiskey like water, both as to quantity
+and effect, and who chuckled continuously in his huge gray beard. But
+such doubts only added to the excitement of the evening, which reached a
+climax when a lighted candle was thrust in at the door and the pair
+advised not to make a night of it by the candid crone on her way to bed.
+
+"We will give her twenty minutes," said the manager, winking across his
+glass. "I've never let her hear me, and she mustn't hear you either. She
+must know nothing at all about it; nobody must, except you and me."
+
+The mystification of Fergus was now complete. Unimaginative as he was by
+practice and profession, he had an explanation a minute until the time
+was up, when the truth beat them all for wild improbability. Macbean had
+risen, lifting the lamp; holding it on high he led the way through baize
+doors into the banking premises. Here was another door, which Macbean
+not only unlocked, but locked again behind them both. A small inner
+office led them into a shuttered chamber of fair size, with a broad
+polished counter, glass swing-doors, and a formidable portal beyond. And
+one of young Carrick's theories received apparent confirmation on the
+spot; for the manager slipped behind his counter by another door, and at
+once whipped out a great revolver.
+
+"This they provide us with," said he. "So far it is our only authorized
+defence, and it hangs on a hook down here behind the counter. But you
+march in here prepared, your pistol cocked behind your back, and which
+of us is likely to shoot first?"
+
+"The bushranger," said Fergus, still rather more startled than
+reassured.
+
+"The bushranger, of course. Stingaree, let us say. As for me, either my
+arms go up, or down I go in a heap. But supposing my arms do go
+up--supposing I still touch something with one foot--and supposing the
+floor just opens and swallows Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree! Eh? eh? What
+then?"
+
+"It would be great," cried Fergus. "But could it be done?"
+
+"It can be, it will be, and is being done," replied the manager,
+replacing the bank revolver and sliding over the counter like a boy. A
+square of plain linoleum covered the floor, overlapped by a border of
+the same material bearing a design. Down went Macbean upon his knees,
+and his beard swept this border as he began pulling it up, tacks and
+all.
+
+The lamp burned brightly on the counter, its rays reflected in the
+burnished mahogany. All at once Fergus seized it on his own initiative,
+and set it on the floor before his kneeling elder, going upon his own
+knees on the other side. And where the plain linoleum ended, but where
+the overlapping border covered the floor, the planks were sawn through
+and through down one side of the central and self-colored square.
+
+"A trap-door!" exclaimed Fergus in a whisper.
+
+Macbean leant back on his slippered heels, his skull-cap wickedly awry.
+
+"This border takes a lot o' lifting," said he. "Yet we've just got to
+lift it every time, and tack it down again before morning. You might try
+your hand over yonder on the far side."
+
+Fergus complied with so much energy that the whole border was ripped up
+in a minute; and he was not mistaken. A trap-door it was, of huge
+dimensions, almost exactly covered by the self-colored square; but at
+each side a tongue of linoleum had been left loose for lifting it; and
+the lamp had scarcely been replaced upon the counter when the bulk of
+the floor leaned upright in one piece against the opposite wall. It had
+uncovered a pit of corresponding size, but as yet hardly deep enough to
+afford a hiding-place for the bucket, spade, and pickaxe which lay there
+on a length of sacking.
+
+"I see!" exclaimed Carrick, as the full light flooded his brain.
+
+"Is that a fact?" inquired the manager twinkling.
+
+"You're going to make a deep hole of it----?"
+
+"No. I'm going to pay you to make it deep for me----"
+
+"And then----"
+
+"At dead o' night; you can take out your sleep by day."
+
+"When Stingaree comes----"
+
+"If he waits till we're ready for him----"
+
+"You touch some lever----"
+
+"And the floor swallows him, as I said, if he waits till we are ready
+for him. Everything depends on that--and on your silence. We must take
+time. It isn't only the digging of the hole. We need to fix up some
+counterpoise to make it shut after a body like a mouse-trap; we must do
+the thing thoroughly if we do it at all; and till it's done, not a word
+to a soul in the same hemisphere! In the end I suppose I shall have to
+tell Donkin, my cashier, and Fowler the clerk. Donkin's a disbeliever
+who deserves the name o' Didymus more than ony mon o' my acquaintance.
+Fowler would take so kindly to the whole idea that he'd blurt it out
+within a week. He may find it out when all's in readiness, but I'll no
+tell him even then. See how I trust a brither Scot at sight!"
+
+"I much appreciate it," said Fergus, humbly.
+
+"I wouldna ha' trustit even you, gin I hadna found the delvin' ill worrk
+for auld shoulders," pursued Macbean, broadening his speech with
+intentional humor. "Noo, wull ye do't or wull ye no?"
+
+The young man's answer was to strip off his coat and spring into the
+hole, and to set to work with such energy, yet so quietly, that the
+bucket was filled in a few almost silent seconds. Macbean carried it
+off, unlocking doors for the nonce, while Fergus remained in the hole to
+mop his forehead.
+
+"We need to have another bucket," said the manager, on his return. "I've
+thought of every other thing. There's a disused well in the yard, and
+down goes every blessed bucket!"
+
+To and fro, over the lip of the closing well, back into the throat of
+the deepening hole, went the buckets for many a night; and by day Fergus
+Carrick employed his best wits to make an intrinsically anomalous
+position appear natural to the world. It was a position which he himself
+could thoroughly enjoy; he was largely his own master. He had daily
+opportunities of picking up the ways and customs of the bush, and a
+nightly excitement which did not pall as the secret task approached
+conclusion; but he was subjected to much chaff and questioning from the
+other young bloods of Glenranald. He felt from the first that it was
+what he must expect. He was a groom with a place at his master's table;
+he was a jackeroo who introduced station life into a town. And the
+element of underlying mystery, really existing as it did, was detected
+soon enough by other young heads, led by that of Fowler, the keen bank
+clerk.
+
+"I was looking at you both together, and you do favor the old man, and
+no error!" he would say; or else, "What is it you could hang the boss
+for, Fergy, old toucher?"
+
+These delicate but cryptic sallies being ignored or parried, the heavy
+swamp of innuendo was invariably deserted for the breezy hill-top of
+plain speech, and Fergus had often work enough to put a guard upon hand
+and tongue. But his temperament was eminently self-contained, and on the
+whole he was an elusive target for the witticisms of his friends. There
+was no wit, however, and no attempt at it on the part of Donkin, the
+cantankerous cashier. He seldom addressed a word to Carrick, never a
+civil word, but more than once he treated his chief to a sarcastic
+remonstrance on his degrading familiarity with an underling. In such
+encounters the imperturbable graybeard was well able to take care of
+himself, albeit he expressed to Fergus a regret that he had not
+exercised a little more ingenuity in the beginning.
+
+"You should have come to me with a letter of introduction," said he.
+
+"But who would have given me one?"
+
+"I would, yon first night, and you'd have presented it next day in
+office hours," replied the manager. "But it's too late to think about it
+now, and in a few days Donkin may know the truth."
+
+He might have known it already, but for one difficulty. They had digged
+their pit to the generous depth of eight feet, so that a tall prisoner
+could barely touch the trap-door with extended finger-tips; and
+Stingaree (whose latest performance was no longer the Yallarook affair)
+was of medium height according to his police description. The trap-door
+was a double one, which parted in the centre with the deadly precision
+of the gallows floor. The difficulty was to make the flaps close
+automatically, with the mouse-trap effect of Macbean's ambition. It was
+managed eventually by boring separate wells for a weight behind the
+hinges on either side. Copper wire running on minute pulleys let into
+grooves suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, and
+powerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. The
+lever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reached
+by thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward on a
+spring.
+
+It may be conceived that all this represented the midnight labors and
+the constant thought of many weeks. It was now the beginning of the cool
+but brilliant Riverina winter, and, despite the disparity in their
+years, the two Scotsmen were fast friends. They had worked together as
+one man, with the same patient passion for perfection, the same delight
+in detail for its own sake. Almost the only difference was that the old
+fellow refreshed his energies with the glass of whiskey which was never
+far from his elbow after banking hours, while the young one cultivated
+the local excess of continual tea. And all this time the rascally
+Stingaree ranged the district, with or without his taciturn accomplice,
+covering great distances in fabulous time, lurking none knew where, and
+springing on the unwary in the last places in which his presence was
+suspected.
+
+"But he has not yet robbed a bank, and we have our hopes," wrote Fergus
+to a faithful sister at Largs. "It may be for fear of the revolvers with
+which all the banks are provided now. Mr. Macbean has been practising
+with ours, and purposely put a bullet through one of our back windows.
+The whole township has been chafing him about it, and the local rag has
+risen to a sarcastic paragraph, which is exactly what we wanted. The
+trap-door over the pit is now practically finished. It's too complicated
+to describe, but Stingaree has only to march into the bank and 'stick it
+up,' and the man behind the counter has only to touch a lever with his
+foot for the villain to disappear through the floor into a prison it'll
+take him all his time to break. On Saturday the cashier and the clerk
+are coming to dinner, and before we sit down they are to be shown
+everything."
+
+This was but a fraction of one of the long letters which Fergus
+despatched by nearly every mail. Silent and self-contained as he was, he
+had one confidante at the opposite end of the earth, one escape-pipe in
+his pen. Not a word of the great secret had he even written to another
+soul. To his trusted sister he had never before been quite so
+communicative. His conscience pricked him as he took his letter to the
+post, and he had it registered on no other score.
+
+On Saturday the bank closed at one o'clock; the staff were to return and
+dine at seven, the Queen's birthday falling on the same day for a
+sufficient pretext. As the hour approached Fergus made the distressing
+discovery that his friend and host had anticipated the festivities with
+too free a hand. Macbean was not drunk, but he was perceptibly blunted
+and blurred, and Fergus had never seen the pale eyes so watery or the
+black skull-cap so much on one side of the venerable head. The lad was
+genuinely grieved. A whiskey bottle stood empty on the laden board, and
+he had the temerity to pocket the corkscrew while Macbean was gone to
+his storeroom for another bottle. A solemn search ensued, and then
+Fergus was despatched in haste for a new corkscrew.
+
+"An' look slippy," said Macbean, "or we'll have old Donkin here before
+ye get back."
+
+"Not for another three-quarters of an hour," remarked Fergus, looking at
+his watch.
+
+"Any minute!" retorted Macbean, with a ribald epithet. "I invited
+Donkin, in confidence, to come a good half-hour airly, and I'll tell ye
+for why. Donkin must ken, but I'm none so sure o' yon other impident
+young squirt. His tongue's too long for his mouth. Donkin or I could
+always be behind the counter; anyway, I mean to take his opeenion before
+tellin' any other body."
+
+Entertaining his own distrust of the vivacious Fowler, Fergus commended
+the decision, and so took his departure by the private entrance. It was
+near sundown; a fresh breeze blew along the hard road, puffing cloudlets
+of yellow sand into the rosy dusk. Fergus hurried till he was out of
+sight, and then idled shamelessly under trees. He was not going on for a
+new corkscrew. He was going back to confess boldly where he had found
+the old one. And the sight of Donkin in the distance sent him back in
+something of a hurry; it was quite enough to have to spend an evening
+with the cantankerous cashier.
+
+The bank was practically at one end of the township as then laid out;
+two or three buildings there were further on, but they stood altogether
+aloof. The bank, for a bank, was sufficiently isolated, and Fergus could
+not but congratulate himself on the completion of its ingenious and
+unsuspected defences. It only remained to keep the inventor reasonably
+sober for the evening, and thereafter to whistle or to pray for
+Stingaree. Meanwhile the present was no mean occasion, and Fergus was
+glad to see that Macbean had thrown open the official doors in his
+absence. They had often agreed that it would be worth all their labor to
+enlighten Donkin by letting the pit gape under his nose as he entered
+the bank. Fergus glanced over his shoulder, saw the other hurrying, and
+hurried himself in order to take up a good position for seeing the
+cashier's face. He was in the middle of the treacherous floor before he
+perceived that it was not Macbean in the half-light behind the counter,
+but a good-looking man whom he had never seen before.
+
+"Didn't know I was invited, eh?" said the stranger, putting up a single
+eye-glass. "Don't believe it, perhaps? You'd better ask Mr. Macbean!"
+
+And before it had occurred to him to stir from where he stood agape, the
+floor fell from under the feet of Fergus, his body lurched forward, and
+came down flat and heavy on the hard earth eight feet below. Not
+entirely stunned, though shaken and hurt from head to heel, he was still
+collecting his senses when the pit blackened as the trap-door shut in
+implicit obedience to its weights and springs. And in the clinging
+velvet darkness the young man heard a groan.
+
+"Is that yoursel', Fergy?"
+
+"And are you there, Mr. Macbean?"
+
+"Mon, didn't it shut just fine!"
+
+Curiously blended with the physical pain in the manager's voice was a
+sodden philosophic humor which maddened the younger man. Fergus swore
+where he lay writhing on his stomach. Macbean chuckled and groaned
+again.
+
+"It's Stingaree," he said, drawing a breath through his teeth.
+
+"Of course it is."
+
+"I never breathed it to a soul."
+
+"No more did I."
+
+Fergus spoke with ready confidence, and yet the words left something on
+his mind. It was something vague but haunting, something that made him
+feel instinctively unworthy of the kindly, uncomplaining tone which had
+annoyed him but a moment before.
+
+"No bones broken, Fergy?"
+
+"None that I know of."
+
+"I doubt I've not been so lucky. I'm thinkin' it's a rib, by the way it
+hurts to breathe."
+
+Fergus was already fumbling in his pocket. The match-box opened with a
+click. The match scraped several times in vain. Then at last the scene
+sprang out as on the screen of a magic-lantern. And to Fergus it was a
+very white old man, hunched up against the muddy wall, with blood upon
+his naked scalp and beard, and both hands pressed to his side; to the
+old man, a muddy face stricken with horrified concern, and a match
+burning down between muddy fingers; but to both, such a new view and
+version of their precious hole that the corners of each mouth were
+twitching as the match was thrown away.
+
+Fergus was fumbling for another when a step rang overhead; and at the
+sharp exchange of words which both underground expected, Fergus came on
+all fours to the old man's side, and together they sat gazing upward
+into the pall of impenetrable crape.
+
+"You infernal villain!" they heard Donkin roar, and stamp his feet with
+such effect that the floor opened, and down through the square of light
+came the cashier feet first.
+
+"Heaven and hell!" he squealed, but subsided unhurt on hands and knees
+as the flaps went up with such a snap that Macbean and Carrick nudged
+each other at the same moment. "Now I know who you are!" the cashier
+raved. "Call yourself Stingaree! You're Fowler dressed up, and this is
+one of Macbean's putrid practical jokes. I saw his jackal hurrying in to
+say I was coming. By cripes! it takes a surgical operation to see their
+sort, I grant you."
+
+There was a noise of subdued laughter overhead; even in the pit a dry
+chuckle came through Macbean's set teeth.
+
+"If it's practical joke o' mine, Donkin, it's recoiled on my own poor
+pate," said the old man. "I've a rib stove in, too, if that's any
+consolation to ye. It's Stingaree, my manny!"
+
+"You're right, it is, it must be!" cried the cashier, finding his words
+in a torrent. "I was going to tell you. He's been at his game down
+south; stuck up our own mail again only yesterday, between this and
+Deniliquin, and got a fine haul of registered letters, so they say. But
+where the deuce are we? I never knew there was a cellar under here, let
+alone a trap-door that might have been made for these villains."
+
+"It was made for them," replied Macbean, after a pause; and in the dead
+dark he went on to relate the frank and humble history of the hole, from
+its inception to the crooked climax of that bitter hour. A braver
+confession Fergus had never heard; its philosophic flow was unruffled by
+the more and more scornful interjections of the ungenerous cashier; and
+yet his younger countryman, who might have been proud of him, hardly
+listened to a word uttered by Macbean.
+
+Half-a-dozen fallen from the lips of Donkin had lightened young
+Carrick's darkness with consuming fires of shame. "A fine haul of
+registered letters"--among others his own last letter to his sister! So
+it was he who had done it all; and he had perjured himself to his
+benefactor, besides, betraying him. He sat in the dark between fire and
+ice, chiefly wondering how he could soonest win through the trap-door
+and earn a bullet in his brain.
+
+"The spree to-night," concluded Macbean, whose fall completely sobered
+him, "was for the express purpose of expounding the trap to you, and I
+asked you airly to take your advice. I was no so sure about young
+Fowler, whether we need tell him or no. He has an awful long tongue;
+but I'm thinkin' there's a longer if I knew where to look for it."
+
+"I could tell you where," rasped Donkin. "But go on."
+
+"I was watching old Hannah putting her feenishing touches to the table,
+and waiting for Fergus Carrick to come back, when I thought I heard him
+behind me and you with him. But it was Stingaree and his mate, and the
+two of us were covered with revolvers like young rifles. Hannah they
+told to go on with what she was doing, as they were mighty hungry, and I
+advised her to do as she was bid. The brute with the beard has charge of
+her. Stingaree himself drove me into the middle of my own trap-door,
+made me give up my keys, and then went behind the counter and did the
+trick. He'd got it all down on paper, the Lord alone knows how."
+
+"Oh, you Scotchmen!" cried the pleasant cashier. "Talk of your land of
+cakes! You take every cake in the land between you!"
+
+It seemed he had been filling his pipe while he listened and prepared
+this pretty speech. Now he struck a match, and with the flame to the
+bowl saw Fergus for the first time. The cashier held the match on high.
+
+"You hear all the while?" he cried. "No wonder you lay low, Carrick; no
+wonder I didn't hear your voice."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" growled Fergus, in fierce heat and fierce
+satisfaction.
+
+"Surely, Mr. Macbean, you aren't wondering who wagged the long tongue
+now?"
+
+"You mean that I wagged mine? And it's a lie!" said Fergus, hoarsely; he
+was sitting upon his heels, poised to spring.
+
+"I mean that if Mr. Macbean had listened to me two months ago we should
+none of us be in this hole now."
+
+"Then, my faith, you're in a worse one than you think!" cried Fergus,
+and fell upon his traducer as the match went out. "Take that, and that,
+and that!" he ground out through his teeth, as he sent the cashier over
+on his back and pounded the earth with his skull. Luckily the first was
+soft and the second hard, so that the man was more outraged than hurt
+when circumstances which they might have followed created a diversion.
+
+In his turn the lively Fowler had marched whistling into the bank, had
+ceased whistling to swear down the barrel of a cocked revolver, and met
+a quicker fate than his comrades by impressing the bushranger as the
+most dangerous man of the quartette. Unfortunately for him, his fate
+was still further differentiated from theirs. Fowler's feet glanced off
+Carrick's back, and he plunged into the well head-first, rolling over
+like a stone as the wooden jaws above closed greedily upon the light of
+day.
+
+Fergus at once struck matches, and in their light the cashier took the
+insensible head upon his knees and glared at his enemy as if from
+sanctuary of the Red Cross. But Fergus returned to Macbean's side.
+
+"I never said a word to a living soul," he muttered. "It has come out
+some other way."
+
+"Of course it has," said the old manager, with the same tell-tale
+inhalation through the teeth. Fergus felt worse than ever. He groped for
+the bald head and found it cold and dank. In an instant he was clamoring
+under the trap-door, leaping up and striking it with his fist.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Whiskey. Some of us are hurt."
+
+"God help you if it's any hanky-panky!"
+
+"It's none. Something to drink, and something to drink it in, or there's
+blood upon your head!"
+
+Clanking steps departed and returned.
+
+"Stand by to catch, below there!"
+
+And Fergus stood by, expecting to see a long barrel with the bottle and
+glass that broke their fall on him; but Stingaree had crept away
+unheard, and he pressed the lever just enough to let the glass and
+bottle tumble through.
+
+Time passed: it might have been an hour. The huddled heap that was
+Macbean breathed forth relief. The head on Donkin's knees moved from
+side to side with groans. Donkin himself thanked Fergus for his ration;
+he who served it out alone went thirsty. "Wait till I earn some," he
+said bitterly to himself. "I could finish the lot if I started now." But
+the others never dreamt that he was waiting, and he lied about it to
+Macbean.
+
+Now that they sat in silence no sound escaped them overhead. They heard
+Stingaree and his mate sit down to a feast which Macbean described with
+groaning modesty as the best that he could do.
+
+"There's no soup," he whispered, "but there's a barr'l of oysters
+fetched up on purpose by the coach. I hope they havena missed the
+Chablis. They may as well do the thing complete." In a little the
+champagne popped. "Dry Monopole!" moaned the manager, near to tears. "It
+came up along with the oysters. O sirs, O sirs, but this is hard on us
+all! Now they're at the turkey--and I chopped the stuffing with my ain
+twa han's!"
+
+They were at the turkey a long time. Another cork popped; but the
+familiar tread of deaf Hannah was heard no more, and at length they
+called her.
+
+"Mother!" roared a mouth that was full.
+
+"Old lady!" cried the gallant Stingaree.
+
+"She's 'ard of 'earing, mate."
+
+"She might still hear you, Howie."
+
+And the chairs rasped backward over bare boards as one; at the same
+instant Fergus leapt to his feet in the earthly Tartarus his own hands
+had dug.
+
+"I do believe she's done a bolt," he gasped, "and got clean away!"
+
+Curses overhead confirmed the supposition. Clanking feet hunted the
+premises at a run. In a minute the curses were renewed and multiplied,
+yet muffled, as though there was some fresh cause for them which the
+prisoners need not know. Hannah had not been found. Yet some disturbing
+discovery had undoubtedly been made. Doors were banged and bolted. A
+gunshot came faint but staccato from the outer world. A real report
+echoed through the bank.
+
+"A siege!" cried Fergus, striking a match to dance by. "The old heroine
+has fetched the police, and these beauties are in a trap."
+
+"And what about us?" demanded the cashier.
+
+"Shut up and listen!" retorted Fergus, without ceremony. Macbean was
+leaning forward, with bald head on one side and hollowed palm at the
+upper ear. Even the stunned man had recovered sufficiently to raise
+himself on one elbow and gaze overhead as Fergus struck match after
+match. The villains were having an altercation on the very trap-door.
+
+"Now's the time to cut and run--now or never."
+
+"Very well, you do so. I'm going through the safe."
+
+"You should ha' done that first."
+
+"Better late than not at all."
+
+"You can't stop and do it without me."
+
+"Oh, yes, I can. I'll call for a volunteer from below. You show them
+your spurs and save your skin."
+
+"Oh, I'll stay, curse you, I'll stay!"
+
+"And I'll have my volunteer, whether you stay or not."
+
+The pair had scarcely parted when the trap-door opened slowly and stayed
+open for the first time. The banking chamber was but dimly lit, and the
+light in the pit less than it had been during the brief burning of
+single matches. No peering face was revealed to those below, but the
+voice of Stingaree came rich and crisp from behind the counter.
+
+"Your old woman has got away to the police-barracks and the place is
+surrounded. One of you has got to come up and help, and help fair, or go
+to hell with a bullet in his heart. I give you one minute to choose your
+man."
+
+But in one second the man had chosen himself. Without a word, or a
+glance at any of his companions, but with a face burning with
+extraordinary fires, Fergus Carrick sprang for the clean edge of the
+trap-door, caught it first with one hand and then with both, drew
+himself up like the gymnast he had been at his Scottish school, and
+found himself prone upon the floor and trap-door as the latter closed
+under him on the release of the lever which Stingaree understood so
+well. A yell of execration followed him into the upper air. And
+Stingaree was across the counter before his new ally had picked himself
+up.
+
+"That's because this was expected of me," said Fergus, grimly, to
+explain the cashier's reiterated anathemas. "I was the writer of the
+registered letter that led to all this. So now I'm going the whole hog."
+
+And the blue eyes boiled in his brick-red face.
+
+"You mean that? No nonsense?"
+
+"You shall see."
+
+"I should shoot you like a native cat."
+
+"You couldn't do me a better turn."
+
+"Right! Swear on your knees that you won't use it against me or my mate,
+and I'll trust you with this revolver. You may fire as high as you
+please, but they must think we're three instead of two."
+
+Fergus took the oath in fierce earnest upon his knees, was handed the
+weapon belonging to the bank, and posted in his own bedroom window at
+the rear of the building. The front was secure enough with the shutters
+and bolts of the official fortress. It was to the back premises that the
+attack confined itself, making all use of the admirable cover afforded
+by the stables.
+
+Carrick saw heads and shoulders hunched to aim over stable-doors as he
+obeyed his orders and kept his oath. His high fire drew a deadlier upon
+himself; a stream of lead from a Winchester whistled into the room past
+his ear and over his ducked head. He tried firing from the floor without
+showing his face. The Winchester let him alone; in a sudden sickness he
+sprang up to see if anything hung sprawling over the stable-door, and
+was in time to see men in retreat to right and left, the white pugarees
+of the police fluttering ingloriously among them. Only one was left
+upon the ground, and he could sit up to nurse a knee.
+
+Fergus sighed relief as he sought Stingaree, and found him with a
+comical face before the open safe.
+
+"House full of paltry paper!" said he. "I suppose it's the old
+sportsman's custom to get rid of most of his heavy metal before closing
+on Saturdays?"
+
+Fergus said it was; he had himself stowed many a strong-box aboard
+unsuspected barges for Echuca.
+
+"Well, now's our time to leave you," continued Stingaree. "If I'm not
+mistaken, their flight is simply for the moment, and in two or three
+more they'll be back to batter in the bank shutters. I wonder what they
+think we've done with our horses? I'll bet they've looked everywhere but
+in the larder next the kitchen door--not that we ever let them get so
+close. But my mate's in there now, mounted and waiting, and I shall have
+to leave you."
+
+"But I was coming with you," cried Fergus, aghast.
+
+Stingaree's eye-glass dangled on its cord.
+
+"I'm afraid I must trouble you to step into that safe instead," said he,
+smiling.
+
+"Man, I mean it! You think I don't. I've fought on your side of my own
+free will. How can I live that down? It's the only side for me for the
+rest of time!"
+
+The fixed eye-glass covered the brick-red face with the molten eyes.
+
+"I believe you do mean it."
+
+"You shall shoot me if I don't."
+
+"I most certainly should. But my mate Howie has his obvious limitations.
+I've long wanted a drop of new blood. Barmaid's thoroughbred and strong
+as an elephant; we're neither of us heavyweights; by the powers, I'll
+trust you, and you shall ride behind!"
+
+Now, Barmaid was the milk-white mare that was only less notorious than
+her lawless rider. It was noised in travellers' huts and around
+campfires that she would do more at her master's word than had been
+known of horse outside a circus. It was the one touch that Stingaree had
+borrowed from a more Napoleonic but incomparably coarser and crueller
+knight of the bush. In all other respects the _fin de siècle_ desperado
+was unique. It was a stroke of luck, however, that there happened to be
+an old white mare in the bank stables, which the police had impounded
+with solemn care while turning every other animal adrift. And so it
+fell out that not a shot followed the mounted bushrangers into the
+night, and that long before the bank shutters were battered in the
+flying trio were miles away.
+
+Fergus flew like a runaway bride, his arms about the belted waist of
+Stingaree. Trees loomed ahead and flew past by the clump under a
+wonderful wide sky of scintillating stars. The broad bush track had very
+soon been deserted at a tangent; through ridges and billows of salt-bush
+and cotton-bush they sailed with the swift confidence of a well-handled
+clipper before the wind. Stingaree was the leader four miles out of
+five, but in the fifth his mate Howie would gallop ahead, and anon they
+would come on him dismounted at a wire fence, with the wires strapped
+down and his horse tethered to one of the posts till he had led Barmaid
+over.
+
+It was thus they careered across the vast chessboard of the fenced
+back-blocks at dead of night. Stingaree and Fergus sat saddle and
+bareback without a break until near dawn their pioneer spurred forward
+yet again and was swallowed in a steely haze. It was cold as a sharp
+spring night in England. But for a mile or more Fergus had clung on with
+but one arm round the bushranger's waist; now the right arm came
+stealing back; felt something cold for the fraction of a second, and
+plucked prodigiously, and in another fraction an icy ring mouthed
+Stingaree's neck.
+
+"Pull up," said Fergus, hoarsely, "or your brains go flying."
+
+"Little traitor!" whispered the other, with an imprecation that froze
+the blood.
+
+"I am no traitor. I swore I wouldn't abuse the revolver you gave me, and
+it's been in my pocket all the night."
+
+"The other's unloaded."
+
+"You wouldn't sit so quiet if it were. Now, round we go, and back on our
+tracks full split. It's getting light, and we shall see them plain. If
+you vary a yard either way, or if your mate catches us, out go your
+brains."
+
+The bushranger obeyed without a word. Fergus was almost unnerved by the
+incredible ease of his conquest over so redoubtable a ruffian. His
+stolid Scottish blood stood by him; but still he made grim apology as
+they rode.
+
+"I had to do it. It was through me you got to know. I had to live that
+down; this was the only way."
+
+"You have spirit. If you would still be my mate----"
+
+"Your mate! I mean this to be the making of me as an honest man. Here's
+the fence. I give you two minutes to strap it down and get us over."
+
+Stingaree slid tamely to the ground.
+
+"Don't you dare to get through those wires! Strap it from this side with
+your belt, and strap it quick!"
+
+And the bushranger obeyed with the same sensible docility, but with his
+back turned, so that Fergus could not see has face; and it was light
+enough to see faces now; yet Barmaid refused the visible wires, as she
+had not refused them all that night of indigo starlight.
+
+"Coax her, man!" cried Fergus, in the saddle now, and urging the mare
+with his heels. So Stingaree whispered in the mare's ear; and with that
+the strapped wires flew under his captor's nose, as the rider took the
+fence, but not the horse.
+
+At a single syllable the milk-white mare had gone on her knees, like
+devout lady in holy fane; and as she rose her last rider lay senseless
+at her master's feet; but whether from his fall, or from a blow dealt
+him in the act of falling, the unhappy Fergus never knew. Indeed,
+knowledge for him was at an end until matches burnt under his nose
+awakened him to a position of the last humiliation. His throat and chin
+topped a fence-post, the weight of his body was on chin and throat,
+while wrists and muscles were lashed at full stretch to the wires on
+either side.
+
+"Now I'm going to shoot you like a dog," said Stingaree. He drew the
+revolver whose muzzle had pressed into his own neck so short a time
+before. Yet now it was broad daylight, and the sun coming up in the
+bound youth's eyes for the last time.
+
+"Shoot away!" he croaked, raising the top of his head to speak at all.
+"I gave you leave before we started. Shoot away!"
+
+"At ten paces," said Stingaree, stepping them. "That, I think, is fair."
+
+"Perfectly," replied Fergus. "But be kind enough to make this so-called
+man of yours hold his foul tongue till I'm out of earshot of you all."
+
+Huge Howie had muttered little enough for him, but to that little
+Stingaree put an instantaneous stop.
+
+"He's a dog, to be shot like a dog, but too good a dog for you to
+blackguard!" cried he. "Any message, young fellow?"
+
+[Illustration: "Any message, young fellow?"]
+
+"Not through you."
+
+"So long, then!"
+
+"Shoot away!"
+
+The long barrel was poised as steadily as field-gun on its carriage.
+Fergus kept his blue eyes on the gleaming ring of the muzzle.
+
+The hammer fell, the cartridge cracked, and from the lifted muzzle a
+tiny cloud flowed like a bubble from a pipe. The post quivered under
+Carrick's chin, and a splinter flew up and down before his eyes. But
+that was all.
+
+"Aim longer," said he. "Get it over this shot."
+
+"I'll try."
+
+But the same thing happened again.
+
+"Come nearer," sneered Fergus.
+
+And Stingaree strode forward with an oath.
+
+"I was going to give you six of them. But you're a braver man than I
+thought. And that's the lot."
+
+The bound youth's livid face turned redder than the red dawn.
+
+"Shoot me--shoot!" he shouted, like a lunatic.
+
+"No, I shall not. I never meant to--I did mean you to sit out six--but
+you're the most gallant little idiot I've ever struck. Besides, you come
+from the old country, like myself!"
+
+And a sigh floated into the keen morning air as he looked his last upon
+the lad through the celebrated monocle.
+
+"Then I'll shoot myself when I'm free," sobbed Fergus through his
+teeth.
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," were Stingaree's last words. "You'll find it's not
+a bit worth while."
+
+And when the mounted police and others from Glenranald discovered the
+trussed youngster, not an hour later, they took the same tone. And one
+and all stopped and stooped to peer at the two bullet-holes in the post,
+and at something underneath them, before cutting poor Fergus down.
+
+Then they propped him up to read with his own eyes the nailed legend
+which first helped Fergus Carrick to live down the indiscretion of his
+letter to Largs, and then did more for him in that Colony than letter
+from Queen Victoria to His Excellency of New South Wales. For it ran:--
+
+    "THIS IS THE GAMEST LITTLE COCK I HAVE EVER STRUCK. HE
+    HAD ME CAPTIVE ONCE, COULD HAVE SHOT ME OVER AND OVER
+    AGAIN, AND ALL BUT TOOK ME ALIVE. MORE POWER TO HIM!
+
+    "STINGAREE."
+
+
+
+
+"To the Vile Dust"
+
+
+Vanheimert had been in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so far
+from the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full of
+sand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm which
+already shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks there
+were none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned browner
+and more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket and
+ran for the fence as for his life. He had only left it in order to camp
+where his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundred
+yards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which the
+bushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he was
+groping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collision
+with invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wondering
+where the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise to
+retrace his steps and try again. And while he wondered a fit of coughing
+drove the dust from his mouth like smoke; and even as he coughed the
+thickening swirl obliterated his tracks as swiftly as heavy snow.
+
+Speckled eyeballs stood out of a sanded face as Vanheimert saw himself
+adrift and drowning in the dust. He was a huge young fellow, and it was
+a great smooth face, from which the gaping mouth cut a slice from jaw to
+jaw. Terror and rage, and an overpowering passion of self-pity,
+convulsed the coarse features in turn; then, with the grunt of a wounded
+beast, he rallied and plunged to his destruction, deeper and deeper into
+the bush, further and further from the fence.
+
+The trees were few and mostly stunted, but Vanheimert crashed into more
+than one upon his headlong course. The sense was choked out of him
+already; he was fleeing on the wings of the storm; of direction he
+thought no more. He forgot that the run he had been traversing was at
+the best abandoned by man and beast; he forgot the "spell" that he had
+promised himself at the deserted homestead where he had once worked as a
+lad. He might have remembered that the paddock in which he was burying
+himself had always been the largest in the district. It was a ten-mile
+block without subdividing fence or drop of water from end to end. The
+whole station was a howling desert, little likely to be stocked a second
+time by enlightened man. But this was the desert's heart, and into it
+sped Vanheimert, coated yellow to the eyes and lips, the dust-fiend
+himself in visible shape. Now he staggered in his stride, now fell
+headlong to cough and sob in the hollow of his arm. The unfortunate
+young man had the courage of his desperate strait. Many times he arose
+and hurled himself onward with curse or prayer; many times he fell or
+flung himself back to earth. But at length the storm passed over and
+over his spent members; sand gathered by the handful in the folds of his
+clothes; the end was as near as end could be.
+
+It was just then that two riders, who fancied they had heard a voice,
+struck an undoubted trail before it vanished, and followed it to the
+great sprawling body in which the dregs of life pulsed feebly. The thing
+groaned as it was lifted and strapped upon a horse; it gurgled gibberish
+at the taste of raw spirits later in the same hour. It was high noon
+before Vanheimert opened a seeing eye and blinked it in the unveiled
+sun.
+
+He was lying on a blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees.
+The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of
+barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that
+sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a
+natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the
+sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep
+exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every leaf within
+Vanheimert's vision bore its little load of sand, and the sand was
+clotted as though the dust-storm had ended with the usual shower.
+Vanheimert turned and viewed the sylvan amphitheatre; on its far side
+were two small tents, and a man in a folding chair reading the
+_Australasian_. He closed the paper on meeting Vanheimert's eyes, went
+to one of the tents, stood a moment looking in, and then came across the
+sunlit circle with his newspaper and the folded chair.
+
+"And how do you feel now?" said he, setting up the chair beside the
+blanket, but still standing as he surveyed the prostrate man, with dark
+eyes drawn together in the shade of a great straw sombrero.
+
+"Fine!" replied Vanheimert, huskily. "But where am I, and who are you
+chaps? Rabbiters?"
+
+As he spoke, however, he searched for the inevitable strings of rabbit
+skins festooned about the tents, and found them not.
+
+"If you like," replied the other, frowning a little at the immediate
+curiosity of the rescued man.
+
+"I don't like," said Vanheimert, staring unabashed. "I'm a rabbiter
+myself, and know too much. It ain't no game for abandoned stations, and
+you don't go playin' it in top-boots and spurs. Where's your skins and
+where's your squatter to pay for 'em? Plucky rabbiters, you two!"
+
+And he gazed across the open toward the further tent, which had just
+disgorged a long body and a black beard not wholly unfamiliar to
+Vanheimert. The dark man was a shade darker as he followed the look and
+read its partial recognition; but a grim light came with quick resolve,
+and it was with sardonic deliberation that an eye-glass was screwed into
+one dark eye.
+
+"Then what should you say that we are?"
+
+"How do I know?" cried Vanheimert, turning pale; for he had been one of
+the audience at Mrs. Clarkson's concert in Gulland's store, and in
+consecutive moments he had recognized first Howie and now Stingaree.
+
+"You know well enough!"
+
+And the terrible eye-glass covered him like a pistol.
+
+"Perhaps I can guess," faltered Vanheimert, no small brain working in
+his prodigious skull.
+
+"Guess, then!"
+
+"There are tales about a new chum camping by himself--that is, just with
+one man----"
+
+"And what object?"
+
+"To get away from the world, sir."
+
+"And where did you hear these tales?"
+
+"All along the road, sir."
+
+The chastened tone, the anxious countenance, the sudden recourse to the
+servile monosyllable, were none of them lost on Stingaree; but he
+himself had once set such a tale abroad, and it might be that the
+present bearer still believed it. The eye-glass looked him through and
+through. Vanheimert bore the inspection like a man, and was soon
+satisfied that his recognition of the outlaw was as yet quite
+unsuspected. He congratulated himself on his presence of mind, and had
+sufficient courage to relish the excitement of a situation of which he
+also perceived the peril.
+
+"I suppose you have no recollection of how you got here?" at length said
+Stingaree.
+
+"Not me. I only remember the dust-storm." And Vanheimert shuddered where
+he lay in the sun. "But I'm very grateful to you, sir, for saving my
+life."
+
+"You are, are you?"
+
+"Haven't I cause to be, sir?"
+
+"Well, I dare say we did bring you round between us, but it was pure
+luck that we ever came across you. And now I should lie quiet if I were
+you. In a few minutes there'll be a pannikin of tea for you, and after
+that you'll feel a different man."
+
+Vanheimert lay quiet enough; there was much to occupy his mind.
+Instinctively he had assumed a part, and he was only less quick to
+embrace the necessity of a strictly consistent performance. He watched
+Stingaree in close conversation with Howie, who was boiling the billy on
+a spirit-lamp between the two tents, but he watched them with an
+admirable simulation of idle unconcern. They were talking about him, of
+course; more than once they glanced in his direction; and each time
+Vanheimert congratulated himself the more heartily on the ready pretence
+to which he was committed. Let them but dream that he knew them, and
+Vanheimert gave himself as short a shrift as he would have granted in
+their place. But they did not dream it, they were off their guard, and
+rather at his mercy than he at theirs. He might prove the immediate
+instrument of their capture--why not? The thought put Vanheimert in a
+glow; on the blanket where they had laid him, he dwelt on it without a
+qualm; and the same wide mouth watered for the tea which these villains
+were making, and for their blood.
+
+It was Howie who came over with the steaming pannikin, and watched
+Vanheimert as he sipped and smacked his lips, while Stingaree at his
+distance watched them both. The pannikin was accompanied by a tin-plate
+full of cold mutton and a wedge of baking-powder bread, which between
+them prevented the ravening man from observing how closely he was
+himself observed as he assuaged his pangs. There was, however, something
+in the nature of a muttered altercation between the bushrangers when
+Howie was sent back for more of everything. Vanheimert put it down to
+his own demands, and felt that Stingaree was his friend when it was he
+who brought the fresh supplies.
+
+"Eat away," said Stingaree, seating himself and producing pipe and
+tobacco. "It's rough fare, but there's plenty of it."
+
+"I won't ask you for no more," replied Vanheimert, paving the way for
+his escape.
+
+"Oh, yes, you will!" said Stingaree. "You're going to camp with us for
+the next few days, my friend!"
+
+"Why am I?" cried Vanheimert, aghast at the quiet statement, which it
+never occurred to him to gainsay. Stingaree pared a pipeful of tobacco
+and rubbed it fine before troubling to reply.
+
+"Because the way out of this takes some finding, and what's the use of
+escaping an unpleasant death one day if you go and die it the next?
+That's one reason," said Stingaree, "but there's another. The other
+reason is that, now you're here, you don't go till I choose."
+
+Blue wreaths of smoke went up with the words, which might have phrased
+either a humorous hospitality or a covert threat. The dispassionate tone
+told nothing. But Vanheimert felt the eye-glass on him, and his hearty
+appetite was at an end.
+
+"That's real kind of you," said he. "I don't feel like running no more
+risks till I'm obliged. My nerves are shook. And if a born back-blocker
+may make so bold, it's a fair old treat to see a new chum camping out
+for the fun of it!"
+
+"Who told you I was a new chum?" asked Stingaree, sharply. "Ah! I
+remember," he added, nodding; "you heard of me lower down the road."
+
+Vanheimert grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"I'd have known it without that," said he. "What real bushmen would boil
+their billy on a spirit-lamp when there's wood and to spare for a
+camp-fire on all sides of 'em?"
+
+Now, Vanheimert clearly perceived the superiority of smokeless
+spirit-lamp to tell-tale fire for those in hiding; so he chuckled
+consumedly over this thrust, which was taken in such excellent part by
+Stingaree as to prove him a victim to the desired illusion. It was the
+cleverest touch that Vanheimert had yet achieved. And he had the wit
+neither to blunt his point by rubbing it in nor to recall attention to
+it by subtle protestation of his pretended persuasion. But once or twice
+before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning
+the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the
+Englishman in the bush learns to expect from the indigenous buffoon.
+
+In the night Vanheimert was less easy. He had to sleep in Howie's tent,
+but it was some hours before he slept at all, for Howie would remain
+outside, and Vanheimert longed to hear him snore. At last the rabbiter
+fell into a doze, and when he awoke the auspicious music filled the
+tent. He listened on one elbow, peering till the darkness turned less
+dense; and there lay Howie across the opening of the tent. Vanheimert
+reached for his thin elastic-sided bushman's boots, and his hands
+trembled as he drew them on. He could now see the form of Howie plainly
+enough as it lay half in the starlight and half in the darkness of the
+tent. He stepped over it without a mistake, and the ignoble strains
+droned on behind him.
+
+The stars seemed unnaturally bright and busy as Vanheimert stole into
+their tremulous light. At first he could distinguish nothing earthly;
+then the tents came sharply into focus, and after them the ring of
+impenetrable trees. The trees whispered a chorus, myriads strong, in a
+chromatic scale that sang but faintly of the open country. There were
+palpable miles of wilderness, and none other lodge but this, yet the
+psychological necessity for escape was stronger in Vanheimert than the
+bodily reluctance to leave the insecure security of the bushrangers'
+encampment. He was their prisoner, whatever they might say, and the
+sense of captivity was intolerable; besides, let them but surprise his
+knowledge of their secret, and they would shoot him like a dog. On the
+other hand, beyond the forest and along the beaten track lay fame and a
+fortune in direct reward.
+
+Before departure Vanheimert wished to peep into the other tent, but its
+open end was completely covered in for the night, and prudence forbade
+him to meddle with his hands. He had an even keener desire to steal one
+or other of the horses which he had seen before nightfall tethered in
+the scrub; but here again he lacked enterprise, fancied the saddles must
+be in Stingaree's tent, and shrank from committing himself to an action
+which nothing, in the event of disaster, could explain away. On foot he
+need not put himself in the wrong, even with villains ready to suspect
+that he suspected them.
+
+And on foot he went, indeed on tiptoe till the edge of the trees was
+reached without adventure, and he turned to look his last upon the two
+tents shimmering in the starlight. As he turned again, satisfied that
+the one was still shut and that Howie still lay across the opening of
+the other, a firm hand took Vanheimert by either shoulder; otherwise he
+had leapt into the air; for it was Stingaree, who had stepped from
+behind a bush as from another planet, so suddenly that Vanheimert nearly
+gasped his dreadful name.
+
+"I couldn't sleep! I couldn't sleep!" he cried out instead, shrinking as
+from a lifted hand, though he was merely being shaken playfully to and
+fro.
+
+"No more could I," said Stingaree.
+
+"So I was going for a stroll. That was all, I swear, Mr.--Mr.--I don't
+know your name!"
+
+"Quite sure?" said Stingaree.
+
+"My oath! How should I?"
+
+"You might have heard it down the road."
+
+"Not me!"
+
+"Yet you heard of me, you know."
+
+"Not by name--my oath!"
+
+Stingaree peered into the great face in which the teeth were chattering
+and from which all trace of color had flown.
+
+"I shouldn't eat you for knowing who I am," said he. "Honesty is still a
+wise policy in certain circumstances; but you know best."
+
+"I know nothing about you, and care less," retorted Vanheimert,
+sullenly, though the perspiration was welling out of him. "I come for a
+stroll because I couldn't sleep, and I can't see what all this barney's
+about."
+
+Stingaree dropped his hands.
+
+"Do you want to sleep?"
+
+"My blessed oath!"
+
+"Then come to my tent, and I'll give you a nobbler that may make you."
+
+The nobbler was poured out of a gallon jar, under Vanheimert's nose, by
+the light of a candle which he held himself. Yet he smelt it furtively
+before trying it with his lips, and denied himself a gulp till he was
+reassured. But soon the empty pannikin was held out for more. And it was
+the starless hour before dawn when Vanheimert tripped over Howie's legs
+and took a contented header into the corner from which he had made his
+stealthy escape.
+
+The tent was tropical when he awoke, but Stingaree was still at his
+breakfast outside in the shade. He pointed to a bucket and a piece of
+soap behind the tent, and Vanheimert engaged in obedient ablutions
+before sitting down to his pannikin, his slice of damper, and his
+portion of a tin of sardines.
+
+"Sorry there's no meat for you," said Stingaree. "My mate's gone for
+fresh supplies. By the way, did you miss your boots?"
+
+The rabbiter looked at a pair of dilapidated worsted socks and at one
+protruding toe; he was not sure whether he had gone to bed for the
+second time in these or in his boots. Certainly he had missed the latter
+on his second awakening, but had not deemed it expedient to make
+inquiries. And now he merely observed that he wondered where he could
+have left them.
+
+"On your feet," said Stingaree. "My mate has made so bold as to borrow
+them for the day."
+
+"He's welcome to them, I'm sure," said Vanheimert with a sickly smile.
+
+"I was sure you would say so," rejoined Stingaree. "His own are reduced
+to uppers and half a heel apiece, but he hopes to get them soled in
+Ivanhoe while he waits."
+
+"So he's gone to Ivanhoe, has he?"
+
+"He's been gone three hours."
+
+"Surely it's a long trip?"
+
+"Yes; we shall have to make the most of each other till sundown," said
+Stingaree, gazing through his glass upon Vanheimert's perplexity. "If I
+were you I should take my revenge by shaking anything of his that I
+could find for the day."
+
+And with a cavalier nod, to clinch the last word on the subject, the
+bushranger gave himself over to his camp-chair, his pipe, and his
+inexhaustible _Australasian_. As for Vanheimert, he eventually returned
+to the tent in which he had spent the night; and there he remained a
+good many minutes, though it was now the forenoon, and the heat under
+canvas past endurance. But when at length he emerged, as from a bath,
+Stingaree, seated behind his _Australasian_ in the lee of the other
+tent, took so little notice of him that Vanheimert crept back to have
+one more look at the thing which he had found in the old valise which
+served Howie for a pillow. And the thing was a very workmanlike
+revolver, with a heavy cartridge in each of its six chambers.
+
+Vanheimert handled it with trembling fingers, and packed it afresh in
+the pocket where it least affected his personal contour, its angles
+softened by a big bandanna handkerchief, only to take it out yet again
+with a resolution that opened a fresh sluice in every pore. The blanket
+that had been lent to him, and Howie's blanket, both lay at his feet; he
+threw one over either arm, and with the revolver thus effectually
+concealed, but grasped for action with finger on trigger, sallied forth
+at last.
+
+Stingaree was still seated in the narrowing shade of his own tent.
+Vanheimert was within five paces of him before he looked up so very
+quickly, with such a rapid adjustment of the terrible eye-glass, that
+Vanheimert stood stock-still, and the butt of his hidden weapon turned
+colder than ever in his melting hand.
+
+"Why, what have you got there?" cried Stingaree. "And what's the matter
+with you, man?" he added, as Vanheimert stood shaking in his socks.
+
+"Only his blankets, to camp on," the fellow answered, hoarsely. "You
+advised me to help myself, you know."
+
+"Quite right; so I did; but you're as white as the tent--you tremble
+like a leaf. What's wrong?"
+
+"My head," replied Vanheimert, in a whine. "It's going round and round,
+either from what I had in the night, or lying too long in the hot tent,
+or one on top of the other. I thought I'd camp for a bit in the shade."
+
+"I should," said Stingaree, and buried himself in his paper with
+undisguised contempt.
+
+Vanheimert came a step nearer. Stingaree did not look up again. The
+revolver was levelled under one trailing blanket. But the trigger was
+never pulled. Vanheimert feared to miss even at arm's length, so palsied
+was his hand, so dim his eye; and when he would have played the man and
+called desperately on the other to surrender, the very tongue clove in
+his head.
+
+He slunk over to the shady margin of surrounding scrub and lay aloof all
+the morning, now fingering the weapon in his pocket, now watching the
+man who never once looked his way. He was a bushranger and an outlaw; he
+deserved to die or to be taken; and Vanheimert's only regret was that he
+had neither taken nor shot him at their last interview. The bloodless
+alternative was to be borne in mind, yet in his heart he well knew that
+the bullet was his one chance with Stingaree. And even with the bullet
+he was horribly uncertain and afraid. But of hesitation on any higher
+ground, of remorse or of reluctance, or the desire to give fair play, he
+had none at all. The man whom he had stupidly spared so far was a
+notorious criminal with a high price upon his head. It weighed not a
+grain with Vanheimert that the criminal happened to have saved his life.
+
+"Come and eat," shouted Stingaree at last; and Vanheimert trailed the
+blankets over his left arm, his right thrust idly into his pocket, which
+bulged with a red bandanna handkerchief. "Sorry it's sardines again,"
+the bushranger went on, "but we shall make up with a square feed
+to-night if my mate gets back by dark; if he doesn't, we may have to
+tighten our belts till morning. Fortunately, there's plenty to drink.
+Have some whiskey in your tea?"
+
+Vanheimert nodded, and with an eye on the bushranger, who was once more
+stooping over his beloved _Australasian_, helped himself enormously from
+the gallon jar.
+
+"And now for a siesta," yawned Stingaree, rising and stretching himself
+after the meal.
+
+"Hear, hear!" croaked Vanheimert, his great face flushed, his bloodshot
+eyes on fire.
+
+"I shall camp on the shady side of my tent."
+
+"And I'll do ditto at the other."
+
+"So long, then."
+
+"So long."
+
+"Sweet repose to you!"
+
+"Same to you," rasped Vanheimert, and went off cursing and chuckling in
+his heart by turns.
+
+It was a sweltering afternoon of little air, and that little as hot and
+dry in the nostrils as the atmosphere of a laundry on ironing day.
+Beyond and above the trees a fiery blast blew from the north; but it was
+seldom a wandering puff stooped to flutter the edges of the tents in the
+little hollow among the trees. And into this empty basin poured a
+vertical sun, as if through some giant lens which had burnt a hole in
+the heart of the scrub. Lulled by the faint perpetual murmur of leaf and
+branch, without a sound from bird or beast to break its soothing
+monotone, the two men lay down within a few yards, though out of sight,
+of each other. And for a time all was very still.
+
+Then Vanheimert rose slowly, without a sound, and came on tiptoe to the
+other tent, his right hand in the pocket where the bandanna handkerchief
+had been but was no longer. He came close up to the sunny side of the
+tent and listened vainly for a sound. But Stingaree lay like a log in
+the shade on the far side, his face to the canvas and his straw sombrero
+tilted over it. And so Vanheimert found him, breathing with the placid
+regularity of a sleeping child.
+
+Vanheimert looked about him; only the ring of impenetrable trees and
+the deep blue eye of Heaven would see what really happened. But as to
+what exactly was to happen Vanheimert himself was not clear as he drew
+the revolver ready cocked; even he shrank from shooting a sleeping man;
+what he desired and yet feared was a sudden start, a semblance of
+resistance, a swift, justifiable shot. And as his mind's eye measured
+the dead man at his feet, the live man turned slowly over on his back.
+
+It was too much for Vanheimert's nerves. The revolver went off in his
+hands. But it was only a cap that snapped, and another, and another, as
+he stepped back firing desperately. Stingaree sat upright, looking his
+treacherous enemy in the eye, through the glass in which, it seemed, he
+slept. And when the sixth cap snapped as harmlessly as the other five,
+Vanheimert caught the revolver by its barrel to throw or to strike. But
+the raised arm was seized from behind by Howie, who had crept from the
+scrub at the snapping of the first cap; at the same moment Stingaree
+sprang upon him; and in less than a minute Vanheimert lay powerless,
+grinding his teeth, foaming and bleeding at the mouth, and filling the
+air with nameless imprecations.
+
+The bushrangers let him curse; not a word did they bandy with him or
+with each other. Their action was silent, swift, concerted, prearranged.
+They lashed their prisoner's wrists together, lashed his elbows to his
+ribs, hobbled his ankles, and tethered him to a tree by the longest and
+the stoutest of their many ropes. The tree was the one under which
+Vanheimert had found himself the day before; in the afternoon it was
+exposed to the full fury of the sun; and in the sun they left him,
+quieter already, but not so quiet as they. It was near sundown when they
+returned to look upon a broken man, crouching in his toils like a beaten
+beast, with undying malice in his swollen eyes. Stingaree sat at his
+prisoner's feet, offered him tobacco without a sneer, and lit up his own
+when the offer was declined with a curse.
+
+"When we came upon you yesterday morning in the storm, one of us was for
+leaving you to die in your tracks," began Stingaree. He was immediately
+interrupted by his mate.
+
+"That was me!" cried Howie, with a savage satisfaction.
+
+"It doesn't matter which of us it was," continued Stingaree; "the other
+talked him over; we put you on one of our horses, and we brought you
+more dead than alive to the place which no other man has seen since we
+took a fancy to it. We saved your miserable life, I won't say at the
+risk of our own, but at risk enough even if you had not recognized us.
+We were going to see you through, whether you knew us or not; before
+this we should have set you on the road from which you had strayed. I
+thought you must know us by sight, but when you denied it I saw no
+reason to disbelieve you. It only dawned on me by degrees that you were
+lying, though Howie here was sure of it.
+
+"I still couldn't make out your game; if it was funk I could have
+understood it; so I tried to get you to own up in the night. I let you
+see that we didn't mind whether you knew us or not, and yet you
+persisted in your lie. So then I smelt something deeper. But we had gone
+out of our way to save your life. It never struck me that you might go
+out of your way to take ours!"
+
+Stingaree paused, smoking his pipe.
+
+"But it did me!" cried Howie.
+
+"I never meant taking your lives," muttered Vanheimert. "I meant taking
+you--as you deserved."
+
+"We scarcely deserved it of you; but that is a matter of opinion. As for
+taking us alive, no doubt you would have preferred to do so if it had
+seemed equally safe and easy; you had not the pluck to run a single
+risk. You were given every chance. I sent Howie into the scrub, took the
+powder out of six cartridges, and put what anybody would have taken for
+a loaded revolver all but into your hands. I sat at your mercy, quite
+looking forward to the sensation of being stuck up for a change. If you
+had stuck me up like a man," said Stingaree, reflectively examining his
+pipe, "you might have lived to tell the tale."
+
+There was an interval of the faint, persistent rustling of branch and
+leaf, varied by the screech of a distant cockatoo and the nearer cry of
+a crow, as the dusk deepened into night as expeditiously as on the
+stage. Vanheimert was not awed by the quiet voice to which he had been
+listening. It lacked the note of violence which he understood; it even
+lulled him into a belief that he would still live to tell the tale. But
+in the dying light he looked up, and in the fierce unrelenting face,
+made the more sinister by its foppish furniture, he read his doom.
+
+"You tried to shoot me in my sleep," said Stingaree, speaking slowly,
+with intense articulation. "That's your gratitude! You will live just
+long enough to wish that you had shot yourself instead!"
+
+Stingaree rose.
+
+"You may as well shoot me now!" cried Vanheimert, with a husky effort.
+
+"Shoot you? I'm not going to _shoot_ you at all; shooting's too good for
+scum like you. But you are to die--make no mistake about that. And soon;
+but not to-night. That would not be fair on you, for reasons which I
+leave to your imagination. You will lie where you are to-night; and you
+will be watched and fed like your superiors in the condemned cell. The
+only difference is that I can't tell you when it will be. It might be
+to-morrow--I don't think it will--but you may number your days on the
+fingers of both hands."
+
+So saying, Stingaree turned on his heel, and was lost to sight in the
+shades of evening before he reached his tent. But Howie remained on duty
+with the condemned man.
+
+As such Vanheimert was treated from the first hour of his captivity. Not
+a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were
+received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and
+supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was
+ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last
+refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a
+tree that it was no longer necessary for him to spend a moment in the
+red eye of the sun. He could follow a sufficient shade from dawn to
+dusk. His boots were restored to him; a blanket was permitted him day
+and night; but night and day he was sedulously watched, and neither
+knife nor fork was provided with his meals. His fare was relatively not
+inferior to that of the legally condemned, whose notorious privileges
+and restrictions served the bushrangers for a model.
+
+And Vanheimert clung to the hope of a reprieve with all the sanguine
+tenacity of his ill-starred class, though it did seem with more
+encouragement on the whole. For the days went on, and each of many
+mornings brought its own respite till the next. The welcome announcement
+was invariably made by Howie after a colloquy with his chief, which
+Vanheimert watched with breathless interest for a day or two, but
+thereafter with increasing coolness. They were trying to frighten him;
+they did not mean it, any more than Stingaree had meant to shoot the new
+chum who had the temerity to put a pistol to his head after the affair
+of the Glenranald bank. The case of lucky Fergus, justly celebrated
+throughout the colony, was a great comfort to Vanheimert's mind; he
+could see but little difference between the two; but if his treachery
+was the greater, so also was the ordeal to which he was being subjected.
+For in the light of a mere ordeal he soon regarded what he was invited
+to consider as his last days on earth, and in the conviction that they
+were not, began suddenly to bear them like a man. This change of front
+produced its fellow in Stingaree, who apologized to Vanheimert for the
+delay, which he vowed he could not help. Vanheimert was a little shaken
+by his manner, though he smiled behind the bushranger's back. And he
+could scarcely believe his ears when, the very next morning, Howie told
+him that his hour was come.
+
+"Rot!" said Vanheimert, with a confident expletive.
+
+"Oh, all right," said Howie. "But if you don't believe me, I'm sorrier
+for you than I was."
+
+He slouched away, but Vanheimert had no stomach for the tea and damper
+which had been left behind. It was unusual for him to be suffered to
+take a meal unwatched; something unusual was in the air. Stingaree
+emerged from the scrub leading the two horses. Vanheimert began to
+figure the fate that might be in store for him. And the horses, saddled
+and bridled before his eyes, were led over to where he sat.
+
+"Are you going to shoot me before you go," he cried, "or are you going
+to leave me to die alone?"
+
+"Neither, here," said Stingaree. "We're too fond of the camp."
+
+It was his first brutal speech, but the brutality was too subtle for
+Vanheimert. He was beginning to feel that something dreadful might
+happen to him after all. The pinions were removed from his arms and
+legs, the long rope detached from the tree and made fast to one of
+Stingaree's stirrups instead. And by it Vanheimert was led a good mile
+through the scrub, with Howie at his heels.
+
+A red sun had risen on the camp, but in the scrub it ceased to shine,
+and the first open space was as sunless as the dense bush. Spires of
+sand kept whirling from earth to sky, joining other spinning spires,
+forming a monster balloon of yellow sand, a balloon that swelled until
+it burst, obscuring first the firmament and then the earth. But the mind
+of Vanheimert was so busy with the fate he feared that he did not
+realize he was in another dust-storm until Stingaree, at the end of the
+rope, was swallowed like a tug in a fog. And even then Vanheimert's
+peculiar terror of a dust-storm did not link itself to the fear of
+sudden death which had at last been put into him. But the moment of
+mental enlightenment was at hand.
+
+The rope trailed on the ground as Stingaree loomed large and yellow
+through the storm. He had dropped his end. Vanheimert glanced over his
+shoulder, and Howie loomed large and yellow behind him.
+
+"You will now perceive the reason for so many days' delay," said
+Stingaree. "I have been waiting for such a dust-storm as the one from
+which we saved you, to be rewarded as you endeavored to reward me. You
+might, perhaps, have preferred me to make shorter work of you, but on
+consideration you will see that this is not only just but generous. The
+chances are perhaps against you, and somewhat in favor of a more
+unpleasant death; but it is quite possible that the storm may pass
+before it finishes you, and that you may then hit the fence before you
+die of thirst, and at the worst we leave you no worse off than we found
+you. And that, I hold, is more than you had any right to expect. So
+long!"
+
+The thickening storm had swallowed man and horse once more. Vanheimert
+looked round. The second man and the second horse had also vanished. And
+his own tracks were being obliterated as fast as footmarks in blinding
+snow. . . .
+
+
+
+
+A Bushranger at Bay
+
+
+The Hon. Guy Kentish was trotting the globe--an exercise foreign to his
+habit--when he went on to Australia for a reason racy of his blood. He
+wished to witness a certain game of cricket between the full strength of
+Australia and an English team which included one or two young men of his
+acquaintance. It was no part of his original scheme to see anything of
+the country; one of the Australian cricketers put that idea into his
+head; and it was under inward protest that Mr. Kentish found himself
+smoking his chronic cigar on the Glenranald and Clear Corner coach one
+scorching morning in the month of February. He thought he had never seen
+such a howling desert in his life; and it is to be feared that in his
+heart he applied the same epithet to his two fellow-passengers. The one
+outside was chatting horribly with the driver; the other had tried to
+chaff the Hon. Guy, and had repaired in some disorder to the company of
+the mail-bags inside. Kentish wondered whether these were the types he
+might expect to encounter upon the station to which he had reluctantly
+accepted an officious introduction. He wished himself out of the absurd
+little two-horse coach, out of an expedition whose absurdity was on a
+larger scale, and back again on the shady side of the two or three
+streets where he lived his normal life. The fare at wayside inns made
+the thought of his club a positive pain; and these pangs were at their
+sharpest when Stingaree cantered out of the scrub on his lily mare, a
+blessed bolt from the blue.
+
+Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up" without a
+word, but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous
+pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the
+desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The
+inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not that the trio
+were set any better example by their noble ally, who began by smiling at
+the whole affair, and was content to the last in taking an observant
+interest in the bushranger's methods. These were simple and in a sense
+humane; there was no personal robbery at all. The mail-bags were
+sufficient for Stingaree, who on this occasion worked alone, but led a
+pack-horse, to which the driver and the inside passenger were compelled
+to strap the long canvas bags, under his eye-glass and his long
+revolver. Few words were spoken from first to last; the Hon. Guy never
+put in his at all; but he watched the outlaw like a lynx, without
+betraying an undue attention, and when all was over he gave a sigh.
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up"
+without a word.]
+
+"So that's Stingaree!" he said, more to himself than to his comrades in
+humiliation; but the bushranger had cantered back into the scrub, and
+his name opened the flood-gates of a profanity which made Kentish wince,
+for all his knowledge of the world.
+
+"Do you never swear at him till he has gone?" he asked when he had a
+chance. The driver leant across the legs of his friend.
+
+"Not unless we want a bullet through our skulls," he answered in boorish
+derision; and the man between them laughed harshly.
+
+"I thought he had never been known to shoot?"
+
+"That's just it, mister. We don't want him to begin on us."
+
+"Why didn't _you_ give him a bit of _your_ mind?" the man in the middle
+inquired of Kentish. "I never heard you open your gills!"
+
+"And we expected to see some pluck from the old country," added the
+driver, wreaking vengeance with his lash.
+
+Mr. Kentish produced his cigar-case with an insensitive smile, and,
+after a moment's deliberation, handed it for the first time to his
+uncouth companions. "Do you want those mail-bags back?" he asked, quite
+casually, when the three cigars were in blast.
+
+"Want them? Of course I want them; but want must be my boss," said the
+driver, gloomily.
+
+"I'm not so sure," said Kentish. "When does the next coach pass this
+way?"
+
+"Midnight, and I drive it. I turn back when I get to Clear Corner, you
+see."
+
+"Then look out for me about this spot. I'm going to ask you to put me
+down."
+
+"Put you down?"
+
+"If you don't mind pulling up. I'm not going on at present; but I'll go
+back with you to Glenranald instead, if you'll keep a lookout for me
+to-night."
+
+Instinctively the driver put his foot upon the brake, for the request
+had been made with that quiet authority which this silent passenger had
+suddenly assumed; and yet it seemed to them such a mad demand that his
+companions looked at Kentish as they had not looked before. His face
+bore a close inspection; it was one of those which burn red, and in the
+redness twinkled hazel eyes that toned agreeably with a fair beard and
+fairer mustache. The former he had grown upon his travels; but the
+trail of the West-end tailor, whose shooting-jacket is as distinctive as
+his frock-coat, was upon Guy Kentish from head to heel. As they watched
+him he took an open envelope from his pocket, scribbled a few words on a
+card, put that in, and stuck down the flap.
+
+"Here," said he, "is my letter of introduction to the good people at the
+Mazeppa Station higher up. If I don't turn up to-night, see that they
+get it, even if it costs you a bit of this?"
+
+And, putting a sovereign in a startled palm, he jumped to the ground.
+
+"But what are you going to do, sir?" cried the driver, in alarm.
+
+"Recover your mail-bags if I can."
+
+"What? After you've just been stuck up----"
+
+"Exactly. I hope to stick up Stingaree!"
+
+"Then you were armed all the time?"
+
+Mr. Kentish smiled as he shook his head.
+
+"That's my affair, I imagine; but even so I am not fool enough to tackle
+such a fellow with his own weapons. You leave it to me, and don't be
+anxious. But I must be off if I'm to stalk him before he goes through
+the letters. No, I know what I'm doing, and I shall do better alone.
+Till to-night, then!"
+
+And he was in the scrub ere they decided to take him at his madcap word,
+and let his blood be on the chuckle-head of the new-chummiest new chum
+that ever came out after the rain! Was it pluck or all pretence? It was
+rather plucky even to pretend in such proximity to the terrible
+Stingaree; on the whole, the coaching trio were disposed to concede a
+certain amount of unequivocal courage; and the driver, with Kentish's
+sovereign in his pocket, went so far as to declare that duty alone
+nailed him to the box.
+
+Meantime the Hon. Guy had skirted the road until he came to double
+horse-tracks striking back into the bush; these he followed with the
+wary stealth of one who had spent his autumns, at least, in the right
+place. They led him through belts of scrub in which he trod like a cat,
+without disturbing an avoidable branch, and over treeless spaces that he
+crossed at a run, bent double; but always, as he followed the trail, his
+shadow fell at one consistent angle, showing how the bushranger rode
+through his natural element as the crow might have flown overhead.
+
+At last Kentish found himself in a sandy gully bristling with pines,
+through which the sunlight dripped like melted gold; and in the fine
+warp and woof of high light and sharp shadow the bushranger's horses
+stood lashing at the flies with their long tails. The bushranger himself
+was nowhere to be seen. But at last Kentish descried a white-and-brown
+litter on either side of the thickest trunk in sight, from whose further
+side floated intermittent puffs of thin blue smoke. Kentish looked and
+looked again before advancing. But the tall pine threw such a shadow as
+should easily swallow his own. And in another minute he was peeping
+round the hole.
+
+The litter on either side was, of course, the shower of miscellaneous
+postal matter from the mail-bags; and in its midst sat Stingaree against
+the tree, enjoying his pipe and a copy of _Punch_, of which the wrapper
+lay upon his knees. Kentish peered for torn envelopes and gaping
+packets; there were no more. The bushranger had evidently started with
+_Punch_, and was still curiously absorbed in its contents. The notorious
+eye-glass dangled against that kindred vanity, the spotless white jacket
+which he affected in summer-time; the brown, attentive face, even as
+Kentish saw it in less than profile, was thus purged of the sinister
+aspect which such an appendage can impart to the most innocent; and a
+somewhat passive amusement was its unmistakable note. Nevertheless, the
+long revolver which had once more done its nefarious work still lay
+ready to his hand; indeed, the Hon. Guy could have stooped and whipped
+it up, had he been so minded.
+
+He was absorbed, however, in the absorption of Stingaree; and as he
+peered audaciously over the other's shoulder he put himself in the
+outlaw's place. An old friend would have lurked in every cut, a friend
+whom it might well be a painful pleasure to meet again. There were the
+oval face and the short upper lip of one imperishable type; on the next
+page one of _Punch's_ Fancy Portraits, with lines underneath which set
+Stingaree incongruously humming a stave from _H.M.S. Pinafore_. Mr.
+Kentish smiled without surprise. The common folk in the omnibus opposite
+were the common folk of an inveterate master; there was matter for a
+homesick sigh in his hint of streaming streets--and Kentish thought he
+heard one as he held his breath. The page after that detained the reader
+some minutes. The illustrations proclaimed it an article on the new
+Savoy opera, and Stingaree confirmed the impression by humming more
+_Pinafore_ when he came to the end. Kentish left him at it, and,
+creeping away as silently as he had come, described a circle and came
+noisily on the bushranger from the front. The result was that Stingaree
+was not startled into firing, but stopped the intruder at due distance
+with his revolver levelled across the open copy of _Punch_.
+
+"I heard you singing _Pinafore_," cried Kentish, cheerily. "And I find
+you reading _Punch_!"
+
+"How dare you find me?" demanded the bushranger, black with passion.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind. I am perfectly innocuous--look!"
+
+And, divesting himself of his shooting-coat, he tossed it across for the
+other's inspection; he wore neither waistcoat nor hip-pocket, and his
+innocence of arms was manifest when he had turned round slowly where he
+stood.
+
+"Now may I not come a little nearer?" asked the Hon. Guy.
+
+"No; keep your distance, and tell me why you have come so far. The
+truth, mind, or you'll be shot!"
+
+"Very well," said Kentish. "They were dreadful people on the coach----"
+
+"Are they waiting for you?" thundered Stingaree.
+
+"No; they've gone on; and they think me mad."
+
+"So you are."
+
+"We shall see; meanwhile I prefer your company to theirs, and mean to
+enjoy it up to the moment of my murder."
+
+For an instant Stingaree seemed on the brink of a smile; then his dark
+face hardened, and he tapped the long barrel in rest between his knees.
+
+"You may call it murder if you like," said he. "That will not prevent me
+from shooting you dead unless you speak the truth. You have come for
+something; what is it?"
+
+"I've told you already. I was bored and disgusted. That is the truth."
+
+"But not the whole truth," cried Stingaree. "You had some other reason."
+
+Kentish looked down without speaking. He heard the revolver cocked.
+
+"Come, let us have it, or I'll shoot you like the spy I believe you
+are!"
+
+"You may shoot me for telling you," said Kentish, with a quiet laugh and
+shrug.
+
+"No, I shall not, unless it turns out that you're ground-bait for the
+police."
+
+"That I am not," said Kentish, growing serious in his turn. "But, since
+you insist, I have come to persuade you to give up every one of these
+letters which you have no earthly right to touch."
+
+Their eyes met. Stingaree's were the wider open, and in an instant the
+less stern. He dropped his revolver, with a laugh, into its old place at
+his side.
+
+"Mad or sane," said he, "I shall be under the unpleasant necessity of
+leaving you rather securely tied to one of these trees."
+
+"I don't believe you will," returned Kentish, without losing a shade of
+his rich coloring. "But in any case I suppose we may have a chat first?
+I give you my word that you are safe from further intrusion to the level
+best of my knowledge and belief. May I sit down instead of standing?"
+
+"You may."
+
+"We are a good many yards apart."
+
+"You may reduce them by half. There."
+
+"I thank you," said Kentish, seating himself tailorwise within arm's
+length of Stingaree's spurs. "Now, if you will feel in the breast-pocket
+of my coat you will find a case of very fair cigars--J. S. Murias--not
+too strong. I shall be honored if you will help yourself and throw me
+one."
+
+Stingaree took the one, and handed the case with no ungraceful
+acknowledgment to its owner; but before Mr. Kentish could return the
+courtesy by proffering his cigar-cutter, the bushranger had produced his
+razor from a pocket of the white jacket, and sliced off the end with
+that.
+
+"So you shave every day in the wilds," remarked the other, handing his
+match-box instead. "And I gave it up on my voyage."
+
+"I alter myself from time to time," said Stingaree, as he struck a
+light.
+
+"It must be a wonderful life!"
+
+But Stingaree lit up without a word, and Kentish had the wit to do the
+same. They smoked in silence for some minutes. A gray ash had grown on
+each cigar before Kentish demanded an opinion of the brand.
+
+"To tell you the truth," said Stingaree, "I have smoked strong trash so
+many years that I can scarcely taste it."
+
+And he peered rather pathetically through his glass.
+
+"Didn't the same apply to _Punch_?"
+
+"No; I have always read the papers when I could," said Stingaree, and
+suddenly he was smiling. "That's one reason why I make a specialty of
+sticking up the mail," he explained.
+
+Mr. Kentish was not to be drawn into a second deliverance on the
+bushranging career. "Is it a good number?" he asked, nodding toward the
+copy of _Punch_. The bushranger picked it up.
+
+"Good enough for me."
+
+"What date?"
+
+"Ninth of December."
+
+"Nearly three months ago. I was in London then," remarked Kentish, in a
+reflective tone.
+
+"Really?" cried Stingaree, under his breath. His voice was as soft as
+the other's, but there was suppressed interest in his manner. His dark
+eyes were only less alight than the red cigar he took from his teeth as
+he spoke. And he held it like a connoisseur, between finger and thumb,
+for all his ruined palate.
+
+"I was," repeated Kentish. "I didn't sail till the middle of the month."
+
+"To think you were in town till nearly Christmas!" and Stingaree gazed
+enviously. "It must be hard to realize," he added in some haste.
+
+"Other things," replied Kentish, "are harder."
+
+"I gather from the _Punch_ cartoon that the new Law Courts are in use at
+last?"
+
+"I was at the opening."
+
+"Then you may have seen this opera that I have been reading about?"
+
+Kentish asked what it was, although he knew.
+
+"_Iolanthe._"
+
+"Rather! I was there the first night."
+
+"The deuce you were!" cried Stingaree; and for the next quarter of an
+hour this armed scoundrel, the terror of a district as large as England
+and Wales, talked of nothing else to the man whom he was about to bind
+to a tree. Was the new opera equal to its predecessors? Which were the
+best numbers? Did _Punch_ do it justice, or was there some jealousy in
+that rival hot-bed of wit and wisdom?
+
+Unfortunately, Guy Kentish had no ear for music, but he made a clear
+report of the plot, could repeat some of the Lord Chancellor's quips,
+and was in decided disagreement with the captious banter from which he
+was given more than one extract. And in default of one of the new airs
+Stingaree rounded off the subject by dropping once more into--
+
+    "For he might have been a Rooshian,
+    A French, or Turk, or Prooshian,
+      Or, perhaps, I-tal-i-an!
+      Or, perhaps, I-tal-i-an!
+    But in spite of all temptations
+    To belong to other nations
+      He remains an Englishman!"
+
+"I understand that might be said of both of us," remarked Kentish,
+looking the outlaw boldly in the eyes. "But from all accounts I should
+have thought you were out here before the days of Gilbert and Sullivan."
+
+"So I was," replied Stingaree, without frown or hesitation. "But you may
+also have heard that I am fond of music--any I can get. My only
+opportunities, as a rule," the bushranger continued, smiling
+mischievously at his cigar, "occur on the stations I have occasion to
+visit from time to time. On one a good lady played and sang _Pinafore_
+and _The Pirates of Penzance_ to me from dewy eve to dawn. I'm bound to
+say I sang some of it at sight myself; and I flatter myself it helped to
+pass an embarrassing night rather pleasantly for all concerned. We had
+all hands on the place for our audience, and when I left I was formally
+presented with both scores; for I had simply called for horses, and
+horses were all I took. Only the other day I had the luck to confiscate
+a musical-box which plays selections from _The Pirates_. I ought to have
+had it with me in my swag."
+
+So affable and even charming was the quiet voice, so evident the
+appreciation of the last inch of the cigar which had thawed a frozen
+palate, and so conceivable a further softening, that Guy Kentish made
+bolder than before. He knew what he meant to do; he knew how he meant to
+do it. And yet it seemed just possible there might be a gentler way.
+
+"You don't always take things, I believe?" he hazarded.
+
+"You mean after sticking up?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Generally, I fear; it's the whole meaning of the act," confessed
+Stingaree, still the dandy in tone and phrase. "But there have been
+exceptions."
+
+"Exactly!" quoth Kentish. "And there's going to be another this
+afternoon!"
+
+Stingaree hurled the stump of his cigar into the scrub, and without a
+word the villain was born again, with his hard eyes, his harder mouth,
+his sinister scowl, his crag of a chin.
+
+"So you come back to that," he cried, harshly. "I thought you had more
+sense; you will make me tie you up before your time."
+
+"You may do exactly what you like," retorted Kentish, a galling scorn in
+his unaltered voice. "Only, before you do it, you may as well know who I
+am."
+
+"My good sir, do you suppose I care who you are?" asked Stingaree, with
+an angry laugh: and his anger is the rarest thing in all his annals.
+
+"I am quite sure you don't," responded Kentish. "But you may as well
+know my name, even though you never heard it before." And he gave it
+with a touch of triumph, not for one moment to be confounded with a
+natural pride.
+
+The bushranger stared him steadily in the eyes; his hand had dropped
+once more upon the butt of his revolver. "No; I never did hear it
+before," he said.
+
+"I'm not surprised," replied the other. "I was a new member when you
+were turned out of the club." Stingaree's hand closed: his eyes were
+terrible. "And yet," continued Kentish, "the moment I saw you at close
+quarters in the road I recognized you as----"
+
+"Stingaree!" cried the bushranger, on a rich and vibrant note. "Let the
+other name pass your lips--even here--and it's the last word that ever
+will!"
+
+"Very well," said Mr. Kentish, with his unaffected shrug. "But, you see,
+I know all about you."
+
+"You're the only man who does, in all Australia!" exclaimed the outlaw,
+hoarsely.
+
+"At present! I sha'n't be the only man long."
+
+"You will," said Stingaree through teeth and mustache; and he leaned
+over, revolver in hand. "You'll be the only man ever, because, instead
+of tying you up, I'm going to shoot you."
+
+Kentish threw up his head in sharp contempt.
+
+"What!" said he. "Sitting?"
+
+Stingaree sprang to his feet in a fury. "No; I have a brace!" he cried,
+catching the pack-horse. "You shall have the other, if it makes you
+happy; but you'll be a dead man all the same. I can handle these things,
+and I shall shoot to kill!"
+
+"Then it's all up with you," said Kentish, rising slowly in his turn.
+
+"All up with me? What the devil do you mean?"
+
+"Unless I am at a certain place by a certain time, with or without these
+letters that are not yours, another letter will be opened."
+
+Stingaree's stare gradually changed into a smile.
+
+"A little vague," said he, "don't you think?"
+
+"It shall be as plain as you please. The letter I mean was scribbled on
+the coach before I got down. It will only be opened if I don't return.
+It contains the name you can't bear to hear!"
+
+There was a pause. The afternoon sun was sinking with southern
+precipitancy, and Kentish had got his back to it by cool intent. He
+studied the play of suppressed mortification and strenuous philosophy in
+the swarthy face warmed by the reddening light; and admired the arduous
+triumph of judgment over instinct, even as a certain admiration dawned
+through the monocle which insensibly focussed his attention.
+
+"And suppose," said Stingaree--"suppose you return empty as you came?"
+A contemptuous kick sent a pack of letters spinning.
+
+"I should feel under no obligation to keep your secret."
+
+"And you think I would trust you to keep it otherwise?"
+
+"If I gave you my word," said Kentish, "I know you would."
+
+Stingaree made no immediate answer; but he gazed in the sun-flayed face
+without suspicion.
+
+"You wouldn't give me your word," he said at last.
+
+"Oh, yes, I would."
+
+"That you would die without letting that name pass your lips?"
+
+"Unless I die delirious--with all my heart. I have as much respect for
+it as you."
+
+"As much!" echoed the bushranger, in a strange blend of bitterness and
+obligation. "But how could you explain the bags? How could you have
+taken them from me?"
+
+Kentish shrugged once more.
+
+"You left them--I found them. Or you were sleeping, but I was unarmed."
+
+"You would lie like that--to save my name?"
+
+"And a man whom I remember perfectly . . ."
+
+Stingaree heard no more; he was down on his knees, collecting the
+letters into heaps and shovelling them into the bags. Even the copy of
+_Punch_ and the loose wrapper went in with the rest.
+
+"You can't carry them," said he, when none remained outside. "I'll take
+them for you and dump them on the track."
+
+"I have to pass the time till midnight. I can manage them in two
+journeys."
+
+But Stingaree insisted, and presently stood ready to mount his mare.
+
+"You give me your word, Kentish?"
+
+"My word of honor."
+
+"It is something to have one to give! I shall not come back this way; we
+shall have the Clear Corner police on our tracks by moonlight, and the
+more they have to choose from the better. So I must go. You have given
+me your word; you wouldn't care to give me----"
+
+But his hand went out a little as he spoke, and Kentish's met it
+seven-eights of the way.
+
+"Give this up, man! It's a poor game, when all's said; do give it up!"
+urged the man of the world with the warmth of a lad. "Come back to
+England and----"
+
+But the hand he had detained was wrenched from his, and, in the pink
+sunset sifted through the pines, Stingaree vaulted into his saddle with
+an oath.
+
+"With a price on my skin!" he cried, and galloped from the gully with a
+bitter laugh.
+
+And in the moonlight sure enough came bobbing horsemen, with fluttering
+pugarees and short tunics with silver buttons; but they saw nothing of
+the missing passenger, who had carried the bags some distance down the
+road, and had found them quite a comfortable couch in a certain
+box-clump commanding a sufficient view of the road. Nevertheless, when
+the little coach came swaying on its leathern springs, its scarlet
+enamel stained black as ink in the moonshine, he was on the spot to stop
+it with uplifted arms.
+
+"Don't shoot!" he cried. "I'm the passenger you put down this
+afternoon." And the driver nearly tumbled from his perch.
+
+"What about my mail-bags?" he recovered himself enough to ask: for it
+was perfectly plain that the pretentiously intrepid passenger had been
+skulking all day in the scrub, scared by the terrors of the road.
+
+"They're in that clump," replied Mr. Kentish. "And you can get them
+yourself, or send someone else for them, for I have carried them far
+enough."
+
+"That be blowed for a yarn!" cried the driver, forgetting his benefits
+in the virtuous indignation of the moment.
+
+"I don't wonder at your thinking it one," returned the other, mildly;
+"for I never had such absolute luck in all my life!"
+
+And he went on to amplify his first lie like a man.
+
+But when the bags were really back in the coach, piled roof-high on
+those of the downward mail, then it was worse fun for Guy Kentish
+outside than even he had anticipated. Question followed question,
+compliment capped compliment, and a certain unsteady undercurrent of
+incredulity by no means lessened his embarrassment. Had he but told the
+truth, he felt he could have borne the praise, and indeed enjoyed it,
+for he had done far better than anybody was likely to suppose, and
+already it was irritating to have to keep that circumstance a secret.
+Yet one thing he was able to say from his soul before the coach drew up
+at the next stage.
+
+"You should have a spell here," the driver had suggested, "and let me
+pick you up again on my way back. You'd soon lay hands on the bird
+himself, if you can put salt on his tail as you've done. And no one else
+can--we want a few more chums like you."
+
+"I dare say!"
+
+And the new chum's tone bore its own significance.
+
+"You don't mean," cried the driver, "to go and tell me you'll hurry home
+after this?"
+
+"Only by the first steamer!" said Guy Kentish.
+
+And he kept that word as well.
+
+
+
+
+The Taking of Stingaree
+
+
+Stingaree had crossed the Murray, and all Victoria was agog with the
+news. It was not his first descent upon that Colony, nor likely to be
+his last, unless Sub-Inspector Kilbride and his mounted myrmidons did
+much better than they had done before. There is no stimulus, however,
+like a trembling reputation. Within four-and-twenty hours Kilbride
+himself was on the track of the invader, whose heels he had never seen,
+much less his face. And he rode alone.
+
+It was not merely his reputation that was at stake, though nothing could
+restore that more effectually than the single-handed capture of so
+notorious a desperado as Stingaree. The dashing officer was not
+unnaturally actuated by the sum of three hundred pounds now set upon the
+outlaw's person, alive or dead. That would be a little windfall for one
+man, but not much to divide among five or six; on the other hand, and
+with all his faults, Sub-Inspector Kilbride had courage enough to
+furnish forth a squadron. He was a black-bearded, high-cheeked
+Irish-Australian, keen and over-eager to a disease, restless,
+irascible, but full of the fire and dash that make as dangerous an enemy
+as another good fighter need desire. And as a fine fighter in an
+infamous cause, Stingaree had his admirers even in Victoria, where the
+old tale of popular sympathy with a picturesque rascal was responsible
+for not the least of the Sub-Inspector's difficulties. But even this
+struck Kilbride as yet another of those obstacles which were more easily
+surmounted alone than at the head of a talkative squad; and with that
+conviction he pushed his thoroughbred on and on through a whole cool
+night and three parts of an Australian summer's day. Imagine, then, his
+disgust at the apparition of a mounted trooper galloping to meet him in
+the middle of the afternoon, and within a few miles of a former
+hiding-place of the bushranger, where the senior officer had strong
+hopes of finding and surprising him now.
+
+"Where the devil do you come from?" cried Kilbride, as the other rode
+up.
+
+"Jumping Creek," was the crisp reply. "Stationed there."
+
+"Then why don't you stop there and do your duty?"
+
+"Stingaree!" said the laconic trooper.
+
+"What! Do you think you're after him too?"
+
+"I am after him."
+
+"So am I."
+
+"Then you're going in the wrong direction."
+
+Kilbride flushed a warm brown from beard to helmet.
+
+"Do you know who you're speaking to?" cried he. "I'm Sub-Inspector
+Kilbride, and this business is my business, and no other man's in this
+Colony. You go back to your barracks, sir! I'm not going to have every
+damned fool in the force charging about the country on his own account."
+
+The trooper was a dark, smart, dapper young fellow, of a type not easily
+browbeaten or subdued. And discipline is not the strong point of forces
+so irregular as the mounted police of a crescent colony. But nothing
+could have been more admirable than the manner in which this rebuke was
+received.
+
+"Very well, sir, if you wish it; but I can assure you that you are off
+the track of Stingaree."
+
+"How do _you_ know?" asked Kilbride, rudely; but he was beginning to
+look less black.
+
+"I happen to know the place. You would have some difficulty in finding
+it if you never were there before. I only stumbled across it by accident
+myself."
+
+"Lately?"
+
+"One day last winter when I was out looking for some horses."
+
+"And you kept it to yourself!"
+
+The trooper hung his head. "I knew we should have him across the river
+again," he said. "It was only a question of time; and--well, sir, you
+can understand!"
+
+"You were keen on taking him yourself, were you?"
+
+"As keen as you are, Mr. Kilbride!" owned the younger man, raising bold
+eyes, and looking his superior fairly and squarely in the face.
+
+Kilbride returned the stare, and what he saw unsettled him. The other
+was wiry, trim, eminently alert; he had the masterful mouth and the
+dare-devil eye, and his horse seemed a part of himself. A more promising
+comrade at hot work was not to be desired: and the work would be hot if
+Stingaree had half a chance. After all, it was better for two to succeed
+than for one to fail. "Half the money and a whole skin!" said Kilbride
+to himself, and rapped out his decision with an oath.
+
+The trooper's eyes lit with reckless mirth, and a soft cheer came from
+under his breath.
+
+"By the bye, what's your name," said Kilbride, "before we start?"
+
+"Bowen--Jack Bowen."
+
+"Then I know all about you! Why on earth didn't you tell me before? It
+was you who took that black fellow who murdered the shepherd on Woolshed
+Creek, wasn't it?"
+
+The admission was made with due modesty.
+
+"Why, you're the very man for me!" Kilbride cried. "You show the way,
+Jack, and I'll make the going."
+
+And off they went together at a canter, the slanting sun striking fire
+from their buttons and accoutrements, and lighting their sunburnt faces
+as it lit the red stems and the white that raced past them on either
+side. For a little they followed the path which Kilbride had taken on
+his way thither; then the trooper plunged into the thick bush on the
+left, and the game became follow-my-leader, in and out, out and in,
+through a maze of red stems and of white, where the pungent eucalyptus
+scent hung heavy as the sage-green, perpendicular leaves themselves: and
+so onward until the Sub-Inspector called a halt.
+
+"How far is it now, Bowen?"
+
+"Two or three miles, sir."
+
+"Good! It'll be light for another hour and a half. We'd better give the
+mokes a breather while we can. And there'd be no harm in two draws."
+
+"I was just thinking the same thing, sir."
+
+So their reins dangled while they cut up a pipeful of apparent
+shoe-leather apiece: and presently the dull blue smoke was curling and
+circling against the dull green foliage, producing subtle half-tint
+harmonies and momentary arabesques as the horses ambled neck and neck.
+
+"Native of this Colony?" puffed Kilbride.
+
+"Well, no--old country originally--but I've been out some years."
+
+"That's all right so long as you're not a New South Welshman," said
+Kilbride, with a chuckle. "I'll be shot if I wouldn't almost have turned
+you back if you had been!"
+
+"Victoria is to have all the credit, is she, sir?"
+
+"Anyhow they sha'n't have any on the other side, or I'll know the
+reason!" the Victorian swore. "I--I--by Jove, I'd as lief lose my man
+again as let them have a hand in taking him!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Why? Do you live so near the border, and can you ask? Did you never
+hear a Sydney-side drover blowing about his blooming Colony? Haven't you
+heard of Sydney Harbor till you're sick? And then their papers!" cried
+Kilbride, with columns in his tone. "But I'll have the last laugh yet!
+I swore I would, and I will! I swore I'd take Stingaree----"
+
+"So I heard."
+
+"Yes, they put it in their infernal papers! But it was true--take him I
+will!"
+
+"Or die in the attempt, eh?"
+
+"Or die and be damned to me!"
+
+All the bitterness of previous failure, indeed of notorious and
+much-criticized defeat, was in the Sub-Inspector's tone; that of his
+subordinate, though light as air, had a touch of insolence which an
+outsider could not have failed--but Kilbride was too excited--to detect.
+The outsider might possibly have foreseen a rivalry which no longer
+entered Kilbride's hot head.
+
+Meanwhile the country was changing even with their now leisurely
+advance. The timbered flats in the region of the river had merged into a
+gully which was rapidly developing into a gorge, with new luxuriant
+growths which added greatly to the density of the forest, suggesting its
+very heart. The almost neutral eucalyptian tint was splashed with the
+gay hues of many parrots, as though the gum-trees had burst into flower.
+The noise of running water stole gradually through the murmur of leaves.
+And suddenly an object in the grass struck the sight like a lantern
+flashed at dead of night: it proved to be an empty sardine tin pricked
+by a stray lance from the slanting sun.
+
+"We must be near," whispered Kilbride.
+
+"We are there! You hear the creek? He has a gunyah there--that's all.
+Shall we rush it on horseback or creep up on foot?"
+
+"You know the lie of the land, Bowen; which do you recommend?"
+
+"Rushing it."
+
+"Then here goes."
+
+In a few seconds they had leaped their horses into a tiny clearing on
+the banks of a creek as relatively minute. And the gunyah--a mere funnel
+of boughs and leaves, in which a man could lie at full length, but only
+sit upright at the funnel's mouth--seemed as empty as the space on every
+hand. The only other sign of Stingaree was a hank of rope flung
+carelessly across the gunyah roof.
+
+"He may be watching us from among the trees," muttered Kilbride, looking
+sharply about him. Bowen screwed up his eyes and followed suit.
+
+"I hardly think it, Mr. Kilbride."
+
+"But it's possible, and here we sit for him to pot us! Let's dismount,
+whether or no."
+
+They slid to the ground. The trooper found himself at the mouth of the
+gunyah.
+
+"What if he were in there after all!" said he.
+
+"He isn't," said Kilbride, stepping in front and stooping quickly. "But
+you might creep in, Jack, and see if he's left any sign of life behind
+him."
+
+The men were standing between the horses, their revolvers cocked.
+Bowen's answer was to hand his weapon over to Kilbride and to creep into
+the gunyah on his hands and knees.
+
+"Here's something or other," his voice cried thickly from within. "It's
+half buried. Wait a bit."
+
+"As sharp as you can!"
+
+"All right; but it's a box, and jolly heavy!"
+
+Kilbride peered nervously to right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell
+upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box
+in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though they
+had violated a grave.
+
+"Kick it open!" exclaimed Kilbride, excitedly.
+
+But there was no need for that; the box was not even locked; and the
+lifted lid revealed an inner one of glass, protecting a brass cylinder
+with steel bristles in uneven growth, and a long line of lilliputian
+hammers.
+
+"A musical-box!" said the staggered Sub-Inspector.
+
+"That's it, sir. I remember hearing that he'd collared one on one of
+the stations he stuck up last time he was down here. It must have lain
+in the ground ever since. And it only shows how hard you must have
+pressed him, Mr. Kilbride!"
+
+"Yes! I headed him back across the Murray--I soon had him out o' this!"
+rejoined the other in grim bravado. "Anything else in the gunyah?"
+
+"All he took that trip, I fancy, if we dig a bit. You never gave him
+time to roll his swag!"
+
+"I must have a look," said Kilbride, his excitement fed by his reviving
+vanity.
+
+The other questioned whether it were worth while. This settled the
+Sub-Inspector.
+
+"There may be something to show where he's gone," that casuist
+suggested, "for I don't believe he's anywhere here."
+
+"Shall I hold the shooters, sir?"
+
+"Thanks; and keep your eyes open, just in case. But it's my opinion that
+the bird's flown somewhere else, and it's for us to find out where."
+
+Kilbride then crept into the gunyah upon his hands and knees, and found
+it less dark than he had supposed, the light filtering freely through
+the leaves and branches. At the inner extremity he found a mildewed
+blanket, and the place where the musical-box had evidently lain a long
+time; but there, though he delved to the elbows in the loosened earth,
+his discoveries ended. Puzzled and annoyed, Kilbride was on the verge of
+cursing his subordinate, when all at once he was given fresh cause. The
+musical-box had burst into selections from _The Pirates of Penzance_.
+
+"What the deuce are you at?" shouted the irate officer.
+
+"Only seeing how it goes."
+
+"Stop it at once, you fool! He may hear it!"
+
+"You said the bird had flown."
+
+"You dare to argue with me? By thunder, you shall see!"
+
+But it was Sub-Inspector Kilbride who saw most. Backing precipitately
+out of the gunyah, he turned round before rising upright--and remained
+upon his knees after all. He was covered by two revolvers--one of them
+his own--and the face behind the barrels was the one with which the last
+hour had familiarized Kilbride. The only difference was the single
+eye-glass in the right eye. And the strains of the musical-box--so thin
+and tinkling in the open air--filled the pause.
+
+"What in blazes are you playing at?" laughed the luckless officer,
+feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was
+entering his soul by inches.
+
+"Rise another inch without my leave and you may be in blazes to see!"
+
+"Look here, Bowen, what do you mean?"
+
+"Only that Stingaree happens to be at home after all, Mr. Kilbride."
+
+The victim's grin was no longer forced; the situation made for laughter,
+even if the laughter were hysterical; and for an instant it was given
+even to Kilbride to see the cruel humor of it. Then he realized all it
+meant to him--certain ruin or a sudden death--and the drops stood thick
+upon his skin.
+
+"What of Bowen?" he at length asked hoarsely. The idea of another victim
+came as some slight alleviation of his own grotesque case.
+
+"I didn't kill him," Stingaree.
+
+"Good!" said Kilbride. It was something that two of them should live to
+share the shame.
+
+"But wing him I did," added the bushranger. "I couldn't help myself. The
+beggar put a bullet through my hat; he did well only to get one back in
+the leg."
+
+Kilbride longed to be winged and wounded in his turn, since blood alone
+could lessen his disgrace. On cooler reflection, however, it was
+obviously wiser to feign a surrender more abject than it might finally
+prove to have been.
+
+"Well," said Kilbride, "you have the whip-hand over me this time, and I
+give you best. How long are you going to keep me on my knees?"
+
+"You can get up when you like," replied Stingaree, "if you promise not
+to play the fool. So you were really going to take me this time, were
+you? I have really no desire to rub it in, but if I were you I should
+have kept that to myself until I'd done it. And you wanted to have me
+all to yourself? Well, you couldn't pay me a higher compliment, but I'm
+going to pay you a high one in return. You really did make me run for it
+last time, and leave all sorts of things behind. So this time I mean to
+take them with me and leave you here instead. Nevertheless, you're the
+only Victorian trap I have any respect for, Mr. Kilbride, or I shouldn't
+have gone to all this trouble to get you here."
+
+Kilbride did not blanch, but he heard his apparent doom with a
+glittering eye, and was deaf for a little to _The Pirates of Penzance_.
+
+"Oh! I'm not going to harm a good man like you," continued Stingaree,
+"unless you make me. Your friend Bowen made me, but I don't promise to
+fire low every time, mark you! There's another good man on the other
+side--Cairns by name--you know him, do you? He'll kick up his heels
+when he hears of this; but they do no better in New South Wales, so
+don't you let that worry you. To think you held both shooters at one
+stage of the game! I trusted you, and so you trusted me; if only you had
+known, eh? Hear that tune, and know what it is? It's in your honor, Mr.
+Kilbride."
+
+And Stingaree hummed the policemen's chorus _sotto voce_; but before the
+end, with a swift remorse, induced by the dignity of Kilbride's bearing
+in humiliating disaster, he swooped upon the insolent instrument and
+stopped its tinkle by touching the lever with one revolver-barrel while
+sedulously covering the Sub-Inspector with the other. The sudden
+cessation of the toy music, bringing back into undue prominence all the
+little bush noises which had filled the air before, brought home to
+Kilbride a position which he had subconsciously associated with those
+malevolent strains as something theatrical and unreal. He had known in
+his heart that it was real, without grasping the reality until now. He
+flung up his fists in sudden entreaty.
+
+"Put a bullet through me," he cried, "if you're a man!"
+
+Stingaree shook a decisive head.
+
+"Not if I can help it," said he. "But I fear I shall have to tie you
+up."
+
+"That's slow death!"
+
+"It never has been yet, but you must take your chance. Get me that rope
+that's slung over the gunyah. It's got to be done."
+
+Kilbride obeyed with apparent apathy; but his heart was inflamed with a
+sudden and infernal glow. Yes, it had never ended in death in any case
+that he could recall of this time-honored trick of all the bushrangers;
+on the contrary, sooner or later, most victims had contrived to release
+themselves. Well, one victim was going to complete his release by
+hanging himself by the same rope to the same tree! Meanwhile he
+confronted his captor grimly, the coil in both hands.
+
+"There's a loop at one end," said Stingaree. "Stick your foot through
+it--either foot you like."
+
+Kilbride obeyed, wondering whether his head would go through when his
+turn came.
+
+"Now chuck me the other end."
+
+It fell in coils at the bushranger's feet.
+
+"Now stand up against that blue gum," he continued, pointing at the tree
+with Kilbride's revolver, his own being back at his hip. "And stand
+still like a sensible chap!"
+
+Stingaree then walked round and round the tree, paying out the long
+rope, yet keeping it taut, until it wound round tree and man from the
+latter's ankles to his armpits. Instinctively Kilbride had kept his arms
+free to the last, but they were no use to him in his suit of hemp, and
+one after the other his wrists were pinned and handcuffed behind the
+tree. The cold steel came as a shock. The captive had counted on
+loosening the knots by degrees, beginning with those about his hands.
+But there was no loosening steel gyves like these; he knew the feel of
+them too well; they were Kilbride's own, that he had brought with him
+for Stingaree. "Found 'em in your saddle-bags while you were in my
+gunyah," explained the bushranger, stepping round to survey his
+handiwork. "Sorry to scar the kid--so to speak! But you see you were my
+most dangerous enemy on this side of the Murray!"
+
+The enemy did not look very dangerous as he stood in the dusk, in the
+heart of that forest, lashed to that tree, with his finger-tips not
+quite meeting behind it, and the blood already on his wrists.
+
+"And now?" he whispered, hoarse already, his lips cracking, and his
+throat parched.
+
+"I shall give you a drink before I go."
+
+"I won't take one from you!"
+
+"I shall make you, if I have to be a bigger brute than ever. You must
+live to spin this yarn!"
+
+"Never!"
+
+Stingaree smiled to himself as he produced pipe and tobacco; but it was
+not his sinister smile; it was rather that of the victor who salutes the
+vanquished in his heart. Meanwhile a more striking and a more subtle
+change had come over the face of Kilbride. It was not joy, but it was
+quite a new grimness, and in his own preoccupation the bushranger did
+not notice it at all. He sauntered nearer with his knife and his
+tobacco-plug, and there was some compassion in his pensive stare.
+
+"Cheer up, man!" said he. "There's no disgrace in coming out second best
+to me. You may smile. You'll find it's generally admitted in New South
+Wales. And after all, you needn't tell little crooked Cairns how it
+happened. So that stops your smile! But he's the best man left on my
+tracks, and I shouldn't be surprised if he's the first to find you."
+
+"No more should I!" said a harsh voice behind the bushranger. "Hands up
+and empty, Stingaree, or you're the next dead man in this little
+Colony!"
+
+Quick as thought Stingaree stepped in front of the tied Victorian. But
+his hands were up, and his eye-glass dangling on its string.
+
+"Oh, you don't catch me kill two birds," rasped the newcomer's voice,
+"though I'm not sure which of you would be least loss!"
+
+Stingaree stood aside once more, and waved his hands without lowering
+them, bowing from his captor to his captive as he did so.
+
+"Superintendent Cairns, of New South Wales--Inspector Kilbride, of
+Victoria," said he. "You two men will be glad to know each other."
+
+The New South Welshman drawled out a dry expression of his own
+satisfaction. His was a strange and striking personality. Dark as a
+mulatto, and round-shouldered to the extent of some distinct deformity,
+he carried his eyes high under the lids, and shot his piercing glance
+from under the penthouse of a beetling brow; a lipless mouth was pursed
+in such a fashion as to shorten the upper lip and exaggerate an already
+powerful chin; and this stooping and intent carriage was no less
+suggestive of the human sleuth-hound than were the veiled vigilance and
+dogged determination of the lowered face. Such was the man who had
+succeeded where Kilbride had failed--succeeded at the most humiliating
+moment of that most ignominious failure--and who came unwarrantably from
+the wrong side of the Murray. The Victorian stood in his bonds and
+favored his rival with such a glare as he had not levelled at Stingaree
+himself. But not a syllable did Kilbride vouchsafe. And the
+Superintendent was fully occupied with his prisoner.
+
+"'Little crooked Cairns,' am I? There are those that look a jolly sight
+smaller, and'll have a worse hump than mine for the rest of their born
+days! Come nearer and turn your back."
+
+And the revolver was withdrawn from its carrier on the stolen
+constabulary belt. The bushranger was then searched for other weapons;
+then marched into the bush at the pistol's point, and brought back
+handcuffed to the Superintendent's bridle.
+
+"That's the way you'll come marching home, my boy; and one of us on
+horseback each side; don't trust _you_ in a saddle on a dark night!"
+
+Indeed, it was nearly dark already, and in the nebulous middle-distance
+a laughing jackass was indulging in his evening peal. Cairns jerked his
+head in the direction of the unearthly cackle. "Lots of 'em down here in
+Vic, I believe," said he, and at length turned his attention to the
+bound man. "You see, I wanted to land him alive and kicking without
+spilling blood," he continued, opening his knife. "That was why I had to
+let him tie you up."
+
+"You _let_ him?" thundered the Victorian, breaking his silence with a
+bellow. It was as though the man with the knife had cut through the rope
+into the bound man's body.
+
+"Stand still," said he, "or I may hurt you. I had to let him, my good
+fellow, or we'd have been dropping each other like bullocks. As it is,
+not a scratch between us, though I found young Bowen in a pretty bad
+way. Our friend had stuck up Jumping Creek barracks in the small hours,
+put a bullet through Bowen's leg, and come away in his uniform. Pretty
+tall, that, eh? I shouldn't wonder if you'd swing him for it alone, down
+here in Vic; no doubt you've got to be more severe in a young Colony.
+Well, I tracked my gentleman to the barracks, and I found Bowen in his
+blood, sent my trooper for a doctor, and got on _your_ tracks before
+they were half an hour old. I came up with you just as he'd stuck you
+up. He had one in each hand. It wasn't quite good enough at the moment."
+
+The knife shore through the rope for the last time, and it lay in short
+ends all round the tree.
+
+"Now my hands," cried Kilbride fiercely.
+
+"I beg pardon?" said the satirical Superintendent.
+
+"My hands, I tell you!"
+
+"There's a little word they teach 'em to say at our State Schools.
+Perhaps you never heard it down in Vic?"
+
+"Don't be a silly fool," said Kilbride, wearily. "You haven't been
+through what I have!"
+
+"That's true," said Cairns. "Still, you might be decently civil to the
+man that gets you out of a mess."
+
+Nevertheless, the handcuffs were immediately removed; and that instant,
+with the curtest thanks, Sub-Inspector Kilbride sprang forward with such
+vigorous intent that the other detained him forcibly by one of his stiff
+and aching arms.
+
+"What are you after now, Kilbride?"
+
+"My prisoner!"
+
+"Your what?"
+
+"_My_ prisoner," I said.
+
+"I like that--and you his!"
+
+Kilbride burst into a voluble defence of his position.
+
+"What right have you on this side of the Murray, you Sydney-sider? None
+at all, except as a passenger. You can't lay finger on man, woman, or
+child in this Colony, and, by God, you sha'n't! Nor yet upon the three
+hundred there's on his head; and the sons of convicts down in Sydney can
+put _that_ in their pipe and smoke it!"
+
+For all his cool and ready insolence, the misshapen Superintendent from
+the other side stood dazed and bewildered by this volcanic outpouring.
+Then his dark face flushed darker, and with a snarl he clinched his
+fists. The Victorian, however, had turned on his heel, and now his
+liberated hands flew skyward, as though the bushranger's revolver
+covered him yet again.
+
+But there was no such weapon discernible through the shade; no New South
+Welshman's horse; and neither sight, sound, wraith, nor echo of
+Stingaree, the outlawed bushranger, the terror and the despair of the
+Sister Colonies!
+
+"I thought it might be done when I saw how you fixed him," said Kilbride
+cheerfully. "Those beggars can ride lying down or standing up!"
+
+"I believe you saw him clear!"
+
+"I'll settle that with you when I've caught him."
+
+"You catch him, you gum-sucker, when you as good as let him go!"
+
+And a volley of further and far more trenchant abuse was discharged by
+Superintendent Cairns, of the New South Wales Police. But Kilbride was
+already in the saddle; a covert outward kick with his spurred heel, and
+the third horse went cantering riderless into the trees.
+
+"He won't go far," sang the Sub-Inspector, "and he'll take you safe
+back to barracks if you give him his head. It's easy to get bushed in
+this country--for new chums from penal settlements!"
+
+As the Victorian galloped into the darkness, and the New South Welshman
+dashed wildly after the third horse, the laughing jackass in the
+invisible middle-distance gave his last grotesque guffaw at departed
+day. And the laughing jackass is a Victorian bird.
+
+
+
+
+The Honor of the Road
+
+
+Sergeant Cameron was undressing for bed when he first heard the voices
+through the weather-board walls; in less than a minute there was a knock
+at his door.
+
+"Here's Mr. Hardcastle from Rosanna, sir. He says he must see you at
+once."
+
+"The deuce he does! What about?"
+
+"He says he'll only tell you; but he's ridden over in three hours, and
+he looks like the dead."
+
+"Give him some whiskey, Tyler, and tell him I'll be down in two ticks."
+
+So saying, the gray-bearded sergeant of the New South Wales Mounted
+Police tucked his night-gown into his cord breeches, slipped into his
+tunic, and hastened to the parlor which served as court-room on
+occasion, buttoning as he went. Mr. Hardcastle had a glass to his lips
+as the sergeant entered. He was a very fine man of forty, and his
+massive frame was crowned with a countenance as handsome as it was open
+and bold; but at a glance it was plain that he was both shaken and
+exhausted, and in no mood to hide either his fatigue or his distress.
+Sergeant Cameron sat down on the other side of the oval table with the
+faded cloth; the younger constable had left the room when Hardcastle
+called him back.
+
+"Don't go, Tyler," said he. "You may as well both hear what I've got to
+say. It's--it's Stingaree!"
+
+The name was echoed in incredulous undertones.
+
+"But he's down in Vic," urged the sergeant. "He's been giving our chaps
+a devil of a time down there!"
+
+"He's come back. I've seen him with my own eyes. But I'm beginning at
+the wrong end first," said the squatter, taking another sip and then
+sitting back to survey his hearers. "You know old Duncan, my overseer?"
+
+The sergeant nodded.
+
+"Of course you know him," the other continued, "and so does the whole
+back-country, and did even before he won this fortune in the Melbourne
+Cup sweep. I suppose you've heard how he took the news? He was fuddling
+himself from his own bottle on Sunday afternoon when the mail came; the
+first I knew of it was when I saw him sitting with his letter in one
+hand and throwing out the rest of his grog with the other. Then he told
+us he had won the first prize of thirty thousand, and that he had made
+up his mind to have his next drink at his own place in Scotland. He left
+us that afternoon to catch the coach and go down to Sydney for his
+money. He ought to have been back this evening before sundown."
+
+The sergeant put in his word:
+
+"That he ought, for I saw him come off the coach and start for the
+station as soon as they'd run up the horse he left behind him at the
+pub. I wondered what had brought him, if he was so set on getting back
+to the old country."
+
+"I could tell you," said Hardcastle, after some little hesitation, "and
+I may as well. Poor old Duncan was the most generous of men, and nothing
+would serve him but that every soul on Rosanna should share more or less
+in his good fortune. I am ashamed to tell you how much he spoke of
+pressing on myself. You have probably heard that one of his
+peculiarities was that he would never take payment by check, like other
+people? I believe it was because he had knocked down too many checks in
+his day. In any case, we used to call him Hard Cash Duncan on Rosanna;
+and I am very much afraid that when you saw him he must have had the
+whole of his thirty thousand pounds upon him in the hardest form of
+cash."
+
+"But what has happened, Mr. Hardcastle?"
+
+"The very worst," said Hardcastle, stooping to sip. The three heads came
+closer together across the faded tablecloth. "There was no sign of him
+at seven; he ought to have been with us before six. We had done our best
+to make it an occasion, and it seemed that the dinner would be spoilt.
+So at seven young Evans, my store-keeper, went off at a gallop to meet
+him, and at twenty-five past he came galloping back leading a riderless
+horse. It was the one you saw Duncan riding this afternoon. There was
+blood upon the saddle. I found it. And within another hour we had found
+the poor old boy himself, dead and cold in the middle of the track, with
+a bullet through his heart."
+
+The squatter's voice trembled with an emotion that did him honor in his
+hearers' eyes; and the gray-bearded sergeant waited a little before
+asking questions.
+
+"What makes you think it is Stingaree?" he inquired, at length.
+
+"I tell you I saw him on the run, with my own eyes, this morning. I
+passed him in one of my paddocks, as close as I am to you, and asked him
+if he was looking for the homestead. He answered that he was only riding
+through, and we neither of us stopped."
+
+"Yet you knew all the time that it was Stingaree?"
+
+"No; to be quite honest," replied Hardcastle, "I never dreamt of it at
+the time. But now I am quite positive on the point. He hadn't his
+eye-glass in his eye, but it was dangling on its cord all right; and
+there was the curled mustache, and the boots and breeches that one knows
+all about, if one has never seen them for oneself. Yet I own it didn't
+dawn on me just then. I happened to be thinking of the stations round
+about, and wondering if they were as burnt up as we are, and when I met
+this swell I simply took him for a new chum on one or other of them."
+
+"There had been robbery, of course?"
+
+"An absolute clearance," said Hardcastle. "The valise had been cut to
+ribbons with a knife, and its other contents were strewed all about; a
+pocketbook we found still bulging from the roll of notes which had been
+taken out. I waited beside him while Evans went back for the buggy, and
+when they started to take him in I rode on to you."
+
+"We'll ride back with you at once," said the sergeant, "and find you a
+fresh horse if your own has had enough. Run up the lot, Tyler, and Mr.
+Hardcastle can take his choice. It seems clear enough," continued
+Cameron, as the trooper disappeared. "But this is a new departure for
+Stingaree; it's the very thing that everybody said he would never do."
+
+"And yet it's the logical climax of his career; it might have happened
+long ago, but it's not his first blood as it is," argued Hardcastle,
+when he had drained his glass. "Didn't he wing one of you down in
+Victoria the other day? Your bushranger is bound to come to it sooner or
+later. He may much prefer not to shoot; but he has only to get up
+against a man of his own calibre, as resolute and as well armed as
+himself, to have no choice in the matter. Poor old Duncan was the very
+type; he would never have given way. In fact, we found him with his own
+revolver fast in his hand, and a finger frozen to the trigger, but not a
+chamber discharged."
+
+"Yes? Then that settles it, and it must have been foul play," cried
+Cameron, owning a doubt in its dismissal. "And we mustn't lose a single
+minute in getting on this blackguard's tracks."
+
+Yet it was midnight before the little cavalcade set out upon a ride of
+over thirty miles, for arrangements had to be made for a telegram to be
+sent to the Glenranald coroner first thing in the morning, and to insure
+this it was necessary to disturb the postmaster, who occupied one of the
+three weather-board dwellings which constituted the roadside hamlet of
+Clear Corner. A round moon topped the sand-hills as the trio rode away;
+it was near its almost dazzling zenith when they reined up at the scene
+of the murder. This was at a point where the sandy track ran through a
+belt of scrub, and the sergeant got off to examine the ground with
+Hardcastle, while Tyler mounted guard in the saddle. But nothing of
+importance was discovered by the pair on foot, and nothing seen or heard
+by their mounted comrade.
+
+They found the station still astir and faintly aglow in the veiled
+daylight of the moon. A cluster of the men stood in a glare at the door
+of their hut; the travellers' hut betrayed the like symptoms of
+excitement; at the kitchen door were more men with pannikins, and odd
+glimpses of a firelit, white-capped face within. But on the broad
+veranda sat two young men with their backs to a closed and darkened
+window. And behind the window lay all that remained of an elderly man,
+whose brown, gnarled face was scarcely recognizable by the newcomers in
+its strange smooth pallor, but his grizzled beard weirdly familiar and
+still crisp with lingering life.
+
+The coroner arrived in some thirty hours, which had brought forth
+nothing new; his jury was drawn from the men's hut and rabbiters'
+tents; and after a prolonged but inconclusive investigation, the inquest
+was adjourned for a week. But the seven days were as barren as the
+first, and a verdict against some person unknown a foregone result. This
+did not satisfy the many who were positive that they knew the person;
+for Stingaree had been seen a hundred miles lower down, doubtless on his
+way back to Victoria, and with his appearance altered in a telltale
+manner. But the coroner thought he knew better than anybody else, and
+had his way, notwithstanding the manifest feeling on the long veranda
+where he held his court.
+
+So jurors and spectators drifted back to hut and tent and neighboring
+station, the coroner started in his buggy for Glenranald, and last of
+all the police departed, leading the horse which Hardcastle had ridden
+home from their barracks, and leaving him at peace once more with his
+two young men. But on the squatter the time had told; his table had been
+full to overflowing through it all; and he sank into a long chair, a
+trifle grayer at the temples, a thought looser in his dress, as the
+pugarees of Cameron and Tyler fluttered out of sight.
+
+"I think we might have a drink," he said with a wry smile to Evans, who
+fetched the decanter from the store; the jackeroo was called from a
+stable which had become Augean during the week, and the three were still
+mildly tippling when the store-keeper came to his feet.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried he. "I thought we'd seen the last of the plucky
+police!"
+
+"You don't mean to say they're coming back?"
+
+"I do, worse luck! Cameron, Tyler, and some new joker in plain clothes."
+
+Hardcastle finished his drink with a resigned smile, and stood on the
+veranda to receive the intruders.
+
+"After all, it will stave off the reaction I began to feel the moment
+they had turned their backs," said he. "Well, well, well! I thought I'd
+just got rid of you fellows, and back you come like base coin!"
+
+"You mustn't blame us," said the sergeant, first to dismount. "We
+couldn't know that Superintendent Cairns had been sent up from Sydney,
+much less that we should ride right into him in your horse-paddock!"
+
+The squatter had stepped down from the veranda with polite alacrity.
+
+"Glad to see you, Mr. Cairns," said he. "I only wish you had come
+before."
+
+The creature in the plain clothes looked about him with a dry smile,
+and a sharp eye upon the younger men and the empty glasses, as he and
+the sergeant accompanied Hardcastle to the veranda, while Tyler took
+charge of the three horses. The fame of Cairns had travelled before him
+to Rosanna, but none had been prepared for a figure so weird or for a
+countenance so forbidding and malign. His manners were equally uncouth.
+He shook his bent head to decline refreshment; he pointedly ignored a
+generalization of Hardcastle's about the crime; and when he spoke, it
+was in a gratuitously satirical style of his own.
+
+"May I ask, Mr. Hardcastle, if you are the owner or the manager of this
+lodge in a howling wilderness?"
+
+"I'm sorry to say I am both."
+
+"I appreciate the sorrow. I failed to discern a single green blade as I
+came along."
+
+"We depend on salt-bush and the like."
+
+"In spite of which, I believe, you have had several lean years?"
+
+"There's no denying it."
+
+"I am sorry to be one of so many intruders in such a season, Mr.
+Hardcastle, but I shall not trouble you long. I hope to take the
+murderer to-night."
+
+"Stingaree?"
+
+"Not quite so loud, please. Who else, should you suppose? You may be
+interested to hear that he has been in hiding on your run for several
+days, and so have I, within fairly easy reach of him. But he is not a
+man to be taken single-handed without further loss of life; so I
+intercepted you, sergeant, and now you are both enlightened. To-night,
+with your assistance and that of your young colleague, I count upon a
+bloodless victory. But I should prefer you, Mr. Hardcastle, not to
+mention the matter to the very young men whom I noticed in your company
+on my arrival. Have I your promise to comply with my wishes on this
+point, and on any other which may arise in connection with the capture?"
+
+And a steely glitter shot through the beetling eyebrows; but Hardcastle
+had given his word before the request was rounded to that pedantic
+neatness which characterized the crabbed utterances of the
+round-shouldered dictator.
+
+"That is well," he went on, "for now I can admit you both into my plan
+of campaign. Suppose we sit down here on the veranda, at the end
+farthest from any door. Be good enough to draw your chairs nearer mine,
+gentlemen. It might be dangerous if a fourth person heard me say that I
+had discovered the murderer's ill-gotten hoard!"
+
+"Not you, sir!" cried Cameron.
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed the squatter.
+
+"The discoverer was not divine, and indeed no human being but myself,"
+the bent man averred, turning with mischievous humor from one to the
+other of his astonished hearers. "Yes, there was more gold than I would
+have credited a sane Scotchman with carrying through the wilds; but the
+bulk was in small notes and the whole has been buried in the scrub close
+to the scene of the murder, doubtless to avoid at once the detection and
+the division of such unusual spoil."
+
+"You are thinking of his mate?"
+
+It was Cameron who had asked the question, but Mr. Hardcastle followed
+immediately with another.
+
+"Did you remove the spoil?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Hardcastle! How you must lack the detective instinct! Of
+course, I left everything as nearly as possible as I found it; the man
+camps on the spot, or very near it; he lights no fires and is careful to
+leave no marks, but I am more or less convinced of it. And that is where
+I shall take him to-night, or, rather, early to-morrow morning."
+
+"I wish you could make it to-night," said Hardcastle, with a yawn that
+put a period to a pause of some duration.
+
+"Why?" demanded the detective, raising open eyes for once.
+
+"Because I've had a desperate week of it," replied Hardcastle, "and am
+dead with sleep."
+
+The other carried his growing geniality to the length of an almost
+hearty laugh.
+
+"My dear sir, do you suppose that I thought of taking _you_ with us? No,
+Mr. Hardcastle, the risks of this sort of enterprise are for those who
+are paid to run them. And there is a risk; if we timed our attack too
+early or too late there would be bloodshed to a certainty. But at two
+o'clock the average man is fast asleep; at a quarter after one,
+therefore, I start with Sergeant Cameron and Constable Tyler."
+
+Hardcastle yawned again.
+
+"I should like to have been with you, but there are compensations," said
+he. "I doubt if I shall even stay up to see you off."
+
+"If you did you would sit up alone," returned the Superintendent. "I
+intend to turn in myself for three or four hours; and it will be in the
+face of all my wishes, sergeant, if you and Tyler do not do the same. No
+reason to tell him what a short night it's to be; it might prevent a
+young fellow like that from getting any sleep at all. Merely let it be
+arranged that we all turn in betimes in view of an early start; we three
+alone need know how early the start will be."
+
+They had their simple dinner at half-past seven, when the detective took
+it on himself to entertain the party, and succeeded so well that the
+entertainment was continued on the veranda for the better part of
+another hour. Doubled up in his chair, abnormal, weird, he recounted in
+particular the exploits of Stingaree (included a garbled version of the
+recent fiasco across the Murray) with a zest only equalled by his
+confidant undertaking to avenge the death of Robert Duncan before
+another day was out; all listened in a rapt silence, and the younger men
+were duly disappointed when the party broke up prematurely between nine
+and ten. But they also had played their part in a fatiguing week; by the
+later hour all were in their rooms, and before very long Rosanna Station
+lay lighted only by the full white moon of New South Wales.
+
+Cameron wondered if it could possibly be two o'clock, while Tyler sat up
+insensate with the full weight of his first sleep, when their chief
+crept into the double-bedded room in which the two policemen had been
+put. He owned himself before his time by an hour and more, but explained
+that he had an idea which had only struck him as he was about to fall
+asleep.
+
+"If we hunt for the fellow in the dark," said he, "we may give him the
+alarm before we come on him. But if we go now there is at least a chance
+that we may find his fire to guide us. I am aware I said he wouldn't
+light one there, but everybody knows that Stingaree uses a spirit-lamp.
+In any case it's a chance, and with a desperate man like that we can't
+afford to give the ghost of a chance away."
+
+The sergeant dressed without more ado, as did his subordinate on
+learning the nature of their midnight errand; meanwhile the disturber of
+slumbers was gone to the horse-yard to start saddling. The others
+followed in a few minutes. And there was the horse-yard overflowing with
+moonshine, but empty alike of man and beast.
+
+"I wonder what's got him?" murmured the bewildered sergeant uneasily.
+
+"Old Harry, for all I care!" muttered the other. "I'm no such nuts on
+him, if you ask me. There's a bit too much of him for my taste."
+
+In his secret breast the sergeant entertained a similar sentiment, but
+he was too old an officer to breathe disaffection in the ear of his
+subaltern. He contented himself with a mild expression of his surprise
+at the conduct of the Sydney authorities in putting a "towny" over his
+head without so much as a word of notice.
+
+"And such a 'towny'!" echoed Tyler. "One you never heard of in your life
+before, and never will again!"
+
+"Speak for yourself!" rejoined Cameron, irritated at the exaggeration of
+their case. "I have heard of him ever since I joined the force."
+
+"Well, he's a funny joke to have shoved over us, a blooming little
+hunchback like that."
+
+"I always heard that he was none the worse for what he couldn't help,
+and now I can understand it," said the sergeant, "for he's not such a
+hunch----"
+
+The men looked at each other in the moonlight, and the ugly word was
+never finished. A dozen hoofs were galloping upon them, their thunder
+muffled by the sandy road, and into the tank of moonshine came two
+horses, hounded by the detective bareback on the third.
+
+"Someone left the slip-rails down, and they were all over the
+horse-paddock," he panted. "But I took a bridle and managed to catch
+one, and it was easy enough to run up the other two."
+
+But even Constable Tyler thought the more of their misshapen leader for
+the feat.
+
+There was now no time to be lost, for it approached midnight, but the
+trio were soon cantering through the horse-paddock neck-and-neck, and
+the new day found them at the farther gate. The moon still poured
+unbroken brilliance upon that desert world of sandy stretches tufted
+with salt-bush and erratically overgrown with scrub. The shadow of the
+gate was as another gate lying ready to be hung; for each particular
+wire in the fence there was a thin black stripe upon the ground. The
+three passed through, and came in quick time upon the edge of that scrub
+in which the crime had been committed. And here the chief called a halt.
+
+"The two to nail him must be on foot," said he. "You can creep upon him
+on foot as you never could with a horse; but I will remain mounted in
+the road and ride him down if he shows fight."
+
+So the pair in the pugarees walked one at either stirrup of their
+crooked chief, leaving the two horses tethered to a tree, until of a
+sudden the whole party halted as one. They had rounded a bend in the
+road with great caution, for they all knew where they were; but only one
+of them was prepared for the position of the light which flashed into
+their eyes from the heart of the scrub.
+
+It was a tiny light, set low upon the ground, and yet it flashed through
+the forest like a diamond in a bundle of hay. It burnt at no little
+distance from the track, for at a movement it was lost, but it was some
+hundreds of yards nearer the station than the scene of the murder. The
+chief whispered that this was where he had found the buried booty, and
+over half the distance he led the way, winding in and out among the
+trees, now throwing a leg across his horse's withers to avoid a hole,
+anon embracing its neck to escape contact with the branches. It was long
+before they could discern anything but the light itself amid the trunks
+and branches of the scrub.
+
+Suddenly the horseman stopped, beckoning with his free hand to the pair
+afoot, pointing at the fire with the one that held the reins; and as
+they crept up to him he stooped in the stirrups till his mouth was close
+to the sergeant's ear.
+
+"He's sitting on the far side of the light, but you can't see his face.
+I thought he was a log, and I still believe he's asleep. Creep on him
+like cats till he looks up; then rush him with your revolvers before he
+can draw his, and I'll support you with mine!"
+
+Nearer and nearer stole Cameron and Tyler; the rider managed to coax a
+few more noiseless steps from his clever mount, but dropped the reins
+and squared his elbows some twenty paces from the light--a hurricane
+lamp now in the sharpest focus. The policemen crawled some yards ahead;
+all three carried revolver in hand. But still the unsuspecting figure
+sat motionless, his chin upon his chest, the brim of his wideawake
+hiding his face, a little heap of gold and notes before him on the
+ground. Then the Superintendent's horse flung up its head; its teeth
+champed upon the bit; the man sat bolt upright, and the light of the
+hurricane lamp fell full upon the face of Hardcastle the squatter.
+
+"Rush him! rush him! That's the man we want!"
+
+But the momentary stupefaction of the police had given Hardcastle his
+opportunity; the hurricane lamp flew between them, going out where it
+fell, and for a minute the revolvers spat harmlessly in the remaining
+patchwork of moonshine and shadow.
+
+"Get behind trees; shoot low, don't kill him!" shouted the chief from
+his saddle. "Now on to him before he can load again. That's it! Pin him!
+Throw your revolvers away, or he'll snatch one before you know where you
+are! Ah, I thought he was too strong for you! Mr. Hardcastle, I'll put a
+bullet through you myself if you don't instantly surrender!"
+
+And the fight ended with the bent man leaning in his stirrups over the
+locked and swaying group, as he brandished his revolver to suit deed to
+word. It was a heavy blow with the long barrel that finally turned the
+scale. In a few seconds Hardcastle stood a prisoner, the handcuffs
+fitting his large wrists like gloves, his great frame panting from the
+fray, and yet a marvel of monstrous manhood in its stoical and defiant
+carriage.
+
+"For God's sake, Cairns, do what you say!" he cried. "Put three bullets
+through me, and divide what's on the ground between you!"
+
+"I half wish we could, for your sake," was the reply. "But it's idle to
+speak of it, and I'm afraid you've committed a crime that places you
+beyond the reach of sympathy."
+
+"That he has!" cried the sergeant, wiping blood from his gray beard.
+"It's plain as a pikestaff now; and to think that he was the one to come
+and fetch us the very night he'd done it! But what licks me more than
+anything is how in the world you found him out, sir!"
+
+The hunchback looked down upon the stalwart prisoner standing up to his
+last inch between his two captors: there was an impersonal interest in
+the man's bold eyes that invited a statement more eloquently than the
+sergeant's tongue.
+
+"I will tell you," said the horseman, smiling down upon the three on
+foot. "In the first place, I had my own reasons for knowing that
+Stingaree was nowhere near this place on the night of the murder, for I
+happen to have been on his tracks for some time. Who knew all about the
+dead man's stroke of luck, his insane preference for hard cash, the time
+of his return? Mr. Hardcastle, for one. Who swore that he had met
+Stingaree face to face upon the run? Mr. Hardcastle alone; there was not
+a soul to corroborate or contradict him. Who was in need of many
+thousand pounds? Mr. Hardcastle, as I suspected, and as he practically
+admitted to me when we discussed the bad season on my arrival. I was
+pretty sure of my man before I crossed the boundary fence, but I was
+absolutely convinced before I had spent twenty minutes on his veranda."
+
+The prisoner smiled sardonically in the moonlight. The policemen gazed
+with awe upon the man who had solved a nine days' mystery in fewer
+hours.
+
+"You must remember," he continued, "that I have spent some days and
+nights upon the run; during the days I have camped in the thickest scrub
+I could find, but by night I have been very busy, and last night I had a
+stroke of luck. I stumbled by accident on a track that led me to the
+place I had been looking for all along. You see, I had put myself in
+Hardcastle's skin, and I was quite clear that I should have buried a
+lapful of gold and notes somewhere in the bush until the hue and cry had
+blown over. Not that I expected to find it so near the scene of the
+crime--I should certainly have gone farther afield myself."
+
+"But I can't make out why that wasn't enough for you, sir," ventured the
+sergeant, deferentially. "Why didn't you come in and arrest him on
+that?"
+
+"You shall see in three minutes. Wasn't it far better to catch him
+red-handed as we have? You will at least admit that it was far neater. I
+say I have the place. I say we are all going to it at two in the
+morning. I say, let us sleep till a little after one. Was it not obvious
+what would happen? The only thing I did not expect was to find him
+asleep with the swag under his nose."
+
+Then Hardcastle spoke up.
+
+"I was not asleep," said he. "I thought I was safe for an hour or two
+. . . and I began to think . . . I was wondering what to do . . .
+whether to cut my throat at once . . ."
+
+And his dreadful voice died away like a single chord struck in an empty
+room.
+
+"But Stingaree," put in Tyler in the end. "What's happened to him?"
+
+"He also has been here. But he was many a mile away at the time."
+
+"What brought him here?"
+
+The crooked Superintendent from Sydney was sitting strangely upright in
+his saddle; his face was not to be seen, for his back was to the moon,
+but he seemed to rub one of his eyes.
+
+"He may have wished to clear his character. He may have itched to uphold
+the honor of that road of which he considers himself a not imperfect
+knight. He may have found it so jolly easy to play policeman down in
+Victoria, that he couldn't resist another shot in a better cause up
+here. At his worst he never killed a man in all his life. And you will
+be good enough to take his own word for it that he never will!"
+
+He had backed his horse while he spoke; he turned a little to the light,
+and the eye-glass gleamed in his eye.
+
+The young constable sprang forward.
+
+"Stingaree!" he screamed.
+
+But the gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner.
+
+[Illustration: The gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner.]
+
+"That's right!" cried the bushranger, as he trotted off. "Your horses
+and even your pistols are out of reach, thanks to a discipline for
+which I love you dearly. You hang on to your bird in the hand, my
+friends, and never again misjudge the one in the bush!"
+
+And as the trees swallowed the cantering horse and man, followed by a
+futile shot from the first revolver which the young constable had picked
+up, an embittered admiration kindled in the captive murderer's eyes.
+
+
+
+
+The Purification of Mulfera
+
+
+Mulfera Station, N.S.W., was not only an uttermost end of the earth, but
+an exceedingly loose end, and that again in more senses than one. There
+were no ladies on Mulfera, and this wrought inevitable deterioration in
+the young men who made a bachelors' barracks of the homestead. Not that
+they ever turned it into the perfect pandemonium you might suppose; but
+it was unnecessary either to wear a collar or to repress an oath at
+table; and this sort of disregard does not usually stop at the
+elementary decencies. It is true that on Mulfera the bark of the
+bachelor was something worse than his bite, and his tongue no fair
+criterion to the rest of him. Nevertheless, the place became a byword,
+even in the back-blocks; and when at last the good Bishop Methuen had
+the hardihood to include it in an episcopal itinerary, there were
+admirers of that dear divine who roundly condemned his folly, and
+enemies who no longer denied his heroism.
+
+The Lord Bishop of the Back-Blocks had at that time been a twelvemonth
+or more in charge of what he himself described playfully as his
+"oceanic see"; but his long neglect of Mulfera was due less to its
+remoteness than to the notorious fact that they wanted no adjectival and
+alliterative bishops there. An obvious way of repulse happened to be
+open to the blaspheming squatter, though there is no other instance of
+its employment. On these up-country visitations the Bishop was dependent
+for his mobility upon the horseflesh of his hospitable hosts; thus it
+became the custom to send to fetch him from one station to another; and
+as a rule the owner or the manager came himself, with four horses and
+the big trap. The manager of Mulfera said his horses had something else
+to do, and his neighbors backed him up with some discreet encouragement
+on their own account. It was felt that a slur would be left upon the
+whole district if his lordship actually met with the only sort of
+reception which was predicted for him on Mulfera. Bishop Methuen,
+however, was one of the last men on earth to shirk a plague-spot; and on
+this one, warning was eventually received that the Bishop and his
+chaplain would arrive on horseback the following Sunday morning, to
+conduct divine service, if quite convenient, at eleven o'clock.
+
+The language of the manager was something inconceivable upon the receipt
+of this cool advice. He was a man named Carmichael, and quite a
+different type from the neighbors who held up horny hands when the
+Bishop decided on his raid. Carmichael was not "a native of this
+colony," or of the next, but he was that distressing spectacle, the
+public-school man who is no credit to his public school. Worse than
+this, he was a man of brains; worst of all, he had promised very
+differently as a boy. A younger man who had been at school with him,
+having come out for his health, travelled some hundreds of miles to see
+Carmichael, whose conversation struck him absolutely dumb. "He was
+captain of our house," the visitor explained to Carmichael's
+subordinates, "and you daren't say dash in dormitory--not even dash!"
+
+In appearance this redoubtable person was chiefly remarkable for the
+intellectual cast of his still occasionally clean-shaven countenance,
+and for his double eye-glasses, or rather the way he wore them. They
+were very strong and very common, without any rims, and Carmichael
+bought them by the box. He would not wear them with a cord, and in the
+heat they were continually slipping off his nose; when they did not slip
+right off they hung at such an angle that Carmichael had to throw his
+whole body and head backward in order to see anything through them
+except the ground. And when they fell, someone else had to find them
+while Carmichael cursed, for his naked eye was as blind as a bat's.
+
+"Let's go mustering on Sunday," suggested the overseer--"every blessed
+man! Let him find the whole place deserted, homestead and hut!"
+
+"Or let's get blind for the occasion," was the bookkeeper's idea--"every
+mother's son!"
+
+"That would do," agreed the overseer, "if we got just blind enough. And
+we might get the blacks from Poonee Creek to come and join the dance."
+
+The overseer was a dapper Victorian with a golden mustache twisted
+rakishly up and down at either end respectively, like an overturned
+letter S. He lived up to the name of Smart. The bookkeeper was a servile
+echo with a character and a face of putty. He had once perpetrated an
+opprobrious ode to the overseer, and had answered to the name of Chaucer
+ever since.
+
+Carmichael leaned back to look from one of these worthies to the other,
+and his spectacled eyes flamed with mordant scorn.
+
+"I suppose you think you're funny, you fellows," said he, and without
+the oath which was a sign of his good-will, except when he lost his
+temper with the sheep. "If so, I wish you'd get outside to entertain
+each other. Since the fellow's coming we shall have to let him come, and
+the thing is how to choke him off ever coming again without open insult,
+which I won't allow. A service of some sort we shall have to have, this
+once."
+
+"I'm on to guy it," declared the indiscreet Chaucer.
+
+"If you do I'll rehearse the men," the overseer promised.
+
+"You idiots!" thundered Carmichael, whose temper was as short as his
+sight. "Can't you see I weaken on the prospect as much as the two of you
+stuck together? But the beggar's certain to be a public-school and
+'Varsity man: and I won't have him treated as though he'd been dragged
+up in one of these God-forsaken Colonies!"
+
+Now--most properly--you cannot talk like this in the bush unless you are
+also capable of confirming the insult with your fists. But Carmichael
+could; and he was much too blind to fight without his glasses. He was,
+in fact, the same strenuous character who had set his dogmatic face
+against the most harmless expletives in dormitory at school, and set it
+successfully, because Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was
+not to be withstood. His standard alone was changed. Or he was playing
+on the other side. Yet he had brought a prayer-book with him to the
+back-blocks. And he was seen studying it on the eve of the episcopal
+descent.
+
+"He may have his say," observed Carmichael, darkly, "and then I'll have
+mine."
+
+"Going to heckle him?" inquired Smart, in a nasal voice full of hope and
+encouragement.
+
+"Not at the function, you fool," replied Carmichael, sweetly. "But when
+it's all over I should like to take him on about the Athanasian Creed
+and the Thirty-nine Articles." Only both substantives were qualified by
+the epithet of the country, for Carmichael had put himself in excellent
+temper for the day of battle.
+
+That day dawned blood-red and beautiful, but in a little it was a
+blinding blue from pole to pole, and the thermometer in the veranda
+reached three figures before breakfast. It was a hot-wind day, and even
+Carmichael's subordinates pitied Dr. Methuen and his chaplain, who were
+riding from the south in the teeth of that Promethean blast. But
+Carmichael himself drew his own line with unswerving rigidity; and
+though the deep veranda was prepared as a place for worship, and covered
+in with canvas which was kept saturated with water, he would not permit
+an escort to sally even to the boundary fence to meet the uninvited
+prelate.
+
+Not long after breakfast the two horsemen jogged into view, ambling over
+the sand-hills whose red-hot edge met a shimmering sky some little
+distance beyond the station pines. Both wore pith helmets and fluttering
+buff dust-coats, but both had hot black legs, the pair in gaiters being
+remarkable for their length. The homestead trio, their red necks chafed
+by the unaccustomed collar, gathered grimly at the open end of the
+veranda, where they exchanged impressions while the religious raiders
+bore down upon them.
+
+"They can ride a bit, too, I'm bothered if they can't," exclaimed the
+overseer, in considerable astonishment.
+
+"And do you suppose, my good fool," inquired Carmichael, with the usual
+unregenerate embroidery--"do you in your innocence suppose that's an
+accomplishment confined to these precious provinces?"
+
+"They're as brown as my sugar," said the keeper of books and stores.
+
+"The Bishop looks as though he'd been out here all his life."
+
+Carmichael did not quarrel with this observation of his overseer, but
+colorless eyebrows were raised above the cheap glasses as he stepped
+into the yard to shake hands with the visitors. The bearded Bishop
+returned his greeting in a grave silence. The chaplain, on the other
+hand, seemed the victim of a nervous volubility, and unduly anxious to
+atone for his chief's taciturnity, which he essayed to explain to
+Carmichael on the first opportunity.
+
+"His lordship feels the heat so much more than I do, who have had so
+many years of it; and to tell you the truth, he is still a little hurt
+at not being met, for the first time since he has been out here."
+
+"Then why did he come?" demanded Carmichael, bluntly. "I never asked
+him, did I?"
+
+"No, no, but--ah, well! We won't go into it," said the chaplain. "I am
+glad to see your preparations, Mr. Carmichael; that I consider very
+magnanimous in you, under all the circumstances; and so will his
+lordship when he has had a rest. You won't mind his retiring until it's
+time for the little service, Mr. Carmichael?"
+
+"Not I," returned Carmichael, promptly. But the worst paddock on
+Mulfera, in its worst season, was not more dry than the manager's tone.
+
+Shortly before eleven the bell was rung which roused the men on week-day
+mornings, and they began trooping over from their hut, while the trio
+foregathered on the veranda as before. The open end was the one looking
+east but the sun was too near the zenith to enter many inches, and with
+equal thoroughness and tact Carmichael had placed the table, the
+water-bag, and the tumbler, at the open end. They were all that he could
+do in the way of pulpit, desk, and lectern.
+
+The men tramped in and filled the chairs, forms, tin trunks, and
+packing-cases which had been pressed into the service of this makeshift
+sanctuary. The trio sat in front. The bell ceased, the ringer entering
+and taking his place. There was some delay, if not some hitch. Then came
+the chaplain with an anxious face.
+
+"His lordship wishes to know if all hands are here," he whispered across
+the desk.
+
+Carmichael looked behind him for several seconds. "Every man Jack," he
+replied. "And damn his lordship's cheek!" he added for his equals'
+benefit, as the chaplain disappeared.
+
+"Rum cove, that chaplain," whispered Chaucer, in the guarded manner of
+one whose frequent portion is the snub brutal.
+
+"How so?" inquired Carmichael, with a duly withering glance.
+
+Chaucer told in whispers of a word which he had overheard through the
+weather-board wall of the room in which the Bishop had sought repose. It
+was, in fact, the monosyllable of which Carmichael had just made use.
+He, however, was the first to heap discredit on the book-keeper's story,
+which he laughed to scorn with as much of his usual arrogance as could
+be assumed below the breath.
+
+"If you heard it at all," said Carmichael, "which I don't for a moment
+believe, you heard it in the strictly Biblical sense. You can't be
+expected to know what that is, Chaucer, but as a matter of fact it means
+lost and done for, like our noble selves. And it was probably applied to
+us, if there's the least truth in what you say."
+
+"Truth!" he began, but was not suffered to add another word.
+
+"Shut up," snarled Carmichael. "Can't you hear them coming?"
+
+And the tramp of the shooting-boots, which Dr. Methuen was still new
+chum enough to wear, followed by the chaplain's lighter step, drew
+noisily nearer upon the unseen part of the veranda that encircled the
+whole house.
+
+"Stand up, you cripples!" cried Carmichael over his shoulder, in a stage
+whisper. And they all came to their feet as the two ecclesiastics
+appeared behind the table at the open end of the tabernacle.
+
+Carmichael felt inclined to disperse the congregation on the spot.
+
+There was the Bishop still in his gaiters and his yellow dust-coat; even
+the chaplain had not taken the trouble to don his surplice. So anything
+was good enough for Mulfera! Carmichael had lunged forward with a
+jutting jaw when an authoritative voice rang out across the table.
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+The Bishop had not opened his hairy mouth. It was the smart young
+chaplain who spoke. And all obeyed except Carmichael.
+
+"I beg your lordship's pardon," he was beginning, with sarcastic
+emphasis, when the manager of Mulfera was cut as short as he was himself
+in the habit of cutting his inferiors.
+
+"If you will kindly sit down," cried the chaplain, "like everybody else,
+I shall at once explain the apparent irregularity upon which you were
+doubtless about to comment."
+
+Carmichael glowered through his glasses for a few seconds, and then
+resumed his seat with a shrug and a murmur, happily inaudible to all but
+his two immediate neighbors.
+
+"On his way here this morning," the chaplain went on, "his lordship met
+with a misadventure from which he has not yet recovered sufficiently to
+address you as he fully hoped and intended to do to-day." At this all
+eyes sped to the Bishop, who stood certainly in a drooping attitude at
+the chaplain's side, his episcopal hands behind his back. "Something
+happened," the glib spokesman continued with stern eyes, "something that
+you do not often hear of in these days. His lordship was accosted,
+beset, and, like the poor man in the Scriptures, despitefully entreated,
+not many miles beyond your own boundary, by a pair of armed ruffians!"
+
+"Stuck up!" cried one or two, and "Bushrangers!" one or two more.
+
+"I thank you for both words," said the chaplain, bowing. "He was stuck
+up by the bushranger who is once more abroad in the land. Really, Mr.
+Carmichael----"
+
+But the manager of Mulfera rose to his full height, and, leaning back to
+get the speaker into focus, stuck his arms akimbo in a way that he had
+in his most aggressive moments.
+
+"And what were _you_ doing?" he demanded fiercely of the chaplain.
+
+"It was I who stuck him up," answered the _soi-disant_ chaplain,
+whipping a single glass into his eye to meet the double ones. "My name
+is Stingaree!"
+
+And in the instant's hush which followed he plucked a revolver from his
+breast, while the hands of the sham bishop shot out from behind his
+back, with one in each.
+
+The scene of the instant after that defies ordinary description. It was
+made the more hideous by the frightful imprecations of Carmichael, and
+the short, sharp threat of Stingaree to shoot him dead unless he
+instantly sat down. Carmichael bade him do so with a gallant oath, at
+which the men immediately behind him joined with his two companions in
+pulling him back into his chair and there holding him by main force.
+Thereafter the manager appeared to realize the futility of resistance,
+and was unhanded on his undertaking to sit quiet, which he did with the
+exception of one speech to those behind.
+
+"If any of you happen to be armed," he shouted over his shoulder, "shoot
+him down like a dog. But if you're all as fairly had as I am, let's hear
+what the beggar's got to say."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Carmichael," said the bushranger, still from the far
+side of the table, as a comparative silence fell at last. "You are a man
+after my own heart, sir, and I would as lief have you on my side as the
+simple ruffian on my right. Not a bad bishop to look at," continued
+Stingaree, with a jerk of the head toward his mate with the two
+revolvers. "But if I had let him open his mouth! Now, if I'd had you,
+Mr. Carmichael--but I have my doubts about your vocabulary, too!"
+
+The point appealed to all present, and there was a laugh, in which,
+however, Carmichael did not join.
+
+"I suppose you didn't come here simply to give us a funny
+entertainment," said he. "I happen to be the boss, or have been
+hitherto, and if you will condescend to tell me what you want I shall
+consider whether it is worth while to supply you or to be shot by you. I
+shall be sorry to meet my death at the hands of a thieving blackguard,
+but one can't pick and choose in that matter. Before it comes to
+choosing, however, is it any good asking what you've done with the real
+bishop and the real chaplain? If you've murdered them, as I----"
+
+Stingaree had listened thus far with more than patience, in fact with
+something akin to approval, to the captive who was still his master with
+the tongue. With all his villainy, the bushranger was man enough to
+appreciate another man when he met him; but Carmichael's last word
+flicked him on a bare nerve.
+
+"Don't you dare to talk to me about murder," he rapped out. "I've never
+committed one yet, but you're going the right way to make me begin! As
+for Bishop Methuen, I have more respect for him than for any man in
+Australia; but his horse was worth two of my mate's, and that's all I
+troubled him for. I didn't even tie him up as I would any other man. We
+just relieved the two of them of their boots and clothes, which was
+quite as good as tying up, with your roads as red-hot as they
+are--though my mate here doesn't agree with me."
+
+The man with the beard very emphatically shook a matted head, now
+relieved of the stolen helmet, and observed that the quicker they were
+the better it would be. He was as taciturn a bushranger as he had been a
+bishop, but Stingaree was perfectly right. Even these few words would
+have destroyed all chance of illusion in the case of his mate.
+
+"The very clothes, which become us so well," continued the prince of
+personators, who happened to be without hair upon his face at this
+period, and who looked every inch his part; "their very boots, we have
+only borrowed! I will tell you presently where we dropped the rest of
+their kit. We left them a suit of pyjamas apiece, and not another
+stitch, and we blindfolded and drove 'em into the scrub as a last
+precaution. But before we go I shall also tell you where a search-party
+is likely to pick up their tracks. Meanwhile you will all stay exactly
+where you are, with the exception of the store-keeper, who will kindly
+accompany me to the store. I shall naturally require to see the inside
+of the safe, but otherwise our wants are very simple."
+
+The outlaw ceased. There was no word in answer; a curious hush had
+fallen on the captive congregation.
+
+"If there is a store-keeper," suggested Stingaree, "he'd better stand
+up."
+
+But the accomplished Chaucer sat stark and staring.
+
+"Up with you," whispered Carmichael, in terrible tones, "or we're done!"
+
+And even as the book-keeper rose tremulously to his feet, a strange and
+stealthy figure, the cynosure of all eyes but the bushrangers' for a
+long minute, reached the open end of the veranda; and with a final
+spring, a tall man in silk pyjamas, his gray beard flying over either
+shoulder, hurled himself upon both bushrangers at once. With outspread
+fingers he clutched the scruff of each neck at the self-same second,
+crash came the two heads together, and over went the table with the
+three men over it.
+
+Shots were fired in the struggle on the ground, happily without effect.
+Stingaree had his shooting hand mangled by one blow with a chair whirled
+from a height. Carmichael got his heel with a venomous stamp upon the
+neck of Howie; and, in fewer seconds than it would take to write their
+names, the rascals were defeated and disarmed. Howie had his neck half
+broken, and his face was darkening before Carmichael could be induced to
+lift his foot.
+
+"The cockroach!" bawled the manager, drunk with battle. "I'd hoof his
+soul out for two pins!"
+
+A moment later he was groping for his glasses, which had slipped and
+fallen from his perspiring nose, and making use of such expressions
+withal as to compel a panting protest from the tall man in the silken
+stripes.
+
+"My name is Methuen," said he. "I know it's a special moment, but--do
+you mind?"
+
+Carmichael found his glasses at that instant, adjusted them, stood up,
+and leant back to view the Bishop; and his next words were the apology
+of the gentleman he should have been.
+
+"My dear fellow," cried the other, "I quite understand. What are they
+doing with the ruffians? Have you any handcuffs? Is it far to the
+nearest police barracks?"
+
+But the next act of this moving melodrama was not the least
+characteristic of the chief performance; for when Stingaree and partner
+had been not only handcuffed but lashed hand and foot, and incarcerated
+in separate log-huts, with a guard apiece; and when a mounted messenger
+had been despatched to the barracks at Clare Corner, and the remnant
+raised a cheer for Bishop Methuen; it was then that the fine fellow
+showed them the still finer stuff of which he was also made. He invited
+all present to step back for a few minutes into the place of worship
+which had been so charmingly prepared, so scandalously misused, and
+where he hoped to see them all yet again in the evening, if it would not
+bore them to give him a further and more formal hearing then.
+
+"I won't keep them five minutes now," he whispered to Carmichael, as the
+men went ahead to pick up the chairs and take their places, while the
+Bishop hobbled after, still in his pyjamas, and with terribly inflamed
+and swollen feet. "And then," he added, "I must ask you to send a buggy
+at once for my poor chaplain. He did his gallant best, poor fellow, but
+I had to leave him fallen by the way. I am an old miler, you know; it
+came easier to me; but the cinder-path and running-shoes are a different
+story from hot sand and naked feet! And now, if you please, I will
+strike one little blow while our hearts are still warm."
+
+But how shrewdly he struck it, how straight from the shoulder, how
+simply, how honestly, there is perhaps no need to tell even those who
+have no previous knowledge of back-block Bishop Methuen and his manly
+ways.
+
+What afterward happened to Stingaree is another matter, to be set forth
+faithfully in the sequel. This is the story of the Purification of
+Mulfera Station, N.S.W., in which the bushrangers played but an indirect
+and a most inglorious part.
+
+The Bishop and his chaplain (a good man of no present account) stayed to
+see the police arrive that night, and the romantic ruffians taken thence
+next morning in unromantic bonds. Comparatively little attention was
+paid to their departure--partly on account of the truculent attitude of
+the police--partly because the Episcopal pair were making an equally
+early start in another direction. No one accompanied the armed men and
+the bound. But every man on the place, from homestead, men's hut,
+rabbiter's tent, and boundary-rider's camp--every single man who could
+be mustered for the nonce had a horse run up for him--escorted Dr.
+Methuen in close cavalcade to the Mulfera boundary, where the final
+cheering took place, led by Carmichael, who, of course, was font and
+origin of the display. And Carmichael rode by himself on the way back;
+he had been much with the Bishop during his lordship's stay; and he was
+too morose for profanity during the remainder of that day.
+
+But it was no better when the manager's mood lifted, and the life on
+Mulfera slipped back into the old blinding and perspiring groove.
+
+Then one night, a night of the very week thus sensationally begun, the
+ingenious Chaucer began one of the old, old stories, on the moonlit
+veranda, and Carmichael stopped him while that particular old story was
+still quite young in the telling. There was an awkward pause until
+Carmichael laughed.
+
+"I don't care twopence what you fellows think of me," said he, "and
+never did. I saw a lot of the Bishop," he went on, less aggressively,
+after a pause.
+
+"So _we_ saw," assented Smart.
+
+"You bet!" added Chaucer.
+
+For they were two to one.
+
+"He ran the mile for Oxford," continued Carmichael. "Two years he ran
+it--and won both times. You may not appreciate quite what that means."
+
+And, with a patience foreign to his character as they knew it,
+Carmichael proceeded to explain.
+
+"But," he added, "that was nothing to his performance last Sunday, in
+getting here from beyond the boundary in the time he did it
+in--barefoot! It would have been good enough in shoes. But don't you
+forget his feet. I can see them--and feel them--still."
+
+"Oh, he's a grand chap," the overseer allowed.
+
+"We never said he wasn't," his ally chimed in.
+
+Carmichael took no notice of a tone which the youth with the putty face
+had never employed toward him before.
+
+"He was also in his school eleven," continued Carmichael, still in a
+reflective fashion.
+
+"Was it a public school?" inquired Smart.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"_The_ public school?" added Chaucer.
+
+"Not mine, if that's what you mean," returned Carmichael, with just a
+touch of his earlier manner. "But--he knew my old Head Master--he was
+quite a pal of the dear Old Man! . . . We had such lots in common,"
+added the manager, more to himself than to the other two.
+
+The overseer's comment is of no consequence. What the book-keeper was
+emboldened to add matters even less. Suffice it that between them they
+brought the old Carmichael to his feet, his glasses flaming in the
+moonshine, his body thrown pugilistically backward, his jaw jutting like
+a crag--the old Carmichael in deed--but not in word.
+
+"I told you just now I didn't care twopence what either of you thought
+of me," he roared, "though there wasn't the least necessity to tell you,
+because you knew! So I needn't repeat myself; but just listen a moment,
+and try not to be greater fools than God made you. You saw a real man
+last Sunday, and so did I. I had almost forgotten what they were
+like--that quality. Well, we had a lot of talk, and he told me what they
+are doing on some of the other stations. They are holding services,
+something like what he held here, every Sunday night for themselves.
+Now, it isn't in human nature to fly from one extreme to the other: but
+we are going to have a try to keep up our Sunday end with the other
+stations; at least I am, and you two are going to back me up."
+
+He paused. Not a syllable from the pair.
+
+"Do you hear me?" thundered Carmichael, as he had thundered in the
+dormitory at school, now after twenty years in the same good cause once
+more. "Whether you like it or not, you fellows are going to back me up!"
+
+And Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was not to be
+withstood.
+
+
+
+
+A Duel in the Desert
+
+
+It was eight o'clock and Monday morning when the romantic rascals were
+led away in unromantic bonds. Their arms were bound to their bodies,
+their feet lashed to the stirrup-irons; they sat like packs upon quiet
+station horses, carefully chosen for the nonce; they were tethered to a
+mounted policeman apiece, each with leading-rein buckled to his left
+wrist and Government revolver in his right hand. Behind the quartette
+rode the officer in command, superbly mounted, watching ever all four
+with a third revolver ready cocked. It seemed a small and yet an ample
+escort for the two bound men.
+
+But Stingaree was by no means in that state of Napoleonic despair which
+his bent back and lowering countenance were intended to convey. He had
+not uttered a word since the arrival of the police, whom he had suffered
+to lift him on horseback, as he now sat, without raising his morose eyes
+once. Howie, on the other hand, had offered a good deal of futile
+opposition, cursing his captors as the fit moved him, and once
+struggling so insanely in his bonds as to earn a tap from the wrong end
+of a revolver and a bloody face for his pains. Stingaree glowered in
+deep delight. His mate's part was as well acted as his own; but it was
+he who had conceived them both, and expounded them in countless camps
+against some such extremity as this. The result was in ideal accordance
+with his calculations. The man who gave the trouble was the man to
+watch. And Stingaree, chin on chest, was left in peace to evolve a way
+of escape.
+
+The chances were all adverse; he had never been less sanguine in his
+life. Not that Stingaree had much opinion of the police; he had slipped
+through their hands too often; but it was an unfortunate circumstance
+that two of the present trio were among those whom he had eluded most
+recently, and who therefore would be least likely to give him another
+chance. A lightning student of his kind, he based his only hope upon an
+accurate estimate of these men, and applied his whole mind to the triple
+task. But it was a single task almost from the first; for the policeman
+in charge of him was none other than his credulous old friend, Sergeant
+Cameron from Clear Corner; and Howie's custodian, a young trooper run
+from the same mould as Constable Tyler and many a hundred more, in whom
+a thick skull cancelled a stout heart. Both were brave men; neither was
+really to be feared. But the man behind upon the thoroughbred, the man
+in front, the man now on this side and now on that, with his braying
+laugh and his vindictive voice--triumphant as though he had taken the
+bushrangers himself, and a blatant bully in his triumph--was none other
+than the formidable Superintendent whose undying animosity the
+bushrangers had earned by the two escapades associated with his name.
+
+Yet the outlaw never flattered him with word or look, never lifted chin
+from chest, never raised an eye or opened his mouth until Howie's knock
+on the head caused him to curse his mate for a fool who deserved all he
+got. The thoroughbred was caracoling on his other side in an instant.
+
+"You ain't one, are you?" cried the taunting tongue of Superintendent
+Cairns. "Not much fool about Stingaree!"
+
+The time had come for a reply.
+
+"So I thought until yesterday," sighed the bushranger. "But now I'm not
+so sure."
+
+"Not so sure, eh? You were sure enough last time we met, my beauty!"
+
+"Yes! I had some conceit of myself then," said Stingaree, with another
+of his convincing sighs.
+
+"To say nothing of when you guyed me, damn you!" added the
+Superintendent, below his breath and through his teeth.
+
+"Well," replied the outlaw, "you've got your revenge. I must expect you
+to rub it in."
+
+"My fine friend," rejoined Cairns, "you may expect worse than that, and
+still you won't be disappointed."
+
+Stingaree made no reply; and it would have taken a very shrewd eye to
+have read deeper than the depth of sullen despair expressed in every
+inch of his bound body and every furrow of his downcast face. Even the
+vindictive Cairns ceased for a time to crow over so abject an adversary
+in so bitter an hour. Meanwhile, the five horses streamed slowly through
+the high lights and heavy shadows of a winding avenue of scrub. It was
+like a hot-house in the dense, low trees: not a wandering wind, not a
+waking bird; but five faces that dripped steadily in the shade, and all
+but caught fire in the sun. Ahead rode Howie, dazed and bleeding, with
+his callous young constable; the sergeant and his chief, with Stingaree
+between them, now brought up the rear. By degrees Stingaree raised his
+chin a little, but still looked neither right nor left.
+
+"Cheer up!" cried the chief, with soothing irony.
+
+"I feel the heat," said the bound man, uncomplainingly. "And it was just
+about here it happened."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"We overtook the Church militant here on earth," rejoined the
+bushranger, with rueful irreverence.
+
+"Well, you ran against a snag that time, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree!"
+
+"I couldn't resist turning Howie into the Bishop and making myself his
+mouthpiece. I daren't let him open his lips! It wasn't the offertory
+that was worth having; it was the fun of rounding up that congregation
+on the homestead veranda, and never letting them spot a thing till we'd
+showed our guns. There hadn't been a hitch, and never would have been if
+that old Bishop hadn't run all those miles barefoot over hot sand and
+taken us unawares."
+
+Made with wry humor and a philosophic candor, alike germane to his
+predicament, these remarks seemed natural enough to one knowing little
+of Stingaree. They seemed just the sort of things that Stingaree would
+say. The effect, however, was rather to glorify Bishop Methuen at the
+expense of Superintendent Cairns, who strove to reverse it with some
+dexterity.
+
+"You certainly ran against a snag," he repeated, "and now your mate's
+run against another." He gave the butt of his ready pistol a significant
+tap. "But I'm the worst snag that ever either of you struck," he went on
+in his vainglory. "Make no mistake about that. And the worst day's work
+that ever you did in your life, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree, was when you
+dared to play at being little crooked Cairns."
+
+Stingaree took a first good look at his man. After all he was not so
+crooked on horseback as he had seemed on foot at dusk in the Victorian
+bush; his hump was even less pronounced than Stingaree himself had made
+it on Rosanna; it looked more like a ridge of extra muscle across a pair
+of abnormally broad and powerful shoulders. There was the absence of
+neck which this deformity suggests; there was a great head lighted by
+flashing and indignant eyes, but mounted only on its mighty chin. The
+bushranger was conceited enough to find in the flesh a coarser and more
+common type than that created by himself for the honor of the road. But
+this did not make the real Superintendent a less formidable foe.
+
+"The most poetic justice!" murmured Stingaree, and resumed in an instant
+his apathetic pose.
+
+"It serves you jolly well right, if that's what you mean," the
+Superintendent snarled. "You've yourself and your own mighty cheek to
+thank for taking me out of my shell and putting me on your tracks in
+earnest. But it was high time they knew the cut of my jib up here; the
+fools won't forget me again in a hurry. And you, you devil, you sha'n't
+forget me till your dying day!"
+
+On Stingaree's off-side Sergeant Cameron was also hanging an insulted
+head. But the bushranger laughed softly in his chest.
+
+"Someone has got to do your dirty work," said he. "I did it that time,
+and the Bishop has done it now; but you shouldn't blame me for helping
+your fellows to bring a murderer to justice."
+
+"You guyed me," said Cairns through his teeth. "I heard all about it.
+You guyed me, blight your soul!"
+
+Stingaree felt that he was missing a strong face finely convulsed with
+passion--as indeed he was. But he had already committed the indiscretion
+of a repartee, which was scarcely consistent with an attitude of extreme
+despair. A downcast silence seemed the safest policy after all.
+
+"It used to be forty miles to the Corner," he murmured, after a time.
+"We can't have come more than ten."
+
+"Not so much," snapped the Superintendent.
+
+"Going to stop for feed at Mazeppa Station?"
+
+"That's my business."
+
+"It's a long day for three of you, in this heat, with two of us."
+
+"The time won't hang heavy on _our_ hands."
+
+"Not heavy enough, I should have thought. I wonder you didn't bring some
+of the boys from Mulfera along with you."
+
+Superintendent Cairns brayed his high, harsh laugh.
+
+"Yes, you wonder, and so did they," said he. "But I know a bit too much.
+There'll always be sympathy among scum like them for thicker scum like
+you!"
+
+"You're too suspicious," said Stingaree, mildly. "But I was thinking of
+the Bishop and the boss."
+
+"They've gone their own way," growled Cairns, "and it's just as well it
+wasn't our way. I'd have stood no interference from them!"
+
+That had been his attitude on the station. Stingaree had heard of his
+rudeness to those to whom the whole credit of the capture belonged; the
+man revealed his character as freely as an angry child; and, indeed, a
+childish character it was. Arrogance was its strength and weakness: a
+suggestion had only to be made to call down either the insolence of
+office or the malice of denial for denial's sake.
+
+"I wish you'd stop a bit at Mazeppa," whined Stingaree, drooping like a
+candle in the heat.
+
+The station roofs gleamed through the trees far off the track.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I'm feeling sick."
+
+"Gammon! You've got some friends there; on you push!"
+
+"But you will camp somewhere in the heat of the day?"
+
+"I'll do as I think fit. I sha'n't consult you, my fine friend."
+
+Stingaree drooped and nodded, lower and lower; then recovered himself
+with a jerk, like one battling against sleep. The party pushed on for
+another hour. The heat was terrible; the bound men endured torments in
+their bonds. But the nature of the Superintendent, deformed like his
+body, declared itself duly at every turn, and the more one prisoner
+groaned and the other blasphemed, the greater the zest and obduracy of
+the driving force behind them.
+
+Noon passed; the scanty shadows lengthened; and Howie gave more trouble
+of an insensate sort. They reined up, and lashed him tighter; he had
+actually loosened his cords. But Stingaree seemed past remonstrance with
+friend or foe, and his bound body swayed from side to side as the
+little cavalcade went on at a canter to make up for lost time.
+
+[Illustration: Stingaree toppled out of the saddle.]
+
+He was leading now with the kindly sergeant, and his mind had never been
+more alert. Behind them thundered the recalcitrant Howie with constable
+and Superintendent on either side. They were midway between Mazeppa and
+Clear Corner, or some fifteen miles from either haunt of men. Stingaree
+pulled himself upright in the saddle as by a superhuman effort, and
+shook off the helping hand that held him by one elbow.
+
+He was about to do a thing at which even his courage quailed, and he
+longed for the use of his right arm. It was not absolutely bound; the
+hand and wrist had been badly hurt in the Sunday's fray--so badly that
+it had been easy to sham a fracture, and have hand and wrist in splints
+before the arrival of the police. They still hung before him in a sling,
+his good right hand and fore-arm, stiff and sore enough, yet strong and
+ready at a moment's notice, when the moment came. It had not come, and
+was not coming for a long time, when Stingaree set his teeth, lurched
+either way--and toppled out of the saddle in the path of the cantering
+hoofs. His lashed feet held him in the stirrups; the off stirrup-leather
+had come over with his weight; and there at his horse's hoofs, kicked
+and trampled and smothered with blood and dust, he dragged like an
+anchor, without sign of life.
+
+And it was worse even than it looked, for the life never left him for an
+instant, nor ever for an instant did he fail to behave as though it had.
+Minutes later, when they had stopped his horse, and cut him down from
+the stirrups, and carried him into the shade of a hop-bush off the
+track, and when Stingaree dared to open his eyes, he was nearer closing
+them perforce, and the scene swam before him with superfluous realism.
+
+Cairns and Cameron, dismounted (while the trooper sat aloof with Howie
+in the saddle), were at high words about their prostrate prisoner. Not a
+syllable was lost on Stingaree.
+
+"You may put him across the horse yourself," said the sergeant. "I won't
+have a hand in it. But make sure you haven't killed him as it
+is--travelling a sick man like that."
+
+"Killed him? He's got his eyes open!" cried Cairns in savage triumph.
+Stingaree lay blinking at the sky. "Do you still refuse to do your
+duty?"
+
+"Cruelty to animals is no duty of mine," declared the sergeant: "let
+alone my fellowmen, bushrangers or no bushrangers."
+
+"And you?" thundered Cairns at the mounted constable.
+
+"I'm with the sergeant," said he. "He's had enough."
+
+"Right!" cried the Superintendent, producing a note-book and scribbling
+venomously. "You both refuse! You will hear more of this; meanwhile,
+sergeant, I should like to know what your superior wisdom may be pleased
+to suggest."
+
+"Send a cart back for him," said Cameron. "It's the only way he's fit to
+travel."
+
+Stingaree sought to prop himself upon the elbow of the splintered wrist
+and hand.
+
+"There are no more bones broken that I know of," said he, faintly. "But
+I felt bad before, and now I feel worse."
+
+"He looks it, too," observed the sergeant, as Stingaree, ghastly enough
+beneath his blood and dust, rolled over on his back once more, and lay
+effectively with closed eyes. Even the Superintendent was impressed.
+
+"Then what's to be done with him?" he exclaimed, with an oath. "What's
+to be done?"
+
+"If you ask me," returned Cameron, "I should make him comfortable where
+he is; after all, he's a human being, and done no murder, that we should
+run the risk of murdering him. Leave him to me while you two push on
+with his mate; then one of you can get back with the spring-cart before
+sundown; but trust me to look after him till you do."
+
+Stingaree held his breath where he lay. His excitement was not to be
+betrayed by the opening of an eye. And yet he knew that the
+Superintendent was looking the sergeant up and down, and he guessed what
+was passing through that suspicious mind.
+
+"Trust you!" rasped the dictatorial voice at last. "That's the very
+thing I'm not inclined to do, Sergeant Cameron."
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Keep your temper, sergeant. I don't say you'd let him go. But I've got
+to remember that this man has twisted you round his finger before
+to-day, led you by the hand like a blessed old child, and passed himself
+off for me! Look at the fellow; look at me; and ask yourself candidly if
+you're the man for the job. But don't ask me, unless you want my opinion
+of you a bit plainer still. No; you go on with the others. The two of
+you can manage Howie; if you can't, you put a bullet through him! This
+is my man; and I'm his, by the hokey, as he'll know if he tries any of
+his tricks while you're gone!"
+
+Stingaree did not move a muscle. He might have been dead; and in his
+disappointment it was the easier to lie as though he were. Really
+bruised, really battered, really faint and stiff and sore, to say
+nothing of his bonds, he felt himself physically no match for so young a
+man--with the extra breadth of shoulder and the extra length of arm
+which were part and parcel of his deformity. With the elderly sergeant
+he might have had a chance, man to man, one arm to two; but with
+Superintendent Cairns his only weapons were his wits. He lay quite still
+and reviewed the situation, as it was, and as it had been. In the very
+moment of his downfall, by instinctive presence of mind he had preserved
+the use of his right hand, and that was a still unsuspected asset of
+incalculable worth. It had been the nucleus of all his plans; without a
+hand he must have resigned himself to the inevitable from the first.
+Then he had split up the party. He heard the sergeant and the constable
+ride off with Howie, exactly as he had intended two of the three captors
+to do. His fall alone introduced the element of luck. It might have
+killed or maimed him; but the risk had been run with open eyes. Being
+alive and whole, he had reduced the odds from three against two to man
+and man; and the difference was enormous, even though one man held all
+the cards. Against Howie the odds were heavier than ever, but Howie was
+eliminated from present calculations. And as Stingaree made them with
+the upturned face of seeming insensibility, he heard a nonchalant step
+come and go, but knew an eye was on him all the time, and never opened
+his own till the striking of a match was followed by the smell of bush
+tobacco.
+
+The shadow of the hop-bush was spreading like spilt ink, and for the
+moment Stingaree thought he had it to himself. But a wreath of blue
+smoke hovered overhead; and when he got to his elbow, and glanced
+behind, there sat Cairns in his shirt-sleeves, filling the niche his
+body made in the actual green bush, a swollen wet water-bag at his feet,
+his revolver across his knees. There was an ominous click even as
+Stingaree screwed round where he lay.
+
+"Give me a drink!" he cried at sight of the humid canvas bag.
+
+"Why should I?" asked the Superintendent, smoking on.
+
+"Because I haven't had one since we started--because I'm parched with
+thirst."
+
+"Parch away!" cried the creature of suspicion. "You can't help yourself,
+and I can't help you with this baby to nurse."
+
+And he fondled the cocked revolver in his hands.
+
+"Very well! Don't give me one!" exclaimed Stingaree, and dealt the moist
+bag a kick that sent a jet of cold water spurting over his foot. He
+expected to be kicked himself for that; he was only cursed, the bag
+snatched out of his reach, and deeply drained before his eyes.
+
+"I was going to give you some," said Cairns, smacking his lips. "Now
+your tongue may hang out before I do."
+
+Stingaree left the last word with the foe: it was part of his
+preconceived policy. He still regretted his solitary retort, but not for
+a moment the more petulant act which he had just committed. His boots
+had been removed after his fall; one of his socks was now wet through,
+and he spent the next few minutes in taking it off with the other foot.
+The lengthy process seemed to afford his mind a certain pensive
+entertainment. It was a shapely and delicate white foot that lay
+stripped at last--a foot that its owner, with nothing better to do,
+could contemplate with legitimate satisfaction. But Superintendent
+Cairns, noting his prisoner's every look, and putting his own confident
+interpretation on them all, cursed him afresh for a conceited pig, and
+filled another pipe, with the revolver for an instant by his side.
+
+Stingaree took no interest in his proceedings; the revolver he
+especially ignored, and lay stretched before his captor, one sock off
+and one sock on, one arm in splints and sling and the other bound to his
+ribs, a model prisoner whose last thought was of escape. His legs,
+indeed, were free; but a man who could not sit on a horse was not the
+man to run away. And then there was the relentless Superintendent
+sitting over him, pipe in mouth, but revolver again in hand, and a
+crooked finger very near the trigger.
+
+The fiery wilderness still lay breathless in the great heat, but the
+lengthening shadow of the hop-bush was now a thing to be thankful for,
+and in it the broken captive fell into a fine semblance of natural
+slumber. Cairns watched with alternate envy and suspicion; for him there
+could not be a wink; but most likely the fellow was shamming all the
+time. No ruse, however, succeeded in exposing the sham, which the
+Superintendent copied by breathing first heavily and then stertorously,
+with one eye open and on his man. Stingaree never opened one of his:
+there was no change in the regular breathing, in the peaceful expression
+of the blood-stained face: asleep the man must be. The Superintendent's
+own experiments had gone to show him that no extremity need necessarily
+keep one awake in such heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his
+performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot;
+and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's
+senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled
+pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an
+agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself
+really asleep this time? He breathed as though he were; but so did
+Stingaree; and yet was there hope in the fact that his own greatest
+struggle all this time had been against the very thing he feigned.
+
+At last he opened one eye a little; it was met by no answering furtive
+glance; he opened the other, and there could be no more doubt. The
+terrible Superintendent was dozing in his place; but it was the lightest
+sort of doze, the eyes were scarcely closed, and all but watching
+Stingaree, as the cocked revolver in the relaxed hand all but covered
+him.
+
+The prisoner felt that for the moment he was unseen, forgotten, but that
+the lightest movement of his body would open those terrible eyes once
+and for all. Be it remembered that he was lying under them lengthwise,
+on the bound arm, with the arm in the sling uppermost, and easily to be
+freed, but yet the most salient part of the recumbent figure, and that
+on which the hidden eyes still seemed fixed, for all their lids. To make
+the least movement there, to attempt the slowest withdrawal of hand and
+arm, was to court the last disaster of discovery in such an act. But to
+lie motionless down to the thighs, and to execute a flank movement with
+the leg uppermost, was a far less perilous exploit. It was the leg with
+the bare foot: every detail had been foreseen. And now at last the bare
+foot hovered over the revolver and the hand it held, while the upper man
+yet lay like a log under those drowsy, dreadful eyes.
+
+Stingaree took a last look at the barrel drooping from the slackened
+hand; the back of the hand lay on the ground, the muzzle of the barrel
+was filled with sand, and yet the angle was such that it was by no means
+sure whether a bullet would bury itself in the sand or in Stingaree. He
+took the risk, and with his bare toe he touched the trigger sharply.
+There was a horrible explosion. It brought the drowsy Superintendent to
+his senses with such a jerk that it was as though the smoking pistol had
+leapt out of his hand a thing alive, and so into the hand that flashed
+to meet it from the sling. And almost in the same second--while the
+double cloud of smoke and sand still hung between them--Stingaree
+sprang from the ground, an armed man once more.
+
+"Sit where you are!" he thundered. "Up with those hands before I shoot
+them to shreds! Your life's in less danger than mine has been all day,
+but I'll wing you limb by limb if you offer to budge!"
+
+With uplifted hands above his ears, the deformed officer sat with head
+and shoulders depressed into the semblance of one sphere. Not a syllable
+did he utter; but his upturned eyes shot indomitable fires. Stingaree
+stood wriggling and fumbling at the coil which bound his left arm to his
+side; suddenly the revolver went off, as if by accident, but so much by
+design that there dangled two ends of rope, cut and burnt asunder by
+lead and powder. In less than a minute the bushranger was unbound, and
+before the minute was up he had leapt upon the Superintendent's
+thoroughbred. It had been tethered all this time to a tree, swishing
+tails with the station hack which Stingaree had ridden as a captive; he
+now rode the thoroughbred, and led the hack, to the very feet of the
+humiliated Cairns.
+
+"I will thank you for that water-bag," said Stingaree. "I am much
+obliged. And now I'll trouble you for that nice wideawake. You really
+don't need it in the shade. Thank you so much!"
+
+He received both bag and hat on the barrel of the Government revolver,
+hooking the one to its proper saddle-strap, and clapping on the other at
+an angle inimitably imitative of the outwitted officer.
+
+"I won't carry the rehearsal any further to your face," continued
+Stingaree; "but I can at least promise you a more flattering portrait
+than the last; and this excellent coat, which you have so considerately
+left strapped to your saddle, should contribute greatly to the
+verisimilitude. Dare I hope that you begin to appreciate some of the
+points of my performance so far as it has gone? The pretext on which I
+bared my foot for its delicate job under your very eyes, eh? Not so vain
+as it looked, in either sense, I fancy! Should you have said that your
+hand would recoil from a revolver the moment it went off? You see, I
+staked my life on it, and I've won. And what about that fall? It was the
+lottery! I was prepared to have my head cracked like an egg, and it's
+still pretty sore. The broken wrist wasn't your fault; it had passed
+into the accepted situation before you turned up. And you would
+certainly have seen that I was shamming sleep if we hadn't both been so
+genuinely sleepy at the time. I give you my word, I very nearly threw
+up the whole thing for forty winks! Any other point on which you could
+wish enlightenment? Then let me thank you with all my heart for one of
+the worst days, and some of the greatest moments, in my whole career."
+
+But the crooked man answered never a word, as he sat in a ball with
+uplifted palms, and glaring, upturned, unconquerable eyes.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Superintendent Cairns," said Stingaree. "I'm afraid I've
+been rather cruel to you--but you were never very nice to me!"
+
+
+Sergeant Cameron was driving the spring-cart, toward sundown, after a
+variety of unforeseen delays. Of a sudden out of the pink haze came a
+galloping figure, slightly humped, in the inspector's coat and
+wideawake, with a bare foot through one stirrup and only a sock on its
+fellow.
+
+"Where's Stingaree?" screamed the sergeant, pulling up. And the galloper
+drew rein at the driven horse's head.
+
+"Dead!" said he, thickly. "He was worse than we thought. You fetch him
+while I----"
+
+But this time the sergeant knew that voice too well, and his right hand
+had flown to the back of his belt. Stingaree's shot was only first by a
+fraction of a second, but it put a bullet through the brain of the horse
+between the shafts, so that horse and shafts came down together, and the
+sergeant fired into the earth as he fell across the splashboard.
+
+Stingaree pressed soft heels into the thoroughbred's ribs and thundered
+on and on. Soon there was a gate to open, and when he listened at that
+gate all was still behind him and before; but far ahead the rolling
+plain was faintly luminous in the dusk, and as this deepened into night
+a cluster of terrestrial lights sprang out with the stars. Stingaree
+knew the handful of gaunt, unsheltered huts the lights stood for. They
+were an inn, a store, and police-barracks: Clear Corner on the map. The
+bushranger galloped straight up to the barracks, but skirted the knot of
+men in the light before the veranda, and went jingling round into the
+yard. The young constable in charge ran through the building and met him
+dismounted at the back.
+
+"What's the matter, sir?"
+
+"He's gone!"
+
+"Stingaree?"
+
+"He was worse than we thought. Your man all right?"
+
+"No trouble whatever, sir. Only sick and sorry and saying his prayers
+in a way you'd never credit. Come and hear him."
+
+"I must come and see him at once. Got a fresh horse in?"
+
+"I have so! In and saddled in the stall. I thought you might want one,
+sir, and ran up Barmaid, Stingaree's own mare, that was sent out here
+from the station when we had the news."
+
+"That was very thoughtful of you. You'll get on, young man. Now lead the
+way with that lamp."
+
+This time Stingaree had spoken in gasps, like a man who had ridden very
+far, and the young constable, unlike his sergeant, did not know his
+voice of old. Yet it struck him at the last moment as more unlike the
+voice of Superintendent Cairns than the hardest riding should have made
+it, and with the key in the door of the cell the young fellow wheeled
+round and held the lamp on high. That instant he was felled to the
+floor, the lamp went down and out with a separate yet simultaneous
+crash, and Stingaree turned the key.
+
+"Howie! Not a word--out you come!"
+
+The burly ruffian crept forth with outstretched hands apart.
+
+"What! Not even handcuffed?"
+
+"No; turned over a new leaf the moment we left you, and been praying
+like a parson for 'em all to hear!"
+
+"This chap can do the same when he comes to himself. Lies pretty still,
+doesn't he? In with him!"
+
+The door clanged. The key was turned. Stingaree popped it into his
+pocket.
+
+"The later they let him out the better. Here's the best mount you ever
+had. And my sweetheart's waiting for me in the stable!"
+
+Outside, in front, before the barracks veranda, an inquisitive little
+group heard first the clang of the door within, and presently the
+clatter of hoofs coming round from the yard. Stingaree and Howie--a
+white flash and a bay streak--swept past them as they stood confounded.
+And the dwindling pair still bobbed in sight, under a full complement of
+stars, when a fresh outcry from the cell, and a mighty hammering against
+its locked door, broke the truth to one and all.
+
+
+
+
+The Villain-Worshipper
+
+
+There was no more fervent admirer of Stingaree and all bushrangers than
+George Oswald Abernethy Melvin. Despite this mellifluous nomenclature
+young Melvin helped his mother to sell dance-music, ballads, melodeons,
+and a very occasional pianoforte, in one of the several self-styled
+capitals of Riverina; and despite both facts the mother was a lady of
+most gentle blood. The son could either teach or tune the piano with a
+certain crude and idle skill. He endured a monopoly of what little
+business the locality provided in this line, and sat superior on the
+music-stool at all the dances. He had once sung tenor in Bishop
+Methuen's choir, but, offended by a word of wise and kindly advice, was
+seen no more in surplice or in church. It will be perceived that Oswald
+Melvin had all the aggressive independence of Young Australia without
+the virility which leavens the truer type.
+
+Yet he was neither a base nor an unkind lad. His bane was a morbid
+temperament, which he could no more help than his sallow face and weedy
+person; even his vanity was directly traceable to the early influence of
+an eccentric and feckless father with experimental ideas on the
+upbringing of a child. It was a pity that brilliantly unsuccessful man
+had not lived to see the result of his sedulous empiricism. His wife was
+left to bear the brunt--a brave exile whose romantic history was never
+likely to escape her continent lips. None even knew whether she saw any
+or one of those aggravated faults of an only child which were so
+apparent to all her world.
+
+And yet the worst of Oswald Melvin was known only to his own morbid and
+sensitive heart. An unimpressive presence in real life, on his mind's
+stage he was ever in the limelight with a good line on his lips. Not
+that he was invariably the hero of these pieces. He could see himself as
+large with the noose round his neck as in coronet or halo; and though
+this inward and spiritual temper may be far from rare, there had been no
+one to kick out of him its outward and visible expression. Oswald had
+never learned to gulp down the little lie which insures a flattering
+attention; his clever father had even encouraged it in him as the
+nucleus of imagination. Imagination he certainly had, but it fed on
+strong meat for an unhealthy mind; it fattened on the sordid history of
+the earlier bushrangers; its favorite fare was the character and
+exploits of Stingaree. The sallow and neurotic face would brighten with
+morbid enthusiasm at the bare mention of the desperado's name. The
+somewhat dull, dark eyes would lighten with borrowed fires: the young
+fool wore an eye-glass in one of them when he dared.
+
+"Stingaree," he would say, "is the greatest man in all Australia." He
+had inherited from his father a delight in uttering startling opinions;
+but this one he held with unusual sincerity. It had come to all ears,
+and was the subject of that episcopal compliment which Oswald took as an
+affront. The impudent little choristers supported his loss by calling
+"Stingaree!" after him in the street: he was wise to keep his eye-glass
+for the house.
+
+There, however, with a few even younger men who admired his standpoint
+and revelled in his store of criminous annals, or with his patient,
+inscrutable mother, Oswald Melvin was another being. His language became
+bright and picturesque, his animation surprising. A casual customer
+would sometimes see this side of him, and carry away the impression of a
+rare young dare-devil. And it was one such who gave Oswald the first
+great moment of his bush life.
+
+"Not been down from the back-blocks for three years?" he had asked, as
+he showed a tremulous and dilapidated bushman how to play the instrument
+that he had bought with the few shillings remaining out of his check.
+"Been on the spree and going back to drive a whim until you've enough to
+go on another? How I wish you'd tell that to our high and mighty Lord
+Bishop of all the Back-Blocks! I should like to see his face and hear
+him on the subject; but I suppose he's new since you were down here
+last? Never come across him, eh? But, of course, you heard how good old
+Stingaree scored off him the other day, after he thought he'd scored off
+Stingaree?"
+
+The whim-driver had heard something about it. Young Melvin plunged into
+the congenial narrative and emerged minutes later in a dusky glow.
+
+"That's the man for my money," he perorated. "Stingaree, sir, is the
+greatest chap in all these Colonies, and deserves to be Viceroy when
+they get Federation. Thunderbolt, Morgan, Ben Hall and Ned Kelly were
+not a circumstance between them to Stingaree; and the silly old Bishop's
+a silly old fool to him! I don't care twopence about right and wrong.
+That's not the point. The one's a Force, and the other isn't."
+
+"A darned sight too much force, to my mind," observed the whim-driver
+with some warmth.
+
+"You don't take my meaning," the superior youth pursued. "It's a
+question of personality."
+
+"A bit more personal than you think," was the dark rejoinder.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+Melvin's tone had altered in an instant.
+
+"I know too much about him."
+
+"At first hand?" the youth asked, with bated breath.
+
+"Double first!" returned the other, with a muddled glimmer of better
+things.
+
+"You never knew him, did you?" whispered Oswald.
+
+"Knew him? I've been taken prisoner by him," said the whim-driver, with
+the pause of a man who hesitates to humiliate himself, but is lost for
+the sake of that same sensation which Oswald Melvin loved to create.
+
+Mrs. Melvin was in the back room, wistfully engrossed in an English
+magazine sent that evening from Bishop's Lodge. The bad blood in the son
+had not affected Dr. Methuen's keen but tactful interest in the mother.
+She looked up in tolerant consternation as her Oswald pushed an unsavory
+bushman before him into the room; but even through her gentle horror
+the mother's love shone with that steady humor which raised it above the
+sphere of obvious pathos.
+
+"Here's a man who's been stuck up by Stingaree!" he cried, boyish enough
+in his delight. "Do keep an eye on the show, mother, and let him tell me
+all about it, as he's good enough to say he will. Is there any whiskey?"
+
+"Not for me!" put in the whim-driver, with a frank shudder. "I should
+like a drink of tea out of a cup, if I'm to have anything."
+
+Mrs. Melvin left them with a good-humored word besides her promise. She
+had given no sign of injury or disapproval; she was not one of the
+wincing sort; and the tremulous tramp was in her own chair before her
+back was turned.
+
+"Now fire away!" cried the impatient Oswald.
+
+"It's a long story," said the whim-driver; and his dirty brows were knit
+in thought.
+
+"Let's have it," coaxed the young man. And the other's thoughtful
+creases vanished suddenly in the end.
+
+"Very well," said he, "since it means a drink of tea out of a cup! It
+was only the other day, in a dust-storm away back near the Darling, as
+bad a one as ever I was out in. I was bushed and done for, gave it up
+and said my prayers. Then I practically died in my tracks, and came to
+life in a sunny clearing later in the day. The storm was over; two coves
+had found me and carried me to their camp; and as soon as I saw them I
+spotted one for Howie and the other for Stingaree!"
+
+The narrative went no farther for a time. The thrilling youth fired
+question and leading question like a cross-examining counsel in a fever
+to conclude his case. The tea arrived, but the whim-driver had to help
+himself. His host neglected everything but the first chance he had ever
+had of hearing of Stingaree or any other bushranger at first-hand.
+
+"And how long were you there?"
+
+"About a week."
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+The whim-driver paused in doubt renewed.
+
+"You will never guess."
+
+"Tell me."
+
+"They waited for the next dust-storm, and then cast me adrift in that."
+
+Oswald stared; he would never have guessed, indeed. The unhealthy light
+faded from his sallow face. Even his morbid enthusiasm was a little
+damped.
+
+"You must have done something to deserve it," he cried, at last.
+
+"I did," was the reply, with hanging head. "I--I tried to take him."
+
+"Take your benefactor--take him prisoner?"
+
+"Yes--the man who saved my life."
+
+Melvin sat staring: it was a stare of honestly incredulous disgust. Then
+he sprang to his feet, a brighter youth than ever, his depression melted
+like a cloud. His villainous hero was an heroic villain after all! His
+heart of hearts--which was not black--could still render whole homage to
+Stingaree! He no longer frowned on his informer as on a thing accursed.
+The creature had wiped out his original treachery to Stingaree by
+replacing the uninjured idol in its niche in this warped mind. Oswald,
+however, had made his repugnance only too plain; he was unable to elicit
+another detail; and in a very few minutes Mrs. Melvin was back in her
+place, though not before flicking it with her handkerchief, undetected
+by her son.
+
+It was certainly a battered and hang-dog figure that stole away into the
+bush. Yet the creature straightened as he strode into star-light
+undefiled by earthly illumination; his palsy left him; presently as he
+went he began fingering the new melodeon in the way of a man who need
+not have sought elementary instruction from Oswald Melvin. And now a
+shining disk filled one unwashed eye.
+
+Stingaree lay a part of that night beside the milk-white mare that he
+had left tethered in a box-clump quite near the town; at sunrise he
+knelt and shaved on the margin of a Government tank, before breaking the
+mirror by plunging in. And before the next stars paled he was snugly
+back in older haunts, none knowing of his descent upon those of men.
+
+There or thereabouts, hidden like the needle in the hay, and yet
+ubiquitous in the stack, the bushranger remained for months. Then there
+was an encounter, not the first of this period, but the first in which
+shots were exchanged. One of these pierced the lungs of his melodeon--an
+instrument more notorious by this time than the musical-box before it--a
+still greater treasure to Stingaree. That was near the full of a certain
+summer moon; it was barely waning to the eye when the battered buyer of
+melodeons came for a new one to the shop in the pretty bush town.
+
+The shop was closed for the night, but Stingaree knocked at a lighted
+window under the veranda, which Mrs. Melvin presently threw up. Her eyes
+flashed when she recognized one against whom she now harbored a
+bitterness on quite a different plane of feeling from her former
+repulsion. Even to his first glance she looked an older and a harder
+woman.
+
+"I am sorry to see you," she said, with a soft vehemence plainly foreign
+to herself. "I almost hate the sight of you! You have been the ruin of
+my son!"
+
+"His ruin?"
+
+Stingaree forgot the speech of the unlettered stockman; but his cry was
+too short to do worse than warn him.
+
+"Come round," continued Mrs. Melvin, austerely. "I will see you. You
+shall hear what you have done."
+
+In another minute he was in the parlor where he had sat aforetime. He
+never dreamt of sitting now. But the lady took her accustomed chair as a
+queen her throne.
+
+"_Is_ he ruined?" asked Stingaree.
+
+"Not irrevocably--not yet; but he may be any moment. He must be before
+long."
+
+"But--but what ails him, madame?"
+
+"Villain-worship!" cried the lady, with a tragic face stripped of all
+its humor, and bare without it as a winter's tree.
+
+"I remember! Yes--I understand. He was mad about--Stingaree."
+
+"It is madness now," said the bitter mother. "It was only a stupid,
+hare-brained fancy then, but now it is something worse. You're the first
+to whom I have admitted it," she continued, with illogical indignation,
+"because it's all through you!"
+
+"All through me?"
+
+"You told him a tale. You made that villain a greater hero in his eyes
+than ever. You made him real."
+
+"He is real enough, God knows!"
+
+"But you made him so to my son." The keen eyes softened for one divine
+instant before they filled. "And I--I am talking my own boy over
+with--with----"
+
+Stingaree stood in twofold embarrassment. Did she know after all who he
+was? And what had he said he was, the time before?
+
+"The lowest of the low," he answered, with a twitch of his unshaven
+lips.
+
+"No! That you were not, or are not, whatever you may say. You--" she
+hesitated sweetly--"you had been unsteady when you were here before." He
+twitched again, imperceptibly. "I am thankful to see that you are now
+more like what you must once have been. I can bear to tell you of my
+boy. Oh, sir, can you bear with me?"
+
+Stingaree twitched no more. Rich as the situation was, keenly as he had
+savored its unsuspected irony, the humor was all over for him. Here was
+a woman, still young, sweet and kind, and gentle as a childish memory,
+with her fine eyes full of tears! That was bad enough. To make it worse,
+she went on to tell him of her son, him an outlaw, him a bushranger with
+a price upon his skin, as she might have outlined the case to a
+consulting physician. The boy had been born in the trouble of her early
+exile; he could not help his temperament. He had countless virtues; she
+extolled him in beaming parentheses. But he had too much imagination and
+too little balance. He was morbidly wrapped up in the whole subject of
+romantic crime, and no less than possessed with the personality of this
+one romantic criminal.
+
+"I should be ashamed to tell you the childish lengths to which he has
+gone," she went on, "if he were quite himself on the point. But indeed
+he is not. He is Stingaree in his heart, Stingaree in his dreams; it is
+as debasing a form as mental and temperamental weakness could well take;
+yet I know, who watch over him half of the night. He has an eye-glass;
+he keeps revolvers; he has even bought a white mare! He can look
+extremely like the portraits one has seen of the wretched man. But come
+with me one moment."
+
+She took the lamp and led the way into the little room where Oswald
+Melvin slept. He had slept in it from that boyhood in which the brave
+woman had opened this sort of shop entirely for his sake. Music was his
+only talent; he was obviously not to be a genius in the musical world;
+but it was the only one in which she could foresee the selfish,
+self-willed child figuring with credit, and her foresight was only
+equalled by her resource. The business was ripe and ready for him when
+he grew up. And this was what he was making of it.
+
+But Stingaree saw only the little bed that had once been far too large,
+the Bible still by its side, read or unread, the parents' portraits
+overhead. The mother was looking in an opposite direction; he followed
+her eyes, and there at the foot, where the infatuated fool could see it
+last thing at night and first in the morning, was an enlarged photograph
+of the bushranger himself.
+
+It had been taken in audacious circumstances a year or two before. A
+travelling photographer had been one of yet another coach-load turned
+out and stood in a line by the masterful masterless man.
+
+"Now you may take my photograph. The police refuse to know me when we do
+meet. Give them a chance."
+
+And he had posed on the spot with eye-glass up and pistols pointed, as
+he saw himself now, not less than a quarter life-size, in a great gaudy
+frame. But while he stared Mrs. Melvin had been rummaging in a drawer,
+and when he turned she was staring in her turn with glassy eyes. In her
+hands was an empty mahogany case with velvet moulds which ought to have
+been filled by a brace of missing revolvers.
+
+"He kept it locked--he kept them in it!" she gasped. "He may have done
+it this very night!"
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Stuck up the Deniliquin mail. That is his maddest dream. I have heard
+him boast of it to his friends--the brainless boys who alone look up to
+him--I have even heard him rave of it in his dreams!"
+
+Stingaree was heavy for a moment with a mental calculation. His head was
+a time-table of Cobb's coaches on the Riverina road-system; he nodded it
+as he located the imperilled vehicle.
+
+"A dream it shall remain," said he. "But there's not a moment to lose!"
+
+"Do you propose to follow and stop him?"
+
+"If he really means it."
+
+"He may not. He will ride at night. He is often out as late."
+
+"Going and coming about the same time?"
+
+"Yes--now I think of it."
+
+"Then his courage must have failed him hitherto, and it probably will
+again."
+
+"But if not!"
+
+"I will cure him. But I must go at once. I have a horse not far away. I
+will gallop and meet the coach; if it is still safe, as you may be sure
+it will be, I shall scour the country for your son. I can tell him a
+fresh thing or two about Stingaree!"
+
+"God bless you!"
+
+"Leave him to me."
+
+"Oh, may God bless you always!"
+
+His hands were in a lady's hands once more. Stingaree withdrew them
+gently. And he looked his last into the brave wet eyes raised gratefully
+to his.
+
+The villain-worshipper was indeed duly posted in a certain belt of trees
+through which the coach-route ran, about half-way between the town and
+the first stage south. It was not his first nocturnal visit to the spot;
+often, as his prototype divined, had the mimic would-be desperado sat
+trembling on his hoary screw, revolvers ready, while the red eyes of the
+coach dilated down the road; and as often had the cumbrous ship pitched
+past unscathed. The week-kneed and weak-minded youth was too vain to
+feel much ashamed. He was biding his time, he could pick his night; one
+was too dark, another not dark enough; he had always some excuse for
+himself when he regained his room, still unstained by crime; and so the
+unhealthy excitement was deliciously maintained. To-night, as always
+when he sallied forth, the deed should be done; he only wished there was
+a shade less moon, and wondered whether he might not have done better to
+wait. But, as usual, the die was cast. And indeed it was quite a new
+complication that deterred this poor creature for the last time: he was
+feverishly expecting the coach when a patter of hoofs smote his ear from
+the opposite quarter.
+
+This was enough to stay an older and a bolder hand. Oswald tucked in his
+guns with unrealized relief. It was his last instinct to wait and see
+whether the horseman was worth attacking for his own sake; he had room
+for few ideas at the same time; and his only new one was the sense of a
+new danger, which he prepared to meet by pocketing his pistols as a
+child bolts stolen fruit. There was no thinking before the act; but it
+was perhaps as characteristic of the naturally honest man as of the
+coward.
+
+Stingaree swept through the trees at a gallop, the milk-white mare
+flashing in the moonlit patches. At the sight of her Oswald was
+convulsed with a premonition as to who was coming; his heart palpitated
+as even his heart had never done before; and yet he would have sat
+irresolute, inert, and let the man pass as he always let the coach, had
+the decision been left to him. The real milk-white mare affected the
+imitation in its turn as the coach-horses never had; and Oswald swayed
+and swam upon a whinnying steed. . . .
+
+"I thought you were Stingaree!"
+
+The anti-climax was as profound as the weakling's relief. Yet there was
+a strong dash of indignation in his tone.
+
+"What if I am?"
+
+"But you're not. You're not half smart enough. You can't tell me
+anything about Stingaree!"
+
+He put his eye-glass up with an air.
+
+Stingaree put up his.
+
+"You young fool!" said he.
+
+The thoroughbred mare, the eye-glass, a peeping pistol, were all
+superfluous evidence. There was the far more unmistakable authority of
+voice and eye and bearing. Yet the voice at least was somehow familiar
+to the ear of Oswald, who stuttered as much when he was able.
+
+"I must have heard it before, or have I dreamt it? I've thought a good
+deal about you, you know!"
+
+To do him justice, he was no longer very nervous, though still
+physically shaken. On the other hand, he began already to feel the
+elation of his dreams.
+
+"I do know. You've thought your soul into a pulp on the subject, and you
+must give it up," said Stingaree, sternly.
+
+Oswald sat aghast.
+
+"But how on earth did you know?"
+
+"I've come straight from your mother. You're breaking her heart."
+
+"But how can _you_ have come straight from _her_?"
+
+"I've come down for another melodeon. I've got to have one, too."
+
+"Another----"
+
+And Oswald Melvin knew his drunken whim-driver for what he had really
+been.
+
+"The yarn I told you about myself was true enough," continued Stingaree.
+"Only the names were altered, as they say; it happened to the other
+fellow, not to me. I made it happen. He is hardly likely to have lived
+to tell the tale."
+
+"Did he really try to betray you after what you'd done for him?"
+
+"More or less. He looked on me as fair game."
+
+"But you had saved his life?"
+
+Stingaree shrugged.
+
+"We rode across him."
+
+"And you think he perished of dust and thirst?"
+
+Stingaree nodded. "In torment!"
+
+"Then he got what he jolly well earned! Anything less would have been
+too good for him!" cried Oswald, and with a boyish, uncompromising heat
+which spoke to some human nature in him still.
+
+But Stingaree frowned up the moonlit track. There was still no sign of
+the coach. Yet time was short, and the morbid enthusiast was not to be
+disgusted; indeed, he was all enthusiasm now, and a less unattractive
+lad than the bushranger had hoped to find him. He looked the white screw
+and Oswald up and down as they sat in their saddles in the moonshine: it
+seemed like sunlight on that beaming fool.
+
+"And you think of commencing bushranger, do you?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"It's a hard life while it lasts, and a nasty death to top up with."
+
+"They don't hang you for it."
+
+"They might hang me for the man I put back in the vile dust from whence
+he sprung. They'd hang you in six months. You've too many nerves. You'd
+pull the trigger every time."
+
+"A short life and a merry one!" cried the reckless Oswald. "I shouldn't
+care."
+
+"But your mother would," retorted Stingaree, sharply. "Don't think about
+yourself so much; think about her for a change."
+
+The young man turned dusky in the moonlight; he was wounded where the
+Bishop had wounded him, and Stingaree was quick to see it--as quick to
+turn the knife round in the wound.
+
+"What a bushranger!" he jeered. "Put your plucky little mother in a
+side-saddle and she'd make two of you--ten of you--twenty of a puny,
+namby-pamby, conceited young idiot like you! Upon my word, Melvin, if I
+had a mother like you I should be ashamed of myself. I never had, I may
+tell you, or I shouldn't have come down to a dog's life like this."
+
+The bushranger paused to watch the effect of his insults. It was not
+quite what he wanted. The youth would not hang his head. And, if he did
+not answer back, he looked back doggedly enough; for he could be dogged,
+in a passive way; it was his one hard quality, the knot in a character
+of green deal. Stingaree glanced up the road once more, but only for an
+instant.
+
+"It is a dog's life," he went on, "whether you believe it or not. But it
+takes a bull-dog to live it, and don't you forget it. It's no life for a
+young poodle like you! You can't stick up a better man than yourself,
+not more than once or twice. It requires something more than a
+six-shooter, and a good deal more than was put into you, my son! But you
+shall see for yourself; look over your shoulder."
+
+Oswald did so, and started in a fashion that set the bushranger nodding
+his scorn. It was only a pair of lamps still close together in the
+distance up the road.
+
+"The coach!" exclaimed the excited youth.
+
+"Exactly," said Stingaree, "and I'm going to stick it up."
+
+Excitement grew to frenzy in a flash.
+
+"I'll help you!"
+
+"You'll do no such thing. But you shall see how it's done, and then ask
+yourself candidly if it's nice work and if you're the man to do it. Ride
+a hundred yards further in, tether your horse quickly in the thickest
+scrub you can find, then run back and climb into the fork of this
+gum-tree. You'll have time; if you're sharp I'll give you a leg up. But
+I sha'n't be surprised if I don't see you again!"
+
+There is no saying what Oswald might have done, but for these last
+words. Certain it is that they set him galloping with an oath, and
+brought him back panting in another minute. The coach-lamps were not
+much wider apart. Stingaree awaited him, also on foot, and quicker than
+the telling Oswald was ensconced on high where he could see through the
+meagre drooping leaves with very little danger of being seen.
+
+"And if you come down before I'm done and gone--if it's not to
+glory--I'll run some lead through you! You'll be the first!"
+
+Oswald perched reflecting on this final threat; and the scene soon
+enacted before his eyes was viewed as usual through the aura of his own
+egoism. He longed all the time to be taking part in it; he could see
+himself so distinctly at the work--save for about a minute in the
+middle, when for once in his life he held his breath and trembled for
+other skins.
+
+There had been no unusual feature. The life-size coach-lamps had shown
+their mountain-range of outside passengers against moonlit sky or trees.
+A cigar paled and reddened between the teeth of one, plain wreaths of
+smoke floated from his lips, with but an instant's break when Stingaree
+rode out and stopped the coach. The three leaders reared; the two
+wheelers were pulled almost to their haunches. The driver was docile in
+deed, though profane in word; and Stingaree himself discovered a
+horrifying vocabulary out of keeping with his reputation. In incredibly
+few minutes driver and passengers were formed in a line and robbed in
+rotation, all but two ladies who were kept inside unmolested. A flagrant
+Irishman declared it was the proudest day of his life, and Oswald's
+heart went out to him, though it rather displeased him to find his own
+sentiments shared by the vulgar. The man with the cigar kept it glowing
+all the time. The mail-bags were not demanded on this occasion.
+Stingaree had no time to waste on them. He was still collecting purse
+and watch, when Oswald's young blood froze in the stiffening limbs he
+dared not move.
+
+One of the ladies had got down from the coach on the off side, and
+behold! it was a man wrapped in a rug, which dropped from him as he
+crept round behind the horses. At their head stood the lily mare, as if
+doing her own nefarious part by her own kind. In a twinkling the mad
+adventurer was on her back, and all this time Oswald longed to jump
+down, or at least to shout a warning to his hero, but, as usual, his
+desires were unproductive of word or deed. And then Stingaree saw his
+man.
+
+He did not fire; he did not shift sight or barrel for a moment from the
+docile file before him. "Barmaid! Barmaid, my pet!" he cried, and hardly
+looked to see what happened.
+
+But Oswald watched the mare stop, prick her ears under the hammering of
+unspurred heels, spin round, bucking as she spun, and toss her rider
+like a bull. There in the moonlight he lay like lead, with leaden face
+upturned to the shuddering youngster in the tree.
+
+"One of you a doctor?" asked Stingaree, checking a forward movement of
+the file.
+
+"I am."
+
+The cigar was paling between finger and thumb.
+
+"Then come you here and have a look at him. The rest of you move at your
+peril!"
+
+Stingaree led the way, stepping backward, but not as far as the injured
+man, who sat up ruefully as the bushranger sprang into the saddle.
+
+"Another yard, and I'd have grabbed your ankles!" said the man on the
+ground.
+
+"You're a stout fellow, but I know more about this game than you," the
+outlaw answered, riding to his distance and reining up. "If I didn't you
+might have had me--but you must think of something better for
+Stingaree!"
+
+He galloped his mare into the bush and Oswald clung in lonely terror
+to his tree. A snatch of conversation called him to attention. The
+plundered party were clambering philosophically to their seats, while
+the driver blasphemed delightedly over the integrity of his mails.
+
+[Illustration: The mare spun round, bucking as she spun.]
+
+"That wasn't Stingaree," said one.
+
+"You bet it was!"
+
+"How much? He hardly ever works so far south."
+
+"And he's nuts on mails."
+
+"But if it wasn't Stingaree, who was it?"
+
+"It was him all right. Look at the mare."
+
+"She isn't the only white 'orse ever foaled," remarked the driver,
+sorting his fistful of reins.
+
+"But who else could it have been?"
+
+The driver uttered an inspired imprecation.
+
+"I can tell you. I chanst to live in this here township we're comin' to.
+On second thoughts, I'll keep it to myself till we get there."
+
+And he cracked his whip.
+
+Oswald himself rode back to the township before the moon went down. He
+was very heavy with his own reflections. How magnificent! It had all
+surpassed his most extravagant imaginings--in audacity, in expedition,
+in simple mastery of the mutable many by the dominant one. He forgave
+Stingaree his gibes and insults; he could have forgiven a
+horse-whipping from that king of men. Stingaree had been his imaginary
+god before; he was a realized ideal from this night forth, and the
+reality outdid the dream.
+
+But the fly of self must always poison this young man's ointment, and
+to-night there was some excuse from his degenerate point of view. He
+must give it up. Stingaree was right; it was only one man in thousands
+who could do unerringly what he had done that night. Oswald Melvin was
+not that man. He saw it for himself at last. But it was a bitter hour
+for him. Life in the music-shop would fall very flat after this; he
+would be dishonored before his only friends, the unworthy hobbledehoys
+who were to have joined his gang; he could not tell them what had
+happened, not at least until he had invented some less inglorious part
+for himself, and that was a difficulty in view of newspaper reports of
+the sticking-up. He could scarcely tell them a true word of what had
+passed between himself and Stingaree. If only he might yet grow more
+like the master! If only he might still hope to follow so sublime a
+lead!
+
+Thus aspiring, vainly as now he knew, Oswald Melvin rode slowly back
+into the excited town, and past the lighted police-barracks, in the
+innocence of that portion of his heart. But one had flown like the wind
+ahead of him, and two in uniform, followed by that one, dashed out on
+Oswald and the old white screw.
+
+"Surrender!" sang out one.
+
+"In the Queen's name!" added the other.
+
+"Call yourself Stingaree!" panted the runner.
+
+Our egoist was quick enough to grasp their meaning, but quicker still to
+see and to seize the chance of a crazy lifetime. Always acute where his
+own vanity was touched, his promptitude was for once on a par with his
+perceptions.
+
+"Had your eye on me long?" he inquired, delightfully, as he dismounted.
+
+"Long enough," said one policeman. The other was busy plucking loaded
+revolvers from the desperado's pockets. A crowd had formed.
+
+"If you're looking for the loot," he went on, raising his voice for the
+benefit of all, "you may look. _I_ sha'n't tell you, and it'll take you
+all your time!"
+
+But a surprise was in store for prisoner and police alike. Every stolen
+watch and all the missing money were discovered no later than next
+morning in the bush quite close to the scene of the outrage. There had
+been no attempt to hide them; they lay in a heap, dumped from the
+saddle, with no more depreciation than a broken watch-glass. True to
+his new character, Oswald learned this development without flinching.
+His ready comment was in next day's papers.
+
+"There was nothing worth having," he had maintained, and did not see the
+wisdom of the boast until a lawyer called and pointed out that it
+contained the nucleus of a strong defence.
+
+"I'll defend myself, thank you," said the inflated fool.
+
+"Then you'll make a mess of it, and deserve all you get. And it would be
+a pity to spoil such a good defence."
+
+"What is the defence?"
+
+"You did it for a joke, of course!"
+
+Oswald smiled inscrutably, and dismissed his visitor with a lordly
+promise to consider the proposition and that lawyer's claims upon the
+case. Never was such triumph tasted in guilty immunity as was this
+innocent man's under cloud of guilt so apparent as to impose on every
+mind. He had but carried out a notorious intention; for his few friends
+were the first to betray their captain, albeit his bold bearing and
+magnanimous smiles won an admiration which they had never before
+vouchsafed him in their hearts. He was, indeed, a different man. He had
+lived to see Stingaree in action, and now he modelled himself from the
+life. The only doubt was as to whether at the last of that business he
+had actually avowed himself Stingaree or not. There might have been
+trouble about the horse, but fortunately for the enthusiastic prisoner
+the man who had been thrown was allowed to proceed on a pressing journey
+to the Barcoo. There was a plethora of evidence without his; besides,
+the hide-and-bone mare was called Barmaid, after the original, and it
+was known that Oswald had tried to teach the old creature tricks; above
+all, the prisoner had never pretended to deny his guilt. Still, this
+matter of the horses gave him a certain sense of insecurity in his cosey
+cell.
+
+He had awakened to find himself not only deliciously notorious, but
+actually more of a man than in his heart of hearts he had dared to hope.
+The tenacity and consistency of his pose were alike remarkable. Even in
+the overweening cause of egoism he had never shown so much character in
+his life. Yet he shuddered to realize that, given the usual time for
+reflection before his great moment, that moment might have proved as
+mean as many another when the spirit had been wine and the flesh water.
+There was, in fine, but one feature of the affair which even Oswald
+Melvin, drunk with notoriety and secretly sanguine of a nominal
+punishment, could not contemplate with absolute satisfaction. But that
+feature followed the others into the papers which kept him intoxicated.
+And a bundle of these papers found their adventurous way to the latest
+fastness of Stingaree in the mallee.
+
+The real villain dropped his eye-glass, clapped it in again, and did his
+best to crack it with his stare. Student of character as he was, he
+could not have conceived such a development in such a character. He read
+on, more enlightened than amused. "To think he had the pluck!" he
+murmured, as he dropped that _Australasian_ and took up the next week's.
+He was filled with admiration, but soon a frown and then an oath came to
+put an end to it. "The little beast," he cried, "he'll kill that woman!
+He can't have kept it up." He sorted the papers for the latest of all--a
+sinful publican saved them for him--and therein read that Oswald Melvin
+had been committed for trial, and that his only concern was for the
+condition of his mother, which was still unchanged, and had seemed
+latterly to distress the prisoner very much.
+
+"I'll distress him!" roared Stingaree to the mallee. "I'll distress him,
+if we change places for it!"
+
+Riding all night, and as much as he dared by day, it was some hundred
+hours before he paid his third and last visit to the Melvins'
+music-shop. He rode boldly to the door, but he rode a piebald mare not
+to be confused in the most suspicious mind with the no more conspicuous
+Barmaid. It is true the brown parts smelt of Condy's Fluid, and were at
+once strange and seemingly a little tender to the touch. But Stingaree
+allowed no meddling with his mount; and only a very sinful publican,
+very many leagues back, was in the secret.
+
+There were no lighted windows behind the shop to-night. The whole place
+was in darkness, and Stingaree knocked in vain. A neighbor appeared upon
+the next veranda.
+
+"Who is it you want?" he asked.
+
+"Mrs. Melvin."
+
+"It's no use knocking for her."
+
+"Is she dead?"
+
+"Not that I know of; but she can't be long for this world."
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"Bishop's Lodge; they say Miss Methuen's with her day and night."
+
+For it was in the days of the Bishop's daughter, who had a strong mind
+but no sense of humor, and a heart only fickle in its own affairs. Miss
+Methuen made an admirable, if a somewhat too assiduous and dictatorial,
+nurse. She had, however, a fund of real sympathy with the afflicted, and
+Mrs. Melvin's only serious complaint (which she intended to die without
+uttering) was that she was never left alone with her grief by day or
+night. It was Miss Methuen who, sitting with rather ostentatious
+patience in the dark, at the open window, until her patient should fall
+or pretend to be asleep, saw a man ride a piebald horse in at the gate,
+and then, half-way up the drive, suspiciously dismount and lead his
+horse into a tempting shrubbery.
+
+Stingaree did not often change his mind at the last moment, but he knew
+the man on whose generosity he was about to throw himself, which was to
+know further that that generosity would be curbed by judgment, and to
+reflect that he was least likely to be deprived of a horse whose
+whereabouts was known only to himself. There was but one lighted room
+when he eventually stole upon the house; it had a veranda to itself; and
+in the bright frame of the French windows, which stood open, sat the
+Bishop with his Bible on his knees.
+
+"Yes, I know you," said he, putting his marker in the place as Stingaree
+entered, boots in one hand and something else in the other. "I thought
+we should meet again. Do you mind putting that thing back in your
+pocket?"
+
+[Illustration: Stingaree knocked in vain.]
+
+"Will you promise not to call a soul?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes."
+
+"You weren't expecting me, were you?" cried Stingaree, suspiciously.
+
+"I've been expecting you for months," returned the Bishop. "You knew my
+address, but I hadn't yours. We were bound to meet again."
+
+Stingaree smiled as he took his revolver by the barrel and carried it
+across the room to Dr. Methuen.
+
+"What's that for? I don't want it; put it in your own pocket. At least I
+can trust you not to take my life in cold blood."
+
+The Bishop seemed nettled and annoyed. Stingaree loved him.
+
+"I don't come to take anything, much less life," he said. "I come to
+save it; if it is not too late."
+
+"To save life--here?"
+
+"In your house."
+
+"But whom do you know of my household?"
+
+"Mrs. Melvin. I have had the honor of meeting her twice, though each
+time she was unaware of the dishonor of meeting me. The last time I
+promised to try to save her unhappy son from himself. I found him
+waiting to waylay the coach, told him who I was, and had ten minutes to
+try to cure him in. He wouldn't listen to reason; insult ran like water
+off his back. I did my best to show him what a life it was he longed to
+lead, and how much more there was in it than a loaded revolver. He
+wouldn't take my word for it, however, so I put him out of harm's way,
+up in a tree; and when the coach came along I gave him as brutal an
+exhibition of the art of bushranging as I could without spilling blood.
+I promise you it was for no other reason. What did I want with watches?
+What were a few pounds to me? I dropped the lot that the lad might
+know."
+
+The Bishop started to his gaitered legs.
+
+"And he's actually innocent all the time?"
+
+"Of the deed, as the babe unborn."
+
+"Then why in the wide world----"
+
+Dr. Methuen stood beggared of further speech. His mind was too plain and
+sane for immediate understanding of such a type as Oswald Melvin. But
+the bushranger hit off that young man's character in half-a-dozen
+trenchant phrases.
+
+"He must be let out, and it may save his mother's life; but if he were
+mine," exclaimed the Bishop, "I would rather he had done the other deed!
+But what about you?" he added, suddenly, his eyes resting on his
+sardonic visitor, who had disguised himself far less than his horse.
+"It will mean giving yourself up."
+
+"No. You know me. You can spread what I've told you."
+
+The Bishop shifted uneasily on his hearth-rug.
+
+"I may not see my way to that," said he. "Besides, you must have run a
+lot of risks to do this good action; how do you know you haven't been
+recognized already? I should have known you anywhere."
+
+"But you have undertaken not to raise an alarm, my lord."
+
+"I shall not break my promise."
+
+There was a grim regret in the Bishop's voice. Stingaree thought he
+understood it.
+
+"Thank you," he said.
+
+"Don't thank me, pray!" Dr. Methuen could be quite testy on occasion. "I
+have other duties than to you, you know, and I only answer for my
+actions during the actual period of our interview. There are many things
+I should like to say to you, my brother," a gentler voice went on, "but
+this is hardly the time for me to say them. But there is one question I
+should like to ask you for the peace of both our souls, and for the
+maintenance of my own belief in human nature." He threw up an episcopal
+hand dramatically. "If you earnestly and honestly wished to save this
+poor lady's life, and there were no other way, would you then be man
+enough to give yourself up--to give your liberty for her life?"
+
+Stingaree took time to think. His eyes were brightly fixed upon the
+Bishop's. Yet they saw a little bedroom just as plain, an English lady
+standing by the empty bed, and at its foot a portrait of himself armed
+to the teeth.
+
+"For hers?" said he. "Yes, like a shot!"
+
+"I'm thankful to hear it," replied the Bishop, with most fervent relief.
+"I only wish you could have the opportunity. But now you never will. My
+brother, if you look round, you will see why!"
+
+Stingaree looked round without a word. In the Bishop's eyes at the last
+instant he had learned what to expect. A firing-party of four
+stocking-soled constables were drawn across the opened French windows,
+their levelled rifles poking through.
+
+The bushranger looked over his shoulder with a bitter smile. "You've
+done me, after all!" said he, and stretched out empty hands.
+
+"It was done before I saw you," the Bishop made answer. "I had already
+sent for the police."
+
+One had entered excitedly by an inner door.
+
+"And he didn't do you at all!" cried the voice of high hysteria. "It
+was I who saw you--it was I who guessed who it was! Oh, father, why have
+you been talking so long to such a dreadful man? I made sure he would
+shoot you, and you'd still be shot if they had to shoot him!
+Move--move--move!"
+
+Stingaree looked at the strong-minded girl, shrill with her triumph,
+quite carried away by her excitement, all undaunted by the prospect of
+bloodshed before her eyes. And it was he who moved, with but a shrug of
+the shoulders, and gave himself up without another sign.
+
+
+
+
+The Moth and the Star
+
+
+I
+
+Darlinghurst Jail had never immured a more interesting prisoner than the
+back-block bandit who was tried and convicted under the strange style
+and title which he had made his own. Not even in prison was his real
+name ever known, and the wild speculations of some imaginative officials
+were nothing else up to the end. There was enough color in their
+wildness, however, to crown the convict with a certain halo of romance,
+which his behavior in jail did nothing to dispel. That, of course, was
+exemplary, since Stingaree had never been a fool; but it was something
+more and rarer. Not content simply to follow the line of least
+resistance, he exhibited from the first a spirit and a philosophy unique
+indeed beneath the broad arrow. And so far from decreasing with the
+years of his captivity, these attractive qualities won him friend after
+friend among the officials, and privilege upon privilege at their hands,
+while amply justifying the romantic interest in his case.
+
+At last there came to Sydney a person more capable of an acute
+appreciation of the heroic villain than his most ardent admirer on the
+spot. Lucius Brady was a long-haired Irishman of letters, bard and
+bookworm, rebel and reviewer; in his ample leisure he was also the most
+enthusiastic criminologist in London. And as President of an exceedingly
+esoteric Society for the Cultivation of Criminals, even from London did
+he come for a prearranged series of interviews with the last and the
+most distinguished of all the bushrangers.
+
+It was to Lucius Brady, his biographer to be, that Stingaree confided
+the data of all the misdeeds recounted in these pages; but of his life
+during the quiet intervals, of his relations with confederates, and his
+more honest dealings with honest folk (of which many a pretty tale was
+rife), he was not to be persuaded to speak without an irritating
+reserve.
+
+"Keep to my points of contact with the world, about which something is
+known already, and you shall have the whole truth of each matter," said
+the convict. "But I don't intend to give away the altogether unknown,
+and I doubt if it would interest you if I did. The most interesting
+thing to me has been the different types with whom I have had what it
+pleases you to term professional relations, and the very different ways
+in which they have taken me. You read character by flashlight along the
+barrel of your revolver. What you should do is to hunt up my various
+victims and get at their point of view; you really mustn't press me to
+hark back to mine. As it is you bring a whiff of the outer world which
+makes me bruise my wings against the bars."
+
+The criminologist gloated over such speeches from such lips. It would
+have touched another to note what an irresistible fascination the bars
+had for the wings, despite all pain; but Lucius Brady's interest in
+Stingaree was exclusively intellectual. His heart never ached for a
+roving spirit in confinement; it did not occur to him to suppress a
+detail of his own days in Sydney, down to the attractions of an Italian
+restaurant he had discovered near the jail, the flavor of the Chianti
+and so forth. On the contrary, it was most interesting to note the play
+of features in the tortured man, who after all brought his torture on
+himself by asking so many questions. Soon, when his visitor left him,
+the bondman could follow the free in all but the flesh, through every
+corridor of the prison and every street outside, to the hotel where you
+read the English papers on the veranda, or to the little restaurant
+where the Chianti was corked with oil which the waiter removed with a
+wisp of tow.
+
+One day, late in the afternoon, as Lucius Brady was beaming on him
+through his spectacles, and indulging in an incisive criticism on the
+champagne at Government House, Stingaree quietly garroted him. A gag was
+in all readiness, likewise strips of coarse sheeting torn up for the
+purpose in the night. Black in the face, but with breath still in his
+body, the criminologist was carefully gagged and tied down to the
+bedstead, while his living image (at a casual glance) strolled with bent
+head, black sombrero, spectacles and frock-coat, first through the cold
+corridors and presently along the streets.
+
+The heat of the pavement striking to his soles was the first of a
+hundred exquisite sensations; but Stingaree did not permit himself to
+savor one of them. Indeed, he had his work cut out to check the pace his
+heart dictated; and it was by admirable exercise of the will that he
+wandered along, deep to all appearance in a Camelot Classic which he had
+found in the criminologist's pocket; in reality blinded by the glasses,
+but all the more vigilant out of the corners of his eyes.
+
+A suburb was the scene of these perambulations; had he but dared to lift
+his face, Stingaree might have caught a glimpse of the bluest of blue
+water; and his prison eyes hungered for the sight, but he would not
+raise his eyes so long as footsteps sounded on the same pavement. By
+taking judicious turnings, however, he drifted into a quiet road, with
+gray suburban bungalows on one side and building lots on the other. No
+step approached. He could look up at last. And the very bungalow that he
+was passing was shut up, yet furnished; the people had merely gone away,
+servants and all; he saw it at a glance from the newspapers plastering
+the windows which caught the sun. In an instant he was in the garden,
+and in another he had forced a side gate leading by an alley to backyard
+and kitchen door; but for many minutes he went no further than this
+gate, behind which he cowered, prepared with excuses in case he had
+already been observed.
+
+It was in this interval that Stingaree recalled the season with a
+thrill; for it was Christmas week, and without a doubt the house would
+be empty till the New Year. Here was one port for the storm that must
+follow his escape. And a very pleasant port he found it on entering,
+after due precautionary delay.
+
+Clearly the abode of young married people, the bungalow was fitted and
+furnished with a taste which appealed almost painfully to Stingaree; the
+drawing-room was draped in sheets, but the walls carried a few good
+engravings, some of which he remembered with a stab. It was the
+dressing-room, however, that he wanted, and the dressing-room made him
+rub his hands. The dainty establishment had no more luxurious corner,
+what with the fitted bath, circular shaving-glass, packed trouser-press,
+a row of boots on trees, and a fine old wardrobe full of hanging coats.
+Stingaree began by selecting his suit; and it may have been his vanity,
+or a strange longing to look for once what he once had been, but he
+could not resist the young man's excellent evening clothes.
+
+"This fellow comes from Home," said he. "And they are spending their
+Christmas pretty far back, or he would have taken these with him."
+
+He had wallowed in the highly enamelled bath, and was looking for a
+towel when he saw his head in the shaving-glass; he was dry enough
+before he could think of anything else. There was a dilemma, obvious yet
+unforeseen. That shaven head! Purple and fine linen could not disguise
+the convict's crop; a wig was the only hope; but to wear a wig one must
+first try it on--and let the perruquier call the police. The knot was
+Gordian. And yet, desperately as Stingaree sought unravelment, he was at
+the same time subconsciously as deep in a study of a face so unfamiliar
+that at first he had scarcely known it for his own. It was far leaner
+than of old; it was no longer richly tanned; and the mouth called
+louder than ever for a mustache. The hair, what there was of it, seemed
+iron-gray. It had certainly receded at the temples. What a pity, while
+it was about it----
+
+Stingaree clapped his hands; his hunt for the razor was feverish,
+tremulous. Such a young man must have many razors; he had, he had--here
+they were. Oh, young man blessed among young men!
+
+It was quite dark when a gentleman in evening clothes, light overcoat,
+and opera hat, sallied forth into the quiet road. Quiet as it was,
+however, a whistle blew as he trod the pavement, and his hour or two of
+liberty seemed at an end. His long term in prison had mixed Stingaree's
+ideas of the old country and the new; he had forgotten that it is the
+postmen who blow the whistles in Australia. Yet this postman stopped him
+on the spot.
+
+"Beg your pardon, sir, but if it's quite convenient may I ask you for
+the Christmas-box you was kind enough to promise me?"
+
+"I think you are mistaking me for someone else," said Stingaree.
+
+"Why, so I am, sir! I thought you came out of Mr. Brinton's house."
+
+"Sorry to disappoint you," said the convict. "If I only had change you
+should have some of it, in spite of your mistake; but, unfortunately, I
+have none."
+
+He had, however, a handsome pair of opera-glasses, which he converted
+into change (on the gratuitous plea that he had forgotten his purse) at
+the first pawnbroker's on the confines of the city. The pawnbroker
+talked Greek to him at once.
+
+"It's a pity you won't be able to see 'er, sir, as well as 'ear 'er,"
+said he.
+
+"Perhaps they have them on hire in the theatre," replied Stingaree at a
+venture. The pawnbroker's face instantly advised him that his
+observation was wide of the obscure mark.
+
+"The theatre! You won't 'ear 'er at any theatre in Sydney, nor yet in
+the Southern 'Emisphere. Town 'Alls is the only lay for 'Ilda Bouverie
+out 'ere!"
+
+At first the name conveyed nothing to Stingaree. Yet it was not wholly
+unfamiliar.
+
+"Of course," said he. "The Town Hall I meant."
+
+The pawnbroker leered as he put down a sovereign and a shilling.
+
+"What a season she's 'aving, sir!"
+
+"Ah! What a season!"
+
+And Stingaree wagged his opera-hatted head.
+
+"'Undreds of pounds' worth of flowers flung on to every platform, and
+not a dry eye in the place!"
+
+"I know," said the feeling Stingaree.
+
+"It's wonderful to think of this 'ere Colony prodoocin' the world's best
+primer donner!"
+
+"It is, indeed."
+
+"When you think of 'er start."
+
+"That's true."
+
+The pawnbroker leant across his counter and leered more than ever in his
+customer's face.
+
+"They say she ain't no better than she ought to be!"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"It's right, too; but what can you expect of a primer donner whose
+fortune was made by a blood-thirsty bushranger like that there
+Stingaree?"
+
+"You little scurrilous wretch!" cried the bushranger, and flung out of
+the shop that second.
+
+It was a miracle. He remembered everything now. Then he had done the
+world a service as well as the woman! He gave thanks for the guinea in
+his pocket, and asked his way to the Town Hall. And as he marched down
+the middle of the lighted streets the first flock of newsboys came
+flying in his face.
+
+"_Escape of Stingaree! Escape of Stingaree! Cowardly Outrage on Famous
+Author! Escape of Stingaree!!_"
+
+The damp pink papers were in the hands of the overflow crowd outside
+the hall; his own name was already in every mouth, continually coupled
+with that of the world-renowned Hilda Bouverie. It did not deter the
+convict from elbowing his way through the mass that gloated over his
+deed exactly as they would have gloated over his destruction on the
+gallows. "I have my ticket; I have been detained," he told the police;
+and at the last line of defence he whispered, "A guinea for
+standing-room!" And the guinea got it.
+
+It was the interval between parts one and two. He thought of that other
+interval, when he had made such a different entry at the same juncture;
+the other concert-room would have gone some fifty times into this. All
+at once fell a hush, and then a rising thunder of applause, and some one
+requested Stingaree to remove his hat; he did so, and a cold creeping of
+the shaven flesh reminded him of his general position and of this
+particular peril. But no one took any notice of him or of his head. And
+it was not Hilda Bouverie this time; it was a pianiste in violent
+magenta and elaborate lace, whose performance also was loud and
+embroidered. Followed a beautiful young barytone whom Miss Bouverie had
+brought from London in her pocket for the tour. He sang three little
+songs very charmingly indeed; but there was no encore. The gods were
+burning for their own; perfunctory plaudits died to a dramatic pause.
+
+And then, and then, amid deafening salvos a dazzling vision appeared
+upon the platform, came forward with the carriage of a conscious queen,
+stood bowing and beaming in the gloss and glitter of fabric and of gem
+that were yet less radiant than herself. Stingaree stood inanimate
+between stamping feet and clapping hands. No; he would never have
+connected this magnificent woman with the simple bush girl in the
+unpretentious frocks that he recalled as clearly as her former self. He
+had looked for less finery, less physical development, less, indeed, of
+the grand operatic _tout-ensemble_. But acting ended with her smile, and
+much of the old innocent simplicity came back as the lips parted in
+song. And her song had not been spoilt by riches and adulation; her song
+had not sacrificed sweetness to artifice; there was even more than the
+old magic in her song.
+
+    "Is this a dream?
+      Then waking would be pain!
+    Oh! do not wake me;
+      Let me dream again."
+
+It was no new number even then; even Stingaree had often heard it, and
+heard great singers go the least degree flat upon the first "dream." He
+listened critically. Hilda Bouverie was not one of the delinquents. Her
+intonation was as perfect as that of the great violinists, her high
+notes had the rarefied quality of the E string finely touched. It was a
+flawless, if a purely popular, performance; and the musical heart of one
+listener in that crowded room was too full for mere applause. But he
+waited with patient curiosity for the encore, waited while courtesy
+after courtesy was given in vain. She had to yield; she yielded with a
+winning grace. And the first bars of the new song set one full heart
+beating, so that the earlier words were lost upon his brain.
+
+    "She ran before me in the meads;
+      And down this world-worn track
+    She leads me on; but while she leads
+      She never gazes back.
+
+    "And yet her voice is in my dreams,
+      To witch me more and more;
+    That wooing voice! Ah me, it seems
+      Less near me than of yore.
+
+    "Lightly I sped when hope was high,
+      And youth beguiled the chase;
+    I follow--follow still; but I
+      Shall never see her Face."
+
+So the song ended; and in the ultimate quiet the need of speech came
+over Stingaree.
+
+"'The Unrealized Ideal,'" he informed a neighbor.
+
+"Rather!" rejoined the man, treating the stale news as a mere remark.
+"We never let her off without that."
+
+"I suppose not," said Stingaree.
+
+"It's the song the bushranger forced her to sing at the back-block
+concert, and it made her fortune! Good old Stingaree! By the way, I
+heard somebody behind me say he had escaped. That can't be true?"
+
+"The newsboys were yelling it as I came along late."
+
+"Well," said Stingaree's neighbor, "if he has escaped, and I for one
+don't hope he hasn't, this is where he ought to be. Just the sort of
+thing he'd do, too. Good old sportsman, Stingaree!"
+
+It was an embarrassing compliment, eye to eye and foot to foot, wedged
+in a crowd. The bushranger did not fish for any more; neither did he
+wait to hear Hilda Bouverie sing again, though this cost him much. But
+he had one more word with his neighbor before he went.
+
+"You don't happen to know where she's staying, I suppose? I've met her
+once or twice, and I might call."
+
+The other smiled as on some suicidal moth.
+
+"There's only one place good enough for a star like her in Sydney."
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"Government House."
+
+
+II
+
+His Excellency of the moment was a young nobleman of sporting
+proclivities and your true sportsman's breadth of mind. He was immensely
+popular with all sects and sections but the aggressively puritanical and
+the narrowly austere. He graced the theatre with his constant presence,
+the Turf with his own horses. His entertainment was lavish, and in
+quality far above the gubernatorial average. Late life and soul of
+exalted circle, he was hide-bound by few of the conventional trammels
+that distinguished the older type of peer to which the Colonies had been
+accustomed. It was the obvious course for such a Governor and his
+kindred lady to insist upon making the great Miss Bouverie their guest
+for the period of her professional sojourn in the capital; and a
+semi-Bohemian supper at the Government House was but a characteristic
+_finale_ to her first great concert.
+
+The _prima donna_ sat on the Governor's right, and at the proper point
+his Excellency sang her praises in a charmingly informal speech, which
+delighted and amused the press men, actors and actresses whom he had
+collected for the occasion. Only the guest of honor looked a little
+weary and condescending; she had a sufficient experience of such
+entertainments in London, where the actors were all London actors, the
+authors and journalists men whose names one knew. Mere peers were no
+great treat either; in a word, Hilda Bouverie was not a little spoilt.
+She had lost the girl's glad outlook on the world, which some women keep
+until old age. There were stories about her which would have accounted
+for a deeper deterioration. Yet she was the Governor's guest, and her
+behavior not unworthy of the honor. On him at least she smiled, and her
+real smile, less expansive than the platform counterfeit, had still its
+genuine sweetness, its winning flashes; and, at its worst, it was more
+sad than bitter.
+
+To-night the woman was an exhausted artist--unnerved, unstrung, unfitted
+for the world, yet only showing it in a languid appreciation which her
+host and hostess were the first to understand. Indeed, it was the great
+lady who carried her off, bowing with her platform bow, and smiling that
+smile, before the banquet was at an end.
+
+A charming suite of rooms had been placed at the disposal of the _prima
+donna_; the boudoir was like a hot-house with the floral offerings of
+the evening, already tastefully arranged by madame's own Swiss maid. But
+the weary lady walked straight through to her bedroom, and sank with a
+sigh into the arm-chair before the glass.
+
+"Who brought this?" she asked, peevishly picking a twisted note from
+amid the golden furniture of her toilet-table.
+
+"I never saw it until this minute, madame!" the Swiss maid answered, in
+dismay. "It was not there ten minutes ago, I am sure, madame!"
+
+"Where have you been since?"
+
+"Down to the servants' hall, for one minute, madame."
+
+Miss Bouverie read the note, and was an animated being in three seconds.
+She looked in the glass, the flush became her, and even as she looked
+all horror died in her dark-blue eyes. Instead there came a glitter that
+warned the maid.
+
+"I am tired of you, Lea," cried madame. "You let people bring notes into
+my room, and you say you were only out of it a minute. Be good enough
+to leave me for the night. I can look after myself, for once!"
+
+The maid protested, wept, but was expelled, and a key turned between
+them; then Hilda Bouverie read her note again:--
+
+    "Escaped this afternoon. Came to your concert. Hiding in
+    boudoir. Give me five minutes, or raise alarm, which you
+    please.--STINGAREE."
+
+So ran his words in pencil on her own paper, and they were true; she had
+heard at supper of the escape. Once more she looked in the glass. And to
+her own eyes in these minutes she looked years younger--there was a new
+sensation left in life!
+
+A touch to her hair, a glance in the pier-glass, and all for a notorious
+convict broken prison! So into the boudoir with her grandest air; but
+again she locked the door behind her, and, sweeping round, beheld a bald
+man bowing to her in immaculate evening clothes.
+
+"Are you the writer of a note found on my dressing-table?" she demanded,
+every syllable off the ice.
+
+"I am."
+
+"Then who are you, besides being an impudent forger?"
+
+"You name the one crime I never committed," said he. "I am Stingaree."
+
+And they gazed into each other's eyes; but not yet were hers to be
+believed.
+
+"He only escaped this afternoon!"
+
+"I am he."
+
+"With a bald head?"
+
+"Thanks to a razor."
+
+"And in those clothes?"
+
+"I found them where I found the razor. Look; they don't fit me as well
+as they might."
+
+And he drew nearer, flinging out an abbreviated sleeve; but she looked
+all the harder in his face.
+
+"Yes. I begin to remember your face; but it has changed."
+
+"It has gazed on prison walls for many years."
+
+"I heard . . . I was grieved . . . but it was bound to come."
+
+"It may come again. I care very little, after this!"
+
+And his dark eyes shone, his deep voice vibrated; then he glanced over a
+shrugged shoulder toward the outer door, and Hilda darted as if to turn
+that key too, but there was none to turn.
+
+"It ought to happen at once," she said, "and through me."
+
+"But it will not."
+
+His assurance annoyed her; she preferred his homage.
+
+"I know what you mean," she cried. "You did me a service years ago. I am
+not to forget it!"
+
+"It is not I who have kept it before your mind."
+
+"Perhaps not; but that's why you come to me to-night."
+
+Stingaree looked upon the spirited, spoilt beauty in her satin and
+diamonds and pearls; villain as he was, he held himself at her mercy,
+but he was not going to kneel to her for that. He saw a woman who had
+heard the truth from very few men, a nature grown in mastery as his own
+had inevitably shrunk: it was worth being at large to pit the old Adam
+still remaining to him against the old Eve in this petted darling of the
+world. But false protestations were no counters in his game.
+
+"Miss Bouverie," said Stingaree, "you may well suppose that I have borne
+you in mind all these years. As a matter of honest fact, when I first
+heard your name this evening, I was slow to connect it with any human
+being. You look angry. I intend no insult. If you have not forgotten the
+life I was leading before, you would very readily understand that I have
+never heard your name from those days to this. That is my misfortune, if
+also my own fault. It should suffice that, when I did remember, I came
+at my peril to hear you sing, and that before I dreamt of coming an inch
+further. But I heard them say, both in the hall and outside, that you
+owed your start to me; now one thinks of it, it must have been a rather
+striking advertisement; and I reflected that not another soul in Sydney
+can possibly owe me anything at all. So I came straight to you, without
+thinking twice about it. Criminal as I have been, and am, my one thought
+was and is that I deserve some little consideration at your hands."
+
+"You mean money?"
+
+"I have not a penny. It would make all the difference to me. And I give
+you my word, if that is any satisfaction to you, I would be an honest
+man from this time forth!"
+
+"You actually ask me to assist a criminal and escaped convict--me, Hilda
+Bouverie, at my own absolute risk!"
+
+"I took a risk for you nine years ago, Miss Bouverie; it was all I did
+take," said Stingaree, "at the concert that made your name."
+
+"And you rub it in," she told him. "You rub it in!"
+
+"I am running for my life!" he exclaimed, in answer. "It wouldn't have
+been necessary--that would have been enough for the Miss Bouverie I
+knew then. But you are different; you are another being, you are a woman
+of the world; your heart, your heart is dead and gone!"
+
+He cut her to it, none the less; he could not have inflicted a deeper
+wound. The blood leapt to her face and neck; she cried out at the
+insult, the indignity, the outrage of it all; and crying she darted to
+the door.
+
+It was locked.
+
+She turned on Stingaree.
+
+"You dared to lock the door--you dared! Give me the key this instant."
+
+"I refuse."
+
+"Very well! You have heard my voice; you shall hear it again!"
+
+Her pale lips made the perfect round, her grand teeth gleamed in the
+electric light.
+
+He arrested her, not with violence, but a shrug.
+
+"I shall jump out of the window and break my neck. They don't take me
+twice--alive."
+
+She glared at him in anger and contempt. He meant it. Then let him do
+it. Her eyes told him all that; but as they flashed, stabbing him, their
+expression altered, and in a trice her ear was to the keyhole.
+
+"Something has happened," she whispered, turning a scared face up to
+him. "I hear your name. They have traced you here. They are coming! Oh!
+what are we to do?"
+
+He strode over to the door.
+
+"If you fear a scandal I can give myself up this moment and explain
+all."
+
+He spoke eagerly. The thought was sudden. She rose up, looking in his
+eyes.
+
+"No, you shall not," she said. Her hand flew out behind her, and in two
+seconds the brilliant room had click-clicked into a velvet darkness.
+
+"Stand like a mouse," she whispered, and he heard her reach the inner
+door, where she stood like another.
+
+Steps and voices came along the landing at a quick crescendo.
+
+"Miss Bouverie! Miss Bouverie! Miss Bouverie!"
+
+It was his Excellency's own gay voice. And it continued until with much
+noise Miss Bouverie flung her bedroom door wide open, put on the light
+within, ran across the boudoir, put on the boudoir light, and stooped to
+parley through the keyhole.
+
+"The bushranger Stingaree has been traced to Government House."
+
+"Good heavens!"
+
+"One of your windows was seen open."
+
+"He had not come in through it."
+
+"Then you were heard raising your voice."
+
+"That was to my maid. This is all through her. I don't know how to tell
+you, but she leaves me in the morning. Yes, yes, there was a man, but it
+was not Stingaree. I saw him myself through coming up early, but I let
+him go as he had come, to save a fuss."
+
+"Through the window?"
+
+"I am so ashamed!"
+
+"Not a bit, Miss Bouverie. I am ashamed of bothering you. Confound the
+police!"
+
+When the voices and steps had died away, Hilda Bouverie turned to
+Stingaree, her whole face shining, her deep blue eyes alight.
+
+"There!" said she. "Could you have done that better yourself?"
+
+"Not half so well."
+
+"And you thought I could forget!"
+
+"I thought nothing. I only came to you in my scrape."
+
+After years of imprisonment he could speak of this life-and-death hazard
+as a scrape! She looked at him with admiring eyes; her personal triumph
+had put an end to her indignation.
+
+"My poor Lea! I wonder how much she has heard? I shall have to tell her
+nearly all; she can wait for me at Melbourne or Adelaide, and I can
+pick her up on my voyage home. It will be no joke without her until
+then. I give her up for your sake!"
+
+Stingaree hung his head. He was a changed man.
+
+"And I," he said grimly--not pathetically--"and I am a convict who
+escaped by violence this afternoon."
+
+Hilda smiled.
+
+"I met Mr. Brady the other day," she said, "and I heard of him to-night.
+He is not going to die!"
+
+He stared at her unscrupulous radiance.
+
+"Do you wonder at me?" she said. "Did you never hear that musical people
+had no morals?"
+
+And her smile bewitched him more and more.
+
+"It explains us both!" declared Miss Bouverie. "But do you know what I
+have kept all these years?" she went on. "Do you know what has been my
+mascot, what I have had about me whenever I have sung in public, since
+and including that time at Yallarook? Can't you guess?"
+
+He could not. She turned her back, he heard some gussets give, and the
+next moment she was holding a strange trophy in both hands.
+
+It was a tiny silken bandolier, containing six revolver cartridges, with
+bullet and cap intact.
+
+"Can't you guess now?" she gloried.
+
+"No. I never missed them; they are not like any I ever had."
+
+"Don't you remember the man who chased you out and misfired at you six
+times? He was the overseer on the station; his name may come back to me,
+but his face I shall never forget. He had a revolver in his pocket, but
+he dared not lower a hand. I took it out of his pocket and was to hand
+it up to him when I got the chance. Until then I was to keep it under my
+shawl. That was when I managed to unload every chamber. These are the
+cartridges I took out, and they have been my mascot ever since."
+
+She looked years younger than she had seemed even singing in the Town
+Hall; but the lines deepened on the bushranger's face, and he stepped
+back from her a pace.
+
+"So you saved my life," he said. "You had saved my life all the time.
+And yet I came to ask you to do as much for me as I had done for you!"
+
+He turned away; his hands were clenched behind his back.
+
+"I will do more," she cried, "if more could be done by one person for
+another. Here are jewels." She stripped her neck of its rope of pearls.
+"And here are notes." She dived into a bureau and thrust a handful upon
+him. "With these alone you should be able to get to England or America;
+and if you want more when you get there, write to Hilda Bouverie! As
+long as she has any, there will be some for you!"
+
+Tears filled her eyes. The simplicity of her girlhood had come back to
+the seasoned woman of the world, at once spoiled and satiated with
+success. This was the other side of the artistic temperament which had
+enslaved her soul. She would swing from one extreme of wounded and
+vindictive vanity to this length of lawless nobility; now she could
+think of none but self, and now not of herself at all. Stingaree glanced
+toward the window.
+
+"I can't go yet, I'm afraid."
+
+"You sha'n't! Why should you?"
+
+"But I still fear they may not be satisfied downstairs. I am ashamed to
+ask it--but will you do one little thing more for me?"
+
+"Name it!"
+
+"It is only to make assurance doubly sure. Go downstairs and let them
+see you; tell them more details, if you like. Go down as you are, and
+say that without your maid you could not find anything else to put on. I
+promise not to vanish with everything in your absence."
+
+"You do promise?"
+
+"On my--liberty!"
+
+She looked in his face with a very wistful sweetness.
+
+"If they were to find me out," she said, "I wonder how many years they
+would give _me_? I neither know nor care; it would be worth a few. I
+thought I had lived since I saw you last . . . but this is the best fun
+I have ever had . . . since Yallarook!"
+
+She stood for a moment before opening the door that he unlocked for her,
+stood before him in all her flushed and brilliant radiance, and blew a
+kiss to him before she went.
+
+The Governor was easily found. He was grieved at her troubling to
+descend at such an hour, and did not detain her five minutes in all. He
+thought she was in a fever, but that the fever became her beyond belief.
+Reassured on every point, Miss Bouverie was back in her room but a very
+few minutes after she had left it.
+
+It was empty. She searched all over, first behind the curtains, then
+between the pedestals of the bureau, but Stingaree was nowhere in the
+room, and the bedroom door was still locked. It was a second look behind
+the curtains that revealed an open window and the scratch of a boot upon
+the white enamel. It was no breakneck drop into the shrubs.
+
+So he had gone without a word, but also without breaking his word; for,
+with wet eyes and a white face, between anger and admiration, Hilda
+Bouverie had already discovered her bundle of notes and her rope of
+pearls.
+
+
+There are no more tales of Stingaree; tongue never answered to the name
+again, nor was face ever recognized as his. He may have died that night;
+it is not very likely, since the young married man in the well-appointed
+bungalow, which had been broken into earlier in the day, missed a suit
+of clothes indeed, but not his evening clothes, which were found hung up
+neatly where he had left them; and it is regrettable to add that his
+opera-glasses were not the only article of a marketable character which
+could never be found on his return. There is none the less reason to
+believe that this was the last professional incident in one of the most
+incredible criminal careers of which there is any record in Australia.
+Whether he be dead or alive, back in the old country or still in the
+new, or, what is less likely, in prison under some other name, the
+gratifying fact remains that neither in Australia nor elsewhere has
+there been a second series of crimes bearing the stamp of Stingaree.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The following typographical errors present in the original
+edition have been corrected. No other changes have been made
+to the text.
+
+   In Chapter I, a quotation mark was removed after "could that
+   be possible?", "You had beter play this yourself" was changed
+   to "You had better play this yourself", and a quotation mark
+   was added after "And hangs below her waist".
+
+   In Chapter III, "You might, prehaps, have preferred" has been
+   changed to "You might, perhaps, have preferred".
+
+   In Chapter V, a quotation mark was added after "I was just
+   thinking the same thing", and "succeded at the most
+   humiliating moment" was changed to "succeeded at the most
+   humiliating moment".
+
+   In Chapter VI, a quotation mark was added before "He may have
+   wished to clear his character."
+
+   In Chapter VII, "Stingareee was perfectly right" was changed
+   to "Stingaree was perfectly right".
+
+   In Chapter VIII, a quotation mark was added after "it was
+   just about here it happened", and "seemed the samest policy"
+   was changed to "seemed the safest policy".
+
+   In Chapter IX, "allowed to proceeed on a pressing journey"
+   was changed to "allowed to proceed on a pressing journey",
+   "when the spirit had beeen wine" was changed to "when the
+   spirit had been wine", and "The Bishop seeemed nettled and
+   annoyed" was changed to "The Bishop seemed nettled and
+   annoyed".
+
+   In Chapter X, "whenever I have sung in jublic" has been
+   changed to "whenever I have sung in public".
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STINGAREE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 26526-8.txt or 26526-8.zip *******
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Stingaree, by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung,
+Illustrated by George W. Lambert</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Stingaree</p>
+<p>Author: E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung</p>
+<p>Release Date: September 4, 2008  [eBook #26526]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STINGAREE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Steven desJardins<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;"><a name="IMAGE_1" id="IMAGE_1"></a>
+<img src="images/image-1.jpg" width="325" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="caption">&quot;My name&#39;s Stingaree!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>STINGAREE</h1>
+
+<h2><span style="font-size: 75%;">BY</span><br />
+E. W. HORNUNG</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ILLUSTRATED BY<br />
+GEORGE W. LAMBERT</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br />
+NEW YORK&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;1910</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1905, by</span><br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 166px;">
+<img src="images/logo.png" width="166" height="180" alt="publisher's logo" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 90%; text-align: right;">Page</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">I.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">A Voice in the Wilderness</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">II.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">The Black Hole of Glenranald</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">32</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">III.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">"To the Vile Dust"</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">70</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">IV.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">A Bushranger at Bay</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">98</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">V.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">The Taking of Stingaree</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">121</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">VI.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">The Honor of the Road</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">144</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">VII.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">The Purification of Mulfera</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">168</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">VIII.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">A Duel in the Desert</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">190</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">IX.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">The Villain-Worshipper</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">215</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chapnum">X.</td>
+<td class="chaptitle">The Moth and the Star</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">252</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr>
+<td class="chaptitle">"My name's Stingaree!"</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#IMAGE_1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chaptitle">"Any message, young fellow?"</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#IMAGE_2">66</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chaptitle">Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up" without a word</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#IMAGE_3">98</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chaptitle">The gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#IMAGE_4">166</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chaptitle">Stingaree toppled out of the saddle</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#IMAGE_5">198</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chaptitle">The mare spun round, bucking as she spun</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#IMAGE_6">238</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="chaptitle">Stingaree knocked in vain</td>
+<td class="chappage"><a href="#IMAGE_7">246</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<h1 class="chapter"><a name="Stingaree" id="Stingaree"></a>Stingaree</h1>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>A Voice in the Wilderness</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"La parlate d'amor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O cari fior,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Recate i miei sospiri,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Narrate i miei matiri,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ditele o cari fior&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Miss Bouverie ceased on the high note, as abruptly as string that snaps
+beneath the bow, and revolved with the music-stool, to catch but her
+echoes in the empty room. None had entered behind her back; there was
+neither sound nor shadow in the deep veranda through the open door. But
+for the startled girl at the open piano, Mrs. Clarkson's sanctum was
+precisely as Mrs. Clarkson had left it an hour before; her own
+photograph, in as many modes, beamed from the usual number of ornamental
+frames; there was nothing whatever to confirm a wild suspicion of the
+living lady's untimely return. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> yet either guilty consciences, or an
+ear as sensitive as it was true, had heard an unmistakable step outside.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda Bouverie lived to look magnificent when she sang, her fine frame
+drawn up to its last inch, her throat a pillar of pale coral, her mouth
+the perfect round, her teeth a noble relic of barbarism; but sweeter she
+never was than in these days, or at this moment of them, as she sat with
+lips just parted and teeth just showing, in a simple summer frock of her
+own unaided making. Her eyes, of the one deep Tasmanian blue, were still
+open very wide, but no longer with the same apprehension; for a step
+there was, but a step that jingled; nor did they recognize the
+silhouette in top-boots which at length stood bowing on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Please finish it!" prayed a voice that Miss Bouverie liked in her turn;
+but it was too much at ease for one entirely strange to her, and she
+rose with little embarrassment and no hesitation at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, no! I thought I had the station to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"So you had&mdash;I have not seen a soul."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bouverie instantly perceived that honors were due from her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry! You've come to see Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson?" she cried.
+"Mrs. Clarkson has just left for Melbourne with her maid, and Mr.
+Clarkson has gone mustering with all his men. But the Indian cook is
+about somewhere. I'll find him, and he shall make some tea."</p>
+
+<p>The visitor planted himself with much gallantry in the doorway; he was a
+man still young, with a single eye-glass and a martial mustache, which
+combined to give distinction to a somewhat swarthy countenance. At the
+moment he had also an engaging smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't come to see either Mr. or Mrs. Clarkson," said he; "in fact, I
+never heard their name before. I was passing the station, and I simply
+came to see who it was who could sing like that&mdash;to believe my own
+ears!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bouverie was thrilled. The stranger spoke with an authority that
+she divined, a sincerity which she instinctively took on trust. Her
+breath came quickly; she was a little nervous now.</p>
+
+<p>"If you won't sing to my face," he went on, "I must go back to where I
+hung up my horse, and pray that you will at least send me on my way
+rejoicing. You will do that in any case. I didn't know there was such a
+voice in these parts. You sing a good deal, of course?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I haven't sung for months."</p>
+
+<p>He was now in the room; there was no longer any necessity to bar the
+doorway, and the light coming through fell full on his amazement. The
+girl stood before him with a calm face, more wistful than ironic, yet
+with hints of humor in the dark blue eyes. Her companion put up the
+eye-glass which he had dropped at her reply.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask what you are doing in these wilds?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. I am Mrs. Clarkson's companion."</p>
+
+<p>"And you sing, for the first time in months, the minute her back is
+turned: has the lady no soul for music?"</p>
+
+<p>"You had better ask the lady."</p>
+
+<p>And her visible humor reached the corners of Miss Bouverie's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"She sings herself, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"And I am here to play her accompaniments!"</p>
+
+<p>The eye-glass focussed the great, smiling girl.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Can</i> she sing?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has a voice."</p>
+
+<p>"But have you never let her hear yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once. I had not been here long enough to know better. And I made my
+usual mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had the station to myself."</p>
+
+<p>The questioner bowed to his rebuke. "Well?" he persisted none the less.</p>
+
+<p>"I was told exactly what my voice was like, and fit for."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman turned on his heel, as though her appreciation of the
+humor of her position were an annoyance to him. His movement brought him
+face to face with a photographic galaxy of ladies in varying styles of
+evening dress, with an equal variety in coiffures, but a certain family
+likeness running through the series.</p>
+
+<p>"Are any of these Mrs. Clarkson?"</p>
+
+<p>"All of them."</p>
+
+<p>He muttered something in his mustache. "And what's this?" he asked of a
+sudden.</p>
+
+<p>The young man (for as such Miss Bouverie was beginning to regard him)
+was standing under the flaming bill of a grand concert to be given in
+the township of Yallarook for the benefit of local charities.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's Mrs. Clarkson's concert," he was informed. "She has been
+getting it up, and that's why she's had to go to Melbourne&mdash;about her
+dress, you know."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled sardonically through mustache and monocle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Her charity begins near home!"</p>
+
+<p>"It need not necessarily end there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet she sings five times herself."</p>
+
+<p>"True&mdash;without the encores."</p>
+
+<p>"And you don't sing at all."</p>
+
+<p>"But I accompany."</p>
+
+<p>"A bitter irony! But, I say, what's this? 'Under the distinguished
+patronage of Sir Julian Crum, Mus. Doc., D.C.L.' Who may he be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Director of the Royal College of Music, in the old country," the girl
+answered with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Royal College of Music? That's something new, since my time," said the
+visitor, sighing also. "But what's a man like that doing out here?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has a brother a squatter, the next station but one. Sir Julian's
+spending the English winter with him on account of his health."</p>
+
+<p>"So you've seen something of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we had."</p>
+
+<p>"But Mrs. Clarkson has?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I see!" and an enlightened gleam shot through the eye-glass. "So this
+is her way of getting to know a poor overworked wreck who came out to
+patch his lungs in peace and quiet! And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> she's going to sing him one of
+his own songs; she's gone to Melbourne to dress the part; and you're not
+going to sing anything at all!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bouverie refrained alike from comment and confirmation; but her
+silence was the less creditable in that her companion was now communing
+chiefly with himself. She felt, indeed, that she had already been guilty
+of a certain disloyalty to one to whom she owed some manner of
+allegiance; but that was the extent of Miss Bouverie's indiscretion in
+her own eyes. It caused her no qualms to entertain an anonymous
+gentleman whom she had never seen before. A colder course had commended
+itself to the young lady fresh from London; but to a Colonial girl, on a
+station where special provision was made for the entertaining of strange
+travellers, the situation was simply conventional. It might have been
+less onerous with host or hostess on the spot; but then the visitor
+would not have heard her sing, and he seemed to know what singing was.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bouverie watched him as he leant over the piano, looking through
+the songs which she had dared once more to bring forth from her room.
+She might well have taken a romantic interest in the dark and dapper
+man, with the military eye-glass and mustache, the spruce duck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> jacket
+and the spurred top-boots. It was her first meeting with such a type in
+the back-blocks of New South Wales. The gallant ease, the natural
+gayety, the charming manners that charmed no less for a clear trace of
+mannerism, were a peculiar refreshment after society racier of Riverina
+soil. Yet it was none of these things which attracted this woman to this
+man; for the susceptible girl was dead in her for the time being; but
+the desperate artist was alive again after many weeks, was panting for
+fresh life, was catching at a straw. He had heard her sing. It had
+brought him galloping off the track. He praised her voice; and he
+knew&mdash;he knew what singing was.</p>
+
+<p>Who could he be? Not .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. could that be possible?</p>
+
+<p>"Sing me this," he said, suddenly, and, seating himself at the piano,
+played the opening bars of a vocal adaptation of Handel's Largo with a
+just, though unpractised, touch.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have afforded a finer hearing of the quality and the
+compass of her voice, and she knew of old how well it suited her; yet at
+the outset, from the sheer excitement of her suspicion, Hilda Bouverie
+was shaky to the point of a pronounced tremolo. It wore off with the
+lengthening cadences, and in a minute the little building<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> was bursting
+with her voice, while the pianist swayed and bent upon his stool with
+the exuberant sympathy of a brother in art. And when the last rich note
+had died away he wheeled about, and so sat silent for many moments,
+looking curiously on her flushed face and panting bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't place your voice," he said, at last. "It's both voices&mdash;the
+most wonderful compass in the world&mdash;and the world will tell you so,
+when you go back to it, as go back you must and shall. May I ask the
+name of your master?"</p>
+
+<p>"My own name&mdash;Bouverie. It was my father. He is dead."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes glistened.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not go to another?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had no money. Besides, he had lived for what you say; when he died
+with his dream still a dream, I said I would do the same, and I came up
+here."</p>
+
+<p>She had turned away. A less tactful interlocutor had sought plainer
+repudiation of the rash resolve; this one rose and buried himself in
+more songs.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard you in Grand Opera, and in something really grand," he
+said. "Now I want a song, the simpler the better."</p>
+
+<p>Behind his back a daring light came into the moist eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There is one of Mrs. Clarkson's," she said. "She would never forgive me
+for singing it, but I have heard it from her so often, I know so well
+how it ought to go."</p>
+
+<p>And, fetching the song from a cabinet, she thrust it boldly under his
+nose. It was called "The Unrealized Ideal," and was a setting of some
+words by a real poet then living, whose name caused this reader to
+murmur, "London Lyrics!" The composer was Sir Julian Crum. But his name
+was read without a word, or a movement of the strong shoulders and the
+tanned neck on which Miss Bouverie's eyes were fixed.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better play this yourself," said he, after peering at the music
+through his glass. "It is rather too many for me."</p>
+
+<p>And, strangely crestfallen, Miss Bouverie took his place.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My only love is always near,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In country or in town<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see her twinkling feet, I hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The whisper of her gown.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She foots it, ever fair and young,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her locks are tied in haste,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one is o'er her shoulder flung<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And hangs below her waist."<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>For that was the immortal trifle. How much of its immortality it will
+owe to the setting of Sir Julian Crum is a matter of opinion, but here
+is an anonymous view.</p>
+
+<p>"I like the words, Miss Bouverie, but the setting doesn't take me. It
+might with repetition. It seems lacking in go and simplicity;
+technically, I should say, a gem. But there can be no two opinions of
+your singing of such a song; that's the sort of arrow to go straight to
+the heart of the public&mdash;a world-wide public&mdash;and if I am the first to
+say it to you, I hope you will one day remember it in my favor.
+Meanwhile it is for me to thank you&mdash;from my heart&mdash;and to say good-by!"</p>
+
+<p>He was holding out a sunburnt hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Must you go?" she asked, withholding her own in frank disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, yes; my man is waiting for me with both horses in the
+scrub. But before I go I want to ask a great favor of you. It is&mdash;not to
+tell a soul I have been here."</p>
+
+<p>For a singer and a woman of temperament, Hilda Bouverie had a
+wonderfully level head. She inquired his reason in no promising tone.</p>
+
+<p>"You will see at Mrs. Clarkson's concert."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda started.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are coming to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without fail&mdash;to hear Mrs. Clarkson sing five songs&mdash;your song among
+them!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it's hers; it has been the other way about."</p>
+
+<p>The gay smile broadened on the swarthy face; a very bright eye twinkled
+through the monocle into those of Miss Bouverie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, will you promise to say nothing about me? I have a reason which
+you will be the first to appreciate in due season."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda hesitated, reasoned with herself, and finally gave her word. Their
+hands were joined an instant, as he thanked her with gallant smile and
+bow. Then he was gone. And as his spurs ceased jingling on the veranda
+outside, Hilda Bouverie glanced again at the song on the piano and
+clapped her hands with unreasonable pride.</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe that I was right after all!" said she.</p>
+
+
+<h3 class="section">II</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Clarkson and his young men sat at meat that evening with a Miss
+Bouverie hard to recognize as the apparently austere spinster who had
+hitherto been something of a skeleton at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> their board. Coldly handsome
+at her worst, a single day had brought her forth a radiant beauty
+wreathed in human smiles. Her clear skin had a tinge which at once
+suggested and dismissed the thought of rouge; but beyond all doubt she
+had done her hair with less reserve; and it was coppery hair of a
+volatile sort, that sprang into natural curls at the first relaxation of
+an undue discipline. Mr. Clarkson wondered whether his wife's departure
+had aught to do with the striking change in her companion; the two young
+men rested mutually assured that it had.</p>
+
+<p>"The old girl keeps too close an eye on her," said little Mr. Hack, who
+kept the books and hailed from Middlesex. "Get her to yourself, Ted, and
+she's as larky as they're made."</p>
+
+<p>Ted Radford, the station overseer, was a personage not to be dismissed
+in a relative clause. He was a typical back-blocker, dry and wiry,
+nasally cocksure, insolently cool, a fearless hand with horse, man, or
+woman. He was a good friend to Hack when there was no third person of
+his own kidney to appreciate the overseer's conception of friendly
+chaff. They were by themselves now, yet the last speech drew from
+Radford a sufficiently sardonic grin.</p>
+
+<p>"You see if she is, old man," said he, "and I'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> stand by to collect
+your remains. Not but what she hasn't come off the ice, and looks like
+thoring if you take her the right way."</p>
+
+<p>Ted Radford was a confirmed believer in the rightness of his own way
+with all mankind; his admirable confidence had not been shaken by a long
+succession of snubs in the quarter under discussion. As for Miss
+Bouverie, it was her practice to play off one young man against the
+other by discouraging each in his turn. But this evening she was a
+different being. She had a vague yet absolute conviction that her
+fortune was made. She could have sung all her songs to the twain, but
+for the reflection that Mr. Clarkson himself would hear them too, and
+report the matter to his wife on her return.</p>
+
+<p>And the next night the male trio were strangely absorbed in some station
+happening which did not arouse Miss Bouverie's curiosity in the least.
+They were excited and yet constrained at dinner, and drew their chairs
+close together on the veranda afterward. The young lady caught at least
+one word of which she did not know the meaning. She had the tact to keep
+out of earshot after that. Nor was she very much more interested when
+she met the two young men with revolvers in their hands the following
+day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Going to fight a duel?" she inquired, smilingly, for her heart was
+still singing Grand Opera and Oratorio by turns.</p>
+
+<p>"More or less," returned the overseer, without his usual pleasantry.
+"We're going to have a match at a target behind the pines."</p>
+
+<p>The London bookkeeper looked an anxious clerk: the girl was glad when
+she saw the pair alive at dinner. There seemed to be little doing.
+Though the summer was already tropical, there had been plenteous rains,
+and Mr. Clarkson observed in Hilda's hearing that the recent day's
+mustering would be the last for some little time. She was thrown much in
+his company, and she liked Mr. Clarkson when Mrs. Clarkson was not
+there. In his wife's hands the good man was wax; now a mere echo, now a
+veritable claque in himself, he pandered indefatigably to the
+multitudinous vanities of a ludicrously vain woman. But it was soon Miss
+Bouverie's experience that he could, when he dared, be attentively
+considerate of lesser ladies. And in many ways these were much the
+happiest days that she had spent on the station.</p>
+
+<p>They were, however, days of a consuming excitement for the caged and
+gagged nightingale that Hilda Bouverie now conceived herself to be. She
+sang not another note aloud. Mr. Clarkson<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> lived in slippers on the
+veranda, which Hilda now associated chiefly with a stranger's spurs: for
+of the booted and spurred stranger she was thinking incessantly, though
+still without the emotions of an ordinarily romantic temperament. Would
+he be at the concert, or would he not? Would he turn out to be what she
+firmly imagined him, or was she to find out her mistake? Might he not in
+any case have said or written some pregnant word for her? Was it beyond
+the bounds of possibility that she should be asked to sing after all?</p>
+
+<p>The last question was the only one to be answered before the time,
+unless a point-blank inquiry of Mrs. Clarkson be included in the
+category. The lady had returned with a gorgeous gown, only less full of
+her experiences than of the crowning triumph yet to come. She had bought
+every song of Sir Julian's to be had in Melbourne, and his name was
+always on her lips. In a reckless moment Miss Bouverie had inquired his
+age.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't know," said Mrs. Clarkson. "What <i>can</i> it matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only wondered whether he was a youngish man or not."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Clarkson had already raised her eye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>brows; at this answer they
+disappeared behind a <i>toupet</i> dating from her late descent upon the
+Victorian capital.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Miss Bouverie!" she said, and nothing more in words. But the
+tone was intolerable, and its accompanying sneer a refinement in
+vulgarity, which only the really refined would have resented as it
+deserved. Miss Bouverie got up and left the room without a word. But her
+flaming face left a misleading tale behind.</p>
+
+<p>She was not introduced to Sir Julian; but that was not her prime
+disappointment when the great night came. All desire for an
+introduction, all interest in the concert, died a sudden death in Hilda
+Bouverie at her first glimpse of the gentleman who was duly presented to
+Mrs. Clarkson as Sir Julian Crum. He was more than middle-aged; he wore
+a gray beard, and the air of a somewhat supercilious martyr; his near
+sight was obviated by double lenses in gold rims. Hilda could have wept
+before the world. For nearly three weeks she had been bowing in
+imagination to a very different Sir Julian, bowing as though she had
+never beheld him in her life before; and yet in three minutes she saw
+how little real reason she had ever had for the illogical conclusion to
+which she had jumped. She searched for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> sprightly figure she had
+worn in her mind's eye; his presence under any other name would still
+have been welcome enough now. But he was not there at all. In the patchy
+glare of the kerosene lamps, against the bunting which lined the
+corrugated walls of Gulland's new iron store, among flower and weed of
+township and of station, did Miss Bouverie seek in vain for a single
+eye-glass and a military mustache.</p>
+
+<p>The concert began. Miss Bouverie opened it herself with the inevitably
+thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into
+the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs.
+Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a
+dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted
+her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the
+first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood
+to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his
+wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and
+acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with
+the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous
+stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied,
+extracted solace from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> depressed attitude in which Sir Julian Crum
+sat looking down his nose.</p>
+
+<p>The township boasted its score of dwellings, but few of them showed a
+light that evening; not less than ninety of the round hundred of
+inhabitants clapped their hands and mopped their foreheads in Gulland's
+new store. It might have been run up for its present purpose. There was
+an entrance at one end for the performers, and that on the platform
+level, since the ground sloped a little; at the other end was the only
+other entrance, by which the audience were admitted. A makeshift lobby
+had been arranged behind the platform, and thither Mrs. Clarkson retired
+to await her earlier encores; when the compliment became a recognized
+matter of course, she abandoned the mere form of a momentary retirement,
+and stood patiently smiling in the satin ball-dress brought from
+Melbourne for the nonce. And for the brief intervals between her efforts
+she descended to a throne specially reserved on the great musician's
+right.</p>
+
+<p>The other performers did not dim her brilliance by reason of their own.
+There was her own dear husband, whose serious recitation was the one
+entertaining number. There was a Rabbit Inspector who rapped out "The
+Scout" in a defiant barytone, and a publican whose somewhat uneven tenor
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> shaken to its depths by the simple pathos of "When Sparrows Build."
+Mrs. Clarkson could afford to encourage such tyros with marked applause.
+The only danger was that Sir Julian might think she really admired their
+untutored attempts.</p>
+
+<p>"One must do it," she therefore took occasion to explain as she clapped.
+"They are so nervous. The hard thing is to put oneself in their place;
+it's nothing to me to sing a song, Sir Julian."</p>
+
+<p>"So I can see, madam," said he.</p>
+
+<p>At the extreme end of the same row Miss Bouverie passed her unemployed
+moments between Mr. Radford and the wall, and was not easy until she had
+signalled to little Mr. Hack to occupy the seat behind her. With the two
+together she felt comparatively comfortable. Mr. Radford's running
+criticism on the performers, always pungent, was often amusing, while
+Mr. Hack lost no opportunity of advancing his own ideals in the matter
+of musical entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>"A song and dance," said he, again and again, with a more and more
+sepulchral deviltry&mdash;"a song and dance is what you want. You should have
+heard the Sisters Belton in their palmy days at the Pav! You don't get
+the best of everything out here, you know, Ted!"</p>
+
+<p>"No; let's hope they've got some better men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> than you," returned
+Radford, inspired by the quorum of three to make mince-meat of his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>It was the interval between parts one and two. The platform was
+unoccupied. A cool draught blew through the iron building from open door
+to open door; there was no occasion to go outside. They had done so,
+however, at the lower end; there was a sudden stampede of returning
+feet. A something in the scuffling steps, a certain outcry that
+accompanied them, caused Miss Bouverie and her companions to turn their
+heads; they turned again at as sudden a jingle on the platform, and the
+girl caught her breath. There stood her missing hero, smiling on the
+people, dapper, swarthy, booted, spurred, and for one moment the man she
+had reason to remember, exactly as she remembered him. The next his
+folded arms sprang out from the shoulders, and a brace of long-barrelled
+revolvers covered the assembly.</p>
+
+<p>"Up with your hands, every man of you!" he cried. "No, not the ladies,
+but every man and boy who doesn't want a bullet in his brain!"</p>
+
+<p>The command was echoed in uncouth accents at the lower door, where, in
+fact, a bearded savage had driven in all and sundry at his pistol's
+point. And in a few seconds the meeting was one which had carried by
+overwhelming show of hands a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> proposition from which the ladies alone
+saw occasion to dissent.</p>
+
+<p>"You may have heard of me before," said the man on the platform,
+sweeping the forest of hands with his eye-glass. "My name's Stingaree."</p>
+
+<p>It was the word which Hilda Bouverie had heard on the veranda and taken
+for some strange expletive.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" she asked, in a whisper that bespoke excitement, agitation,
+but not alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"The fancy bushranger&mdash;the dandy outlaw!" drawled Radford, in cool
+reply. "I've been expecting him. He was seen on our run the day Mrs.
+Clarkson went down to Melbourne."</p>
+
+<p>That memorable day for Hilda Bouverie! And it was this manner of man who
+had been her hero ever since: a bushranger, an outlaw, a common robber
+under arms!</p>
+
+<p>"And you never told me!" she cried, in an indignant whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"We never told Mrs. Clarkson either. You must blame the boss."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda snatched her eyes from Stingaree, and was sorry for Mrs. Clarkson
+for the first time in their acquaintance. The new ball-dress of bridal
+satin was no whiter than its wearer's face, which had aged several years
+in as many seconds. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> squatter leant toward her with uplifted hands,
+loyally concerned for no one and for nothing else. Between the couple
+Sir Julian might have been conducting without his b&acirc;ton, but with both
+arms. Meanwhile, the flashing eye-glass had fixed itself on Miss
+Bouverie's companion, without resting for an instant on Miss Bouverie.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence over there!" cried Stingaree, sternly. "I'm here on a perfectly
+harmless errand. If you know anything about me at all, you may know that
+I have a weakness for music of any kind, so long as it's good of its
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>The eye-glass dropped for a moment upon Mrs. Clarkson in the front row,
+and the irrepressible Radford was enabled to continue his say.</p>
+
+<p>"He has, too, from a mouth-organ to a full orchestra, from all accounts,
+Miss Bouverie. <i>My revolver's in the coat-pocket next you!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the music," continued Stingaree, looking harder than before in
+their direction, "which has brought me here to-night. I've come to
+listen, and for no other reason in the world. Unfortunately, when one
+has a price upon one's head, one has to take certain precautions before
+venturing among one's fellow-men. And, though I'm not here for gain or
+bloodshed, if any man of you gives me trouble I shall shoot him like a
+dog!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's one for me," whispered the intrepid overseer, in lower key.
+"Never mind. He's not looking at us now. I believe Mrs. Clarkson's going
+to faint. <i>You take what I told you and slip it under your shawl, and
+you'll save a second by passing it up to me the instant you see her
+sway!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Hilda hesitated. A dead silence had fallen on the crowded and heated
+store, and in the silence Stingaree was already taking an unguarded
+interest in Mrs. Clarkson's appearance, which as certainly betokened
+imminent collapse. "<i>Now!</i>" whispered Radford, and Hilda hesitated no
+more. She was wearing a black lace shawl between her appearances at the
+piano; she had the revolver under it in a twinkling, and pressed it to
+her bosom with both hands, one outside the shawl and one underneath, as
+who should hug a beating heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Clarkson," said Stingaree, "you have been singing too much, and
+the quality of your song has not been equal to the quantity."</p>
+
+<p>It sounded a brutal speech enough; and to do justice to a portion of the
+audience not hitherto remarkable for its spirit, the ungallant criticism
+was audibly resented in the back rows. The maudlin stockman had indeed
+to be restrained by his neighbors from precipitating himself upon the
+barrels of Stingaree. But the effect upon Mrs. Clark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>son herself was
+still more remarkable, and revealed a subtle kindness in the desperado's
+cruelty. Her pale face flushed; her lack-lustre eyes blazed forth their
+indignation; her very clay was on fire for all the room to see.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't sing for criminals and cut-throats!" the indignant lady cried
+out. She glanced at Sir Julian as one for whom she did sing. And Sir
+Julian's eyes twinkled under the bushranger's guns.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure you don't," said Stingaree, with as much sweetness as his
+character would permit. "You sing for charity, and spend three times as
+much as you are ever likely to make in arraying yourself for the
+occasion. Well, we must put up with some song-bird without fine
+feathers, for I mean to hear the programme out." His eyes ranged the
+front rows till they fell on Hilda Bouverie in her corner. "You young
+lady over there! You've been talking since I called for silence. You
+deserve to pay a penalty; be good enough to step this way."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda's excitement may be supposed; it made her scandalously radiant in
+that company of humiliated men and women, but it did not rob her of her
+resource. Removing her shawl with apparent haste, but with calculated
+deliberation, she laid it in a bunch upon the seat which she had
+occupied,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and stepped forward with a courage that won a cheer from the
+back rows. Stingaree stooped to hand her up to the platform; and his
+warm grip told a tale. This was what he had come for, to make her sing,
+to make her sing before Sir Julian Crum, to give her a start unique in
+the history of the platform and the stage. Criminal, was he? Then the
+dearest, kindest, most enchanting, most romantic criminal the world had
+ever seen! But she must be worthy of his chivalry and her chance; and,
+from the first, her artistic egoism insisted that she was.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree had picked up a programme, and dexterously mounted it between
+hammer and cartridge of the revolver which he had momentarily
+relinquished, much as a cornet-player mounts his music under his nose.
+With both weapons once more levelled, he consulted the programme now.</p>
+
+<p>"The next item, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is another pianoforte
+solo by this young lady. We'll let you off that, Miss Bouverie, since
+you've got to sing. The next song on the programme is called 'The
+Unrealized Ideal,' and the music is by our distinguished visitor and
+patron, Sir Julian Crum. In happier circumstances it would have been
+sung to you by Mrs. Montgomery Clarkson; as it is, I call upon Miss
+Bouverie to realize her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> ideal and ours, and on Sir Julian Crum to
+accompany her, if he will."</p>
+
+<p>At Mrs. Clarkson's stony side the great man dropped both arms at the
+superb impudence of the invitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, Sir Julian; let the blood run into them," said Stingaree.
+"It is a pure oversight that you were not exempted in the beginning.
+Comply with my entreaty and I guarantee that you shall suffer no further
+inconvenience."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Julian wavered. In London he was a club-man and a diner-out; and
+what a tale for the Athen&aelig;um&mdash;what a short cut to every ear at a
+Kensington dinner-table! In the end it would get into the papers. That
+was the worst of it. But in the midst of Sir Julian's hesitation his
+pondering eyes met those of Miss Bouverie&mdash;on fire to sing him his own
+song&mdash;alight with the ability to do it justice. And Sir Julian was lost.</p>
+
+<p>How she sang it may be guessed. Sir Julian bowed and swayed upon his
+stool. Stingaree stood by with a smile of personal pride and
+responsibility, but with both revolvers still levelled, and one of them
+cocked. It was a better song than he had supposed. It gained enormously
+from the composer's accompaniment. The last verse was softer than
+another would have made it, and yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> the singer obeyed inaudible
+instructions as though she had never sung it otherwise. It was more in a
+tuneful whisper than in hushed notes that the last words left her
+lips:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lightly I sped when hope was high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And youth beguiled the chase;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I follow&mdash;follow still; but I<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall never see her Face."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The applause, when it came, was almost overwhelming. The bushranger
+watched and smiled, but cocked his second pistol, and let the programme
+flutter to the floor. As for Sir Julian Crum, the self-contained, the
+cynical, he was seen for an instant, wheeled about on the music-stool,
+grasping the singer by both hands. But there was no hearing what he
+said; the girl herself heard nothing until he bellowed in her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have their encore. What can you give them? It must be something
+they know. 'Home, Sweet Home'? 'The Last Rose'? 'Within a Mile'? The
+first, eh? Very well; it's a leaf out of Patti's book; but so are they
+all."</p>
+
+<p>And he struck the opening bars in the key of his own song, but for some
+moments Hilda Bouverie stood bereft of her great voice. A leaf out of
+Patti's book, in that up-country township, before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> a roomful held in
+terror&mdash;and yet unmindful&mdash;of the loaded pistols of two bloodthirsty
+bushrangers! The singer prayed for power to live up to those golden
+words. A leaf out of Patti's book!</p>
+
+<p>It was over. The last poignant note trembled into nothingness. The
+silence, absolutely dead for some seconds, was then only broken by a
+spirituous sob from the incorrigible stockman. There was never any
+applause at all. Ere it came, even as it was coming, the overseer
+Radford leapt to his feet with a raucous shout.</p>
+
+<p>The bushranger had vanished from the platform. The other bushranger had
+disappeared through the other door. The precious pair of them had melted
+from the room unseen, unheard, what time every eye doted on handsome
+Hilda Bouverie, and every ear on the simple words and moving cadences of
+"Home, Sweet Home."</p>
+
+<p>Ted Radford was the first to see it; for by the end of the brief song he
+had his revolver uncovered and cocked at last, and no quarry left for
+him to shoot. With a bound he was on the platform; another carried him
+into the canvas anteroom, a third and a fourth out into the moonlight.
+It was as bright as noon in a conservatory of smoked glass. And in the
+tinted brightness one man was already galloping away; but it was
+Stingaree who danced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> with one foot only in the stirrup of a milk-white
+mare.</p>
+
+<p>Radford rushed up to him and fired point-blank again and again. A series
+of metallic clicks was all the harm he did, for Stingaree was in the
+saddle before the hurled revolver struck the mare on the ribs, and sent
+the pair flying through the moonlight with a shout of laughter, a cloud
+of sand, and a dull volley of thunderous hoofs. The overseer picked up
+his revolver and returned crestfallen to examine it in the lights of the
+emptying room.</p>
+
+<p>"I could have sworn I loaded it," said he. "If I had, he'd have been a
+dead man six times over."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bouverie had been talking to Sir Julian Crum. On Radford's entry
+she had grown <i>distraite</i>, but at Radford's speech she turned back to
+Sir Julian with shining eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife wants a companion for the voyage," he was saying. "So that will
+cost you nothing, but if anything the other way, and once in London,
+I'll be answerable. I've adjudicated these things for years to voices
+not in the same class as yours. But the worst of it is you won't stay
+with us."</p>
+
+<p>"I will."</p>
+
+<p>"No; they'll want you at Covent Garden before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> we know where we are. And
+when you are ready to go to them, go you must."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do what you tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then speak to Mrs. Clarkson at once."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda Bouverie glanced over her shoulder, but her employers had left the
+building. Her smile was less roguish than demure.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no need, Sir Julian. Mrs. Clarkson has already spoken to me,
+though only in a whisper. But I am to take myself off by the next
+coach."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>The Black Hole of Glenranald</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was coming up the Murrumbidgee that Fergus Carrick first heard the
+name of Stingaree. With the cautious enterprise of his race, the young
+gentleman had booked steerage on a river steamer whose solitary
+passenger he proved to be; accordingly he was not only permitted to
+sleep on the saloon settee at nights, but graciously bidden to the
+captain's board by day. It was there that Fergus Carrick encouraged
+tales of the bushrangers as the one cleanly topic familiar in the mouth
+of the elderly engineer who completed the party. And it seemed that the
+knighthood of the up-country road had been an extinct order from the
+extirpation of the Kellys to the appearance of this same Stingaree, who
+was reported a man of birth and mystery, with an ostentatious passion
+for music and as romantic a method as that of any highwayman of the Old
+World from which he hailed. But the callow Fergus had been spared the
+romantic temperament, and was less impressed than entertained with what
+he heard.</p>
+
+<p>On his arrival at Glenranald, however, he found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> that substantial
+township shaking with laughter over the outlaw's latest and least
+discreditable exploit, at the back-block hamlet of Yallarook; and then
+it was that young Carrick first conceived an ambition to open his
+Colonial career with the capture of Stingaree; for he was a serious
+immigrant, who had come out in his teens, to stay out, if necessary, for
+the term of his natural life.</p>
+
+<p>The idea had birth under one of the many pine trees which shaded the
+skeleton streets of budding Glenranald. On this tree was nailed a
+placard offering high reward for the bushranger's person alive or dead.
+Fergus was making an immediate note in his pocketbook when a hand fell
+on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Would ye like the half o' yon?" inquired a voice in his own tongue; and
+there at his elbow stood an elderly gentleman, whose patriarchal beard
+hid half the buttons of his alpaca coat, while a black skull-cap sat
+somewhat jauntily on his head.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" said Fergus, bluntly, for the old gentleman stood
+chuckling gently in his venerable beard.</p>
+
+<p>"To lay a hold of him," replied the other, "with the help o' some
+younger and abler-bodied man; and you're the very one I want."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The raw youth stared ingenuously.</p>
+
+<p>"But what can you know about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw ye land at the wharf," said the old gentleman, nodding his
+approval of the question, "and says I, 'That's my man,' as soon as ever
+I clapped eyes on ye. So I had a crack wi' the captain o' yon steamer;
+he told me you hadna a billet, but were just on the lookout for the best
+ye could get, an' that's all he'd been able to get out o' ye in a five
+days' voyage. That was enough for me. I want a man who can keep his
+tongue behind his teeth, and I wanted you before I knew you were a
+brither Scot!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a squatter, sir?" the young man asked, a little overwhelmed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, I'm branch manager o' the Bank o' New South Wales, the only
+bank within a hunder miles o' where we stand; and I can offer ye a
+better billet than any squatter in the Colony."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed? I'm sure you're very kind, sir, but I'm wanting to get on a
+station," protested Fergus with all his tact. "And as a matter of fact,
+I have introductions to one or two stations further back, though I saw
+no reason to tell our friend the skipper so."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, quite right! I like a man who can keep his tongue in its
+kennel!" cried the bank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> manager, rubbing his hands. "But wait while I
+tell ye: ye'd need to work for your rations an any station I ever heard
+tell of, and I keep the accounts of enough to know. Now, with me, ye'd
+get two pound a week till your share o' the reward was wiped off; and if
+we had no luck for a year you'd be no worse off, but could go and try
+your squatters then. That's a promise, and I'll keep it as sure as my
+name's Andr' Macbean!"</p>
+
+<p>"But how do you propose to catch this fellow, Mr. Macbean?"</p>
+
+<p>The bank manager looked on all sides, likewise behind the tree, before
+replying under his breath: "By setting a wee trap for him! A bank's a
+bank, and Stingaree hasna stuck one up since he took to his trade. But
+I'll tell ye no more till ye give me your answer. Yes or no?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't even write an office hand; and as for figures&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Macbean laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I say I was going to take ye into the bank, mun?" cried he.
+"There's three of us already to do the writin' an' the cipherin,' an'
+three's enough. Can you ride?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have ridden."</p>
+
+<p>"And ye'll do any rough job I set ye to?"</p>
+
+<p>"The rougher the better."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's all I ask. There's a buggy and a pair for ye to mind, and mebbe
+drive, though it's horseback errands you'll do most of. I'm an old
+widower, living alone with an aged housekeeper. The cashier and the
+clerk dig in the township, and I need to have a man of some sort about
+the place; in fact, I have one, but I'll soon get rid of him if you'll
+come instead. Understand, you live in the house with me, just like the
+jackeroos on the stations; and like the jackeroos, you do all the odd
+jobs and dirty work that no one else'll look at; but, unlike them, you
+get two pounds a week from the first for doing it."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Andrew Macbean had chanced upon a magic word. It was the position of
+"jackeroo," or utility parlor-man, on one or other of the stations to
+which he carried introductions, that his young countryman had set before
+him as his goal. True, a bank in a bush township was not a station in
+the bush itself. On the other hand, his would-be friend was not the
+first to warn Fergus against the futility of expecting more than a
+nominal salary as a babe and suckling in Colonial experience; and
+perhaps the prime elements of that experience might be gained as well in
+the purlieus of a sufficiently remote township as in realms unnamed on
+any map. It will be seen that the sober stripling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> was reduced to
+arguing with himself, and that his main argument was not to be admitted
+in his own heart. The mysterious eccentricity of his employer, coupled
+with the adventurous character of his alleged prospects, was what
+induced the lad to embrace both in defiance of an unimaginative
+hard-headedness which he aimed at rather than possessed.</p>
+
+<p>With characteristic prudence he had left his baggage on board the
+river-steamer, and his own hands carried it piecemeal to the bank. This
+was a red-brick bungalow with an ample veranda, standing back from the
+future street that was as yet little better than a country road. The
+veranda commanded a long perspective of pines, but no further bricks and
+mortar, and but very few weather board walls. The yard behind the house
+was shut in by as many outbuildings as clustered about the small
+homesteads which Fergus had already beheld on the banks of the
+Murrumbidgee. The man in charge of the yard was palpably in liquor, a
+chronic condition from his general appearance, and Mr. Macbean
+discharged him on the spot with a decision which left no loophole for
+appeal. The woman in charge of the house adorned another plane of
+civilization; she was very deaf, and very outspoken on her introduction
+to the young gen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>tleman, whose face she was pleased to approve, with the
+implied reservation that all faces were liars; but she served up the
+mutton of the country hot and tender; and Fergus Carrick, leaning back
+after an excellent repast, marvelled for the twentieth time that he was
+not to pay for it.</p>
+
+<p>"A teetotaler, are ye?" said Macbean, mixing a third glass of whiskey,
+with the skull-cap on the back of his head. "And so was I at your age;
+but you're my very man. There are some it sets talking. Wait till the
+old lady turns in, and then you shall see what you shall see."</p>
+
+<p>Fergus waited in increasing excitement. The day's events were worthier
+of a dream. To have set foot in Glenranald without knowing a soul in the
+place, and to find one's self comfortably housed at a good salary before
+night! There were moments when he questioned the complete sanity of his
+eccentric benefactor, who drank whiskey like water, both as to quantity
+and effect, and who chuckled continuously in his huge gray beard. But
+such doubts only added to the excitement of the evening, which reached a
+climax when a lighted candle was thrust in at the door and the pair
+advised not to make a night of it by the candid crone on her way to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"We will give her twenty minutes," said the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> manager, winking across his
+glass. "I've never let her hear me, and she mustn't hear you either. She
+must know nothing at all about it; nobody must, except you and me."</p>
+
+<p>The mystification of Fergus was now complete. Unimaginative as he was by
+practice and profession, he had an explanation a minute until the time
+was up, when the truth beat them all for wild improbability. Macbean had
+risen, lifting the lamp; holding it on high he led the way through baize
+doors into the banking premises. Here was another door, which Macbean
+not only unlocked, but locked again behind them both. A small inner
+office led them into a shuttered chamber of fair size, with a broad
+polished counter, glass swing-doors, and a formidable portal beyond. And
+one of young Carrick's theories received apparent confirmation on the
+spot; for the manager slipped behind his counter by another door, and at
+once whipped out a great revolver.</p>
+
+<p>"This they provide us with," said he. "So far it is our only authorized
+defence, and it hangs on a hook down here behind the counter. But you
+march in here prepared, your pistol cocked behind your back, and which
+of us is likely to shoot first?"</p>
+
+<p>"The bushranger," said Fergus, still rather more startled than
+reassured.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The bushranger, of course. Stingaree, let us say. As for me, either my
+arms go up, or down I go in a heap. But supposing my arms do go
+up&mdash;supposing I still touch something with one foot&mdash;and supposing the
+floor just opens and swallows Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree! Eh? eh? What
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be great," cried Fergus. "But could it be done?"</p>
+
+<p>"It can be, it will be, and is being done," replied the manager,
+replacing the bank revolver and sliding over the counter like a boy. A
+square of plain linoleum covered the floor, overlapped by a border of
+the same material bearing a design. Down went Macbean upon his knees,
+and his beard swept this border as he began pulling it up, tacks and
+all.</p>
+
+<p>The lamp burned brightly on the counter, its rays reflected in the
+burnished mahogany. All at once Fergus seized it on his own initiative,
+and set it on the floor before his kneeling elder, going upon his own
+knees on the other side. And where the plain linoleum ended, but where
+the overlapping border covered the floor, the planks were sawn through
+and through down one side of the central and self-colored square.</p>
+
+<p>"A trap-door!" exclaimed Fergus in a whisper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Macbean leant back on his slippered heels, his skull-cap wickedly awry.</p>
+
+<p>"This border takes a lot o' lifting," said he. "Yet we've just got to
+lift it every time, and tack it down again before morning. You might try
+your hand over yonder on the far side."</p>
+
+<p>Fergus complied with so much energy that the whole border was ripped up
+in a minute; and he was not mistaken. A trap-door it was, of huge
+dimensions, almost exactly covered by the self-colored square; but at
+each side a tongue of linoleum had been left loose for lifting it; and
+the lamp had scarcely been replaced upon the counter when the bulk of
+the floor leaned upright in one piece against the opposite wall. It had
+uncovered a pit of corresponding size, but as yet hardly deep enough to
+afford a hiding-place for the bucket, spade, and pickaxe which lay there
+on a length of sacking.</p>
+
+<p>"I see!" exclaimed Carrick, as the full light flooded his brain.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a fact?" inquired the manager twinkling.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to make a deep hole of it&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I'm going to pay you to make it deep for me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And then&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"At dead o' night; you can take out your sleep by day."</p>
+
+<p>"When Stingaree comes&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If he waits till we're ready for him&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You touch some lever&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And the floor swallows him, as I said, if he waits till we are ready
+for him. Everything depends on that&mdash;and on your silence. We must take
+time. It isn't only the digging of the hole. We need to fix up some
+counterpoise to make it shut after a body like a mouse-trap; we must do
+the thing thoroughly if we do it at all; and till it's done, not a word
+to a soul in the same hemisphere! In the end I suppose I shall have to
+tell Donkin, my cashier, and Fowler the clerk. Donkin's a disbeliever
+who deserves the name o' Didymus more than ony mon o' my acquaintance.
+Fowler would take so kindly to the whole idea that he'd blurt it out
+within a week. He may find it out when all's in readiness, but I'll no
+tell him even then. See how I trust a brither Scot at sight!"</p>
+
+<p>"I much appreciate it," said Fergus, humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldna ha' trustit even you, gin I hadna found the delvin' ill worrk
+for auld shoulders," pursued Macbean, broadening his speech with
+intentional humor. "Noo, wull ye do't or wull ye no?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The young man's answer was to strip off his coat and spring into the
+hole, and to set to work with such energy, yet so quietly, that the
+bucket was filled in a few almost silent seconds. Macbean carried it
+off, unlocking doors for the nonce, while Fergus remained in the hole to
+mop his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"We need to have another bucket," said the manager, on his return. "I've
+thought of every other thing. There's a disused well in the yard, and
+down goes every blessed bucket!"</p>
+
+<p>To and fro, over the lip of the closing well, back into the throat of
+the deepening hole, went the buckets for many a night; and by day Fergus
+Carrick employed his best wits to make an intrinsically anomalous
+position appear natural to the world. It was a position which he himself
+could thoroughly enjoy; he was largely his own master. He had daily
+opportunities of picking up the ways and customs of the bush, and a
+nightly excitement which did not pall as the secret task approached
+conclusion; but he was subjected to much chaff and questioning from the
+other young bloods of Glenranald. He felt from the first that it was
+what he must expect. He was a groom with a place at his master's table;
+he was a jackeroo who introduced station life into a town. And the
+element of underlying mystery, really existing as it did, was detected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+soon enough by other young heads, led by that of Fowler, the keen bank
+clerk.</p>
+
+<p>"I was looking at you both together, and you do favor the old man, and
+no error!" he would say; or else, "What is it you could hang the boss
+for, Fergy, old toucher?"</p>
+
+<p>These delicate but cryptic sallies being ignored or parried, the heavy
+swamp of innuendo was invariably deserted for the breezy hill-top of
+plain speech, and Fergus had often work enough to put a guard upon hand
+and tongue. But his temperament was eminently self-contained, and on the
+whole he was an elusive target for the witticisms of his friends. There
+was no wit, however, and no attempt at it on the part of Donkin, the
+cantankerous cashier. He seldom addressed a word to Carrick, never a
+civil word, but more than once he treated his chief to a sarcastic
+remonstrance on his degrading familiarity with an underling. In such
+encounters the imperturbable graybeard was well able to take care of
+himself, albeit he expressed to Fergus a regret that he had not
+exercised a little more ingenuity in the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have come to me with a letter of introduction," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"But who would have given me one?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would, yon first night, and you'd have pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>sented it next day in
+office hours," replied the manager. "But it's too late to think about it
+now, and in a few days Donkin may know the truth."</p>
+
+<p>He might have known it already, but for one difficulty. They had digged
+their pit to the generous depth of eight feet, so that a tall prisoner
+could barely touch the trap-door with extended finger-tips; and
+Stingaree (whose latest performance was no longer the Yallarook affair)
+was of medium height according to his police description. The trap-door
+was a double one, which parted in the centre with the deadly precision
+of the gallows floor. The difficulty was to make the flaps close
+automatically, with the mouse-trap effect of Macbean's ambition. It was
+managed eventually by boring separate wells for a weight behind the
+hinges on either side. Copper wire running on minute pulleys let into
+grooves suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, and
+powerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. The
+lever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reached
+by thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward on a
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>It may be conceived that all this represented the midnight labors and
+the constant thought of many weeks. It was now the beginning of the cool
+but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> brilliant Riverina winter, and, despite the disparity in their
+years, the two Scotsmen were fast friends. They had worked together as
+one man, with the same patient passion for perfection, the same delight
+in detail for its own sake. Almost the only difference was that the old
+fellow refreshed his energies with the glass of whiskey which was never
+far from his elbow after banking hours, while the young one cultivated
+the local excess of continual tea. And all this time the rascally
+Stingaree ranged the district, with or without his taciturn accomplice,
+covering great distances in fabulous time, lurking none knew where, and
+springing on the unwary in the last places in which his presence was
+suspected.</p>
+
+<p>"But he has not yet robbed a bank, and we have our hopes," wrote Fergus
+to a faithful sister at Largs. "It may be for fear of the revolvers with
+which all the banks are provided now. Mr. Macbean has been practising
+with ours, and purposely put a bullet through one of our back windows.
+The whole township has been chafing him about it, and the local rag has
+risen to a sarcastic paragraph, which is exactly what we wanted. The
+trap-door over the pit is now practically finished. It's too complicated
+to describe, but Stingaree has only to march into the bank and 'stick it
+up,' and the man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> behind the counter has only to touch a lever with his
+foot for the villain to disappear through the floor into a prison it'll
+take him all his time to break. On Saturday the cashier and the clerk
+are coming to dinner, and before we sit down they are to be shown
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>This was but a fraction of one of the long letters which Fergus
+despatched by nearly every mail. Silent and self-contained as he was, he
+had one confidante at the opposite end of the earth, one escape-pipe in
+his pen. Not a word of the great secret had he even written to another
+soul. To his trusted sister he had never before been quite so
+communicative. His conscience pricked him as he took his letter to the
+post, and he had it registered on no other score.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday the bank closed at one o'clock; the staff were to return and
+dine at seven, the Queen's birthday falling on the same day for a
+sufficient pretext. As the hour approached Fergus made the distressing
+discovery that his friend and host had anticipated the festivities with
+too free a hand. Macbean was not drunk, but he was perceptibly blunted
+and blurred, and Fergus had never seen the pale eyes so watery or the
+black skull-cap so much on one side of the venerable head. The lad was
+genuinely grieved. A whiskey bottle stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> empty on the laden board, and
+he had the temerity to pocket the corkscrew while Macbean was gone to
+his storeroom for another bottle. A solemn search ensued, and then
+Fergus was despatched in haste for a new corkscrew.</p>
+
+<p>"An' look slippy," said Macbean, "or we'll have old Donkin here before
+ye get back."</p>
+
+<p>"Not for another three-quarters of an hour," remarked Fergus, looking at
+his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Any minute!" retorted Macbean, with a ribald epithet. "I invited
+Donkin, in confidence, to come a good half-hour airly, and I'll tell ye
+for why. Donkin must ken, but I'm none so sure o' yon other impident
+young squirt. His tongue's too long for his mouth. Donkin or I could
+always be behind the counter; anyway, I mean to take his opeenion before
+tellin' any other body."</p>
+
+<p>Entertaining his own distrust of the vivacious Fowler, Fergus commended
+the decision, and so took his departure by the private entrance. It was
+near sundown; a fresh breeze blew along the hard road, puffing cloudlets
+of yellow sand into the rosy dusk. Fergus hurried till he was out of
+sight, and then idled shamelessly under trees. He was not going on for a
+new corkscrew. He was going back to confess boldly where he had found
+the old one. And the sight of Donkin in the dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>tance sent him back in
+something of a hurry; it was quite enough to have to spend an evening
+with the cantankerous cashier.</p>
+
+<p>The bank was practically at one end of the township as then laid out;
+two or three buildings there were further on, but they stood altogether
+aloof. The bank, for a bank, was sufficiently isolated, and Fergus could
+not but congratulate himself on the completion of its ingenious and
+unsuspected defences. It only remained to keep the inventor reasonably
+sober for the evening, and thereafter to whistle or to pray for
+Stingaree. Meanwhile the present was no mean occasion, and Fergus was
+glad to see that Macbean had thrown open the official doors in his
+absence. They had often agreed that it would be worth all their labor to
+enlighten Donkin by letting the pit gape under his nose as he entered
+the bank. Fergus glanced over his shoulder, saw the other hurrying, and
+hurried himself in order to take up a good position for seeing the
+cashier's face. He was in the middle of the treacherous floor before he
+perceived that it was not Macbean in the half-light behind the counter,
+but a good-looking man whom he had never seen before.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't know I was invited, eh?" said the stranger, putting up a single
+eye-glass. "Don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> believe it, perhaps? You'd better ask Mr. Macbean!"</p>
+
+<p>And before it had occurred to him to stir from where he stood agape, the
+floor fell from under the feet of Fergus, his body lurched forward, and
+came down flat and heavy on the hard earth eight feet below. Not
+entirely stunned, though shaken and hurt from head to heel, he was still
+collecting his senses when the pit blackened as the trap-door shut in
+implicit obedience to its weights and springs. And in the clinging
+velvet darkness the young man heard a groan.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that yoursel', Fergy?"</p>
+
+<p>"And are you there, Mr. Macbean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mon, didn't it shut just fine!"</p>
+
+<p>Curiously blended with the physical pain in the manager's voice was a
+sodden philosophic humor which maddened the younger man. Fergus swore
+where he lay writhing on his stomach. Macbean chuckled and groaned
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Stingaree," he said, drawing a breath through his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is."</p>
+
+<p>"I never breathed it to a soul."</p>
+
+<p>"No more did I."</p>
+
+<p>Fergus spoke with ready confidence, and yet the words left something on
+his mind. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> something vague but haunting, something that made him
+feel instinctively unworthy of the kindly, uncomplaining tone which had
+annoyed him but a moment before.</p>
+
+<p>"No bones broken, Fergy?"</p>
+
+<p>"None that I know of."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt I've not been so lucky. I'm thinkin' it's a rib, by the way it
+hurts to breathe."</p>
+
+<p>Fergus was already fumbling in his pocket. The match-box opened with a
+click. The match scraped several times in vain. Then at last the scene
+sprang out as on the screen of a magic-lantern. And to Fergus it was a
+very white old man, hunched up against the muddy wall, with blood upon
+his naked scalp and beard, and both hands pressed to his side; to the
+old man, a muddy face stricken with horrified concern, and a match
+burning down between muddy fingers; but to both, such a new view and
+version of their precious hole that the corners of each mouth were
+twitching as the match was thrown away.</p>
+
+<p>Fergus was fumbling for another when a step rang overhead; and at the
+sharp exchange of words which both underground expected, Fergus came on
+all fours to the old man's side, and together they sat gazing upward
+into the pall of impenetrable crape.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You infernal villain!" they heard Donkin roar, and stamp his feet with
+such effect that the floor opened, and down through the square of light
+came the cashier feet first.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven and hell!" he squealed, but subsided unhurt on hands and knees
+as the flaps went up with such a snap that Macbean and Carrick nudged
+each other at the same moment. "Now I know who you are!" the cashier
+raved. "Call yourself Stingaree! You're Fowler dressed up, and this is
+one of Macbean's putrid practical jokes. I saw his jackal hurrying in to
+say I was coming. By cripes! it takes a surgical operation to see their
+sort, I grant you."</p>
+
+<p>There was a noise of subdued laughter overhead; even in the pit a dry
+chuckle came through Macbean's set teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's practical joke o' mine, Donkin, it's recoiled on my own poor
+pate," said the old man. "I've a rib stove in, too, if that's any
+consolation to ye. It's Stingaree, my manny!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, it is, it must be!" cried the cashier, finding his words
+in a torrent. "I was going to tell you. He's been at his game down
+south; stuck up our own mail again only yesterday, between this and
+Deniliquin, and got a fine haul of registered letters, so they say. But
+where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> deuce are we? I never knew there was a cellar under here, let
+alone a trap-door that might have been made for these villains."</p>
+
+<p>"It was made for them," replied Macbean, after a pause; and in the dead
+dark he went on to relate the frank and humble history of the hole, from
+its inception to the crooked climax of that bitter hour. A braver
+confession Fergus had never heard; its philosophic flow was unruffled by
+the more and more scornful interjections of the ungenerous cashier; and
+yet his younger countryman, who might have been proud of him, hardly
+listened to a word uttered by Macbean.</p>
+
+<p>Half-a-dozen fallen from the lips of Donkin had lightened young
+Carrick's darkness with consuming fires of shame. "A fine haul of
+registered letters"&mdash;among others his own last letter to his sister! So
+it was he who had done it all; and he had perjured himself to his
+benefactor, besides, betraying him. He sat in the dark between fire and
+ice, chiefly wondering how he could soonest win through the trap-door
+and earn a bullet in his brain.</p>
+
+<p>"The spree to-night," concluded Macbean, whose fall completely sobered
+him, "was for the express purpose of expounding the trap to you, and I
+asked you airly to take your advice. I was no so sure about young
+Fowler, whether we need tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> him or no. He has an awful long tongue;
+but I'm thinkin' there's a longer if I knew where to look for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I could tell you where," rasped Donkin. "But go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I was watching old Hannah putting her feenishing touches to the table,
+and waiting for Fergus Carrick to come back, when I thought I heard him
+behind me and you with him. But it was Stingaree and his mate, and the
+two of us were covered with revolvers like young rifles. Hannah they
+told to go on with what she was doing, as they were mighty hungry, and I
+advised her to do as she was bid. The brute with the beard has charge of
+her. Stingaree himself drove me into the middle of my own trap-door,
+made me give up my keys, and then went behind the counter and did the
+trick. He'd got it all down on paper, the Lord alone knows how."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you Scotchmen!" cried the pleasant cashier. "Talk of your land of
+cakes! You take every cake in the land between you!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed he had been filling his pipe while he listened and prepared
+this pretty speech. Now he struck a match, and with the flame to the
+bowl saw Fergus for the first time. The cashier held the match on high.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You hear all the while?" he cried. "No wonder you lay low, Carrick; no
+wonder I didn't hear your voice."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?" growled Fergus, in fierce heat and fierce
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, Mr. Macbean, you aren't wondering who wagged the long tongue
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that I wagged mine? And it's a lie!" said Fergus, hoarsely; he
+was sitting upon his heels, poised to spring.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that if Mr. Macbean had listened to me two months ago we should
+none of us be in this hole now."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, my faith, you're in a worse one than you think!" cried Fergus,
+and fell upon his traducer as the match went out. "Take that, and that,
+and that!" he ground out through his teeth, as he sent the cashier over
+on his back and pounded the earth with his skull. Luckily the first was
+soft and the second hard, so that the man was more outraged than hurt
+when circumstances which they might have followed created a diversion.</p>
+
+<p>In his turn the lively Fowler had marched whistling into the bank, had
+ceased whistling to swear down the barrel of a cocked revolver, and met
+a quicker fate than his comrades by impressing the bushranger as the
+most dangerous man of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> quartette. Unfortunately for him, his fate
+was still further differentiated from theirs. Fowler's feet glanced off
+Carrick's back, and he plunged into the well head-first, rolling over
+like a stone as the wooden jaws above closed greedily upon the light of
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Fergus at once struck matches, and in their light the cashier took the
+insensible head upon his knees and glared at his enemy as if from
+sanctuary of the Red Cross. But Fergus returned to Macbean's side.</p>
+
+<p>"I never said a word to a living soul," he muttered. "It has come out
+some other way."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it has," said the old manager, with the same tell-tale
+inhalation through the teeth. Fergus felt worse than ever. He groped for
+the bald head and found it cold and dank. In an instant he was clamoring
+under the trap-door, leaping up and striking it with his fist.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whiskey. Some of us are hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"God help you if it's any hanky-panky!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's none. Something to drink, and something to drink it in, or there's
+blood upon your head!"</p>
+
+<p>Clanking steps departed and returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand by to catch, below there!"</p>
+
+<p>And Fergus stood by, expecting to see a long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> barrel with the bottle and
+glass that broke their fall on him; but Stingaree had crept away
+unheard, and he pressed the lever just enough to let the glass and
+bottle tumble through.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed: it might have been an hour. The huddled heap that was
+Macbean breathed forth relief. The head on Donkin's knees moved from
+side to side with groans. Donkin himself thanked Fergus for his ration;
+he who served it out alone went thirsty. "Wait till I earn some," he
+said bitterly to himself. "I could finish the lot if I started now." But
+the others never dreamt that he was waiting, and he lied about it to
+Macbean.</p>
+
+<p>Now that they sat in silence no sound escaped them overhead. They heard
+Stingaree and his mate sit down to a feast which Macbean described with
+groaning modesty as the best that he could do.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no soup," he whispered, "but there's a barr'l of oysters
+fetched up on purpose by the coach. I hope they havena missed the
+Chablis. They may as well do the thing complete." In a little the
+champagne popped. "Dry Monopole!" moaned the manager, near to tears. "It
+came up along with the oysters. O sirs, O sirs, but this is hard on us
+all! Now they're at the turkey&mdash;and I chopped the stuffing with my ain
+twa han's!"</p>
+
+<p>They were at the turkey a long time. Another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> cork popped; but the
+familiar tread of deaf Hannah was heard no more, and at length they
+called her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" roared a mouth that was full.</p>
+
+<p>"Old lady!" cried the gallant Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"She's 'ard of 'earing, mate."</p>
+
+<p>"She might still hear you, Howie."</p>
+
+<p>And the chairs rasped backward over bare boards as one; at the same
+instant Fergus leapt to his feet in the earthly Tartarus his own hands
+had dug.</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe she's done a bolt," he gasped, "and got clean away!"</p>
+
+<p>Curses overhead confirmed the supposition. Clanking feet hunted the
+premises at a run. In a minute the curses were renewed and multiplied,
+yet muffled, as though there was some fresh cause for them which the
+prisoners need not know. Hannah had not been found. Yet some disturbing
+discovery had undoubtedly been made. Doors were banged and bolted. A
+gunshot came faint but staccato from the outer world. A real report
+echoed through the bank.</p>
+
+<p>"A siege!" cried Fergus, striking a match to dance by. "The old heroine
+has fetched the police, and these beauties are in a trap."</p>
+
+<p>"And what about us?" demanded the cashier.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Shut up and listen!" retorted Fergus, without ceremony. Macbean was
+leaning forward, with bald head on one side and hollowed palm at the
+upper ear. Even the stunned man had recovered sufficiently to raise
+himself on one elbow and gaze overhead as Fergus struck match after
+match. The villains were having an altercation on the very trap-door.</p>
+
+<p>"Now's the time to cut and run&mdash;now or never."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, you do so. I'm going through the safe."</p>
+
+<p>"You should ha' done that first."</p>
+
+<p>"Better late than not at all."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't stop and do it without me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I can. I'll call for a volunteer from below. You show them
+your spurs and save your skin."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll stay, curse you, I'll stay!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll have my volunteer, whether you stay or not."</p>
+
+<p>The pair had scarcely parted when the trap-door opened slowly and stayed
+open for the first time. The banking chamber was but dimly lit, and the
+light in the pit less than it had been during the brief burning of
+single matches. No peering face was revealed to those below, but the
+voice of Stingaree came rich and crisp from behind the counter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Your old woman has got away to the police-barracks and the place is
+surrounded. One of you has got to come up and help, and help fair, or go
+to hell with a bullet in his heart. I give you one minute to choose your
+man."</p>
+
+<p>But in one second the man had chosen himself. Without a word, or a
+glance at any of his companions, but with a face burning with
+extraordinary fires, Fergus Carrick sprang for the clean edge of the
+trap-door, caught it first with one hand and then with both, drew
+himself up like the gymnast he had been at his Scottish school, and
+found himself prone upon the floor and trap-door as the latter closed
+under him on the release of the lever which Stingaree understood so
+well. A yell of execration followed him into the upper air. And
+Stingaree was across the counter before his new ally had picked himself
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"That's because this was expected of me," said Fergus, grimly, to
+explain the cashier's reiterated anathemas. "I was the writer of the
+registered letter that led to all this. So now I'm going the whole hog."</p>
+
+<p>And the blue eyes boiled in his brick-red face.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that? No nonsense?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall see."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should shoot you like a native cat."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't do me a better turn."</p>
+
+<p>"Right! Swear on your knees that you won't use it against me or my mate,
+and I'll trust you with this revolver. You may fire as high as you
+please, but they must think we're three instead of two."</p>
+
+<p>Fergus took the oath in fierce earnest upon his knees, was handed the
+weapon belonging to the bank, and posted in his own bedroom window at
+the rear of the building. The front was secure enough with the shutters
+and bolts of the official fortress. It was to the back premises that the
+attack confined itself, making all use of the admirable cover afforded
+by the stables.</p>
+
+<p>Carrick saw heads and shoulders hunched to aim over stable-doors as he
+obeyed his orders and kept his oath. His high fire drew a deadlier upon
+himself; a stream of lead from a Winchester whistled into the room past
+his ear and over his ducked head. He tried firing from the floor without
+showing his face. The Winchester let him alone; in a sudden sickness he
+sprang up to see if anything hung sprawling over the stable-door, and
+was in time to see men in retreat to right and left, the white pugarees
+of the police fluttering ingloriously among them. Only one was left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+upon the ground, and he could sit up to nurse a knee.</p>
+
+<p>Fergus sighed relief as he sought Stingaree, and found him with a
+comical face before the open safe.</p>
+
+<p>"House full of paltry paper!" said he. "I suppose it's the old
+sportsman's custom to get rid of most of his heavy metal before closing
+on Saturdays?"</p>
+
+<p>Fergus said it was; he had himself stowed many a strong-box aboard
+unsuspected barges for Echuca.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now's our time to leave you," continued Stingaree. "If I'm not
+mistaken, their flight is simply for the moment, and in two or three
+more they'll be back to batter in the bank shutters. I wonder what they
+think we've done with our horses? I'll bet they've looked everywhere but
+in the larder next the kitchen door&mdash;not that we ever let them get so
+close. But my mate's in there now, mounted and waiting, and I shall have
+to leave you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I was coming with you," cried Fergus, aghast.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree's eye-glass dangled on its cord.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I must trouble you to step into that safe instead," said he,
+smiling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Man, I mean it! You think I don't. I've fought on your side of my own
+free will. How can I live that down? It's the only side for me for the
+rest of time!"</p>
+
+<p>The fixed eye-glass covered the brick-red face with the molten eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you do mean it."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall shoot me if I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"I most certainly should. But my mate Howie has his obvious limitations.
+I've long wanted a drop of new blood. Barmaid's thoroughbred and strong
+as an elephant; we're neither of us heavyweights; by the powers, I'll
+trust you, and you shall ride behind!"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Barmaid was the milk-white mare that was only less notorious than
+her lawless rider. It was noised in travellers' huts and around
+campfires that she would do more at her master's word than had been
+known of horse outside a circus. It was the one touch that Stingaree had
+borrowed from a more Napoleonic but incomparably coarser and crueller
+knight of the bush. In all other respects the <i>fin de si&egrave;cle</i> desperado
+was unique. It was a stroke of luck, however, that there happened to be
+an old white mare in the bank stables, which the police had impounded
+with solemn care while turning every other animal adrift.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> And so it
+fell out that not a shot followed the mounted bushrangers into the
+night, and that long before the bank shutters were battered in the
+flying trio were miles away.</p>
+
+<p>Fergus flew like a runaway bride, his arms about the belted waist of
+Stingaree. Trees loomed ahead and flew past by the clump under a
+wonderful wide sky of scintillating stars. The broad bush track had very
+soon been deserted at a tangent; through ridges and billows of salt-bush
+and cotton-bush they sailed with the swift confidence of a well-handled
+clipper before the wind. Stingaree was the leader four miles out of
+five, but in the fifth his mate Howie would gallop ahead, and anon they
+would come on him dismounted at a wire fence, with the wires strapped
+down and his horse tethered to one of the posts till he had led Barmaid
+over.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus they careered across the vast chessboard of the fenced
+back-blocks at dead of night. Stingaree and Fergus sat saddle and
+bareback without a break until near dawn their pioneer spurred forward
+yet again and was swallowed in a steely haze. It was cold as a sharp
+spring night in England. But for a mile or more Fergus had clung on with
+but one arm round the bushranger's waist; now the right arm came
+stealing back; felt some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>thing cold for the fraction of a second, and
+plucked prodigiously, and in another fraction an icy ring mouthed
+Stingaree's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Pull up," said Fergus, hoarsely, "or your brains go flying."</p>
+
+<p>"Little traitor!" whispered the other, with an imprecation that froze
+the blood.</p>
+
+<p>"I am no traitor. I swore I wouldn't abuse the revolver you gave me, and
+it's been in my pocket all the night."</p>
+
+<p>"The other's unloaded."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't sit so quiet if it were. Now, round we go, and back on our
+tracks full split. It's getting light, and we shall see them plain. If
+you vary a yard either way, or if your mate catches us, out go your
+brains."</p>
+
+<p>The bushranger obeyed without a word. Fergus was almost unnerved by the
+incredible ease of his conquest over so redoubtable a ruffian. His
+stolid Scottish blood stood by him; but still he made grim apology as
+they rode.</p>
+
+<p>"I had to do it. It was through me you got to know. I had to live that
+down; this was the only way."</p>
+
+<p>"You have spirit. If you would still be my mate&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Your mate! I mean this to be the making of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> me as an honest man. Here's
+the fence. I give you two minutes to strap it down and get us over."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree slid tamely to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you dare to get through those wires! Strap it from this side with
+your belt, and strap it quick!"</p>
+
+<p>And the bushranger obeyed with the same sensible docility, but with his
+back turned, so that Fergus could not see has face; and it was light
+enough to see faces now; yet Barmaid refused the visible wires, as she
+had not refused them all that night of indigo starlight.</p>
+
+<p>"Coax her, man!" cried Fergus, in the saddle now, and urging the mare
+with his heels. So Stingaree whispered in the mare's ear; and with that
+the strapped wires flew under his captor's nose, as the rider took the
+fence, but not the horse.</p>
+
+<p>At a single syllable the milk-white mare had gone on her knees, like
+devout lady in holy fane; and as she rose her last rider lay senseless
+at her master's feet; but whether from his fall, or from a blow dealt
+him in the act of falling, the unhappy Fergus never knew. Indeed,
+knowledge for him was at an end until matches burnt under his nose
+awakened him to a position of the last humiliation. His throat and chin
+topped a fence-post, the weight of his body was on chin and throat,
+while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> wrists and muscles were lashed at full stretch to the wires on
+either side.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm going to shoot you like a dog," said Stingaree. He drew the
+revolver whose muzzle had pressed into his own neck so short a time
+before. Yet now it was broad daylight, and the sun coming up in the
+bound youth's eyes for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot away!" he croaked, raising the top of his head to speak at all.
+"I gave you leave before we started. Shoot away!"</p>
+
+<p>"At ten paces," said Stingaree, stepping them. "That, I think, is fair."</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly," replied Fergus. "But be kind enough to make this so-called
+man of yours hold his foul tongue till I'm out of earshot of you all."</p>
+
+<p>Huge Howie had muttered little enough for him, but to that little
+Stingaree put an instantaneous stop.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a dog, to be shot like a dog, but too good a dog for you to
+blackguard!" cried he. "Any message, young fellow?"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 328px;"><a name="IMAGE_2" id="IMAGE_2"></a>
+<img src="images/image-2.jpg" width="328" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="caption">&quot;Any message, young fellow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>"Not through you."</p>
+
+<p>"So long, then!"</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot away!"</p>
+
+<p>The long barrel was poised as steadily as field-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>gun on its carriage.
+Fergus kept his blue eyes on the gleaming ring of the muzzle.</p>
+
+<p>The hammer fell, the cartridge cracked, and from the lifted muzzle a
+tiny cloud flowed like a bubble from a pipe. The post quivered under
+Carrick's chin, and a splinter flew up and down before his eyes. But
+that was all.</p>
+
+<p>"Aim longer," said he. "Get it over this shot."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try."</p>
+
+<p>But the same thing happened again.</p>
+
+<p>"Come nearer," sneered Fergus.</p>
+
+<p>And Stingaree strode forward with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to give you six of them. But you're a braver man than I
+thought. And that's the lot."</p>
+
+<p>The bound youth's livid face turned redder than the red dawn.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot me&mdash;shoot!" he shouted, like a lunatic.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shall not. I never meant to&mdash;I did mean you to sit out six&mdash;but
+you're the most gallant little idiot I've ever struck. Besides, you come
+from the old country, like myself!"</p>
+
+<p>And a sigh floated into the keen morning air as he looked his last upon
+the lad through the celebrated monocle.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll shoot myself when I'm free," sobbed Fergus through his
+teeth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, you won't," were Stingaree's last words. "You'll find it's not
+a bit worth while."</p>
+
+<p>And when the mounted police and others from Glenranald discovered the
+trussed youngster, not an hour later, they took the same tone. And one
+and all stopped and stooped to peer at the two bullet-holes in the post,
+and at something underneath them, before cutting poor Fergus down.</p>
+
+<p>Then they propped him up to read with his own eyes the nailed legend
+which first helped Fergus Carrick to live down the indiscretion of his
+letter to Largs, and then did more for him in that Colony than letter
+from Queen Victoria to His Excellency of New South Wales. For it ran:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">"This is the gamest little cock I have ever struck.
+He had me captive once, could have shot me over and
+over again, and all but took me alive. More power to
+him!</span></p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Stingaree.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>"To the Vile Dust"</h2>
+
+
+<p>Vanheimert had been in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so far
+from the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full of
+sand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm which
+already shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks there
+were none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned browner
+and more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket and
+ran for the fence as for his life. He had only left it in order to camp
+where his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundred
+yards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which the
+bushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he was
+groping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collision
+with invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wondering
+where the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise to
+retrace his steps and try again. And while he wondered a fit of coughing
+drove the dust from his mouth like smoke; and even as he coughed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+thickening swirl obliterated his tracks as swiftly as heavy snow.</p>
+
+<p>Speckled eyeballs stood out of a sanded face as Vanheimert saw himself
+adrift and drowning in the dust. He was a huge young fellow, and it was
+a great smooth face, from which the gaping mouth cut a slice from jaw to
+jaw. Terror and rage, and an overpowering passion of self-pity,
+convulsed the coarse features in turn; then, with the grunt of a wounded
+beast, he rallied and plunged to his destruction, deeper and deeper into
+the bush, further and further from the fence.</p>
+
+<p>The trees were few and mostly stunted, but Vanheimert crashed into more
+than one upon his headlong course. The sense was choked out of him
+already; he was fleeing on the wings of the storm; of direction he
+thought no more. He forgot that the run he had been traversing was at
+the best abandoned by man and beast; he forgot the "spell" that he had
+promised himself at the deserted homestead where he had once worked as a
+lad. He might have remembered that the paddock in which he was burying
+himself had always been the largest in the district. It was a ten-mile
+block without subdividing fence or drop of water from end to end. The
+whole station was a howling desert, little likely to be stocked a second
+time by enlight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>ened man. But this was the desert's heart, and into it
+sped Vanheimert, coated yellow to the eyes and lips, the dust-fiend
+himself in visible shape. Now he staggered in his stride, now fell
+headlong to cough and sob in the hollow of his arm. The unfortunate
+young man had the courage of his desperate strait. Many times he arose
+and hurled himself onward with curse or prayer; many times he fell or
+flung himself back to earth. But at length the storm passed over and
+over his spent members; sand gathered by the handful in the folds of his
+clothes; the end was as near as end could be.</p>
+
+<p>It was just then that two riders, who fancied they had heard a voice,
+struck an undoubted trail before it vanished, and followed it to the
+great sprawling body in which the dregs of life pulsed feebly. The thing
+groaned as it was lifted and strapped upon a horse; it gurgled gibberish
+at the taste of raw spirits later in the same hour. It was high noon
+before Vanheimert opened a seeing eye and blinked it in the unveiled
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>He was lying on a blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees.
+The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of
+barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that
+sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a
+natural cir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>cle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the
+sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep
+exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every leaf within
+Vanheimert's vision bore its little load of sand, and the sand was
+clotted as though the dust-storm had ended with the usual shower.
+Vanheimert turned and viewed the sylvan amphitheatre; on its far side
+were two small tents, and a man in a folding chair reading the
+<i>Australasian</i>. He closed the paper on meeting Vanheimert's eyes, went
+to one of the tents, stood a moment looking in, and then came across the
+sunlit circle with his newspaper and the folded chair.</p>
+
+<p>"And how do you feel now?" said he, setting up the chair beside the
+blanket, but still standing as he surveyed the prostrate man, with dark
+eyes drawn together in the shade of a great straw sombrero.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine!" replied Vanheimert, huskily. "But where am I, and who are you
+chaps? Rabbiters?"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, however, he searched for the inevitable strings of rabbit
+skins festooned about the tents, and found them not.</p>
+
+<p>"If you like," replied the other, frowning a little at the immediate
+curiosity of the rescued man.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like," said Vanheimert, staring un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>abashed. "I'm a rabbiter
+myself, and know too much. It ain't no game for abandoned stations, and
+you don't go playin' it in top-boots and spurs. Where's your skins and
+where's your squatter to pay for 'em? Plucky rabbiters, you two!"</p>
+
+<p>And he gazed across the open toward the further tent, which had just
+disgorged a long body and a black beard not wholly unfamiliar to
+Vanheimert. The dark man was a shade darker as he followed the look and
+read its partial recognition; but a grim light came with quick resolve,
+and it was with sardonic deliberation that an eye-glass was screwed into
+one dark eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what should you say that we are?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know?" cried Vanheimert, turning pale; for he had been one of
+the audience at Mrs. Clarkson's concert in Gulland's store, and in
+consecutive moments he had recognized first Howie and now Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"You know well enough!"</p>
+
+<p>And the terrible eye-glass covered him like a pistol.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I can guess," faltered Vanheimert, no small brain working in
+his prodigious skull.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess, then!"</p>
+
+<p>"There are tales about a new chum camping by himself&mdash;that is, just with
+one man&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And what object?"</p>
+
+<p>"To get away from the world, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And where did you hear these tales?"</p>
+
+<p>"All along the road, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The chastened tone, the anxious countenance, the sudden recourse to the
+servile monosyllable, were none of them lost on Stingaree; but he
+himself had once set such a tale abroad, and it might be that the
+present bearer still believed it. The eye-glass looked him through and
+through. Vanheimert bore the inspection like a man, and was soon
+satisfied that his recognition of the outlaw was as yet quite
+unsuspected. He congratulated himself on his presence of mind, and had
+sufficient courage to relish the excitement of a situation of which he
+also perceived the peril.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you have no recollection of how you got here?" at length said
+Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"Not me. I only remember the dust-storm." And Vanheimert shuddered where
+he lay in the sun. "But I'm very grateful to you, sir, for saving my
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"You are, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I cause to be, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I dare say we did bring you round between us, but it was pure
+luck that we ever came across you. And now I should lie quiet if I were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+you. In a few minutes there'll be a pannikin of tea for you, and after
+that you'll feel a different man."</p>
+
+<p>Vanheimert lay quiet enough; there was much to occupy his mind.
+Instinctively he had assumed a part, and he was only less quick to
+embrace the necessity of a strictly consistent performance. He watched
+Stingaree in close conversation with Howie, who was boiling the billy on
+a spirit-lamp between the two tents, but he watched them with an
+admirable simulation of idle unconcern. They were talking about him, of
+course; more than once they glanced in his direction; and each time
+Vanheimert congratulated himself the more heartily on the ready pretence
+to which he was committed. Let them but dream that he knew them, and
+Vanheimert gave himself as short a shrift as he would have granted in
+their place. But they did not dream it, they were off their guard, and
+rather at his mercy than he at theirs. He might prove the immediate
+instrument of their capture&mdash;why not? The thought put Vanheimert in a
+glow; on the blanket where they had laid him, he dwelt on it without a
+qualm; and the same wide mouth watered for the tea which these villains
+were making, and for their blood.</p>
+
+<p>It was Howie who came over with the steam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>ing pannikin, and watched
+Vanheimert as he sipped and smacked his lips, while Stingaree at his
+distance watched them both. The pannikin was accompanied by a tin-plate
+full of cold mutton and a wedge of baking-powder bread, which between
+them prevented the ravening man from observing how closely he was
+himself observed as he assuaged his pangs. There was, however, something
+in the nature of a muttered altercation between the bushrangers when
+Howie was sent back for more of everything. Vanheimert put it down to
+his own demands, and felt that Stingaree was his friend when it was he
+who brought the fresh supplies.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat away," said Stingaree, seating himself and producing pipe and
+tobacco. "It's rough fare, but there's plenty of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't ask you for no more," replied Vanheimert, paving the way for
+his escape.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, you will!" said Stingaree. "You're going to camp with us for
+the next few days, my friend!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why am I?" cried Vanheimert, aghast at the quiet statement, which it
+never occurred to him to gainsay. Stingaree pared a pipeful of tobacco
+and rubbed it fine before troubling to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Because the way out of this takes some find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>ing, and what's the use of
+escaping an unpleasant death one day if you go and die it the next?
+That's one reason," said Stingaree, "but there's another. The other
+reason is that, now you're here, you don't go till I choose."</p>
+
+<p>Blue wreaths of smoke went up with the words, which might have phrased
+either a humorous hospitality or a covert threat. The dispassionate tone
+told nothing. But Vanheimert felt the eye-glass on him, and his hearty
+appetite was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>"That's real kind of you," said he. "I don't feel like running no more
+risks till I'm obliged. My nerves are shook. And if a born back-blocker
+may make so bold, it's a fair old treat to see a new chum camping out
+for the fun of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you I was a new chum?" asked Stingaree, sharply. "Ah! I
+remember," he added, nodding; "you heard of me lower down the road."</p>
+
+<p>Vanheimert grinned from ear to ear.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd have known it without that," said he. "What real bushmen would boil
+their billy on a spirit-lamp when there's wood and to spare for a
+camp-fire on all sides of 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Vanheimert clearly perceived the superiority of smokeless
+spirit-lamp to tell-tale fire for those in hiding; so he chuckled
+consumedly over this thrust, which was taken in such excellent part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> by
+Stingaree as to prove him a victim to the desired illusion. It was the
+cleverest touch that Vanheimert had yet achieved. And he had the wit
+neither to blunt his point by rubbing it in nor to recall attention to
+it by subtle protestation of his pretended persuasion. But once or twice
+before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning
+the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the
+Englishman in the bush learns to expect from the indigenous buffoon.</p>
+
+<p>In the night Vanheimert was less easy. He had to sleep in Howie's tent,
+but it was some hours before he slept at all, for Howie would remain
+outside, and Vanheimert longed to hear him snore. At last the rabbiter
+fell into a doze, and when he awoke the auspicious music filled the
+tent. He listened on one elbow, peering till the darkness turned less
+dense; and there lay Howie across the opening of the tent. Vanheimert
+reached for his thin elastic-sided bushman's boots, and his hands
+trembled as he drew them on. He could now see the form of Howie plainly
+enough as it lay half in the starlight and half in the darkness of the
+tent. He stepped over it without a mistake, and the ignoble strains
+droned on behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The stars seemed unnaturally bright and busy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> as Vanheimert stole into
+their tremulous light. At first he could distinguish nothing earthly;
+then the tents came sharply into focus, and after them the ring of
+impenetrable trees. The trees whispered a chorus, myriads strong, in a
+chromatic scale that sang but faintly of the open country. There were
+palpable miles of wilderness, and none other lodge but this, yet the
+psychological necessity for escape was stronger in Vanheimert than the
+bodily reluctance to leave the insecure security of the bushrangers'
+encampment. He was their prisoner, whatever they might say, and the
+sense of captivity was intolerable; besides, let them but surprise his
+knowledge of their secret, and they would shoot him like a dog. On the
+other hand, beyond the forest and along the beaten track lay fame and a
+fortune in direct reward.</p>
+
+<p>Before departure Vanheimert wished to peep into the other tent, but its
+open end was completely covered in for the night, and prudence forbade
+him to meddle with his hands. He had an even keener desire to steal one
+or other of the horses which he had seen before nightfall tethered in
+the scrub; but here again he lacked enterprise, fancied the saddles must
+be in Stingaree's tent, and shrank from committing himself to an action
+which nothing, in the event of disaster, could ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>plain away. On foot he
+need not put himself in the wrong, even with villains ready to suspect
+that he suspected them.</p>
+
+<p>And on foot he went, indeed on tiptoe till the edge of the trees was
+reached without adventure, and he turned to look his last upon the two
+tents shimmering in the starlight. As he turned again, satisfied that
+the one was still shut and that Howie still lay across the opening of
+the other, a firm hand took Vanheimert by either shoulder; otherwise he
+had leapt into the air; for it was Stingaree, who had stepped from
+behind a bush as from another planet, so suddenly that Vanheimert nearly
+gasped his dreadful name.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't sleep! I couldn't sleep!" he cried out instead, shrinking as
+from a lifted hand, though he was merely being shaken playfully to and
+fro.</p>
+
+<p>"No more could I," said Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"So I was going for a stroll. That was all, I swear, Mr.&mdash;Mr.&mdash;I don't
+know your name!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure?" said Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"My oath! How should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You might have heard it down the road."</p>
+
+<p>"Not me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you heard of me, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Not by name&mdash;my oath!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree peered into the great face in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> the teeth were chattering
+and from which all trace of color had flown.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't eat you for knowing who I am," said he. "Honesty is still a
+wise policy in certain circumstances; but you know best."</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing about you, and care less," retorted Vanheimert,
+sullenly, though the perspiration was welling out of him. "I come for a
+stroll because I couldn't sleep, and I can't see what all this barney's
+about."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree dropped his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"My blessed oath!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then come to my tent, and I'll give you a nobbler that may make you."</p>
+
+<p>The nobbler was poured out of a gallon jar, under Vanheimert's nose, by
+the light of a candle which he held himself. Yet he smelt it furtively
+before trying it with his lips, and denied himself a gulp till he was
+reassured. But soon the empty pannikin was held out for more. And it was
+the starless hour before dawn when Vanheimert tripped over Howie's legs
+and took a contented header into the corner from which he had made his
+stealthy escape.</p>
+
+<p>The tent was tropical when he awoke, but Stingaree was still at his
+breakfast outside in the shade.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> He pointed to a bucket and a piece of
+soap behind the tent, and Vanheimert engaged in obedient ablutions
+before sitting down to his pannikin, his slice of damper, and his
+portion of a tin of sardines.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry there's no meat for you," said Stingaree. "My mate's gone for
+fresh supplies. By the way, did you miss your boots?"</p>
+
+<p>The rabbiter looked at a pair of dilapidated worsted socks and at one
+protruding toe; he was not sure whether he had gone to bed for the
+second time in these or in his boots. Certainly he had missed the latter
+on his second awakening, but had not deemed it expedient to make
+inquiries. And now he merely observed that he wondered where he could
+have left them.</p>
+
+<p>"On your feet," said Stingaree. "My mate has made so bold as to borrow
+them for the day."</p>
+
+<p>"He's welcome to them, I'm sure," said Vanheimert with a sickly smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sure you would say so," rejoined Stingaree. "His own are reduced
+to uppers and half a heel apiece, but he hopes to get them soled in
+Ivanhoe while he waits."</p>
+
+<p>"So he's gone to Ivanhoe, has he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's been gone three hours."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Surely it's a long trip?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; we shall have to make the most of each other till sundown," said
+Stingaree, gazing through his glass upon Vanheimert's perplexity. "If I
+were you I should take my revenge by shaking anything of his that I
+could find for the day."</p>
+
+<p>And with a cavalier nod, to clinch the last word on the subject, the
+bushranger gave himself over to his camp-chair, his pipe, and his
+inexhaustible <i>Australasian</i>. As for Vanheimert, he eventually returned
+to the tent in which he had spent the night; and there he remained a
+good many minutes, though it was now the forenoon, and the heat under
+canvas past endurance. But when at length he emerged, as from a bath,
+Stingaree, seated behind his <i>Australasian</i> in the lee of the other
+tent, took so little notice of him that Vanheimert crept back to have
+one more look at the thing which he had found in the old valise which
+served Howie for a pillow. And the thing was a very workmanlike
+revolver, with a heavy cartridge in each of its six chambers.</p>
+
+<p>Vanheimert handled it with trembling fingers, and packed it afresh in
+the pocket where it least affected his personal contour, its angles
+softened by a big bandanna handkerchief, only to take it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> out yet again
+with a resolution that opened a fresh sluice in every pore. The blanket
+that had been lent to him, and Howie's blanket, both lay at his feet; he
+threw one over either arm, and with the revolver thus effectually
+concealed, but grasped for action with finger on trigger, sallied forth
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree was still seated in the narrowing shade of his own tent.
+Vanheimert was within five paces of him before he looked up so very
+quickly, with such a rapid adjustment of the terrible eye-glass, that
+Vanheimert stood stock-still, and the butt of his hidden weapon turned
+colder than ever in his melting hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what have you got there?" cried Stingaree. "And what's the matter
+with you, man?" he added, as Vanheimert stood shaking in his socks.</p>
+
+<p>"Only his blankets, to camp on," the fellow answered, hoarsely. "You
+advised me to help myself, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right; so I did; but you're as white as the tent&mdash;you tremble
+like a leaf. What's wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"My head," replied Vanheimert, in a whine. "It's going round and round,
+either from what I had in the night, or lying too long in the hot tent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+or one on top of the other. I thought I'd camp for a bit in the shade."</p>
+
+<p>"I should," said Stingaree, and buried himself in his paper with
+undisguised contempt.</p>
+
+<p>Vanheimert came a step nearer. Stingaree did not look up again. The
+revolver was levelled under one trailing blanket. But the trigger was
+never pulled. Vanheimert feared to miss even at arm's length, so palsied
+was his hand, so dim his eye; and when he would have played the man and
+called desperately on the other to surrender, the very tongue clove in
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>He slunk over to the shady margin of surrounding scrub and lay aloof all
+the morning, now fingering the weapon in his pocket, now watching the
+man who never once looked his way. He was a bushranger and an outlaw; he
+deserved to die or to be taken; and Vanheimert's only regret was that he
+had neither taken nor shot him at their last interview. The bloodless
+alternative was to be borne in mind, yet in his heart he well knew that
+the bullet was his one chance with Stingaree. And even with the bullet
+he was horribly uncertain and afraid. But of hesitation on any higher
+ground, of remorse or of reluctance, or the desire to give fair play, he
+had none at all. The man whom he had stupidly spared so far was a
+notorious crim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>inal with a high price upon his head. It weighed not a
+grain with Vanheimert that the criminal happened to have saved his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and eat," shouted Stingaree at last; and Vanheimert trailed the
+blankets over his left arm, his right thrust idly into his pocket, which
+bulged with a red bandanna handkerchief. "Sorry it's sardines again,"
+the bushranger went on, "but we shall make up with a square feed
+to-night if my mate gets back by dark; if he doesn't, we may have to
+tighten our belts till morning. Fortunately, there's plenty to drink.
+Have some whiskey in your tea?"</p>
+
+<p>Vanheimert nodded, and with an eye on the bushranger, who was once more
+stooping over his beloved <i>Australasian</i>, helped himself enormously from
+the gallon jar.</p>
+
+<p>"And now for a siesta," yawned Stingaree, rising and stretching himself
+after the meal.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear, hear!" croaked Vanheimert, his great face flushed, his bloodshot
+eyes on fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall camp on the shady side of my tent."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll do ditto at the other."</p>
+
+<p>"So long, then."</p>
+
+<p>"So long."</p>
+
+<p>"Sweet repose to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Same to you," rasped Vanheimert, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> went off cursing and chuckling in
+his heart by turns.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sweltering afternoon of little air, and that little as hot and
+dry in the nostrils as the atmosphere of a laundry on ironing day.
+Beyond and above the trees a fiery blast blew from the north; but it was
+seldom a wandering puff stooped to flutter the edges of the tents in the
+little hollow among the trees. And into this empty basin poured a
+vertical sun, as if through some giant lens which had burnt a hole in
+the heart of the scrub. Lulled by the faint perpetual murmur of leaf and
+branch, without a sound from bird or beast to break its soothing
+monotone, the two men lay down within a few yards, though out of sight,
+of each other. And for a time all was very still.</p>
+
+<p>Then Vanheimert rose slowly, without a sound, and came on tiptoe to the
+other tent, his right hand in the pocket where the bandanna handkerchief
+had been but was no longer. He came close up to the sunny side of the
+tent and listened vainly for a sound. But Stingaree lay like a log in
+the shade on the far side, his face to the canvas and his straw sombrero
+tilted over it. And so Vanheimert found him, breathing with the placid
+regularity of a sleeping child.</p>
+
+<p>Vanheimert looked about him; only the ring of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> impenetrable trees and
+the deep blue eye of Heaven would see what really happened. But as to
+what exactly was to happen Vanheimert himself was not clear as he drew
+the revolver ready cocked; even he shrank from shooting a sleeping man;
+what he desired and yet feared was a sudden start, a semblance of
+resistance, a swift, justifiable shot. And as his mind's eye measured
+the dead man at his feet, the live man turned slowly over on his back.</p>
+
+<p>It was too much for Vanheimert's nerves. The revolver went off in his
+hands. But it was only a cap that snapped, and another, and another, as
+he stepped back firing desperately. Stingaree sat upright, looking his
+treacherous enemy in the eye, through the glass in which, it seemed, he
+slept. And when the sixth cap snapped as harmlessly as the other five,
+Vanheimert caught the revolver by its barrel to throw or to strike. But
+the raised arm was seized from behind by Howie, who had crept from the
+scrub at the snapping of the first cap; at the same moment Stingaree
+sprang upon him; and in less than a minute Vanheimert lay powerless,
+grinding his teeth, foaming and bleeding at the mouth, and filling the
+air with nameless imprecations.</p>
+
+<p>The bushrangers let him curse; not a word did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> they bandy with him or
+with each other. Their action was silent, swift, concerted, prearranged.
+They lashed their prisoner's wrists together, lashed his elbows to his
+ribs, hobbled his ankles, and tethered him to a tree by the longest and
+the stoutest of their many ropes. The tree was the one under which
+Vanheimert had found himself the day before; in the afternoon it was
+exposed to the full fury of the sun; and in the sun they left him,
+quieter already, but not so quiet as they. It was near sundown when they
+returned to look upon a broken man, crouching in his toils like a beaten
+beast, with undying malice in his swollen eyes. Stingaree sat at his
+prisoner's feet, offered him tobacco without a sneer, and lit up his own
+when the offer was declined with a curse.</p>
+
+<p>"When we came upon you yesterday morning in the storm, one of us was for
+leaving you to die in your tracks," began Stingaree. He was immediately
+interrupted by his mate.</p>
+
+<p>"That was me!" cried Howie, with a savage satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter which of us it was," continued Stingaree; "the other
+talked him over; we put you on one of our horses, and we brought you
+more dead than alive to the place which no other man has seen since we
+took a fancy to it. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> saved your miserable life, I won't say at the
+risk of our own, but at risk enough even if you had not recognized us.
+We were going to see you through, whether you knew us or not; before
+this we should have set you on the road from which you had strayed. I
+thought you must know us by sight, but when you denied it I saw no
+reason to disbelieve you. It only dawned on me by degrees that you were
+lying, though Howie here was sure of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I still couldn't make out your game; if it was funk I could have
+understood it; so I tried to get you to own up in the night. I let you
+see that we didn't mind whether you knew us or not, and yet you
+persisted in your lie. So then I smelt something deeper. But we had gone
+out of our way to save your life. It never struck me that you might go
+out of your way to take ours!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree paused, smoking his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"But it did me!" cried Howie.</p>
+
+<p>"I never meant taking your lives," muttered Vanheimert. "I meant taking
+you&mdash;as you deserved."</p>
+
+<p>"We scarcely deserved it of you; but that is a matter of opinion. As for
+taking us alive, no doubt you would have preferred to do so if it had
+seemed equally safe and easy; you had not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> pluck to run a single
+risk. You were given every chance. I sent Howie into the scrub, took the
+powder out of six cartridges, and put what anybody would have taken for
+a loaded revolver all but into your hands. I sat at your mercy, quite
+looking forward to the sensation of being stuck up for a change. If you
+had stuck me up like a man," said Stingaree, reflectively examining his
+pipe, "you might have lived to tell the tale."</p>
+
+<p>There was an interval of the faint, persistent rustling of branch and
+leaf, varied by the screech of a distant cockatoo and the nearer cry of
+a crow, as the dusk deepened into night as expeditiously as on the
+stage. Vanheimert was not awed by the quiet voice to which he had been
+listening. It lacked the note of violence which he understood; it even
+lulled him into a belief that he would still live to tell the tale. But
+in the dying light he looked up, and in the fierce unrelenting face,
+made the more sinister by its foppish furniture, he read his doom.</p>
+
+<p>"You tried to shoot me in my sleep," said Stingaree, speaking slowly,
+with intense articulation. "That's your gratitude! You will live just
+long enough to wish that you had shot yourself instead!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree rose.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You may as well shoot me now!" cried Vanheimert, with a husky effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot you? I'm not going to <i>shoot</i> you at all; shooting's too good for
+scum like you. But you are to die&mdash;make no mistake about that. And soon;
+but not to-night. That would not be fair on you, for reasons which I
+leave to your imagination. You will lie where you are to-night; and you
+will be watched and fed like your superiors in the condemned cell. The
+only difference is that I can't tell you when it will be. It might be
+to-morrow&mdash;I don't think it will&mdash;but you may number your days on the
+fingers of both hands."</p>
+
+<p>So saying, Stingaree turned on his heel, and was lost to sight in the
+shades of evening before he reached his tent. But Howie remained on duty
+with the condemned man.</p>
+
+<p>As such Vanheimert was treated from the first hour of his captivity. Not
+a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were
+received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and
+supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was
+ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last
+refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a
+tree that it was no longer necessary for him to spend a moment in the
+red eye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> of the sun. He could follow a sufficient shade from dawn to
+dusk. His boots were restored to him; a blanket was permitted him day
+and night; but night and day he was sedulously watched, and neither
+knife nor fork was provided with his meals. His fare was relatively not
+inferior to that of the legally condemned, whose notorious privileges
+and restrictions served the bushrangers for a model.</p>
+
+<p>And Vanheimert clung to the hope of a reprieve with all the sanguine
+tenacity of his ill-starred class, though it did seem with more
+encouragement on the whole. For the days went on, and each of many
+mornings brought its own respite till the next. The welcome announcement
+was invariably made by Howie after a colloquy with his chief, which
+Vanheimert watched with breathless interest for a day or two, but
+thereafter with increasing coolness. They were trying to frighten him;
+they did not mean it, any more than Stingaree had meant to shoot the new
+chum who had the temerity to put a pistol to his head after the affair
+of the Glenranald bank. The case of lucky Fergus, justly celebrated
+throughout the colony, was a great comfort to Vanheimert's mind; he
+could see but little difference between the two; but if his treachery
+was the greater, so also was the ordeal to which he was being subjected.
+For in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> light of a mere ordeal he soon regarded what he was invited
+to consider as his last days on earth, and in the conviction that they
+were not, began suddenly to bear them like a man. This change of front
+produced its fellow in Stingaree, who apologized to Vanheimert for the
+delay, which he vowed he could not help. Vanheimert was a little shaken
+by his manner, though he smiled behind the bushranger's back. And he
+could scarcely believe his ears when, the very next morning, Howie told
+him that his hour was come.</p>
+
+<p>"Rot!" said Vanheimert, with a confident expletive.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all right," said Howie. "But if you don't believe me, I'm sorrier
+for you than I was."</p>
+
+<p>He slouched away, but Vanheimert had no stomach for the tea and damper
+which had been left behind. It was unusual for him to be suffered to
+take a meal unwatched; something unusual was in the air. Stingaree
+emerged from the scrub leading the two horses. Vanheimert began to
+figure the fate that might be in store for him. And the horses, saddled
+and bridled before his eyes, were led over to where he sat.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to shoot me before you go," he cried, "or are you going
+to leave me to die alone?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neither, here," said Stingaree. "We're too fond of the camp."</p>
+
+<p>It was his first brutal speech, but the brutality was too subtle for
+Vanheimert. He was beginning to feel that something dreadful might
+happen to him after all. The pinions were removed from his arms and
+legs, the long rope detached from the tree and made fast to one of
+Stingaree's stirrups instead. And by it Vanheimert was led a good mile
+through the scrub, with Howie at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>A red sun had risen on the camp, but in the scrub it ceased to shine,
+and the first open space was as sunless as the dense bush. Spires of
+sand kept whirling from earth to sky, joining other spinning spires,
+forming a monster balloon of yellow sand, a balloon that swelled until
+it burst, obscuring first the firmament and then the earth. But the mind
+of Vanheimert was so busy with the fate he feared that he did not
+realize he was in another dust-storm until Stingaree, at the end of the
+rope, was swallowed like a tug in a fog. And even then Vanheimert's
+peculiar terror of a dust-storm did not link itself to the fear of
+sudden death which had at last been put into him. But the moment of
+mental enlightenment was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>The rope trailed on the ground as Stingaree loomed large and yellow
+through the storm. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> had dropped his end. Vanheimert glanced over his
+shoulder, and Howie loomed large and yellow behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"You will now perceive the reason for so many days' delay," said
+Stingaree. "I have been waiting for such a dust-storm as the one from
+which we saved you, to be rewarded as you endeavored to reward me. You
+might, perhaps, have preferred me to make shorter work of you, but on
+consideration you will see that this is not only just but generous. The
+chances are perhaps against you, and somewhat in favor of a more
+unpleasant death; but it is quite possible that the storm may pass
+before it finishes you, and that you may then hit the fence before you
+die of thirst, and at the worst we leave you no worse off than we found
+you. And that, I hold, is more than you had any right to expect. So
+long!"</p>
+
+<p>The thickening storm had swallowed man and horse once more. Vanheimert
+looked round. The second man and the second horse had also vanished. And
+his own tracks were being obliterated as fast as footmarks in blinding
+snow. .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>A Bushranger at Bay</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Hon. Guy Kentish was trotting the globe&mdash;an exercise foreign to his
+habit&mdash;when he went on to Australia for a reason racy of his blood. He
+wished to witness a certain game of cricket between the full strength of
+Australia and an English team which included one or two young men of his
+acquaintance. It was no part of his original scheme to see anything of
+the country; one of the Australian cricketers put that idea into his
+head; and it was under inward protest that Mr. Kentish found himself
+smoking his chronic cigar on the Glenranald and Clear Corner coach one
+scorching morning in the month of February. He thought he had never seen
+such a howling desert in his life; and it is to be feared that in his
+heart he applied the same epithet to his two fellow-passengers. The one
+outside was chatting horribly with the driver; the other had tried to
+chaff the Hon. Guy, and had repaired in some disorder to the company of
+the mail-bags inside. Kentish wondered whether these were the types he
+might expect to encounter upon the station to which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> had reluctantly
+accepted an officious introduction. He wished himself out of the absurd
+little two-horse coach, out of an expedition whose absurdity was on a
+larger scale, and back again on the shady side of the two or three
+streets where he lived his normal life. The fare at wayside inns made
+the thought of his club a positive pain; and these pangs were at their
+sharpest when Stingaree cantered out of the scrub on his lily mare, a
+blessed bolt from the blue.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up" without a
+word, but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous
+pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the
+desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The
+inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not that the trio
+were set any better example by their noble ally, who began by smiling at
+the whole affair, and was content to the last in taking an observant
+interest in the bushranger's methods. These were simple and in a sense
+humane; there was no personal robbery at all. The mail-bags were
+sufficient for Stingaree, who on this occasion worked alone, but led a
+pack-horse, to which the driver and the inside passenger were compelled
+to strap the long canvas bags, under his eye-glass and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> his long
+revolver. Few words were spoken from first to last; the Hon. Guy never
+put in his at all; but he watched the outlaw like a lynx, without
+betraying an undue attention, and when all was over he gave a sigh.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 323px;"><a name="IMAGE_3" id="IMAGE_3"></a>
+<img src="images/image-3.jpg" width="323" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="caption">Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of &quot;sticking up&quot;
+without a word.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's Stingaree!" he said, more to himself than to his comrades in
+humiliation; but the bushranger had cantered back into the scrub, and
+his name opened the flood-gates of a profanity which made Kentish wince,
+for all his knowledge of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you never swear at him till he has gone?" he asked when he had a
+chance. The driver leant across the legs of his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless we want a bullet through our skulls," he answered in boorish
+derision; and the man between them laughed harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought he had never been known to shoot?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it, mister. We don't want him to begin on us."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't <i>you</i> give him a bit of <i>your</i> mind?" the man in the middle
+inquired of Kentish. "I never heard you open your gills!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we expected to see some pluck from the old country," added the
+driver, wreaking vengeance with his lash.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kentish produced his cigar-case with an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> insensitive smile, and,
+after a moment's deliberation, handed it for the first time to his
+uncouth companions. "Do you want those mail-bags back?" he asked, quite
+casually, when the three cigars were in blast.</p>
+
+<p>"Want them? Of course I want them; but want must be my boss," said the
+driver, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure," said Kentish. "When does the next coach pass this
+way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Midnight, and I drive it. I turn back when I get to Clear Corner, you
+see."</p>
+
+<p>"Then look out for me about this spot. I'm going to ask you to put me
+down."</p>
+
+<p>"Put you down?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't mind pulling up. I'm not going on at present; but I'll go
+back with you to Glenranald instead, if you'll keep a lookout for me
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively the driver put his foot upon the brake, for the request
+had been made with that quiet authority which this silent passenger had
+suddenly assumed; and yet it seemed to them such a mad demand that his
+companions looked at Kentish as they had not looked before. His face
+bore a close inspection; it was one of those which burn red, and in the
+redness twinkled hazel eyes that toned agreeably with a fair beard and
+fairer mus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>tache. The former he had grown upon his travels; but the
+trail of the West-end tailor, whose shooting-jacket is as distinctive as
+his frock-coat, was upon Guy Kentish from head to heel. As they watched
+him he took an open envelope from his pocket, scribbled a few words on a
+card, put that in, and stuck down the flap.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said he, "is my letter of introduction to the good people at the
+Mazeppa Station higher up. If I don't turn up to-night, see that they
+get it, even if it costs you a bit of this?"</p>
+
+<p>And, putting a sovereign in a startled palm, he jumped to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"But what are you going to do, sir?" cried the driver, in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Recover your mail-bags if I can."</p>
+
+<p>"What? After you've just been stuck up&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. I hope to stick up Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you were armed all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kentish smiled as he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my affair, I imagine; but even so I am not fool enough to tackle
+such a fellow with his own weapons. You leave it to me, and don't be
+anxious. But I must be off if I'm to stalk him before he goes through
+the letters. No, I know what I'm doing, and I shall do better alone.
+Till to-night, then!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And he was in the scrub ere they decided to take him at his madcap word,
+and let his blood be on the chuckle-head of the new-chummiest new chum
+that ever came out after the rain! Was it pluck or all pretence? It was
+rather plucky even to pretend in such proximity to the terrible
+Stingaree; on the whole, the coaching trio were disposed to concede a
+certain amount of unequivocal courage; and the driver, with Kentish's
+sovereign in his pocket, went so far as to declare that duty alone
+nailed him to the box.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the Hon. Guy had skirted the road until he came to double
+horse-tracks striking back into the bush; these he followed with the
+wary stealth of one who had spent his autumns, at least, in the right
+place. They led him through belts of scrub in which he trod like a cat,
+without disturbing an avoidable branch, and over treeless spaces that he
+crossed at a run, bent double; but always, as he followed the trail, his
+shadow fell at one consistent angle, showing how the bushranger rode
+through his natural element as the crow might have flown overhead.</p>
+
+<p>At last Kentish found himself in a sandy gully bristling with pines,
+through which the sunlight dripped like melted gold; and in the fine
+warp and woof of high light and sharp shadow the bush<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>ranger's horses
+stood lashing at the flies with their long tails. The bushranger himself
+was nowhere to be seen. But at last Kentish descried a white-and-brown
+litter on either side of the thickest trunk in sight, from whose further
+side floated intermittent puffs of thin blue smoke. Kentish looked and
+looked again before advancing. But the tall pine threw such a shadow as
+should easily swallow his own. And in another minute he was peeping
+round the hole.</p>
+
+<p>The litter on either side was, of course, the shower of miscellaneous
+postal matter from the mail-bags; and in its midst sat Stingaree against
+the tree, enjoying his pipe and a copy of <i>Punch</i>, of which the wrapper
+lay upon his knees. Kentish peered for torn envelopes and gaping
+packets; there were no more. The bushranger had evidently started with
+<i>Punch</i>, and was still curiously absorbed in its contents. The notorious
+eye-glass dangled against that kindred vanity, the spotless white jacket
+which he affected in summer-time; the brown, attentive face, even as
+Kentish saw it in less than profile, was thus purged of the sinister
+aspect which such an appendage can impart to the most innocent; and a
+somewhat passive amusement was its unmistakable note. Nevertheless, the
+long revolver which had once more done its nefarious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> work still lay
+ready to his hand; indeed, the Hon. Guy could have stooped and whipped
+it up, had he been so minded.</p>
+
+<p>He was absorbed, however, in the absorption of Stingaree; and as he
+peered audaciously over the other's shoulder he put himself in the
+outlaw's place. An old friend would have lurked in every cut, a friend
+whom it might well be a painful pleasure to meet again. There were the
+oval face and the short upper lip of one imperishable type; on the next
+page one of <i>Punch's</i> Fancy Portraits, with lines underneath which set
+Stingaree incongruously humming a stave from <i>H.M.S. Pinafore</i>. Mr.
+Kentish smiled without surprise. The common folk in the omnibus opposite
+were the common folk of an inveterate master; there was matter for a
+homesick sigh in his hint of streaming streets&mdash;and Kentish thought he
+heard one as he held his breath. The page after that detained the reader
+some minutes. The illustrations proclaimed it an article on the new
+Savoy opera, and Stingaree confirmed the impression by humming more
+<i>Pinafore</i> when he came to the end. Kentish left him at it, and,
+creeping away as silently as he had come, described a circle and came
+noisily on the bushranger from the front. The result was that Stingaree
+was not startled into firing, but stopped the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> intruder at due distance
+with his revolver levelled across the open copy of <i>Punch</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard you singing <i>Pinafore</i>," cried Kentish, cheerily. "And I find
+you reading <i>Punch</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you find me?" demanded the bushranger, black with passion.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you wouldn't mind. I am perfectly innocuous&mdash;look!"</p>
+
+<p>And, divesting himself of his shooting-coat, he tossed it across for the
+other's inspection; he wore neither waistcoat nor hip-pocket, and his
+innocence of arms was manifest when he had turned round slowly where he
+stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Now may I not come a little nearer?" asked the Hon. Guy.</p>
+
+<p>"No; keep your distance, and tell me why you have come so far. The
+truth, mind, or you'll be shot!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Kentish. "They were dreadful people on the coach&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Are they waiting for you?" thundered Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"No; they've gone on; and they think me mad."</p>
+
+<p>"So you are."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see; meanwhile I prefer your company to theirs, and mean to
+enjoy it up to the moment of my murder."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For an instant Stingaree seemed on the brink of a smile; then his dark
+face hardened, and he tapped the long barrel in rest between his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"You may call it murder if you like," said he. "That will not prevent me
+from shooting you dead unless you speak the truth. You have come for
+something; what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you already. I was bored and disgusted. That is the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"But not the whole truth," cried Stingaree. "You had some other reason."</p>
+
+<p>Kentish looked down without speaking. He heard the revolver cocked.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, let us have it, or I'll shoot you like the spy I believe you
+are!"</p>
+
+<p>"You may shoot me for telling you," said Kentish, with a quiet laugh and
+shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shall not, unless it turns out that you're ground-bait for the
+police."</p>
+
+<p>"That I am not," said Kentish, growing serious in his turn. "But, since
+you insist, I have come to persuade you to give up every one of these
+letters which you have no earthly right to touch."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met. Stingaree's were the wider open, and in an instant the
+less stern. He dropped his revolver, with a laugh, into its old place at
+his side.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mad or sane," said he, "I shall be under the unpleasant necessity of
+leaving you rather securely tied to one of these trees."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe you will," returned Kentish, without losing a shade of
+his rich coloring. "But in any case I suppose we may have a chat first?
+I give you my word that you are safe from further intrusion to the level
+best of my knowledge and belief. May I sit down instead of standing?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may."</p>
+
+<p>"We are a good many yards apart."</p>
+
+<p>"You may reduce them by half. There."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you," said Kentish, seating himself tailorwise within arm's
+length of Stingaree's spurs. "Now, if you will feel in the breast-pocket
+of my coat you will find a case of very fair cigars&mdash;J.&nbsp;S. Murias&mdash;not
+too strong. I shall be honored if you will help yourself and throw me
+one."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree took the one, and handed the case with no ungraceful
+acknowledgment to its owner; but before Mr. Kentish could return the
+courtesy by proffering his cigar-cutter, the bushranger had produced his
+razor from a pocket of the white jacket, and sliced off the end with
+that.</p>
+
+<p>"So you shave every day in the wilds," remarked the other, handing his
+match-box instead. "And I gave it up on my voyage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I alter myself from time to time," said Stingaree, as he struck a
+light.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a wonderful life!"</p>
+
+<p>But Stingaree lit up without a word, and Kentish had the wit to do the
+same. They smoked in silence for some minutes. A gray ash had grown on
+each cigar before Kentish demanded an opinion of the brand.</p>
+
+<p>"To tell you the truth," said Stingaree, "I have smoked strong trash so
+many years that I can scarcely taste it."</p>
+
+<p>And he peered rather pathetically through his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't the same apply to <i>Punch</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I have always read the papers when I could," said Stingaree, and
+suddenly he was smiling. "That's one reason why I make a specialty of
+sticking up the mail," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kentish was not to be drawn into a second deliverance on the
+bushranging career. "Is it a good number?" he asked, nodding toward the
+copy of <i>Punch</i>. The bushranger picked it up.</p>
+
+<p>"Good enough for me."</p>
+
+<p>"What date?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ninth of December."</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly three months ago. I was in London then," remarked Kentish, in a
+reflective tone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Really?" cried Stingaree, under his breath. His voice was as soft as
+the other's, but there was suppressed interest in his manner. His dark
+eyes were only less alight than the red cigar he took from his teeth as
+he spoke. And he held it like a connoisseur, between finger and thumb,
+for all his ruined palate.</p>
+
+<p>"I was," repeated Kentish. "I didn't sail till the middle of the month."</p>
+
+<p>"To think you were in town till nearly Christmas!" and Stingaree gazed
+enviously. "It must be hard to realize," he added in some haste.</p>
+
+<p>"Other things," replied Kentish, "are harder."</p>
+
+<p>"I gather from the <i>Punch</i> cartoon that the new Law Courts are in use at
+last?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was at the opening."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you may have seen this opera that I have been reading about?"</p>
+
+<p>Kentish asked what it was, although he knew.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Iolanthe.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather! I was there the first night."</p>
+
+<p>"The deuce you were!" cried Stingaree; and for the next quarter of an
+hour this armed scoundrel, the terror of a district as large as England
+and Wales, talked of nothing else to the man whom he was about to bind
+to a tree. Was the new opera equal to its predecessors? Which were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> the
+best numbers? Did <i>Punch</i> do it justice, or was there some jealousy in
+that rival hot-bed of wit and wisdom?</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, Guy Kentish had no ear for music, but he made a clear
+report of the plot, could repeat some of the Lord Chancellor's quips,
+and was in decided disagreement with the captious banter from which he
+was given more than one extract. And in default of one of the new airs
+Stingaree rounded off the subject by dropping once more into&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For he might have been a Rooshian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A French, or Turk, or Prooshian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or, perhaps, I-tal-i-an!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or, perhaps, I-tal-i-an!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in spite of all temptations<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To belong to other nations<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He remains an Englishman!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I understand that might be said of both of us," remarked Kentish,
+looking the outlaw boldly in the eyes. "But from all accounts I should
+have thought you were out here before the days of Gilbert and Sullivan."</p>
+
+<p>"So I was," replied Stingaree, without frown or hesitation. "But you may
+also have heard that I am fond of music&mdash;any I can get. My only
+opportunities, as a rule," the bushranger contin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>ued, smiling
+mischievously at his cigar, "occur on the stations I have occasion to
+visit from time to time. On one a good lady played and sang <i>Pinafore</i>
+and <i>The Pirates of Penzance</i> to me from dewy eve to dawn. I'm bound to
+say I sang some of it at sight myself; and I flatter myself it helped to
+pass an embarrassing night rather pleasantly for all concerned. We had
+all hands on the place for our audience, and when I left I was formally
+presented with both scores; for I had simply called for horses, and
+horses were all I took. Only the other day I had the luck to confiscate
+a musical-box which plays selections from <i>The Pirates</i>. I ought to have
+had it with me in my swag."</p>
+
+<p>So affable and even charming was the quiet voice, so evident the
+appreciation of the last inch of the cigar which had thawed a frozen
+palate, and so conceivable a further softening, that Guy Kentish made
+bolder than before. He knew what he meant to do; he knew how he meant to
+do it. And yet it seemed just possible there might be a gentler way.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't always take things, I believe?" he hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean after sticking up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Generally, I fear; it's the whole meaning of the act," confessed
+Stingaree, still the dandy in tone and phrase. "But there have been
+exceptions."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly!" quoth Kentish. "And there's going to be another this
+afternoon!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree hurled the stump of his cigar into the scrub, and without a
+word the villain was born again, with his hard eyes, his harder mouth,
+his sinister scowl, his crag of a chin.</p>
+
+<p>"So you come back to that," he cried, harshly. "I thought you had more
+sense; you will make me tie you up before your time."</p>
+
+<p>"You may do exactly what you like," retorted Kentish, a galling scorn in
+his unaltered voice. "Only, before you do it, you may as well know who I
+am."</p>
+
+<p>"My good sir, do you suppose I care who you are?" asked Stingaree, with
+an angry laugh: and his anger is the rarest thing in all his annals.</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure you don't," responded Kentish. "But you may as well
+know my name, even though you never heard it before." And he gave it
+with a touch of triumph, not for one moment to be confounded with a
+natural pride.</p>
+
+<p>The bushranger stared him steadily in the eyes; his hand had dropped
+once more upon the butt of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> his revolver. "No; I never did hear it
+before," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not surprised," replied the other. "I was a new member when you
+were turned out of the club." Stingaree's hand closed: his eyes were
+terrible. "And yet," continued Kentish, "the moment I saw you at close
+quarters in the road I recognized you as&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stingaree!" cried the bushranger, on a rich and vibrant note. "Let the
+other name pass your lips&mdash;even here&mdash;and it's the last word that ever
+will!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Mr. Kentish, with his unaffected shrug. "But, you see,
+I know all about you."</p>
+
+<p>"You're the only man who does, in all Australia!" exclaimed the outlaw,
+hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"At present! I sha'n't be the only man long."</p>
+
+<p>"You will," said Stingaree through teeth and mustache; and he leaned
+over, revolver in hand. "You'll be the only man ever, because, instead
+of tying you up, I'm going to shoot you."</p>
+
+<p>Kentish threw up his head in sharp contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" said he. "Sitting?"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree sprang to his feet in a fury. "No; I have a brace!" he cried,
+catching the pack-horse. "You shall have the other, if it makes you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+happy; but you'll be a dead man all the same. I can handle these things,
+and I shall shoot to kill!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's all up with you," said Kentish, rising slowly in his turn.</p>
+
+<p>"All up with me? What the devil do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless I am at a certain place by a certain time, with or without these
+letters that are not yours, another letter will be opened."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree's stare gradually changed into a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"A little vague," said he, "don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"It shall be as plain as you please. The letter I mean was scribbled on
+the coach before I got down. It will only be opened if I don't return.
+It contains the name you can't bear to hear!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. The afternoon sun was sinking with southern
+precipitancy, and Kentish had got his back to it by cool intent. He
+studied the play of suppressed mortification and strenuous philosophy in
+the swarthy face warmed by the reddening light; and admired the arduous
+triumph of judgment over instinct, even as a certain admiration dawned
+through the monocle which insensibly focussed his attention.</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose," said Stingaree&mdash;"suppose you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> return empty as you came?"
+A contemptuous kick sent a pack of letters spinning.</p>
+
+<p>"I should feel under no obligation to keep your secret."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think I would trust you to keep it otherwise?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I gave you my word," said Kentish, "I know you would."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree made no immediate answer; but he gazed in the sun-flayed face
+without suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't give me your word," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I would."</p>
+
+<p>"That you would die without letting that name pass your lips?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless I die delirious&mdash;with all my heart. I have as much respect for
+it as you."</p>
+
+<p>"As much!" echoed the bushranger, in a strange blend of bitterness and
+obligation. "But how could you explain the bags? How could you have
+taken them from me?"</p>
+
+<p>Kentish shrugged once more.</p>
+
+<p>"You left them&mdash;I found them. Or you were sleeping, but I was unarmed."</p>
+
+<p>"You would lie like that&mdash;to save my name?"</p>
+
+<p>"And a man whom I remember perfectly .&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree heard no more; he was down on his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> knees, collecting the
+letters into heaps and shovelling them into the bags. Even the copy of
+<i>Punch</i> and the loose wrapper went in with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't carry them," said he, when none remained outside. "I'll take
+them for you and dump them on the track."</p>
+
+<p>"I have to pass the time till midnight. I can manage them in two
+journeys."</p>
+
+<p>But Stingaree insisted, and presently stood ready to mount his mare.</p>
+
+<p>"You give me your word, Kentish?"</p>
+
+<p>"My word of honor."</p>
+
+<p>"It is something to have one to give! I shall not come back this way; we
+shall have the Clear Corner police on our tracks by moonlight, and the
+more they have to choose from the better. So I must go. You have given
+me your word; you wouldn't care to give me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But his hand went out a little as he spoke, and Kentish's met it
+seven-eights of the way.</p>
+
+<p>"Give this up, man! It's a poor game, when all's said; do give it up!"
+urged the man of the world with the warmth of a lad. "Come back to
+England and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the hand he had detained was wrenched from his, and, in the pink
+sunset sifted through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> the pines, Stingaree vaulted into his saddle with
+an oath.</p>
+
+<p>"With a price on my skin!" he cried, and galloped from the gully with a
+bitter laugh.</p>
+
+<p>And in the moonlight sure enough came bobbing horsemen, with fluttering
+pugarees and short tunics with silver buttons; but they saw nothing of
+the missing passenger, who had carried the bags some distance down the
+road, and had found them quite a comfortable couch in a certain
+box-clump commanding a sufficient view of the road. Nevertheless, when
+the little coach came swaying on its leathern springs, its scarlet
+enamel stained black as ink in the moonshine, he was on the spot to stop
+it with uplifted arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't shoot!" he cried. "I'm the passenger you put down this
+afternoon." And the driver nearly tumbled from his perch.</p>
+
+<p>"What about my mail-bags?" he recovered himself enough to ask: for it
+was perfectly plain that the pretentiously intrepid passenger had been
+skulking all day in the scrub, scared by the terrors of the road.</p>
+
+<p>"They're in that clump," replied Mr. Kentish. "And you can get them
+yourself, or send someone else for them, for I have carried them far
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>"That be blowed for a yarn!" cried the driver,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> forgetting his benefits
+in the virtuous indignation of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wonder at your thinking it one," returned the other, mildly;
+"for I never had such absolute luck in all my life!"</p>
+
+<p>And he went on to amplify his first lie like a man.</p>
+
+<p>But when the bags were really back in the coach, piled roof-high on
+those of the downward mail, then it was worse fun for Guy Kentish
+outside than even he had anticipated. Question followed question,
+compliment capped compliment, and a certain unsteady undercurrent of
+incredulity by no means lessened his embarrassment. Had he but told the
+truth, he felt he could have borne the praise, and indeed enjoyed it,
+for he had done far better than anybody was likely to suppose, and
+already it was irritating to have to keep that circumstance a secret.
+Yet one thing he was able to say from his soul before the coach drew up
+at the next stage.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have a spell here," the driver had suggested, "and let me
+pick you up again on my way back. You'd soon lay hands on the bird
+himself, if you can put salt on his tail as you've done. And no one else
+can&mdash;we want a few more chums like you."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the new chum's tone bore its own significance.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean," cried the driver, "to go and tell me you'll hurry home
+after this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only by the first steamer!" said Guy Kentish.</p>
+
+<p>And he kept that word as well.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>The Taking of Stingaree</h2>
+
+
+<p>Stingaree had crossed the Murray, and all Victoria was agog with the
+news. It was not his first descent upon that Colony, nor likely to be
+his last, unless Sub-Inspector Kilbride and his mounted myrmidons did
+much better than they had done before. There is no stimulus, however,
+like a trembling reputation. Within four-and-twenty hours Kilbride
+himself was on the track of the invader, whose heels he had never seen,
+much less his face. And he rode alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was not merely his reputation that was at stake, though nothing could
+restore that more effectually than the single-handed capture of so
+notorious a desperado as Stingaree. The dashing officer was not
+unnaturally actuated by the sum of three hundred pounds now set upon the
+outlaw's person, alive or dead. That would be a little windfall for one
+man, but not much to divide among five or six; on the other hand, and
+with all his faults, Sub-Inspector Kilbride had courage enough to
+furnish forth a squadron. He was a black-bearded, high-cheeked
+Irish-Australian, keen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> and over-eager to a disease, restless,
+irascible, but full of the fire and dash that make as dangerous an enemy
+as another good fighter need desire. And as a fine fighter in an
+infamous cause, Stingaree had his admirers even in Victoria, where the
+old tale of popular sympathy with a picturesque rascal was responsible
+for not the least of the Sub-Inspector's difficulties. But even this
+struck Kilbride as yet another of those obstacles which were more easily
+surmounted alone than at the head of a talkative squad; and with that
+conviction he pushed his thoroughbred on and on through a whole cool
+night and three parts of an Australian summer's day. Imagine, then, his
+disgust at the apparition of a mounted trooper galloping to meet him in
+the middle of the afternoon, and within a few miles of a former
+hiding-place of the bushranger, where the senior officer had strong
+hopes of finding and surprising him now.</p>
+
+<p>"Where the devil do you come from?" cried Kilbride, as the other rode
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"Jumping Creek," was the crisp reply. "Stationed there."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why don't you stop there and do your duty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stingaree!" said the laconic trooper.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Do you think you're after him too?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am after him."</p>
+
+<p>"So am I."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're going in the wrong direction."</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride flushed a warm brown from beard to helmet.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who you're speaking to?" cried he. "I'm Sub-Inspector
+Kilbride, and this business is my business, and no other man's in this
+Colony. You go back to your barracks, sir! I'm not going to have every
+damned fool in the force charging about the country on his own account."</p>
+
+<p>The trooper was a dark, smart, dapper young fellow, of a type not easily
+browbeaten or subdued. And discipline is not the strong point of forces
+so irregular as the mounted police of a crescent colony. But nothing
+could have been more admirable than the manner in which this rebuke was
+received.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir, if you wish it; but I can assure you that you are off
+the track of Stingaree."</p>
+
+<p>"How do <i>you</i> know?" asked Kilbride, rudely; but he was beginning to
+look less black.</p>
+
+<p>"I happen to know the place. You would have some difficulty in finding
+it if you never were there before. I only stumbled across it by accident
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Lately?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One day last winter when I was out looking for some horses."</p>
+
+<p>"And you kept it to yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>The trooper hung his head. "I knew we should have him across the river
+again," he said. "It was only a question of time; and&mdash;well, sir, you
+can understand!"</p>
+
+<p>"You were keen on taking him yourself, were you?"</p>
+
+<p>"As keen as you are, Mr. Kilbride!" owned the younger man, raising bold
+eyes, and looking his superior fairly and squarely in the face.</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride returned the stare, and what he saw unsettled him. The other
+was wiry, trim, eminently alert; he had the masterful mouth and the
+dare-devil eye, and his horse seemed a part of himself. A more promising
+comrade at hot work was not to be desired: and the work would be hot if
+Stingaree had half a chance. After all, it was better for two to succeed
+than for one to fail. "Half the money and a whole skin!" said Kilbride
+to himself, and rapped out his decision with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>The trooper's eyes lit with reckless mirth, and a soft cheer came from
+under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"By the bye, what's your name," said Kilbride, "before we start?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Bowen&mdash;Jack Bowen."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I know all about you! Why on earth didn't you tell me before? It
+was you who took that black fellow who murdered the shepherd on Woolshed
+Creek, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The admission was made with due modesty.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you're the very man for me!" Kilbride cried. "You show the way,
+Jack, and I'll make the going."</p>
+
+<p>And off they went together at a canter, the slanting sun striking fire
+from their buttons and accoutrements, and lighting their sunburnt faces
+as it lit the red stems and the white that raced past them on either
+side. For a little they followed the path which Kilbride had taken on
+his way thither; then the trooper plunged into the thick bush on the
+left, and the game became follow-my-leader, in and out, out and in,
+through a maze of red stems and of white, where the pungent eucalyptus
+scent hung heavy as the sage-green, perpendicular leaves themselves: and
+so onward until the Sub-Inspector called a halt.</p>
+
+<p>"How far is it now, Bowen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two or three miles, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Good! It'll be light for another hour and a half. We'd better give the
+mokes a breather while we can. And there'd be no harm in two draws."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I was just thinking the same thing, sir."</p>
+
+<p>So their reins dangled while they cut up a pipeful of apparent
+shoe-leather apiece: and presently the dull blue smoke was curling and
+circling against the dull green foliage, producing subtle half-tint
+harmonies and momentary arabesques as the horses ambled neck and neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Native of this Colony?" puffed Kilbride.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no&mdash;old country originally&mdash;but I've been out some years."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right so long as you're not a New South Welshman," said
+Kilbride, with a chuckle. "I'll be shot if I wouldn't almost have turned
+you back if you had been!"</p>
+
+<p>"Victoria is to have all the credit, is she, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow they sha'n't have any on the other side, or I'll know the
+reason!" the Victorian swore. "I&mdash;I&mdash;by Jove, I'd as lief lose my man
+again as let them have a hand in taking him!"</p>
+
+<p>"But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Do you live so near the border, and can you ask? Did you never
+hear a Sydney-side drover blowing about his blooming Colony? Haven't you
+heard of Sydney Harbor till you're sick? And then their papers!" cried
+Kilbride, with columns in his tone. "But I'll have the last laugh yet!
+I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> swore I would, and I will! I swore I'd take Stingaree&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"So I heard."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they put it in their infernal papers! But it was true&mdash;take him I
+will!"</p>
+
+<p>"Or die in the attempt, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Or die and be damned to me!"</p>
+
+<p>All the bitterness of previous failure, indeed of notorious and
+much-criticized defeat, was in the Sub-Inspector's tone; that of his
+subordinate, though light as air, had a touch of insolence which an
+outsider could not have failed&mdash;but Kilbride was too excited&mdash;to detect.
+The outsider might possibly have foreseen a rivalry which no longer
+entered Kilbride's hot head.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the country was changing even with their now leisurely
+advance. The timbered flats in the region of the river had merged into a
+gully which was rapidly developing into a gorge, with new luxuriant
+growths which added greatly to the density of the forest, suggesting its
+very heart. The almost neutral eucalyptian tint was splashed with the
+gay hues of many parrots, as though the gum-trees had burst into flower.
+The noise of running water stole gradually through the murmur of leaves.
+And suddenly an object in the grass struck the sight like a lantern
+flashed at dead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> night: it proved to be an empty sardine tin pricked
+by a stray lance from the slanting sun.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be near," whispered Kilbride.</p>
+
+<p>"We are there! You hear the creek? He has a gunyah there&mdash;that's all.
+Shall we rush it on horseback or creep up on foot?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know the lie of the land, Bowen; which do you recommend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rushing it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then here goes."</p>
+
+<p>In a few seconds they had leaped their horses into a tiny clearing on
+the banks of a creek as relatively minute. And the gunyah&mdash;a mere funnel
+of boughs and leaves, in which a man could lie at full length, but only
+sit upright at the funnel's mouth&mdash;seemed as empty as the space on every
+hand. The only other sign of Stingaree was a hank of rope flung
+carelessly across the gunyah roof.</p>
+
+<p>"He may be watching us from among the trees," muttered Kilbride, looking
+sharply about him. Bowen screwed up his eyes and followed suit.</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly think it, Mr. Kilbride."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's possible, and here we sit for him to pot us! Let's dismount,
+whether or no."</p>
+
+<p>They slid to the ground. The trooper found himself at the mouth of the
+gunyah.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What if he were in there after all!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't," said Kilbride, stepping in front and stooping quickly. "But
+you might creep in, Jack, and see if he's left any sign of life behind
+him."</p>
+
+<p>The men were standing between the horses, their revolvers cocked.
+Bowen's answer was to hand his weapon over to Kilbride and to creep into
+the gunyah on his hands and knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's something or other," his voice cried thickly from within. "It's
+half buried. Wait a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"As sharp as you can!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right; but it's a box, and jolly heavy!"</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride peered nervously to right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell
+upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box
+in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though they
+had violated a grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Kick it open!" exclaimed Kilbride, excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no need for that; the box was not even locked; and the
+lifted lid revealed an inner one of glass, protecting a brass cylinder
+with steel bristles in uneven growth, and a long line of lilliputian
+hammers.</p>
+
+<p>"A musical-box!" said the staggered Sub-Inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, sir. I remember hearing that he'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> collared one on one of
+the stations he stuck up last time he was down here. It must have lain
+in the ground ever since. And it only shows how hard you must have
+pressed him, Mr. Kilbride!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I headed him back across the Murray&mdash;I soon had him out o' this!"
+rejoined the other in grim bravado. "Anything else in the gunyah?"</p>
+
+<p>"All he took that trip, I fancy, if we dig a bit. You never gave him
+time to roll his swag!"</p>
+
+<p>"I must have a look," said Kilbride, his excitement fed by his reviving
+vanity.</p>
+
+<p>The other questioned whether it were worth while. This settled the
+Sub-Inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"There may be something to show where he's gone," that casuist
+suggested, "for I don't believe he's anywhere here."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I hold the shooters, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks; and keep your eyes open, just in case. But it's my opinion that
+the bird's flown somewhere else, and it's for us to find out where."</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride then crept into the gunyah upon his hands and knees, and found
+it less dark than he had supposed, the light filtering freely through
+the leaves and branches. At the inner extremity he found a mildewed
+blanket, and the place where the musical-box had evidently lain a long
+time;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> but there, though he delved to the elbows in the loosened earth,
+his discoveries ended. Puzzled and annoyed, Kilbride was on the verge of
+cursing his subordinate, when all at once he was given fresh cause. The
+musical-box had burst into selections from <i>The Pirates of Penzance</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"What the deuce are you at?" shouted the irate officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Only seeing how it goes."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop it at once, you fool! He may hear it!"</p>
+
+<p>"You said the bird had flown."</p>
+
+<p>"You dare to argue with me? By thunder, you shall see!"</p>
+
+<p>But it was Sub-Inspector Kilbride who saw most. Backing precipitately
+out of the gunyah, he turned round before rising upright&mdash;and remained
+upon his knees after all. He was covered by two revolvers&mdash;one of them
+his own&mdash;and the face behind the barrels was the one with which the last
+hour had familiarized Kilbride. The only difference was the single
+eye-glass in the right eye. And the strains of the musical-box&mdash;so thin
+and tinkling in the open air&mdash;filled the pause.</p>
+
+<p>"What in blazes are you playing at?" laughed the luckless officer,
+feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was
+entering his soul by inches.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Rise another inch without my leave and you may be in blazes to see!"</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Bowen, what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that Stingaree happens to be at home after all, Mr. Kilbride."</p>
+
+<p>The victim's grin was no longer forced; the situation made for laughter,
+even if the laughter were hysterical; and for an instant it was given
+even to Kilbride to see the cruel humor of it. Then he realized all it
+meant to him&mdash;certain ruin or a sudden death&mdash;and the drops stood thick
+upon his skin.</p>
+
+<p>"What of Bowen?" he at length asked hoarsely. The idea of another victim
+came as some slight alleviation of his own grotesque case.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't kill him," Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said Kilbride. It was something that two of them should live to
+share the shame.</p>
+
+<p>"But wing him I did," added the bushranger. "I couldn't help myself. The
+beggar put a bullet through my hat; he did well only to get one back in
+the leg."</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride longed to be winged and wounded in his turn, since blood alone
+could lessen his disgrace. On cooler reflection, however, it was
+obviously wiser to feign a surrender more abject than it might finally
+prove to have been.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Kilbride, "you have the whip-hand over me this time, and I
+give you best. How long are you going to keep me on my knees?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can get up when you like," replied Stingaree, "if you promise not
+to play the fool. So you were really going to take me this time, were
+you? I have really no desire to rub it in, but if I were you I should
+have kept that to myself until I'd done it. And you wanted to have me
+all to yourself? Well, you couldn't pay me a higher compliment, but I'm
+going to pay you a high one in return. You really did make me run for it
+last time, and leave all sorts of things behind. So this time I mean to
+take them with me and leave you here instead. Nevertheless, you're the
+only Victorian trap I have any respect for, Mr. Kilbride, or I shouldn't
+have gone to all this trouble to get you here."</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride did not blanch, but he heard his apparent doom with a
+glittering eye, and was deaf for a little to <i>The Pirates of Penzance</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'm not going to harm a good man like you," continued Stingaree,
+"unless you make me. Your friend Bowen made me, but I don't promise to
+fire low every time, mark you! There's another good man on the other
+side&mdash;Cairns by name&mdash;you know him, do you? He'll kick up his heels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+when he hears of this; but they do no better in New South Wales, so
+don't you let that worry you. To think you held both shooters at one
+stage of the game! I trusted you, and so you trusted me; if only you had
+known, eh? Hear that tune, and know what it is? It's in your honor, Mr.
+Kilbride."</p>
+
+<p>And Stingaree hummed the policemen's chorus <i>sotto voce</i>; but before the
+end, with a swift remorse, induced by the dignity of Kilbride's bearing
+in humiliating disaster, he swooped upon the insolent instrument and
+stopped its tinkle by touching the lever with one revolver-barrel while
+sedulously covering the Sub-Inspector with the other. The sudden
+cessation of the toy music, bringing back into undue prominence all the
+little bush noises which had filled the air before, brought home to
+Kilbride a position which he had subconsciously associated with those
+malevolent strains as something theatrical and unreal. He had known in
+his heart that it was real, without grasping the reality until now. He
+flung up his fists in sudden entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>"Put a bullet through me," he cried, "if you're a man!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree shook a decisive head.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I can help it," said he. "But I fear I shall have to tie you
+up."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's slow death!"</p>
+
+<p>"It never has been yet, but you must take your chance. Get me that rope
+that's slung over the gunyah. It's got to be done."</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride obeyed with apparent apathy; but his heart was inflamed with a
+sudden and infernal glow. Yes, it had never ended in death in any case
+that he could recall of this time-honored trick of all the bushrangers;
+on the contrary, sooner or later, most victims had contrived to release
+themselves. Well, one victim was going to complete his release by
+hanging himself by the same rope to the same tree! Meanwhile he
+confronted his captor grimly, the coil in both hands.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a loop at one end," said Stingaree. "Stick your foot through
+it&mdash;either foot you like."</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride obeyed, wondering whether his head would go through when his
+turn came.</p>
+
+<p>"Now chuck me the other end."</p>
+
+<p>It fell in coils at the bushranger's feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Now stand up against that blue gum," he continued, pointing at the tree
+with Kilbride's revolver, his own being back at his hip. "And stand
+still like a sensible chap!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree then walked round and round the tree, paying out the long
+rope, yet keeping it taut, until<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> it wound round tree and man from the
+latter's ankles to his armpits. Instinctively Kilbride had kept his arms
+free to the last, but they were no use to him in his suit of hemp, and
+one after the other his wrists were pinned and handcuffed behind the
+tree. The cold steel came as a shock. The captive had counted on
+loosening the knots by degrees, beginning with those about his hands.
+But there was no loosening steel gyves like these; he knew the feel of
+them too well; they were Kilbride's own, that he had brought with him
+for Stingaree. "Found 'em in your saddle-bags while you were in my
+gunyah," explained the bushranger, stepping round to survey his
+handiwork. "Sorry to scar the kid&mdash;so to speak! But you see you were my
+most dangerous enemy on this side of the Murray!"</p>
+
+<p>The enemy did not look very dangerous as he stood in the dusk, in the
+heart of that forest, lashed to that tree, with his finger-tips not
+quite meeting behind it, and the blood already on his wrists.</p>
+
+<p>"And now?" he whispered, hoarse already, his lips cracking, and his
+throat parched.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall give you a drink before I go."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't take one from you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall make you, if I have to be a bigger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> brute than ever. You must
+live to spin this yarn!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree smiled to himself as he produced pipe and tobacco; but it was
+not his sinister smile; it was rather that of the victor who salutes the
+vanquished in his heart. Meanwhile a more striking and a more subtle
+change had come over the face of Kilbride. It was not joy, but it was
+quite a new grimness, and in his own preoccupation the bushranger did
+not notice it at all. He sauntered nearer with his knife and his
+tobacco-plug, and there was some compassion in his pensive stare.</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer up, man!" said he. "There's no disgrace in coming out second best
+to me. You may smile. You'll find it's generally admitted in New South
+Wales. And after all, you needn't tell little crooked Cairns how it
+happened. So that stops your smile! But he's the best man left on my
+tracks, and I shouldn't be surprised if he's the first to find you."</p>
+
+<p>"No more should I!" said a harsh voice behind the bushranger. "Hands up
+and empty, Stingaree, or you're the next dead man in this little
+Colony!"</p>
+
+<p>Quick as thought Stingaree stepped in front of the tied Victorian. But
+his hands were up, and his eye-glass dangling on its string.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't catch me kill two birds," rasped the newcomer's voice,
+"though I'm not sure which of you would be least loss!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree stood aside once more, and waved his hands without lowering
+them, bowing from his captor to his captive as he did so.</p>
+
+<p>"Superintendent Cairns, of New South Wales&mdash;Inspector Kilbride, of
+Victoria," said he. "You two men will be glad to know each other."</p>
+
+<p>The New South Welshman drawled out a dry expression of his own
+satisfaction. His was a strange and striking personality. Dark as a
+mulatto, and round-shouldered to the extent of some distinct deformity,
+he carried his eyes high under the lids, and shot his piercing glance
+from under the penthouse of a beetling brow; a lipless mouth was pursed
+in such a fashion as to shorten the upper lip and exaggerate an already
+powerful chin; and this stooping and intent carriage was no less
+suggestive of the human sleuth-hound than were the veiled vigilance and
+dogged determination of the lowered face. Such was the man who had
+succeeded where Kilbride had failed&mdash;succeeded at the most humiliating
+moment of that most ignominious failure&mdash;and who came unwarrantably from
+the wrong side of the Murray. The Victorian stood in his bonds and
+favored his rival with such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> a glare as he had not levelled at Stingaree
+himself. But not a syllable did Kilbride vouchsafe. And the
+Superintendent was fully occupied with his prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"'Little crooked Cairns,' am I? There are those that look a jolly sight
+smaller, and'll have a worse hump than mine for the rest of their born
+days! Come nearer and turn your back."</p>
+
+<p>And the revolver was withdrawn from its carrier on the stolen
+constabulary belt. The bushranger was then searched for other weapons;
+then marched into the bush at the pistol's point, and brought back
+handcuffed to the Superintendent's bridle.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way you'll come marching home, my boy; and one of us on
+horseback each side; don't trust <i>you</i> in a saddle on a dark night!"</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it was nearly dark already, and in the nebulous middle-distance
+a laughing jackass was indulging in his evening peal. Cairns jerked his
+head in the direction of the unearthly cackle. "Lots of 'em down here in
+Vic, I believe," said he, and at length turned his attention to the
+bound man. "You see, I wanted to land him alive and kicking without
+spilling blood," he continued, opening his knife. "That was why I had to
+let him tie you up."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You <i>let</i> him?" thundered the Victorian, breaking his silence with a
+bellow. It was as though the man with the knife had cut through the rope
+into the bound man's body.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand still," said he, "or I may hurt you. I had to let him, my good
+fellow, or we'd have been dropping each other like bullocks. As it is,
+not a scratch between us, though I found young Bowen in a pretty bad
+way. Our friend had stuck up Jumping Creek barracks in the small hours,
+put a bullet through Bowen's leg, and come away in his uniform. Pretty
+tall, that, eh? I shouldn't wonder if you'd swing him for it alone, down
+here in Vic; no doubt you've got to be more severe in a young Colony.
+Well, I tracked my gentleman to the barracks, and I found Bowen in his
+blood, sent my trooper for a doctor, and got on <i>your</i> tracks before
+they were half an hour old. I came up with you just as he'd stuck you
+up. He had one in each hand. It wasn't quite good enough at the moment."</p>
+
+<p>The knife shore through the rope for the last time, and it lay in short
+ends all round the tree.</p>
+
+<p>"Now my hands," cried Kilbride fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon?" said the satirical Superintendent.</p>
+
+<p>"My hands, I tell you!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's a little word they teach 'em to say at our State Schools.
+Perhaps you never heard it down in Vic?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a silly fool," said Kilbride, wearily. "You haven't been
+through what I have!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's true," said Cairns. "Still, you might be decently civil to the
+man that gets you out of a mess."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the handcuffs were immediately removed; and that instant,
+with the curtest thanks, Sub-Inspector Kilbride sprang forward with such
+vigorous intent that the other detained him forcibly by one of his stiff
+and aching arms.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you after now, Kilbride?"</p>
+
+<p>"My prisoner!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your what?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>My</i> prisoner," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I like that&mdash;and you his!"</p>
+
+<p>Kilbride burst into a voluble defence of his position.</p>
+
+<p>"What right have you on this side of the Murray, you Sydney-sider? None
+at all, except as a passenger. You can't lay finger on man, woman, or
+child in this Colony, and, by God, you sha'n't! Nor yet upon the three
+hundred there's on his head; and the sons of convicts down in Sydney can
+put <i>that</i> in their pipe and smoke it!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For all his cool and ready insolence, the misshapen Superintendent from
+the other side stood dazed and bewildered by this volcanic outpouring.
+Then his dark face flushed darker, and with a snarl he clinched his
+fists. The Victorian, however, had turned on his heel, and now his
+liberated hands flew skyward, as though the bushranger's revolver
+covered him yet again.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no such weapon discernible through the shade; no New South
+Welshman's horse; and neither sight, sound, wraith, nor echo of
+Stingaree, the outlawed bushranger, the terror and the despair of the
+Sister Colonies!</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it might be done when I saw how you fixed him," said Kilbride
+cheerfully. "Those beggars can ride lying down or standing up!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you saw him clear!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll settle that with you when I've caught him."</p>
+
+<p>"You catch him, you gum-sucker, when you as good as let him go!"</p>
+
+<p>And a volley of further and far more trenchant abuse was discharged by
+Superintendent Cairns, of the New South Wales Police. But Kilbride was
+already in the saddle; a covert outward kick with his spurred heel, and
+the third horse went cantering riderless into the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't go far," sang the Sub-Inspector,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> "and he'll take you safe
+back to barracks if you give him his head. It's easy to get bushed in
+this country&mdash;for new chums from penal settlements!"</p>
+
+<p>As the Victorian galloped into the darkness, and the New South Welshman
+dashed wildly after the third horse, the laughing jackass in the
+invisible middle-distance gave his last grotesque guffaw at departed
+day. And the laughing jackass is a Victorian bird.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>The Honor of the Road</h2>
+
+
+<p>Sergeant Cameron was undressing for bed when he first heard the voices
+through the weather-board walls; in less than a minute there was a knock
+at his door.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's Mr. Hardcastle from Rosanna, sir. He says he must see you at
+once."</p>
+
+<p>"The deuce he does! What about?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says he'll only tell you; but he's ridden over in three hours, and
+he looks like the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Give him some whiskey, Tyler, and tell him I'll be down in two ticks."</p>
+
+<p>So saying, the gray-bearded sergeant of the New South Wales Mounted
+Police tucked his night-gown into his cord breeches, slipped into his
+tunic, and hastened to the parlor which served as court-room on
+occasion, buttoning as he went. Mr. Hardcastle had a glass to his lips
+as the sergeant entered. He was a very fine man of forty, and his
+massive frame was crowned with a countenance as handsome as it was open
+and bold; but at a glance it was plain that he was both shaken and
+exhausted, and in no mood to hide either his fatigue or his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> distress.
+Sergeant Cameron sat down on the other side of the oval table with the
+faded cloth; the younger constable had left the room when Hardcastle
+called him back.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go, Tyler," said he. "You may as well both hear what I've got to
+say. It's&mdash;it's Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>The name was echoed in incredulous undertones.</p>
+
+<p>"But he's down in Vic," urged the sergeant. "He's been giving our chaps
+a devil of a time down there!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's come back. I've seen him with my own eyes. But I'm beginning at
+the wrong end first," said the squatter, taking another sip and then
+sitting back to survey his hearers. "You know old Duncan, my overseer?"</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you know him," the other continued, "and so does the whole
+back-country, and did even before he won this fortune in the Melbourne
+Cup sweep. I suppose you've heard how he took the news? He was fuddling
+himself from his own bottle on Sunday afternoon when the mail came; the
+first I knew of it was when I saw him sitting with his letter in one
+hand and throwing out the rest of his grog with the other. Then he told
+us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> he had won the first prize of thirty thousand, and that he had made
+up his mind to have his next drink at his own place in Scotland. He left
+us that afternoon to catch the coach and go down to Sydney for his
+money. He ought to have been back this evening before sundown."</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant put in his word:</p>
+
+<p>"That he ought, for I saw him come off the coach and start for the
+station as soon as they'd run up the horse he left behind him at the
+pub. I wondered what had brought him, if he was so set on getting back
+to the old country."</p>
+
+<p>"I could tell you," said Hardcastle, after some little hesitation, "and
+I may as well. Poor old Duncan was the most generous of men, and nothing
+would serve him but that every soul on Rosanna should share more or less
+in his good fortune. I am ashamed to tell you how much he spoke of
+pressing on myself. You have probably heard that one of his
+peculiarities was that he would never take payment by check, like other
+people? I believe it was because he had knocked down too many checks in
+his day. In any case, we used to call him Hard Cash Duncan on Rosanna;
+and I am very much afraid that when you saw him he must have had the
+whole of his thirty thousand pounds upon him in the hardest form of
+cash."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But what has happened, Mr. Hardcastle?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very worst," said Hardcastle, stooping to sip. The three heads came
+closer together across the faded tablecloth. "There was no sign of him
+at seven; he ought to have been with us before six. We had done our best
+to make it an occasion, and it seemed that the dinner would be spoilt.
+So at seven young Evans, my store-keeper, went off at a gallop to meet
+him, and at twenty-five past he came galloping back leading a riderless
+horse. It was the one you saw Duncan riding this afternoon. There was
+blood upon the saddle. I found it. And within another hour we had found
+the poor old boy himself, dead and cold in the middle of the track, with
+a bullet through his heart."</p>
+
+<p>The squatter's voice trembled with an emotion that did him honor in his
+hearers' eyes; and the gray-bearded sergeant waited a little before
+asking questions.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think it is Stingaree?" he inquired, at length.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you I saw him on the run, with my own eyes, this morning. I
+passed him in one of my paddocks, as close as I am to you, and asked him
+if he was looking for the homestead. He answered that he was only riding
+through, and we neither of us stopped."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yet you knew all the time that it was Stingaree?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; to be quite honest," replied Hardcastle, "I never dreamt of it at
+the time. But now I am quite positive on the point. He hadn't his
+eye-glass in his eye, but it was dangling on its cord all right; and
+there was the curled mustache, and the boots and breeches that one knows
+all about, if one has never seen them for oneself. Yet I own it didn't
+dawn on me just then. I happened to be thinking of the stations round
+about, and wondering if they were as burnt up as we are, and when I met
+this swell I simply took him for a new chum on one or other of them."</p>
+
+<p>"There had been robbery, of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"An absolute clearance," said Hardcastle. "The valise had been cut to
+ribbons with a knife, and its other contents were strewed all about; a
+pocketbook we found still bulging from the roll of notes which had been
+taken out. I waited beside him while Evans went back for the buggy, and
+when they started to take him in I rode on to you."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll ride back with you at once," said the sergeant, "and find you a
+fresh horse if your own has had enough. Run up the lot, Tyler, and Mr.
+Hardcastle can take his choice. It seems clear enough," continued
+Cameron, as the trooper dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>appeared. "But this is a new departure for
+Stingaree; it's the very thing that everybody said he would never do."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet it's the logical climax of his career; it might have happened
+long ago, but it's not his first blood as it is," argued Hardcastle,
+when he had drained his glass. "Didn't he wing one of you down in
+Victoria the other day? Your bushranger is bound to come to it sooner or
+later. He may much prefer not to shoot; but he has only to get up
+against a man of his own calibre, as resolute and as well armed as
+himself, to have no choice in the matter. Poor old Duncan was the very
+type; he would never have given way. In fact, we found him with his own
+revolver fast in his hand, and a finger frozen to the trigger, but not a
+chamber discharged."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes? Then that settles it, and it must have been foul play," cried
+Cameron, owning a doubt in its dismissal. "And we mustn't lose a single
+minute in getting on this blackguard's tracks."</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was midnight before the little cavalcade set out upon a ride of
+over thirty miles, for arrangements had to be made for a telegram to be
+sent to the Glenranald coroner first thing in the morning, and to insure
+this it was necessary to disturb the postmaster, who occupied one of the
+three weather-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>board dwellings which constituted the roadside hamlet of
+Clear Corner. A round moon topped the sand-hills as the trio rode away;
+it was near its almost dazzling zenith when they reined up at the scene
+of the murder. This was at a point where the sandy track ran through a
+belt of scrub, and the sergeant got off to examine the ground with
+Hardcastle, while Tyler mounted guard in the saddle. But nothing of
+importance was discovered by the pair on foot, and nothing seen or heard
+by their mounted comrade.</p>
+
+<p>They found the station still astir and faintly aglow in the veiled
+daylight of the moon. A cluster of the men stood in a glare at the door
+of their hut; the travellers' hut betrayed the like symptoms of
+excitement; at the kitchen door were more men with pannikins, and odd
+glimpses of a firelit, white-capped face within. But on the broad
+veranda sat two young men with their backs to a closed and darkened
+window. And behind the window lay all that remained of an elderly man,
+whose brown, gnarled face was scarcely recognizable by the newcomers in
+its strange smooth pallor, but his grizzled beard weirdly familiar and
+still crisp with lingering life.</p>
+
+<p>The coroner arrived in some thirty hours, which had brought forth
+nothing new; his jury was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> drawn from the men's hut and rabbiters'
+tents; and after a prolonged but inconclusive investigation, the inquest
+was adjourned for a week. But the seven days were as barren as the
+first, and a verdict against some person unknown a foregone result. This
+did not satisfy the many who were positive that they knew the person;
+for Stingaree had been seen a hundred miles lower down, doubtless on his
+way back to Victoria, and with his appearance altered in a telltale
+manner. But the coroner thought he knew better than anybody else, and
+had his way, notwithstanding the manifest feeling on the long veranda
+where he held his court.</p>
+
+<p>So jurors and spectators drifted back to hut and tent and neighboring
+station, the coroner started in his buggy for Glenranald, and last of
+all the police departed, leading the horse which Hardcastle had ridden
+home from their barracks, and leaving him at peace once more with his
+two young men. But on the squatter the time had told; his table had been
+full to overflowing through it all; and he sank into a long chair, a
+trifle grayer at the temples, a thought looser in his dress, as the
+pugarees of Cameron and Tyler fluttered out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we might have a drink," he said with a wry smile to Evans, who
+fetched the decanter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> from the store; the jackeroo was called from a
+stable which had become Augean during the week, and the three were still
+mildly tippling when the store-keeper came to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" cried he. "I thought we'd seen the last of the plucky
+police!"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say they're coming back?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do, worse luck! Cameron, Tyler, and some new joker in plain clothes."</p>
+
+<p>Hardcastle finished his drink with a resigned smile, and stood on the
+veranda to receive the intruders.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, it will stave off the reaction I began to feel the moment
+they had turned their backs," said he. "Well, well, well! I thought I'd
+just got rid of you fellows, and back you come like base coin!"</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't blame us," said the sergeant, first to dismount. "We
+couldn't know that Superintendent Cairns had been sent up from Sydney,
+much less that we should ride right into him in your horse-paddock!"</p>
+
+<p>The squatter had stepped down from the veranda with polite alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad to see you, Mr. Cairns," said he. "I only wish you had come
+before."</p>
+
+<p>The creature in the plain clothes looked about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> him with a dry smile,
+and a sharp eye upon the younger men and the empty glasses, as he and
+the sergeant accompanied Hardcastle to the veranda, while Tyler took
+charge of the three horses. The fame of Cairns had travelled before him
+to Rosanna, but none had been prepared for a figure so weird or for a
+countenance so forbidding and malign. His manners were equally uncouth.
+He shook his bent head to decline refreshment; he pointedly ignored a
+generalization of Hardcastle's about the crime; and when he spoke, it
+was in a gratuitously satirical style of his own.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask, Mr. Hardcastle, if you are the owner or the manager of this
+lodge in a howling wilderness?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to say I am both."</p>
+
+<p>"I appreciate the sorrow. I failed to discern a single green blade as I
+came along."</p>
+
+<p>"We depend on salt-bush and the like."</p>
+
+<p>"In spite of which, I believe, you have had several lean years?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no denying it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to be one of so many intruders in such a season, Mr.
+Hardcastle, but I shall not trouble you long. I hope to take the
+murderer to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Stingaree?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not quite so loud, please. Who else, should you suppose? You may be
+interested to hear that he has been in hiding on your run for several
+days, and so have I, within fairly easy reach of him. But he is not a
+man to be taken single-handed without further loss of life; so I
+intercepted you, sergeant, and now you are both enlightened. To-night,
+with your assistance and that of your young colleague, I count upon a
+bloodless victory. But I should prefer you, Mr. Hardcastle, not to
+mention the matter to the very young men whom I noticed in your company
+on my arrival. Have I your promise to comply with my wishes on this
+point, and on any other which may arise in connection with the capture?"</p>
+
+<p>And a steely glitter shot through the beetling eyebrows; but Hardcastle
+had given his word before the request was rounded to that pedantic
+neatness which characterized the crabbed utterances of the
+round-shouldered dictator.</p>
+
+<p>"That is well," he went on, "for now I can admit you both into my plan
+of campaign. Suppose we sit down here on the veranda, at the end
+farthest from any door. Be good enough to draw your chairs nearer mine,
+gentlemen. It might be dangerous if a fourth person heard me say that I
+had discovered the murderer's ill-gotten hoard!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not you, sir!" cried Cameron.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" exclaimed the squatter.</p>
+
+<p>"The discoverer was not divine, and indeed no human being but myself,"
+the bent man averred, turning with mischievous humor from one to the
+other of his astonished hearers. "Yes, there was more gold than I would
+have credited a sane Scotchman with carrying through the wilds; but the
+bulk was in small notes and the whole has been buried in the scrub close
+to the scene of the murder, doubtless to avoid at once the detection and
+the division of such unusual spoil."</p>
+
+<p>"You are thinking of his mate?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Cameron who had asked the question, but Mr. Hardcastle followed
+immediately with another.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you remove the spoil?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mr. Hardcastle! How you must lack the detective instinct! Of
+course, I left everything as nearly as possible as I found it; the man
+camps on the spot, or very near it; he lights no fires and is careful to
+leave no marks, but I am more or less convinced of it. And that is where
+I shall take him to-night, or, rather, early to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could make it to-night," said Hardcastle, with a yawn that
+put a period to a pause of some duration.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why?" demanded the detective, raising open eyes for once.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I've had a desperate week of it," replied Hardcastle, "and am
+dead with sleep."</p>
+
+<p>The other carried his growing geniality to the length of an almost
+hearty laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir, do you suppose that I thought of taking <i>you</i> with us? No,
+Mr. Hardcastle, the risks of this sort of enterprise are for those who
+are paid to run them. And there is a risk; if we timed our attack too
+early or too late there would be bloodshed to a certainty. But at two
+o'clock the average man is fast asleep; at a quarter after one,
+therefore, I start with Sergeant Cameron and Constable Tyler."</p>
+
+<p>Hardcastle yawned again.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to have been with you, but there are compensations," said
+he. "I doubt if I shall even stay up to see you off."</p>
+
+<p>"If you did you would sit up alone," returned the Superintendent. "I
+intend to turn in myself for three or four hours; and it will be in the
+face of all my wishes, sergeant, if you and Tyler do not do the same. No
+reason to tell him what a short night it's to be; it might prevent a
+young fellow like that from getting any sleep at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> Merely let it be
+arranged that we all turn in betimes in view of an early start; we three
+alone need know how early the start will be."</p>
+
+<p>They had their simple dinner at half-past seven, when the detective took
+it on himself to entertain the party, and succeeded so well that the
+entertainment was continued on the veranda for the better part of
+another hour. Doubled up in his chair, abnormal, weird, he recounted in
+particular the exploits of Stingaree (included a garbled version of the
+recent fiasco across the Murray) with a zest only equalled by his
+confidant undertaking to avenge the death of Robert Duncan before
+another day was out; all listened in a rapt silence, and the younger men
+were duly disappointed when the party broke up prematurely between nine
+and ten. But they also had played their part in a fatiguing week; by the
+later hour all were in their rooms, and before very long Rosanna Station
+lay lighted only by the full white moon of New South Wales.</p>
+
+<p>Cameron wondered if it could possibly be two o'clock, while Tyler sat up
+insensate with the full weight of his first sleep, when their chief
+crept into the double-bedded room in which the two policemen had been
+put. He owned himself before his time by an hour and more, but explained
+that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> had an idea which had only struck him as he was about to fall
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"If we hunt for the fellow in the dark," said he, "we may give him the
+alarm before we come on him. But if we go now there is at least a chance
+that we may find his fire to guide us. I am aware I said he wouldn't
+light one there, but everybody knows that Stingaree uses a spirit-lamp.
+In any case it's a chance, and with a desperate man like that we can't
+afford to give the ghost of a chance away."</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant dressed without more ado, as did his subordinate on
+learning the nature of their midnight errand; meanwhile the disturber of
+slumbers was gone to the horse-yard to start saddling. The others
+followed in a few minutes. And there was the horse-yard overflowing with
+moonshine, but empty alike of man and beast.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what's got him?" murmured the bewildered sergeant uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Harry, for all I care!" muttered the other. "I'm no such nuts on
+him, if you ask me. There's a bit too much of him for my taste."</p>
+
+<p>In his secret breast the sergeant entertained a similar sentiment, but
+he was too old an officer to breathe disaffection in the ear of his
+subaltern. He contented himself with a mild expression of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> surprise
+at the conduct of the Sydney authorities in putting a "towny" over his
+head without so much as a word of notice.</p>
+
+<p>"And such a 'towny'!" echoed Tyler. "One you never heard of in your life
+before, and never will again!"</p>
+
+<p>"Speak for yourself!" rejoined Cameron, irritated at the exaggeration of
+their case. "I have heard of him ever since I joined the force."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's a funny joke to have shoved over us, a blooming little
+hunchback like that."</p>
+
+<p>"I always heard that he was none the worse for what he couldn't help,
+and now I can understand it," said the sergeant, "for he's not such a
+hunch&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The men looked at each other in the moonlight, and the ugly word was
+never finished. A dozen hoofs were galloping upon them, their thunder
+muffled by the sandy road, and into the tank of moonshine came two
+horses, hounded by the detective bareback on the third.</p>
+
+<p>"Someone left the slip-rails down, and they were all over the
+horse-paddock," he panted. "But I took a bridle and managed to catch
+one, and it was easy enough to run up the other two."</p>
+
+<p>But even Constable Tyler thought the more of their misshapen leader for
+the feat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was now no time to be lost, for it approached midnight, but the
+trio were soon cantering through the horse-paddock neck-and-neck, and
+the new day found them at the farther gate. The moon still poured
+unbroken brilliance upon that desert world of sandy stretches tufted
+with salt-bush and erratically overgrown with scrub. The shadow of the
+gate was as another gate lying ready to be hung; for each particular
+wire in the fence there was a thin black stripe upon the ground. The
+three passed through, and came in quick time upon the edge of that scrub
+in which the crime had been committed. And here the chief called a halt.</p>
+
+<p>"The two to nail him must be on foot," said he. "You can creep upon him
+on foot as you never could with a horse; but I will remain mounted in
+the road and ride him down if he shows fight."</p>
+
+<p>So the pair in the pugarees walked one at either stirrup of their
+crooked chief, leaving the two horses tethered to a tree, until of a
+sudden the whole party halted as one. They had rounded a bend in the
+road with great caution, for they all knew where they were; but only one
+of them was prepared for the position of the light which flashed into
+their eyes from the heart of the scrub.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tiny light, set low upon the ground, and yet it flashed through
+the forest like a diamond in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> a bundle of hay. It burnt at no little
+distance from the track, for at a movement it was lost, but it was some
+hundreds of yards nearer the station than the scene of the murder. The
+chief whispered that this was where he had found the buried booty, and
+over half the distance he led the way, winding in and out among the
+trees, now throwing a leg across his horse's withers to avoid a hole,
+anon embracing its neck to escape contact with the branches. It was long
+before they could discern anything but the light itself amid the trunks
+and branches of the scrub.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the horseman stopped, beckoning with his free hand to the pair
+afoot, pointing at the fire with the one that held the reins; and as
+they crept up to him he stooped in the stirrups till his mouth was close
+to the sergeant's ear.</p>
+
+<p>"He's sitting on the far side of the light, but you can't see his face.
+I thought he was a log, and I still believe he's asleep. Creep on him
+like cats till he looks up; then rush him with your revolvers before he
+can draw his, and I'll support you with mine!"</p>
+
+<p>Nearer and nearer stole Cameron and Tyler; the rider managed to coax a
+few more noiseless steps from his clever mount, but dropped the reins
+and squared his elbows some twenty paces from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> light&mdash;a hurricane
+lamp now in the sharpest focus. The policemen crawled some yards ahead;
+all three carried revolver in hand. But still the unsuspecting figure
+sat motionless, his chin upon his chest, the brim of his wideawake
+hiding his face, a little heap of gold and notes before him on the
+ground. Then the Superintendent's horse flung up its head; its teeth
+champed upon the bit; the man sat bolt upright, and the light of the
+hurricane lamp fell full upon the face of Hardcastle the squatter.</p>
+
+<p>"Rush him! rush him! That's the man we want!"</p>
+
+<p>But the momentary stupefaction of the police had given Hardcastle his
+opportunity; the hurricane lamp flew between them, going out where it
+fell, and for a minute the revolvers spat harmlessly in the remaining
+patchwork of moonshine and shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Get behind trees; shoot low, don't kill him!" shouted the chief from
+his saddle. "Now on to him before he can load again. That's it! Pin him!
+Throw your revolvers away, or he'll snatch one before you know where you
+are! Ah, I thought he was too strong for you! Mr. Hardcastle, I'll put a
+bullet through you myself if you don't instantly surrender!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the fight ended with the bent man leaning in his stirrups over the
+locked and swaying group, as he brandished his revolver to suit deed to
+word. It was a heavy blow with the long barrel that finally turned the
+scale. In a few seconds Hardcastle stood a prisoner, the handcuffs
+fitting his large wrists like gloves, his great frame panting from the
+fray, and yet a marvel of monstrous manhood in its stoical and defiant
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Cairns, do what you say!" he cried. "Put three bullets
+through me, and divide what's on the ground between you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I half wish we could, for your sake," was the reply. "But it's idle to
+speak of it, and I'm afraid you've committed a crime that places you
+beyond the reach of sympathy."</p>
+
+<p>"That he has!" cried the sergeant, wiping blood from his gray beard.
+"It's plain as a pikestaff now; and to think that he was the one to come
+and fetch us the very night he'd done it! But what licks me more than
+anything is how in the world you found him out, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>The hunchback looked down upon the stalwart prisoner standing up to his
+last inch between his two captors: there was an impersonal interest in
+the man's bold eyes that invited a statement more eloquently than the
+sergeant's tongue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," said the horseman, smiling down upon the three on
+foot. "In the first place, I had my own reasons for knowing that
+Stingaree was nowhere near this place on the night of the murder, for I
+happen to have been on his tracks for some time. Who knew all about the
+dead man's stroke of luck, his insane preference for hard cash, the time
+of his return? Mr. Hardcastle, for one. Who swore that he had met
+Stingaree face to face upon the run? Mr. Hardcastle alone; there was not
+a soul to corroborate or contradict him. Who was in need of many
+thousand pounds? Mr. Hardcastle, as I suspected, and as he practically
+admitted to me when we discussed the bad season on my arrival. I was
+pretty sure of my man before I crossed the boundary fence, but I was
+absolutely convinced before I had spent twenty minutes on his veranda."</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner smiled sardonically in the moonlight. The policemen gazed
+with awe upon the man who had solved a nine days' mystery in fewer
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>"You must remember," he continued, "that I have spent some days and
+nights upon the run; during the days I have camped in the thickest scrub
+I could find, but by night I have been very busy, and last night I had a
+stroke of luck. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> stumbled by accident on a track that led me to the
+place I had been looking for all along. You see, I had put myself in
+Hardcastle's skin, and I was quite clear that I should have buried a
+lapful of gold and notes somewhere in the bush until the hue and cry had
+blown over. Not that I expected to find it so near the scene of the
+crime&mdash;I should certainly have gone farther afield myself."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't make out why that wasn't enough for you, sir," ventured the
+sergeant, deferentially. "Why didn't you come in and arrest him on
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall see in three minutes. Wasn't it far better to catch him
+red-handed as we have? You will at least admit that it was far neater. I
+say I have the place. I say we are all going to it at two in the
+morning. I say, let us sleep till a little after one. Was it not obvious
+what would happen? The only thing I did not expect was to find him
+asleep with the swag under his nose."</p>
+
+<p>Then Hardcastle spoke up.</p>
+
+<p>"I was not asleep," said he. "I thought I was safe for an hour or two
+.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and I began to think .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I was wondering what to do .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+whether to cut my throat at once .&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>And his dreadful voice died away like a single chord struck in an empty
+room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But Stingaree," put in Tyler in the end. "What's happened to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He also has been here. But he was many a mile away at the time."</p>
+
+<p>"What brought him here?"</p>
+
+<p>The crooked Superintendent from Sydney was sitting strangely upright in
+his saddle; his face was not to be seen, for his back was to the moon,
+but he seemed to rub one of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He may have wished to clear his character. He may have itched to uphold
+the honor of that road of which he considers himself a not imperfect
+knight. He may have found it so jolly easy to play policeman down in
+Victoria, that he couldn't resist another shot in a better cause up
+here. At his worst he never killed a man in all his life. And you will
+be good enough to take his own word for it that he never will!"</p>
+
+<p>He had backed his horse while he spoke; he turned a little to the light,
+and the eye-glass gleamed in his eye.</p>
+
+<p>The young constable sprang forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Stingaree!" he screamed.</p>
+
+<p>But the gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;"><a name="IMAGE_4" id="IMAGE_4"></a>
+<img src="images/image-4.jpg" width="325" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="caption">The gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right!" cried the bushranger, as he trotted off. "Your horses
+and even your pistols<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> are out of reach, thanks to a discipline for
+which I love you dearly. You hang on to your bird in the hand, my
+friends, and never again misjudge the one in the bush!"</p>
+
+<p>And as the trees swallowed the cantering horse and man, followed by a
+futile shot from the first revolver which the young constable had picked
+up, an embittered admiration kindled in the captive murderer's eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>The Purification of Mulfera</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mulfera Station, N.S.W., was not only an uttermost end of the earth, but
+an exceedingly loose end, and that again in more senses than one. There
+were no ladies on Mulfera, and this wrought inevitable deterioration in
+the young men who made a bachelors' barracks of the homestead. Not that
+they ever turned it into the perfect pandemonium you might suppose; but
+it was unnecessary either to wear a collar or to repress an oath at
+table; and this sort of disregard does not usually stop at the
+elementary decencies. It is true that on Mulfera the bark of the
+bachelor was something worse than his bite, and his tongue no fair
+criterion to the rest of him. Nevertheless, the place became a byword,
+even in the back-blocks; and when at last the good Bishop Methuen had
+the hardihood to include it in an episcopal itinerary, there were
+admirers of that dear divine who roundly condemned his folly, and
+enemies who no longer denied his heroism.</p>
+
+<p>The Lord Bishop of the Back-Blocks had at that time been a twelvemonth
+or more in charge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> of what he himself described playfully as his
+"oceanic see"; but his long neglect of Mulfera was due less to its
+remoteness than to the notorious fact that they wanted no adjectival and
+alliterative bishops there. An obvious way of repulse happened to be
+open to the blaspheming squatter, though there is no other instance of
+its employment. On these up-country visitations the Bishop was dependent
+for his mobility upon the horseflesh of his hospitable hosts; thus it
+became the custom to send to fetch him from one station to another; and
+as a rule the owner or the manager came himself, with four horses and
+the big trap. The manager of Mulfera said his horses had something else
+to do, and his neighbors backed him up with some discreet encouragement
+on their own account. It was felt that a slur would be left upon the
+whole district if his lordship actually met with the only sort of
+reception which was predicted for him on Mulfera. Bishop Methuen,
+however, was one of the last men on earth to shirk a plague-spot; and on
+this one, warning was eventually received that the Bishop and his
+chaplain would arrive on horseback the following Sunday morning, to
+conduct divine service, if quite convenient, at eleven o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The language of the manager was something inconceivable upon the receipt
+of this cool advice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> He was a man named Carmichael, and quite a
+different type from the neighbors who held up horny hands when the
+Bishop decided on his raid. Carmichael was not "a native of this
+colony," or of the next, but he was that distressing spectacle, the
+public-school man who is no credit to his public school. Worse than
+this, he was a man of brains; worst of all, he had promised very
+differently as a boy. A younger man who had been at school with him,
+having come out for his health, travelled some hundreds of miles to see
+Carmichael, whose conversation struck him absolutely dumb. "He was
+captain of our house," the visitor explained to Carmichael's
+subordinates, "and you daren't say dash in dormitory&mdash;not even dash!"</p>
+
+<p>In appearance this redoubtable person was chiefly remarkable for the
+intellectual cast of his still occasionally clean-shaven countenance,
+and for his double eye-glasses, or rather the way he wore them. They
+were very strong and very common, without any rims, and Carmichael
+bought them by the box. He would not wear them with a cord, and in the
+heat they were continually slipping off his nose; when they did not slip
+right off they hung at such an angle that Carmichael had to throw his
+whole body and head backward in order to see anything through them
+except the ground. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> when they fell, someone else had to find them
+while Carmichael cursed, for his naked eye was as blind as a bat's.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go mustering on Sunday," suggested the overseer&mdash;"every blessed
+man! Let him find the whole place deserted, homestead and hut!"</p>
+
+<p>"Or let's get blind for the occasion," was the bookkeeper's idea&mdash;"every
+mother's son!"</p>
+
+<p>"That would do," agreed the overseer, "if we got just blind enough. And
+we might get the blacks from Poonee Creek to come and join the dance."</p>
+
+<p>The overseer was a dapper Victorian with a golden mustache twisted
+rakishly up and down at either end respectively, like an overturned
+letter S. He lived up to the name of Smart. The bookkeeper was a servile
+echo with a character and a face of putty. He had once perpetrated an
+opprobrious ode to the overseer, and had answered to the name of Chaucer
+ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Carmichael leaned back to look from one of these worthies to the other,
+and his spectacled eyes flamed with mordant scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you think you're funny, you fellows," said he, and without
+the oath which was a sign of his good-will, except when he lost his
+temper with the sheep. "If so, I wish you'd get outside to enter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>tain
+each other. Since the fellow's coming we shall have to let him come, and
+the thing is how to choke him off ever coming again without open insult,
+which I won't allow. A service of some sort we shall have to have, this
+once."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm on to guy it," declared the indiscreet Chaucer.</p>
+
+<p>"If you do I'll rehearse the men," the overseer promised.</p>
+
+<p>"You idiots!" thundered Carmichael, whose temper was as short as his
+sight. "Can't you see I weaken on the prospect as much as the two of you
+stuck together? But the beggar's certain to be a public-school and
+'Varsity man: and I won't have him treated as though he'd been dragged
+up in one of these God-forsaken Colonies!"</p>
+
+<p>Now&mdash;most properly&mdash;you cannot talk like this in the bush unless you are
+also capable of confirming the insult with your fists. But Carmichael
+could; and he was much too blind to fight without his glasses. He was,
+in fact, the same strenuous character who had set his dogmatic face
+against the most harmless expletives in dormitory at school, and set it
+successfully, because Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was
+not to be withstood. His standard alone was changed. Or he was playing
+on the other side. Yet he had brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> a prayer-book with him to the
+back-blocks. And he was seen studying it on the eve of the episcopal
+descent.</p>
+
+<p>"He may have his say," observed Carmichael, darkly, "and then I'll have
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Going to heckle him?" inquired Smart, in a nasal voice full of hope and
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at the function, you fool," replied Carmichael, sweetly. "But when
+it's all over I should like to take him on about the Athanasian Creed
+and the Thirty-nine Articles." Only both substantives were qualified by
+the epithet of the country, for Carmichael had put himself in excellent
+temper for the day of battle.</p>
+
+<p>That day dawned blood-red and beautiful, but in a little it was a
+blinding blue from pole to pole, and the thermometer in the veranda
+reached three figures before breakfast. It was a hot-wind day, and even
+Carmichael's subordinates pitied Dr. Methuen and his chaplain, who were
+riding from the south in the teeth of that Promethean blast. But
+Carmichael himself drew his own line with unswerving rigidity; and
+though the deep veranda was prepared as a place for worship, and covered
+in with canvas which was kept saturated with water, he would not permit
+an escort to sally even to the boundary fence to meet the uninvited
+prelate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not long after breakfast the two horsemen jogged into view, ambling over
+the sand-hills whose red-hot edge met a shimmering sky some little
+distance beyond the station pines. Both wore pith helmets and fluttering
+buff dust-coats, but both had hot black legs, the pair in gaiters being
+remarkable for their length. The homestead trio, their red necks chafed
+by the unaccustomed collar, gathered grimly at the open end of the
+veranda, where they exchanged impressions while the religious raiders
+bore down upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"They can ride a bit, too, I'm bothered if they can't," exclaimed the
+overseer, in considerable astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"And do you suppose, my good fool," inquired Carmichael, with the usual
+unregenerate embroidery&mdash;"do you in your innocence suppose that's an
+accomplishment confined to these precious provinces?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're as brown as my sugar," said the keeper of books and stores.</p>
+
+<p>"The Bishop looks as though he'd been out here all his life."</p>
+
+<p>Carmichael did not quarrel with this observation of his overseer, but
+colorless eyebrows were raised above the cheap glasses as he stepped
+into the yard to shake hands with the visitors. The bearded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> Bishop
+returned his greeting in a grave silence. The chaplain, on the other
+hand, seemed the victim of a nervous volubility, and unduly anxious to
+atone for his chief's taciturnity, which he essayed to explain to
+Carmichael on the first opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"His lordship feels the heat so much more than I do, who have had so
+many years of it; and to tell you the truth, he is still a little hurt
+at not being met, for the first time since he has been out here."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why did he come?" demanded Carmichael, bluntly. "I never asked
+him, did I?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, but&mdash;ah, well! We won't go into it," said the chaplain. "I am
+glad to see your preparations, Mr. Carmichael; that I consider very
+magnanimous in you, under all the circumstances; and so will his
+lordship when he has had a rest. You won't mind his retiring until it's
+time for the little service, Mr. Carmichael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I," returned Carmichael, promptly. But the worst paddock on
+Mulfera, in its worst season, was not more dry than the manager's tone.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before eleven the bell was rung which roused the men on week-day
+mornings, and they began trooping over from their hut, while the trio
+foregathered on the veranda as before. The open end was the one looking
+east but the sun was too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> near the zenith to enter many inches, and with
+equal thoroughness and tact Carmichael had placed the table, the
+water-bag, and the tumbler, at the open end. They were all that he could
+do in the way of pulpit, desk, and lectern.</p>
+
+<p>The men tramped in and filled the chairs, forms, tin trunks, and
+packing-cases which had been pressed into the service of this makeshift
+sanctuary. The trio sat in front. The bell ceased, the ringer entering
+and taking his place. There was some delay, if not some hitch. Then came
+the chaplain with an anxious face.</p>
+
+<p>"His lordship wishes to know if all hands are here," he whispered across
+the desk.</p>
+
+<p>Carmichael looked behind him for several seconds. "Every man Jack," he
+replied. "And damn his lordship's cheek!" he added for his equals'
+benefit, as the chaplain disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Rum cove, that chaplain," whispered Chaucer, in the guarded manner of
+one whose frequent portion is the snub brutal.</p>
+
+<p>"How so?" inquired Carmichael, with a duly withering glance.</p>
+
+<p>Chaucer told in whispers of a word which he had overheard through the
+weather-board wall of the room in which the Bishop had sought repose. It
+was, in fact, the monosyllable of which Car<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>michael had just made use.
+He, however, was the first to heap discredit on the book-keeper's story,
+which he laughed to scorn with as much of his usual arrogance as could
+be assumed below the breath.</p>
+
+<p>"If you heard it at all," said Carmichael, "which I don't for a moment
+believe, you heard it in the strictly Biblical sense. You can't be
+expected to know what that is, Chaucer, but as a matter of fact it means
+lost and done for, like our noble selves. And it was probably applied to
+us, if there's the least truth in what you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Truth!" he began, but was not suffered to add another word.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up," snarled Carmichael. "Can't you hear them coming?"</p>
+
+<p>And the tramp of the shooting-boots, which Dr. Methuen was still new
+chum enough to wear, followed by the chaplain's lighter step, drew
+noisily nearer upon the unseen part of the veranda that encircled the
+whole house.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand up, you cripples!" cried Carmichael over his shoulder, in a stage
+whisper. And they all came to their feet as the two ecclesiastics
+appeared behind the table at the open end of the tabernacle.</p>
+
+<p>Carmichael felt inclined to disperse the congregation on the spot.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was the Bishop still in his gaiters and his yellow dust-coat; even
+the chaplain had not taken the trouble to don his surplice. So anything
+was good enough for Mulfera! Carmichael had lunged forward with a
+jutting jaw when an authoritative voice rang out across the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down!"</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop had not opened his hairy mouth. It was the smart young
+chaplain who spoke. And all obeyed except Carmichael.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your lordship's pardon," he was beginning, with sarcastic
+emphasis, when the manager of Mulfera was cut as short as he was himself
+in the habit of cutting his inferiors.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will kindly sit down," cried the chaplain, "like everybody else,
+I shall at once explain the apparent irregularity upon which you were
+doubtless about to comment."</p>
+
+<p>Carmichael glowered through his glasses for a few seconds, and then
+resumed his seat with a shrug and a murmur, happily inaudible to all but
+his two immediate neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>"On his way here this morning," the chaplain went on, "his lordship met
+with a misadventure from which he has not yet recovered sufficiently to
+address you as he fully hoped and intended to do to-day." At this all
+eyes sped to the Bishop, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> stood certainly in a drooping attitude at
+the chaplain's side, his episcopal hands behind his back. "Something
+happened," the glib spokesman continued with stern eyes, "something that
+you do not often hear of in these days. His lordship was accosted,
+beset, and, like the poor man in the Scriptures, despitefully entreated,
+not many miles beyond your own boundary, by a pair of armed ruffians!"</p>
+
+<p>"Stuck up!" cried one or two, and "Bushrangers!" one or two more.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you for both words," said the chaplain, bowing. "He was stuck
+up by the bushranger who is once more abroad in the land. Really, Mr.
+Carmichael&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the manager of Mulfera rose to his full height, and, leaning back to
+get the speaker into focus, stuck his arms akimbo in a way that he had
+in his most aggressive moments.</p>
+
+<p>"And what were <i>you</i> doing?" he demanded fiercely of the chaplain.</p>
+
+<p>"It was I who stuck him up," answered the <i>soi-disant</i> chaplain,
+whipping a single glass into his eye to meet the double ones. "My name
+is Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>And in the instant's hush which followed he plucked a revolver from his
+breast, while the hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> of the sham bishop shot out from behind his
+back, with one in each.</p>
+
+<p>The scene of the instant after that defies ordinary description. It was
+made the more hideous by the frightful imprecations of Carmichael, and
+the short, sharp threat of Stingaree to shoot him dead unless he
+instantly sat down. Carmichael bade him do so with a gallant oath, at
+which the men immediately behind him joined with his two companions in
+pulling him back into his chair and there holding him by main force.
+Thereafter the manager appeared to realize the futility of resistance,
+and was unhanded on his undertaking to sit quiet, which he did with the
+exception of one speech to those behind.</p>
+
+<p>"If any of you happen to be armed," he shouted over his shoulder, "shoot
+him down like a dog. But if you're all as fairly had as I am, let's hear
+what the beggar's got to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Carmichael," said the bushranger, still from the far
+side of the table, as a comparative silence fell at last. "You are a man
+after my own heart, sir, and I would as lief have you on my side as the
+simple ruffian on my right. Not a bad bishop to look at," continued
+Stingaree, with a jerk of the head toward his mate with the two
+revolvers. "But if I had let him open his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> mouth! Now, if I'd had you,
+Mr. Carmichael&mdash;but I have my doubts about your vocabulary, too!"</p>
+
+<p>The point appealed to all present, and there was a laugh, in which,
+however, Carmichael did not join.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you didn't come here simply to give us a funny
+entertainment," said he. "I happen to be the boss, or have been
+hitherto, and if you will condescend to tell me what you want I shall
+consider whether it is worth while to supply you or to be shot by you. I
+shall be sorry to meet my death at the hands of a thieving blackguard,
+but one can't pick and choose in that matter. Before it comes to
+choosing, however, is it any good asking what you've done with the real
+bishop and the real chaplain? If you've murdered them, as I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree had listened thus far with more than patience, in fact with
+something akin to approval, to the captive who was still his master with
+the tongue. With all his villainy, the bushranger was man enough to
+appreciate another man when he met him; but Carmichael's last word
+flicked him on a bare nerve.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you dare to talk to me about murder," he rapped out. "I've never
+committed one yet, but you're going the right way to make me begin! As
+for Bishop Methuen, I have more respect for him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> than for any man in
+Australia; but his horse was worth two of my mate's, and that's all I
+troubled him for. I didn't even tie him up as I would any other man. We
+just relieved the two of them of their boots and clothes, which was
+quite as good as tying up, with your roads as red-hot as they
+are&mdash;though my mate here doesn't agree with me."</p>
+
+<p>The man with the beard very emphatically shook a matted head, now
+relieved of the stolen helmet, and observed that the quicker they were
+the better it would be. He was as taciturn a bushranger as he had been a
+bishop, but Stingaree was perfectly right. Even these few words would
+have destroyed all chance of illusion in the case of his mate.</p>
+
+<p>"The very clothes, which become us so well," continued the prince of
+personators, who happened to be without hair upon his face at this
+period, and who looked every inch his part; "their very boots, we have
+only borrowed! I will tell you presently where we dropped the rest of
+their kit. We left them a suit of pyjamas apiece, and not another
+stitch, and we blindfolded and drove 'em into the scrub as a last
+precaution. But before we go I shall also tell you where a search-party
+is likely to pick up their tracks. Meanwhile you will all stay exactly
+where you are, with the exception of the store-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>keeper, who will kindly
+accompany me to the store. I shall naturally require to see the inside
+of the safe, but otherwise our wants are very simple."</p>
+
+<p>The outlaw ceased. There was no word in answer; a curious hush had
+fallen on the captive congregation.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is a store-keeper," suggested Stingaree, "he'd better stand
+up."</p>
+
+<p>But the accomplished Chaucer sat stark and staring.</p>
+
+<p>"Up with you," whispered Carmichael, in terrible tones, "or we're done!"</p>
+
+<p>And even as the book-keeper rose tremulously to his feet, a strange and
+stealthy figure, the cynosure of all eyes but the bushrangers' for a
+long minute, reached the open end of the veranda; and with a final
+spring, a tall man in silk pyjamas, his gray beard flying over either
+shoulder, hurled himself upon both bushrangers at once. With outspread
+fingers he clutched the scruff of each neck at the self-same second,
+crash came the two heads together, and over went the table with the
+three men over it.</p>
+
+<p>Shots were fired in the struggle on the ground, happily without effect.
+Stingaree had his shooting hand mangled by one blow with a chair whirled
+from a height. Carmichael got his heel with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> venomous stamp upon the
+neck of Howie; and, in fewer seconds than it would take to write their
+names, the rascals were defeated and disarmed. Howie had his neck half
+broken, and his face was darkening before Carmichael could be induced to
+lift his foot.</p>
+
+<p>"The cockroach!" bawled the manager, drunk with battle. "I'd hoof his
+soul out for two pins!"</p>
+
+<p>A moment later he was groping for his glasses, which had slipped and
+fallen from his perspiring nose, and making use of such expressions
+withal as to compel a panting protest from the tall man in the silken
+stripes.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Methuen," said he. "I know it's a special moment, but&mdash;do
+you mind?"</p>
+
+<p>Carmichael found his glasses at that instant, adjusted them, stood up,
+and leant back to view the Bishop; and his next words were the apology
+of the gentleman he should have been.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow," cried the other, "I quite understand. What are they
+doing with the ruffians? Have you any handcuffs? Is it far to the
+nearest police barracks?"</p>
+
+<p>But the next act of this moving melodrama was not the least
+characteristic of the chief performance; for when Stingaree and partner
+had been not only handcuffed but lashed hand and foot, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> incarcerated
+in separate log-huts, with a guard apiece; and when a mounted messenger
+had been despatched to the barracks at Clare Corner, and the remnant
+raised a cheer for Bishop Methuen; it was then that the fine fellow
+showed them the still finer stuff of which he was also made. He invited
+all present to step back for a few minutes into the place of worship
+which had been so charmingly prepared, so scandalously misused, and
+where he hoped to see them all yet again in the evening, if it would not
+bore them to give him a further and more formal hearing then.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't keep them five minutes now," he whispered to Carmichael, as the
+men went ahead to pick up the chairs and take their places, while the
+Bishop hobbled after, still in his pyjamas, and with terribly inflamed
+and swollen feet. "And then," he added, "I must ask you to send a buggy
+at once for my poor chaplain. He did his gallant best, poor fellow, but
+I had to leave him fallen by the way. I am an old miler, you know; it
+came easier to me; but the cinder-path and running-shoes are a different
+story from hot sand and naked feet! And now, if you please, I will
+strike one little blow while our hearts are still warm."</p>
+
+<p>But how shrewdly he struck it, how straight from the shoulder, how
+simply, how honestly, there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> perhaps no need to tell even those who
+have no previous knowledge of back-block Bishop Methuen and his manly
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>What afterward happened to Stingaree is another matter, to be set forth
+faithfully in the sequel. This is the story of the Purification of
+Mulfera Station, N.S.W., in which the bushrangers played but an indirect
+and a most inglorious part.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop and his chaplain (a good man of no present account) stayed to
+see the police arrive that night, and the romantic ruffians taken thence
+next morning in unromantic bonds. Comparatively little attention was
+paid to their departure&mdash;partly on account of the truculent attitude of
+the police&mdash;partly because the Episcopal pair were making an equally
+early start in another direction. No one accompanied the armed men and
+the bound. But every man on the place, from homestead, men's hut,
+rabbiter's tent, and boundary-rider's camp&mdash;every single man who could
+be mustered for the nonce had a horse run up for him&mdash;escorted Dr.
+Methuen in close cavalcade to the Mulfera boundary, where the final
+cheering took place, led by Carmichael, who, of course, was font and
+origin of the display. And Carmichael rode by himself on the way back;
+he had been much with the Bishop during his lordship's stay; and he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+too morose for profanity during the remainder of that day.</p>
+
+<p>But it was no better when the manager's mood lifted, and the life on
+Mulfera slipped back into the old blinding and perspiring groove.</p>
+
+<p>Then one night, a night of the very week thus sensationally begun, the
+ingenious Chaucer began one of the old, old stories, on the moonlit
+veranda, and Carmichael stopped him while that particular old story was
+still quite young in the telling. There was an awkward pause until
+Carmichael laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care twopence what you fellows think of me," said he, "and
+never did. I saw a lot of the Bishop," he went on, less aggressively,
+after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"So <i>we</i> saw," assented Smart.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet!" added Chaucer.</p>
+
+<p>For they were two to one.</p>
+
+<p>"He ran the mile for Oxford," continued Carmichael. "Two years he ran
+it&mdash;and won both times. You may not appreciate quite what that means."</p>
+
+<p>And, with a patience foreign to his character as they knew it,
+Carmichael proceeded to explain.</p>
+
+<p>"But," he added, "that was nothing to his performance last Sunday, in
+getting here from beyond the boundary in the time he did it
+in&mdash;bare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>foot! It would have been good enough in shoes. But don't you
+forget his feet. I can see them&mdash;and feel them&mdash;still."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's a grand chap," the overseer allowed.</p>
+
+<p>"We never said he wasn't," his ally chimed in.</p>
+
+<p>Carmichael took no notice of a tone which the youth with the putty face
+had never employed toward him before.</p>
+
+<p>"He was also in his school eleven," continued Carmichael, still in a
+reflective fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it a public school?" inquired Smart.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The</i> public school?" added Chaucer.</p>
+
+<p>"Not mine, if that's what you mean," returned Carmichael, with just a
+touch of his earlier manner. "But&mdash;he knew my old Head Master&mdash;he was
+quite a pal of the dear Old Man! .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. We had such lots in common,"
+added the manager, more to himself than to the other two.</p>
+
+<p>The overseer's comment is of no consequence. What the book-keeper was
+emboldened to add matters even less. Suffice it that between them they
+brought the old Carmichael to his feet, his glasses flaming in the
+moonshine, his body thrown pugilistically backward, his jaw jutting like
+a crag&mdash;the old Carmichael in deed&mdash;but not in word.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you just now I didn't care twopence what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> either of you thought
+of me," he roared, "though there wasn't the least necessity to tell you,
+because you knew! So I needn't repeat myself; but just listen a moment,
+and try not to be greater fools than God made you. You saw a real man
+last Sunday, and so did I. I had almost forgotten what they were
+like&mdash;that quality. Well, we had a lot of talk, and he told me what they
+are doing on some of the other stations. They are holding services,
+something like what he held here, every Sunday night for themselves.
+Now, it isn't in human nature to fly from one extreme to the other: but
+we are going to have a try to keep up our Sunday end with the other
+stations; at least I am, and you two are going to back me up."</p>
+
+<p>He paused. Not a syllable from the pair.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear me?" thundered Carmichael, as he had thundered in the
+dormitory at school, now after twenty years in the same good cause once
+more. "Whether you like it or not, you fellows are going to back me up!"</p>
+
+<p>And Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was not to be
+withstood.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>A Duel in the Desert</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was eight o'clock and Monday morning when the romantic rascals were
+led away in unromantic bonds. Their arms were bound to their bodies,
+their feet lashed to the stirrup-irons; they sat like packs upon quiet
+station horses, carefully chosen for the nonce; they were tethered to a
+mounted policeman apiece, each with leading-rein buckled to his left
+wrist and Government revolver in his right hand. Behind the quartette
+rode the officer in command, superbly mounted, watching ever all four
+with a third revolver ready cocked. It seemed a small and yet an ample
+escort for the two bound men.</p>
+
+<p>But Stingaree was by no means in that state of Napoleonic despair which
+his bent back and lowering countenance were intended to convey. He had
+not uttered a word since the arrival of the police, whom he had suffered
+to lift him on horseback, as he now sat, without raising his morose eyes
+once. Howie, on the other hand, had offered a good deal of futile
+opposition, cursing his captors as the fit moved him, and once
+struggling so insanely in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> bonds as to earn a tap from the wrong end
+of a revolver and a bloody face for his pains. Stingaree glowered in
+deep delight. His mate's part was as well acted as his own; but it was
+he who had conceived them both, and expounded them in countless camps
+against some such extremity as this. The result was in ideal accordance
+with his calculations. The man who gave the trouble was the man to
+watch. And Stingaree, chin on chest, was left in peace to evolve a way
+of escape.</p>
+
+<p>The chances were all adverse; he had never been less sanguine in his
+life. Not that Stingaree had much opinion of the police; he had slipped
+through their hands too often; but it was an unfortunate circumstance
+that two of the present trio were among those whom he had eluded most
+recently, and who therefore would be least likely to give him another
+chance. A lightning student of his kind, he based his only hope upon an
+accurate estimate of these men, and applied his whole mind to the triple
+task. But it was a single task almost from the first; for the policeman
+in charge of him was none other than his credulous old friend, Sergeant
+Cameron from Clear Corner; and Howie's custodian, a young trooper run
+from the same mould as Constable Tyler and many a hundred more, in whom
+a thick skull cancelled a stout<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> heart. Both were brave men; neither was
+really to be feared. But the man behind upon the thoroughbred, the man
+in front, the man now on this side and now on that, with his braying
+laugh and his vindictive voice&mdash;triumphant as though he had taken the
+bushrangers himself, and a blatant bully in his triumph&mdash;was none other
+than the formidable Superintendent whose undying animosity the
+bushrangers had earned by the two escapades associated with his name.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the outlaw never flattered him with word or look, never lifted chin
+from chest, never raised an eye or opened his mouth until Howie's knock
+on the head caused him to curse his mate for a fool who deserved all he
+got. The thoroughbred was caracoling on his other side in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't one, are you?" cried the taunting tongue of Superintendent
+Cairns. "Not much fool about Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>The time had come for a reply.</p>
+
+<p>"So I thought until yesterday," sighed the bushranger. "But now I'm not
+so sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so sure, eh? You were sure enough last time we met, my beauty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I had some conceit of myself then," said Stingaree, with another
+of his convincing sighs.</p>
+
+<p>"To say nothing of when you guyed me, damn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> you!" added the
+Superintendent, below his breath and through his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," replied the outlaw, "you've got your revenge. I must expect you
+to rub it in."</p>
+
+<p>"My fine friend," rejoined Cairns, "you may expect worse than that, and
+still you won't be disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree made no reply; and it would have taken a very shrewd eye to
+have read deeper than the depth of sullen despair expressed in every
+inch of his bound body and every furrow of his downcast face. Even the
+vindictive Cairns ceased for a time to crow over so abject an adversary
+in so bitter an hour. Meanwhile, the five horses streamed slowly through
+the high lights and heavy shadows of a winding avenue of scrub. It was
+like a hot-house in the dense, low trees: not a wandering wind, not a
+waking bird; but five faces that dripped steadily in the shade, and all
+but caught fire in the sun. Ahead rode Howie, dazed and bleeding, with
+his callous young constable; the sergeant and his chief, with Stingaree
+between them, now brought up the rear. By degrees Stingaree raised his
+chin a little, but still looked neither right nor left.</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer up!" cried the chief, with soothing irony.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I feel the heat," said the bound man, uncomplainingly. "And it was just
+about here it happened."</p>
+
+<p>"What happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"We overtook the Church militant here on earth," rejoined the
+bushranger, with rueful irreverence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you ran against a snag that time, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't resist turning Howie into the Bishop and making myself his
+mouthpiece. I daren't let him open his lips! It wasn't the offertory
+that was worth having; it was the fun of rounding up that congregation
+on the homestead veranda, and never letting them spot a thing till we'd
+showed our guns. There hadn't been a hitch, and never would have been if
+that old Bishop hadn't run all those miles barefoot over hot sand and
+taken us unawares."</p>
+
+<p>Made with wry humor and a philosophic candor, alike germane to his
+predicament, these remarks seemed natural enough to one knowing little
+of Stingaree. They seemed just the sort of things that Stingaree would
+say. The effect, however, was rather to glorify Bishop Methuen at the
+expense of Superintendent Cairns, who strove to reverse it with some
+dexterity.</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly ran against a snag," he repeated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> "and now your mate's
+run against another." He gave the butt of his ready pistol a significant
+tap. "But I'm the worst snag that ever either of you struck," he went on
+in his vainglory. "Make no mistake about that. And the worst day's work
+that ever you did in your life, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree, was when you
+dared to play at being little crooked Cairns."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree took a first good look at his man. After all he was not so
+crooked on horseback as he had seemed on foot at dusk in the Victorian
+bush; his hump was even less pronounced than Stingaree himself had made
+it on Rosanna; it looked more like a ridge of extra muscle across a pair
+of abnormally broad and powerful shoulders. There was the absence of
+neck which this deformity suggests; there was a great head lighted by
+flashing and indignant eyes, but mounted only on its mighty chin. The
+bushranger was conceited enough to find in the flesh a coarser and more
+common type than that created by himself for the honor of the road. But
+this did not make the real Superintendent a less formidable foe.</p>
+
+<p>"The most poetic justice!" murmured Stingaree, and resumed in an instant
+his apathetic pose.</p>
+
+<p>"It serves you jolly well right, if that's what you mean," the
+Superintendent snarled. "You've your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>self and your own mighty cheek to
+thank for taking me out of my shell and putting me on your tracks in
+earnest. But it was high time they knew the cut of my jib up here; the
+fools won't forget me again in a hurry. And you, you devil, you sha'n't
+forget me till your dying day!"</p>
+
+<p>On Stingaree's off-side Sergeant Cameron was also hanging an insulted
+head. But the bushranger laughed softly in his chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Someone has got to do your dirty work," said he. "I did it that time,
+and the Bishop has done it now; but you shouldn't blame me for helping
+your fellows to bring a murderer to justice."</p>
+
+<p>"You guyed me," said Cairns through his teeth. "I heard all about it.
+You guyed me, blight your soul!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree felt that he was missing a strong face finely convulsed with
+passion&mdash;as indeed he was. But he had already committed the indiscretion
+of a repartee, which was scarcely consistent with an attitude of extreme
+despair. A downcast silence seemed the safest policy after all.</p>
+
+<p>"It used to be forty miles to the Corner," he murmured, after a time.
+"We can't have come more than ten."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much," snapped the Superintendent.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to stop for feed at Mazeppa Station?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's my business."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a long day for three of you, in this heat, with two of us."</p>
+
+<p>"The time won't hang heavy on <i>our</i> hands."</p>
+
+<p>"Not heavy enough, I should have thought. I wonder you didn't bring some
+of the boys from Mulfera along with you."</p>
+
+<p>Superintendent Cairns brayed his high, harsh laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you wonder, and so did they," said he. "But I know a bit too much.
+There'll always be sympathy among scum like them for thicker scum like
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're too suspicious," said Stingaree, mildly. "But I was thinking of
+the Bishop and the boss."</p>
+
+<p>"They've gone their own way," growled Cairns, "and it's just as well it
+wasn't our way. I'd have stood no interference from them!"</p>
+
+<p>That had been his attitude on the station. Stingaree had heard of his
+rudeness to those to whom the whole credit of the capture belonged; the
+man revealed his character as freely as an angry child; and, indeed, a
+childish character it was. Arrogance was its strength and weakness: a
+suggestion had only to be made to call down either the insolence of
+office or the malice of denial for denial's sake.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd stop a bit at Mazeppa," whined Stingaree, drooping like a
+candle in the heat.</p>
+
+<p>The station roofs gleamed through the trees far off the track.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I'm feeling sick."</p>
+
+<p>"Gammon! You've got some friends there; on you push!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you will camp somewhere in the heat of the day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do as I think fit. I sha'n't consult you, my fine friend."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree drooped and nodded, lower and lower; then recovered himself
+with a jerk, like one battling against sleep. The party pushed on for
+another hour. The heat was terrible; the bound men endured torments in
+their bonds. But the nature of the Superintendent, deformed like his
+body, declared itself duly at every turn, and the more one prisoner
+groaned and the other blasphemed, the greater the zest and obduracy of
+the driving force behind them.</p>
+
+<p>Noon passed; the scanty shadows lengthened; and Howie gave more trouble
+of an insensate sort. They reined up, and lashed him tighter; he had
+actually loosened his cords. But Stingaree seemed past remonstrance with
+friend or foe, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> bound body swayed from side to side as the
+little cavalcade went on at a canter to make up for lost time.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 324px;"><a name="IMAGE_5" id="IMAGE_5"></a>
+<img src="images/image-5.jpg" width="324" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="caption">Stingaree toppled out of the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>He was leading now with the kindly sergeant, and his mind had never been
+more alert. Behind them thundered the recalcitrant Howie with constable
+and Superintendent on either side. They were midway between Mazeppa and
+Clear Corner, or some fifteen miles from either haunt of men. Stingaree
+pulled himself upright in the saddle as by a superhuman effort, and
+shook off the helping hand that held him by one elbow.</p>
+
+<p>He was about to do a thing at which even his courage quailed, and he
+longed for the use of his right arm. It was not absolutely bound; the
+hand and wrist had been badly hurt in the Sunday's fray&mdash;so badly that
+it had been easy to sham a fracture, and have hand and wrist in splints
+before the arrival of the police. They still hung before him in a sling,
+his good right hand and fore-arm, stiff and sore enough, yet strong and
+ready at a moment's notice, when the moment came. It had not come, and
+was not coming for a long time, when Stingaree set his teeth, lurched
+either way&mdash;and toppled out of the saddle in the path of the cantering
+hoofs. His lashed feet held him in the stirrups; the off stirrup-leather
+had come over with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> his weight; and there at his horse's hoofs, kicked
+and trampled and smothered with blood and dust, he dragged like an
+anchor, without sign of life.</p>
+
+<p>And it was worse even than it looked, for the life never left him for an
+instant, nor ever for an instant did he fail to behave as though it had.
+Minutes later, when they had stopped his horse, and cut him down from
+the stirrups, and carried him into the shade of a hop-bush off the
+track, and when Stingaree dared to open his eyes, he was nearer closing
+them perforce, and the scene swam before him with superfluous realism.</p>
+
+<p>Cairns and Cameron, dismounted (while the trooper sat aloof with Howie
+in the saddle), were at high words about their prostrate prisoner. Not a
+syllable was lost on Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"You may put him across the horse yourself," said the sergeant. "I won't
+have a hand in it. But make sure you haven't killed him as it
+is&mdash;travelling a sick man like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Killed him? He's got his eyes open!" cried Cairns in savage triumph.
+Stingaree lay blinking at the sky. "Do you still refuse to do your
+duty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cruelty to animals is no duty of mine," declared the sergeant: "let
+alone my fellowmen, bushrangers or no bushrangers."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And you?" thundered Cairns at the mounted constable.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm with the sergeant," said he. "He's had enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" cried the Superintendent, producing a note-book and scribbling
+venomously. "You both refuse! You will hear more of this; meanwhile,
+sergeant, I should like to know what your superior wisdom may be pleased
+to suggest."</p>
+
+<p>"Send a cart back for him," said Cameron. "It's the only way he's fit to
+travel."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree sought to prop himself upon the elbow of the splintered wrist
+and hand.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no more bones broken that I know of," said he, faintly. "But
+I felt bad before, and now I feel worse."</p>
+
+<p>"He looks it, too," observed the sergeant, as Stingaree, ghastly enough
+beneath his blood and dust, rolled over on his back once more, and lay
+effectively with closed eyes. Even the Superintendent was impressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what's to be done with him?" he exclaimed, with an oath. "What's
+to be done?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you ask me," returned Cameron, "I should make him comfortable where
+he is; after all, he's a human being, and done no murder, that we should
+run the risk of murdering him. Leave him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> to me while you two push on
+with his mate; then one of you can get back with the spring-cart before
+sundown; but trust me to look after him till you do."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree held his breath where he lay. His excitement was not to be
+betrayed by the opening of an eye. And yet he knew that the
+Superintendent was looking the sergeant up and down, and he guessed what
+was passing through that suspicious mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust you!" rasped the dictatorial voice at last. "That's the very
+thing I'm not inclined to do, Sergeant Cameron."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep your temper, sergeant. I don't say you'd let him go. But I've got
+to remember that this man has twisted you round his finger before
+to-day, led you by the hand like a blessed old child, and passed himself
+off for me! Look at the fellow; look at me; and ask yourself candidly if
+you're the man for the job. But don't ask me, unless you want my opinion
+of you a bit plainer still. No; you go on with the others. The two of
+you can manage Howie; if you can't, you put a bullet through him! This
+is my man; and I'm his, by the hokey, as he'll know if he tries any of
+his tricks while you're gone!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stingaree did not move a muscle. He might have been dead; and in his
+disappointment it was the easier to lie as though he were. Really
+bruised, really battered, really faint and stiff and sore, to say
+nothing of his bonds, he felt himself physically no match for so young a
+man&mdash;with the extra breadth of shoulder and the extra length of arm
+which were part and parcel of his deformity. With the elderly sergeant
+he might have had a chance, man to man, one arm to two; but with
+Superintendent Cairns his only weapons were his wits. He lay quite still
+and reviewed the situation, as it was, and as it had been. In the very
+moment of his downfall, by instinctive presence of mind he had preserved
+the use of his right hand, and that was a still unsuspected asset of
+incalculable worth. It had been the nucleus of all his plans; without a
+hand he must have resigned himself to the inevitable from the first.
+Then he had split up the party. He heard the sergeant and the constable
+ride off with Howie, exactly as he had intended two of the three captors
+to do. His fall alone introduced the element of luck. It might have
+killed or maimed him; but the risk had been run with open eyes. Being
+alive and whole, he had reduced the odds from three against two to man
+and man; and the difference was enormous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> even though one man held all
+the cards. Against Howie the odds were heavier than ever, but Howie was
+eliminated from present calculations. And as Stingaree made them with
+the upturned face of seeming insensibility, he heard a nonchalant step
+come and go, but knew an eye was on him all the time, and never opened
+his own till the striking of a match was followed by the smell of bush
+tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of the hop-bush was spreading like spilt ink, and for the
+moment Stingaree thought he had it to himself. But a wreath of blue
+smoke hovered overhead; and when he got to his elbow, and glanced
+behind, there sat Cairns in his shirt-sleeves, filling the niche his
+body made in the actual green bush, a swollen wet water-bag at his feet,
+his revolver across his knees. There was an ominous click even as
+Stingaree screwed round where he lay.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a drink!" he cried at sight of the humid canvas bag.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I?" asked the Superintendent, smoking on.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I haven't had one since we started&mdash;because I'm parched with
+thirst."</p>
+
+<p>"Parch away!" cried the creature of suspicion. "You can't help yourself,
+and I can't help you with this baby to nurse."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And he fondled the cocked revolver in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well! Don't give me one!" exclaimed Stingaree, and dealt the moist
+bag a kick that sent a jet of cold water spurting over his foot. He
+expected to be kicked himself for that; he was only cursed, the bag
+snatched out of his reach, and deeply drained before his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to give you some," said Cairns, smacking his lips. "Now
+your tongue may hang out before I do."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree left the last word with the foe: it was part of his
+preconceived policy. He still regretted his solitary retort, but not for
+a moment the more petulant act which he had just committed. His boots
+had been removed after his fall; one of his socks was now wet through,
+and he spent the next few minutes in taking it off with the other foot.
+The lengthy process seemed to afford his mind a certain pensive
+entertainment. It was a shapely and delicate white foot that lay
+stripped at last&mdash;a foot that its owner, with nothing better to do,
+could contemplate with legitimate satisfaction. But Superintendent
+Cairns, noting his prisoner's every look, and putting his own confident
+interpretation on them all, cursed him afresh for a conceited pig, and
+filled another pipe, with the revolver for an instant by his side.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stingaree took no interest in his proceedings; the revolver he
+especially ignored, and lay stretched before his captor, one sock off
+and one sock on, one arm in splints and sling and the other bound to his
+ribs, a model prisoner whose last thought was of escape. His legs,
+indeed, were free; but a man who could not sit on a horse was not the
+man to run away. And then there was the relentless Superintendent
+sitting over him, pipe in mouth, but revolver again in hand, and a
+crooked finger very near the trigger.</p>
+
+<p>The fiery wilderness still lay breathless in the great heat, but the
+lengthening shadow of the hop-bush was now a thing to be thankful for,
+and in it the broken captive fell into a fine semblance of natural
+slumber. Cairns watched with alternate envy and suspicion; for him there
+could not be a wink; but most likely the fellow was shamming all the
+time. No ruse, however, succeeded in exposing the sham, which the
+Superintendent copied by breathing first heavily and then stertorously,
+with one eye open and on his man. Stingaree never opened one of his:
+there was no change in the regular breathing, in the peaceful expression
+of the blood-stained face: asleep the man must be. The Superintendent's
+own experiments had gone to show him that no extremity need necessarily
+keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> one awake in such heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his
+performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot;
+and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's
+senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled
+pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an
+agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself
+really asleep this time? He breathed as though he were; but so did
+Stingaree; and yet was there hope in the fact that his own greatest
+struggle all this time had been against the very thing he feigned.</p>
+
+<p>At last he opened one eye a little; it was met by no answering furtive
+glance; he opened the other, and there could be no more doubt. The
+terrible Superintendent was dozing in his place; but it was the lightest
+sort of doze, the eyes were scarcely closed, and all but watching
+Stingaree, as the cocked revolver in the relaxed hand all but covered
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner felt that for the moment he was unseen, forgotten, but that
+the lightest movement of his body would open those terrible eyes once
+and for all. Be it remembered that he was lying under them lengthwise,
+on the bound arm, with the arm in the sling uppermost, and easily to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> be
+freed, but yet the most salient part of the recumbent figure, and that
+on which the hidden eyes still seemed fixed, for all their lids. To make
+the least movement there, to attempt the slowest withdrawal of hand and
+arm, was to court the last disaster of discovery in such an act. But to
+lie motionless down to the thighs, and to execute a flank movement with
+the leg uppermost, was a far less perilous exploit. It was the leg with
+the bare foot: every detail had been foreseen. And now at last the bare
+foot hovered over the revolver and the hand it held, while the upper man
+yet lay like a log under those drowsy, dreadful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree took a last look at the barrel drooping from the slackened
+hand; the back of the hand lay on the ground, the muzzle of the barrel
+was filled with sand, and yet the angle was such that it was by no means
+sure whether a bullet would bury itself in the sand or in Stingaree. He
+took the risk, and with his bare toe he touched the trigger sharply.
+There was a horrible explosion. It brought the drowsy Superintendent to
+his senses with such a jerk that it was as though the smoking pistol had
+leapt out of his hand a thing alive, and so into the hand that flashed
+to meet it from the sling. And almost in the same second&mdash;while the
+double cloud of smoke and sand still hung between them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>&mdash;Stingaree
+sprang from the ground, an armed man once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit where you are!" he thundered. "Up with those hands before I shoot
+them to shreds! Your life's in less danger than mine has been all day,
+but I'll wing you limb by limb if you offer to budge!"</p>
+
+<p>With uplifted hands above his ears, the deformed officer sat with head
+and shoulders depressed into the semblance of one sphere. Not a syllable
+did he utter; but his upturned eyes shot indomitable fires. Stingaree
+stood wriggling and fumbling at the coil which bound his left arm to his
+side; suddenly the revolver went off, as if by accident, but so much by
+design that there dangled two ends of rope, cut and burnt asunder by
+lead and powder. In less than a minute the bushranger was unbound, and
+before the minute was up he had leapt upon the Superintendent's
+thoroughbred. It had been tethered all this time to a tree, swishing
+tails with the station hack which Stingaree had ridden as a captive; he
+now rode the thoroughbred, and led the hack, to the very feet of the
+humiliated Cairns.</p>
+
+<p>"I will thank you for that water-bag," said Stingaree. "I am much
+obliged. And now I'll trouble you for that nice wideawake. You really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+don't need it in the shade. Thank you so much!"</p>
+
+<p>He received both bag and hat on the barrel of the Government revolver,
+hooking the one to its proper saddle-strap, and clapping on the other at
+an angle inimitably imitative of the outwitted officer.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't carry the rehearsal any further to your face," continued
+Stingaree; "but I can at least promise you a more flattering portrait
+than the last; and this excellent coat, which you have so considerately
+left strapped to your saddle, should contribute greatly to the
+verisimilitude. Dare I hope that you begin to appreciate some of the
+points of my performance so far as it has gone? The pretext on which I
+bared my foot for its delicate job under your very eyes, eh? Not so vain
+as it looked, in either sense, I fancy! Should you have said that your
+hand would recoil from a revolver the moment it went off? You see, I
+staked my life on it, and I've won. And what about that fall? It was the
+lottery! I was prepared to have my head cracked like an egg, and it's
+still pretty sore. The broken wrist wasn't your fault; it had passed
+into the accepted situation before you turned up. And you would
+certainly have seen that I was shamming sleep if we hadn't both been so
+genu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>inely sleepy at the time. I give you my word, I very nearly threw
+up the whole thing for forty winks! Any other point on which you could
+wish enlightenment? Then let me thank you with all my heart for one of
+the worst days, and some of the greatest moments, in my whole career."</p>
+
+<p>But the crooked man answered never a word, as he sat in a ball with
+uplifted palms, and glaring, upturned, unconquerable eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, Mr. Superintendent Cairns," said Stingaree. "I'm afraid I've
+been rather cruel to you&mdash;but you were never very nice to me!"</p>
+
+
+<p class="section">Sergeant Cameron was driving the spring-cart, toward sundown, after a
+variety of unforeseen delays. Of a sudden out of the pink haze came a
+galloping figure, slightly humped, in the inspector's coat and
+wideawake, with a bare foot through one stirrup and only a sock on its
+fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Stingaree?" screamed the sergeant, pulling up. And the galloper
+drew rein at the driven horse's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Dead!" said he, thickly. "He was worse than we thought. You fetch him
+while I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But this time the sergeant knew that voice too well, and his right hand
+had flown to the back of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> his belt. Stingaree's shot was only first by a
+fraction of a second, but it put a bullet through the brain of the horse
+between the shafts, so that horse and shafts came down together, and the
+sergeant fired into the earth as he fell across the splashboard.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree pressed soft heels into the thoroughbred's ribs and thundered
+on and on. Soon there was a gate to open, and when he listened at that
+gate all was still behind him and before; but far ahead the rolling
+plain was faintly luminous in the dusk, and as this deepened into night
+a cluster of terrestrial lights sprang out with the stars. Stingaree
+knew the handful of gaunt, unsheltered huts the lights stood for. They
+were an inn, a store, and police-barracks: Clear Corner on the map. The
+bushranger galloped straight up to the barracks, but skirted the knot of
+men in the light before the veranda, and went jingling round into the
+yard. The young constable in charge ran through the building and met him
+dismounted at the back.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"Stingaree?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was worse than we thought. Your man all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"No trouble whatever, sir. Only sick and sorry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> and saying his prayers
+in a way you'd never credit. Come and hear him."</p>
+
+<p>"I must come and see him at once. Got a fresh horse in?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have so! In and saddled in the stall. I thought you might want one,
+sir, and ran up Barmaid, Stingaree's own mare, that was sent out here
+from the station when we had the news."</p>
+
+<p>"That was very thoughtful of you. You'll get on, young man. Now lead the
+way with that lamp."</p>
+
+<p>This time Stingaree had spoken in gasps, like a man who had ridden very
+far, and the young constable, unlike his sergeant, did not know his
+voice of old. Yet it struck him at the last moment as more unlike the
+voice of Superintendent Cairns than the hardest riding should have made
+it, and with the key in the door of the cell the young fellow wheeled
+round and held the lamp on high. That instant he was felled to the
+floor, the lamp went down and out with a separate yet simultaneous
+crash, and Stingaree turned the key.</p>
+
+<p>"Howie! Not a word&mdash;out you come!"</p>
+
+<p>The burly ruffian crept forth with outstretched hands apart.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Not even handcuffed?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; turned over a new leaf the moment we left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> you, and been praying
+like a parson for 'em all to hear!"</p>
+
+<p>"This chap can do the same when he comes to himself. Lies pretty still,
+doesn't he? In with him!"</p>
+
+<p>The door clanged. The key was turned. Stingaree popped it into his
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"The later they let him out the better. Here's the best mount you ever
+had. And my sweetheart's waiting for me in the stable!"</p>
+
+<p>Outside, in front, before the barracks veranda, an inquisitive little
+group heard first the clang of the door within, and presently the
+clatter of hoofs coming round from the yard. Stingaree and Howie&mdash;a
+white flash and a bay streak&mdash;swept past them as they stood confounded.
+And the dwindling pair still bobbed in sight, under a full complement of
+stars, when a fresh outcry from the cell, and a mighty hammering against
+its locked door, broke the truth to one and all.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>The Villain-Worshipper</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was no more fervent admirer of Stingaree and all bushrangers than
+George Oswald Abernethy Melvin. Despite this mellifluous nomenclature
+young Melvin helped his mother to sell dance-music, ballads, melodeons,
+and a very occasional pianoforte, in one of the several self-styled
+capitals of Riverina; and despite both facts the mother was a lady of
+most gentle blood. The son could either teach or tune the piano with a
+certain crude and idle skill. He endured a monopoly of what little
+business the locality provided in this line, and sat superior on the
+music-stool at all the dances. He had once sung tenor in Bishop
+Methuen's choir, but, offended by a word of wise and kindly advice, was
+seen no more in surplice or in church. It will be perceived that Oswald
+Melvin had all the aggressive independence of Young Australia without
+the virility which leavens the truer type.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he was neither a base nor an unkind lad. His bane was a morbid
+temperament, which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> could no more help than his sallow face and weedy
+person; even his vanity was directly traceable to the early influence of
+an eccentric and feckless father with experimental ideas on the
+upbringing of a child. It was a pity that brilliantly unsuccessful man
+had not lived to see the result of his sedulous empiricism. His wife was
+left to bear the brunt&mdash;a brave exile whose romantic history was never
+likely to escape her continent lips. None even knew whether she saw any
+or one of those aggravated faults of an only child which were so
+apparent to all her world.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the worst of Oswald Melvin was known only to his own morbid and
+sensitive heart. An unimpressive presence in real life, on his mind's
+stage he was ever in the limelight with a good line on his lips. Not
+that he was invariably the hero of these pieces. He could see himself as
+large with the noose round his neck as in coronet or halo; and though
+this inward and spiritual temper may be far from rare, there had been no
+one to kick out of him its outward and visible expression. Oswald had
+never learned to gulp down the little lie which insures a flattering
+attention; his clever father had even encouraged it in him as the
+nucleus of imagination. Imagination he certainly had, but it fed on
+strong meat for an unhealthy mind; it fattened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> on the sordid history of
+the earlier bushrangers; its favorite fare was the character and
+exploits of Stingaree. The sallow and neurotic face would brighten with
+morbid enthusiasm at the bare mention of the desperado's name. The
+somewhat dull, dark eyes would lighten with borrowed fires: the young
+fool wore an eye-glass in one of them when he dared.</p>
+
+<p>"Stingaree," he would say, "is the greatest man in all Australia." He
+had inherited from his father a delight in uttering startling opinions;
+but this one he held with unusual sincerity. It had come to all ears,
+and was the subject of that episcopal compliment which Oswald took as an
+affront. The impudent little choristers supported his loss by calling
+"Stingaree!" after him in the street: he was wise to keep his eye-glass
+for the house.</p>
+
+<p>There, however, with a few even younger men who admired his standpoint
+and revelled in his store of criminous annals, or with his patient,
+inscrutable mother, Oswald Melvin was another being. His language became
+bright and picturesque, his animation surprising. A casual customer
+would sometimes see this side of him, and carry away the impression of a
+rare young dare-devil. And it was one such who gave Oswald the first
+great moment of his bush life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not been down from the back-blocks for three years?" he had asked, as
+he showed a tremulous and dilapidated bushman how to play the instrument
+that he had bought with the few shillings remaining out of his check.
+"Been on the spree and going back to drive a whim until you've enough to
+go on another? How I wish you'd tell that to our high and mighty Lord
+Bishop of all the Back-Blocks! I should like to see his face and hear
+him on the subject; but I suppose he's new since you were down here
+last? Never come across him, eh? But, of course, you heard how good old
+Stingaree scored off him the other day, after he thought he'd scored off
+Stingaree?"</p>
+
+<p>The whim-driver had heard something about it. Young Melvin plunged into
+the congenial narrative and emerged minutes later in a dusky glow.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the man for my money," he perorated. "Stingaree, sir, is the
+greatest chap in all these Colonies, and deserves to be Viceroy when
+they get Federation. Thunderbolt, Morgan, Ben Hall and Ned Kelly were
+not a circumstance between them to Stingaree; and the silly old Bishop's
+a silly old fool to him! I don't care twopence about right and wrong.
+That's not the point. The one's a Force, and the other isn't."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A darned sight too much force, to my mind," observed the whim-driver
+with some warmth.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't take my meaning," the superior youth pursued. "It's a
+question of personality."</p>
+
+<p>"A bit more personal than you think," was the dark rejoinder.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Melvin's tone had altered in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"I know too much about him."</p>
+
+<p>"At first hand?" the youth asked, with bated breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Double first!" returned the other, with a muddled glimmer of better
+things.</p>
+
+<p>"You never knew him, did you?" whispered Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>"Knew him? I've been taken prisoner by him," said the whim-driver, with
+the pause of a man who hesitates to humiliate himself, but is lost for
+the sake of that same sensation which Oswald Melvin loved to create.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Melvin was in the back room, wistfully engrossed in an English
+magazine sent that evening from Bishop's Lodge. The bad blood in the son
+had not affected Dr. Methuen's keen but tactful interest in the mother.
+She looked up in tolerant consternation as her Oswald pushed an unsavory
+bushman before him into the room; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> even through her gentle horror
+the mother's love shone with that steady humor which raised it above the
+sphere of obvious pathos.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a man who's been stuck up by Stingaree!" he cried, boyish enough
+in his delight. "Do keep an eye on the show, mother, and let him tell me
+all about it, as he's good enough to say he will. Is there any whiskey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me!" put in the whim-driver, with a frank shudder. "I should
+like a drink of tea out of a cup, if I'm to have anything."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Melvin left them with a good-humored word besides her promise. She
+had given no sign of injury or disapproval; she was not one of the
+wincing sort; and the tremulous tramp was in her own chair before her
+back was turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Now fire away!" cried the impatient Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a long story," said the whim-driver; and his dirty brows were knit
+in thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have it," coaxed the young man. And the other's thoughtful
+creases vanished suddenly in the end.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said he, "since it means a drink of tea out of a cup! It
+was only the other day, in a dust-storm away back near the Darling, as
+bad a one as ever I was out in. I was bushed and done for, gave it up
+and said my prayers. Then I prac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>tically died in my tracks, and came to
+life in a sunny clearing later in the day. The storm was over; two coves
+had found me and carried me to their camp; and as soon as I saw them I
+spotted one for Howie and the other for Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>The narrative went no farther for a time. The thrilling youth fired
+question and leading question like a cross-examining counsel in a fever
+to conclude his case. The tea arrived, but the whim-driver had to help
+himself. His host neglected everything but the first chance he had ever
+had of hearing of Stingaree or any other bushranger at first-hand.</p>
+
+<p>"And how long were you there?"</p>
+
+<p>"About a week."</p>
+
+<p>"What happened then?"</p>
+
+<p>The whim-driver paused in doubt renewed.</p>
+
+<p>"You will never guess."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"They waited for the next dust-storm, and then cast me adrift in that."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald stared; he would never have guessed, indeed. The unhealthy light
+faded from his sallow face. Even his morbid enthusiasm was a little
+damped.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have done something to deserve it," he cried, at last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I did," was the reply, with hanging head. "I&mdash;I tried to take him."</p>
+
+<p>"Take your benefactor&mdash;take him prisoner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;the man who saved my life."</p>
+
+<p>Melvin sat staring: it was a stare of honestly incredulous disgust. Then
+he sprang to his feet, a brighter youth than ever, his depression melted
+like a cloud. His villainous hero was an heroic villain after all! His
+heart of hearts&mdash;which was not black&mdash;could still render whole homage to
+Stingaree! He no longer frowned on his informer as on a thing accursed.
+The creature had wiped out his original treachery to Stingaree by
+replacing the uninjured idol in its niche in this warped mind. Oswald,
+however, had made his repugnance only too plain; he was unable to elicit
+another detail; and in a very few minutes Mrs. Melvin was back in her
+place, though not before flicking it with her handkerchief, undetected
+by her son.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly a battered and hang-dog figure that stole away into the
+bush. Yet the creature straightened as he strode into star-light
+undefiled by earthly illumination; his palsy left him; presently as he
+went he began fingering the new melodeon in the way of a man who need
+not have sought elementary instruction from Oswald Mel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>vin. And now a
+shining disk filled one unwashed eye.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree lay a part of that night beside the milk-white mare that he
+had left tethered in a box-clump quite near the town; at sunrise he
+knelt and shaved on the margin of a Government tank, before breaking the
+mirror by plunging in. And before the next stars paled he was snugly
+back in older haunts, none knowing of his descent upon those of men.</p>
+
+<p>There or thereabouts, hidden like the needle in the hay, and yet
+ubiquitous in the stack, the bushranger remained for months. Then there
+was an encounter, not the first of this period, but the first in which
+shots were exchanged. One of these pierced the lungs of his melodeon&mdash;an
+instrument more notorious by this time than the musical-box before it&mdash;a
+still greater treasure to Stingaree. That was near the full of a certain
+summer moon; it was barely waning to the eye when the battered buyer of
+melodeons came for a new one to the shop in the pretty bush town.</p>
+
+<p>The shop was closed for the night, but Stingaree knocked at a lighted
+window under the veranda, which Mrs. Melvin presently threw up. Her eyes
+flashed when she recognized one against whom she now harbored a
+bitterness on quite a different plane<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> of feeling from her former
+repulsion. Even to his first glance she looked an older and a harder
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to see you," she said, with a soft vehemence plainly foreign
+to herself. "I almost hate the sight of you! You have been the ruin of
+my son!"</p>
+
+<p>"His ruin?"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree forgot the speech of the unlettered stockman; but his cry was
+too short to do worse than warn him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come round," continued Mrs. Melvin, austerely. "I will see you. You
+shall hear what you have done."</p>
+
+<p>In another minute he was in the parlor where he had sat aforetime. He
+never dreamt of sitting now. But the lady took her accustomed chair as a
+queen her throne.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Is</i> he ruined?" asked Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"Not irrevocably&mdash;not yet; but he may be any moment. He must be before
+long."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but what ails him, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Villain-worship!" cried the lady, with a tragic face stripped of all
+its humor, and bare without it as a winter's tree.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember! Yes&mdash;I understand. He was mad about&mdash;Stingaree."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is madness now," said the bitter mother. "It was only a stupid,
+hare-brained fancy then, but now it is something worse. You're the first
+to whom I have admitted it," she continued, with illogical indignation,
+"because it's all through you!"</p>
+
+<p>"All through me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You told him a tale. You made that villain a greater hero in his eyes
+than ever. You made him real."</p>
+
+<p>"He is real enough, God knows!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you made him so to my son." The keen eyes softened for one divine
+instant before they filled. "And I&mdash;I am talking my own boy over
+with&mdash;with&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree stood in twofold embarrassment. Did she know after all who he
+was? And what had he said he was, the time before?</p>
+
+<p>"The lowest of the low," he answered, with a twitch of his unshaven
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"No! That you were not, or are not, whatever you may say. You&mdash;" she
+hesitated sweetly&mdash;"you had been unsteady when you were here before." He
+twitched again, imperceptibly. "I am thankful to see that you are now
+more like what you must once have been. I can bear to tell you of my
+boy. Oh, sir, can you bear with me?"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree twitched no more. Rich as the situa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>tion was, keenly as he had
+savored its unsuspected irony, the humor was all over for him. Here was
+a woman, still young, sweet and kind, and gentle as a childish memory,
+with her fine eyes full of tears! That was bad enough. To make it worse,
+she went on to tell him of her son, him an outlaw, him a bushranger with
+a price upon his skin, as she might have outlined the case to a
+consulting physician. The boy had been born in the trouble of her early
+exile; he could not help his temperament. He had countless virtues; she
+extolled him in beaming parentheses. But he had too much imagination and
+too little balance. He was morbidly wrapped up in the whole subject of
+romantic crime, and no less than possessed with the personality of this
+one romantic criminal.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be ashamed to tell you the childish lengths to which he has
+gone," she went on, "if he were quite himself on the point. But indeed
+he is not. He is Stingaree in his heart, Stingaree in his dreams; it is
+as debasing a form as mental and temperamental weakness could well take;
+yet I know, who watch over him half of the night. He has an eye-glass;
+he keeps revolvers; he has even bought a white mare! He can look
+extremely like the portraits one has seen of the wretched man. But come
+with me one moment."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She took the lamp and led the way into the little room where Oswald
+Melvin slept. He had slept in it from that boyhood in which the brave
+woman had opened this sort of shop entirely for his sake. Music was his
+only talent; he was obviously not to be a genius in the musical world;
+but it was the only one in which she could foresee the selfish,
+self-willed child figuring with credit, and her foresight was only
+equalled by her resource. The business was ripe and ready for him when
+he grew up. And this was what he was making of it.</p>
+
+<p>But Stingaree saw only the little bed that had once been far too large,
+the Bible still by its side, read or unread, the parents' portraits
+overhead. The mother was looking in an opposite direction; he followed
+her eyes, and there at the foot, where the infatuated fool could see it
+last thing at night and first in the morning, was an enlarged photograph
+of the bushranger himself.</p>
+
+<p>It had been taken in audacious circumstances a year or two before. A
+travelling photographer had been one of yet another coach-load turned
+out and stood in a line by the masterful masterless man.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you may take my photograph. The police refuse to know me when we do
+meet. Give them a chance."</p>
+
+<p>And he had posed on the spot with eye-glass up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> and pistols pointed, as
+he saw himself now, not less than a quarter life-size, in a great gaudy
+frame. But while he stared Mrs. Melvin had been rummaging in a drawer,
+and when he turned she was staring in her turn with glassy eyes. In her
+hands was an empty mahogany case with velvet moulds which ought to have
+been filled by a brace of missing revolvers.</p>
+
+<p>"He kept it locked&mdash;he kept them in it!" she gasped. "He may have done
+it this very night!"</p>
+
+<p>"Done what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stuck up the Deniliquin mail. That is his maddest dream. I have heard
+him boast of it to his friends&mdash;the brainless boys who alone look up to
+him&mdash;I have even heard him rave of it in his dreams!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree was heavy for a moment with a mental calculation. His head was
+a time-table of Cobb's coaches on the Riverina road-system; he nodded it
+as he located the imperilled vehicle.</p>
+
+<p>"A dream it shall remain," said he. "But there's not a moment to lose!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you propose to follow and stop him?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he really means it."</p>
+
+<p>"He may not. He will ride at night. He is often out as late."</p>
+
+<p>"Going and coming about the same time?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;now I think of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then his courage must have failed him hitherto, and it probably will
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"But if not!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will cure him. But I must go at once. I have a horse not far away. I
+will gallop and meet the coach; if it is still safe, as you may be sure
+it will be, I shall scour the country for your son. I can tell him a
+fresh thing or two about Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave him to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, may God bless you always!"</p>
+
+<p>His hands were in a lady's hands once more. Stingaree withdrew them
+gently. And he looked his last into the brave wet eyes raised gratefully
+to his.</p>
+
+<p>The villain-worshipper was indeed duly posted in a certain belt of trees
+through which the coach-route ran, about half-way between the town and
+the first stage south. It was not his first nocturnal visit to the spot;
+often, as his prototype divined, had the mimic would-be desperado sat
+trembling on his hoary screw, revolvers ready, while the red eyes of the
+coach dilated down the road; and as often had the cumbrous ship pitched
+past unscathed. The week-kneed and weak-minded youth was too vain to
+feel much ashamed. He was bid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>ing his time, he could pick his night; one
+was too dark, another not dark enough; he had always some excuse for
+himself when he regained his room, still unstained by crime; and so the
+unhealthy excitement was deliciously maintained. To-night, as always
+when he sallied forth, the deed should be done; he only wished there was
+a shade less moon, and wondered whether he might not have done better to
+wait. But, as usual, the die was cast. And indeed it was quite a new
+complication that deterred this poor creature for the last time: he was
+feverishly expecting the coach when a patter of hoofs smote his ear from
+the opposite quarter.</p>
+
+<p>This was enough to stay an older and a bolder hand. Oswald tucked in his
+guns with unrealized relief. It was his last instinct to wait and see
+whether the horseman was worth attacking for his own sake; he had room
+for few ideas at the same time; and his only new one was the sense of a
+new danger, which he prepared to meet by pocketing his pistols as a
+child bolts stolen fruit. There was no thinking before the act; but it
+was perhaps as characteristic of the naturally honest man as of the
+coward.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree swept through the trees at a gallop, the milk-white mare
+flashing in the moonlit patches. At the sight of her Oswald was
+con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>vulsed with a premonition as to who was coming; his heart palpitated
+as even his heart had never done before; and yet he would have sat
+irresolute, inert, and let the man pass as he always let the coach, had
+the decision been left to him. The real milk-white mare affected the
+imitation in its turn as the coach-horses never had; and Oswald swayed
+and swam upon a whinnying steed. .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>The anti-climax was as profound as the weakling's relief. Yet there was
+a strong dash of indignation in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"What if I am?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not. You're not half smart enough. You can't tell me
+anything about Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>He put his eye-glass up with an air.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree put up his.</p>
+
+<p>"You young fool!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>The thoroughbred mare, the eye-glass, a peeping pistol, were all
+superfluous evidence. There was the far more unmistakable authority of
+voice and eye and bearing. Yet the voice at least was somehow familiar
+to the ear of Oswald, who stuttered as much when he was able.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have heard it before, or have I dreamt it? I've thought a good
+deal about you, you know!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To do him justice, he was no longer very nervous, though still
+physically shaken. On the other hand, he began already to feel the
+elation of his dreams.</p>
+
+<p>"I do know. You've thought your soul into a pulp on the subject, and you
+must give it up," said Stingaree, sternly.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald sat aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"But how on earth did you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've come straight from your mother. You're breaking her heart."</p>
+
+<p>"But how can <i>you</i> have come straight from <i>her</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've come down for another melodeon. I've got to have one, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Another&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And Oswald Melvin knew his drunken whim-driver for what he had really
+been.</p>
+
+<p>"The yarn I told you about myself was true enough," continued Stingaree.
+"Only the names were altered, as they say; it happened to the other
+fellow, not to me. I made it happen. He is hardly likely to have lived
+to tell the tale."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he really try to betray you after what you'd done for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"More or less. He looked on me as fair game."</p>
+
+<p>"But you had saved his life?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stingaree shrugged.</p>
+
+<p>"We rode across him."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think he perished of dust and thirst?"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree nodded. "In torment!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then he got what he jolly well earned! Anything less would have been
+too good for him!" cried Oswald, and with a boyish, uncompromising heat
+which spoke to some human nature in him still.</p>
+
+<p>But Stingaree frowned up the moonlit track. There was still no sign of
+the coach. Yet time was short, and the morbid enthusiast was not to be
+disgusted; indeed, he was all enthusiasm now, and a less unattractive
+lad than the bushranger had hoped to find him. He looked the white screw
+and Oswald up and down as they sat in their saddles in the moonshine: it
+seemed like sunlight on that beaming fool.</p>
+
+<p>"And you think of commencing bushranger, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a hard life while it lasts, and a nasty death to top up with."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't hang you for it."</p>
+
+<p>"They might hang me for the man I put back in the vile dust from whence
+he sprung. They'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> hang you in six months. You've too many nerves. You'd
+pull the trigger every time."</p>
+
+<p>"A short life and a merry one!" cried the reckless Oswald. "I shouldn't
+care."</p>
+
+<p>"But your mother would," retorted Stingaree, sharply. "Don't think about
+yourself so much; think about her for a change."</p>
+
+<p>The young man turned dusky in the moonlight; he was wounded where the
+Bishop had wounded him, and Stingaree was quick to see it&mdash;as quick to
+turn the knife round in the wound.</p>
+
+<p>"What a bushranger!" he jeered. "Put your plucky little mother in a
+side-saddle and she'd make two of you&mdash;ten of you&mdash;twenty of a puny,
+namby-pamby, conceited young idiot like you! Upon my word, Melvin, if I
+had a mother like you I should be ashamed of myself. I never had, I may
+tell you, or I shouldn't have come down to a dog's life like this."</p>
+
+<p>The bushranger paused to watch the effect of his insults. It was not
+quite what he wanted. The youth would not hang his head. And, if he did
+not answer back, he looked back doggedly enough; for he could be dogged,
+in a passive way; it was his one hard quality, the knot in a character
+of green deal. Stingaree glanced up the road once more, but only for an
+instant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is a dog's life," he went on, "whether you believe it or not. But it
+takes a bull-dog to live it, and don't you forget it. It's no life for a
+young poodle like you! You can't stick up a better man than yourself,
+not more than once or twice. It requires something more than a
+six-shooter, and a good deal more than was put into you, my son! But you
+shall see for yourself; look over your shoulder."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald did so, and started in a fashion that set the bushranger nodding
+his scorn. It was only a pair of lamps still close together in the
+distance up the road.</p>
+
+<p>"The coach!" exclaimed the excited youth.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said Stingaree, "and I'm going to stick it up."</p>
+
+<p>Excitement grew to frenzy in a flash.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll help you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do no such thing. But you shall see how it's done, and then ask
+yourself candidly if it's nice work and if you're the man to do it. Ride
+a hundred yards further in, tether your horse quickly in the thickest
+scrub you can find, then run back and climb into the fork of this
+gum-tree. You'll have time; if you're sharp I'll give you a leg up. But
+I sha'n't be surprised if I don't see you again!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is no saying what Oswald might have done, but for these last
+words. Certain it is that they set him galloping with an oath, and
+brought him back panting in another minute. The coach-lamps were not
+much wider apart. Stingaree awaited him, also on foot, and quicker than
+the telling Oswald was ensconced on high where he could see through the
+meagre drooping leaves with very little danger of being seen.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you come down before I'm done and gone&mdash;if it's not to
+glory&mdash;I'll run some lead through you! You'll be the first!"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald perched reflecting on this final threat; and the scene soon
+enacted before his eyes was viewed as usual through the aura of his own
+egoism. He longed all the time to be taking part in it; he could see
+himself so distinctly at the work&mdash;save for about a minute in the
+middle, when for once in his life he held his breath and trembled for
+other skins.</p>
+
+<p>There had been no unusual feature. The life-size coach-lamps had shown
+their mountain-range of outside passengers against moonlit sky or trees.
+A cigar paled and reddened between the teeth of one, plain wreaths of
+smoke floated from his lips, with but an instant's break when Stingaree
+rode out and stopped the coach. The three leaders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> reared; the two
+wheelers were pulled almost to their haunches. The driver was docile in
+deed, though profane in word; and Stingaree himself discovered a
+horrifying vocabulary out of keeping with his reputation. In incredibly
+few minutes driver and passengers were formed in a line and robbed in
+rotation, all but two ladies who were kept inside unmolested. A flagrant
+Irishman declared it was the proudest day of his life, and Oswald's
+heart went out to him, though it rather displeased him to find his own
+sentiments shared by the vulgar. The man with the cigar kept it glowing
+all the time. The mail-bags were not demanded on this occasion.
+Stingaree had no time to waste on them. He was still collecting purse
+and watch, when Oswald's young blood froze in the stiffening limbs he
+dared not move.</p>
+
+<p>One of the ladies had got down from the coach on the off side, and
+behold! it was a man wrapped in a rug, which dropped from him as he
+crept round behind the horses. At their head stood the lily mare, as if
+doing her own nefarious part by her own kind. In a twinkling the mad
+adventurer was on her back, and all this time Oswald longed to jump
+down, or at least to shout a warning to his hero, but, as usual, his
+desires were unproductive of word or deed. And then Stingaree saw his
+man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He did not fire; he did not shift sight or barrel for a moment from the
+docile file before him. "Barmaid! Barmaid, my pet!" he cried, and hardly
+looked to see what happened.</p>
+
+<p>But Oswald watched the mare stop, prick her ears under the hammering of
+unspurred heels, spin round, bucking as she spun, and toss her rider
+like a bull. There in the moonlight he lay like lead, with leaden face
+upturned to the shuddering youngster in the tree.</p>
+
+<p>"One of you a doctor?" asked Stingaree, checking a forward movement of
+the file.</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>The cigar was paling between finger and thumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Then come you here and have a look at him. The rest of you move at your
+peril!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree led the way, stepping backward, but not as far as the injured
+man, who sat up ruefully as the bushranger sprang into the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Another yard, and I'd have grabbed your ankles!" said the man on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a stout fellow, but I know more about this game than you," the
+outlaw answered, riding to his distance and reining up. "If I didn't you
+might have had me&mdash;but you must think of something better for
+Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>He galloped his mare into the bush and Oswald<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> clung in lonely terror
+to his tree. A snatch of conversation called him to attention. The
+plundered party were clambering philosophically to their seats, while
+the driver blasphemed delightedly over the integrity of his mails.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 328px;"><a name="IMAGE_6" id="IMAGE_6"></a>
+<img src="images/image-6.jpg" width="328" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="caption">The mare spun round, bucking as she spun.</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't Stingaree," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet it was!"</p>
+
+<p>"How much? He hardly ever works so far south."</p>
+
+<p>"And he's nuts on mails."</p>
+
+<p>"But if it wasn't Stingaree, who was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was him all right. Look at the mare."</p>
+
+<p>"She isn't the only white 'orse ever foaled," remarked the driver,
+sorting his fistful of reins.</p>
+
+<p>"But who else could it have been?"</p>
+
+<p>The driver uttered an inspired imprecation.</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell you. I chanst to live in this here township we're comin' to.
+On second thoughts, I'll keep it to myself till we get there."</p>
+
+<p>And he cracked his whip.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald himself rode back to the township before the moon went down. He
+was very heavy with his own reflections. How magnificent! It had all
+surpassed his most extravagant imaginings&mdash;in audacity, in expedition,
+in simple mastery of the mutable many by the dominant one. He forgave
+Stingaree his gibes and insults; he could have for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>given a
+horse-whipping from that king of men. Stingaree had been his imaginary
+god before; he was a realized ideal from this night forth, and the
+reality outdid the dream.</p>
+
+<p>But the fly of self must always poison this young man's ointment, and
+to-night there was some excuse from his degenerate point of view. He
+must give it up. Stingaree was right; it was only one man in thousands
+who could do unerringly what he had done that night. Oswald Melvin was
+not that man. He saw it for himself at last. But it was a bitter hour
+for him. Life in the music-shop would fall very flat after this; he
+would be dishonored before his only friends, the unworthy hobbledehoys
+who were to have joined his gang; he could not tell them what had
+happened, not at least until he had invented some less inglorious part
+for himself, and that was a difficulty in view of newspaper reports of
+the sticking-up. He could scarcely tell them a true word of what had
+passed between himself and Stingaree. If only he might yet grow more
+like the master! If only he might still hope to follow so sublime a
+lead!</p>
+
+<p>Thus aspiring, vainly as now he knew, Oswald Melvin rode slowly back
+into the excited town, and past the lighted police-barracks, in the
+innocence of that portion of his heart. But one had flown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> like the wind
+ahead of him, and two in uniform, followed by that one, dashed out on
+Oswald and the old white screw.</p>
+
+<p>"Surrender!" sang out one.</p>
+
+<p>"In the Queen's name!" added the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Call yourself Stingaree!" panted the runner.</p>
+
+<p>Our egoist was quick enough to grasp their meaning, but quicker still to
+see and to seize the chance of a crazy lifetime. Always acute where his
+own vanity was touched, his promptitude was for once on a par with his
+perceptions.</p>
+
+<p>"Had your eye on me long?" he inquired, delightfully, as he dismounted.</p>
+
+<p>"Long enough," said one policeman. The other was busy plucking loaded
+revolvers from the desperado's pockets. A crowd had formed.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're looking for the loot," he went on, raising his voice for the
+benefit of all, "you may look. <i>I</i> sha'n't tell you, and it'll take you
+all your time!"</p>
+
+<p>But a surprise was in store for prisoner and police alike. Every stolen
+watch and all the missing money were discovered no later than next
+morning in the bush quite close to the scene of the outrage. There had
+been no attempt to hide them; they lay in a heap, dumped from the
+saddle, with no more depreciation than a broken watch-glass.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> True to
+his new character, Oswald learned this development without flinching.
+His ready comment was in next day's papers.</p>
+
+<p>"There was nothing worth having," he had maintained, and did not see the
+wisdom of the boast until a lawyer called and pointed out that it
+contained the nucleus of a strong defence.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll defend myself, thank you," said the inflated fool.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll make a mess of it, and deserve all you get. And it would be
+a pity to spoil such a good defence."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the defence?"</p>
+
+<p>"You did it for a joke, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald smiled inscrutably, and dismissed his visitor with a lordly
+promise to consider the proposition and that lawyer's claims upon the
+case. Never was such triumph tasted in guilty immunity as was this
+innocent man's under cloud of guilt so apparent as to impose on every
+mind. He had but carried out a notorious intention; for his few friends
+were the first to betray their captain, albeit his bold bearing and
+magnanimous smiles won an admiration which they had never before
+vouchsafed him in their hearts. He was, indeed, a different man. He had
+lived to see Stingaree in action, and now he modelled himself from the
+life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> The only doubt was as to whether at the last of that business he
+had actually avowed himself Stingaree or not. There might have been
+trouble about the horse, but fortunately for the enthusiastic prisoner
+the man who had been thrown was allowed to proceed on a pressing journey
+to the Barcoo. There was a plethora of evidence without his; besides,
+the hide-and-bone mare was called Barmaid, after the original, and it
+was known that Oswald had tried to teach the old creature tricks; above
+all, the prisoner had never pretended to deny his guilt. Still, this
+matter of the horses gave him a certain sense of insecurity in his cosey
+cell.</p>
+
+<p>He had awakened to find himself not only deliciously notorious, but
+actually more of a man than in his heart of hearts he had dared to hope.
+The tenacity and consistency of his pose were alike remarkable. Even in
+the overweening cause of egoism he had never shown so much character in
+his life. Yet he shuddered to realize that, given the usual time for
+reflection before his great moment, that moment might have proved as
+mean as many another when the spirit had been wine and the flesh water.
+There was, in fine, but one feature of the affair which even Oswald
+Melvin, drunk with notoriety and secretly sanguine of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> nominal
+punishment, could not contemplate with absolute satisfaction. But that
+feature followed the others into the papers which kept him intoxicated.
+And a bundle of these papers found their adventurous way to the latest
+fastness of Stingaree in the mallee.</p>
+
+<p>The real villain dropped his eye-glass, clapped it in again, and did his
+best to crack it with his stare. Student of character as he was, he
+could not have conceived such a development in such a character. He read
+on, more enlightened than amused. "To think he had the pluck!" he
+murmured, as he dropped that <i>Australasian</i> and took up the next week's.
+He was filled with admiration, but soon a frown and then an oath came to
+put an end to it. "The little beast," he cried, "he'll kill that woman!
+He can't have kept it up." He sorted the papers for the latest of all&mdash;a
+sinful publican saved them for him&mdash;and therein read that Oswald Melvin
+had been committed for trial, and that his only concern was for the
+condition of his mother, which was still unchanged, and had seemed
+latterly to distress the prisoner very much.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll distress him!" roared Stingaree to the mallee. "I'll distress him,
+if we change places for it!"</p>
+
+<p>Riding all night, and as much as he dared by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> day, it was some hundred
+hours before he paid his third and last visit to the Melvins'
+music-shop. He rode boldly to the door, but he rode a piebald mare not
+to be confused in the most suspicious mind with the no more conspicuous
+Barmaid. It is true the brown parts smelt of Condy's Fluid, and were at
+once strange and seemingly a little tender to the touch. But Stingaree
+allowed no meddling with his mount; and only a very sinful publican,
+very many leagues back, was in the secret.</p>
+
+<p>There were no lighted windows behind the shop to-night. The whole place
+was in darkness, and Stingaree knocked in vain. A neighbor appeared upon
+the next veranda.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it you want?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Melvin."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use knocking for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of; but she can't be long for this world."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bishop's Lodge; they say Miss Methuen's with her day and night."</p>
+
+<p>For it was in the days of the Bishop's daughter, who had a strong mind
+but no sense of humor, and a heart only fickle in its own affairs. Miss
+Meth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>uen made an admirable, if a somewhat too assiduous and dictatorial,
+nurse. She had, however, a fund of real sympathy with the afflicted, and
+Mrs. Melvin's only serious complaint (which she intended to die without
+uttering) was that she was never left alone with her grief by day or
+night. It was Miss Methuen who, sitting with rather ostentatious
+patience in the dark, at the open window, until her patient should fall
+or pretend to be asleep, saw a man ride a piebald horse in at the gate,
+and then, half-way up the drive, suspiciously dismount and lead his
+horse into a tempting shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree did not often change his mind at the last moment, but he knew
+the man on whose generosity he was about to throw himself, which was to
+know further that that generosity would be curbed by judgment, and to
+reflect that he was least likely to be deprived of a horse whose
+whereabouts was known only to himself. There was but one lighted room
+when he eventually stole upon the house; it had a veranda to itself; and
+in the bright frame of the French windows, which stood open, sat the
+Bishop with his Bible on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know you," said he, putting his marker in the place as Stingaree
+entered, boots in one hand and something else in the other. "I thought
+we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> should meet again. Do you mind putting that thing back in your
+pocket?"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 328px;"><a name="IMAGE_7" id="IMAGE_7"></a>
+<img src="images/image-7.jpg" width="328" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="caption">Stingaree knocked in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you promise not to call a soul?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't expecting me, were you?" cried Stingaree, suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been expecting you for months," returned the Bishop. "You knew my
+address, but I hadn't yours. We were bound to meet again."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree smiled as he took his revolver by the barrel and carried it
+across the room to Dr. Methuen.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that for? I don't want it; put it in your own pocket. At least I
+can trust you not to take my life in cold blood."</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop seemed nettled and annoyed. Stingaree loved him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't come to take anything, much less life," he said. "I come to
+save it; if it is not too late."</p>
+
+<p>"To save life&mdash;here?"</p>
+
+<p>"In your house."</p>
+
+<p>"But whom do you know of my household?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Melvin. I have had the honor of meeting her twice, though each
+time she was unaware of the dishonor of meeting me. The last time I
+promised to try to save her unhappy son from himself. I found him
+waiting to waylay the coach,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> told him who I was, and had ten minutes to
+try to cure him in. He wouldn't listen to reason; insult ran like water
+off his back. I did my best to show him what a life it was he longed to
+lead, and how much more there was in it than a loaded revolver. He
+wouldn't take my word for it, however, so I put him out of harm's way,
+up in a tree; and when the coach came along I gave him as brutal an
+exhibition of the art of bushranging as I could without spilling blood.
+I promise you it was for no other reason. What did I want with watches?
+What were a few pounds to me? I dropped the lot that the lad might
+know."</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop started to his gaitered legs.</p>
+
+<p>"And he's actually innocent all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of the deed, as the babe unborn."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why in the wide world&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Methuen stood beggared of further speech. His mind was too plain and
+sane for immediate understanding of such a type as Oswald Melvin. But
+the bushranger hit off that young man's character in half-a-dozen
+trenchant phrases.</p>
+
+<p>"He must be let out, and it may save his mother's life; but if he were
+mine," exclaimed the Bishop, "I would rather he had done the other deed!
+But what about you?" he added, suddenly, his eyes resting on his
+sardonic visitor, who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> disguised himself far less than his horse.
+"It will mean giving yourself up."</p>
+
+<p>"No. You know me. You can spread what I've told you."</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop shifted uneasily on his hearth-rug.</p>
+
+<p>"I may not see my way to that," said he. "Besides, you must have run a
+lot of risks to do this good action; how do you know you haven't been
+recognized already? I should have known you anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have undertaken not to raise an alarm, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not break my promise."</p>
+
+<p>There was a grim regret in the Bishop's voice. Stingaree thought he
+understood it.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't thank me, pray!" Dr. Methuen could be quite testy on occasion. "I
+have other duties than to you, you know, and I only answer for my
+actions during the actual period of our interview. There are many things
+I should like to say to you, my brother," a gentler voice went on, "but
+this is hardly the time for me to say them. But there is one question I
+should like to ask you for the peace of both our souls, and for the
+maintenance of my own belief in human nature." He threw up an episcopal
+hand dramatically. "If you earnestly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> and honestly wished to save this
+poor lady's life, and there were no other way, would you then be man
+enough to give yourself up&mdash;to give your liberty for her life?"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree took time to think. His eyes were brightly fixed upon the
+Bishop's. Yet they saw a little bedroom just as plain, an English lady
+standing by the empty bed, and at its foot a portrait of himself armed
+to the teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"For hers?" said he. "Yes, like a shot!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thankful to hear it," replied the Bishop, with most fervent relief.
+"I only wish you could have the opportunity. But now you never will. My
+brother, if you look round, you will see why!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree looked round without a word. In the Bishop's eyes at the last
+instant he had learned what to expect. A firing-party of four
+stocking-soled constables were drawn across the opened French windows,
+their levelled rifles poking through.</p>
+
+<p>The bushranger looked over his shoulder with a bitter smile. "You've
+done me, after all!" said he, and stretched out empty hands.</p>
+
+<p>"It was done before I saw you," the Bishop made answer. "I had already
+sent for the police."</p>
+
+<p>One had entered excitedly by an inner door.</p>
+
+<p>"And he didn't do you at all!" cried the voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> of high hysteria. "It
+was I who saw you&mdash;it was I who guessed who it was! Oh, father, why have
+you been talking so long to such a dreadful man? I made sure he would
+shoot you, and you'd still be shot if they had to shoot him!
+Move&mdash;move&mdash;move!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree looked at the strong-minded girl, shrill with her triumph,
+quite carried away by her excitement, all undaunted by the prospect of
+bloodshed before her eyes. And it was he who moved, with but a shrug of
+the shoulders, and gave himself up without another sign.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapter"><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>The Moth and the Star</h2>
+
+<h3 class="section">I</h3>
+
+<p>Darlinghurst Jail had never immured a more interesting prisoner than the
+back-block bandit who was tried and convicted under the strange style
+and title which he had made his own. Not even in prison was his real
+name ever known, and the wild speculations of some imaginative officials
+were nothing else up to the end. There was enough color in their
+wildness, however, to crown the convict with a certain halo of romance,
+which his behavior in jail did nothing to dispel. That, of course, was
+exemplary, since Stingaree had never been a fool; but it was something
+more and rarer. Not content simply to follow the line of least
+resistance, he exhibited from the first a spirit and a philosophy unique
+indeed beneath the broad arrow. And so far from decreasing with the
+years of his captivity, these attractive qualities won him friend after
+friend among the officials, and privilege upon privilege at their hands,
+while amply justifying the romantic interest in his case.</p>
+
+<p>At last there came to Sydney a person more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> capable of an acute
+appreciation of the heroic villain than his most ardent admirer on the
+spot. Lucius Brady was a long-haired Irishman of letters, bard and
+bookworm, rebel and reviewer; in his ample leisure he was also the most
+enthusiastic criminologist in London. And as President of an exceedingly
+esoteric Society for the Cultivation of Criminals, even from London did
+he come for a prearranged series of interviews with the last and the
+most distinguished of all the bushrangers.</p>
+
+<p>It was to Lucius Brady, his biographer to be, that Stingaree confided
+the data of all the misdeeds recounted in these pages; but of his life
+during the quiet intervals, of his relations with confederates, and his
+more honest dealings with honest folk (of which many a pretty tale was
+rife), he was not to be persuaded to speak without an irritating
+reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep to my points of contact with the world, about which something is
+known already, and you shall have the whole truth of each matter," said
+the convict. "But I don't intend to give away the altogether unknown,
+and I doubt if it would interest you if I did. The most interesting
+thing to me has been the different types with whom I have had what it
+pleases you to term professional relations, and the very different ways
+in which they have taken me. You read character by flashlight along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> the
+barrel of your revolver. What you should do is to hunt up my various
+victims and get at their point of view; you really mustn't press me to
+hark back to mine. As it is you bring a whiff of the outer world which
+makes me bruise my wings against the bars."</p>
+
+<p>The criminologist gloated over such speeches from such lips. It would
+have touched another to note what an irresistible fascination the bars
+had for the wings, despite all pain; but Lucius Brady's interest in
+Stingaree was exclusively intellectual. His heart never ached for a
+roving spirit in confinement; it did not occur to him to suppress a
+detail of his own days in Sydney, down to the attractions of an Italian
+restaurant he had discovered near the jail, the flavor of the Chianti
+and so forth. On the contrary, it was most interesting to note the play
+of features in the tortured man, who after all brought his torture on
+himself by asking so many questions. Soon, when his visitor left him,
+the bondman could follow the free in all but the flesh, through every
+corridor of the prison and every street outside, to the hotel where you
+read the English papers on the veranda, or to the little restaurant
+where the Chianti was corked with oil which the waiter removed with a
+wisp of tow.</p>
+
+<p>One day, late in the afternoon, as Lucius Brady was beaming on him
+through his spectacles, and indulging in an incisive criticism on the
+champagne at Government House, Stingaree quietly garroted him. A gag was
+in all readiness, likewise strips of coarse sheeting torn up for the
+purpose in the night. Black in the face, but with breath still in his
+body, the criminologist was carefully gagged and tied down to the
+bedstead, while his living image (at a casual glance) strolled with bent
+head, black sombrero, spectacles and frock-coat, first through the cold
+corridors and presently along the streets.</p>
+
+<p>The heat of the pavement striking to his soles was the first of a
+hundred exquisite sensations; but Stingaree did not permit himself to
+savor one of them. Indeed, he had his work cut out to check the pace his
+heart dictated; and it was by admirable exercise of the will that he
+wandered along, deep to all appearance in a Camelot Classic which he had
+found in the criminologist's pocket; in reality blinded by the glasses,
+but all the more vigilant out of the corners of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A suburb was the scene of these perambulations; had he but dared to lift
+his face, Stingaree might have caught a glimpse of the bluest of blue
+water; and his prison eyes hungered for the sight, but he would not
+raise his eyes so long as footsteps sounded on the same pavement. By
+taking judi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>cious turnings, however, he drifted into a quiet road, with
+gray suburban bungalows on one side and building lots on the other. No
+step approached. He could look up at last. And the very bungalow that he
+was passing was shut up, yet furnished; the people had merely gone away,
+servants and all; he saw it at a glance from the newspapers plastering
+the windows which caught the sun. In an instant he was in the garden,
+and in another he had forced a side gate leading by an alley to backyard
+and kitchen door; but for many minutes he went no further than this
+gate, behind which he cowered, prepared with excuses in case he had
+already been observed.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this interval that Stingaree recalled the season with a
+thrill; for it was Christmas week, and without a doubt the house would
+be empty till the New Year. Here was one port for the storm that must
+follow his escape. And a very pleasant port he found it on entering,
+after due precautionary delay.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly the abode of young married people, the bungalow was fitted and
+furnished with a taste which appealed almost painfully to Stingaree; the
+drawing-room was draped in sheets, but the walls carried a few good
+engravings, some of which he remembered with a stab. It was the
+dressing-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>room, however, that he wanted, and the dressing-room made him
+rub his hands. The dainty establishment had no more luxurious corner,
+what with the fitted bath, circular shaving-glass, packed trouser-press,
+a row of boots on trees, and a fine old wardrobe full of hanging coats.
+Stingaree began by selecting his suit; and it may have been his vanity,
+or a strange longing to look for once what he once had been, but he
+could not resist the young man's excellent evening clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"This fellow comes from Home," said he. "And they are spending their
+Christmas pretty far back, or he would have taken these with him."</p>
+
+<p>He had wallowed in the highly enamelled bath, and was looking for a
+towel when he saw his head in the shaving-glass; he was dry enough
+before he could think of anything else. There was a dilemma, obvious yet
+unforeseen. That shaven head! Purple and fine linen could not disguise
+the convict's crop; a wig was the only hope; but to wear a wig one must
+first try it on&mdash;and let the perruquier call the police. The knot was
+Gordian. And yet, desperately as Stingaree sought unravelment, he was at
+the same time subconsciously as deep in a study of a face so unfamiliar
+that at first he had scarcely known it for his own. It was far leaner
+than of old; it was no longer richly tanned;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> and the mouth called
+louder than ever for a mustache. The hair, what there was of it, seemed
+iron-gray. It had certainly receded at the temples. What a pity, while
+it was about it&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree clapped his hands; his hunt for the razor was feverish,
+tremulous. Such a young man must have many razors; he had, he had&mdash;here
+they were. Oh, young man blessed among young men!</p>
+
+<p>It was quite dark when a gentleman in evening clothes, light overcoat,
+and opera hat, sallied forth into the quiet road. Quiet as it was,
+however, a whistle blew as he trod the pavement, and his hour or two of
+liberty seemed at an end. His long term in prison had mixed Stingaree's
+ideas of the old country and the new; he had forgotten that it is the
+postmen who blow the whistles in Australia. Yet this postman stopped him
+on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>"Beg your pardon, sir, but if it's quite convenient may I ask you for
+the Christmas-box you was kind enough to promise me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are mistaking me for someone else," said Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, so I am, sir! I thought you came out of Mr. Brinton's house."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry to disappoint you," said the convict. "If I only had change you
+should have some of it, in spite of your mistake; but, unfortunately, I
+have none."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He had, however, a handsome pair of opera-glasses, which he converted
+into change (on the gratuitous plea that he had forgotten his purse) at
+the first pawnbroker's on the confines of the city. The pawnbroker
+talked Greek to him at once.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity you won't be able to see 'er, sir, as well as 'ear 'er,"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps they have them on hire in the theatre," replied Stingaree at a
+venture. The pawnbroker's face instantly advised him that his
+observation was wide of the obscure mark.</p>
+
+<p>"The theatre! You won't 'ear 'er at any theatre in Sydney, nor yet in
+the Southern 'Emisphere. Town 'Alls is the only lay for 'Ilda Bouverie
+out 'ere!"</p>
+
+<p>At first the name conveyed nothing to Stingaree. Yet it was not wholly
+unfamiliar.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said he. "The Town Hall I meant."</p>
+
+<p>The pawnbroker leered as he put down a sovereign and a shilling.</p>
+
+<p>"What a season she's 'aving, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! What a season!"</p>
+
+<p>And Stingaree wagged his opera-hatted head.</p>
+
+<p>"'Undreds of pounds' worth of flowers flung on to every platform, and
+not a dry eye in the place!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said the feeling Stingaree.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's wonderful to think of this 'ere Colony prodoocin' the world's best
+primer donner!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"When you think of 'er start."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true."</p>
+
+<p>The pawnbroker leant across his counter and leered more than ever in his
+customer's face.</p>
+
+<p>"They say she ain't no better than she ought to be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's right, too; but what can you expect of a primer donner whose
+fortune was made by a blood-thirsty bushranger like that there
+Stingaree?"</p>
+
+<p>"You little scurrilous wretch!" cried the bushranger, and flung out of
+the shop that second.</p>
+
+<p>It was a miracle. He remembered everything now. Then he had done the
+world a service as well as the woman! He gave thanks for the guinea in
+his pocket, and asked his way to the Town Hall. And as he marched down
+the middle of the lighted streets the first flock of newsboys came
+flying in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Escape of Stingaree! Escape of Stingaree! Cowardly Outrage on Famous
+Author! Escape of Stingaree!!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The damp pink papers were in the hands of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> overflow crowd outside
+the hall; his own name was already in every mouth, continually coupled
+with that of the world-renowned Hilda Bouverie. It did not deter the
+convict from elbowing his way through the mass that gloated over his
+deed exactly as they would have gloated over his destruction on the
+gallows. "I have my ticket; I have been detained," he told the police;
+and at the last line of defence he whispered, "A guinea for
+standing-room!" And the guinea got it.</p>
+
+<p>It was the interval between parts one and two. He thought of that other
+interval, when he had made such a different entry at the same juncture;
+the other concert-room would have gone some fifty times into this. All
+at once fell a hush, and then a rising thunder of applause, and some one
+requested Stingaree to remove his hat; he did so, and a cold creeping of
+the shaven flesh reminded him of his general position and of this
+particular peril. But no one took any notice of him or of his head. And
+it was not Hilda Bouverie this time; it was a pianiste in violent
+magenta and elaborate lace, whose performance also was loud and
+embroidered. Followed a beautiful young barytone whom Miss Bouverie had
+brought from London in her pocket for the tour. He sang three little
+songs very charmingly indeed; but there was no encore. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> gods were
+burning for their own; perfunctory plaudits died to a dramatic pause.</p>
+
+<p>And then, and then, amid deafening salvos a dazzling vision appeared
+upon the platform, came forward with the carriage of a conscious queen,
+stood bowing and beaming in the gloss and glitter of fabric and of gem
+that were yet less radiant than herself. Stingaree stood inanimate
+between stamping feet and clapping hands. No; he would never have
+connected this magnificent woman with the simple bush girl in the
+unpretentious frocks that he recalled as clearly as her former self. He
+had looked for less finery, less physical development, less, indeed, of
+the grand operatic <i>tout-ensemble</i>. But acting ended with her smile, and
+much of the old innocent simplicity came back as the lips parted in
+song. And her song had not been spoilt by riches and adulation; her song
+had not sacrificed sweetness to artifice; there was even more than the
+old magic in her song.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Is this a dream?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then waking would be pain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! do not wake me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let me dream again."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was no new number even then; even Stingaree had often heard it, and
+heard great singers go the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> least degree flat upon the first "dream." He
+listened critically. Hilda Bouverie was not one of the delinquents. Her
+intonation was as perfect as that of the great violinists, her high
+notes had the rarefied quality of the E string finely touched. It was a
+flawless, if a purely popular, performance; and the musical heart of one
+listener in that crowded room was too full for mere applause. But he
+waited with patient curiosity for the encore, waited while courtesy
+after courtesy was given in vain. She had to yield; she yielded with a
+winning grace. And the first bars of the new song set one full heart
+beating, so that the earlier words were lost upon his brain.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She ran before me in the meads;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And down this world-worn track<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She leads me on; but while she leads<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She never gazes back.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And yet her voice is in my dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To witch me more and more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wooing voice! Ah me, it seems<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Less near me than of yore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lightly I sped when hope was high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And youth beguiled the chase;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I follow&mdash;follow still; but I<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall never see her Face."<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>So the song ended; and in the ultimate quiet the need of speech came
+over Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Unrealized Ideal,'" he informed a neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather!" rejoined the man, treating the stale news as a mere remark.
+"We never let her off without that."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not," said Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the song the bushranger forced her to sing at the back-block
+concert, and it made her fortune! Good old Stingaree! By the way, I
+heard somebody behind me say he had escaped. That can't be true?"</p>
+
+<p>"The newsboys were yelling it as I came along late."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Stingaree's neighbor, "if he has escaped, and I for one
+don't hope he hasn't, this is where he ought to be. Just the sort of
+thing he'd do, too. Good old sportsman, Stingaree!"</p>
+
+<p>It was an embarrassing compliment, eye to eye and foot to foot, wedged
+in a crowd. The bushranger did not fish for any more; neither did he
+wait to hear Hilda Bouverie sing again, though this cost him much. But
+he had one more word with his neighbor before he went.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't happen to know where she's staying,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> I suppose? I've met her
+once or twice, and I might call."</p>
+
+<p>The other smiled as on some suicidal moth.</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one place good enough for a star like her in Sydney."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Government House."</p>
+
+
+<h3 class="section">II</h3>
+
+<p>His Excellency of the moment was a young nobleman of sporting
+proclivities and your true sportsman's breadth of mind. He was immensely
+popular with all sects and sections but the aggressively puritanical and
+the narrowly austere. He graced the theatre with his constant presence,
+the Turf with his own horses. His entertainment was lavish, and in
+quality far above the gubernatorial average. Late life and soul of
+exalted circle, he was hide-bound by few of the conventional trammels
+that distinguished the older type of peer to which the Colonies had been
+accustomed. It was the obvious course for such a Governor and his
+kindred lady to insist upon making the great Miss Bouverie their guest
+for the period of her professional sojourn in the capital; and a
+semi-Bohe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>mian supper at the Government House was but a characteristic
+<i>finale</i> to her first great concert.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>prima donna</i> sat on the Governor's right, and at the proper point
+his Excellency sang her praises in a charmingly informal speech, which
+delighted and amused the press men, actors and actresses whom he had
+collected for the occasion. Only the guest of honor looked a little
+weary and condescending; she had a sufficient experience of such
+entertainments in London, where the actors were all London actors, the
+authors and journalists men whose names one knew. Mere peers were no
+great treat either; in a word, Hilda Bouverie was not a little spoilt.
+She had lost the girl's glad outlook on the world, which some women keep
+until old age. There were stories about her which would have accounted
+for a deeper deterioration. Yet she was the Governor's guest, and her
+behavior not unworthy of the honor. On him at least she smiled, and her
+real smile, less expansive than the platform counterfeit, had still its
+genuine sweetness, its winning flashes; and, at its worst, it was more
+sad than bitter.</p>
+
+<p>To-night the woman was an exhausted artist&mdash;unnerved, unstrung, unfitted
+for the world, yet only showing it in a languid appreciation which her
+host and hostess were the first to understand. Indeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> it was the great
+lady who carried her off, bowing with her platform bow, and smiling that
+smile, before the banquet was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>A charming suite of rooms had been placed at the disposal of the <i>prima
+donna</i>; the boudoir was like a hot-house with the floral offerings of
+the evening, already tastefully arranged by madame's own Swiss maid. But
+the weary lady walked straight through to her bedroom, and sank with a
+sigh into the arm-chair before the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Who brought this?" she asked, peevishly picking a twisted note from
+amid the golden furniture of her toilet-table.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw it until this minute, madame!" the Swiss maid answered, in
+dismay. "It was not there ten minutes ago, I am sure, madame!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down to the servants' hall, for one minute, madame."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bouverie read the note, and was an animated being in three seconds.
+She looked in the glass, the flush became her, and even as she looked
+all horror died in her dark-blue eyes. Instead there came a glitter that
+warned the maid.</p>
+
+<p>"I am tired of you, Lea," cried madame. "You let people bring notes into
+my room, and you say you were only out of it a minute. Be good enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+to leave me for the night. I can look after myself, for once!"</p>
+
+<p>The maid protested, wept, but was expelled, and a key turned between
+them; then Hilda Bouverie read her note again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Escaped this afternoon. Came to your concert.
+Hiding in boudoir. Give me five minutes, or raise
+alarm, which you please.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Stingaree.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<p>So ran his words in pencil on her own paper, and they were true; she had
+heard at supper of the escape. Once more she looked in the glass. And to
+her own eyes in these minutes she looked years younger&mdash;there was a new
+sensation left in life!</p>
+
+<p>A touch to her hair, a glance in the pier-glass, and all for a notorious
+convict broken prison! So into the boudoir with her grandest air; but
+again she locked the door behind her, and, sweeping round, beheld a bald
+man bowing to her in immaculate evening clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the writer of a note found on my dressing-table?" she demanded,
+every syllable off the ice.</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who are you, besides being an impudent forger?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You name the one crime I never committed," said he. "I am Stingaree."</p>
+
+<p>And they gazed into each other's eyes; but not yet were hers to be
+believed.</p>
+
+<p>"He only escaped this afternoon!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am he."</p>
+
+<p>"With a bald head?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks to a razor."</p>
+
+<p>"And in those clothes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I found them where I found the razor. Look; they don't fit me as well
+as they might."</p>
+
+<p>And he drew nearer, flinging out an abbreviated sleeve; but she looked
+all the harder in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I begin to remember your face; but it has changed."</p>
+
+<p>"It has gazed on prison walls for many years."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I was grieved .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. but it was bound to come."</p>
+
+<p>"It may come again. I care very little, after this!"</p>
+
+<p>And his dark eyes shone, his deep voice vibrated; then he glanced over a
+shrugged shoulder toward the outer door, and Hilda darted as if to turn
+that key too, but there was none to turn.</p>
+
+<p>"It ought to happen at once," she said, "and through me."</p>
+
+<p>"But it will not."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His assurance annoyed her; she preferred his homage.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you mean," she cried. "You did me a service years ago. I am
+not to forget it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not I who have kept it before your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not; but that's why you come to me to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree looked upon the spirited, spoilt beauty in her satin and
+diamonds and pearls; villain as he was, he held himself at her mercy,
+but he was not going to kneel to her for that. He saw a woman who had
+heard the truth from very few men, a nature grown in mastery as his own
+had inevitably shrunk: it was worth being at large to pit the old Adam
+still remaining to him against the old Eve in this petted darling of the
+world. But false protestations were no counters in his game.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Bouverie," said Stingaree, "you may well suppose that I have borne
+you in mind all these years. As a matter of honest fact, when I first
+heard your name this evening, I was slow to connect it with any human
+being. You look angry. I intend no insult. If you have not forgotten the
+life I was leading before, you would very readily understand that I have
+never heard your name from those days to this. That is my misfortune, if
+also my own fault. It should suffice that, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> I did remember, I came
+at my peril to hear you sing, and that before I dreamt of coming an inch
+further. But I heard them say, both in the hall and outside, that you
+owed your start to me; now one thinks of it, it must have been a rather
+striking advertisement; and I reflected that not another soul in Sydney
+can possibly owe me anything at all. So I came straight to you, without
+thinking twice about it. Criminal as I have been, and am, my one thought
+was and is that I deserve some little consideration at your hands."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean money?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not a penny. It would make all the difference to me. And I give
+you my word, if that is any satisfaction to you, I would be an honest
+man from this time forth!"</p>
+
+<p>"You actually ask me to assist a criminal and escaped convict&mdash;me, Hilda
+Bouverie, at my own absolute risk!"</p>
+
+<p>"I took a risk for you nine years ago, Miss Bouverie; it was all I did
+take," said Stingaree, "at the concert that made your name."</p>
+
+<p>"And you rub it in," she told him. "You rub it in!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am running for my life!" he exclaimed, in answer. "It wouldn't have
+been necessary&mdash;that would have been enough for the Miss Bouverie I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+knew then. But you are different; you are another being, you are a woman
+of the world; your heart, your heart is dead and gone!"</p>
+
+<p>He cut her to it, none the less; he could not have inflicted a deeper
+wound. The blood leapt to her face and neck; she cried out at the
+insult, the indignity, the outrage of it all; and crying she darted to
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>It was locked.</p>
+
+<p>She turned on Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>"You dared to lock the door&mdash;you dared! Give me the key this instant."</p>
+
+<p>"I refuse."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well! You have heard my voice; you shall hear it again!"</p>
+
+<p>Her pale lips made the perfect round, her grand teeth gleamed in the
+electric light.</p>
+
+<p>He arrested her, not with violence, but a shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall jump out of the window and break my neck. They don't take me
+twice&mdash;alive."</p>
+
+<p>She glared at him in anger and contempt. He meant it. Then let him do
+it. Her eyes told him all that; but as they flashed, stabbing him, their
+expression altered, and in a trice her ear was to the keyhole.</p>
+
+<p>"Something has happened," she whispered, turning a scared face up to
+him. "I hear your name.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> They have traced you here. They are coming! Oh!
+what are we to do?"</p>
+
+<p>He strode over to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"If you fear a scandal I can give myself up this moment and explain
+all."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke eagerly. The thought was sudden. She rose up, looking in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you shall not," she said. Her hand flew out behind her, and in two
+seconds the brilliant room had click-clicked into a velvet darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand like a mouse," she whispered, and he heard her reach the inner
+door, where she stood like another.</p>
+
+<p>Steps and voices came along the landing at a quick crescendo.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Bouverie! Miss Bouverie! Miss Bouverie!"</p>
+
+<p>It was his Excellency's own gay voice. And it continued until with much
+noise Miss Bouverie flung her bedroom door wide open, put on the light
+within, ran across the boudoir, put on the boudoir light, and stooped to
+parley through the keyhole.</p>
+
+<p>"The bushranger Stingaree has been traced to Government House."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!"</p>
+
+<p>"One of your windows was seen open."</p>
+
+<p>"He had not come in through it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then you were heard raising your voice."</p>
+
+<p>"That was to my maid. This is all through her. I don't know how to tell
+you, but she leaves me in the morning. Yes, yes, there was a man, but it
+was not Stingaree. I saw him myself through coming up early, but I let
+him go as he had come, to save a fuss."</p>
+
+<p>"Through the window?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am so ashamed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, Miss Bouverie. I am ashamed of bothering you. Confound the
+police!"</p>
+
+<p>When the voices and steps had died away, Hilda Bouverie turned to
+Stingaree, her whole face shining, her deep blue eyes alight.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" said she. "Could you have done that better yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not half so well."</p>
+
+<p>"And you thought I could forget!"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought nothing. I only came to you in my scrape."</p>
+
+<p>After years of imprisonment he could speak of this life-and-death hazard
+as a scrape! She looked at him with admiring eyes; her personal triumph
+had put an end to her indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Lea! I wonder how much she has heard? I shall have to tell her
+nearly all; she can wait for me at Melbourne or Adelaide, and I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+pick her up on my voyage home. It will be no joke without her until
+then. I give her up for your sake!"</p>
+
+<p>Stingaree hung his head. He was a changed man.</p>
+
+<p>"And I," he said grimly&mdash;not pathetically&mdash;"and I am a convict who
+escaped by violence this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I met Mr. Brady the other day," she said, "and I heard of him to-night.
+He is not going to die!"</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her unscrupulous radiance.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wonder at me?" she said. "Did you never hear that musical people
+had no morals?"</p>
+
+<p>And her smile bewitched him more and more.</p>
+
+<p>"It explains us both!" declared Miss Bouverie. "But do you know what I
+have kept all these years?" she went on. "Do you know what has been my
+mascot, what I have had about me whenever I have sung in public, since
+and including that time at Yallarook? Can't you guess?"</p>
+
+<p>He could not. She turned her back, he heard some gussets give, and the
+next moment she was holding a strange trophy in both hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tiny silken bandolier, containing six revolver cartridges, with
+bullet and cap intact.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you guess now?" she gloried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No. I never missed them; they are not like any I ever had."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember the man who chased you out and misfired at you six
+times? He was the overseer on the station; his name may come back to me,
+but his face I shall never forget. He had a revolver in his pocket, but
+he dared not lower a hand. I took it out of his pocket and was to hand
+it up to him when I got the chance. Until then I was to keep it under my
+shawl. That was when I managed to unload every chamber. These are the
+cartridges I took out, and they have been my mascot ever since."</p>
+
+<p>She looked years younger than she had seemed even singing in the Town
+Hall; but the lines deepened on the bushranger's face, and he stepped
+back from her a pace.</p>
+
+<p>"So you saved my life," he said. "You had saved my life all the time.
+And yet I came to ask you to do as much for me as I had done for you!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned away; his hands were clenched behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>"I will do more," she cried, "if more could be done by one person for
+another. Here are jewels." She stripped her neck of its rope of pearls.
+"And here are notes." She dived into a bureau and thrust a handful upon
+him. "With these alone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> you should be able to get to England or America;
+and if you want more when you get there, write to Hilda Bouverie! As
+long as she has any, there will be some for you!"</p>
+
+<p>Tears filled her eyes. The simplicity of her girlhood had come back to
+the seasoned woman of the world, at once spoiled and satiated with
+success. This was the other side of the artistic temperament which had
+enslaved her soul. She would swing from one extreme of wounded and
+vindictive vanity to this length of lawless nobility; now she could
+think of none but self, and now not of herself at all. Stingaree glanced
+toward the window.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go yet, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"You sha'n't! Why should you?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I still fear they may not be satisfied downstairs. I am ashamed to
+ask it&mdash;but will you do one little thing more for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Name it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is only to make assurance doubly sure. Go downstairs and let them
+see you; tell them more details, if you like. Go down as you are, and
+say that without your maid you could not find anything else to put on. I
+promise not to vanish with everything in your absence."</p>
+
+<p>"You do promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"On my&mdash;liberty!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She looked in his face with a very wistful sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>"If they were to find me out," she said, "I wonder how many years they
+would give <i>me</i>? I neither know nor care; it would be worth a few. I
+thought I had lived since I saw you last .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. but this is the best fun
+I have ever had .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. since Yallarook!"</p>
+
+<p>She stood for a moment before opening the door that he unlocked for her,
+stood before him in all her flushed and brilliant radiance, and blew a
+kiss to him before she went.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor was easily found. He was grieved at her troubling to
+descend at such an hour, and did not detain her five minutes in all. He
+thought she was in a fever, but that the fever became her beyond belief.
+Reassured on every point, Miss Bouverie was back in her room but a very
+few minutes after she had left it.</p>
+
+<p>It was empty. She searched all over, first behind the curtains, then
+between the pedestals of the bureau, but Stingaree was nowhere in the
+room, and the bedroom door was still locked. It was a second look behind
+the curtains that revealed an open window and the scratch of a boot upon
+the white enamel. It was no breakneck drop into the shrubs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So he had gone without a word, but also without breaking his word; for,
+with wet eyes and a white face, between anger and admiration, Hilda
+Bouverie had already discovered her bundle of notes and her rope of
+pearls.</p>
+
+
+<p class="section">There are no more tales of Stingaree; tongue never answered to the name
+again, nor was face ever recognized as his. He may have died that night;
+it is not very likely, since the young married man in the well-appointed
+bungalow, which had been broken into earlier in the day, missed a suit
+of clothes indeed, but not his evening clothes, which were found hung up
+neatly where he had left them; and it is regrettable to add that his
+opera-glasses were not the only article of a marketable character which
+could never be found on his return. There is none the less reason to
+believe that this was the last professional incident in one of the most
+incredible criminal careers of which there is any record in Australia.
+Whether he be dead or alive, back in the old country or still in the
+new, or, what is less likely, in prison under some other name, the
+gratifying fact remains that neither in Australia nor elsewhere has
+there been a second series of crimes bearing the stamp of Stingaree.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="chapter">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+
+<p>The following typographical errors present in the
+original edition have been corrected. No other changes have been made to
+the text.</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter I, a quotation mark was removed after "could that be
+possible?", "You had beter play this yourself" was changed to "You had
+better play this yourself", and a quotation mark was added after "And
+hangs below her waist".</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter III, "You might, prehaps, have preferred" has been changed to
+"You might, perhaps, have preferred".</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter V, a quotation mark was added after "I was just thinking the
+same thing", and "succeded at the most humiliating moment" was changed
+to "succeeded at the most humiliating moment".</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter VI, a quotation mark was added before "He may have wished to
+clear his character."</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter VII, "Stingareee was perfectly right" was changed to
+"Stingaree was perfectly right".</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter VIII, a quotation mark was added after "it was just about
+here it happened", and "seemed the samest policy" was changed to "seemed
+the safest policy".</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter IX, "allowed to proceeed on a pressing journey" was changed
+to "allowed to proceed on a pressing journey", "when the spirit had
+beeen wine" was changed to "when the spirit had been wine", and "The
+Bishop seeemed nettled and annoyed" was changed to "The Bishop seemed
+nettled and annoyed".</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter X, "whenever I have sung in jublic" has been changed to
+"whenever I have sung in public".</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STINGAREE***</p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,7404 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Stingaree, by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung,
+Illustrated by George W. Lambert
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Stingaree
+
+
+Author: E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2008  [eBook #26526]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STINGAREE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Steven desJardins and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 26526-h.htm or 26526-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/5/2/26526/26526-h/26526-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/5/2/26526/26526-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+STINGAREE
+
+by
+
+E. W. HORNUNG
+
+Illustrated by George W. Lambert
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "My name's Stingaree!"]
+
+
+
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+New York 1910
+
+Copyright, 1905, by
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                              Page
+I.      A Voice in the Wilderness                1
+II.     The Black Hole of Glenranald            32
+III.    "To the Vile Dust"                      70
+IV.     A Bushranger at Bay                     98
+V.      The Taking of Stingaree                121
+VI.     The Honor of the Road                  144
+VII.    The Purification of Mulfera            168
+VIII.   A Duel in the Desert                   190
+IX.     The Villain-Worshipper                 215
+X.      The Moth and the Star                  252
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"My name's Stingaree!"                                  Frontispiece
+
+"Any message, young fellow?"                                      66
+
+Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up"         98
+without a word
+
+The gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner            166
+
+Stingaree toppled out of the saddle                              198
+
+The mare spun round, bucking as she spun                         238
+
+Stingaree knocked in vain                                        246
+
+
+
+
+Stingaree
+
+
+
+
+A Voice in the Wilderness
+
+
+I
+
+    "La parlate d'amor,
+    O cari fior,
+    Recate i miei sospiri,
+    Narrate i miei matiri,
+    Ditele o cari fior----"
+
+Miss Bouverie ceased on the high note, as abruptly as string that snaps
+beneath the bow, and revolved with the music-stool, to catch but her
+echoes in the empty room. None had entered behind her back; there was
+neither sound nor shadow in the deep veranda through the open door. But
+for the startled girl at the open piano, Mrs. Clarkson's sanctum was
+precisely as Mrs. Clarkson had left it an hour before; her own
+photograph, in as many modes, beamed from the usual number of ornamental
+frames; there was nothing whatever to confirm a wild suspicion of the
+living lady's untimely return. And yet either guilty consciences, or an
+ear as sensitive as it was true, had heard an unmistakable step outside.
+
+Hilda Bouverie lived to look magnificent when she sang, her fine frame
+drawn up to its last inch, her throat a pillar of pale coral, her mouth
+the perfect round, her teeth a noble relic of barbarism; but sweeter she
+never was than in these days, or at this moment of them, as she sat with
+lips just parted and teeth just showing, in a simple summer frock of her
+own unaided making. Her eyes, of the one deep Tasmanian blue, were still
+open very wide, but no longer with the same apprehension; for a step
+there was, but a step that jingled; nor did they recognize the
+silhouette in top-boots which at length stood bowing on the threshold.
+
+"Please finish it!" prayed a voice that Miss Bouverie liked in her turn;
+but it was too much at ease for one entirely strange to her, and she
+rose with little embarrassment and no hesitation at all.
+
+"Indeed, no! I thought I had the station to myself."
+
+"So you had--I have not seen a soul."
+
+Miss Bouverie instantly perceived that honors were due from her.
+
+"I am so sorry! You've come to see Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson?" she cried.
+"Mrs. Clarkson has just left for Melbourne with her maid, and Mr.
+Clarkson has gone mustering with all his men. But the Indian cook is
+about somewhere. I'll find him, and he shall make some tea."
+
+The visitor planted himself with much gallantry in the doorway; he was a
+man still young, with a single eye-glass and a martial mustache, which
+combined to give distinction to a somewhat swarthy countenance. At the
+moment he had also an engaging smile.
+
+"I didn't come to see either Mr. or Mrs. Clarkson," said he; "in fact, I
+never heard their name before. I was passing the station, and I simply
+came to see who it was who could sing like that--to believe my own
+ears!"
+
+Miss Bouverie was thrilled. The stranger spoke with an authority that
+she divined, a sincerity which she instinctively took on trust. Her
+breath came quickly; she was a little nervous now.
+
+"If you won't sing to my face," he went on, "I must go back to where I
+hung up my horse, and pray that you will at least send me on my way
+rejoicing. You will do that in any case. I didn't know there was such a
+voice in these parts. You sing a good deal, of course?"
+
+"I haven't sung for months."
+
+He was now in the room; there was no longer any necessity to bar the
+doorway, and the light coming through fell full on his amazement. The
+girl stood before him with a calm face, more wistful than ironic, yet
+with hints of humor in the dark blue eyes. Her companion put up the
+eye-glass which he had dropped at her reply.
+
+"May I ask what you are doing in these wilds?"
+
+"Certainly. I am Mrs. Clarkson's companion."
+
+"And you sing, for the first time in months, the minute her back is
+turned: has the lady no soul for music?"
+
+"You had better ask the lady."
+
+And her visible humor reached the corners of Miss Bouverie's mouth.
+
+"She sings herself, perhaps?"
+
+"And I am here to play her accompaniments!"
+
+The eye-glass focussed the great, smiling girl.
+
+"_Can_ she sing?"
+
+"She has a voice."
+
+"But have you never let her hear yours?"
+
+"Once. I had not been here long enough to know better. And I made my
+usual mistake."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"I thought I had the station to myself."
+
+The questioner bowed to his rebuke. "Well?" he persisted none the less.
+
+"I was told exactly what my voice was like, and fit for."
+
+The gentleman turned on his heel, as though her appreciation of the
+humor of her position were an annoyance to him. His movement brought him
+face to face with a photographic galaxy of ladies in varying styles of
+evening dress, with an equal variety in coiffures, but a certain family
+likeness running through the series.
+
+"Are any of these Mrs. Clarkson?"
+
+"All of them."
+
+He muttered something in his mustache. "And what's this?" he asked of a
+sudden.
+
+The young man (for as such Miss Bouverie was beginning to regard him)
+was standing under the flaming bill of a grand concert to be given in
+the township of Yallarook for the benefit of local charities.
+
+"Oh, that's Mrs. Clarkson's concert," he was informed. "She has been
+getting it up, and that's why she's had to go to Melbourne--about her
+dress, you know."
+
+He smiled sardonically through mustache and monocle.
+
+"Her charity begins near home!"
+
+"It need not necessarily end there."
+
+"Yet she sings five times herself."
+
+"True--without the encores."
+
+"And you don't sing at all."
+
+"But I accompany."
+
+"A bitter irony! But, I say, what's this? 'Under the distinguished
+patronage of Sir Julian Crum, Mus. Doc., D.C.L.' Who may he be?"
+
+"Director of the Royal College of Music, in the old country," the girl
+answered with a sigh.
+
+"Royal College of Music? That's something new, since my time," said the
+visitor, sighing also. "But what's a man like that doing out here?"
+
+"He has a brother a squatter, the next station but one. Sir Julian's
+spending the English winter with him on account of his health."
+
+"So you've seen something of him?"
+
+"I wish we had."
+
+"But Mrs. Clarkson has?"
+
+"No--not yet."
+
+"I see!" and an enlightened gleam shot through the eye-glass. "So this
+is her way of getting to know a poor overworked wreck who came out to
+patch his lungs in peace and quiet! And she's going to sing him one of
+his own songs; she's gone to Melbourne to dress the part; and you're not
+going to sing anything at all!"
+
+Miss Bouverie refrained alike from comment and confirmation; but her
+silence was the less creditable in that her companion was now communing
+chiefly with himself. She felt, indeed, that she had already been guilty
+of a certain disloyalty to one to whom she owed some manner of
+allegiance; but that was the extent of Miss Bouverie's indiscretion in
+her own eyes. It caused her no qualms to entertain an anonymous
+gentleman whom she had never seen before. A colder course had commended
+itself to the young lady fresh from London; but to a Colonial girl, on a
+station where special provision was made for the entertaining of strange
+travellers, the situation was simply conventional. It might have been
+less onerous with host or hostess on the spot; but then the visitor
+would not have heard her sing, and he seemed to know what singing was.
+
+Miss Bouverie watched him as he leant over the piano, looking through
+the songs which she had dared once more to bring forth from her room.
+She might well have taken a romantic interest in the dark and dapper
+man, with the military eye-glass and mustache, the spruce duck jacket
+and the spurred top-boots. It was her first meeting with such a type in
+the back-blocks of New South Wales. The gallant ease, the natural
+gayety, the charming manners that charmed no less for a clear trace of
+mannerism, were a peculiar refreshment after society racier of Riverina
+soil. Yet it was none of these things which attracted this woman to this
+man; for the susceptible girl was dead in her for the time being; but
+the desperate artist was alive again after many weeks, was panting for
+fresh life, was catching at a straw. He had heard her sing. It had
+brought him galloping off the track. He praised her voice; and he
+knew--he knew what singing was.
+
+Who could he be? Not . . . could that be possible?
+
+"Sing me this," he said, suddenly, and, seating himself at the piano,
+played the opening bars of a vocal adaptation of Handel's Largo with a
+just, though unpractised, touch.
+
+Nothing could have afforded a finer hearing of the quality and the
+compass of her voice, and she knew of old how well it suited her; yet at
+the outset, from the sheer excitement of her suspicion, Hilda Bouverie
+was shaky to the point of a pronounced tremolo. It wore off with the
+lengthening cadences, and in a minute the little building was bursting
+with her voice, while the pianist swayed and bent upon his stool with
+the exuberant sympathy of a brother in art. And when the last rich note
+had died away he wheeled about, and so sat silent for many moments,
+looking curiously on her flushed face and panting bosom.
+
+"I can't place your voice," he said, at last. "It's both voices--the
+most wonderful compass in the world--and the world will tell you so,
+when you go back to it, as go back you must and shall. May I ask the
+name of your master?"
+
+"My own name--Bouverie. It was my father. He is dead."
+
+Her eyes glistened.
+
+"You did not go to another?"
+
+"I had no money. Besides, he had lived for what you say; when he died
+with his dream still a dream, I said I would do the same, and I came up
+here."
+
+She had turned away. A less tactful interlocutor had sought plainer
+repudiation of the rash resolve; this one rose and buried himself in
+more songs.
+
+"I have heard you in Grand Opera, and in something really grand," he
+said. "Now I want a song, the simpler the better."
+
+Behind his back a daring light came into the moist eyes.
+
+"There is one of Mrs. Clarkson's," she said. "She would never forgive me
+for singing it, but I have heard it from her so often, I know so well
+how it ought to go."
+
+And, fetching the song from a cabinet, she thrust it boldly under his
+nose. It was called "The Unrealized Ideal," and was a setting of some
+words by a real poet then living, whose name caused this reader to
+murmur, "London Lyrics!" The composer was Sir Julian Crum. But his name
+was read without a word, or a movement of the strong shoulders and the
+tanned neck on which Miss Bouverie's eyes were fixed.
+
+"You had better play this yourself," said he, after peering at the music
+through his glass. "It is rather too many for me."
+
+And, strangely crestfallen, Miss Bouverie took his place.
+
+    "My only love is always near,--
+      In country or in town
+    I see her twinkling feet, I hear
+      The whisper of her gown.
+
+    "She foots it, ever fair and young,
+      Her locks are tied in haste,
+    And one is o'er her shoulder flung
+      And hangs below her waist."
+
+For that was the immortal trifle. How much of its immortality it will
+owe to the setting of Sir Julian Crum is a matter of opinion, but here
+is an anonymous view.
+
+"I like the words, Miss Bouverie, but the setting doesn't take me. It
+might with repetition. It seems lacking in go and simplicity;
+technically, I should say, a gem. But there can be no two opinions of
+your singing of such a song; that's the sort of arrow to go straight to
+the heart of the public--a world-wide public--and if I am the first to
+say it to you, I hope you will one day remember it in my favor.
+Meanwhile it is for me to thank you--from my heart--and to say good-by!"
+
+He was holding out a sunburnt hand.
+
+"Must you go?" she asked, withholding her own in frank disappointment.
+
+"Unfortunately, yes; my man is waiting for me with both horses in the
+scrub. But before I go I want to ask a great favor of you. It is--not to
+tell a soul I have been here."
+
+For a singer and a woman of temperament, Hilda Bouverie had a
+wonderfully level head. She inquired his reason in no promising tone.
+
+"You will see at Mrs. Clarkson's concert."
+
+Hilda started.
+
+"You are coming to that?"
+
+"Without fail--to hear Mrs. Clarkson sing five songs--your song among
+them!"
+
+"But it's hers; it has been the other way about."
+
+The gay smile broadened on the swarthy face; a very bright eye twinkled
+through the monocle into those of Miss Bouverie.
+
+"Well, will you promise to say nothing about me? I have a reason which
+you will be the first to appreciate in due season."
+
+Hilda hesitated, reasoned with herself, and finally gave her word. Their
+hands were joined an instant, as he thanked her with gallant smile and
+bow. Then he was gone. And as his spurs ceased jingling on the veranda
+outside, Hilda Bouverie glanced again at the song on the piano and
+clapped her hands with unreasonable pride.
+
+"I do believe that I was right after all!" said she.
+
+
+II
+
+Mr. Clarkson and his young men sat at meat that evening with a Miss
+Bouverie hard to recognize as the apparently austere spinster who had
+hitherto been something of a skeleton at their board. Coldly handsome
+at her worst, a single day had brought her forth a radiant beauty
+wreathed in human smiles. Her clear skin had a tinge which at once
+suggested and dismissed the thought of rouge; but beyond all doubt she
+had done her hair with less reserve; and it was coppery hair of a
+volatile sort, that sprang into natural curls at the first relaxation of
+an undue discipline. Mr. Clarkson wondered whether his wife's departure
+had aught to do with the striking change in her companion; the two young
+men rested mutually assured that it had.
+
+"The old girl keeps too close an eye on her," said little Mr. Hack, who
+kept the books and hailed from Middlesex. "Get her to yourself, Ted, and
+she's as larky as they're made."
+
+Ted Radford, the station overseer, was a personage not to be dismissed
+in a relative clause. He was a typical back-blocker, dry and wiry,
+nasally cocksure, insolently cool, a fearless hand with horse, man, or
+woman. He was a good friend to Hack when there was no third person of
+his own kidney to appreciate the overseer's conception of friendly
+chaff. They were by themselves now, yet the last speech drew from
+Radford a sufficiently sardonic grin.
+
+"You see if she is, old man," said he, "and I'll stand by to collect
+your remains. Not but what she hasn't come off the ice, and looks like
+thoring if you take her the right way."
+
+Ted Radford was a confirmed believer in the rightness of his own way
+with all mankind; his admirable confidence had not been shaken by a long
+succession of snubs in the quarter under discussion. As for Miss
+Bouverie, it was her practice to play off one young man against the
+other by discouraging each in his turn. But this evening she was a
+different being. She had a vague yet absolute conviction that her
+fortune was made. She could have sung all her songs to the twain, but
+for the reflection that Mr. Clarkson himself would hear them too, and
+report the matter to his wife on her return.
+
+And the next night the male trio were strangely absorbed in some station
+happening which did not arouse Miss Bouverie's curiosity in the least.
+They were excited and yet constrained at dinner, and drew their chairs
+close together on the veranda afterward. The young lady caught at least
+one word of which she did not know the meaning. She had the tact to keep
+out of earshot after that. Nor was she very much more interested when
+she met the two young men with revolvers in their hands the following
+day.
+
+"Going to fight a duel?" she inquired, smilingly, for her heart was
+still singing Grand Opera and Oratorio by turns.
+
+"More or less," returned the overseer, without his usual pleasantry.
+"We're going to have a match at a target behind the pines."
+
+The London bookkeeper looked an anxious clerk: the girl was glad when
+she saw the pair alive at dinner. There seemed to be little doing.
+Though the summer was already tropical, there had been plenteous rains,
+and Mr. Clarkson observed in Hilda's hearing that the recent day's
+mustering would be the last for some little time. She was thrown much in
+his company, and she liked Mr. Clarkson when Mrs. Clarkson was not
+there. In his wife's hands the good man was wax; now a mere echo, now a
+veritable claque in himself, he pandered indefatigably to the
+multitudinous vanities of a ludicrously vain woman. But it was soon Miss
+Bouverie's experience that he could, when he dared, be attentively
+considerate of lesser ladies. And in many ways these were much the
+happiest days that she had spent on the station.
+
+They were, however, days of a consuming excitement for the caged and
+gagged nightingale that Hilda Bouverie now conceived herself to be. She
+sang not another note aloud. Mr. Clarkson lived in slippers on the
+veranda, which Hilda now associated chiefly with a stranger's spurs: for
+of the booted and spurred stranger she was thinking incessantly, though
+still without the emotions of an ordinarily romantic temperament. Would
+he be at the concert, or would he not? Would he turn out to be what she
+firmly imagined him, or was she to find out her mistake? Might he not in
+any case have said or written some pregnant word for her? Was it beyond
+the bounds of possibility that she should be asked to sing after all?
+
+The last question was the only one to be answered before the time,
+unless a point-blank inquiry of Mrs. Clarkson be included in the
+category. The lady had returned with a gorgeous gown, only less full of
+her experiences than of the crowning triumph yet to come. She had bought
+every song of Sir Julian's to be had in Melbourne, and his name was
+always on her lips. In a reckless moment Miss Bouverie had inquired his
+age.
+
+"I really don't know," said Mrs. Clarkson. "What _can_ it matter?"
+
+"I only wondered whether he was a youngish man or not."
+
+Mrs. Clarkson had already raised her eyebrows; at this answer they
+disappeared behind a _toupet_ dating from her late descent upon the
+Victorian capital.
+
+"Really, Miss Bouverie!" she said, and nothing more in words. But the
+tone was intolerable, and its accompanying sneer a refinement in
+vulgarity, which only the really refined would have resented as it
+deserved. Miss Bouverie got up and left the room without a word. But her
+flaming face left a misleading tale behind.
+
+She was not introduced to Sir Julian; but that was not her prime
+disappointment when the great night came. All desire for an
+introduction, all interest in the concert, died a sudden death in Hilda
+Bouverie at her first glimpse of the gentleman who was duly presented to
+Mrs. Clarkson as Sir Julian Crum. He was more than middle-aged; he wore
+a gray beard, and the air of a somewhat supercilious martyr; his near
+sight was obviated by double lenses in gold rims. Hilda could have wept
+before the world. For nearly three weeks she had been bowing in
+imagination to a very different Sir Julian, bowing as though she had
+never beheld him in her life before; and yet in three minutes she saw
+how little real reason she had ever had for the illogical conclusion to
+which she had jumped. She searched for the sprightly figure she had
+worn in her mind's eye; his presence under any other name would still
+have been welcome enough now. But he was not there at all. In the patchy
+glare of the kerosene lamps, against the bunting which lined the
+corrugated walls of Gulland's new iron store, among flower and weed of
+township and of station, did Miss Bouverie seek in vain for a single
+eye-glass and a military mustache.
+
+The concert began. Miss Bouverie opened it herself with the inevitably
+thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into
+the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs.
+Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a
+dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted
+her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the
+first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood
+to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his
+wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and
+acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with
+the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous
+stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied,
+extracted solace from the depressed attitude in which Sir Julian Crum
+sat looking down his nose.
+
+The township boasted its score of dwellings, but few of them showed a
+light that evening; not less than ninety of the round hundred of
+inhabitants clapped their hands and mopped their foreheads in Gulland's
+new store. It might have been run up for its present purpose. There was
+an entrance at one end for the performers, and that on the platform
+level, since the ground sloped a little; at the other end was the only
+other entrance, by which the audience were admitted. A makeshift lobby
+had been arranged behind the platform, and thither Mrs. Clarkson retired
+to await her earlier encores; when the compliment became a recognized
+matter of course, she abandoned the mere form of a momentary retirement,
+and stood patiently smiling in the satin ball-dress brought from
+Melbourne for the nonce. And for the brief intervals between her efforts
+she descended to a throne specially reserved on the great musician's
+right.
+
+The other performers did not dim her brilliance by reason of their own.
+There was her own dear husband, whose serious recitation was the one
+entertaining number. There was a Rabbit Inspector who rapped out "The
+Scout" in a defiant barytone, and a publican whose somewhat uneven tenor
+was shaken to its depths by the simple pathos of "When Sparrows Build."
+Mrs. Clarkson could afford to encourage such tyros with marked applause.
+The only danger was that Sir Julian might think she really admired their
+untutored attempts.
+
+"One must do it," she therefore took occasion to explain as she clapped.
+"They are so nervous. The hard thing is to put oneself in their place;
+it's nothing to me to sing a song, Sir Julian."
+
+"So I can see, madam," said he.
+
+At the extreme end of the same row Miss Bouverie passed her unemployed
+moments between Mr. Radford and the wall, and was not easy until she had
+signalled to little Mr. Hack to occupy the seat behind her. With the two
+together she felt comparatively comfortable. Mr. Radford's running
+criticism on the performers, always pungent, was often amusing, while
+Mr. Hack lost no opportunity of advancing his own ideals in the matter
+of musical entertainment.
+
+"A song and dance," said he, again and again, with a more and more
+sepulchral deviltry--"a song and dance is what you want. You should have
+heard the Sisters Belton in their palmy days at the Pav! You don't get
+the best of everything out here, you know, Ted!"
+
+"No; let's hope they've got some better men than you," returned
+Radford, inspired by the quorum of three to make mince-meat of his
+friend.
+
+It was the interval between parts one and two. The platform was
+unoccupied. A cool draught blew through the iron building from open door
+to open door; there was no occasion to go outside. They had done so,
+however, at the lower end; there was a sudden stampede of returning
+feet. A something in the scuffling steps, a certain outcry that
+accompanied them, caused Miss Bouverie and her companions to turn their
+heads; they turned again at as sudden a jingle on the platform, and the
+girl caught her breath. There stood her missing hero, smiling on the
+people, dapper, swarthy, booted, spurred, and for one moment the man she
+had reason to remember, exactly as she remembered him. The next his
+folded arms sprang out from the shoulders, and a brace of long-barrelled
+revolvers covered the assembly.
+
+"Up with your hands, every man of you!" he cried. "No, not the ladies,
+but every man and boy who doesn't want a bullet in his brain!"
+
+The command was echoed in uncouth accents at the lower door, where, in
+fact, a bearded savage had driven in all and sundry at his pistol's
+point. And in a few seconds the meeting was one which had carried by
+overwhelming show of hands a proposition from which the ladies alone
+saw occasion to dissent.
+
+"You may have heard of me before," said the man on the platform,
+sweeping the forest of hands with his eye-glass. "My name's Stingaree."
+
+It was the word which Hilda Bouverie had heard on the veranda and taken
+for some strange expletive.
+
+"Who is he?" she asked, in a whisper that bespoke excitement, agitation,
+but not alarm.
+
+"The fancy bushranger--the dandy outlaw!" drawled Radford, in cool
+reply. "I've been expecting him. He was seen on our run the day Mrs.
+Clarkson went down to Melbourne."
+
+That memorable day for Hilda Bouverie! And it was this manner of man who
+had been her hero ever since: a bushranger, an outlaw, a common robber
+under arms!
+
+"And you never told me!" she cried, in an indignant whisper.
+
+"We never told Mrs. Clarkson either. You must blame the boss."
+
+Hilda snatched her eyes from Stingaree, and was sorry for Mrs. Clarkson
+for the first time in their acquaintance. The new ball-dress of bridal
+satin was no whiter than its wearer's face, which had aged several years
+in as many seconds. The squatter leant toward her with uplifted hands,
+loyally concerned for no one and for nothing else. Between the couple
+Sir Julian might have been conducting without his baton, but with both
+arms. Meanwhile, the flashing eye-glass had fixed itself on Miss
+Bouverie's companion, without resting for an instant on Miss Bouverie.
+
+"Silence over there!" cried Stingaree, sternly. "I'm here on a perfectly
+harmless errand. If you know anything about me at all, you may know that
+I have a weakness for music of any kind, so long as it's good of its
+kind."
+
+The eye-glass dropped for a moment upon Mrs. Clarkson in the front row,
+and the irrepressible Radford was enabled to continue his say.
+
+"He has, too, from a mouth-organ to a full orchestra, from all accounts,
+Miss Bouverie. _My revolver's in the coat-pocket next you!_"
+
+"It is the music," continued Stingaree, looking harder than before in
+their direction, "which has brought me here to-night. I've come to
+listen, and for no other reason in the world. Unfortunately, when one
+has a price upon one's head, one has to take certain precautions before
+venturing among one's fellow-men. And, though I'm not here for gain or
+bloodshed, if any man of you gives me trouble I shall shoot him like a
+dog!"
+
+"That's one for me," whispered the intrepid overseer, in lower key.
+"Never mind. He's not looking at us now. I believe Mrs. Clarkson's going
+to faint. _You take what I told you and slip it under your shawl, and
+you'll save a second by passing it up to me the instant you see her
+sway!_"
+
+Hilda hesitated. A dead silence had fallen on the crowded and heated
+store, and in the silence Stingaree was already taking an unguarded
+interest in Mrs. Clarkson's appearance, which as certainly betokened
+imminent collapse. "_Now!_" whispered Radford, and Hilda hesitated no
+more. She was wearing a black lace shawl between her appearances at the
+piano; she had the revolver under it in a twinkling, and pressed it to
+her bosom with both hands, one outside the shawl and one underneath, as
+who should hug a beating heart.
+
+"Mrs. Clarkson," said Stingaree, "you have been singing too much, and
+the quality of your song has not been equal to the quantity."
+
+It sounded a brutal speech enough; and to do justice to a portion of the
+audience not hitherto remarkable for its spirit, the ungallant criticism
+was audibly resented in the back rows. The maudlin stockman had indeed
+to be restrained by his neighbors from precipitating himself upon the
+barrels of Stingaree. But the effect upon Mrs. Clarkson herself was
+still more remarkable, and revealed a subtle kindness in the desperado's
+cruelty. Her pale face flushed; her lack-lustre eyes blazed forth their
+indignation; her very clay was on fire for all the room to see.
+
+"I don't sing for criminals and cut-throats!" the indignant lady cried
+out. She glanced at Sir Julian as one for whom she did sing. And Sir
+Julian's eyes twinkled under the bushranger's guns.
+
+"To be sure you don't," said Stingaree, with as much sweetness as his
+character would permit. "You sing for charity, and spend three times as
+much as you are ever likely to make in arraying yourself for the
+occasion. Well, we must put up with some song-bird without fine
+feathers, for I mean to hear the programme out." His eyes ranged the
+front rows till they fell on Hilda Bouverie in her corner. "You young
+lady over there! You've been talking since I called for silence. You
+deserve to pay a penalty; be good enough to step this way."
+
+Hilda's excitement may be supposed; it made her scandalously radiant in
+that company of humiliated men and women, but it did not rob her of her
+resource. Removing her shawl with apparent haste, but with calculated
+deliberation, she laid it in a bunch upon the seat which she had
+occupied, and stepped forward with a courage that won a cheer from the
+back rows. Stingaree stooped to hand her up to the platform; and his
+warm grip told a tale. This was what he had come for, to make her sing,
+to make her sing before Sir Julian Crum, to give her a start unique in
+the history of the platform and the stage. Criminal, was he? Then the
+dearest, kindest, most enchanting, most romantic criminal the world had
+ever seen! But she must be worthy of his chivalry and her chance; and,
+from the first, her artistic egoism insisted that she was.
+
+Stingaree had picked up a programme, and dexterously mounted it between
+hammer and cartridge of the revolver which he had momentarily
+relinquished, much as a cornet-player mounts his music under his nose.
+With both weapons once more levelled, he consulted the programme now.
+
+"The next item, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is another pianoforte
+solo by this young lady. We'll let you off that, Miss Bouverie, since
+you've got to sing. The next song on the programme is called 'The
+Unrealized Ideal,' and the music is by our distinguished visitor and
+patron, Sir Julian Crum. In happier circumstances it would have been
+sung to you by Mrs. Montgomery Clarkson; as it is, I call upon Miss
+Bouverie to realize her ideal and ours, and on Sir Julian Crum to
+accompany her, if he will."
+
+At Mrs. Clarkson's stony side the great man dropped both arms at the
+superb impudence of the invitation.
+
+"Quite right, Sir Julian; let the blood run into them," said Stingaree.
+"It is a pure oversight that you were not exempted in the beginning.
+Comply with my entreaty and I guarantee that you shall suffer no further
+inconvenience."
+
+Sir Julian wavered. In London he was a club-man and a diner-out; and
+what a tale for the Athenaeum--what a short cut to every ear at a
+Kensington dinner-table! In the end it would get into the papers. That
+was the worst of it. But in the midst of Sir Julian's hesitation his
+pondering eyes met those of Miss Bouverie--on fire to sing him his own
+song--alight with the ability to do it justice. And Sir Julian was lost.
+
+How she sang it may be guessed. Sir Julian bowed and swayed upon his
+stool. Stingaree stood by with a smile of personal pride and
+responsibility, but with both revolvers still levelled, and one of them
+cocked. It was a better song than he had supposed. It gained enormously
+from the composer's accompaniment. The last verse was softer than
+another would have made it, and yet the singer obeyed inaudible
+instructions as though she had never sung it otherwise. It was more in a
+tuneful whisper than in hushed notes that the last words left her
+lips:--
+
+    "Lightly I sped when hope was high,
+      And youth beguiled the chase;
+    I follow--follow still; but I
+      Shall never see her Face."
+
+The applause, when it came, was almost overwhelming. The bushranger
+watched and smiled, but cocked his second pistol, and let the programme
+flutter to the floor. As for Sir Julian Crum, the self-contained, the
+cynical, he was seen for an instant, wheeled about on the music-stool,
+grasping the singer by both hands. But there was no hearing what he
+said; the girl herself heard nothing until he bellowed in her ear:
+
+"They'll have their encore. What can you give them? It must be something
+they know. 'Home, Sweet Home'? 'The Last Rose'? 'Within a Mile'? The
+first, eh? Very well; it's a leaf out of Patti's book; but so are they
+all."
+
+And he struck the opening bars in the key of his own song, but for some
+moments Hilda Bouverie stood bereft of her great voice. A leaf out of
+Patti's book, in that up-country township, before a roomful held in
+terror--and yet unmindful--of the loaded pistols of two bloodthirsty
+bushrangers! The singer prayed for power to live up to those golden
+words. A leaf out of Patti's book!
+
+It was over. The last poignant note trembled into nothingness. The
+silence, absolutely dead for some seconds, was then only broken by a
+spirituous sob from the incorrigible stockman. There was never any
+applause at all. Ere it came, even as it was coming, the overseer
+Radford leapt to his feet with a raucous shout.
+
+The bushranger had vanished from the platform. The other bushranger had
+disappeared through the other door. The precious pair of them had melted
+from the room unseen, unheard, what time every eye doted on handsome
+Hilda Bouverie, and every ear on the simple words and moving cadences of
+"Home, Sweet Home."
+
+Ted Radford was the first to see it; for by the end of the brief song he
+had his revolver uncovered and cocked at last, and no quarry left for
+him to shoot. With a bound he was on the platform; another carried him
+into the canvas anteroom, a third and a fourth out into the moonlight.
+It was as bright as noon in a conservatory of smoked glass. And in the
+tinted brightness one man was already galloping away; but it was
+Stingaree who danced with one foot only in the stirrup of a milk-white
+mare.
+
+Radford rushed up to him and fired point-blank again and again. A series
+of metallic clicks was all the harm he did, for Stingaree was in the
+saddle before the hurled revolver struck the mare on the ribs, and sent
+the pair flying through the moonlight with a shout of laughter, a cloud
+of sand, and a dull volley of thunderous hoofs. The overseer picked up
+his revolver and returned crestfallen to examine it in the lights of the
+emptying room.
+
+"I could have sworn I loaded it," said he. "If I had, he'd have been a
+dead man six times over."
+
+Miss Bouverie had been talking to Sir Julian Crum. On Radford's entry
+she had grown _distraite_, but at Radford's speech she turned back to
+Sir Julian with shining eyes.
+
+"My wife wants a companion for the voyage," he was saying. "So that will
+cost you nothing, but if anything the other way, and once in London,
+I'll be answerable. I've adjudicated these things for years to voices
+not in the same class as yours. But the worst of it is you won't stay
+with us."
+
+"I will."
+
+"No; they'll want you at Covent Garden before we know where we are. And
+when you are ready to go to them, go you must."
+
+"I shall do what you tell me."
+
+"Then speak to Mrs. Clarkson at once."
+
+Hilda Bouverie glanced over her shoulder, but her employers had left the
+building. Her smile was less roguish than demure.
+
+"There is no need, Sir Julian. Mrs. Clarkson has already spoken to me,
+though only in a whisper. But I am to take myself off by the next
+coach."
+
+
+
+
+The Black Hole of Glenranald
+
+
+It was coming up the Murrumbidgee that Fergus Carrick first heard the
+name of Stingaree. With the cautious enterprise of his race, the young
+gentleman had booked steerage on a river steamer whose solitary
+passenger he proved to be; accordingly he was not only permitted to
+sleep on the saloon settee at nights, but graciously bidden to the
+captain's board by day. It was there that Fergus Carrick encouraged
+tales of the bushrangers as the one cleanly topic familiar in the mouth
+of the elderly engineer who completed the party. And it seemed that the
+knighthood of the up-country road had been an extinct order from the
+extirpation of the Kellys to the appearance of this same Stingaree, who
+was reported a man of birth and mystery, with an ostentatious passion
+for music and as romantic a method as that of any highwayman of the Old
+World from which he hailed. But the callow Fergus had been spared the
+romantic temperament, and was less impressed than entertained with what
+he heard.
+
+On his arrival at Glenranald, however, he found that substantial
+township shaking with laughter over the outlaw's latest and least
+discreditable exploit, at the back-block hamlet of Yallarook; and then
+it was that young Carrick first conceived an ambition to open his
+Colonial career with the capture of Stingaree; for he was a serious
+immigrant, who had come out in his teens, to stay out, if necessary, for
+the term of his natural life.
+
+The idea had birth under one of the many pine trees which shaded the
+skeleton streets of budding Glenranald. On this tree was nailed a
+placard offering high reward for the bushranger's person alive or dead.
+Fergus was making an immediate note in his pocketbook when a hand fell
+on his shoulder.
+
+"Would ye like the half o' yon?" inquired a voice in his own tongue; and
+there at his elbow stood an elderly gentleman, whose patriarchal beard
+hid half the buttons of his alpaca coat, while a black skull-cap sat
+somewhat jauntily on his head.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Fergus, bluntly, for the old gentleman stood
+chuckling gently in his venerable beard.
+
+"To lay a hold of him," replied the other, "with the help o' some
+younger and abler-bodied man; and you're the very one I want."
+
+The raw youth stared ingenuously.
+
+"But what can you know about me?"
+
+"I saw ye land at the wharf," said the old gentleman, nodding his
+approval of the question, "and says I, 'That's my man,' as soon as ever
+I clapped eyes on ye. So I had a crack wi' the captain o' yon steamer;
+he told me you hadna a billet, but were just on the lookout for the best
+ye could get, an' that's all he'd been able to get out o' ye in a five
+days' voyage. That was enough for me. I want a man who can keep his
+tongue behind his teeth, and I wanted you before I knew you were a
+brither Scot!"
+
+"Are you a squatter, sir?" the young man asked, a little overwhelmed.
+
+"No, sir, I'm branch manager o' the Bank o' New South Wales, the only
+bank within a hunder miles o' where we stand; and I can offer ye a
+better billet than any squatter in the Colony."
+
+"Indeed? I'm sure you're very kind, sir, but I'm wanting to get on a
+station," protested Fergus with all his tact. "And as a matter of fact,
+I have introductions to one or two stations further back, though I saw
+no reason to tell our friend the skipper so."
+
+"Quite right, quite right! I like a man who can keep his tongue in its
+kennel!" cried the bank manager, rubbing his hands. "But wait while I
+tell ye: ye'd need to work for your rations an any station I ever heard
+tell of, and I keep the accounts of enough to know. Now, with me, ye'd
+get two pound a week till your share o' the reward was wiped off; and if
+we had no luck for a year you'd be no worse off, but could go and try
+your squatters then. That's a promise, and I'll keep it as sure as my
+name's Andr' Macbean!"
+
+"But how do you propose to catch this fellow, Mr. Macbean?"
+
+The bank manager looked on all sides, likewise behind the tree, before
+replying under his breath: "By setting a wee trap for him! A bank's a
+bank, and Stingaree hasna stuck one up since he took to his trade. But
+I'll tell ye no more till ye give me your answer. Yes or no?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't even write an office hand; and as for figures----"
+
+Mr. Macbean laughed outright.
+
+"Did I say I was going to take ye into the bank, mun?" cried he.
+"There's three of us already to do the writin' an' the cipherin,' an'
+three's enough. Can you ride?"
+
+"I have ridden."
+
+"And ye'll do any rough job I set ye to?"
+
+"The rougher the better."
+
+"That's all I ask. There's a buggy and a pair for ye to mind, and mebbe
+drive, though it's horseback errands you'll do most of. I'm an old
+widower, living alone with an aged housekeeper. The cashier and the
+clerk dig in the township, and I need to have a man of some sort about
+the place; in fact, I have one, but I'll soon get rid of him if you'll
+come instead. Understand, you live in the house with me, just like the
+jackeroos on the stations; and like the jackeroos, you do all the odd
+jobs and dirty work that no one else'll look at; but, unlike them, you
+get two pounds a week from the first for doing it."
+
+Mr. Andrew Macbean had chanced upon a magic word. It was the position of
+"jackeroo," or utility parlor-man, on one or other of the stations to
+which he carried introductions, that his young countryman had set before
+him as his goal. True, a bank in a bush township was not a station in
+the bush itself. On the other hand, his would-be friend was not the
+first to warn Fergus against the futility of expecting more than a
+nominal salary as a babe and suckling in Colonial experience; and
+perhaps the prime elements of that experience might be gained as well in
+the purlieus of a sufficiently remote township as in realms unnamed on
+any map. It will be seen that the sober stripling was reduced to
+arguing with himself, and that his main argument was not to be admitted
+in his own heart. The mysterious eccentricity of his employer, coupled
+with the adventurous character of his alleged prospects, was what
+induced the lad to embrace both in defiance of an unimaginative
+hard-headedness which he aimed at rather than possessed.
+
+With characteristic prudence he had left his baggage on board the
+river-steamer, and his own hands carried it piecemeal to the bank. This
+was a red-brick bungalow with an ample veranda, standing back from the
+future street that was as yet little better than a country road. The
+veranda commanded a long perspective of pines, but no further bricks and
+mortar, and but very few weather board walls. The yard behind the house
+was shut in by as many outbuildings as clustered about the small
+homesteads which Fergus had already beheld on the banks of the
+Murrumbidgee. The man in charge of the yard was palpably in liquor, a
+chronic condition from his general appearance, and Mr. Macbean
+discharged him on the spot with a decision which left no loophole for
+appeal. The woman in charge of the house adorned another plane of
+civilization; she was very deaf, and very outspoken on her introduction
+to the young gentleman, whose face she was pleased to approve, with the
+implied reservation that all faces were liars; but she served up the
+mutton of the country hot and tender; and Fergus Carrick, leaning back
+after an excellent repast, marvelled for the twentieth time that he was
+not to pay for it.
+
+"A teetotaler, are ye?" said Macbean, mixing a third glass of whiskey,
+with the skull-cap on the back of his head. "And so was I at your age;
+but you're my very man. There are some it sets talking. Wait till the
+old lady turns in, and then you shall see what you shall see."
+
+Fergus waited in increasing excitement. The day's events were worthier
+of a dream. To have set foot in Glenranald without knowing a soul in the
+place, and to find one's self comfortably housed at a good salary before
+night! There were moments when he questioned the complete sanity of his
+eccentric benefactor, who drank whiskey like water, both as to quantity
+and effect, and who chuckled continuously in his huge gray beard. But
+such doubts only added to the excitement of the evening, which reached a
+climax when a lighted candle was thrust in at the door and the pair
+advised not to make a night of it by the candid crone on her way to bed.
+
+"We will give her twenty minutes," said the manager, winking across his
+glass. "I've never let her hear me, and she mustn't hear you either. She
+must know nothing at all about it; nobody must, except you and me."
+
+The mystification of Fergus was now complete. Unimaginative as he was by
+practice and profession, he had an explanation a minute until the time
+was up, when the truth beat them all for wild improbability. Macbean had
+risen, lifting the lamp; holding it on high he led the way through baize
+doors into the banking premises. Here was another door, which Macbean
+not only unlocked, but locked again behind them both. A small inner
+office led them into a shuttered chamber of fair size, with a broad
+polished counter, glass swing-doors, and a formidable portal beyond. And
+one of young Carrick's theories received apparent confirmation on the
+spot; for the manager slipped behind his counter by another door, and at
+once whipped out a great revolver.
+
+"This they provide us with," said he. "So far it is our only authorized
+defence, and it hangs on a hook down here behind the counter. But you
+march in here prepared, your pistol cocked behind your back, and which
+of us is likely to shoot first?"
+
+"The bushranger," said Fergus, still rather more startled than
+reassured.
+
+"The bushranger, of course. Stingaree, let us say. As for me, either my
+arms go up, or down I go in a heap. But supposing my arms do go
+up--supposing I still touch something with one foot--and supposing the
+floor just opens and swallows Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree! Eh? eh? What
+then?"
+
+"It would be great," cried Fergus. "But could it be done?"
+
+"It can be, it will be, and is being done," replied the manager,
+replacing the bank revolver and sliding over the counter like a boy. A
+square of plain linoleum covered the floor, overlapped by a border of
+the same material bearing a design. Down went Macbean upon his knees,
+and his beard swept this border as he began pulling it up, tacks and
+all.
+
+The lamp burned brightly on the counter, its rays reflected in the
+burnished mahogany. All at once Fergus seized it on his own initiative,
+and set it on the floor before his kneeling elder, going upon his own
+knees on the other side. And where the plain linoleum ended, but where
+the overlapping border covered the floor, the planks were sawn through
+and through down one side of the central and self-colored square.
+
+"A trap-door!" exclaimed Fergus in a whisper.
+
+Macbean leant back on his slippered heels, his skull-cap wickedly awry.
+
+"This border takes a lot o' lifting," said he. "Yet we've just got to
+lift it every time, and tack it down again before morning. You might try
+your hand over yonder on the far side."
+
+Fergus complied with so much energy that the whole border was ripped up
+in a minute; and he was not mistaken. A trap-door it was, of huge
+dimensions, almost exactly covered by the self-colored square; but at
+each side a tongue of linoleum had been left loose for lifting it; and
+the lamp had scarcely been replaced upon the counter when the bulk of
+the floor leaned upright in one piece against the opposite wall. It had
+uncovered a pit of corresponding size, but as yet hardly deep enough to
+afford a hiding-place for the bucket, spade, and pickaxe which lay there
+on a length of sacking.
+
+"I see!" exclaimed Carrick, as the full light flooded his brain.
+
+"Is that a fact?" inquired the manager twinkling.
+
+"You're going to make a deep hole of it----?"
+
+"No. I'm going to pay you to make it deep for me----"
+
+"And then----"
+
+"At dead o' night; you can take out your sleep by day."
+
+"When Stingaree comes----"
+
+"If he waits till we're ready for him----"
+
+"You touch some lever----"
+
+"And the floor swallows him, as I said, if he waits till we are ready
+for him. Everything depends on that--and on your silence. We must take
+time. It isn't only the digging of the hole. We need to fix up some
+counterpoise to make it shut after a body like a mouse-trap; we must do
+the thing thoroughly if we do it at all; and till it's done, not a word
+to a soul in the same hemisphere! In the end I suppose I shall have to
+tell Donkin, my cashier, and Fowler the clerk. Donkin's a disbeliever
+who deserves the name o' Didymus more than ony mon o' my acquaintance.
+Fowler would take so kindly to the whole idea that he'd blurt it out
+within a week. He may find it out when all's in readiness, but I'll no
+tell him even then. See how I trust a brither Scot at sight!"
+
+"I much appreciate it," said Fergus, humbly.
+
+"I wouldna ha' trustit even you, gin I hadna found the delvin' ill worrk
+for auld shoulders," pursued Macbean, broadening his speech with
+intentional humor. "Noo, wull ye do't or wull ye no?"
+
+The young man's answer was to strip off his coat and spring into the
+hole, and to set to work with such energy, yet so quietly, that the
+bucket was filled in a few almost silent seconds. Macbean carried it
+off, unlocking doors for the nonce, while Fergus remained in the hole to
+mop his forehead.
+
+"We need to have another bucket," said the manager, on his return. "I've
+thought of every other thing. There's a disused well in the yard, and
+down goes every blessed bucket!"
+
+To and fro, over the lip of the closing well, back into the throat of
+the deepening hole, went the buckets for many a night; and by day Fergus
+Carrick employed his best wits to make an intrinsically anomalous
+position appear natural to the world. It was a position which he himself
+could thoroughly enjoy; he was largely his own master. He had daily
+opportunities of picking up the ways and customs of the bush, and a
+nightly excitement which did not pall as the secret task approached
+conclusion; but he was subjected to much chaff and questioning from the
+other young bloods of Glenranald. He felt from the first that it was
+what he must expect. He was a groom with a place at his master's table;
+he was a jackeroo who introduced station life into a town. And the
+element of underlying mystery, really existing as it did, was detected
+soon enough by other young heads, led by that of Fowler, the keen bank
+clerk.
+
+"I was looking at you both together, and you do favor the old man, and
+no error!" he would say; or else, "What is it you could hang the boss
+for, Fergy, old toucher?"
+
+These delicate but cryptic sallies being ignored or parried, the heavy
+swamp of innuendo was invariably deserted for the breezy hill-top of
+plain speech, and Fergus had often work enough to put a guard upon hand
+and tongue. But his temperament was eminently self-contained, and on the
+whole he was an elusive target for the witticisms of his friends. There
+was no wit, however, and no attempt at it on the part of Donkin, the
+cantankerous cashier. He seldom addressed a word to Carrick, never a
+civil word, but more than once he treated his chief to a sarcastic
+remonstrance on his degrading familiarity with an underling. In such
+encounters the imperturbable graybeard was well able to take care of
+himself, albeit he expressed to Fergus a regret that he had not
+exercised a little more ingenuity in the beginning.
+
+"You should have come to me with a letter of introduction," said he.
+
+"But who would have given me one?"
+
+"I would, yon first night, and you'd have presented it next day in
+office hours," replied the manager. "But it's too late to think about it
+now, and in a few days Donkin may know the truth."
+
+He might have known it already, but for one difficulty. They had digged
+their pit to the generous depth of eight feet, so that a tall prisoner
+could barely touch the trap-door with extended finger-tips; and
+Stingaree (whose latest performance was no longer the Yallarook affair)
+was of medium height according to his police description. The trap-door
+was a double one, which parted in the centre with the deadly precision
+of the gallows floor. The difficulty was to make the flaps close
+automatically, with the mouse-trap effect of Macbean's ambition. It was
+managed eventually by boring separate wells for a weight behind the
+hinges on either side. Copper wire running on minute pulleys let into
+grooves suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, and
+powerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. The
+lever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reached
+by thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward on a
+spring.
+
+It may be conceived that all this represented the midnight labors and
+the constant thought of many weeks. It was now the beginning of the cool
+but brilliant Riverina winter, and, despite the disparity in their
+years, the two Scotsmen were fast friends. They had worked together as
+one man, with the same patient passion for perfection, the same delight
+in detail for its own sake. Almost the only difference was that the old
+fellow refreshed his energies with the glass of whiskey which was never
+far from his elbow after banking hours, while the young one cultivated
+the local excess of continual tea. And all this time the rascally
+Stingaree ranged the district, with or without his taciturn accomplice,
+covering great distances in fabulous time, lurking none knew where, and
+springing on the unwary in the last places in which his presence was
+suspected.
+
+"But he has not yet robbed a bank, and we have our hopes," wrote Fergus
+to a faithful sister at Largs. "It may be for fear of the revolvers with
+which all the banks are provided now. Mr. Macbean has been practising
+with ours, and purposely put a bullet through one of our back windows.
+The whole township has been chafing him about it, and the local rag has
+risen to a sarcastic paragraph, which is exactly what we wanted. The
+trap-door over the pit is now practically finished. It's too complicated
+to describe, but Stingaree has only to march into the bank and 'stick it
+up,' and the man behind the counter has only to touch a lever with his
+foot for the villain to disappear through the floor into a prison it'll
+take him all his time to break. On Saturday the cashier and the clerk
+are coming to dinner, and before we sit down they are to be shown
+everything."
+
+This was but a fraction of one of the long letters which Fergus
+despatched by nearly every mail. Silent and self-contained as he was, he
+had one confidante at the opposite end of the earth, one escape-pipe in
+his pen. Not a word of the great secret had he even written to another
+soul. To his trusted sister he had never before been quite so
+communicative. His conscience pricked him as he took his letter to the
+post, and he had it registered on no other score.
+
+On Saturday the bank closed at one o'clock; the staff were to return and
+dine at seven, the Queen's birthday falling on the same day for a
+sufficient pretext. As the hour approached Fergus made the distressing
+discovery that his friend and host had anticipated the festivities with
+too free a hand. Macbean was not drunk, but he was perceptibly blunted
+and blurred, and Fergus had never seen the pale eyes so watery or the
+black skull-cap so much on one side of the venerable head. The lad was
+genuinely grieved. A whiskey bottle stood empty on the laden board, and
+he had the temerity to pocket the corkscrew while Macbean was gone to
+his storeroom for another bottle. A solemn search ensued, and then
+Fergus was despatched in haste for a new corkscrew.
+
+"An' look slippy," said Macbean, "or we'll have old Donkin here before
+ye get back."
+
+"Not for another three-quarters of an hour," remarked Fergus, looking at
+his watch.
+
+"Any minute!" retorted Macbean, with a ribald epithet. "I invited
+Donkin, in confidence, to come a good half-hour airly, and I'll tell ye
+for why. Donkin must ken, but I'm none so sure o' yon other impident
+young squirt. His tongue's too long for his mouth. Donkin or I could
+always be behind the counter; anyway, I mean to take his opeenion before
+tellin' any other body."
+
+Entertaining his own distrust of the vivacious Fowler, Fergus commended
+the decision, and so took his departure by the private entrance. It was
+near sundown; a fresh breeze blew along the hard road, puffing cloudlets
+of yellow sand into the rosy dusk. Fergus hurried till he was out of
+sight, and then idled shamelessly under trees. He was not going on for a
+new corkscrew. He was going back to confess boldly where he had found
+the old one. And the sight of Donkin in the distance sent him back in
+something of a hurry; it was quite enough to have to spend an evening
+with the cantankerous cashier.
+
+The bank was practically at one end of the township as then laid out;
+two or three buildings there were further on, but they stood altogether
+aloof. The bank, for a bank, was sufficiently isolated, and Fergus could
+not but congratulate himself on the completion of its ingenious and
+unsuspected defences. It only remained to keep the inventor reasonably
+sober for the evening, and thereafter to whistle or to pray for
+Stingaree. Meanwhile the present was no mean occasion, and Fergus was
+glad to see that Macbean had thrown open the official doors in his
+absence. They had often agreed that it would be worth all their labor to
+enlighten Donkin by letting the pit gape under his nose as he entered
+the bank. Fergus glanced over his shoulder, saw the other hurrying, and
+hurried himself in order to take up a good position for seeing the
+cashier's face. He was in the middle of the treacherous floor before he
+perceived that it was not Macbean in the half-light behind the counter,
+but a good-looking man whom he had never seen before.
+
+"Didn't know I was invited, eh?" said the stranger, putting up a single
+eye-glass. "Don't believe it, perhaps? You'd better ask Mr. Macbean!"
+
+And before it had occurred to him to stir from where he stood agape, the
+floor fell from under the feet of Fergus, his body lurched forward, and
+came down flat and heavy on the hard earth eight feet below. Not
+entirely stunned, though shaken and hurt from head to heel, he was still
+collecting his senses when the pit blackened as the trap-door shut in
+implicit obedience to its weights and springs. And in the clinging
+velvet darkness the young man heard a groan.
+
+"Is that yoursel', Fergy?"
+
+"And are you there, Mr. Macbean?"
+
+"Mon, didn't it shut just fine!"
+
+Curiously blended with the physical pain in the manager's voice was a
+sodden philosophic humor which maddened the younger man. Fergus swore
+where he lay writhing on his stomach. Macbean chuckled and groaned
+again.
+
+"It's Stingaree," he said, drawing a breath through his teeth.
+
+"Of course it is."
+
+"I never breathed it to a soul."
+
+"No more did I."
+
+Fergus spoke with ready confidence, and yet the words left something on
+his mind. It was something vague but haunting, something that made him
+feel instinctively unworthy of the kindly, uncomplaining tone which had
+annoyed him but a moment before.
+
+"No bones broken, Fergy?"
+
+"None that I know of."
+
+"I doubt I've not been so lucky. I'm thinkin' it's a rib, by the way it
+hurts to breathe."
+
+Fergus was already fumbling in his pocket. The match-box opened with a
+click. The match scraped several times in vain. Then at last the scene
+sprang out as on the screen of a magic-lantern. And to Fergus it was a
+very white old man, hunched up against the muddy wall, with blood upon
+his naked scalp and beard, and both hands pressed to his side; to the
+old man, a muddy face stricken with horrified concern, and a match
+burning down between muddy fingers; but to both, such a new view and
+version of their precious hole that the corners of each mouth were
+twitching as the match was thrown away.
+
+Fergus was fumbling for another when a step rang overhead; and at the
+sharp exchange of words which both underground expected, Fergus came on
+all fours to the old man's side, and together they sat gazing upward
+into the pall of impenetrable crape.
+
+"You infernal villain!" they heard Donkin roar, and stamp his feet with
+such effect that the floor opened, and down through the square of light
+came the cashier feet first.
+
+"Heaven and hell!" he squealed, but subsided unhurt on hands and knees
+as the flaps went up with such a snap that Macbean and Carrick nudged
+each other at the same moment. "Now I know who you are!" the cashier
+raved. "Call yourself Stingaree! You're Fowler dressed up, and this is
+one of Macbean's putrid practical jokes. I saw his jackal hurrying in to
+say I was coming. By cripes! it takes a surgical operation to see their
+sort, I grant you."
+
+There was a noise of subdued laughter overhead; even in the pit a dry
+chuckle came through Macbean's set teeth.
+
+"If it's practical joke o' mine, Donkin, it's recoiled on my own poor
+pate," said the old man. "I've a rib stove in, too, if that's any
+consolation to ye. It's Stingaree, my manny!"
+
+"You're right, it is, it must be!" cried the cashier, finding his words
+in a torrent. "I was going to tell you. He's been at his game down
+south; stuck up our own mail again only yesterday, between this and
+Deniliquin, and got a fine haul of registered letters, so they say. But
+where the deuce are we? I never knew there was a cellar under here, let
+alone a trap-door that might have been made for these villains."
+
+"It was made for them," replied Macbean, after a pause; and in the dead
+dark he went on to relate the frank and humble history of the hole, from
+its inception to the crooked climax of that bitter hour. A braver
+confession Fergus had never heard; its philosophic flow was unruffled by
+the more and more scornful interjections of the ungenerous cashier; and
+yet his younger countryman, who might have been proud of him, hardly
+listened to a word uttered by Macbean.
+
+Half-a-dozen fallen from the lips of Donkin had lightened young
+Carrick's darkness with consuming fires of shame. "A fine haul of
+registered letters"--among others his own last letter to his sister! So
+it was he who had done it all; and he had perjured himself to his
+benefactor, besides, betraying him. He sat in the dark between fire and
+ice, chiefly wondering how he could soonest win through the trap-door
+and earn a bullet in his brain.
+
+"The spree to-night," concluded Macbean, whose fall completely sobered
+him, "was for the express purpose of expounding the trap to you, and I
+asked you airly to take your advice. I was no so sure about young
+Fowler, whether we need tell him or no. He has an awful long tongue;
+but I'm thinkin' there's a longer if I knew where to look for it."
+
+"I could tell you where," rasped Donkin. "But go on."
+
+"I was watching old Hannah putting her feenishing touches to the table,
+and waiting for Fergus Carrick to come back, when I thought I heard him
+behind me and you with him. But it was Stingaree and his mate, and the
+two of us were covered with revolvers like young rifles. Hannah they
+told to go on with what she was doing, as they were mighty hungry, and I
+advised her to do as she was bid. The brute with the beard has charge of
+her. Stingaree himself drove me into the middle of my own trap-door,
+made me give up my keys, and then went behind the counter and did the
+trick. He'd got it all down on paper, the Lord alone knows how."
+
+"Oh, you Scotchmen!" cried the pleasant cashier. "Talk of your land of
+cakes! You take every cake in the land between you!"
+
+It seemed he had been filling his pipe while he listened and prepared
+this pretty speech. Now he struck a match, and with the flame to the
+bowl saw Fergus for the first time. The cashier held the match on high.
+
+"You hear all the while?" he cried. "No wonder you lay low, Carrick; no
+wonder I didn't hear your voice."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" growled Fergus, in fierce heat and fierce
+satisfaction.
+
+"Surely, Mr. Macbean, you aren't wondering who wagged the long tongue
+now?"
+
+"You mean that I wagged mine? And it's a lie!" said Fergus, hoarsely; he
+was sitting upon his heels, poised to spring.
+
+"I mean that if Mr. Macbean had listened to me two months ago we should
+none of us be in this hole now."
+
+"Then, my faith, you're in a worse one than you think!" cried Fergus,
+and fell upon his traducer as the match went out. "Take that, and that,
+and that!" he ground out through his teeth, as he sent the cashier over
+on his back and pounded the earth with his skull. Luckily the first was
+soft and the second hard, so that the man was more outraged than hurt
+when circumstances which they might have followed created a diversion.
+
+In his turn the lively Fowler had marched whistling into the bank, had
+ceased whistling to swear down the barrel of a cocked revolver, and met
+a quicker fate than his comrades by impressing the bushranger as the
+most dangerous man of the quartette. Unfortunately for him, his fate
+was still further differentiated from theirs. Fowler's feet glanced off
+Carrick's back, and he plunged into the well head-first, rolling over
+like a stone as the wooden jaws above closed greedily upon the light of
+day.
+
+Fergus at once struck matches, and in their light the cashier took the
+insensible head upon his knees and glared at his enemy as if from
+sanctuary of the Red Cross. But Fergus returned to Macbean's side.
+
+"I never said a word to a living soul," he muttered. "It has come out
+some other way."
+
+"Of course it has," said the old manager, with the same tell-tale
+inhalation through the teeth. Fergus felt worse than ever. He groped for
+the bald head and found it cold and dank. In an instant he was clamoring
+under the trap-door, leaping up and striking it with his fist.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Whiskey. Some of us are hurt."
+
+"God help you if it's any hanky-panky!"
+
+"It's none. Something to drink, and something to drink it in, or there's
+blood upon your head!"
+
+Clanking steps departed and returned.
+
+"Stand by to catch, below there!"
+
+And Fergus stood by, expecting to see a long barrel with the bottle and
+glass that broke their fall on him; but Stingaree had crept away
+unheard, and he pressed the lever just enough to let the glass and
+bottle tumble through.
+
+Time passed: it might have been an hour. The huddled heap that was
+Macbean breathed forth relief. The head on Donkin's knees moved from
+side to side with groans. Donkin himself thanked Fergus for his ration;
+he who served it out alone went thirsty. "Wait till I earn some," he
+said bitterly to himself. "I could finish the lot if I started now." But
+the others never dreamt that he was waiting, and he lied about it to
+Macbean.
+
+Now that they sat in silence no sound escaped them overhead. They heard
+Stingaree and his mate sit down to a feast which Macbean described with
+groaning modesty as the best that he could do.
+
+"There's no soup," he whispered, "but there's a barr'l of oysters
+fetched up on purpose by the coach. I hope they havena missed the
+Chablis. They may as well do the thing complete." In a little the
+champagne popped. "Dry Monopole!" moaned the manager, near to tears. "It
+came up along with the oysters. O sirs, O sirs, but this is hard on us
+all! Now they're at the turkey--and I chopped the stuffing with my ain
+twa han's!"
+
+They were at the turkey a long time. Another cork popped; but the
+familiar tread of deaf Hannah was heard no more, and at length they
+called her.
+
+"Mother!" roared a mouth that was full.
+
+"Old lady!" cried the gallant Stingaree.
+
+"She's 'ard of 'earing, mate."
+
+"She might still hear you, Howie."
+
+And the chairs rasped backward over bare boards as one; at the same
+instant Fergus leapt to his feet in the earthly Tartarus his own hands
+had dug.
+
+"I do believe she's done a bolt," he gasped, "and got clean away!"
+
+Curses overhead confirmed the supposition. Clanking feet hunted the
+premises at a run. In a minute the curses were renewed and multiplied,
+yet muffled, as though there was some fresh cause for them which the
+prisoners need not know. Hannah had not been found. Yet some disturbing
+discovery had undoubtedly been made. Doors were banged and bolted. A
+gunshot came faint but staccato from the outer world. A real report
+echoed through the bank.
+
+"A siege!" cried Fergus, striking a match to dance by. "The old heroine
+has fetched the police, and these beauties are in a trap."
+
+"And what about us?" demanded the cashier.
+
+"Shut up and listen!" retorted Fergus, without ceremony. Macbean was
+leaning forward, with bald head on one side and hollowed palm at the
+upper ear. Even the stunned man had recovered sufficiently to raise
+himself on one elbow and gaze overhead as Fergus struck match after
+match. The villains were having an altercation on the very trap-door.
+
+"Now's the time to cut and run--now or never."
+
+"Very well, you do so. I'm going through the safe."
+
+"You should ha' done that first."
+
+"Better late than not at all."
+
+"You can't stop and do it without me."
+
+"Oh, yes, I can. I'll call for a volunteer from below. You show them
+your spurs and save your skin."
+
+"Oh, I'll stay, curse you, I'll stay!"
+
+"And I'll have my volunteer, whether you stay or not."
+
+The pair had scarcely parted when the trap-door opened slowly and stayed
+open for the first time. The banking chamber was but dimly lit, and the
+light in the pit less than it had been during the brief burning of
+single matches. No peering face was revealed to those below, but the
+voice of Stingaree came rich and crisp from behind the counter.
+
+"Your old woman has got away to the police-barracks and the place is
+surrounded. One of you has got to come up and help, and help fair, or go
+to hell with a bullet in his heart. I give you one minute to choose your
+man."
+
+But in one second the man had chosen himself. Without a word, or a
+glance at any of his companions, but with a face burning with
+extraordinary fires, Fergus Carrick sprang for the clean edge of the
+trap-door, caught it first with one hand and then with both, drew
+himself up like the gymnast he had been at his Scottish school, and
+found himself prone upon the floor and trap-door as the latter closed
+under him on the release of the lever which Stingaree understood so
+well. A yell of execration followed him into the upper air. And
+Stingaree was across the counter before his new ally had picked himself
+up.
+
+"That's because this was expected of me," said Fergus, grimly, to
+explain the cashier's reiterated anathemas. "I was the writer of the
+registered letter that led to all this. So now I'm going the whole hog."
+
+And the blue eyes boiled in his brick-red face.
+
+"You mean that? No nonsense?"
+
+"You shall see."
+
+"I should shoot you like a native cat."
+
+"You couldn't do me a better turn."
+
+"Right! Swear on your knees that you won't use it against me or my mate,
+and I'll trust you with this revolver. You may fire as high as you
+please, but they must think we're three instead of two."
+
+Fergus took the oath in fierce earnest upon his knees, was handed the
+weapon belonging to the bank, and posted in his own bedroom window at
+the rear of the building. The front was secure enough with the shutters
+and bolts of the official fortress. It was to the back premises that the
+attack confined itself, making all use of the admirable cover afforded
+by the stables.
+
+Carrick saw heads and shoulders hunched to aim over stable-doors as he
+obeyed his orders and kept his oath. His high fire drew a deadlier upon
+himself; a stream of lead from a Winchester whistled into the room past
+his ear and over his ducked head. He tried firing from the floor without
+showing his face. The Winchester let him alone; in a sudden sickness he
+sprang up to see if anything hung sprawling over the stable-door, and
+was in time to see men in retreat to right and left, the white pugarees
+of the police fluttering ingloriously among them. Only one was left
+upon the ground, and he could sit up to nurse a knee.
+
+Fergus sighed relief as he sought Stingaree, and found him with a
+comical face before the open safe.
+
+"House full of paltry paper!" said he. "I suppose it's the old
+sportsman's custom to get rid of most of his heavy metal before closing
+on Saturdays?"
+
+Fergus said it was; he had himself stowed many a strong-box aboard
+unsuspected barges for Echuca.
+
+"Well, now's our time to leave you," continued Stingaree. "If I'm not
+mistaken, their flight is simply for the moment, and in two or three
+more they'll be back to batter in the bank shutters. I wonder what they
+think we've done with our horses? I'll bet they've looked everywhere but
+in the larder next the kitchen door--not that we ever let them get so
+close. But my mate's in there now, mounted and waiting, and I shall have
+to leave you."
+
+"But I was coming with you," cried Fergus, aghast.
+
+Stingaree's eye-glass dangled on its cord.
+
+"I'm afraid I must trouble you to step into that safe instead," said he,
+smiling.
+
+"Man, I mean it! You think I don't. I've fought on your side of my own
+free will. How can I live that down? It's the only side for me for the
+rest of time!"
+
+The fixed eye-glass covered the brick-red face with the molten eyes.
+
+"I believe you do mean it."
+
+"You shall shoot me if I don't."
+
+"I most certainly should. But my mate Howie has his obvious limitations.
+I've long wanted a drop of new blood. Barmaid's thoroughbred and strong
+as an elephant; we're neither of us heavyweights; by the powers, I'll
+trust you, and you shall ride behind!"
+
+Now, Barmaid was the milk-white mare that was only less notorious than
+her lawless rider. It was noised in travellers' huts and around
+campfires that she would do more at her master's word than had been
+known of horse outside a circus. It was the one touch that Stingaree had
+borrowed from a more Napoleonic but incomparably coarser and crueller
+knight of the bush. In all other respects the _fin de siecle_ desperado
+was unique. It was a stroke of luck, however, that there happened to be
+an old white mare in the bank stables, which the police had impounded
+with solemn care while turning every other animal adrift. And so it
+fell out that not a shot followed the mounted bushrangers into the
+night, and that long before the bank shutters were battered in the
+flying trio were miles away.
+
+Fergus flew like a runaway bride, his arms about the belted waist of
+Stingaree. Trees loomed ahead and flew past by the clump under a
+wonderful wide sky of scintillating stars. The broad bush track had very
+soon been deserted at a tangent; through ridges and billows of salt-bush
+and cotton-bush they sailed with the swift confidence of a well-handled
+clipper before the wind. Stingaree was the leader four miles out of
+five, but in the fifth his mate Howie would gallop ahead, and anon they
+would come on him dismounted at a wire fence, with the wires strapped
+down and his horse tethered to one of the posts till he had led Barmaid
+over.
+
+It was thus they careered across the vast chessboard of the fenced
+back-blocks at dead of night. Stingaree and Fergus sat saddle and
+bareback without a break until near dawn their pioneer spurred forward
+yet again and was swallowed in a steely haze. It was cold as a sharp
+spring night in England. But for a mile or more Fergus had clung on with
+but one arm round the bushranger's waist; now the right arm came
+stealing back; felt something cold for the fraction of a second, and
+plucked prodigiously, and in another fraction an icy ring mouthed
+Stingaree's neck.
+
+"Pull up," said Fergus, hoarsely, "or your brains go flying."
+
+"Little traitor!" whispered the other, with an imprecation that froze
+the blood.
+
+"I am no traitor. I swore I wouldn't abuse the revolver you gave me, and
+it's been in my pocket all the night."
+
+"The other's unloaded."
+
+"You wouldn't sit so quiet if it were. Now, round we go, and back on our
+tracks full split. It's getting light, and we shall see them plain. If
+you vary a yard either way, or if your mate catches us, out go your
+brains."
+
+The bushranger obeyed without a word. Fergus was almost unnerved by the
+incredible ease of his conquest over so redoubtable a ruffian. His
+stolid Scottish blood stood by him; but still he made grim apology as
+they rode.
+
+"I had to do it. It was through me you got to know. I had to live that
+down; this was the only way."
+
+"You have spirit. If you would still be my mate----"
+
+"Your mate! I mean this to be the making of me as an honest man. Here's
+the fence. I give you two minutes to strap it down and get us over."
+
+Stingaree slid tamely to the ground.
+
+"Don't you dare to get through those wires! Strap it from this side with
+your belt, and strap it quick!"
+
+And the bushranger obeyed with the same sensible docility, but with his
+back turned, so that Fergus could not see has face; and it was light
+enough to see faces now; yet Barmaid refused the visible wires, as she
+had not refused them all that night of indigo starlight.
+
+"Coax her, man!" cried Fergus, in the saddle now, and urging the mare
+with his heels. So Stingaree whispered in the mare's ear; and with that
+the strapped wires flew under his captor's nose, as the rider took the
+fence, but not the horse.
+
+At a single syllable the milk-white mare had gone on her knees, like
+devout lady in holy fane; and as she rose her last rider lay senseless
+at her master's feet; but whether from his fall, or from a blow dealt
+him in the act of falling, the unhappy Fergus never knew. Indeed,
+knowledge for him was at an end until matches burnt under his nose
+awakened him to a position of the last humiliation. His throat and chin
+topped a fence-post, the weight of his body was on chin and throat,
+while wrists and muscles were lashed at full stretch to the wires on
+either side.
+
+"Now I'm going to shoot you like a dog," said Stingaree. He drew the
+revolver whose muzzle had pressed into his own neck so short a time
+before. Yet now it was broad daylight, and the sun coming up in the
+bound youth's eyes for the last time.
+
+"Shoot away!" he croaked, raising the top of his head to speak at all.
+"I gave you leave before we started. Shoot away!"
+
+"At ten paces," said Stingaree, stepping them. "That, I think, is fair."
+
+"Perfectly," replied Fergus. "But be kind enough to make this so-called
+man of yours hold his foul tongue till I'm out of earshot of you all."
+
+Huge Howie had muttered little enough for him, but to that little
+Stingaree put an instantaneous stop.
+
+"He's a dog, to be shot like a dog, but too good a dog for you to
+blackguard!" cried he. "Any message, young fellow?"
+
+[Illustration: "Any message, young fellow?"]
+
+"Not through you."
+
+"So long, then!"
+
+"Shoot away!"
+
+The long barrel was poised as steadily as field-gun on its carriage.
+Fergus kept his blue eyes on the gleaming ring of the muzzle.
+
+The hammer fell, the cartridge cracked, and from the lifted muzzle a
+tiny cloud flowed like a bubble from a pipe. The post quivered under
+Carrick's chin, and a splinter flew up and down before his eyes. But
+that was all.
+
+"Aim longer," said he. "Get it over this shot."
+
+"I'll try."
+
+But the same thing happened again.
+
+"Come nearer," sneered Fergus.
+
+And Stingaree strode forward with an oath.
+
+"I was going to give you six of them. But you're a braver man than I
+thought. And that's the lot."
+
+The bound youth's livid face turned redder than the red dawn.
+
+"Shoot me--shoot!" he shouted, like a lunatic.
+
+"No, I shall not. I never meant to--I did mean you to sit out six--but
+you're the most gallant little idiot I've ever struck. Besides, you come
+from the old country, like myself!"
+
+And a sigh floated into the keen morning air as he looked his last upon
+the lad through the celebrated monocle.
+
+"Then I'll shoot myself when I'm free," sobbed Fergus through his
+teeth.
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," were Stingaree's last words. "You'll find it's not
+a bit worth while."
+
+And when the mounted police and others from Glenranald discovered the
+trussed youngster, not an hour later, they took the same tone. And one
+and all stopped and stooped to peer at the two bullet-holes in the post,
+and at something underneath them, before cutting poor Fergus down.
+
+Then they propped him up to read with his own eyes the nailed legend
+which first helped Fergus Carrick to live down the indiscretion of his
+letter to Largs, and then did more for him in that Colony than letter
+from Queen Victoria to His Excellency of New South Wales. For it ran:--
+
+    "THIS IS THE GAMEST LITTLE COCK I HAVE EVER STRUCK. HE
+    HAD ME CAPTIVE ONCE, COULD HAVE SHOT ME OVER AND OVER
+    AGAIN, AND ALL BUT TOOK ME ALIVE. MORE POWER TO HIM!
+
+    "STINGAREE."
+
+
+
+
+"To the Vile Dust"
+
+
+Vanheimert had been in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so far
+from the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full of
+sand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm which
+already shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks there
+were none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned browner
+and more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket and
+ran for the fence as for his life. He had only left it in order to camp
+where his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundred
+yards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which the
+bushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he was
+groping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collision
+with invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wondering
+where the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise to
+retrace his steps and try again. And while he wondered a fit of coughing
+drove the dust from his mouth like smoke; and even as he coughed the
+thickening swirl obliterated his tracks as swiftly as heavy snow.
+
+Speckled eyeballs stood out of a sanded face as Vanheimert saw himself
+adrift and drowning in the dust. He was a huge young fellow, and it was
+a great smooth face, from which the gaping mouth cut a slice from jaw to
+jaw. Terror and rage, and an overpowering passion of self-pity,
+convulsed the coarse features in turn; then, with the grunt of a wounded
+beast, he rallied and plunged to his destruction, deeper and deeper into
+the bush, further and further from the fence.
+
+The trees were few and mostly stunted, but Vanheimert crashed into more
+than one upon his headlong course. The sense was choked out of him
+already; he was fleeing on the wings of the storm; of direction he
+thought no more. He forgot that the run he had been traversing was at
+the best abandoned by man and beast; he forgot the "spell" that he had
+promised himself at the deserted homestead where he had once worked as a
+lad. He might have remembered that the paddock in which he was burying
+himself had always been the largest in the district. It was a ten-mile
+block without subdividing fence or drop of water from end to end. The
+whole station was a howling desert, little likely to be stocked a second
+time by enlightened man. But this was the desert's heart, and into it
+sped Vanheimert, coated yellow to the eyes and lips, the dust-fiend
+himself in visible shape. Now he staggered in his stride, now fell
+headlong to cough and sob in the hollow of his arm. The unfortunate
+young man had the courage of his desperate strait. Many times he arose
+and hurled himself onward with curse or prayer; many times he fell or
+flung himself back to earth. But at length the storm passed over and
+over his spent members; sand gathered by the handful in the folds of his
+clothes; the end was as near as end could be.
+
+It was just then that two riders, who fancied they had heard a voice,
+struck an undoubted trail before it vanished, and followed it to the
+great sprawling body in which the dregs of life pulsed feebly. The thing
+groaned as it was lifted and strapped upon a horse; it gurgled gibberish
+at the taste of raw spirits later in the same hour. It was high noon
+before Vanheimert opened a seeing eye and blinked it in the unveiled
+sun.
+
+He was lying on a blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees.
+The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of
+barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that
+sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a
+natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the
+sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep
+exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every leaf within
+Vanheimert's vision bore its little load of sand, and the sand was
+clotted as though the dust-storm had ended with the usual shower.
+Vanheimert turned and viewed the sylvan amphitheatre; on its far side
+were two small tents, and a man in a folding chair reading the
+_Australasian_. He closed the paper on meeting Vanheimert's eyes, went
+to one of the tents, stood a moment looking in, and then came across the
+sunlit circle with his newspaper and the folded chair.
+
+"And how do you feel now?" said he, setting up the chair beside the
+blanket, but still standing as he surveyed the prostrate man, with dark
+eyes drawn together in the shade of a great straw sombrero.
+
+"Fine!" replied Vanheimert, huskily. "But where am I, and who are you
+chaps? Rabbiters?"
+
+As he spoke, however, he searched for the inevitable strings of rabbit
+skins festooned about the tents, and found them not.
+
+"If you like," replied the other, frowning a little at the immediate
+curiosity of the rescued man.
+
+"I don't like," said Vanheimert, staring unabashed. "I'm a rabbiter
+myself, and know too much. It ain't no game for abandoned stations, and
+you don't go playin' it in top-boots and spurs. Where's your skins and
+where's your squatter to pay for 'em? Plucky rabbiters, you two!"
+
+And he gazed across the open toward the further tent, which had just
+disgorged a long body and a black beard not wholly unfamiliar to
+Vanheimert. The dark man was a shade darker as he followed the look and
+read its partial recognition; but a grim light came with quick resolve,
+and it was with sardonic deliberation that an eye-glass was screwed into
+one dark eye.
+
+"Then what should you say that we are?"
+
+"How do I know?" cried Vanheimert, turning pale; for he had been one of
+the audience at Mrs. Clarkson's concert in Gulland's store, and in
+consecutive moments he had recognized first Howie and now Stingaree.
+
+"You know well enough!"
+
+And the terrible eye-glass covered him like a pistol.
+
+"Perhaps I can guess," faltered Vanheimert, no small brain working in
+his prodigious skull.
+
+"Guess, then!"
+
+"There are tales about a new chum camping by himself--that is, just with
+one man----"
+
+"And what object?"
+
+"To get away from the world, sir."
+
+"And where did you hear these tales?"
+
+"All along the road, sir."
+
+The chastened tone, the anxious countenance, the sudden recourse to the
+servile monosyllable, were none of them lost on Stingaree; but he
+himself had once set such a tale abroad, and it might be that the
+present bearer still believed it. The eye-glass looked him through and
+through. Vanheimert bore the inspection like a man, and was soon
+satisfied that his recognition of the outlaw was as yet quite
+unsuspected. He congratulated himself on his presence of mind, and had
+sufficient courage to relish the excitement of a situation of which he
+also perceived the peril.
+
+"I suppose you have no recollection of how you got here?" at length said
+Stingaree.
+
+"Not me. I only remember the dust-storm." And Vanheimert shuddered where
+he lay in the sun. "But I'm very grateful to you, sir, for saving my
+life."
+
+"You are, are you?"
+
+"Haven't I cause to be, sir?"
+
+"Well, I dare say we did bring you round between us, but it was pure
+luck that we ever came across you. And now I should lie quiet if I were
+you. In a few minutes there'll be a pannikin of tea for you, and after
+that you'll feel a different man."
+
+Vanheimert lay quiet enough; there was much to occupy his mind.
+Instinctively he had assumed a part, and he was only less quick to
+embrace the necessity of a strictly consistent performance. He watched
+Stingaree in close conversation with Howie, who was boiling the billy on
+a spirit-lamp between the two tents, but he watched them with an
+admirable simulation of idle unconcern. They were talking about him, of
+course; more than once they glanced in his direction; and each time
+Vanheimert congratulated himself the more heartily on the ready pretence
+to which he was committed. Let them but dream that he knew them, and
+Vanheimert gave himself as short a shrift as he would have granted in
+their place. But they did not dream it, they were off their guard, and
+rather at his mercy than he at theirs. He might prove the immediate
+instrument of their capture--why not? The thought put Vanheimert in a
+glow; on the blanket where they had laid him, he dwelt on it without a
+qualm; and the same wide mouth watered for the tea which these villains
+were making, and for their blood.
+
+It was Howie who came over with the steaming pannikin, and watched
+Vanheimert as he sipped and smacked his lips, while Stingaree at his
+distance watched them both. The pannikin was accompanied by a tin-plate
+full of cold mutton and a wedge of baking-powder bread, which between
+them prevented the ravening man from observing how closely he was
+himself observed as he assuaged his pangs. There was, however, something
+in the nature of a muttered altercation between the bushrangers when
+Howie was sent back for more of everything. Vanheimert put it down to
+his own demands, and felt that Stingaree was his friend when it was he
+who brought the fresh supplies.
+
+"Eat away," said Stingaree, seating himself and producing pipe and
+tobacco. "It's rough fare, but there's plenty of it."
+
+"I won't ask you for no more," replied Vanheimert, paving the way for
+his escape.
+
+"Oh, yes, you will!" said Stingaree. "You're going to camp with us for
+the next few days, my friend!"
+
+"Why am I?" cried Vanheimert, aghast at the quiet statement, which it
+never occurred to him to gainsay. Stingaree pared a pipeful of tobacco
+and rubbed it fine before troubling to reply.
+
+"Because the way out of this takes some finding, and what's the use of
+escaping an unpleasant death one day if you go and die it the next?
+That's one reason," said Stingaree, "but there's another. The other
+reason is that, now you're here, you don't go till I choose."
+
+Blue wreaths of smoke went up with the words, which might have phrased
+either a humorous hospitality or a covert threat. The dispassionate tone
+told nothing. But Vanheimert felt the eye-glass on him, and his hearty
+appetite was at an end.
+
+"That's real kind of you," said he. "I don't feel like running no more
+risks till I'm obliged. My nerves are shook. And if a born back-blocker
+may make so bold, it's a fair old treat to see a new chum camping out
+for the fun of it!"
+
+"Who told you I was a new chum?" asked Stingaree, sharply. "Ah! I
+remember," he added, nodding; "you heard of me lower down the road."
+
+Vanheimert grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"I'd have known it without that," said he. "What real bushmen would boil
+their billy on a spirit-lamp when there's wood and to spare for a
+camp-fire on all sides of 'em?"
+
+Now, Vanheimert clearly perceived the superiority of smokeless
+spirit-lamp to tell-tale fire for those in hiding; so he chuckled
+consumedly over this thrust, which was taken in such excellent part by
+Stingaree as to prove him a victim to the desired illusion. It was the
+cleverest touch that Vanheimert had yet achieved. And he had the wit
+neither to blunt his point by rubbing it in nor to recall attention to
+it by subtle protestation of his pretended persuasion. But once or twice
+before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning
+the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the
+Englishman in the bush learns to expect from the indigenous buffoon.
+
+In the night Vanheimert was less easy. He had to sleep in Howie's tent,
+but it was some hours before he slept at all, for Howie would remain
+outside, and Vanheimert longed to hear him snore. At last the rabbiter
+fell into a doze, and when he awoke the auspicious music filled the
+tent. He listened on one elbow, peering till the darkness turned less
+dense; and there lay Howie across the opening of the tent. Vanheimert
+reached for his thin elastic-sided bushman's boots, and his hands
+trembled as he drew them on. He could now see the form of Howie plainly
+enough as it lay half in the starlight and half in the darkness of the
+tent. He stepped over it without a mistake, and the ignoble strains
+droned on behind him.
+
+The stars seemed unnaturally bright and busy as Vanheimert stole into
+their tremulous light. At first he could distinguish nothing earthly;
+then the tents came sharply into focus, and after them the ring of
+impenetrable trees. The trees whispered a chorus, myriads strong, in a
+chromatic scale that sang but faintly of the open country. There were
+palpable miles of wilderness, and none other lodge but this, yet the
+psychological necessity for escape was stronger in Vanheimert than the
+bodily reluctance to leave the insecure security of the bushrangers'
+encampment. He was their prisoner, whatever they might say, and the
+sense of captivity was intolerable; besides, let them but surprise his
+knowledge of their secret, and they would shoot him like a dog. On the
+other hand, beyond the forest and along the beaten track lay fame and a
+fortune in direct reward.
+
+Before departure Vanheimert wished to peep into the other tent, but its
+open end was completely covered in for the night, and prudence forbade
+him to meddle with his hands. He had an even keener desire to steal one
+or other of the horses which he had seen before nightfall tethered in
+the scrub; but here again he lacked enterprise, fancied the saddles must
+be in Stingaree's tent, and shrank from committing himself to an action
+which nothing, in the event of disaster, could explain away. On foot he
+need not put himself in the wrong, even with villains ready to suspect
+that he suspected them.
+
+And on foot he went, indeed on tiptoe till the edge of the trees was
+reached without adventure, and he turned to look his last upon the two
+tents shimmering in the starlight. As he turned again, satisfied that
+the one was still shut and that Howie still lay across the opening of
+the other, a firm hand took Vanheimert by either shoulder; otherwise he
+had leapt into the air; for it was Stingaree, who had stepped from
+behind a bush as from another planet, so suddenly that Vanheimert nearly
+gasped his dreadful name.
+
+"I couldn't sleep! I couldn't sleep!" he cried out instead, shrinking as
+from a lifted hand, though he was merely being shaken playfully to and
+fro.
+
+"No more could I," said Stingaree.
+
+"So I was going for a stroll. That was all, I swear, Mr.--Mr.--I don't
+know your name!"
+
+"Quite sure?" said Stingaree.
+
+"My oath! How should I?"
+
+"You might have heard it down the road."
+
+"Not me!"
+
+"Yet you heard of me, you know."
+
+"Not by name--my oath!"
+
+Stingaree peered into the great face in which the teeth were chattering
+and from which all trace of color had flown.
+
+"I shouldn't eat you for knowing who I am," said he. "Honesty is still a
+wise policy in certain circumstances; but you know best."
+
+"I know nothing about you, and care less," retorted Vanheimert,
+sullenly, though the perspiration was welling out of him. "I come for a
+stroll because I couldn't sleep, and I can't see what all this barney's
+about."
+
+Stingaree dropped his hands.
+
+"Do you want to sleep?"
+
+"My blessed oath!"
+
+"Then come to my tent, and I'll give you a nobbler that may make you."
+
+The nobbler was poured out of a gallon jar, under Vanheimert's nose, by
+the light of a candle which he held himself. Yet he smelt it furtively
+before trying it with his lips, and denied himself a gulp till he was
+reassured. But soon the empty pannikin was held out for more. And it was
+the starless hour before dawn when Vanheimert tripped over Howie's legs
+and took a contented header into the corner from which he had made his
+stealthy escape.
+
+The tent was tropical when he awoke, but Stingaree was still at his
+breakfast outside in the shade. He pointed to a bucket and a piece of
+soap behind the tent, and Vanheimert engaged in obedient ablutions
+before sitting down to his pannikin, his slice of damper, and his
+portion of a tin of sardines.
+
+"Sorry there's no meat for you," said Stingaree. "My mate's gone for
+fresh supplies. By the way, did you miss your boots?"
+
+The rabbiter looked at a pair of dilapidated worsted socks and at one
+protruding toe; he was not sure whether he had gone to bed for the
+second time in these or in his boots. Certainly he had missed the latter
+on his second awakening, but had not deemed it expedient to make
+inquiries. And now he merely observed that he wondered where he could
+have left them.
+
+"On your feet," said Stingaree. "My mate has made so bold as to borrow
+them for the day."
+
+"He's welcome to them, I'm sure," said Vanheimert with a sickly smile.
+
+"I was sure you would say so," rejoined Stingaree. "His own are reduced
+to uppers and half a heel apiece, but he hopes to get them soled in
+Ivanhoe while he waits."
+
+"So he's gone to Ivanhoe, has he?"
+
+"He's been gone three hours."
+
+"Surely it's a long trip?"
+
+"Yes; we shall have to make the most of each other till sundown," said
+Stingaree, gazing through his glass upon Vanheimert's perplexity. "If I
+were you I should take my revenge by shaking anything of his that I
+could find for the day."
+
+And with a cavalier nod, to clinch the last word on the subject, the
+bushranger gave himself over to his camp-chair, his pipe, and his
+inexhaustible _Australasian_. As for Vanheimert, he eventually returned
+to the tent in which he had spent the night; and there he remained a
+good many minutes, though it was now the forenoon, and the heat under
+canvas past endurance. But when at length he emerged, as from a bath,
+Stingaree, seated behind his _Australasian_ in the lee of the other
+tent, took so little notice of him that Vanheimert crept back to have
+one more look at the thing which he had found in the old valise which
+served Howie for a pillow. And the thing was a very workmanlike
+revolver, with a heavy cartridge in each of its six chambers.
+
+Vanheimert handled it with trembling fingers, and packed it afresh in
+the pocket where it least affected his personal contour, its angles
+softened by a big bandanna handkerchief, only to take it out yet again
+with a resolution that opened a fresh sluice in every pore. The blanket
+that had been lent to him, and Howie's blanket, both lay at his feet; he
+threw one over either arm, and with the revolver thus effectually
+concealed, but grasped for action with finger on trigger, sallied forth
+at last.
+
+Stingaree was still seated in the narrowing shade of his own tent.
+Vanheimert was within five paces of him before he looked up so very
+quickly, with such a rapid adjustment of the terrible eye-glass, that
+Vanheimert stood stock-still, and the butt of his hidden weapon turned
+colder than ever in his melting hand.
+
+"Why, what have you got there?" cried Stingaree. "And what's the matter
+with you, man?" he added, as Vanheimert stood shaking in his socks.
+
+"Only his blankets, to camp on," the fellow answered, hoarsely. "You
+advised me to help myself, you know."
+
+"Quite right; so I did; but you're as white as the tent--you tremble
+like a leaf. What's wrong?"
+
+"My head," replied Vanheimert, in a whine. "It's going round and round,
+either from what I had in the night, or lying too long in the hot tent,
+or one on top of the other. I thought I'd camp for a bit in the shade."
+
+"I should," said Stingaree, and buried himself in his paper with
+undisguised contempt.
+
+Vanheimert came a step nearer. Stingaree did not look up again. The
+revolver was levelled under one trailing blanket. But the trigger was
+never pulled. Vanheimert feared to miss even at arm's length, so palsied
+was his hand, so dim his eye; and when he would have played the man and
+called desperately on the other to surrender, the very tongue clove in
+his head.
+
+He slunk over to the shady margin of surrounding scrub and lay aloof all
+the morning, now fingering the weapon in his pocket, now watching the
+man who never once looked his way. He was a bushranger and an outlaw; he
+deserved to die or to be taken; and Vanheimert's only regret was that he
+had neither taken nor shot him at their last interview. The bloodless
+alternative was to be borne in mind, yet in his heart he well knew that
+the bullet was his one chance with Stingaree. And even with the bullet
+he was horribly uncertain and afraid. But of hesitation on any higher
+ground, of remorse or of reluctance, or the desire to give fair play, he
+had none at all. The man whom he had stupidly spared so far was a
+notorious criminal with a high price upon his head. It weighed not a
+grain with Vanheimert that the criminal happened to have saved his life.
+
+"Come and eat," shouted Stingaree at last; and Vanheimert trailed the
+blankets over his left arm, his right thrust idly into his pocket, which
+bulged with a red bandanna handkerchief. "Sorry it's sardines again,"
+the bushranger went on, "but we shall make up with a square feed
+to-night if my mate gets back by dark; if he doesn't, we may have to
+tighten our belts till morning. Fortunately, there's plenty to drink.
+Have some whiskey in your tea?"
+
+Vanheimert nodded, and with an eye on the bushranger, who was once more
+stooping over his beloved _Australasian_, helped himself enormously from
+the gallon jar.
+
+"And now for a siesta," yawned Stingaree, rising and stretching himself
+after the meal.
+
+"Hear, hear!" croaked Vanheimert, his great face flushed, his bloodshot
+eyes on fire.
+
+"I shall camp on the shady side of my tent."
+
+"And I'll do ditto at the other."
+
+"So long, then."
+
+"So long."
+
+"Sweet repose to you!"
+
+"Same to you," rasped Vanheimert, and went off cursing and chuckling in
+his heart by turns.
+
+It was a sweltering afternoon of little air, and that little as hot and
+dry in the nostrils as the atmosphere of a laundry on ironing day.
+Beyond and above the trees a fiery blast blew from the north; but it was
+seldom a wandering puff stooped to flutter the edges of the tents in the
+little hollow among the trees. And into this empty basin poured a
+vertical sun, as if through some giant lens which had burnt a hole in
+the heart of the scrub. Lulled by the faint perpetual murmur of leaf and
+branch, without a sound from bird or beast to break its soothing
+monotone, the two men lay down within a few yards, though out of sight,
+of each other. And for a time all was very still.
+
+Then Vanheimert rose slowly, without a sound, and came on tiptoe to the
+other tent, his right hand in the pocket where the bandanna handkerchief
+had been but was no longer. He came close up to the sunny side of the
+tent and listened vainly for a sound. But Stingaree lay like a log in
+the shade on the far side, his face to the canvas and his straw sombrero
+tilted over it. And so Vanheimert found him, breathing with the placid
+regularity of a sleeping child.
+
+Vanheimert looked about him; only the ring of impenetrable trees and
+the deep blue eye of Heaven would see what really happened. But as to
+what exactly was to happen Vanheimert himself was not clear as he drew
+the revolver ready cocked; even he shrank from shooting a sleeping man;
+what he desired and yet feared was a sudden start, a semblance of
+resistance, a swift, justifiable shot. And as his mind's eye measured
+the dead man at his feet, the live man turned slowly over on his back.
+
+It was too much for Vanheimert's nerves. The revolver went off in his
+hands. But it was only a cap that snapped, and another, and another, as
+he stepped back firing desperately. Stingaree sat upright, looking his
+treacherous enemy in the eye, through the glass in which, it seemed, he
+slept. And when the sixth cap snapped as harmlessly as the other five,
+Vanheimert caught the revolver by its barrel to throw or to strike. But
+the raised arm was seized from behind by Howie, who had crept from the
+scrub at the snapping of the first cap; at the same moment Stingaree
+sprang upon him; and in less than a minute Vanheimert lay powerless,
+grinding his teeth, foaming and bleeding at the mouth, and filling the
+air with nameless imprecations.
+
+The bushrangers let him curse; not a word did they bandy with him or
+with each other. Their action was silent, swift, concerted, prearranged.
+They lashed their prisoner's wrists together, lashed his elbows to his
+ribs, hobbled his ankles, and tethered him to a tree by the longest and
+the stoutest of their many ropes. The tree was the one under which
+Vanheimert had found himself the day before; in the afternoon it was
+exposed to the full fury of the sun; and in the sun they left him,
+quieter already, but not so quiet as they. It was near sundown when they
+returned to look upon a broken man, crouching in his toils like a beaten
+beast, with undying malice in his swollen eyes. Stingaree sat at his
+prisoner's feet, offered him tobacco without a sneer, and lit up his own
+when the offer was declined with a curse.
+
+"When we came upon you yesterday morning in the storm, one of us was for
+leaving you to die in your tracks," began Stingaree. He was immediately
+interrupted by his mate.
+
+"That was me!" cried Howie, with a savage satisfaction.
+
+"It doesn't matter which of us it was," continued Stingaree; "the other
+talked him over; we put you on one of our horses, and we brought you
+more dead than alive to the place which no other man has seen since we
+took a fancy to it. We saved your miserable life, I won't say at the
+risk of our own, but at risk enough even if you had not recognized us.
+We were going to see you through, whether you knew us or not; before
+this we should have set you on the road from which you had strayed. I
+thought you must know us by sight, but when you denied it I saw no
+reason to disbelieve you. It only dawned on me by degrees that you were
+lying, though Howie here was sure of it.
+
+"I still couldn't make out your game; if it was funk I could have
+understood it; so I tried to get you to own up in the night. I let you
+see that we didn't mind whether you knew us or not, and yet you
+persisted in your lie. So then I smelt something deeper. But we had gone
+out of our way to save your life. It never struck me that you might go
+out of your way to take ours!"
+
+Stingaree paused, smoking his pipe.
+
+"But it did me!" cried Howie.
+
+"I never meant taking your lives," muttered Vanheimert. "I meant taking
+you--as you deserved."
+
+"We scarcely deserved it of you; but that is a matter of opinion. As for
+taking us alive, no doubt you would have preferred to do so if it had
+seemed equally safe and easy; you had not the pluck to run a single
+risk. You were given every chance. I sent Howie into the scrub, took the
+powder out of six cartridges, and put what anybody would have taken for
+a loaded revolver all but into your hands. I sat at your mercy, quite
+looking forward to the sensation of being stuck up for a change. If you
+had stuck me up like a man," said Stingaree, reflectively examining his
+pipe, "you might have lived to tell the tale."
+
+There was an interval of the faint, persistent rustling of branch and
+leaf, varied by the screech of a distant cockatoo and the nearer cry of
+a crow, as the dusk deepened into night as expeditiously as on the
+stage. Vanheimert was not awed by the quiet voice to which he had been
+listening. It lacked the note of violence which he understood; it even
+lulled him into a belief that he would still live to tell the tale. But
+in the dying light he looked up, and in the fierce unrelenting face,
+made the more sinister by its foppish furniture, he read his doom.
+
+"You tried to shoot me in my sleep," said Stingaree, speaking slowly,
+with intense articulation. "That's your gratitude! You will live just
+long enough to wish that you had shot yourself instead!"
+
+Stingaree rose.
+
+"You may as well shoot me now!" cried Vanheimert, with a husky effort.
+
+"Shoot you? I'm not going to _shoot_ you at all; shooting's too good for
+scum like you. But you are to die--make no mistake about that. And soon;
+but not to-night. That would not be fair on you, for reasons which I
+leave to your imagination. You will lie where you are to-night; and you
+will be watched and fed like your superiors in the condemned cell. The
+only difference is that I can't tell you when it will be. It might be
+to-morrow--I don't think it will--but you may number your days on the
+fingers of both hands."
+
+So saying, Stingaree turned on his heel, and was lost to sight in the
+shades of evening before he reached his tent. But Howie remained on duty
+with the condemned man.
+
+As such Vanheimert was treated from the first hour of his captivity. Not
+a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were
+received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and
+supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was
+ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last
+refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a
+tree that it was no longer necessary for him to spend a moment in the
+red eye of the sun. He could follow a sufficient shade from dawn to
+dusk. His boots were restored to him; a blanket was permitted him day
+and night; but night and day he was sedulously watched, and neither
+knife nor fork was provided with his meals. His fare was relatively not
+inferior to that of the legally condemned, whose notorious privileges
+and restrictions served the bushrangers for a model.
+
+And Vanheimert clung to the hope of a reprieve with all the sanguine
+tenacity of his ill-starred class, though it did seem with more
+encouragement on the whole. For the days went on, and each of many
+mornings brought its own respite till the next. The welcome announcement
+was invariably made by Howie after a colloquy with his chief, which
+Vanheimert watched with breathless interest for a day or two, but
+thereafter with increasing coolness. They were trying to frighten him;
+they did not mean it, any more than Stingaree had meant to shoot the new
+chum who had the temerity to put a pistol to his head after the affair
+of the Glenranald bank. The case of lucky Fergus, justly celebrated
+throughout the colony, was a great comfort to Vanheimert's mind; he
+could see but little difference between the two; but if his treachery
+was the greater, so also was the ordeal to which he was being subjected.
+For in the light of a mere ordeal he soon regarded what he was invited
+to consider as his last days on earth, and in the conviction that they
+were not, began suddenly to bear them like a man. This change of front
+produced its fellow in Stingaree, who apologized to Vanheimert for the
+delay, which he vowed he could not help. Vanheimert was a little shaken
+by his manner, though he smiled behind the bushranger's back. And he
+could scarcely believe his ears when, the very next morning, Howie told
+him that his hour was come.
+
+"Rot!" said Vanheimert, with a confident expletive.
+
+"Oh, all right," said Howie. "But if you don't believe me, I'm sorrier
+for you than I was."
+
+He slouched away, but Vanheimert had no stomach for the tea and damper
+which had been left behind. It was unusual for him to be suffered to
+take a meal unwatched; something unusual was in the air. Stingaree
+emerged from the scrub leading the two horses. Vanheimert began to
+figure the fate that might be in store for him. And the horses, saddled
+and bridled before his eyes, were led over to where he sat.
+
+"Are you going to shoot me before you go," he cried, "or are you going
+to leave me to die alone?"
+
+"Neither, here," said Stingaree. "We're too fond of the camp."
+
+It was his first brutal speech, but the brutality was too subtle for
+Vanheimert. He was beginning to feel that something dreadful might
+happen to him after all. The pinions were removed from his arms and
+legs, the long rope detached from the tree and made fast to one of
+Stingaree's stirrups instead. And by it Vanheimert was led a good mile
+through the scrub, with Howie at his heels.
+
+A red sun had risen on the camp, but in the scrub it ceased to shine,
+and the first open space was as sunless as the dense bush. Spires of
+sand kept whirling from earth to sky, joining other spinning spires,
+forming a monster balloon of yellow sand, a balloon that swelled until
+it burst, obscuring first the firmament and then the earth. But the mind
+of Vanheimert was so busy with the fate he feared that he did not
+realize he was in another dust-storm until Stingaree, at the end of the
+rope, was swallowed like a tug in a fog. And even then Vanheimert's
+peculiar terror of a dust-storm did not link itself to the fear of
+sudden death which had at last been put into him. But the moment of
+mental enlightenment was at hand.
+
+The rope trailed on the ground as Stingaree loomed large and yellow
+through the storm. He had dropped his end. Vanheimert glanced over his
+shoulder, and Howie loomed large and yellow behind him.
+
+"You will now perceive the reason for so many days' delay," said
+Stingaree. "I have been waiting for such a dust-storm as the one from
+which we saved you, to be rewarded as you endeavored to reward me. You
+might, perhaps, have preferred me to make shorter work of you, but on
+consideration you will see that this is not only just but generous. The
+chances are perhaps against you, and somewhat in favor of a more
+unpleasant death; but it is quite possible that the storm may pass
+before it finishes you, and that you may then hit the fence before you
+die of thirst, and at the worst we leave you no worse off than we found
+you. And that, I hold, is more than you had any right to expect. So
+long!"
+
+The thickening storm had swallowed man and horse once more. Vanheimert
+looked round. The second man and the second horse had also vanished. And
+his own tracks were being obliterated as fast as footmarks in blinding
+snow. . . .
+
+
+
+
+A Bushranger at Bay
+
+
+The Hon. Guy Kentish was trotting the globe--an exercise foreign to his
+habit--when he went on to Australia for a reason racy of his blood. He
+wished to witness a certain game of cricket between the full strength of
+Australia and an English team which included one or two young men of his
+acquaintance. It was no part of his original scheme to see anything of
+the country; one of the Australian cricketers put that idea into his
+head; and it was under inward protest that Mr. Kentish found himself
+smoking his chronic cigar on the Glenranald and Clear Corner coach one
+scorching morning in the month of February. He thought he had never seen
+such a howling desert in his life; and it is to be feared that in his
+heart he applied the same epithet to his two fellow-passengers. The one
+outside was chatting horribly with the driver; the other had tried to
+chaff the Hon. Guy, and had repaired in some disorder to the company of
+the mail-bags inside. Kentish wondered whether these were the types he
+might expect to encounter upon the station to which he had reluctantly
+accepted an officious introduction. He wished himself out of the absurd
+little two-horse coach, out of an expedition whose absurdity was on a
+larger scale, and back again on the shady side of the two or three
+streets where he lived his normal life. The fare at wayside inns made
+the thought of his club a positive pain; and these pangs were at their
+sharpest when Stingaree cantered out of the scrub on his lily mare, a
+blessed bolt from the blue.
+
+Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up" without a
+word, but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous
+pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the
+desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The
+inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not that the trio
+were set any better example by their noble ally, who began by smiling at
+the whole affair, and was content to the last in taking an observant
+interest in the bushranger's methods. These were simple and in a sense
+humane; there was no personal robbery at all. The mail-bags were
+sufficient for Stingaree, who on this occasion worked alone, but led a
+pack-horse, to which the driver and the inside passenger were compelled
+to strap the long canvas bags, under his eye-glass and his long
+revolver. Few words were spoken from first to last; the Hon. Guy never
+put in his at all; but he watched the outlaw like a lynx, without
+betraying an undue attention, and when all was over he gave a sigh.
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up"
+without a word.]
+
+"So that's Stingaree!" he said, more to himself than to his comrades in
+humiliation; but the bushranger had cantered back into the scrub, and
+his name opened the flood-gates of a profanity which made Kentish wince,
+for all his knowledge of the world.
+
+"Do you never swear at him till he has gone?" he asked when he had a
+chance. The driver leant across the legs of his friend.
+
+"Not unless we want a bullet through our skulls," he answered in boorish
+derision; and the man between them laughed harshly.
+
+"I thought he had never been known to shoot?"
+
+"That's just it, mister. We don't want him to begin on us."
+
+"Why didn't _you_ give him a bit of _your_ mind?" the man in the middle
+inquired of Kentish. "I never heard you open your gills!"
+
+"And we expected to see some pluck from the old country," added the
+driver, wreaking vengeance with his lash.
+
+Mr. Kentish produced his cigar-case with an insensitive smile, and,
+after a moment's deliberation, handed it for the first time to his
+uncouth companions. "Do you want those mail-bags back?" he asked, quite
+casually, when the three cigars were in blast.
+
+"Want them? Of course I want them; but want must be my boss," said the
+driver, gloomily.
+
+"I'm not so sure," said Kentish. "When does the next coach pass this
+way?"
+
+"Midnight, and I drive it. I turn back when I get to Clear Corner, you
+see."
+
+"Then look out for me about this spot. I'm going to ask you to put me
+down."
+
+"Put you down?"
+
+"If you don't mind pulling up. I'm not going on at present; but I'll go
+back with you to Glenranald instead, if you'll keep a lookout for me
+to-night."
+
+Instinctively the driver put his foot upon the brake, for the request
+had been made with that quiet authority which this silent passenger had
+suddenly assumed; and yet it seemed to them such a mad demand that his
+companions looked at Kentish as they had not looked before. His face
+bore a close inspection; it was one of those which burn red, and in the
+redness twinkled hazel eyes that toned agreeably with a fair beard and
+fairer mustache. The former he had grown upon his travels; but the
+trail of the West-end tailor, whose shooting-jacket is as distinctive as
+his frock-coat, was upon Guy Kentish from head to heel. As they watched
+him he took an open envelope from his pocket, scribbled a few words on a
+card, put that in, and stuck down the flap.
+
+"Here," said he, "is my letter of introduction to the good people at the
+Mazeppa Station higher up. If I don't turn up to-night, see that they
+get it, even if it costs you a bit of this?"
+
+And, putting a sovereign in a startled palm, he jumped to the ground.
+
+"But what are you going to do, sir?" cried the driver, in alarm.
+
+"Recover your mail-bags if I can."
+
+"What? After you've just been stuck up----"
+
+"Exactly. I hope to stick up Stingaree!"
+
+"Then you were armed all the time?"
+
+Mr. Kentish smiled as he shook his head.
+
+"That's my affair, I imagine; but even so I am not fool enough to tackle
+such a fellow with his own weapons. You leave it to me, and don't be
+anxious. But I must be off if I'm to stalk him before he goes through
+the letters. No, I know what I'm doing, and I shall do better alone.
+Till to-night, then!"
+
+And he was in the scrub ere they decided to take him at his madcap word,
+and let his blood be on the chuckle-head of the new-chummiest new chum
+that ever came out after the rain! Was it pluck or all pretence? It was
+rather plucky even to pretend in such proximity to the terrible
+Stingaree; on the whole, the coaching trio were disposed to concede a
+certain amount of unequivocal courage; and the driver, with Kentish's
+sovereign in his pocket, went so far as to declare that duty alone
+nailed him to the box.
+
+Meantime the Hon. Guy had skirted the road until he came to double
+horse-tracks striking back into the bush; these he followed with the
+wary stealth of one who had spent his autumns, at least, in the right
+place. They led him through belts of scrub in which he trod like a cat,
+without disturbing an avoidable branch, and over treeless spaces that he
+crossed at a run, bent double; but always, as he followed the trail, his
+shadow fell at one consistent angle, showing how the bushranger rode
+through his natural element as the crow might have flown overhead.
+
+At last Kentish found himself in a sandy gully bristling with pines,
+through which the sunlight dripped like melted gold; and in the fine
+warp and woof of high light and sharp shadow the bushranger's horses
+stood lashing at the flies with their long tails. The bushranger himself
+was nowhere to be seen. But at last Kentish descried a white-and-brown
+litter on either side of the thickest trunk in sight, from whose further
+side floated intermittent puffs of thin blue smoke. Kentish looked and
+looked again before advancing. But the tall pine threw such a shadow as
+should easily swallow his own. And in another minute he was peeping
+round the hole.
+
+The litter on either side was, of course, the shower of miscellaneous
+postal matter from the mail-bags; and in its midst sat Stingaree against
+the tree, enjoying his pipe and a copy of _Punch_, of which the wrapper
+lay upon his knees. Kentish peered for torn envelopes and gaping
+packets; there were no more. The bushranger had evidently started with
+_Punch_, and was still curiously absorbed in its contents. The notorious
+eye-glass dangled against that kindred vanity, the spotless white jacket
+which he affected in summer-time; the brown, attentive face, even as
+Kentish saw it in less than profile, was thus purged of the sinister
+aspect which such an appendage can impart to the most innocent; and a
+somewhat passive amusement was its unmistakable note. Nevertheless, the
+long revolver which had once more done its nefarious work still lay
+ready to his hand; indeed, the Hon. Guy could have stooped and whipped
+it up, had he been so minded.
+
+He was absorbed, however, in the absorption of Stingaree; and as he
+peered audaciously over the other's shoulder he put himself in the
+outlaw's place. An old friend would have lurked in every cut, a friend
+whom it might well be a painful pleasure to meet again. There were the
+oval face and the short upper lip of one imperishable type; on the next
+page one of _Punch's_ Fancy Portraits, with lines underneath which set
+Stingaree incongruously humming a stave from _H.M.S. Pinafore_. Mr.
+Kentish smiled without surprise. The common folk in the omnibus opposite
+were the common folk of an inveterate master; there was matter for a
+homesick sigh in his hint of streaming streets--and Kentish thought he
+heard one as he held his breath. The page after that detained the reader
+some minutes. The illustrations proclaimed it an article on the new
+Savoy opera, and Stingaree confirmed the impression by humming more
+_Pinafore_ when he came to the end. Kentish left him at it, and,
+creeping away as silently as he had come, described a circle and came
+noisily on the bushranger from the front. The result was that Stingaree
+was not startled into firing, but stopped the intruder at due distance
+with his revolver levelled across the open copy of _Punch_.
+
+"I heard you singing _Pinafore_," cried Kentish, cheerily. "And I find
+you reading _Punch_!"
+
+"How dare you find me?" demanded the bushranger, black with passion.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind. I am perfectly innocuous--look!"
+
+And, divesting himself of his shooting-coat, he tossed it across for the
+other's inspection; he wore neither waistcoat nor hip-pocket, and his
+innocence of arms was manifest when he had turned round slowly where he
+stood.
+
+"Now may I not come a little nearer?" asked the Hon. Guy.
+
+"No; keep your distance, and tell me why you have come so far. The
+truth, mind, or you'll be shot!"
+
+"Very well," said Kentish. "They were dreadful people on the coach----"
+
+"Are they waiting for you?" thundered Stingaree.
+
+"No; they've gone on; and they think me mad."
+
+"So you are."
+
+"We shall see; meanwhile I prefer your company to theirs, and mean to
+enjoy it up to the moment of my murder."
+
+For an instant Stingaree seemed on the brink of a smile; then his dark
+face hardened, and he tapped the long barrel in rest between his knees.
+
+"You may call it murder if you like," said he. "That will not prevent me
+from shooting you dead unless you speak the truth. You have come for
+something; what is it?"
+
+"I've told you already. I was bored and disgusted. That is the truth."
+
+"But not the whole truth," cried Stingaree. "You had some other reason."
+
+Kentish looked down without speaking. He heard the revolver cocked.
+
+"Come, let us have it, or I'll shoot you like the spy I believe you
+are!"
+
+"You may shoot me for telling you," said Kentish, with a quiet laugh and
+shrug.
+
+"No, I shall not, unless it turns out that you're ground-bait for the
+police."
+
+"That I am not," said Kentish, growing serious in his turn. "But, since
+you insist, I have come to persuade you to give up every one of these
+letters which you have no earthly right to touch."
+
+Their eyes met. Stingaree's were the wider open, and in an instant the
+less stern. He dropped his revolver, with a laugh, into its old place at
+his side.
+
+"Mad or sane," said he, "I shall be under the unpleasant necessity of
+leaving you rather securely tied to one of these trees."
+
+"I don't believe you will," returned Kentish, without losing a shade of
+his rich coloring. "But in any case I suppose we may have a chat first?
+I give you my word that you are safe from further intrusion to the level
+best of my knowledge and belief. May I sit down instead of standing?"
+
+"You may."
+
+"We are a good many yards apart."
+
+"You may reduce them by half. There."
+
+"I thank you," said Kentish, seating himself tailorwise within arm's
+length of Stingaree's spurs. "Now, if you will feel in the breast-pocket
+of my coat you will find a case of very fair cigars--J. S. Murias--not
+too strong. I shall be honored if you will help yourself and throw me
+one."
+
+Stingaree took the one, and handed the case with no ungraceful
+acknowledgment to its owner; but before Mr. Kentish could return the
+courtesy by proffering his cigar-cutter, the bushranger had produced his
+razor from a pocket of the white jacket, and sliced off the end with
+that.
+
+"So you shave every day in the wilds," remarked the other, handing his
+match-box instead. "And I gave it up on my voyage."
+
+"I alter myself from time to time," said Stingaree, as he struck a
+light.
+
+"It must be a wonderful life!"
+
+But Stingaree lit up without a word, and Kentish had the wit to do the
+same. They smoked in silence for some minutes. A gray ash had grown on
+each cigar before Kentish demanded an opinion of the brand.
+
+"To tell you the truth," said Stingaree, "I have smoked strong trash so
+many years that I can scarcely taste it."
+
+And he peered rather pathetically through his glass.
+
+"Didn't the same apply to _Punch_?"
+
+"No; I have always read the papers when I could," said Stingaree, and
+suddenly he was smiling. "That's one reason why I make a specialty of
+sticking up the mail," he explained.
+
+Mr. Kentish was not to be drawn into a second deliverance on the
+bushranging career. "Is it a good number?" he asked, nodding toward the
+copy of _Punch_. The bushranger picked it up.
+
+"Good enough for me."
+
+"What date?"
+
+"Ninth of December."
+
+"Nearly three months ago. I was in London then," remarked Kentish, in a
+reflective tone.
+
+"Really?" cried Stingaree, under his breath. His voice was as soft as
+the other's, but there was suppressed interest in his manner. His dark
+eyes were only less alight than the red cigar he took from his teeth as
+he spoke. And he held it like a connoisseur, between finger and thumb,
+for all his ruined palate.
+
+"I was," repeated Kentish. "I didn't sail till the middle of the month."
+
+"To think you were in town till nearly Christmas!" and Stingaree gazed
+enviously. "It must be hard to realize," he added in some haste.
+
+"Other things," replied Kentish, "are harder."
+
+"I gather from the _Punch_ cartoon that the new Law Courts are in use at
+last?"
+
+"I was at the opening."
+
+"Then you may have seen this opera that I have been reading about?"
+
+Kentish asked what it was, although he knew.
+
+"_Iolanthe._"
+
+"Rather! I was there the first night."
+
+"The deuce you were!" cried Stingaree; and for the next quarter of an
+hour this armed scoundrel, the terror of a district as large as England
+and Wales, talked of nothing else to the man whom he was about to bind
+to a tree. Was the new opera equal to its predecessors? Which were the
+best numbers? Did _Punch_ do it justice, or was there some jealousy in
+that rival hot-bed of wit and wisdom?
+
+Unfortunately, Guy Kentish had no ear for music, but he made a clear
+report of the plot, could repeat some of the Lord Chancellor's quips,
+and was in decided disagreement with the captious banter from which he
+was given more than one extract. And in default of one of the new airs
+Stingaree rounded off the subject by dropping once more into--
+
+    "For he might have been a Rooshian,
+    A French, or Turk, or Prooshian,
+      Or, perhaps, I-tal-i-an!
+      Or, perhaps, I-tal-i-an!
+    But in spite of all temptations
+    To belong to other nations
+      He remains an Englishman!"
+
+"I understand that might be said of both of us," remarked Kentish,
+looking the outlaw boldly in the eyes. "But from all accounts I should
+have thought you were out here before the days of Gilbert and Sullivan."
+
+"So I was," replied Stingaree, without frown or hesitation. "But you may
+also have heard that I am fond of music--any I can get. My only
+opportunities, as a rule," the bushranger continued, smiling
+mischievously at his cigar, "occur on the stations I have occasion to
+visit from time to time. On one a good lady played and sang _Pinafore_
+and _The Pirates of Penzance_ to me from dewy eve to dawn. I'm bound to
+say I sang some of it at sight myself; and I flatter myself it helped to
+pass an embarrassing night rather pleasantly for all concerned. We had
+all hands on the place for our audience, and when I left I was formally
+presented with both scores; for I had simply called for horses, and
+horses were all I took. Only the other day I had the luck to confiscate
+a musical-box which plays selections from _The Pirates_. I ought to have
+had it with me in my swag."
+
+So affable and even charming was the quiet voice, so evident the
+appreciation of the last inch of the cigar which had thawed a frozen
+palate, and so conceivable a further softening, that Guy Kentish made
+bolder than before. He knew what he meant to do; he knew how he meant to
+do it. And yet it seemed just possible there might be a gentler way.
+
+"You don't always take things, I believe?" he hazarded.
+
+"You mean after sticking up?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Generally, I fear; it's the whole meaning of the act," confessed
+Stingaree, still the dandy in tone and phrase. "But there have been
+exceptions."
+
+"Exactly!" quoth Kentish. "And there's going to be another this
+afternoon!"
+
+Stingaree hurled the stump of his cigar into the scrub, and without a
+word the villain was born again, with his hard eyes, his harder mouth,
+his sinister scowl, his crag of a chin.
+
+"So you come back to that," he cried, harshly. "I thought you had more
+sense; you will make me tie you up before your time."
+
+"You may do exactly what you like," retorted Kentish, a galling scorn in
+his unaltered voice. "Only, before you do it, you may as well know who I
+am."
+
+"My good sir, do you suppose I care who you are?" asked Stingaree, with
+an angry laugh: and his anger is the rarest thing in all his annals.
+
+"I am quite sure you don't," responded Kentish. "But you may as well
+know my name, even though you never heard it before." And he gave it
+with a touch of triumph, not for one moment to be confounded with a
+natural pride.
+
+The bushranger stared him steadily in the eyes; his hand had dropped
+once more upon the butt of his revolver. "No; I never did hear it
+before," he said.
+
+"I'm not surprised," replied the other. "I was a new member when you
+were turned out of the club." Stingaree's hand closed: his eyes were
+terrible. "And yet," continued Kentish, "the moment I saw you at close
+quarters in the road I recognized you as----"
+
+"Stingaree!" cried the bushranger, on a rich and vibrant note. "Let the
+other name pass your lips--even here--and it's the last word that ever
+will!"
+
+"Very well," said Mr. Kentish, with his unaffected shrug. "But, you see,
+I know all about you."
+
+"You're the only man who does, in all Australia!" exclaimed the outlaw,
+hoarsely.
+
+"At present! I sha'n't be the only man long."
+
+"You will," said Stingaree through teeth and mustache; and he leaned
+over, revolver in hand. "You'll be the only man ever, because, instead
+of tying you up, I'm going to shoot you."
+
+Kentish threw up his head in sharp contempt.
+
+"What!" said he. "Sitting?"
+
+Stingaree sprang to his feet in a fury. "No; I have a brace!" he cried,
+catching the pack-horse. "You shall have the other, if it makes you
+happy; but you'll be a dead man all the same. I can handle these things,
+and I shall shoot to kill!"
+
+"Then it's all up with you," said Kentish, rising slowly in his turn.
+
+"All up with me? What the devil do you mean?"
+
+"Unless I am at a certain place by a certain time, with or without these
+letters that are not yours, another letter will be opened."
+
+Stingaree's stare gradually changed into a smile.
+
+"A little vague," said he, "don't you think?"
+
+"It shall be as plain as you please. The letter I mean was scribbled on
+the coach before I got down. It will only be opened if I don't return.
+It contains the name you can't bear to hear!"
+
+There was a pause. The afternoon sun was sinking with southern
+precipitancy, and Kentish had got his back to it by cool intent. He
+studied the play of suppressed mortification and strenuous philosophy in
+the swarthy face warmed by the reddening light; and admired the arduous
+triumph of judgment over instinct, even as a certain admiration dawned
+through the monocle which insensibly focussed his attention.
+
+"And suppose," said Stingaree--"suppose you return empty as you came?"
+A contemptuous kick sent a pack of letters spinning.
+
+"I should feel under no obligation to keep your secret."
+
+"And you think I would trust you to keep it otherwise?"
+
+"If I gave you my word," said Kentish, "I know you would."
+
+Stingaree made no immediate answer; but he gazed in the sun-flayed face
+without suspicion.
+
+"You wouldn't give me your word," he said at last.
+
+"Oh, yes, I would."
+
+"That you would die without letting that name pass your lips?"
+
+"Unless I die delirious--with all my heart. I have as much respect for
+it as you."
+
+"As much!" echoed the bushranger, in a strange blend of bitterness and
+obligation. "But how could you explain the bags? How could you have
+taken them from me?"
+
+Kentish shrugged once more.
+
+"You left them--I found them. Or you were sleeping, but I was unarmed."
+
+"You would lie like that--to save my name?"
+
+"And a man whom I remember perfectly . . ."
+
+Stingaree heard no more; he was down on his knees, collecting the
+letters into heaps and shovelling them into the bags. Even the copy of
+_Punch_ and the loose wrapper went in with the rest.
+
+"You can't carry them," said he, when none remained outside. "I'll take
+them for you and dump them on the track."
+
+"I have to pass the time till midnight. I can manage them in two
+journeys."
+
+But Stingaree insisted, and presently stood ready to mount his mare.
+
+"You give me your word, Kentish?"
+
+"My word of honor."
+
+"It is something to have one to give! I shall not come back this way; we
+shall have the Clear Corner police on our tracks by moonlight, and the
+more they have to choose from the better. So I must go. You have given
+me your word; you wouldn't care to give me----"
+
+But his hand went out a little as he spoke, and Kentish's met it
+seven-eights of the way.
+
+"Give this up, man! It's a poor game, when all's said; do give it up!"
+urged the man of the world with the warmth of a lad. "Come back to
+England and----"
+
+But the hand he had detained was wrenched from his, and, in the pink
+sunset sifted through the pines, Stingaree vaulted into his saddle with
+an oath.
+
+"With a price on my skin!" he cried, and galloped from the gully with a
+bitter laugh.
+
+And in the moonlight sure enough came bobbing horsemen, with fluttering
+pugarees and short tunics with silver buttons; but they saw nothing of
+the missing passenger, who had carried the bags some distance down the
+road, and had found them quite a comfortable couch in a certain
+box-clump commanding a sufficient view of the road. Nevertheless, when
+the little coach came swaying on its leathern springs, its scarlet
+enamel stained black as ink in the moonshine, he was on the spot to stop
+it with uplifted arms.
+
+"Don't shoot!" he cried. "I'm the passenger you put down this
+afternoon." And the driver nearly tumbled from his perch.
+
+"What about my mail-bags?" he recovered himself enough to ask: for it
+was perfectly plain that the pretentiously intrepid passenger had been
+skulking all day in the scrub, scared by the terrors of the road.
+
+"They're in that clump," replied Mr. Kentish. "And you can get them
+yourself, or send someone else for them, for I have carried them far
+enough."
+
+"That be blowed for a yarn!" cried the driver, forgetting his benefits
+in the virtuous indignation of the moment.
+
+"I don't wonder at your thinking it one," returned the other, mildly;
+"for I never had such absolute luck in all my life!"
+
+And he went on to amplify his first lie like a man.
+
+But when the bags were really back in the coach, piled roof-high on
+those of the downward mail, then it was worse fun for Guy Kentish
+outside than even he had anticipated. Question followed question,
+compliment capped compliment, and a certain unsteady undercurrent of
+incredulity by no means lessened his embarrassment. Had he but told the
+truth, he felt he could have borne the praise, and indeed enjoyed it,
+for he had done far better than anybody was likely to suppose, and
+already it was irritating to have to keep that circumstance a secret.
+Yet one thing he was able to say from his soul before the coach drew up
+at the next stage.
+
+"You should have a spell here," the driver had suggested, "and let me
+pick you up again on my way back. You'd soon lay hands on the bird
+himself, if you can put salt on his tail as you've done. And no one else
+can--we want a few more chums like you."
+
+"I dare say!"
+
+And the new chum's tone bore its own significance.
+
+"You don't mean," cried the driver, "to go and tell me you'll hurry home
+after this?"
+
+"Only by the first steamer!" said Guy Kentish.
+
+And he kept that word as well.
+
+
+
+
+The Taking of Stingaree
+
+
+Stingaree had crossed the Murray, and all Victoria was agog with the
+news. It was not his first descent upon that Colony, nor likely to be
+his last, unless Sub-Inspector Kilbride and his mounted myrmidons did
+much better than they had done before. There is no stimulus, however,
+like a trembling reputation. Within four-and-twenty hours Kilbride
+himself was on the track of the invader, whose heels he had never seen,
+much less his face. And he rode alone.
+
+It was not merely his reputation that was at stake, though nothing could
+restore that more effectually than the single-handed capture of so
+notorious a desperado as Stingaree. The dashing officer was not
+unnaturally actuated by the sum of three hundred pounds now set upon the
+outlaw's person, alive or dead. That would be a little windfall for one
+man, but not much to divide among five or six; on the other hand, and
+with all his faults, Sub-Inspector Kilbride had courage enough to
+furnish forth a squadron. He was a black-bearded, high-cheeked
+Irish-Australian, keen and over-eager to a disease, restless,
+irascible, but full of the fire and dash that make as dangerous an enemy
+as another good fighter need desire. And as a fine fighter in an
+infamous cause, Stingaree had his admirers even in Victoria, where the
+old tale of popular sympathy with a picturesque rascal was responsible
+for not the least of the Sub-Inspector's difficulties. But even this
+struck Kilbride as yet another of those obstacles which were more easily
+surmounted alone than at the head of a talkative squad; and with that
+conviction he pushed his thoroughbred on and on through a whole cool
+night and three parts of an Australian summer's day. Imagine, then, his
+disgust at the apparition of a mounted trooper galloping to meet him in
+the middle of the afternoon, and within a few miles of a former
+hiding-place of the bushranger, where the senior officer had strong
+hopes of finding and surprising him now.
+
+"Where the devil do you come from?" cried Kilbride, as the other rode
+up.
+
+"Jumping Creek," was the crisp reply. "Stationed there."
+
+"Then why don't you stop there and do your duty?"
+
+"Stingaree!" said the laconic trooper.
+
+"What! Do you think you're after him too?"
+
+"I am after him."
+
+"So am I."
+
+"Then you're going in the wrong direction."
+
+Kilbride flushed a warm brown from beard to helmet.
+
+"Do you know who you're speaking to?" cried he. "I'm Sub-Inspector
+Kilbride, and this business is my business, and no other man's in this
+Colony. You go back to your barracks, sir! I'm not going to have every
+damned fool in the force charging about the country on his own account."
+
+The trooper was a dark, smart, dapper young fellow, of a type not easily
+browbeaten or subdued. And discipline is not the strong point of forces
+so irregular as the mounted police of a crescent colony. But nothing
+could have been more admirable than the manner in which this rebuke was
+received.
+
+"Very well, sir, if you wish it; but I can assure you that you are off
+the track of Stingaree."
+
+"How do _you_ know?" asked Kilbride, rudely; but he was beginning to
+look less black.
+
+"I happen to know the place. You would have some difficulty in finding
+it if you never were there before. I only stumbled across it by accident
+myself."
+
+"Lately?"
+
+"One day last winter when I was out looking for some horses."
+
+"And you kept it to yourself!"
+
+The trooper hung his head. "I knew we should have him across the river
+again," he said. "It was only a question of time; and--well, sir, you
+can understand!"
+
+"You were keen on taking him yourself, were you?"
+
+"As keen as you are, Mr. Kilbride!" owned the younger man, raising bold
+eyes, and looking his superior fairly and squarely in the face.
+
+Kilbride returned the stare, and what he saw unsettled him. The other
+was wiry, trim, eminently alert; he had the masterful mouth and the
+dare-devil eye, and his horse seemed a part of himself. A more promising
+comrade at hot work was not to be desired: and the work would be hot if
+Stingaree had half a chance. After all, it was better for two to succeed
+than for one to fail. "Half the money and a whole skin!" said Kilbride
+to himself, and rapped out his decision with an oath.
+
+The trooper's eyes lit with reckless mirth, and a soft cheer came from
+under his breath.
+
+"By the bye, what's your name," said Kilbride, "before we start?"
+
+"Bowen--Jack Bowen."
+
+"Then I know all about you! Why on earth didn't you tell me before? It
+was you who took that black fellow who murdered the shepherd on Woolshed
+Creek, wasn't it?"
+
+The admission was made with due modesty.
+
+"Why, you're the very man for me!" Kilbride cried. "You show the way,
+Jack, and I'll make the going."
+
+And off they went together at a canter, the slanting sun striking fire
+from their buttons and accoutrements, and lighting their sunburnt faces
+as it lit the red stems and the white that raced past them on either
+side. For a little they followed the path which Kilbride had taken on
+his way thither; then the trooper plunged into the thick bush on the
+left, and the game became follow-my-leader, in and out, out and in,
+through a maze of red stems and of white, where the pungent eucalyptus
+scent hung heavy as the sage-green, perpendicular leaves themselves: and
+so onward until the Sub-Inspector called a halt.
+
+"How far is it now, Bowen?"
+
+"Two or three miles, sir."
+
+"Good! It'll be light for another hour and a half. We'd better give the
+mokes a breather while we can. And there'd be no harm in two draws."
+
+"I was just thinking the same thing, sir."
+
+So their reins dangled while they cut up a pipeful of apparent
+shoe-leather apiece: and presently the dull blue smoke was curling and
+circling against the dull green foliage, producing subtle half-tint
+harmonies and momentary arabesques as the horses ambled neck and neck.
+
+"Native of this Colony?" puffed Kilbride.
+
+"Well, no--old country originally--but I've been out some years."
+
+"That's all right so long as you're not a New South Welshman," said
+Kilbride, with a chuckle. "I'll be shot if I wouldn't almost have turned
+you back if you had been!"
+
+"Victoria is to have all the credit, is she, sir?"
+
+"Anyhow they sha'n't have any on the other side, or I'll know the
+reason!" the Victorian swore. "I--I--by Jove, I'd as lief lose my man
+again as let them have a hand in taking him!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Why? Do you live so near the border, and can you ask? Did you never
+hear a Sydney-side drover blowing about his blooming Colony? Haven't you
+heard of Sydney Harbor till you're sick? And then their papers!" cried
+Kilbride, with columns in his tone. "But I'll have the last laugh yet!
+I swore I would, and I will! I swore I'd take Stingaree----"
+
+"So I heard."
+
+"Yes, they put it in their infernal papers! But it was true--take him I
+will!"
+
+"Or die in the attempt, eh?"
+
+"Or die and be damned to me!"
+
+All the bitterness of previous failure, indeed of notorious and
+much-criticized defeat, was in the Sub-Inspector's tone; that of his
+subordinate, though light as air, had a touch of insolence which an
+outsider could not have failed--but Kilbride was too excited--to detect.
+The outsider might possibly have foreseen a rivalry which no longer
+entered Kilbride's hot head.
+
+Meanwhile the country was changing even with their now leisurely
+advance. The timbered flats in the region of the river had merged into a
+gully which was rapidly developing into a gorge, with new luxuriant
+growths which added greatly to the density of the forest, suggesting its
+very heart. The almost neutral eucalyptian tint was splashed with the
+gay hues of many parrots, as though the gum-trees had burst into flower.
+The noise of running water stole gradually through the murmur of leaves.
+And suddenly an object in the grass struck the sight like a lantern
+flashed at dead of night: it proved to be an empty sardine tin pricked
+by a stray lance from the slanting sun.
+
+"We must be near," whispered Kilbride.
+
+"We are there! You hear the creek? He has a gunyah there--that's all.
+Shall we rush it on horseback or creep up on foot?"
+
+"You know the lie of the land, Bowen; which do you recommend?"
+
+"Rushing it."
+
+"Then here goes."
+
+In a few seconds they had leaped their horses into a tiny clearing on
+the banks of a creek as relatively minute. And the gunyah--a mere funnel
+of boughs and leaves, in which a man could lie at full length, but only
+sit upright at the funnel's mouth--seemed as empty as the space on every
+hand. The only other sign of Stingaree was a hank of rope flung
+carelessly across the gunyah roof.
+
+"He may be watching us from among the trees," muttered Kilbride, looking
+sharply about him. Bowen screwed up his eyes and followed suit.
+
+"I hardly think it, Mr. Kilbride."
+
+"But it's possible, and here we sit for him to pot us! Let's dismount,
+whether or no."
+
+They slid to the ground. The trooper found himself at the mouth of the
+gunyah.
+
+"What if he were in there after all!" said he.
+
+"He isn't," said Kilbride, stepping in front and stooping quickly. "But
+you might creep in, Jack, and see if he's left any sign of life behind
+him."
+
+The men were standing between the horses, their revolvers cocked.
+Bowen's answer was to hand his weapon over to Kilbride and to creep into
+the gunyah on his hands and knees.
+
+"Here's something or other," his voice cried thickly from within. "It's
+half buried. Wait a bit."
+
+"As sharp as you can!"
+
+"All right; but it's a box, and jolly heavy!"
+
+Kilbride peered nervously to right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell
+upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box
+in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though they
+had violated a grave.
+
+"Kick it open!" exclaimed Kilbride, excitedly.
+
+But there was no need for that; the box was not even locked; and the
+lifted lid revealed an inner one of glass, protecting a brass cylinder
+with steel bristles in uneven growth, and a long line of lilliputian
+hammers.
+
+"A musical-box!" said the staggered Sub-Inspector.
+
+"That's it, sir. I remember hearing that he'd collared one on one of
+the stations he stuck up last time he was down here. It must have lain
+in the ground ever since. And it only shows how hard you must have
+pressed him, Mr. Kilbride!"
+
+"Yes! I headed him back across the Murray--I soon had him out o' this!"
+rejoined the other in grim bravado. "Anything else in the gunyah?"
+
+"All he took that trip, I fancy, if we dig a bit. You never gave him
+time to roll his swag!"
+
+"I must have a look," said Kilbride, his excitement fed by his reviving
+vanity.
+
+The other questioned whether it were worth while. This settled the
+Sub-Inspector.
+
+"There may be something to show where he's gone," that casuist
+suggested, "for I don't believe he's anywhere here."
+
+"Shall I hold the shooters, sir?"
+
+"Thanks; and keep your eyes open, just in case. But it's my opinion that
+the bird's flown somewhere else, and it's for us to find out where."
+
+Kilbride then crept into the gunyah upon his hands and knees, and found
+it less dark than he had supposed, the light filtering freely through
+the leaves and branches. At the inner extremity he found a mildewed
+blanket, and the place where the musical-box had evidently lain a long
+time; but there, though he delved to the elbows in the loosened earth,
+his discoveries ended. Puzzled and annoyed, Kilbride was on the verge of
+cursing his subordinate, when all at once he was given fresh cause. The
+musical-box had burst into selections from _The Pirates of Penzance_.
+
+"What the deuce are you at?" shouted the irate officer.
+
+"Only seeing how it goes."
+
+"Stop it at once, you fool! He may hear it!"
+
+"You said the bird had flown."
+
+"You dare to argue with me? By thunder, you shall see!"
+
+But it was Sub-Inspector Kilbride who saw most. Backing precipitately
+out of the gunyah, he turned round before rising upright--and remained
+upon his knees after all. He was covered by two revolvers--one of them
+his own--and the face behind the barrels was the one with which the last
+hour had familiarized Kilbride. The only difference was the single
+eye-glass in the right eye. And the strains of the musical-box--so thin
+and tinkling in the open air--filled the pause.
+
+"What in blazes are you playing at?" laughed the luckless officer,
+feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was
+entering his soul by inches.
+
+"Rise another inch without my leave and you may be in blazes to see!"
+
+"Look here, Bowen, what do you mean?"
+
+"Only that Stingaree happens to be at home after all, Mr. Kilbride."
+
+The victim's grin was no longer forced; the situation made for laughter,
+even if the laughter were hysterical; and for an instant it was given
+even to Kilbride to see the cruel humor of it. Then he realized all it
+meant to him--certain ruin or a sudden death--and the drops stood thick
+upon his skin.
+
+"What of Bowen?" he at length asked hoarsely. The idea of another victim
+came as some slight alleviation of his own grotesque case.
+
+"I didn't kill him," Stingaree.
+
+"Good!" said Kilbride. It was something that two of them should live to
+share the shame.
+
+"But wing him I did," added the bushranger. "I couldn't help myself. The
+beggar put a bullet through my hat; he did well only to get one back in
+the leg."
+
+Kilbride longed to be winged and wounded in his turn, since blood alone
+could lessen his disgrace. On cooler reflection, however, it was
+obviously wiser to feign a surrender more abject than it might finally
+prove to have been.
+
+"Well," said Kilbride, "you have the whip-hand over me this time, and I
+give you best. How long are you going to keep me on my knees?"
+
+"You can get up when you like," replied Stingaree, "if you promise not
+to play the fool. So you were really going to take me this time, were
+you? I have really no desire to rub it in, but if I were you I should
+have kept that to myself until I'd done it. And you wanted to have me
+all to yourself? Well, you couldn't pay me a higher compliment, but I'm
+going to pay you a high one in return. You really did make me run for it
+last time, and leave all sorts of things behind. So this time I mean to
+take them with me and leave you here instead. Nevertheless, you're the
+only Victorian trap I have any respect for, Mr. Kilbride, or I shouldn't
+have gone to all this trouble to get you here."
+
+Kilbride did not blanch, but he heard his apparent doom with a
+glittering eye, and was deaf for a little to _The Pirates of Penzance_.
+
+"Oh! I'm not going to harm a good man like you," continued Stingaree,
+"unless you make me. Your friend Bowen made me, but I don't promise to
+fire low every time, mark you! There's another good man on the other
+side--Cairns by name--you know him, do you? He'll kick up his heels
+when he hears of this; but they do no better in New South Wales, so
+don't you let that worry you. To think you held both shooters at one
+stage of the game! I trusted you, and so you trusted me; if only you had
+known, eh? Hear that tune, and know what it is? It's in your honor, Mr.
+Kilbride."
+
+And Stingaree hummed the policemen's chorus _sotto voce_; but before the
+end, with a swift remorse, induced by the dignity of Kilbride's bearing
+in humiliating disaster, he swooped upon the insolent instrument and
+stopped its tinkle by touching the lever with one revolver-barrel while
+sedulously covering the Sub-Inspector with the other. The sudden
+cessation of the toy music, bringing back into undue prominence all the
+little bush noises which had filled the air before, brought home to
+Kilbride a position which he had subconsciously associated with those
+malevolent strains as something theatrical and unreal. He had known in
+his heart that it was real, without grasping the reality until now. He
+flung up his fists in sudden entreaty.
+
+"Put a bullet through me," he cried, "if you're a man!"
+
+Stingaree shook a decisive head.
+
+"Not if I can help it," said he. "But I fear I shall have to tie you
+up."
+
+"That's slow death!"
+
+"It never has been yet, but you must take your chance. Get me that rope
+that's slung over the gunyah. It's got to be done."
+
+Kilbride obeyed with apparent apathy; but his heart was inflamed with a
+sudden and infernal glow. Yes, it had never ended in death in any case
+that he could recall of this time-honored trick of all the bushrangers;
+on the contrary, sooner or later, most victims had contrived to release
+themselves. Well, one victim was going to complete his release by
+hanging himself by the same rope to the same tree! Meanwhile he
+confronted his captor grimly, the coil in both hands.
+
+"There's a loop at one end," said Stingaree. "Stick your foot through
+it--either foot you like."
+
+Kilbride obeyed, wondering whether his head would go through when his
+turn came.
+
+"Now chuck me the other end."
+
+It fell in coils at the bushranger's feet.
+
+"Now stand up against that blue gum," he continued, pointing at the tree
+with Kilbride's revolver, his own being back at his hip. "And stand
+still like a sensible chap!"
+
+Stingaree then walked round and round the tree, paying out the long
+rope, yet keeping it taut, until it wound round tree and man from the
+latter's ankles to his armpits. Instinctively Kilbride had kept his arms
+free to the last, but they were no use to him in his suit of hemp, and
+one after the other his wrists were pinned and handcuffed behind the
+tree. The cold steel came as a shock. The captive had counted on
+loosening the knots by degrees, beginning with those about his hands.
+But there was no loosening steel gyves like these; he knew the feel of
+them too well; they were Kilbride's own, that he had brought with him
+for Stingaree. "Found 'em in your saddle-bags while you were in my
+gunyah," explained the bushranger, stepping round to survey his
+handiwork. "Sorry to scar the kid--so to speak! But you see you were my
+most dangerous enemy on this side of the Murray!"
+
+The enemy did not look very dangerous as he stood in the dusk, in the
+heart of that forest, lashed to that tree, with his finger-tips not
+quite meeting behind it, and the blood already on his wrists.
+
+"And now?" he whispered, hoarse already, his lips cracking, and his
+throat parched.
+
+"I shall give you a drink before I go."
+
+"I won't take one from you!"
+
+"I shall make you, if I have to be a bigger brute than ever. You must
+live to spin this yarn!"
+
+"Never!"
+
+Stingaree smiled to himself as he produced pipe and tobacco; but it was
+not his sinister smile; it was rather that of the victor who salutes the
+vanquished in his heart. Meanwhile a more striking and a more subtle
+change had come over the face of Kilbride. It was not joy, but it was
+quite a new grimness, and in his own preoccupation the bushranger did
+not notice it at all. He sauntered nearer with his knife and his
+tobacco-plug, and there was some compassion in his pensive stare.
+
+"Cheer up, man!" said he. "There's no disgrace in coming out second best
+to me. You may smile. You'll find it's generally admitted in New South
+Wales. And after all, you needn't tell little crooked Cairns how it
+happened. So that stops your smile! But he's the best man left on my
+tracks, and I shouldn't be surprised if he's the first to find you."
+
+"No more should I!" said a harsh voice behind the bushranger. "Hands up
+and empty, Stingaree, or you're the next dead man in this little
+Colony!"
+
+Quick as thought Stingaree stepped in front of the tied Victorian. But
+his hands were up, and his eye-glass dangling on its string.
+
+"Oh, you don't catch me kill two birds," rasped the newcomer's voice,
+"though I'm not sure which of you would be least loss!"
+
+Stingaree stood aside once more, and waved his hands without lowering
+them, bowing from his captor to his captive as he did so.
+
+"Superintendent Cairns, of New South Wales--Inspector Kilbride, of
+Victoria," said he. "You two men will be glad to know each other."
+
+The New South Welshman drawled out a dry expression of his own
+satisfaction. His was a strange and striking personality. Dark as a
+mulatto, and round-shouldered to the extent of some distinct deformity,
+he carried his eyes high under the lids, and shot his piercing glance
+from under the penthouse of a beetling brow; a lipless mouth was pursed
+in such a fashion as to shorten the upper lip and exaggerate an already
+powerful chin; and this stooping and intent carriage was no less
+suggestive of the human sleuth-hound than were the veiled vigilance and
+dogged determination of the lowered face. Such was the man who had
+succeeded where Kilbride had failed--succeeded at the most humiliating
+moment of that most ignominious failure--and who came unwarrantably from
+the wrong side of the Murray. The Victorian stood in his bonds and
+favored his rival with such a glare as he had not levelled at Stingaree
+himself. But not a syllable did Kilbride vouchsafe. And the
+Superintendent was fully occupied with his prisoner.
+
+"'Little crooked Cairns,' am I? There are those that look a jolly sight
+smaller, and'll have a worse hump than mine for the rest of their born
+days! Come nearer and turn your back."
+
+And the revolver was withdrawn from its carrier on the stolen
+constabulary belt. The bushranger was then searched for other weapons;
+then marched into the bush at the pistol's point, and brought back
+handcuffed to the Superintendent's bridle.
+
+"That's the way you'll come marching home, my boy; and one of us on
+horseback each side; don't trust _you_ in a saddle on a dark night!"
+
+Indeed, it was nearly dark already, and in the nebulous middle-distance
+a laughing jackass was indulging in his evening peal. Cairns jerked his
+head in the direction of the unearthly cackle. "Lots of 'em down here in
+Vic, I believe," said he, and at length turned his attention to the
+bound man. "You see, I wanted to land him alive and kicking without
+spilling blood," he continued, opening his knife. "That was why I had to
+let him tie you up."
+
+"You _let_ him?" thundered the Victorian, breaking his silence with a
+bellow. It was as though the man with the knife had cut through the rope
+into the bound man's body.
+
+"Stand still," said he, "or I may hurt you. I had to let him, my good
+fellow, or we'd have been dropping each other like bullocks. As it is,
+not a scratch between us, though I found young Bowen in a pretty bad
+way. Our friend had stuck up Jumping Creek barracks in the small hours,
+put a bullet through Bowen's leg, and come away in his uniform. Pretty
+tall, that, eh? I shouldn't wonder if you'd swing him for it alone, down
+here in Vic; no doubt you've got to be more severe in a young Colony.
+Well, I tracked my gentleman to the barracks, and I found Bowen in his
+blood, sent my trooper for a doctor, and got on _your_ tracks before
+they were half an hour old. I came up with you just as he'd stuck you
+up. He had one in each hand. It wasn't quite good enough at the moment."
+
+The knife shore through the rope for the last time, and it lay in short
+ends all round the tree.
+
+"Now my hands," cried Kilbride fiercely.
+
+"I beg pardon?" said the satirical Superintendent.
+
+"My hands, I tell you!"
+
+"There's a little word they teach 'em to say at our State Schools.
+Perhaps you never heard it down in Vic?"
+
+"Don't be a silly fool," said Kilbride, wearily. "You haven't been
+through what I have!"
+
+"That's true," said Cairns. "Still, you might be decently civil to the
+man that gets you out of a mess."
+
+Nevertheless, the handcuffs were immediately removed; and that instant,
+with the curtest thanks, Sub-Inspector Kilbride sprang forward with such
+vigorous intent that the other detained him forcibly by one of his stiff
+and aching arms.
+
+"What are you after now, Kilbride?"
+
+"My prisoner!"
+
+"Your what?"
+
+"_My_ prisoner," I said.
+
+"I like that--and you his!"
+
+Kilbride burst into a voluble defence of his position.
+
+"What right have you on this side of the Murray, you Sydney-sider? None
+at all, except as a passenger. You can't lay finger on man, woman, or
+child in this Colony, and, by God, you sha'n't! Nor yet upon the three
+hundred there's on his head; and the sons of convicts down in Sydney can
+put _that_ in their pipe and smoke it!"
+
+For all his cool and ready insolence, the misshapen Superintendent from
+the other side stood dazed and bewildered by this volcanic outpouring.
+Then his dark face flushed darker, and with a snarl he clinched his
+fists. The Victorian, however, had turned on his heel, and now his
+liberated hands flew skyward, as though the bushranger's revolver
+covered him yet again.
+
+But there was no such weapon discernible through the shade; no New South
+Welshman's horse; and neither sight, sound, wraith, nor echo of
+Stingaree, the outlawed bushranger, the terror and the despair of the
+Sister Colonies!
+
+"I thought it might be done when I saw how you fixed him," said Kilbride
+cheerfully. "Those beggars can ride lying down or standing up!"
+
+"I believe you saw him clear!"
+
+"I'll settle that with you when I've caught him."
+
+"You catch him, you gum-sucker, when you as good as let him go!"
+
+And a volley of further and far more trenchant abuse was discharged by
+Superintendent Cairns, of the New South Wales Police. But Kilbride was
+already in the saddle; a covert outward kick with his spurred heel, and
+the third horse went cantering riderless into the trees.
+
+"He won't go far," sang the Sub-Inspector, "and he'll take you safe
+back to barracks if you give him his head. It's easy to get bushed in
+this country--for new chums from penal settlements!"
+
+As the Victorian galloped into the darkness, and the New South Welshman
+dashed wildly after the third horse, the laughing jackass in the
+invisible middle-distance gave his last grotesque guffaw at departed
+day. And the laughing jackass is a Victorian bird.
+
+
+
+
+The Honor of the Road
+
+
+Sergeant Cameron was undressing for bed when he first heard the voices
+through the weather-board walls; in less than a minute there was a knock
+at his door.
+
+"Here's Mr. Hardcastle from Rosanna, sir. He says he must see you at
+once."
+
+"The deuce he does! What about?"
+
+"He says he'll only tell you; but he's ridden over in three hours, and
+he looks like the dead."
+
+"Give him some whiskey, Tyler, and tell him I'll be down in two ticks."
+
+So saying, the gray-bearded sergeant of the New South Wales Mounted
+Police tucked his night-gown into his cord breeches, slipped into his
+tunic, and hastened to the parlor which served as court-room on
+occasion, buttoning as he went. Mr. Hardcastle had a glass to his lips
+as the sergeant entered. He was a very fine man of forty, and his
+massive frame was crowned with a countenance as handsome as it was open
+and bold; but at a glance it was plain that he was both shaken and
+exhausted, and in no mood to hide either his fatigue or his distress.
+Sergeant Cameron sat down on the other side of the oval table with the
+faded cloth; the younger constable had left the room when Hardcastle
+called him back.
+
+"Don't go, Tyler," said he. "You may as well both hear what I've got to
+say. It's--it's Stingaree!"
+
+The name was echoed in incredulous undertones.
+
+"But he's down in Vic," urged the sergeant. "He's been giving our chaps
+a devil of a time down there!"
+
+"He's come back. I've seen him with my own eyes. But I'm beginning at
+the wrong end first," said the squatter, taking another sip and then
+sitting back to survey his hearers. "You know old Duncan, my overseer?"
+
+The sergeant nodded.
+
+"Of course you know him," the other continued, "and so does the whole
+back-country, and did even before he won this fortune in the Melbourne
+Cup sweep. I suppose you've heard how he took the news? He was fuddling
+himself from his own bottle on Sunday afternoon when the mail came; the
+first I knew of it was when I saw him sitting with his letter in one
+hand and throwing out the rest of his grog with the other. Then he told
+us he had won the first prize of thirty thousand, and that he had made
+up his mind to have his next drink at his own place in Scotland. He left
+us that afternoon to catch the coach and go down to Sydney for his
+money. He ought to have been back this evening before sundown."
+
+The sergeant put in his word:
+
+"That he ought, for I saw him come off the coach and start for the
+station as soon as they'd run up the horse he left behind him at the
+pub. I wondered what had brought him, if he was so set on getting back
+to the old country."
+
+"I could tell you," said Hardcastle, after some little hesitation, "and
+I may as well. Poor old Duncan was the most generous of men, and nothing
+would serve him but that every soul on Rosanna should share more or less
+in his good fortune. I am ashamed to tell you how much he spoke of
+pressing on myself. You have probably heard that one of his
+peculiarities was that he would never take payment by check, like other
+people? I believe it was because he had knocked down too many checks in
+his day. In any case, we used to call him Hard Cash Duncan on Rosanna;
+and I am very much afraid that when you saw him he must have had the
+whole of his thirty thousand pounds upon him in the hardest form of
+cash."
+
+"But what has happened, Mr. Hardcastle?"
+
+"The very worst," said Hardcastle, stooping to sip. The three heads came
+closer together across the faded tablecloth. "There was no sign of him
+at seven; he ought to have been with us before six. We had done our best
+to make it an occasion, and it seemed that the dinner would be spoilt.
+So at seven young Evans, my store-keeper, went off at a gallop to meet
+him, and at twenty-five past he came galloping back leading a riderless
+horse. It was the one you saw Duncan riding this afternoon. There was
+blood upon the saddle. I found it. And within another hour we had found
+the poor old boy himself, dead and cold in the middle of the track, with
+a bullet through his heart."
+
+The squatter's voice trembled with an emotion that did him honor in his
+hearers' eyes; and the gray-bearded sergeant waited a little before
+asking questions.
+
+"What makes you think it is Stingaree?" he inquired, at length.
+
+"I tell you I saw him on the run, with my own eyes, this morning. I
+passed him in one of my paddocks, as close as I am to you, and asked him
+if he was looking for the homestead. He answered that he was only riding
+through, and we neither of us stopped."
+
+"Yet you knew all the time that it was Stingaree?"
+
+"No; to be quite honest," replied Hardcastle, "I never dreamt of it at
+the time. But now I am quite positive on the point. He hadn't his
+eye-glass in his eye, but it was dangling on its cord all right; and
+there was the curled mustache, and the boots and breeches that one knows
+all about, if one has never seen them for oneself. Yet I own it didn't
+dawn on me just then. I happened to be thinking of the stations round
+about, and wondering if they were as burnt up as we are, and when I met
+this swell I simply took him for a new chum on one or other of them."
+
+"There had been robbery, of course?"
+
+"An absolute clearance," said Hardcastle. "The valise had been cut to
+ribbons with a knife, and its other contents were strewed all about; a
+pocketbook we found still bulging from the roll of notes which had been
+taken out. I waited beside him while Evans went back for the buggy, and
+when they started to take him in I rode on to you."
+
+"We'll ride back with you at once," said the sergeant, "and find you a
+fresh horse if your own has had enough. Run up the lot, Tyler, and Mr.
+Hardcastle can take his choice. It seems clear enough," continued
+Cameron, as the trooper disappeared. "But this is a new departure for
+Stingaree; it's the very thing that everybody said he would never do."
+
+"And yet it's the logical climax of his career; it might have happened
+long ago, but it's not his first blood as it is," argued Hardcastle,
+when he had drained his glass. "Didn't he wing one of you down in
+Victoria the other day? Your bushranger is bound to come to it sooner or
+later. He may much prefer not to shoot; but he has only to get up
+against a man of his own calibre, as resolute and as well armed as
+himself, to have no choice in the matter. Poor old Duncan was the very
+type; he would never have given way. In fact, we found him with his own
+revolver fast in his hand, and a finger frozen to the trigger, but not a
+chamber discharged."
+
+"Yes? Then that settles it, and it must have been foul play," cried
+Cameron, owning a doubt in its dismissal. "And we mustn't lose a single
+minute in getting on this blackguard's tracks."
+
+Yet it was midnight before the little cavalcade set out upon a ride of
+over thirty miles, for arrangements had to be made for a telegram to be
+sent to the Glenranald coroner first thing in the morning, and to insure
+this it was necessary to disturb the postmaster, who occupied one of the
+three weather-board dwellings which constituted the roadside hamlet of
+Clear Corner. A round moon topped the sand-hills as the trio rode away;
+it was near its almost dazzling zenith when they reined up at the scene
+of the murder. This was at a point where the sandy track ran through a
+belt of scrub, and the sergeant got off to examine the ground with
+Hardcastle, while Tyler mounted guard in the saddle. But nothing of
+importance was discovered by the pair on foot, and nothing seen or heard
+by their mounted comrade.
+
+They found the station still astir and faintly aglow in the veiled
+daylight of the moon. A cluster of the men stood in a glare at the door
+of their hut; the travellers' hut betrayed the like symptoms of
+excitement; at the kitchen door were more men with pannikins, and odd
+glimpses of a firelit, white-capped face within. But on the broad
+veranda sat two young men with their backs to a closed and darkened
+window. And behind the window lay all that remained of an elderly man,
+whose brown, gnarled face was scarcely recognizable by the newcomers in
+its strange smooth pallor, but his grizzled beard weirdly familiar and
+still crisp with lingering life.
+
+The coroner arrived in some thirty hours, which had brought forth
+nothing new; his jury was drawn from the men's hut and rabbiters'
+tents; and after a prolonged but inconclusive investigation, the inquest
+was adjourned for a week. But the seven days were as barren as the
+first, and a verdict against some person unknown a foregone result. This
+did not satisfy the many who were positive that they knew the person;
+for Stingaree had been seen a hundred miles lower down, doubtless on his
+way back to Victoria, and with his appearance altered in a telltale
+manner. But the coroner thought he knew better than anybody else, and
+had his way, notwithstanding the manifest feeling on the long veranda
+where he held his court.
+
+So jurors and spectators drifted back to hut and tent and neighboring
+station, the coroner started in his buggy for Glenranald, and last of
+all the police departed, leading the horse which Hardcastle had ridden
+home from their barracks, and leaving him at peace once more with his
+two young men. But on the squatter the time had told; his table had been
+full to overflowing through it all; and he sank into a long chair, a
+trifle grayer at the temples, a thought looser in his dress, as the
+pugarees of Cameron and Tyler fluttered out of sight.
+
+"I think we might have a drink," he said with a wry smile to Evans, who
+fetched the decanter from the store; the jackeroo was called from a
+stable which had become Augean during the week, and the three were still
+mildly tippling when the store-keeper came to his feet.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried he. "I thought we'd seen the last of the plucky
+police!"
+
+"You don't mean to say they're coming back?"
+
+"I do, worse luck! Cameron, Tyler, and some new joker in plain clothes."
+
+Hardcastle finished his drink with a resigned smile, and stood on the
+veranda to receive the intruders.
+
+"After all, it will stave off the reaction I began to feel the moment
+they had turned their backs," said he. "Well, well, well! I thought I'd
+just got rid of you fellows, and back you come like base coin!"
+
+"You mustn't blame us," said the sergeant, first to dismount. "We
+couldn't know that Superintendent Cairns had been sent up from Sydney,
+much less that we should ride right into him in your horse-paddock!"
+
+The squatter had stepped down from the veranda with polite alacrity.
+
+"Glad to see you, Mr. Cairns," said he. "I only wish you had come
+before."
+
+The creature in the plain clothes looked about him with a dry smile,
+and a sharp eye upon the younger men and the empty glasses, as he and
+the sergeant accompanied Hardcastle to the veranda, while Tyler took
+charge of the three horses. The fame of Cairns had travelled before him
+to Rosanna, but none had been prepared for a figure so weird or for a
+countenance so forbidding and malign. His manners were equally uncouth.
+He shook his bent head to decline refreshment; he pointedly ignored a
+generalization of Hardcastle's about the crime; and when he spoke, it
+was in a gratuitously satirical style of his own.
+
+"May I ask, Mr. Hardcastle, if you are the owner or the manager of this
+lodge in a howling wilderness?"
+
+"I'm sorry to say I am both."
+
+"I appreciate the sorrow. I failed to discern a single green blade as I
+came along."
+
+"We depend on salt-bush and the like."
+
+"In spite of which, I believe, you have had several lean years?"
+
+"There's no denying it."
+
+"I am sorry to be one of so many intruders in such a season, Mr.
+Hardcastle, but I shall not trouble you long. I hope to take the
+murderer to-night."
+
+"Stingaree?"
+
+"Not quite so loud, please. Who else, should you suppose? You may be
+interested to hear that he has been in hiding on your run for several
+days, and so have I, within fairly easy reach of him. But he is not a
+man to be taken single-handed without further loss of life; so I
+intercepted you, sergeant, and now you are both enlightened. To-night,
+with your assistance and that of your young colleague, I count upon a
+bloodless victory. But I should prefer you, Mr. Hardcastle, not to
+mention the matter to the very young men whom I noticed in your company
+on my arrival. Have I your promise to comply with my wishes on this
+point, and on any other which may arise in connection with the capture?"
+
+And a steely glitter shot through the beetling eyebrows; but Hardcastle
+had given his word before the request was rounded to that pedantic
+neatness which characterized the crabbed utterances of the
+round-shouldered dictator.
+
+"That is well," he went on, "for now I can admit you both into my plan
+of campaign. Suppose we sit down here on the veranda, at the end
+farthest from any door. Be good enough to draw your chairs nearer mine,
+gentlemen. It might be dangerous if a fourth person heard me say that I
+had discovered the murderer's ill-gotten hoard!"
+
+"Not you, sir!" cried Cameron.
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed the squatter.
+
+"The discoverer was not divine, and indeed no human being but myself,"
+the bent man averred, turning with mischievous humor from one to the
+other of his astonished hearers. "Yes, there was more gold than I would
+have credited a sane Scotchman with carrying through the wilds; but the
+bulk was in small notes and the whole has been buried in the scrub close
+to the scene of the murder, doubtless to avoid at once the detection and
+the division of such unusual spoil."
+
+"You are thinking of his mate?"
+
+It was Cameron who had asked the question, but Mr. Hardcastle followed
+immediately with another.
+
+"Did you remove the spoil?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Hardcastle! How you must lack the detective instinct! Of
+course, I left everything as nearly as possible as I found it; the man
+camps on the spot, or very near it; he lights no fires and is careful to
+leave no marks, but I am more or less convinced of it. And that is where
+I shall take him to-night, or, rather, early to-morrow morning."
+
+"I wish you could make it to-night," said Hardcastle, with a yawn that
+put a period to a pause of some duration.
+
+"Why?" demanded the detective, raising open eyes for once.
+
+"Because I've had a desperate week of it," replied Hardcastle, "and am
+dead with sleep."
+
+The other carried his growing geniality to the length of an almost
+hearty laugh.
+
+"My dear sir, do you suppose that I thought of taking _you_ with us? No,
+Mr. Hardcastle, the risks of this sort of enterprise are for those who
+are paid to run them. And there is a risk; if we timed our attack too
+early or too late there would be bloodshed to a certainty. But at two
+o'clock the average man is fast asleep; at a quarter after one,
+therefore, I start with Sergeant Cameron and Constable Tyler."
+
+Hardcastle yawned again.
+
+"I should like to have been with you, but there are compensations," said
+he. "I doubt if I shall even stay up to see you off."
+
+"If you did you would sit up alone," returned the Superintendent. "I
+intend to turn in myself for three or four hours; and it will be in the
+face of all my wishes, sergeant, if you and Tyler do not do the same. No
+reason to tell him what a short night it's to be; it might prevent a
+young fellow like that from getting any sleep at all. Merely let it be
+arranged that we all turn in betimes in view of an early start; we three
+alone need know how early the start will be."
+
+They had their simple dinner at half-past seven, when the detective took
+it on himself to entertain the party, and succeeded so well that the
+entertainment was continued on the veranda for the better part of
+another hour. Doubled up in his chair, abnormal, weird, he recounted in
+particular the exploits of Stingaree (included a garbled version of the
+recent fiasco across the Murray) with a zest only equalled by his
+confidant undertaking to avenge the death of Robert Duncan before
+another day was out; all listened in a rapt silence, and the younger men
+were duly disappointed when the party broke up prematurely between nine
+and ten. But they also had played their part in a fatiguing week; by the
+later hour all were in their rooms, and before very long Rosanna Station
+lay lighted only by the full white moon of New South Wales.
+
+Cameron wondered if it could possibly be two o'clock, while Tyler sat up
+insensate with the full weight of his first sleep, when their chief
+crept into the double-bedded room in which the two policemen had been
+put. He owned himself before his time by an hour and more, but explained
+that he had an idea which had only struck him as he was about to fall
+asleep.
+
+"If we hunt for the fellow in the dark," said he, "we may give him the
+alarm before we come on him. But if we go now there is at least a chance
+that we may find his fire to guide us. I am aware I said he wouldn't
+light one there, but everybody knows that Stingaree uses a spirit-lamp.
+In any case it's a chance, and with a desperate man like that we can't
+afford to give the ghost of a chance away."
+
+The sergeant dressed without more ado, as did his subordinate on
+learning the nature of their midnight errand; meanwhile the disturber of
+slumbers was gone to the horse-yard to start saddling. The others
+followed in a few minutes. And there was the horse-yard overflowing with
+moonshine, but empty alike of man and beast.
+
+"I wonder what's got him?" murmured the bewildered sergeant uneasily.
+
+"Old Harry, for all I care!" muttered the other. "I'm no such nuts on
+him, if you ask me. There's a bit too much of him for my taste."
+
+In his secret breast the sergeant entertained a similar sentiment, but
+he was too old an officer to breathe disaffection in the ear of his
+subaltern. He contented himself with a mild expression of his surprise
+at the conduct of the Sydney authorities in putting a "towny" over his
+head without so much as a word of notice.
+
+"And such a 'towny'!" echoed Tyler. "One you never heard of in your life
+before, and never will again!"
+
+"Speak for yourself!" rejoined Cameron, irritated at the exaggeration of
+their case. "I have heard of him ever since I joined the force."
+
+"Well, he's a funny joke to have shoved over us, a blooming little
+hunchback like that."
+
+"I always heard that he was none the worse for what he couldn't help,
+and now I can understand it," said the sergeant, "for he's not such a
+hunch----"
+
+The men looked at each other in the moonlight, and the ugly word was
+never finished. A dozen hoofs were galloping upon them, their thunder
+muffled by the sandy road, and into the tank of moonshine came two
+horses, hounded by the detective bareback on the third.
+
+"Someone left the slip-rails down, and they were all over the
+horse-paddock," he panted. "But I took a bridle and managed to catch
+one, and it was easy enough to run up the other two."
+
+But even Constable Tyler thought the more of their misshapen leader for
+the feat.
+
+There was now no time to be lost, for it approached midnight, but the
+trio were soon cantering through the horse-paddock neck-and-neck, and
+the new day found them at the farther gate. The moon still poured
+unbroken brilliance upon that desert world of sandy stretches tufted
+with salt-bush and erratically overgrown with scrub. The shadow of the
+gate was as another gate lying ready to be hung; for each particular
+wire in the fence there was a thin black stripe upon the ground. The
+three passed through, and came in quick time upon the edge of that scrub
+in which the crime had been committed. And here the chief called a halt.
+
+"The two to nail him must be on foot," said he. "You can creep upon him
+on foot as you never could with a horse; but I will remain mounted in
+the road and ride him down if he shows fight."
+
+So the pair in the pugarees walked one at either stirrup of their
+crooked chief, leaving the two horses tethered to a tree, until of a
+sudden the whole party halted as one. They had rounded a bend in the
+road with great caution, for they all knew where they were; but only one
+of them was prepared for the position of the light which flashed into
+their eyes from the heart of the scrub.
+
+It was a tiny light, set low upon the ground, and yet it flashed through
+the forest like a diamond in a bundle of hay. It burnt at no little
+distance from the track, for at a movement it was lost, but it was some
+hundreds of yards nearer the station than the scene of the murder. The
+chief whispered that this was where he had found the buried booty, and
+over half the distance he led the way, winding in and out among the
+trees, now throwing a leg across his horse's withers to avoid a hole,
+anon embracing its neck to escape contact with the branches. It was long
+before they could discern anything but the light itself amid the trunks
+and branches of the scrub.
+
+Suddenly the horseman stopped, beckoning with his free hand to the pair
+afoot, pointing at the fire with the one that held the reins; and as
+they crept up to him he stooped in the stirrups till his mouth was close
+to the sergeant's ear.
+
+"He's sitting on the far side of the light, but you can't see his face.
+I thought he was a log, and I still believe he's asleep. Creep on him
+like cats till he looks up; then rush him with your revolvers before he
+can draw his, and I'll support you with mine!"
+
+Nearer and nearer stole Cameron and Tyler; the rider managed to coax a
+few more noiseless steps from his clever mount, but dropped the reins
+and squared his elbows some twenty paces from the light--a hurricane
+lamp now in the sharpest focus. The policemen crawled some yards ahead;
+all three carried revolver in hand. But still the unsuspecting figure
+sat motionless, his chin upon his chest, the brim of his wideawake
+hiding his face, a little heap of gold and notes before him on the
+ground. Then the Superintendent's horse flung up its head; its teeth
+champed upon the bit; the man sat bolt upright, and the light of the
+hurricane lamp fell full upon the face of Hardcastle the squatter.
+
+"Rush him! rush him! That's the man we want!"
+
+But the momentary stupefaction of the police had given Hardcastle his
+opportunity; the hurricane lamp flew between them, going out where it
+fell, and for a minute the revolvers spat harmlessly in the remaining
+patchwork of moonshine and shadow.
+
+"Get behind trees; shoot low, don't kill him!" shouted the chief from
+his saddle. "Now on to him before he can load again. That's it! Pin him!
+Throw your revolvers away, or he'll snatch one before you know where you
+are! Ah, I thought he was too strong for you! Mr. Hardcastle, I'll put a
+bullet through you myself if you don't instantly surrender!"
+
+And the fight ended with the bent man leaning in his stirrups over the
+locked and swaying group, as he brandished his revolver to suit deed to
+word. It was a heavy blow with the long barrel that finally turned the
+scale. In a few seconds Hardcastle stood a prisoner, the handcuffs
+fitting his large wrists like gloves, his great frame panting from the
+fray, and yet a marvel of monstrous manhood in its stoical and defiant
+carriage.
+
+"For God's sake, Cairns, do what you say!" he cried. "Put three bullets
+through me, and divide what's on the ground between you!"
+
+"I half wish we could, for your sake," was the reply. "But it's idle to
+speak of it, and I'm afraid you've committed a crime that places you
+beyond the reach of sympathy."
+
+"That he has!" cried the sergeant, wiping blood from his gray beard.
+"It's plain as a pikestaff now; and to think that he was the one to come
+and fetch us the very night he'd done it! But what licks me more than
+anything is how in the world you found him out, sir!"
+
+The hunchback looked down upon the stalwart prisoner standing up to his
+last inch between his two captors: there was an impersonal interest in
+the man's bold eyes that invited a statement more eloquently than the
+sergeant's tongue.
+
+"I will tell you," said the horseman, smiling down upon the three on
+foot. "In the first place, I had my own reasons for knowing that
+Stingaree was nowhere near this place on the night of the murder, for I
+happen to have been on his tracks for some time. Who knew all about the
+dead man's stroke of luck, his insane preference for hard cash, the time
+of his return? Mr. Hardcastle, for one. Who swore that he had met
+Stingaree face to face upon the run? Mr. Hardcastle alone; there was not
+a soul to corroborate or contradict him. Who was in need of many
+thousand pounds? Mr. Hardcastle, as I suspected, and as he practically
+admitted to me when we discussed the bad season on my arrival. I was
+pretty sure of my man before I crossed the boundary fence, but I was
+absolutely convinced before I had spent twenty minutes on his veranda."
+
+The prisoner smiled sardonically in the moonlight. The policemen gazed
+with awe upon the man who had solved a nine days' mystery in fewer
+hours.
+
+"You must remember," he continued, "that I have spent some days and
+nights upon the run; during the days I have camped in the thickest scrub
+I could find, but by night I have been very busy, and last night I had a
+stroke of luck. I stumbled by accident on a track that led me to the
+place I had been looking for all along. You see, I had put myself in
+Hardcastle's skin, and I was quite clear that I should have buried a
+lapful of gold and notes somewhere in the bush until the hue and cry had
+blown over. Not that I expected to find it so near the scene of the
+crime--I should certainly have gone farther afield myself."
+
+"But I can't make out why that wasn't enough for you, sir," ventured the
+sergeant, deferentially. "Why didn't you come in and arrest him on
+that?"
+
+"You shall see in three minutes. Wasn't it far better to catch him
+red-handed as we have? You will at least admit that it was far neater. I
+say I have the place. I say we are all going to it at two in the
+morning. I say, let us sleep till a little after one. Was it not obvious
+what would happen? The only thing I did not expect was to find him
+asleep with the swag under his nose."
+
+Then Hardcastle spoke up.
+
+"I was not asleep," said he. "I thought I was safe for an hour or two
+. . . and I began to think . . . I was wondering what to do . . .
+whether to cut my throat at once . . ."
+
+And his dreadful voice died away like a single chord struck in an empty
+room.
+
+"But Stingaree," put in Tyler in the end. "What's happened to him?"
+
+"He also has been here. But he was many a mile away at the time."
+
+"What brought him here?"
+
+The crooked Superintendent from Sydney was sitting strangely upright in
+his saddle; his face was not to be seen, for his back was to the moon,
+but he seemed to rub one of his eyes.
+
+"He may have wished to clear his character. He may have itched to uphold
+the honor of that road of which he considers himself a not imperfect
+knight. He may have found it so jolly easy to play policeman down in
+Victoria, that he couldn't resist another shot in a better cause up
+here. At his worst he never killed a man in all his life. And you will
+be good enough to take his own word for it that he never will!"
+
+He had backed his horse while he spoke; he turned a little to the light,
+and the eye-glass gleamed in his eye.
+
+The young constable sprang forward.
+
+"Stingaree!" he screamed.
+
+But the gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner.
+
+[Illustration: The gray sergeant flung his arms round their prisoner.]
+
+"That's right!" cried the bushranger, as he trotted off. "Your horses
+and even your pistols are out of reach, thanks to a discipline for
+which I love you dearly. You hang on to your bird in the hand, my
+friends, and never again misjudge the one in the bush!"
+
+And as the trees swallowed the cantering horse and man, followed by a
+futile shot from the first revolver which the young constable had picked
+up, an embittered admiration kindled in the captive murderer's eyes.
+
+
+
+
+The Purification of Mulfera
+
+
+Mulfera Station, N.S.W., was not only an uttermost end of the earth, but
+an exceedingly loose end, and that again in more senses than one. There
+were no ladies on Mulfera, and this wrought inevitable deterioration in
+the young men who made a bachelors' barracks of the homestead. Not that
+they ever turned it into the perfect pandemonium you might suppose; but
+it was unnecessary either to wear a collar or to repress an oath at
+table; and this sort of disregard does not usually stop at the
+elementary decencies. It is true that on Mulfera the bark of the
+bachelor was something worse than his bite, and his tongue no fair
+criterion to the rest of him. Nevertheless, the place became a byword,
+even in the back-blocks; and when at last the good Bishop Methuen had
+the hardihood to include it in an episcopal itinerary, there were
+admirers of that dear divine who roundly condemned his folly, and
+enemies who no longer denied his heroism.
+
+The Lord Bishop of the Back-Blocks had at that time been a twelvemonth
+or more in charge of what he himself described playfully as his
+"oceanic see"; but his long neglect of Mulfera was due less to its
+remoteness than to the notorious fact that they wanted no adjectival and
+alliterative bishops there. An obvious way of repulse happened to be
+open to the blaspheming squatter, though there is no other instance of
+its employment. On these up-country visitations the Bishop was dependent
+for his mobility upon the horseflesh of his hospitable hosts; thus it
+became the custom to send to fetch him from one station to another; and
+as a rule the owner or the manager came himself, with four horses and
+the big trap. The manager of Mulfera said his horses had something else
+to do, and his neighbors backed him up with some discreet encouragement
+on their own account. It was felt that a slur would be left upon the
+whole district if his lordship actually met with the only sort of
+reception which was predicted for him on Mulfera. Bishop Methuen,
+however, was one of the last men on earth to shirk a plague-spot; and on
+this one, warning was eventually received that the Bishop and his
+chaplain would arrive on horseback the following Sunday morning, to
+conduct divine service, if quite convenient, at eleven o'clock.
+
+The language of the manager was something inconceivable upon the receipt
+of this cool advice. He was a man named Carmichael, and quite a
+different type from the neighbors who held up horny hands when the
+Bishop decided on his raid. Carmichael was not "a native of this
+colony," or of the next, but he was that distressing spectacle, the
+public-school man who is no credit to his public school. Worse than
+this, he was a man of brains; worst of all, he had promised very
+differently as a boy. A younger man who had been at school with him,
+having come out for his health, travelled some hundreds of miles to see
+Carmichael, whose conversation struck him absolutely dumb. "He was
+captain of our house," the visitor explained to Carmichael's
+subordinates, "and you daren't say dash in dormitory--not even dash!"
+
+In appearance this redoubtable person was chiefly remarkable for the
+intellectual cast of his still occasionally clean-shaven countenance,
+and for his double eye-glasses, or rather the way he wore them. They
+were very strong and very common, without any rims, and Carmichael
+bought them by the box. He would not wear them with a cord, and in the
+heat they were continually slipping off his nose; when they did not slip
+right off they hung at such an angle that Carmichael had to throw his
+whole body and head backward in order to see anything through them
+except the ground. And when they fell, someone else had to find them
+while Carmichael cursed, for his naked eye was as blind as a bat's.
+
+"Let's go mustering on Sunday," suggested the overseer--"every blessed
+man! Let him find the whole place deserted, homestead and hut!"
+
+"Or let's get blind for the occasion," was the bookkeeper's idea--"every
+mother's son!"
+
+"That would do," agreed the overseer, "if we got just blind enough. And
+we might get the blacks from Poonee Creek to come and join the dance."
+
+The overseer was a dapper Victorian with a golden mustache twisted
+rakishly up and down at either end respectively, like an overturned
+letter S. He lived up to the name of Smart. The bookkeeper was a servile
+echo with a character and a face of putty. He had once perpetrated an
+opprobrious ode to the overseer, and had answered to the name of Chaucer
+ever since.
+
+Carmichael leaned back to look from one of these worthies to the other,
+and his spectacled eyes flamed with mordant scorn.
+
+"I suppose you think you're funny, you fellows," said he, and without
+the oath which was a sign of his good-will, except when he lost his
+temper with the sheep. "If so, I wish you'd get outside to entertain
+each other. Since the fellow's coming we shall have to let him come, and
+the thing is how to choke him off ever coming again without open insult,
+which I won't allow. A service of some sort we shall have to have, this
+once."
+
+"I'm on to guy it," declared the indiscreet Chaucer.
+
+"If you do I'll rehearse the men," the overseer promised.
+
+"You idiots!" thundered Carmichael, whose temper was as short as his
+sight. "Can't you see I weaken on the prospect as much as the two of you
+stuck together? But the beggar's certain to be a public-school and
+'Varsity man: and I won't have him treated as though he'd been dragged
+up in one of these God-forsaken Colonies!"
+
+Now--most properly--you cannot talk like this in the bush unless you are
+also capable of confirming the insult with your fists. But Carmichael
+could; and he was much too blind to fight without his glasses. He was,
+in fact, the same strenuous character who had set his dogmatic face
+against the most harmless expletives in dormitory at school, and set it
+successfully, because Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was
+not to be withstood. His standard alone was changed. Or he was playing
+on the other side. Yet he had brought a prayer-book with him to the
+back-blocks. And he was seen studying it on the eve of the episcopal
+descent.
+
+"He may have his say," observed Carmichael, darkly, "and then I'll have
+mine."
+
+"Going to heckle him?" inquired Smart, in a nasal voice full of hope and
+encouragement.
+
+"Not at the function, you fool," replied Carmichael, sweetly. "But when
+it's all over I should like to take him on about the Athanasian Creed
+and the Thirty-nine Articles." Only both substantives were qualified by
+the epithet of the country, for Carmichael had put himself in excellent
+temper for the day of battle.
+
+That day dawned blood-red and beautiful, but in a little it was a
+blinding blue from pole to pole, and the thermometer in the veranda
+reached three figures before breakfast. It was a hot-wind day, and even
+Carmichael's subordinates pitied Dr. Methuen and his chaplain, who were
+riding from the south in the teeth of that Promethean blast. But
+Carmichael himself drew his own line with unswerving rigidity; and
+though the deep veranda was prepared as a place for worship, and covered
+in with canvas which was kept saturated with water, he would not permit
+an escort to sally even to the boundary fence to meet the uninvited
+prelate.
+
+Not long after breakfast the two horsemen jogged into view, ambling over
+the sand-hills whose red-hot edge met a shimmering sky some little
+distance beyond the station pines. Both wore pith helmets and fluttering
+buff dust-coats, but both had hot black legs, the pair in gaiters being
+remarkable for their length. The homestead trio, their red necks chafed
+by the unaccustomed collar, gathered grimly at the open end of the
+veranda, where they exchanged impressions while the religious raiders
+bore down upon them.
+
+"They can ride a bit, too, I'm bothered if they can't," exclaimed the
+overseer, in considerable astonishment.
+
+"And do you suppose, my good fool," inquired Carmichael, with the usual
+unregenerate embroidery--"do you in your innocence suppose that's an
+accomplishment confined to these precious provinces?"
+
+"They're as brown as my sugar," said the keeper of books and stores.
+
+"The Bishop looks as though he'd been out here all his life."
+
+Carmichael did not quarrel with this observation of his overseer, but
+colorless eyebrows were raised above the cheap glasses as he stepped
+into the yard to shake hands with the visitors. The bearded Bishop
+returned his greeting in a grave silence. The chaplain, on the other
+hand, seemed the victim of a nervous volubility, and unduly anxious to
+atone for his chief's taciturnity, which he essayed to explain to
+Carmichael on the first opportunity.
+
+"His lordship feels the heat so much more than I do, who have had so
+many years of it; and to tell you the truth, he is still a little hurt
+at not being met, for the first time since he has been out here."
+
+"Then why did he come?" demanded Carmichael, bluntly. "I never asked
+him, did I?"
+
+"No, no, but--ah, well! We won't go into it," said the chaplain. "I am
+glad to see your preparations, Mr. Carmichael; that I consider very
+magnanimous in you, under all the circumstances; and so will his
+lordship when he has had a rest. You won't mind his retiring until it's
+time for the little service, Mr. Carmichael?"
+
+"Not I," returned Carmichael, promptly. But the worst paddock on
+Mulfera, in its worst season, was not more dry than the manager's tone.
+
+Shortly before eleven the bell was rung which roused the men on week-day
+mornings, and they began trooping over from their hut, while the trio
+foregathered on the veranda as before. The open end was the one looking
+east but the sun was too near the zenith to enter many inches, and with
+equal thoroughness and tact Carmichael had placed the table, the
+water-bag, and the tumbler, at the open end. They were all that he could
+do in the way of pulpit, desk, and lectern.
+
+The men tramped in and filled the chairs, forms, tin trunks, and
+packing-cases which had been pressed into the service of this makeshift
+sanctuary. The trio sat in front. The bell ceased, the ringer entering
+and taking his place. There was some delay, if not some hitch. Then came
+the chaplain with an anxious face.
+
+"His lordship wishes to know if all hands are here," he whispered across
+the desk.
+
+Carmichael looked behind him for several seconds. "Every man Jack," he
+replied. "And damn his lordship's cheek!" he added for his equals'
+benefit, as the chaplain disappeared.
+
+"Rum cove, that chaplain," whispered Chaucer, in the guarded manner of
+one whose frequent portion is the snub brutal.
+
+"How so?" inquired Carmichael, with a duly withering glance.
+
+Chaucer told in whispers of a word which he had overheard through the
+weather-board wall of the room in which the Bishop had sought repose. It
+was, in fact, the monosyllable of which Carmichael had just made use.
+He, however, was the first to heap discredit on the book-keeper's story,
+which he laughed to scorn with as much of his usual arrogance as could
+be assumed below the breath.
+
+"If you heard it at all," said Carmichael, "which I don't for a moment
+believe, you heard it in the strictly Biblical sense. You can't be
+expected to know what that is, Chaucer, but as a matter of fact it means
+lost and done for, like our noble selves. And it was probably applied to
+us, if there's the least truth in what you say."
+
+"Truth!" he began, but was not suffered to add another word.
+
+"Shut up," snarled Carmichael. "Can't you hear them coming?"
+
+And the tramp of the shooting-boots, which Dr. Methuen was still new
+chum enough to wear, followed by the chaplain's lighter step, drew
+noisily nearer upon the unseen part of the veranda that encircled the
+whole house.
+
+"Stand up, you cripples!" cried Carmichael over his shoulder, in a stage
+whisper. And they all came to their feet as the two ecclesiastics
+appeared behind the table at the open end of the tabernacle.
+
+Carmichael felt inclined to disperse the congregation on the spot.
+
+There was the Bishop still in his gaiters and his yellow dust-coat; even
+the chaplain had not taken the trouble to don his surplice. So anything
+was good enough for Mulfera! Carmichael had lunged forward with a
+jutting jaw when an authoritative voice rang out across the table.
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+The Bishop had not opened his hairy mouth. It was the smart young
+chaplain who spoke. And all obeyed except Carmichael.
+
+"I beg your lordship's pardon," he was beginning, with sarcastic
+emphasis, when the manager of Mulfera was cut as short as he was himself
+in the habit of cutting his inferiors.
+
+"If you will kindly sit down," cried the chaplain, "like everybody else,
+I shall at once explain the apparent irregularity upon which you were
+doubtless about to comment."
+
+Carmichael glowered through his glasses for a few seconds, and then
+resumed his seat with a shrug and a murmur, happily inaudible to all but
+his two immediate neighbors.
+
+"On his way here this morning," the chaplain went on, "his lordship met
+with a misadventure from which he has not yet recovered sufficiently to
+address you as he fully hoped and intended to do to-day." At this all
+eyes sped to the Bishop, who stood certainly in a drooping attitude at
+the chaplain's side, his episcopal hands behind his back. "Something
+happened," the glib spokesman continued with stern eyes, "something that
+you do not often hear of in these days. His lordship was accosted,
+beset, and, like the poor man in the Scriptures, despitefully entreated,
+not many miles beyond your own boundary, by a pair of armed ruffians!"
+
+"Stuck up!" cried one or two, and "Bushrangers!" one or two more.
+
+"I thank you for both words," said the chaplain, bowing. "He was stuck
+up by the bushranger who is once more abroad in the land. Really, Mr.
+Carmichael----"
+
+But the manager of Mulfera rose to his full height, and, leaning back to
+get the speaker into focus, stuck his arms akimbo in a way that he had
+in his most aggressive moments.
+
+"And what were _you_ doing?" he demanded fiercely of the chaplain.
+
+"It was I who stuck him up," answered the _soi-disant_ chaplain,
+whipping a single glass into his eye to meet the double ones. "My name
+is Stingaree!"
+
+And in the instant's hush which followed he plucked a revolver from his
+breast, while the hands of the sham bishop shot out from behind his
+back, with one in each.
+
+The scene of the instant after that defies ordinary description. It was
+made the more hideous by the frightful imprecations of Carmichael, and
+the short, sharp threat of Stingaree to shoot him dead unless he
+instantly sat down. Carmichael bade him do so with a gallant oath, at
+which the men immediately behind him joined with his two companions in
+pulling him back into his chair and there holding him by main force.
+Thereafter the manager appeared to realize the futility of resistance,
+and was unhanded on his undertaking to sit quiet, which he did with the
+exception of one speech to those behind.
+
+"If any of you happen to be armed," he shouted over his shoulder, "shoot
+him down like a dog. But if you're all as fairly had as I am, let's hear
+what the beggar's got to say."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Carmichael," said the bushranger, still from the far
+side of the table, as a comparative silence fell at last. "You are a man
+after my own heart, sir, and I would as lief have you on my side as the
+simple ruffian on my right. Not a bad bishop to look at," continued
+Stingaree, with a jerk of the head toward his mate with the two
+revolvers. "But if I had let him open his mouth! Now, if I'd had you,
+Mr. Carmichael--but I have my doubts about your vocabulary, too!"
+
+The point appealed to all present, and there was a laugh, in which,
+however, Carmichael did not join.
+
+"I suppose you didn't come here simply to give us a funny
+entertainment," said he. "I happen to be the boss, or have been
+hitherto, and if you will condescend to tell me what you want I shall
+consider whether it is worth while to supply you or to be shot by you. I
+shall be sorry to meet my death at the hands of a thieving blackguard,
+but one can't pick and choose in that matter. Before it comes to
+choosing, however, is it any good asking what you've done with the real
+bishop and the real chaplain? If you've murdered them, as I----"
+
+Stingaree had listened thus far with more than patience, in fact with
+something akin to approval, to the captive who was still his master with
+the tongue. With all his villainy, the bushranger was man enough to
+appreciate another man when he met him; but Carmichael's last word
+flicked him on a bare nerve.
+
+"Don't you dare to talk to me about murder," he rapped out. "I've never
+committed one yet, but you're going the right way to make me begin! As
+for Bishop Methuen, I have more respect for him than for any man in
+Australia; but his horse was worth two of my mate's, and that's all I
+troubled him for. I didn't even tie him up as I would any other man. We
+just relieved the two of them of their boots and clothes, which was
+quite as good as tying up, with your roads as red-hot as they
+are--though my mate here doesn't agree with me."
+
+The man with the beard very emphatically shook a matted head, now
+relieved of the stolen helmet, and observed that the quicker they were
+the better it would be. He was as taciturn a bushranger as he had been a
+bishop, but Stingaree was perfectly right. Even these few words would
+have destroyed all chance of illusion in the case of his mate.
+
+"The very clothes, which become us so well," continued the prince of
+personators, who happened to be without hair upon his face at this
+period, and who looked every inch his part; "their very boots, we have
+only borrowed! I will tell you presently where we dropped the rest of
+their kit. We left them a suit of pyjamas apiece, and not another
+stitch, and we blindfolded and drove 'em into the scrub as a last
+precaution. But before we go I shall also tell you where a search-party
+is likely to pick up their tracks. Meanwhile you will all stay exactly
+where you are, with the exception of the store-keeper, who will kindly
+accompany me to the store. I shall naturally require to see the inside
+of the safe, but otherwise our wants are very simple."
+
+The outlaw ceased. There was no word in answer; a curious hush had
+fallen on the captive congregation.
+
+"If there is a store-keeper," suggested Stingaree, "he'd better stand
+up."
+
+But the accomplished Chaucer sat stark and staring.
+
+"Up with you," whispered Carmichael, in terrible tones, "or we're done!"
+
+And even as the book-keeper rose tremulously to his feet, a strange and
+stealthy figure, the cynosure of all eyes but the bushrangers' for a
+long minute, reached the open end of the veranda; and with a final
+spring, a tall man in silk pyjamas, his gray beard flying over either
+shoulder, hurled himself upon both bushrangers at once. With outspread
+fingers he clutched the scruff of each neck at the self-same second,
+crash came the two heads together, and over went the table with the
+three men over it.
+
+Shots were fired in the struggle on the ground, happily without effect.
+Stingaree had his shooting hand mangled by one blow with a chair whirled
+from a height. Carmichael got his heel with a venomous stamp upon the
+neck of Howie; and, in fewer seconds than it would take to write their
+names, the rascals were defeated and disarmed. Howie had his neck half
+broken, and his face was darkening before Carmichael could be induced to
+lift his foot.
+
+"The cockroach!" bawled the manager, drunk with battle. "I'd hoof his
+soul out for two pins!"
+
+A moment later he was groping for his glasses, which had slipped and
+fallen from his perspiring nose, and making use of such expressions
+withal as to compel a panting protest from the tall man in the silken
+stripes.
+
+"My name is Methuen," said he. "I know it's a special moment, but--do
+you mind?"
+
+Carmichael found his glasses at that instant, adjusted them, stood up,
+and leant back to view the Bishop; and his next words were the apology
+of the gentleman he should have been.
+
+"My dear fellow," cried the other, "I quite understand. What are they
+doing with the ruffians? Have you any handcuffs? Is it far to the
+nearest police barracks?"
+
+But the next act of this moving melodrama was not the least
+characteristic of the chief performance; for when Stingaree and partner
+had been not only handcuffed but lashed hand and foot, and incarcerated
+in separate log-huts, with a guard apiece; and when a mounted messenger
+had been despatched to the barracks at Clare Corner, and the remnant
+raised a cheer for Bishop Methuen; it was then that the fine fellow
+showed them the still finer stuff of which he was also made. He invited
+all present to step back for a few minutes into the place of worship
+which had been so charmingly prepared, so scandalously misused, and
+where he hoped to see them all yet again in the evening, if it would not
+bore them to give him a further and more formal hearing then.
+
+"I won't keep them five minutes now," he whispered to Carmichael, as the
+men went ahead to pick up the chairs and take their places, while the
+Bishop hobbled after, still in his pyjamas, and with terribly inflamed
+and swollen feet. "And then," he added, "I must ask you to send a buggy
+at once for my poor chaplain. He did his gallant best, poor fellow, but
+I had to leave him fallen by the way. I am an old miler, you know; it
+came easier to me; but the cinder-path and running-shoes are a different
+story from hot sand and naked feet! And now, if you please, I will
+strike one little blow while our hearts are still warm."
+
+But how shrewdly he struck it, how straight from the shoulder, how
+simply, how honestly, there is perhaps no need to tell even those who
+have no previous knowledge of back-block Bishop Methuen and his manly
+ways.
+
+What afterward happened to Stingaree is another matter, to be set forth
+faithfully in the sequel. This is the story of the Purification of
+Mulfera Station, N.S.W., in which the bushrangers played but an indirect
+and a most inglorious part.
+
+The Bishop and his chaplain (a good man of no present account) stayed to
+see the police arrive that night, and the romantic ruffians taken thence
+next morning in unromantic bonds. Comparatively little attention was
+paid to their departure--partly on account of the truculent attitude of
+the police--partly because the Episcopal pair were making an equally
+early start in another direction. No one accompanied the armed men and
+the bound. But every man on the place, from homestead, men's hut,
+rabbiter's tent, and boundary-rider's camp--every single man who could
+be mustered for the nonce had a horse run up for him--escorted Dr.
+Methuen in close cavalcade to the Mulfera boundary, where the final
+cheering took place, led by Carmichael, who, of course, was font and
+origin of the display. And Carmichael rode by himself on the way back;
+he had been much with the Bishop during his lordship's stay; and he was
+too morose for profanity during the remainder of that day.
+
+But it was no better when the manager's mood lifted, and the life on
+Mulfera slipped back into the old blinding and perspiring groove.
+
+Then one night, a night of the very week thus sensationally begun, the
+ingenious Chaucer began one of the old, old stories, on the moonlit
+veranda, and Carmichael stopped him while that particular old story was
+still quite young in the telling. There was an awkward pause until
+Carmichael laughed.
+
+"I don't care twopence what you fellows think of me," said he, "and
+never did. I saw a lot of the Bishop," he went on, less aggressively,
+after a pause.
+
+"So _we_ saw," assented Smart.
+
+"You bet!" added Chaucer.
+
+For they were two to one.
+
+"He ran the mile for Oxford," continued Carmichael. "Two years he ran
+it--and won both times. You may not appreciate quite what that means."
+
+And, with a patience foreign to his character as they knew it,
+Carmichael proceeded to explain.
+
+"But," he added, "that was nothing to his performance last Sunday, in
+getting here from beyond the boundary in the time he did it
+in--barefoot! It would have been good enough in shoes. But don't you
+forget his feet. I can see them--and feel them--still."
+
+"Oh, he's a grand chap," the overseer allowed.
+
+"We never said he wasn't," his ally chimed in.
+
+Carmichael took no notice of a tone which the youth with the putty face
+had never employed toward him before.
+
+"He was also in his school eleven," continued Carmichael, still in a
+reflective fashion.
+
+"Was it a public school?" inquired Smart.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"_The_ public school?" added Chaucer.
+
+"Not mine, if that's what you mean," returned Carmichael, with just a
+touch of his earlier manner. "But--he knew my old Head Master--he was
+quite a pal of the dear Old Man! . . . We had such lots in common,"
+added the manager, more to himself than to the other two.
+
+The overseer's comment is of no consequence. What the book-keeper was
+emboldened to add matters even less. Suffice it that between them they
+brought the old Carmichael to his feet, his glasses flaming in the
+moonshine, his body thrown pugilistically backward, his jaw jutting like
+a crag--the old Carmichael in deed--but not in word.
+
+"I told you just now I didn't care twopence what either of you thought
+of me," he roared, "though there wasn't the least necessity to tell you,
+because you knew! So I needn't repeat myself; but just listen a moment,
+and try not to be greater fools than God made you. You saw a real man
+last Sunday, and so did I. I had almost forgotten what they were
+like--that quality. Well, we had a lot of talk, and he told me what they
+are doing on some of the other stations. They are holding services,
+something like what he held here, every Sunday night for themselves.
+Now, it isn't in human nature to fly from one extreme to the other: but
+we are going to have a try to keep up our Sunday end with the other
+stations; at least I am, and you two are going to back me up."
+
+He paused. Not a syllable from the pair.
+
+"Do you hear me?" thundered Carmichael, as he had thundered in the
+dormitory at school, now after twenty years in the same good cause once
+more. "Whether you like it or not, you fellows are going to back me up!"
+
+And Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was not to be
+withstood.
+
+
+
+
+A Duel in the Desert
+
+
+It was eight o'clock and Monday morning when the romantic rascals were
+led away in unromantic bonds. Their arms were bound to their bodies,
+their feet lashed to the stirrup-irons; they sat like packs upon quiet
+station horses, carefully chosen for the nonce; they were tethered to a
+mounted policeman apiece, each with leading-rein buckled to his left
+wrist and Government revolver in his right hand. Behind the quartette
+rode the officer in command, superbly mounted, watching ever all four
+with a third revolver ready cocked. It seemed a small and yet an ample
+escort for the two bound men.
+
+But Stingaree was by no means in that state of Napoleonic despair which
+his bent back and lowering countenance were intended to convey. He had
+not uttered a word since the arrival of the police, whom he had suffered
+to lift him on horseback, as he now sat, without raising his morose eyes
+once. Howie, on the other hand, had offered a good deal of futile
+opposition, cursing his captors as the fit moved him, and once
+struggling so insanely in his bonds as to earn a tap from the wrong end
+of a revolver and a bloody face for his pains. Stingaree glowered in
+deep delight. His mate's part was as well acted as his own; but it was
+he who had conceived them both, and expounded them in countless camps
+against some such extremity as this. The result was in ideal accordance
+with his calculations. The man who gave the trouble was the man to
+watch. And Stingaree, chin on chest, was left in peace to evolve a way
+of escape.
+
+The chances were all adverse; he had never been less sanguine in his
+life. Not that Stingaree had much opinion of the police; he had slipped
+through their hands too often; but it was an unfortunate circumstance
+that two of the present trio were among those whom he had eluded most
+recently, and who therefore would be least likely to give him another
+chance. A lightning student of his kind, he based his only hope upon an
+accurate estimate of these men, and applied his whole mind to the triple
+task. But it was a single task almost from the first; for the policeman
+in charge of him was none other than his credulous old friend, Sergeant
+Cameron from Clear Corner; and Howie's custodian, a young trooper run
+from the same mould as Constable Tyler and many a hundred more, in whom
+a thick skull cancelled a stout heart. Both were brave men; neither was
+really to be feared. But the man behind upon the thoroughbred, the man
+in front, the man now on this side and now on that, with his braying
+laugh and his vindictive voice--triumphant as though he had taken the
+bushrangers himself, and a blatant bully in his triumph--was none other
+than the formidable Superintendent whose undying animosity the
+bushrangers had earned by the two escapades associated with his name.
+
+Yet the outlaw never flattered him with word or look, never lifted chin
+from chest, never raised an eye or opened his mouth until Howie's knock
+on the head caused him to curse his mate for a fool who deserved all he
+got. The thoroughbred was caracoling on his other side in an instant.
+
+"You ain't one, are you?" cried the taunting tongue of Superintendent
+Cairns. "Not much fool about Stingaree!"
+
+The time had come for a reply.
+
+"So I thought until yesterday," sighed the bushranger. "But now I'm not
+so sure."
+
+"Not so sure, eh? You were sure enough last time we met, my beauty!"
+
+"Yes! I had some conceit of myself then," said Stingaree, with another
+of his convincing sighs.
+
+"To say nothing of when you guyed me, damn you!" added the
+Superintendent, below his breath and through his teeth.
+
+"Well," replied the outlaw, "you've got your revenge. I must expect you
+to rub it in."
+
+"My fine friend," rejoined Cairns, "you may expect worse than that, and
+still you won't be disappointed."
+
+Stingaree made no reply; and it would have taken a very shrewd eye to
+have read deeper than the depth of sullen despair expressed in every
+inch of his bound body and every furrow of his downcast face. Even the
+vindictive Cairns ceased for a time to crow over so abject an adversary
+in so bitter an hour. Meanwhile, the five horses streamed slowly through
+the high lights and heavy shadows of a winding avenue of scrub. It was
+like a hot-house in the dense, low trees: not a wandering wind, not a
+waking bird; but five faces that dripped steadily in the shade, and all
+but caught fire in the sun. Ahead rode Howie, dazed and bleeding, with
+his callous young constable; the sergeant and his chief, with Stingaree
+between them, now brought up the rear. By degrees Stingaree raised his
+chin a little, but still looked neither right nor left.
+
+"Cheer up!" cried the chief, with soothing irony.
+
+"I feel the heat," said the bound man, uncomplainingly. "And it was just
+about here it happened."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"We overtook the Church militant here on earth," rejoined the
+bushranger, with rueful irreverence.
+
+"Well, you ran against a snag that time, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree!"
+
+"I couldn't resist turning Howie into the Bishop and making myself his
+mouthpiece. I daren't let him open his lips! It wasn't the offertory
+that was worth having; it was the fun of rounding up that congregation
+on the homestead veranda, and never letting them spot a thing till we'd
+showed our guns. There hadn't been a hitch, and never would have been if
+that old Bishop hadn't run all those miles barefoot over hot sand and
+taken us unawares."
+
+Made with wry humor and a philosophic candor, alike germane to his
+predicament, these remarks seemed natural enough to one knowing little
+of Stingaree. They seemed just the sort of things that Stingaree would
+say. The effect, however, was rather to glorify Bishop Methuen at the
+expense of Superintendent Cairns, who strove to reverse it with some
+dexterity.
+
+"You certainly ran against a snag," he repeated, "and now your mate's
+run against another." He gave the butt of his ready pistol a significant
+tap. "But I'm the worst snag that ever either of you struck," he went on
+in his vainglory. "Make no mistake about that. And the worst day's work
+that ever you did in your life, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree, was when you
+dared to play at being little crooked Cairns."
+
+Stingaree took a first good look at his man. After all he was not so
+crooked on horseback as he had seemed on foot at dusk in the Victorian
+bush; his hump was even less pronounced than Stingaree himself had made
+it on Rosanna; it looked more like a ridge of extra muscle across a pair
+of abnormally broad and powerful shoulders. There was the absence of
+neck which this deformity suggests; there was a great head lighted by
+flashing and indignant eyes, but mounted only on its mighty chin. The
+bushranger was conceited enough to find in the flesh a coarser and more
+common type than that created by himself for the honor of the road. But
+this did not make the real Superintendent a less formidable foe.
+
+"The most poetic justice!" murmured Stingaree, and resumed in an instant
+his apathetic pose.
+
+"It serves you jolly well right, if that's what you mean," the
+Superintendent snarled. "You've yourself and your own mighty cheek to
+thank for taking me out of my shell and putting me on your tracks in
+earnest. But it was high time they knew the cut of my jib up here; the
+fools won't forget me again in a hurry. And you, you devil, you sha'n't
+forget me till your dying day!"
+
+On Stingaree's off-side Sergeant Cameron was also hanging an insulted
+head. But the bushranger laughed softly in his chest.
+
+"Someone has got to do your dirty work," said he. "I did it that time,
+and the Bishop has done it now; but you shouldn't blame me for helping
+your fellows to bring a murderer to justice."
+
+"You guyed me," said Cairns through his teeth. "I heard all about it.
+You guyed me, blight your soul!"
+
+Stingaree felt that he was missing a strong face finely convulsed with
+passion--as indeed he was. But he had already committed the indiscretion
+of a repartee, which was scarcely consistent with an attitude of extreme
+despair. A downcast silence seemed the safest policy after all.
+
+"It used to be forty miles to the Corner," he murmured, after a time.
+"We can't have come more than ten."
+
+"Not so much," snapped the Superintendent.
+
+"Going to stop for feed at Mazeppa Station?"
+
+"That's my business."
+
+"It's a long day for three of you, in this heat, with two of us."
+
+"The time won't hang heavy on _our_ hands."
+
+"Not heavy enough, I should have thought. I wonder you didn't bring some
+of the boys from Mulfera along with you."
+
+Superintendent Cairns brayed his high, harsh laugh.
+
+"Yes, you wonder, and so did they," said he. "But I know a bit too much.
+There'll always be sympathy among scum like them for thicker scum like
+you!"
+
+"You're too suspicious," said Stingaree, mildly. "But I was thinking of
+the Bishop and the boss."
+
+"They've gone their own way," growled Cairns, "and it's just as well it
+wasn't our way. I'd have stood no interference from them!"
+
+That had been his attitude on the station. Stingaree had heard of his
+rudeness to those to whom the whole credit of the capture belonged; the
+man revealed his character as freely as an angry child; and, indeed, a
+childish character it was. Arrogance was its strength and weakness: a
+suggestion had only to be made to call down either the insolence of
+office or the malice of denial for denial's sake.
+
+"I wish you'd stop a bit at Mazeppa," whined Stingaree, drooping like a
+candle in the heat.
+
+The station roofs gleamed through the trees far off the track.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I'm feeling sick."
+
+"Gammon! You've got some friends there; on you push!"
+
+"But you will camp somewhere in the heat of the day?"
+
+"I'll do as I think fit. I sha'n't consult you, my fine friend."
+
+Stingaree drooped and nodded, lower and lower; then recovered himself
+with a jerk, like one battling against sleep. The party pushed on for
+another hour. The heat was terrible; the bound men endured torments in
+their bonds. But the nature of the Superintendent, deformed like his
+body, declared itself duly at every turn, and the more one prisoner
+groaned and the other blasphemed, the greater the zest and obduracy of
+the driving force behind them.
+
+Noon passed; the scanty shadows lengthened; and Howie gave more trouble
+of an insensate sort. They reined up, and lashed him tighter; he had
+actually loosened his cords. But Stingaree seemed past remonstrance with
+friend or foe, and his bound body swayed from side to side as the
+little cavalcade went on at a canter to make up for lost time.
+
+[Illustration: Stingaree toppled out of the saddle.]
+
+He was leading now with the kindly sergeant, and his mind had never been
+more alert. Behind them thundered the recalcitrant Howie with constable
+and Superintendent on either side. They were midway between Mazeppa and
+Clear Corner, or some fifteen miles from either haunt of men. Stingaree
+pulled himself upright in the saddle as by a superhuman effort, and
+shook off the helping hand that held him by one elbow.
+
+He was about to do a thing at which even his courage quailed, and he
+longed for the use of his right arm. It was not absolutely bound; the
+hand and wrist had been badly hurt in the Sunday's fray--so badly that
+it had been easy to sham a fracture, and have hand and wrist in splints
+before the arrival of the police. They still hung before him in a sling,
+his good right hand and fore-arm, stiff and sore enough, yet strong and
+ready at a moment's notice, when the moment came. It had not come, and
+was not coming for a long time, when Stingaree set his teeth, lurched
+either way--and toppled out of the saddle in the path of the cantering
+hoofs. His lashed feet held him in the stirrups; the off stirrup-leather
+had come over with his weight; and there at his horse's hoofs, kicked
+and trampled and smothered with blood and dust, he dragged like an
+anchor, without sign of life.
+
+And it was worse even than it looked, for the life never left him for an
+instant, nor ever for an instant did he fail to behave as though it had.
+Minutes later, when they had stopped his horse, and cut him down from
+the stirrups, and carried him into the shade of a hop-bush off the
+track, and when Stingaree dared to open his eyes, he was nearer closing
+them perforce, and the scene swam before him with superfluous realism.
+
+Cairns and Cameron, dismounted (while the trooper sat aloof with Howie
+in the saddle), were at high words about their prostrate prisoner. Not a
+syllable was lost on Stingaree.
+
+"You may put him across the horse yourself," said the sergeant. "I won't
+have a hand in it. But make sure you haven't killed him as it
+is--travelling a sick man like that."
+
+"Killed him? He's got his eyes open!" cried Cairns in savage triumph.
+Stingaree lay blinking at the sky. "Do you still refuse to do your
+duty?"
+
+"Cruelty to animals is no duty of mine," declared the sergeant: "let
+alone my fellowmen, bushrangers or no bushrangers."
+
+"And you?" thundered Cairns at the mounted constable.
+
+"I'm with the sergeant," said he. "He's had enough."
+
+"Right!" cried the Superintendent, producing a note-book and scribbling
+venomously. "You both refuse! You will hear more of this; meanwhile,
+sergeant, I should like to know what your superior wisdom may be pleased
+to suggest."
+
+"Send a cart back for him," said Cameron. "It's the only way he's fit to
+travel."
+
+Stingaree sought to prop himself upon the elbow of the splintered wrist
+and hand.
+
+"There are no more bones broken that I know of," said he, faintly. "But
+I felt bad before, and now I feel worse."
+
+"He looks it, too," observed the sergeant, as Stingaree, ghastly enough
+beneath his blood and dust, rolled over on his back once more, and lay
+effectively with closed eyes. Even the Superintendent was impressed.
+
+"Then what's to be done with him?" he exclaimed, with an oath. "What's
+to be done?"
+
+"If you ask me," returned Cameron, "I should make him comfortable where
+he is; after all, he's a human being, and done no murder, that we should
+run the risk of murdering him. Leave him to me while you two push on
+with his mate; then one of you can get back with the spring-cart before
+sundown; but trust me to look after him till you do."
+
+Stingaree held his breath where he lay. His excitement was not to be
+betrayed by the opening of an eye. And yet he knew that the
+Superintendent was looking the sergeant up and down, and he guessed what
+was passing through that suspicious mind.
+
+"Trust you!" rasped the dictatorial voice at last. "That's the very
+thing I'm not inclined to do, Sergeant Cameron."
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Keep your temper, sergeant. I don't say you'd let him go. But I've got
+to remember that this man has twisted you round his finger before
+to-day, led you by the hand like a blessed old child, and passed himself
+off for me! Look at the fellow; look at me; and ask yourself candidly if
+you're the man for the job. But don't ask me, unless you want my opinion
+of you a bit plainer still. No; you go on with the others. The two of
+you can manage Howie; if you can't, you put a bullet through him! This
+is my man; and I'm his, by the hokey, as he'll know if he tries any of
+his tricks while you're gone!"
+
+Stingaree did not move a muscle. He might have been dead; and in his
+disappointment it was the easier to lie as though he were. Really
+bruised, really battered, really faint and stiff and sore, to say
+nothing of his bonds, he felt himself physically no match for so young a
+man--with the extra breadth of shoulder and the extra length of arm
+which were part and parcel of his deformity. With the elderly sergeant
+he might have had a chance, man to man, one arm to two; but with
+Superintendent Cairns his only weapons were his wits. He lay quite still
+and reviewed the situation, as it was, and as it had been. In the very
+moment of his downfall, by instinctive presence of mind he had preserved
+the use of his right hand, and that was a still unsuspected asset of
+incalculable worth. It had been the nucleus of all his plans; without a
+hand he must have resigned himself to the inevitable from the first.
+Then he had split up the party. He heard the sergeant and the constable
+ride off with Howie, exactly as he had intended two of the three captors
+to do. His fall alone introduced the element of luck. It might have
+killed or maimed him; but the risk had been run with open eyes. Being
+alive and whole, he had reduced the odds from three against two to man
+and man; and the difference was enormous, even though one man held all
+the cards. Against Howie the odds were heavier than ever, but Howie was
+eliminated from present calculations. And as Stingaree made them with
+the upturned face of seeming insensibility, he heard a nonchalant step
+come and go, but knew an eye was on him all the time, and never opened
+his own till the striking of a match was followed by the smell of bush
+tobacco.
+
+The shadow of the hop-bush was spreading like spilt ink, and for the
+moment Stingaree thought he had it to himself. But a wreath of blue
+smoke hovered overhead; and when he got to his elbow, and glanced
+behind, there sat Cairns in his shirt-sleeves, filling the niche his
+body made in the actual green bush, a swollen wet water-bag at his feet,
+his revolver across his knees. There was an ominous click even as
+Stingaree screwed round where he lay.
+
+"Give me a drink!" he cried at sight of the humid canvas bag.
+
+"Why should I?" asked the Superintendent, smoking on.
+
+"Because I haven't had one since we started--because I'm parched with
+thirst."
+
+"Parch away!" cried the creature of suspicion. "You can't help yourself,
+and I can't help you with this baby to nurse."
+
+And he fondled the cocked revolver in his hands.
+
+"Very well! Don't give me one!" exclaimed Stingaree, and dealt the moist
+bag a kick that sent a jet of cold water spurting over his foot. He
+expected to be kicked himself for that; he was only cursed, the bag
+snatched out of his reach, and deeply drained before his eyes.
+
+"I was going to give you some," said Cairns, smacking his lips. "Now
+your tongue may hang out before I do."
+
+Stingaree left the last word with the foe: it was part of his
+preconceived policy. He still regretted his solitary retort, but not for
+a moment the more petulant act which he had just committed. His boots
+had been removed after his fall; one of his socks was now wet through,
+and he spent the next few minutes in taking it off with the other foot.
+The lengthy process seemed to afford his mind a certain pensive
+entertainment. It was a shapely and delicate white foot that lay
+stripped at last--a foot that its owner, with nothing better to do,
+could contemplate with legitimate satisfaction. But Superintendent
+Cairns, noting his prisoner's every look, and putting his own confident
+interpretation on them all, cursed him afresh for a conceited pig, and
+filled another pipe, with the revolver for an instant by his side.
+
+Stingaree took no interest in his proceedings; the revolver he
+especially ignored, and lay stretched before his captor, one sock off
+and one sock on, one arm in splints and sling and the other bound to his
+ribs, a model prisoner whose last thought was of escape. His legs,
+indeed, were free; but a man who could not sit on a horse was not the
+man to run away. And then there was the relentless Superintendent
+sitting over him, pipe in mouth, but revolver again in hand, and a
+crooked finger very near the trigger.
+
+The fiery wilderness still lay breathless in the great heat, but the
+lengthening shadow of the hop-bush was now a thing to be thankful for,
+and in it the broken captive fell into a fine semblance of natural
+slumber. Cairns watched with alternate envy and suspicion; for him there
+could not be a wink; but most likely the fellow was shamming all the
+time. No ruse, however, succeeded in exposing the sham, which the
+Superintendent copied by breathing first heavily and then stertorously,
+with one eye open and on his man. Stingaree never opened one of his:
+there was no change in the regular breathing, in the peaceful expression
+of the blood-stained face: asleep the man must be. The Superintendent's
+own experiments had gone to show him that no extremity need necessarily
+keep one awake in such heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his
+performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot;
+and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's
+senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled
+pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an
+agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself
+really asleep this time? He breathed as though he were; but so did
+Stingaree; and yet was there hope in the fact that his own greatest
+struggle all this time had been against the very thing he feigned.
+
+At last he opened one eye a little; it was met by no answering furtive
+glance; he opened the other, and there could be no more doubt. The
+terrible Superintendent was dozing in his place; but it was the lightest
+sort of doze, the eyes were scarcely closed, and all but watching
+Stingaree, as the cocked revolver in the relaxed hand all but covered
+him.
+
+The prisoner felt that for the moment he was unseen, forgotten, but that
+the lightest movement of his body would open those terrible eyes once
+and for all. Be it remembered that he was lying under them lengthwise,
+on the bound arm, with the arm in the sling uppermost, and easily to be
+freed, but yet the most salient part of the recumbent figure, and that
+on which the hidden eyes still seemed fixed, for all their lids. To make
+the least movement there, to attempt the slowest withdrawal of hand and
+arm, was to court the last disaster of discovery in such an act. But to
+lie motionless down to the thighs, and to execute a flank movement with
+the leg uppermost, was a far less perilous exploit. It was the leg with
+the bare foot: every detail had been foreseen. And now at last the bare
+foot hovered over the revolver and the hand it held, while the upper man
+yet lay like a log under those drowsy, dreadful eyes.
+
+Stingaree took a last look at the barrel drooping from the slackened
+hand; the back of the hand lay on the ground, the muzzle of the barrel
+was filled with sand, and yet the angle was such that it was by no means
+sure whether a bullet would bury itself in the sand or in Stingaree. He
+took the risk, and with his bare toe he touched the trigger sharply.
+There was a horrible explosion. It brought the drowsy Superintendent to
+his senses with such a jerk that it was as though the smoking pistol had
+leapt out of his hand a thing alive, and so into the hand that flashed
+to meet it from the sling. And almost in the same second--while the
+double cloud of smoke and sand still hung between them--Stingaree
+sprang from the ground, an armed man once more.
+
+"Sit where you are!" he thundered. "Up with those hands before I shoot
+them to shreds! Your life's in less danger than mine has been all day,
+but I'll wing you limb by limb if you offer to budge!"
+
+With uplifted hands above his ears, the deformed officer sat with head
+and shoulders depressed into the semblance of one sphere. Not a syllable
+did he utter; but his upturned eyes shot indomitable fires. Stingaree
+stood wriggling and fumbling at the coil which bound his left arm to his
+side; suddenly the revolver went off, as if by accident, but so much by
+design that there dangled two ends of rope, cut and burnt asunder by
+lead and powder. In less than a minute the bushranger was unbound, and
+before the minute was up he had leapt upon the Superintendent's
+thoroughbred. It had been tethered all this time to a tree, swishing
+tails with the station hack which Stingaree had ridden as a captive; he
+now rode the thoroughbred, and led the hack, to the very feet of the
+humiliated Cairns.
+
+"I will thank you for that water-bag," said Stingaree. "I am much
+obliged. And now I'll trouble you for that nice wideawake. You really
+don't need it in the shade. Thank you so much!"
+
+He received both bag and hat on the barrel of the Government revolver,
+hooking the one to its proper saddle-strap, and clapping on the other at
+an angle inimitably imitative of the outwitted officer.
+
+"I won't carry the rehearsal any further to your face," continued
+Stingaree; "but I can at least promise you a more flattering portrait
+than the last; and this excellent coat, which you have so considerately
+left strapped to your saddle, should contribute greatly to the
+verisimilitude. Dare I hope that you begin to appreciate some of the
+points of my performance so far as it has gone? The pretext on which I
+bared my foot for its delicate job under your very eyes, eh? Not so vain
+as it looked, in either sense, I fancy! Should you have said that your
+hand would recoil from a revolver the moment it went off? You see, I
+staked my life on it, and I've won. And what about that fall? It was the
+lottery! I was prepared to have my head cracked like an egg, and it's
+still pretty sore. The broken wrist wasn't your fault; it had passed
+into the accepted situation before you turned up. And you would
+certainly have seen that I was shamming sleep if we hadn't both been so
+genuinely sleepy at the time. I give you my word, I very nearly threw
+up the whole thing for forty winks! Any other point on which you could
+wish enlightenment? Then let me thank you with all my heart for one of
+the worst days, and some of the greatest moments, in my whole career."
+
+But the crooked man answered never a word, as he sat in a ball with
+uplifted palms, and glaring, upturned, unconquerable eyes.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Superintendent Cairns," said Stingaree. "I'm afraid I've
+been rather cruel to you--but you were never very nice to me!"
+
+
+Sergeant Cameron was driving the spring-cart, toward sundown, after a
+variety of unforeseen delays. Of a sudden out of the pink haze came a
+galloping figure, slightly humped, in the inspector's coat and
+wideawake, with a bare foot through one stirrup and only a sock on its
+fellow.
+
+"Where's Stingaree?" screamed the sergeant, pulling up. And the galloper
+drew rein at the driven horse's head.
+
+"Dead!" said he, thickly. "He was worse than we thought. You fetch him
+while I----"
+
+But this time the sergeant knew that voice too well, and his right hand
+had flown to the back of his belt. Stingaree's shot was only first by a
+fraction of a second, but it put a bullet through the brain of the horse
+between the shafts, so that horse and shafts came down together, and the
+sergeant fired into the earth as he fell across the splashboard.
+
+Stingaree pressed soft heels into the thoroughbred's ribs and thundered
+on and on. Soon there was a gate to open, and when he listened at that
+gate all was still behind him and before; but far ahead the rolling
+plain was faintly luminous in the dusk, and as this deepened into night
+a cluster of terrestrial lights sprang out with the stars. Stingaree
+knew the handful of gaunt, unsheltered huts the lights stood for. They
+were an inn, a store, and police-barracks: Clear Corner on the map. The
+bushranger galloped straight up to the barracks, but skirted the knot of
+men in the light before the veranda, and went jingling round into the
+yard. The young constable in charge ran through the building and met him
+dismounted at the back.
+
+"What's the matter, sir?"
+
+"He's gone!"
+
+"Stingaree?"
+
+"He was worse than we thought. Your man all right?"
+
+"No trouble whatever, sir. Only sick and sorry and saying his prayers
+in a way you'd never credit. Come and hear him."
+
+"I must come and see him at once. Got a fresh horse in?"
+
+"I have so! In and saddled in the stall. I thought you might want one,
+sir, and ran up Barmaid, Stingaree's own mare, that was sent out here
+from the station when we had the news."
+
+"That was very thoughtful of you. You'll get on, young man. Now lead the
+way with that lamp."
+
+This time Stingaree had spoken in gasps, like a man who had ridden very
+far, and the young constable, unlike his sergeant, did not know his
+voice of old. Yet it struck him at the last moment as more unlike the
+voice of Superintendent Cairns than the hardest riding should have made
+it, and with the key in the door of the cell the young fellow wheeled
+round and held the lamp on high. That instant he was felled to the
+floor, the lamp went down and out with a separate yet simultaneous
+crash, and Stingaree turned the key.
+
+"Howie! Not a word--out you come!"
+
+The burly ruffian crept forth with outstretched hands apart.
+
+"What! Not even handcuffed?"
+
+"No; turned over a new leaf the moment we left you, and been praying
+like a parson for 'em all to hear!"
+
+"This chap can do the same when he comes to himself. Lies pretty still,
+doesn't he? In with him!"
+
+The door clanged. The key was turned. Stingaree popped it into his
+pocket.
+
+"The later they let him out the better. Here's the best mount you ever
+had. And my sweetheart's waiting for me in the stable!"
+
+Outside, in front, before the barracks veranda, an inquisitive little
+group heard first the clang of the door within, and presently the
+clatter of hoofs coming round from the yard. Stingaree and Howie--a
+white flash and a bay streak--swept past them as they stood confounded.
+And the dwindling pair still bobbed in sight, under a full complement of
+stars, when a fresh outcry from the cell, and a mighty hammering against
+its locked door, broke the truth to one and all.
+
+
+
+
+The Villain-Worshipper
+
+
+There was no more fervent admirer of Stingaree and all bushrangers than
+George Oswald Abernethy Melvin. Despite this mellifluous nomenclature
+young Melvin helped his mother to sell dance-music, ballads, melodeons,
+and a very occasional pianoforte, in one of the several self-styled
+capitals of Riverina; and despite both facts the mother was a lady of
+most gentle blood. The son could either teach or tune the piano with a
+certain crude and idle skill. He endured a monopoly of what little
+business the locality provided in this line, and sat superior on the
+music-stool at all the dances. He had once sung tenor in Bishop
+Methuen's choir, but, offended by a word of wise and kindly advice, was
+seen no more in surplice or in church. It will be perceived that Oswald
+Melvin had all the aggressive independence of Young Australia without
+the virility which leavens the truer type.
+
+Yet he was neither a base nor an unkind lad. His bane was a morbid
+temperament, which he could no more help than his sallow face and weedy
+person; even his vanity was directly traceable to the early influence of
+an eccentric and feckless father with experimental ideas on the
+upbringing of a child. It was a pity that brilliantly unsuccessful man
+had not lived to see the result of his sedulous empiricism. His wife was
+left to bear the brunt--a brave exile whose romantic history was never
+likely to escape her continent lips. None even knew whether she saw any
+or one of those aggravated faults of an only child which were so
+apparent to all her world.
+
+And yet the worst of Oswald Melvin was known only to his own morbid and
+sensitive heart. An unimpressive presence in real life, on his mind's
+stage he was ever in the limelight with a good line on his lips. Not
+that he was invariably the hero of these pieces. He could see himself as
+large with the noose round his neck as in coronet or halo; and though
+this inward and spiritual temper may be far from rare, there had been no
+one to kick out of him its outward and visible expression. Oswald had
+never learned to gulp down the little lie which insures a flattering
+attention; his clever father had even encouraged it in him as the
+nucleus of imagination. Imagination he certainly had, but it fed on
+strong meat for an unhealthy mind; it fattened on the sordid history of
+the earlier bushrangers; its favorite fare was the character and
+exploits of Stingaree. The sallow and neurotic face would brighten with
+morbid enthusiasm at the bare mention of the desperado's name. The
+somewhat dull, dark eyes would lighten with borrowed fires: the young
+fool wore an eye-glass in one of them when he dared.
+
+"Stingaree," he would say, "is the greatest man in all Australia." He
+had inherited from his father a delight in uttering startling opinions;
+but this one he held with unusual sincerity. It had come to all ears,
+and was the subject of that episcopal compliment which Oswald took as an
+affront. The impudent little choristers supported his loss by calling
+"Stingaree!" after him in the street: he was wise to keep his eye-glass
+for the house.
+
+There, however, with a few even younger men who admired his standpoint
+and revelled in his store of criminous annals, or with his patient,
+inscrutable mother, Oswald Melvin was another being. His language became
+bright and picturesque, his animation surprising. A casual customer
+would sometimes see this side of him, and carry away the impression of a
+rare young dare-devil. And it was one such who gave Oswald the first
+great moment of his bush life.
+
+"Not been down from the back-blocks for three years?" he had asked, as
+he showed a tremulous and dilapidated bushman how to play the instrument
+that he had bought with the few shillings remaining out of his check.
+"Been on the spree and going back to drive a whim until you've enough to
+go on another? How I wish you'd tell that to our high and mighty Lord
+Bishop of all the Back-Blocks! I should like to see his face and hear
+him on the subject; but I suppose he's new since you were down here
+last? Never come across him, eh? But, of course, you heard how good old
+Stingaree scored off him the other day, after he thought he'd scored off
+Stingaree?"
+
+The whim-driver had heard something about it. Young Melvin plunged into
+the congenial narrative and emerged minutes later in a dusky glow.
+
+"That's the man for my money," he perorated. "Stingaree, sir, is the
+greatest chap in all these Colonies, and deserves to be Viceroy when
+they get Federation. Thunderbolt, Morgan, Ben Hall and Ned Kelly were
+not a circumstance between them to Stingaree; and the silly old Bishop's
+a silly old fool to him! I don't care twopence about right and wrong.
+That's not the point. The one's a Force, and the other isn't."
+
+"A darned sight too much force, to my mind," observed the whim-driver
+with some warmth.
+
+"You don't take my meaning," the superior youth pursued. "It's a
+question of personality."
+
+"A bit more personal than you think," was the dark rejoinder.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+Melvin's tone had altered in an instant.
+
+"I know too much about him."
+
+"At first hand?" the youth asked, with bated breath.
+
+"Double first!" returned the other, with a muddled glimmer of better
+things.
+
+"You never knew him, did you?" whispered Oswald.
+
+"Knew him? I've been taken prisoner by him," said the whim-driver, with
+the pause of a man who hesitates to humiliate himself, but is lost for
+the sake of that same sensation which Oswald Melvin loved to create.
+
+Mrs. Melvin was in the back room, wistfully engrossed in an English
+magazine sent that evening from Bishop's Lodge. The bad blood in the son
+had not affected Dr. Methuen's keen but tactful interest in the mother.
+She looked up in tolerant consternation as her Oswald pushed an unsavory
+bushman before him into the room; but even through her gentle horror
+the mother's love shone with that steady humor which raised it above the
+sphere of obvious pathos.
+
+"Here's a man who's been stuck up by Stingaree!" he cried, boyish enough
+in his delight. "Do keep an eye on the show, mother, and let him tell me
+all about it, as he's good enough to say he will. Is there any whiskey?"
+
+"Not for me!" put in the whim-driver, with a frank shudder. "I should
+like a drink of tea out of a cup, if I'm to have anything."
+
+Mrs. Melvin left them with a good-humored word besides her promise. She
+had given no sign of injury or disapproval; she was not one of the
+wincing sort; and the tremulous tramp was in her own chair before her
+back was turned.
+
+"Now fire away!" cried the impatient Oswald.
+
+"It's a long story," said the whim-driver; and his dirty brows were knit
+in thought.
+
+"Let's have it," coaxed the young man. And the other's thoughtful
+creases vanished suddenly in the end.
+
+"Very well," said he, "since it means a drink of tea out of a cup! It
+was only the other day, in a dust-storm away back near the Darling, as
+bad a one as ever I was out in. I was bushed and done for, gave it up
+and said my prayers. Then I practically died in my tracks, and came to
+life in a sunny clearing later in the day. The storm was over; two coves
+had found me and carried me to their camp; and as soon as I saw them I
+spotted one for Howie and the other for Stingaree!"
+
+The narrative went no farther for a time. The thrilling youth fired
+question and leading question like a cross-examining counsel in a fever
+to conclude his case. The tea arrived, but the whim-driver had to help
+himself. His host neglected everything but the first chance he had ever
+had of hearing of Stingaree or any other bushranger at first-hand.
+
+"And how long were you there?"
+
+"About a week."
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+The whim-driver paused in doubt renewed.
+
+"You will never guess."
+
+"Tell me."
+
+"They waited for the next dust-storm, and then cast me adrift in that."
+
+Oswald stared; he would never have guessed, indeed. The unhealthy light
+faded from his sallow face. Even his morbid enthusiasm was a little
+damped.
+
+"You must have done something to deserve it," he cried, at last.
+
+"I did," was the reply, with hanging head. "I--I tried to take him."
+
+"Take your benefactor--take him prisoner?"
+
+"Yes--the man who saved my life."
+
+Melvin sat staring: it was a stare of honestly incredulous disgust. Then
+he sprang to his feet, a brighter youth than ever, his depression melted
+like a cloud. His villainous hero was an heroic villain after all! His
+heart of hearts--which was not black--could still render whole homage to
+Stingaree! He no longer frowned on his informer as on a thing accursed.
+The creature had wiped out his original treachery to Stingaree by
+replacing the uninjured idol in its niche in this warped mind. Oswald,
+however, had made his repugnance only too plain; he was unable to elicit
+another detail; and in a very few minutes Mrs. Melvin was back in her
+place, though not before flicking it with her handkerchief, undetected
+by her son.
+
+It was certainly a battered and hang-dog figure that stole away into the
+bush. Yet the creature straightened as he strode into star-light
+undefiled by earthly illumination; his palsy left him; presently as he
+went he began fingering the new melodeon in the way of a man who need
+not have sought elementary instruction from Oswald Melvin. And now a
+shining disk filled one unwashed eye.
+
+Stingaree lay a part of that night beside the milk-white mare that he
+had left tethered in a box-clump quite near the town; at sunrise he
+knelt and shaved on the margin of a Government tank, before breaking the
+mirror by plunging in. And before the next stars paled he was snugly
+back in older haunts, none knowing of his descent upon those of men.
+
+There or thereabouts, hidden like the needle in the hay, and yet
+ubiquitous in the stack, the bushranger remained for months. Then there
+was an encounter, not the first of this period, but the first in which
+shots were exchanged. One of these pierced the lungs of his melodeon--an
+instrument more notorious by this time than the musical-box before it--a
+still greater treasure to Stingaree. That was near the full of a certain
+summer moon; it was barely waning to the eye when the battered buyer of
+melodeons came for a new one to the shop in the pretty bush town.
+
+The shop was closed for the night, but Stingaree knocked at a lighted
+window under the veranda, which Mrs. Melvin presently threw up. Her eyes
+flashed when she recognized one against whom she now harbored a
+bitterness on quite a different plane of feeling from her former
+repulsion. Even to his first glance she looked an older and a harder
+woman.
+
+"I am sorry to see you," she said, with a soft vehemence plainly foreign
+to herself. "I almost hate the sight of you! You have been the ruin of
+my son!"
+
+"His ruin?"
+
+Stingaree forgot the speech of the unlettered stockman; but his cry was
+too short to do worse than warn him.
+
+"Come round," continued Mrs. Melvin, austerely. "I will see you. You
+shall hear what you have done."
+
+In another minute he was in the parlor where he had sat aforetime. He
+never dreamt of sitting now. But the lady took her accustomed chair as a
+queen her throne.
+
+"_Is_ he ruined?" asked Stingaree.
+
+"Not irrevocably--not yet; but he may be any moment. He must be before
+long."
+
+"But--but what ails him, madame?"
+
+"Villain-worship!" cried the lady, with a tragic face stripped of all
+its humor, and bare without it as a winter's tree.
+
+"I remember! Yes--I understand. He was mad about--Stingaree."
+
+"It is madness now," said the bitter mother. "It was only a stupid,
+hare-brained fancy then, but now it is something worse. You're the first
+to whom I have admitted it," she continued, with illogical indignation,
+"because it's all through you!"
+
+"All through me?"
+
+"You told him a tale. You made that villain a greater hero in his eyes
+than ever. You made him real."
+
+"He is real enough, God knows!"
+
+"But you made him so to my son." The keen eyes softened for one divine
+instant before they filled. "And I--I am talking my own boy over
+with--with----"
+
+Stingaree stood in twofold embarrassment. Did she know after all who he
+was? And what had he said he was, the time before?
+
+"The lowest of the low," he answered, with a twitch of his unshaven
+lips.
+
+"No! That you were not, or are not, whatever you may say. You--" she
+hesitated sweetly--"you had been unsteady when you were here before." He
+twitched again, imperceptibly. "I am thankful to see that you are now
+more like what you must once have been. I can bear to tell you of my
+boy. Oh, sir, can you bear with me?"
+
+Stingaree twitched no more. Rich as the situation was, keenly as he had
+savored its unsuspected irony, the humor was all over for him. Here was
+a woman, still young, sweet and kind, and gentle as a childish memory,
+with her fine eyes full of tears! That was bad enough. To make it worse,
+she went on to tell him of her son, him an outlaw, him a bushranger with
+a price upon his skin, as she might have outlined the case to a
+consulting physician. The boy had been born in the trouble of her early
+exile; he could not help his temperament. He had countless virtues; she
+extolled him in beaming parentheses. But he had too much imagination and
+too little balance. He was morbidly wrapped up in the whole subject of
+romantic crime, and no less than possessed with the personality of this
+one romantic criminal.
+
+"I should be ashamed to tell you the childish lengths to which he has
+gone," she went on, "if he were quite himself on the point. But indeed
+he is not. He is Stingaree in his heart, Stingaree in his dreams; it is
+as debasing a form as mental and temperamental weakness could well take;
+yet I know, who watch over him half of the night. He has an eye-glass;
+he keeps revolvers; he has even bought a white mare! He can look
+extremely like the portraits one has seen of the wretched man. But come
+with me one moment."
+
+She took the lamp and led the way into the little room where Oswald
+Melvin slept. He had slept in it from that boyhood in which the brave
+woman had opened this sort of shop entirely for his sake. Music was his
+only talent; he was obviously not to be a genius in the musical world;
+but it was the only one in which she could foresee the selfish,
+self-willed child figuring with credit, and her foresight was only
+equalled by her resource. The business was ripe and ready for him when
+he grew up. And this was what he was making of it.
+
+But Stingaree saw only the little bed that had once been far too large,
+the Bible still by its side, read or unread, the parents' portraits
+overhead. The mother was looking in an opposite direction; he followed
+her eyes, and there at the foot, where the infatuated fool could see it
+last thing at night and first in the morning, was an enlarged photograph
+of the bushranger himself.
+
+It had been taken in audacious circumstances a year or two before. A
+travelling photographer had been one of yet another coach-load turned
+out and stood in a line by the masterful masterless man.
+
+"Now you may take my photograph. The police refuse to know me when we do
+meet. Give them a chance."
+
+And he had posed on the spot with eye-glass up and pistols pointed, as
+he saw himself now, not less than a quarter life-size, in a great gaudy
+frame. But while he stared Mrs. Melvin had been rummaging in a drawer,
+and when he turned she was staring in her turn with glassy eyes. In her
+hands was an empty mahogany case with velvet moulds which ought to have
+been filled by a brace of missing revolvers.
+
+"He kept it locked--he kept them in it!" she gasped. "He may have done
+it this very night!"
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Stuck up the Deniliquin mail. That is his maddest dream. I have heard
+him boast of it to his friends--the brainless boys who alone look up to
+him--I have even heard him rave of it in his dreams!"
+
+Stingaree was heavy for a moment with a mental calculation. His head was
+a time-table of Cobb's coaches on the Riverina road-system; he nodded it
+as he located the imperilled vehicle.
+
+"A dream it shall remain," said he. "But there's not a moment to lose!"
+
+"Do you propose to follow and stop him?"
+
+"If he really means it."
+
+"He may not. He will ride at night. He is often out as late."
+
+"Going and coming about the same time?"
+
+"Yes--now I think of it."
+
+"Then his courage must have failed him hitherto, and it probably will
+again."
+
+"But if not!"
+
+"I will cure him. But I must go at once. I have a horse not far away. I
+will gallop and meet the coach; if it is still safe, as you may be sure
+it will be, I shall scour the country for your son. I can tell him a
+fresh thing or two about Stingaree!"
+
+"God bless you!"
+
+"Leave him to me."
+
+"Oh, may God bless you always!"
+
+His hands were in a lady's hands once more. Stingaree withdrew them
+gently. And he looked his last into the brave wet eyes raised gratefully
+to his.
+
+The villain-worshipper was indeed duly posted in a certain belt of trees
+through which the coach-route ran, about half-way between the town and
+the first stage south. It was not his first nocturnal visit to the spot;
+often, as his prototype divined, had the mimic would-be desperado sat
+trembling on his hoary screw, revolvers ready, while the red eyes of the
+coach dilated down the road; and as often had the cumbrous ship pitched
+past unscathed. The week-kneed and weak-minded youth was too vain to
+feel much ashamed. He was biding his time, he could pick his night; one
+was too dark, another not dark enough; he had always some excuse for
+himself when he regained his room, still unstained by crime; and so the
+unhealthy excitement was deliciously maintained. To-night, as always
+when he sallied forth, the deed should be done; he only wished there was
+a shade less moon, and wondered whether he might not have done better to
+wait. But, as usual, the die was cast. And indeed it was quite a new
+complication that deterred this poor creature for the last time: he was
+feverishly expecting the coach when a patter of hoofs smote his ear from
+the opposite quarter.
+
+This was enough to stay an older and a bolder hand. Oswald tucked in his
+guns with unrealized relief. It was his last instinct to wait and see
+whether the horseman was worth attacking for his own sake; he had room
+for few ideas at the same time; and his only new one was the sense of a
+new danger, which he prepared to meet by pocketing his pistols as a
+child bolts stolen fruit. There was no thinking before the act; but it
+was perhaps as characteristic of the naturally honest man as of the
+coward.
+
+Stingaree swept through the trees at a gallop, the milk-white mare
+flashing in the moonlit patches. At the sight of her Oswald was
+convulsed with a premonition as to who was coming; his heart palpitated
+as even his heart had never done before; and yet he would have sat
+irresolute, inert, and let the man pass as he always let the coach, had
+the decision been left to him. The real milk-white mare affected the
+imitation in its turn as the coach-horses never had; and Oswald swayed
+and swam upon a whinnying steed. . . .
+
+"I thought you were Stingaree!"
+
+The anti-climax was as profound as the weakling's relief. Yet there was
+a strong dash of indignation in his tone.
+
+"What if I am?"
+
+"But you're not. You're not half smart enough. You can't tell me
+anything about Stingaree!"
+
+He put his eye-glass up with an air.
+
+Stingaree put up his.
+
+"You young fool!" said he.
+
+The thoroughbred mare, the eye-glass, a peeping pistol, were all
+superfluous evidence. There was the far more unmistakable authority of
+voice and eye and bearing. Yet the voice at least was somehow familiar
+to the ear of Oswald, who stuttered as much when he was able.
+
+"I must have heard it before, or have I dreamt it? I've thought a good
+deal about you, you know!"
+
+To do him justice, he was no longer very nervous, though still
+physically shaken. On the other hand, he began already to feel the
+elation of his dreams.
+
+"I do know. You've thought your soul into a pulp on the subject, and you
+must give it up," said Stingaree, sternly.
+
+Oswald sat aghast.
+
+"But how on earth did you know?"
+
+"I've come straight from your mother. You're breaking her heart."
+
+"But how can _you_ have come straight from _her_?"
+
+"I've come down for another melodeon. I've got to have one, too."
+
+"Another----"
+
+And Oswald Melvin knew his drunken whim-driver for what he had really
+been.
+
+"The yarn I told you about myself was true enough," continued Stingaree.
+"Only the names were altered, as they say; it happened to the other
+fellow, not to me. I made it happen. He is hardly likely to have lived
+to tell the tale."
+
+"Did he really try to betray you after what you'd done for him?"
+
+"More or less. He looked on me as fair game."
+
+"But you had saved his life?"
+
+Stingaree shrugged.
+
+"We rode across him."
+
+"And you think he perished of dust and thirst?"
+
+Stingaree nodded. "In torment!"
+
+"Then he got what he jolly well earned! Anything less would have been
+too good for him!" cried Oswald, and with a boyish, uncompromising heat
+which spoke to some human nature in him still.
+
+But Stingaree frowned up the moonlit track. There was still no sign of
+the coach. Yet time was short, and the morbid enthusiast was not to be
+disgusted; indeed, he was all enthusiasm now, and a less unattractive
+lad than the bushranger had hoped to find him. He looked the white screw
+and Oswald up and down as they sat in their saddles in the moonshine: it
+seemed like sunlight on that beaming fool.
+
+"And you think of commencing bushranger, do you?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"It's a hard life while it lasts, and a nasty death to top up with."
+
+"They don't hang you for it."
+
+"They might hang me for the man I put back in the vile dust from whence
+he sprung. They'd hang you in six months. You've too many nerves. You'd
+pull the trigger every time."
+
+"A short life and a merry one!" cried the reckless Oswald. "I shouldn't
+care."
+
+"But your mother would," retorted Stingaree, sharply. "Don't think about
+yourself so much; think about her for a change."
+
+The young man turned dusky in the moonlight; he was wounded where the
+Bishop had wounded him, and Stingaree was quick to see it--as quick to
+turn the knife round in the wound.
+
+"What a bushranger!" he jeered. "Put your plucky little mother in a
+side-saddle and she'd make two of you--ten of you--twenty of a puny,
+namby-pamby, conceited young idiot like you! Upon my word, Melvin, if I
+had a mother like you I should be ashamed of myself. I never had, I may
+tell you, or I shouldn't have come down to a dog's life like this."
+
+The bushranger paused to watch the effect of his insults. It was not
+quite what he wanted. The youth would not hang his head. And, if he did
+not answer back, he looked back doggedly enough; for he could be dogged,
+in a passive way; it was his one hard quality, the knot in a character
+of green deal. Stingaree glanced up the road once more, but only for an
+instant.
+
+"It is a dog's life," he went on, "whether you believe it or not. But it
+takes a bull-dog to live it, and don't you forget it. It's no life for a
+young poodle like you! You can't stick up a better man than yourself,
+not more than once or twice. It requires something more than a
+six-shooter, and a good deal more than was put into you, my son! But you
+shall see for yourself; look over your shoulder."
+
+Oswald did so, and started in a fashion that set the bushranger nodding
+his scorn. It was only a pair of lamps still close together in the
+distance up the road.
+
+"The coach!" exclaimed the excited youth.
+
+"Exactly," said Stingaree, "and I'm going to stick it up."
+
+Excitement grew to frenzy in a flash.
+
+"I'll help you!"
+
+"You'll do no such thing. But you shall see how it's done, and then ask
+yourself candidly if it's nice work and if you're the man to do it. Ride
+a hundred yards further in, tether your horse quickly in the thickest
+scrub you can find, then run back and climb into the fork of this
+gum-tree. You'll have time; if you're sharp I'll give you a leg up. But
+I sha'n't be surprised if I don't see you again!"
+
+There is no saying what Oswald might have done, but for these last
+words. Certain it is that they set him galloping with an oath, and
+brought him back panting in another minute. The coach-lamps were not
+much wider apart. Stingaree awaited him, also on foot, and quicker than
+the telling Oswald was ensconced on high where he could see through the
+meagre drooping leaves with very little danger of being seen.
+
+"And if you come down before I'm done and gone--if it's not to
+glory--I'll run some lead through you! You'll be the first!"
+
+Oswald perched reflecting on this final threat; and the scene soon
+enacted before his eyes was viewed as usual through the aura of his own
+egoism. He longed all the time to be taking part in it; he could see
+himself so distinctly at the work--save for about a minute in the
+middle, when for once in his life he held his breath and trembled for
+other skins.
+
+There had been no unusual feature. The life-size coach-lamps had shown
+their mountain-range of outside passengers against moonlit sky or trees.
+A cigar paled and reddened between the teeth of one, plain wreaths of
+smoke floated from his lips, with but an instant's break when Stingaree
+rode out and stopped the coach. The three leaders reared; the two
+wheelers were pulled almost to their haunches. The driver was docile in
+deed, though profane in word; and Stingaree himself discovered a
+horrifying vocabulary out of keeping with his reputation. In incredibly
+few minutes driver and passengers were formed in a line and robbed in
+rotation, all but two ladies who were kept inside unmolested. A flagrant
+Irishman declared it was the proudest day of his life, and Oswald's
+heart went out to him, though it rather displeased him to find his own
+sentiments shared by the vulgar. The man with the cigar kept it glowing
+all the time. The mail-bags were not demanded on this occasion.
+Stingaree had no time to waste on them. He was still collecting purse
+and watch, when Oswald's young blood froze in the stiffening limbs he
+dared not move.
+
+One of the ladies had got down from the coach on the off side, and
+behold! it was a man wrapped in a rug, which dropped from him as he
+crept round behind the horses. At their head stood the lily mare, as if
+doing her own nefarious part by her own kind. In a twinkling the mad
+adventurer was on her back, and all this time Oswald longed to jump
+down, or at least to shout a warning to his hero, but, as usual, his
+desires were unproductive of word or deed. And then Stingaree saw his
+man.
+
+He did not fire; he did not shift sight or barrel for a moment from the
+docile file before him. "Barmaid! Barmaid, my pet!" he cried, and hardly
+looked to see what happened.
+
+But Oswald watched the mare stop, prick her ears under the hammering of
+unspurred heels, spin round, bucking as she spun, and toss her rider
+like a bull. There in the moonlight he lay like lead, with leaden face
+upturned to the shuddering youngster in the tree.
+
+"One of you a doctor?" asked Stingaree, checking a forward movement of
+the file.
+
+"I am."
+
+The cigar was paling between finger and thumb.
+
+"Then come you here and have a look at him. The rest of you move at your
+peril!"
+
+Stingaree led the way, stepping backward, but not as far as the injured
+man, who sat up ruefully as the bushranger sprang into the saddle.
+
+"Another yard, and I'd have grabbed your ankles!" said the man on the
+ground.
+
+"You're a stout fellow, but I know more about this game than you," the
+outlaw answered, riding to his distance and reining up. "If I didn't you
+might have had me--but you must think of something better for
+Stingaree!"
+
+He galloped his mare into the bush and Oswald clung in lonely terror
+to his tree. A snatch of conversation called him to attention. The
+plundered party were clambering philosophically to their seats, while
+the driver blasphemed delightedly over the integrity of his mails.
+
+[Illustration: The mare spun round, bucking as she spun.]
+
+"That wasn't Stingaree," said one.
+
+"You bet it was!"
+
+"How much? He hardly ever works so far south."
+
+"And he's nuts on mails."
+
+"But if it wasn't Stingaree, who was it?"
+
+"It was him all right. Look at the mare."
+
+"She isn't the only white 'orse ever foaled," remarked the driver,
+sorting his fistful of reins.
+
+"But who else could it have been?"
+
+The driver uttered an inspired imprecation.
+
+"I can tell you. I chanst to live in this here township we're comin' to.
+On second thoughts, I'll keep it to myself till we get there."
+
+And he cracked his whip.
+
+Oswald himself rode back to the township before the moon went down. He
+was very heavy with his own reflections. How magnificent! It had all
+surpassed his most extravagant imaginings--in audacity, in expedition,
+in simple mastery of the mutable many by the dominant one. He forgave
+Stingaree his gibes and insults; he could have forgiven a
+horse-whipping from that king of men. Stingaree had been his imaginary
+god before; he was a realized ideal from this night forth, and the
+reality outdid the dream.
+
+But the fly of self must always poison this young man's ointment, and
+to-night there was some excuse from his degenerate point of view. He
+must give it up. Stingaree was right; it was only one man in thousands
+who could do unerringly what he had done that night. Oswald Melvin was
+not that man. He saw it for himself at last. But it was a bitter hour
+for him. Life in the music-shop would fall very flat after this; he
+would be dishonored before his only friends, the unworthy hobbledehoys
+who were to have joined his gang; he could not tell them what had
+happened, not at least until he had invented some less inglorious part
+for himself, and that was a difficulty in view of newspaper reports of
+the sticking-up. He could scarcely tell them a true word of what had
+passed between himself and Stingaree. If only he might yet grow more
+like the master! If only he might still hope to follow so sublime a
+lead!
+
+Thus aspiring, vainly as now he knew, Oswald Melvin rode slowly back
+into the excited town, and past the lighted police-barracks, in the
+innocence of that portion of his heart. But one had flown like the wind
+ahead of him, and two in uniform, followed by that one, dashed out on
+Oswald and the old white screw.
+
+"Surrender!" sang out one.
+
+"In the Queen's name!" added the other.
+
+"Call yourself Stingaree!" panted the runner.
+
+Our egoist was quick enough to grasp their meaning, but quicker still to
+see and to seize the chance of a crazy lifetime. Always acute where his
+own vanity was touched, his promptitude was for once on a par with his
+perceptions.
+
+"Had your eye on me long?" he inquired, delightfully, as he dismounted.
+
+"Long enough," said one policeman. The other was busy plucking loaded
+revolvers from the desperado's pockets. A crowd had formed.
+
+"If you're looking for the loot," he went on, raising his voice for the
+benefit of all, "you may look. _I_ sha'n't tell you, and it'll take you
+all your time!"
+
+But a surprise was in store for prisoner and police alike. Every stolen
+watch and all the missing money were discovered no later than next
+morning in the bush quite close to the scene of the outrage. There had
+been no attempt to hide them; they lay in a heap, dumped from the
+saddle, with no more depreciation than a broken watch-glass. True to
+his new character, Oswald learned this development without flinching.
+His ready comment was in next day's papers.
+
+"There was nothing worth having," he had maintained, and did not see the
+wisdom of the boast until a lawyer called and pointed out that it
+contained the nucleus of a strong defence.
+
+"I'll defend myself, thank you," said the inflated fool.
+
+"Then you'll make a mess of it, and deserve all you get. And it would be
+a pity to spoil such a good defence."
+
+"What is the defence?"
+
+"You did it for a joke, of course!"
+
+Oswald smiled inscrutably, and dismissed his visitor with a lordly
+promise to consider the proposition and that lawyer's claims upon the
+case. Never was such triumph tasted in guilty immunity as was this
+innocent man's under cloud of guilt so apparent as to impose on every
+mind. He had but carried out a notorious intention; for his few friends
+were the first to betray their captain, albeit his bold bearing and
+magnanimous smiles won an admiration which they had never before
+vouchsafed him in their hearts. He was, indeed, a different man. He had
+lived to see Stingaree in action, and now he modelled himself from the
+life. The only doubt was as to whether at the last of that business he
+had actually avowed himself Stingaree or not. There might have been
+trouble about the horse, but fortunately for the enthusiastic prisoner
+the man who had been thrown was allowed to proceed on a pressing journey
+to the Barcoo. There was a plethora of evidence without his; besides,
+the hide-and-bone mare was called Barmaid, after the original, and it
+was known that Oswald had tried to teach the old creature tricks; above
+all, the prisoner had never pretended to deny his guilt. Still, this
+matter of the horses gave him a certain sense of insecurity in his cosey
+cell.
+
+He had awakened to find himself not only deliciously notorious, but
+actually more of a man than in his heart of hearts he had dared to hope.
+The tenacity and consistency of his pose were alike remarkable. Even in
+the overweening cause of egoism he had never shown so much character in
+his life. Yet he shuddered to realize that, given the usual time for
+reflection before his great moment, that moment might have proved as
+mean as many another when the spirit had been wine and the flesh water.
+There was, in fine, but one feature of the affair which even Oswald
+Melvin, drunk with notoriety and secretly sanguine of a nominal
+punishment, could not contemplate with absolute satisfaction. But that
+feature followed the others into the papers which kept him intoxicated.
+And a bundle of these papers found their adventurous way to the latest
+fastness of Stingaree in the mallee.
+
+The real villain dropped his eye-glass, clapped it in again, and did his
+best to crack it with his stare. Student of character as he was, he
+could not have conceived such a development in such a character. He read
+on, more enlightened than amused. "To think he had the pluck!" he
+murmured, as he dropped that _Australasian_ and took up the next week's.
+He was filled with admiration, but soon a frown and then an oath came to
+put an end to it. "The little beast," he cried, "he'll kill that woman!
+He can't have kept it up." He sorted the papers for the latest of all--a
+sinful publican saved them for him--and therein read that Oswald Melvin
+had been committed for trial, and that his only concern was for the
+condition of his mother, which was still unchanged, and had seemed
+latterly to distress the prisoner very much.
+
+"I'll distress him!" roared Stingaree to the mallee. "I'll distress him,
+if we change places for it!"
+
+Riding all night, and as much as he dared by day, it was some hundred
+hours before he paid his third and last visit to the Melvins'
+music-shop. He rode boldly to the door, but he rode a piebald mare not
+to be confused in the most suspicious mind with the no more conspicuous
+Barmaid. It is true the brown parts smelt of Condy's Fluid, and were at
+once strange and seemingly a little tender to the touch. But Stingaree
+allowed no meddling with his mount; and only a very sinful publican,
+very many leagues back, was in the secret.
+
+There were no lighted windows behind the shop to-night. The whole place
+was in darkness, and Stingaree knocked in vain. A neighbor appeared upon
+the next veranda.
+
+"Who is it you want?" he asked.
+
+"Mrs. Melvin."
+
+"It's no use knocking for her."
+
+"Is she dead?"
+
+"Not that I know of; but she can't be long for this world."
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"Bishop's Lodge; they say Miss Methuen's with her day and night."
+
+For it was in the days of the Bishop's daughter, who had a strong mind
+but no sense of humor, and a heart only fickle in its own affairs. Miss
+Methuen made an admirable, if a somewhat too assiduous and dictatorial,
+nurse. She had, however, a fund of real sympathy with the afflicted, and
+Mrs. Melvin's only serious complaint (which she intended to die without
+uttering) was that she was never left alone with her grief by day or
+night. It was Miss Methuen who, sitting with rather ostentatious
+patience in the dark, at the open window, until her patient should fall
+or pretend to be asleep, saw a man ride a piebald horse in at the gate,
+and then, half-way up the drive, suspiciously dismount and lead his
+horse into a tempting shrubbery.
+
+Stingaree did not often change his mind at the last moment, but he knew
+the man on whose generosity he was about to throw himself, which was to
+know further that that generosity would be curbed by judgment, and to
+reflect that he was least likely to be deprived of a horse whose
+whereabouts was known only to himself. There was but one lighted room
+when he eventually stole upon the house; it had a veranda to itself; and
+in the bright frame of the French windows, which stood open, sat the
+Bishop with his Bible on his knees.
+
+"Yes, I know you," said he, putting his marker in the place as Stingaree
+entered, boots in one hand and something else in the other. "I thought
+we should meet again. Do you mind putting that thing back in your
+pocket?"
+
+[Illustration: Stingaree knocked in vain.]
+
+"Will you promise not to call a soul?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes."
+
+"You weren't expecting me, were you?" cried Stingaree, suspiciously.
+
+"I've been expecting you for months," returned the Bishop. "You knew my
+address, but I hadn't yours. We were bound to meet again."
+
+Stingaree smiled as he took his revolver by the barrel and carried it
+across the room to Dr. Methuen.
+
+"What's that for? I don't want it; put it in your own pocket. At least I
+can trust you not to take my life in cold blood."
+
+The Bishop seemed nettled and annoyed. Stingaree loved him.
+
+"I don't come to take anything, much less life," he said. "I come to
+save it; if it is not too late."
+
+"To save life--here?"
+
+"In your house."
+
+"But whom do you know of my household?"
+
+"Mrs. Melvin. I have had the honor of meeting her twice, though each
+time she was unaware of the dishonor of meeting me. The last time I
+promised to try to save her unhappy son from himself. I found him
+waiting to waylay the coach, told him who I was, and had ten minutes to
+try to cure him in. He wouldn't listen to reason; insult ran like water
+off his back. I did my best to show him what a life it was he longed to
+lead, and how much more there was in it than a loaded revolver. He
+wouldn't take my word for it, however, so I put him out of harm's way,
+up in a tree; and when the coach came along I gave him as brutal an
+exhibition of the art of bushranging as I could without spilling blood.
+I promise you it was for no other reason. What did I want with watches?
+What were a few pounds to me? I dropped the lot that the lad might
+know."
+
+The Bishop started to his gaitered legs.
+
+"And he's actually innocent all the time?"
+
+"Of the deed, as the babe unborn."
+
+"Then why in the wide world----"
+
+Dr. Methuen stood beggared of further speech. His mind was too plain and
+sane for immediate understanding of such a type as Oswald Melvin. But
+the bushranger hit off that young man's character in half-a-dozen
+trenchant phrases.
+
+"He must be let out, and it may save his mother's life; but if he were
+mine," exclaimed the Bishop, "I would rather he had done the other deed!
+But what about you?" he added, suddenly, his eyes resting on his
+sardonic visitor, who had disguised himself far less than his horse.
+"It will mean giving yourself up."
+
+"No. You know me. You can spread what I've told you."
+
+The Bishop shifted uneasily on his hearth-rug.
+
+"I may not see my way to that," said he. "Besides, you must have run a
+lot of risks to do this good action; how do you know you haven't been
+recognized already? I should have known you anywhere."
+
+"But you have undertaken not to raise an alarm, my lord."
+
+"I shall not break my promise."
+
+There was a grim regret in the Bishop's voice. Stingaree thought he
+understood it.
+
+"Thank you," he said.
+
+"Don't thank me, pray!" Dr. Methuen could be quite testy on occasion. "I
+have other duties than to you, you know, and I only answer for my
+actions during the actual period of our interview. There are many things
+I should like to say to you, my brother," a gentler voice went on, "but
+this is hardly the time for me to say them. But there is one question I
+should like to ask you for the peace of both our souls, and for the
+maintenance of my own belief in human nature." He threw up an episcopal
+hand dramatically. "If you earnestly and honestly wished to save this
+poor lady's life, and there were no other way, would you then be man
+enough to give yourself up--to give your liberty for her life?"
+
+Stingaree took time to think. His eyes were brightly fixed upon the
+Bishop's. Yet they saw a little bedroom just as plain, an English lady
+standing by the empty bed, and at its foot a portrait of himself armed
+to the teeth.
+
+"For hers?" said he. "Yes, like a shot!"
+
+"I'm thankful to hear it," replied the Bishop, with most fervent relief.
+"I only wish you could have the opportunity. But now you never will. My
+brother, if you look round, you will see why!"
+
+Stingaree looked round without a word. In the Bishop's eyes at the last
+instant he had learned what to expect. A firing-party of four
+stocking-soled constables were drawn across the opened French windows,
+their levelled rifles poking through.
+
+The bushranger looked over his shoulder with a bitter smile. "You've
+done me, after all!" said he, and stretched out empty hands.
+
+"It was done before I saw you," the Bishop made answer. "I had already
+sent for the police."
+
+One had entered excitedly by an inner door.
+
+"And he didn't do you at all!" cried the voice of high hysteria. "It
+was I who saw you--it was I who guessed who it was! Oh, father, why have
+you been talking so long to such a dreadful man? I made sure he would
+shoot you, and you'd still be shot if they had to shoot him!
+Move--move--move!"
+
+Stingaree looked at the strong-minded girl, shrill with her triumph,
+quite carried away by her excitement, all undaunted by the prospect of
+bloodshed before her eyes. And it was he who moved, with but a shrug of
+the shoulders, and gave himself up without another sign.
+
+
+
+
+The Moth and the Star
+
+
+I
+
+Darlinghurst Jail had never immured a more interesting prisoner than the
+back-block bandit who was tried and convicted under the strange style
+and title which he had made his own. Not even in prison was his real
+name ever known, and the wild speculations of some imaginative officials
+were nothing else up to the end. There was enough color in their
+wildness, however, to crown the convict with a certain halo of romance,
+which his behavior in jail did nothing to dispel. That, of course, was
+exemplary, since Stingaree had never been a fool; but it was something
+more and rarer. Not content simply to follow the line of least
+resistance, he exhibited from the first a spirit and a philosophy unique
+indeed beneath the broad arrow. And so far from decreasing with the
+years of his captivity, these attractive qualities won him friend after
+friend among the officials, and privilege upon privilege at their hands,
+while amply justifying the romantic interest in his case.
+
+At last there came to Sydney a person more capable of an acute
+appreciation of the heroic villain than his most ardent admirer on the
+spot. Lucius Brady was a long-haired Irishman of letters, bard and
+bookworm, rebel and reviewer; in his ample leisure he was also the most
+enthusiastic criminologist in London. And as President of an exceedingly
+esoteric Society for the Cultivation of Criminals, even from London did
+he come for a prearranged series of interviews with the last and the
+most distinguished of all the bushrangers.
+
+It was to Lucius Brady, his biographer to be, that Stingaree confided
+the data of all the misdeeds recounted in these pages; but of his life
+during the quiet intervals, of his relations with confederates, and his
+more honest dealings with honest folk (of which many a pretty tale was
+rife), he was not to be persuaded to speak without an irritating
+reserve.
+
+"Keep to my points of contact with the world, about which something is
+known already, and you shall have the whole truth of each matter," said
+the convict. "But I don't intend to give away the altogether unknown,
+and I doubt if it would interest you if I did. The most interesting
+thing to me has been the different types with whom I have had what it
+pleases you to term professional relations, and the very different ways
+in which they have taken me. You read character by flashlight along the
+barrel of your revolver. What you should do is to hunt up my various
+victims and get at their point of view; you really mustn't press me to
+hark back to mine. As it is you bring a whiff of the outer world which
+makes me bruise my wings against the bars."
+
+The criminologist gloated over such speeches from such lips. It would
+have touched another to note what an irresistible fascination the bars
+had for the wings, despite all pain; but Lucius Brady's interest in
+Stingaree was exclusively intellectual. His heart never ached for a
+roving spirit in confinement; it did not occur to him to suppress a
+detail of his own days in Sydney, down to the attractions of an Italian
+restaurant he had discovered near the jail, the flavor of the Chianti
+and so forth. On the contrary, it was most interesting to note the play
+of features in the tortured man, who after all brought his torture on
+himself by asking so many questions. Soon, when his visitor left him,
+the bondman could follow the free in all but the flesh, through every
+corridor of the prison and every street outside, to the hotel where you
+read the English papers on the veranda, or to the little restaurant
+where the Chianti was corked with oil which the waiter removed with a
+wisp of tow.
+
+One day, late in the afternoon, as Lucius Brady was beaming on him
+through his spectacles, and indulging in an incisive criticism on the
+champagne at Government House, Stingaree quietly garroted him. A gag was
+in all readiness, likewise strips of coarse sheeting torn up for the
+purpose in the night. Black in the face, but with breath still in his
+body, the criminologist was carefully gagged and tied down to the
+bedstead, while his living image (at a casual glance) strolled with bent
+head, black sombrero, spectacles and frock-coat, first through the cold
+corridors and presently along the streets.
+
+The heat of the pavement striking to his soles was the first of a
+hundred exquisite sensations; but Stingaree did not permit himself to
+savor one of them. Indeed, he had his work cut out to check the pace his
+heart dictated; and it was by admirable exercise of the will that he
+wandered along, deep to all appearance in a Camelot Classic which he had
+found in the criminologist's pocket; in reality blinded by the glasses,
+but all the more vigilant out of the corners of his eyes.
+
+A suburb was the scene of these perambulations; had he but dared to lift
+his face, Stingaree might have caught a glimpse of the bluest of blue
+water; and his prison eyes hungered for the sight, but he would not
+raise his eyes so long as footsteps sounded on the same pavement. By
+taking judicious turnings, however, he drifted into a quiet road, with
+gray suburban bungalows on one side and building lots on the other. No
+step approached. He could look up at last. And the very bungalow that he
+was passing was shut up, yet furnished; the people had merely gone away,
+servants and all; he saw it at a glance from the newspapers plastering
+the windows which caught the sun. In an instant he was in the garden,
+and in another he had forced a side gate leading by an alley to backyard
+and kitchen door; but for many minutes he went no further than this
+gate, behind which he cowered, prepared with excuses in case he had
+already been observed.
+
+It was in this interval that Stingaree recalled the season with a
+thrill; for it was Christmas week, and without a doubt the house would
+be empty till the New Year. Here was one port for the storm that must
+follow his escape. And a very pleasant port he found it on entering,
+after due precautionary delay.
+
+Clearly the abode of young married people, the bungalow was fitted and
+furnished with a taste which appealed almost painfully to Stingaree; the
+drawing-room was draped in sheets, but the walls carried a few good
+engravings, some of which he remembered with a stab. It was the
+dressing-room, however, that he wanted, and the dressing-room made him
+rub his hands. The dainty establishment had no more luxurious corner,
+what with the fitted bath, circular shaving-glass, packed trouser-press,
+a row of boots on trees, and a fine old wardrobe full of hanging coats.
+Stingaree began by selecting his suit; and it may have been his vanity,
+or a strange longing to look for once what he once had been, but he
+could not resist the young man's excellent evening clothes.
+
+"This fellow comes from Home," said he. "And they are spending their
+Christmas pretty far back, or he would have taken these with him."
+
+He had wallowed in the highly enamelled bath, and was looking for a
+towel when he saw his head in the shaving-glass; he was dry enough
+before he could think of anything else. There was a dilemma, obvious yet
+unforeseen. That shaven head! Purple and fine linen could not disguise
+the convict's crop; a wig was the only hope; but to wear a wig one must
+first try it on--and let the perruquier call the police. The knot was
+Gordian. And yet, desperately as Stingaree sought unravelment, he was at
+the same time subconsciously as deep in a study of a face so unfamiliar
+that at first he had scarcely known it for his own. It was far leaner
+than of old; it was no longer richly tanned; and the mouth called
+louder than ever for a mustache. The hair, what there was of it, seemed
+iron-gray. It had certainly receded at the temples. What a pity, while
+it was about it----
+
+Stingaree clapped his hands; his hunt for the razor was feverish,
+tremulous. Such a young man must have many razors; he had, he had--here
+they were. Oh, young man blessed among young men!
+
+It was quite dark when a gentleman in evening clothes, light overcoat,
+and opera hat, sallied forth into the quiet road. Quiet as it was,
+however, a whistle blew as he trod the pavement, and his hour or two of
+liberty seemed at an end. His long term in prison had mixed Stingaree's
+ideas of the old country and the new; he had forgotten that it is the
+postmen who blow the whistles in Australia. Yet this postman stopped him
+on the spot.
+
+"Beg your pardon, sir, but if it's quite convenient may I ask you for
+the Christmas-box you was kind enough to promise me?"
+
+"I think you are mistaking me for someone else," said Stingaree.
+
+"Why, so I am, sir! I thought you came out of Mr. Brinton's house."
+
+"Sorry to disappoint you," said the convict. "If I only had change you
+should have some of it, in spite of your mistake; but, unfortunately, I
+have none."
+
+He had, however, a handsome pair of opera-glasses, which he converted
+into change (on the gratuitous plea that he had forgotten his purse) at
+the first pawnbroker's on the confines of the city. The pawnbroker
+talked Greek to him at once.
+
+"It's a pity you won't be able to see 'er, sir, as well as 'ear 'er,"
+said he.
+
+"Perhaps they have them on hire in the theatre," replied Stingaree at a
+venture. The pawnbroker's face instantly advised him that his
+observation was wide of the obscure mark.
+
+"The theatre! You won't 'ear 'er at any theatre in Sydney, nor yet in
+the Southern 'Emisphere. Town 'Alls is the only lay for 'Ilda Bouverie
+out 'ere!"
+
+At first the name conveyed nothing to Stingaree. Yet it was not wholly
+unfamiliar.
+
+"Of course," said he. "The Town Hall I meant."
+
+The pawnbroker leered as he put down a sovereign and a shilling.
+
+"What a season she's 'aving, sir!"
+
+"Ah! What a season!"
+
+And Stingaree wagged his opera-hatted head.
+
+"'Undreds of pounds' worth of flowers flung on to every platform, and
+not a dry eye in the place!"
+
+"I know," said the feeling Stingaree.
+
+"It's wonderful to think of this 'ere Colony prodoocin' the world's best
+primer donner!"
+
+"It is, indeed."
+
+"When you think of 'er start."
+
+"That's true."
+
+The pawnbroker leant across his counter and leered more than ever in his
+customer's face.
+
+"They say she ain't no better than she ought to be!"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"It's right, too; but what can you expect of a primer donner whose
+fortune was made by a blood-thirsty bushranger like that there
+Stingaree?"
+
+"You little scurrilous wretch!" cried the bushranger, and flung out of
+the shop that second.
+
+It was a miracle. He remembered everything now. Then he had done the
+world a service as well as the woman! He gave thanks for the guinea in
+his pocket, and asked his way to the Town Hall. And as he marched down
+the middle of the lighted streets the first flock of newsboys came
+flying in his face.
+
+"_Escape of Stingaree! Escape of Stingaree! Cowardly Outrage on Famous
+Author! Escape of Stingaree!!_"
+
+The damp pink papers were in the hands of the overflow crowd outside
+the hall; his own name was already in every mouth, continually coupled
+with that of the world-renowned Hilda Bouverie. It did not deter the
+convict from elbowing his way through the mass that gloated over his
+deed exactly as they would have gloated over his destruction on the
+gallows. "I have my ticket; I have been detained," he told the police;
+and at the last line of defence he whispered, "A guinea for
+standing-room!" And the guinea got it.
+
+It was the interval between parts one and two. He thought of that other
+interval, when he had made such a different entry at the same juncture;
+the other concert-room would have gone some fifty times into this. All
+at once fell a hush, and then a rising thunder of applause, and some one
+requested Stingaree to remove his hat; he did so, and a cold creeping of
+the shaven flesh reminded him of his general position and of this
+particular peril. But no one took any notice of him or of his head. And
+it was not Hilda Bouverie this time; it was a pianiste in violent
+magenta and elaborate lace, whose performance also was loud and
+embroidered. Followed a beautiful young barytone whom Miss Bouverie had
+brought from London in her pocket for the tour. He sang three little
+songs very charmingly indeed; but there was no encore. The gods were
+burning for their own; perfunctory plaudits died to a dramatic pause.
+
+And then, and then, amid deafening salvos a dazzling vision appeared
+upon the platform, came forward with the carriage of a conscious queen,
+stood bowing and beaming in the gloss and glitter of fabric and of gem
+that were yet less radiant than herself. Stingaree stood inanimate
+between stamping feet and clapping hands. No; he would never have
+connected this magnificent woman with the simple bush girl in the
+unpretentious frocks that he recalled as clearly as her former self. He
+had looked for less finery, less physical development, less, indeed, of
+the grand operatic _tout-ensemble_. But acting ended with her smile, and
+much of the old innocent simplicity came back as the lips parted in
+song. And her song had not been spoilt by riches and adulation; her song
+had not sacrificed sweetness to artifice; there was even more than the
+old magic in her song.
+
+    "Is this a dream?
+      Then waking would be pain!
+    Oh! do not wake me;
+      Let me dream again."
+
+It was no new number even then; even Stingaree had often heard it, and
+heard great singers go the least degree flat upon the first "dream." He
+listened critically. Hilda Bouverie was not one of the delinquents. Her
+intonation was as perfect as that of the great violinists, her high
+notes had the rarefied quality of the E string finely touched. It was a
+flawless, if a purely popular, performance; and the musical heart of one
+listener in that crowded room was too full for mere applause. But he
+waited with patient curiosity for the encore, waited while courtesy
+after courtesy was given in vain. She had to yield; she yielded with a
+winning grace. And the first bars of the new song set one full heart
+beating, so that the earlier words were lost upon his brain.
+
+    "She ran before me in the meads;
+      And down this world-worn track
+    She leads me on; but while she leads
+      She never gazes back.
+
+    "And yet her voice is in my dreams,
+      To witch me more and more;
+    That wooing voice! Ah me, it seems
+      Less near me than of yore.
+
+    "Lightly I sped when hope was high,
+      And youth beguiled the chase;
+    I follow--follow still; but I
+      Shall never see her Face."
+
+So the song ended; and in the ultimate quiet the need of speech came
+over Stingaree.
+
+"'The Unrealized Ideal,'" he informed a neighbor.
+
+"Rather!" rejoined the man, treating the stale news as a mere remark.
+"We never let her off without that."
+
+"I suppose not," said Stingaree.
+
+"It's the song the bushranger forced her to sing at the back-block
+concert, and it made her fortune! Good old Stingaree! By the way, I
+heard somebody behind me say he had escaped. That can't be true?"
+
+"The newsboys were yelling it as I came along late."
+
+"Well," said Stingaree's neighbor, "if he has escaped, and I for one
+don't hope he hasn't, this is where he ought to be. Just the sort of
+thing he'd do, too. Good old sportsman, Stingaree!"
+
+It was an embarrassing compliment, eye to eye and foot to foot, wedged
+in a crowd. The bushranger did not fish for any more; neither did he
+wait to hear Hilda Bouverie sing again, though this cost him much. But
+he had one more word with his neighbor before he went.
+
+"You don't happen to know where she's staying, I suppose? I've met her
+once or twice, and I might call."
+
+The other smiled as on some suicidal moth.
+
+"There's only one place good enough for a star like her in Sydney."
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"Government House."
+
+
+II
+
+His Excellency of the moment was a young nobleman of sporting
+proclivities and your true sportsman's breadth of mind. He was immensely
+popular with all sects and sections but the aggressively puritanical and
+the narrowly austere. He graced the theatre with his constant presence,
+the Turf with his own horses. His entertainment was lavish, and in
+quality far above the gubernatorial average. Late life and soul of
+exalted circle, he was hide-bound by few of the conventional trammels
+that distinguished the older type of peer to which the Colonies had been
+accustomed. It was the obvious course for such a Governor and his
+kindred lady to insist upon making the great Miss Bouverie their guest
+for the period of her professional sojourn in the capital; and a
+semi-Bohemian supper at the Government House was but a characteristic
+_finale_ to her first great concert.
+
+The _prima donna_ sat on the Governor's right, and at the proper point
+his Excellency sang her praises in a charmingly informal speech, which
+delighted and amused the press men, actors and actresses whom he had
+collected for the occasion. Only the guest of honor looked a little
+weary and condescending; she had a sufficient experience of such
+entertainments in London, where the actors were all London actors, the
+authors and journalists men whose names one knew. Mere peers were no
+great treat either; in a word, Hilda Bouverie was not a little spoilt.
+She had lost the girl's glad outlook on the world, which some women keep
+until old age. There were stories about her which would have accounted
+for a deeper deterioration. Yet she was the Governor's guest, and her
+behavior not unworthy of the honor. On him at least she smiled, and her
+real smile, less expansive than the platform counterfeit, had still its
+genuine sweetness, its winning flashes; and, at its worst, it was more
+sad than bitter.
+
+To-night the woman was an exhausted artist--unnerved, unstrung, unfitted
+for the world, yet only showing it in a languid appreciation which her
+host and hostess were the first to understand. Indeed, it was the great
+lady who carried her off, bowing with her platform bow, and smiling that
+smile, before the banquet was at an end.
+
+A charming suite of rooms had been placed at the disposal of the _prima
+donna_; the boudoir was like a hot-house with the floral offerings of
+the evening, already tastefully arranged by madame's own Swiss maid. But
+the weary lady walked straight through to her bedroom, and sank with a
+sigh into the arm-chair before the glass.
+
+"Who brought this?" she asked, peevishly picking a twisted note from
+amid the golden furniture of her toilet-table.
+
+"I never saw it until this minute, madame!" the Swiss maid answered, in
+dismay. "It was not there ten minutes ago, I am sure, madame!"
+
+"Where have you been since?"
+
+"Down to the servants' hall, for one minute, madame."
+
+Miss Bouverie read the note, and was an animated being in three seconds.
+She looked in the glass, the flush became her, and even as she looked
+all horror died in her dark-blue eyes. Instead there came a glitter that
+warned the maid.
+
+"I am tired of you, Lea," cried madame. "You let people bring notes into
+my room, and you say you were only out of it a minute. Be good enough
+to leave me for the night. I can look after myself, for once!"
+
+The maid protested, wept, but was expelled, and a key turned between
+them; then Hilda Bouverie read her note again:--
+
+    "Escaped this afternoon. Came to your concert. Hiding in
+    boudoir. Give me five minutes, or raise alarm, which you
+    please.--STINGAREE."
+
+So ran his words in pencil on her own paper, and they were true; she had
+heard at supper of the escape. Once more she looked in the glass. And to
+her own eyes in these minutes she looked years younger--there was a new
+sensation left in life!
+
+A touch to her hair, a glance in the pier-glass, and all for a notorious
+convict broken prison! So into the boudoir with her grandest air; but
+again she locked the door behind her, and, sweeping round, beheld a bald
+man bowing to her in immaculate evening clothes.
+
+"Are you the writer of a note found on my dressing-table?" she demanded,
+every syllable off the ice.
+
+"I am."
+
+"Then who are you, besides being an impudent forger?"
+
+"You name the one crime I never committed," said he. "I am Stingaree."
+
+And they gazed into each other's eyes; but not yet were hers to be
+believed.
+
+"He only escaped this afternoon!"
+
+"I am he."
+
+"With a bald head?"
+
+"Thanks to a razor."
+
+"And in those clothes?"
+
+"I found them where I found the razor. Look; they don't fit me as well
+as they might."
+
+And he drew nearer, flinging out an abbreviated sleeve; but she looked
+all the harder in his face.
+
+"Yes. I begin to remember your face; but it has changed."
+
+"It has gazed on prison walls for many years."
+
+"I heard . . . I was grieved . . . but it was bound to come."
+
+"It may come again. I care very little, after this!"
+
+And his dark eyes shone, his deep voice vibrated; then he glanced over a
+shrugged shoulder toward the outer door, and Hilda darted as if to turn
+that key too, but there was none to turn.
+
+"It ought to happen at once," she said, "and through me."
+
+"But it will not."
+
+His assurance annoyed her; she preferred his homage.
+
+"I know what you mean," she cried. "You did me a service years ago. I am
+not to forget it!"
+
+"It is not I who have kept it before your mind."
+
+"Perhaps not; but that's why you come to me to-night."
+
+Stingaree looked upon the spirited, spoilt beauty in her satin and
+diamonds and pearls; villain as he was, he held himself at her mercy,
+but he was not going to kneel to her for that. He saw a woman who had
+heard the truth from very few men, a nature grown in mastery as his own
+had inevitably shrunk: it was worth being at large to pit the old Adam
+still remaining to him against the old Eve in this petted darling of the
+world. But false protestations were no counters in his game.
+
+"Miss Bouverie," said Stingaree, "you may well suppose that I have borne
+you in mind all these years. As a matter of honest fact, when I first
+heard your name this evening, I was slow to connect it with any human
+being. You look angry. I intend no insult. If you have not forgotten the
+life I was leading before, you would very readily understand that I have
+never heard your name from those days to this. That is my misfortune, if
+also my own fault. It should suffice that, when I did remember, I came
+at my peril to hear you sing, and that before I dreamt of coming an inch
+further. But I heard them say, both in the hall and outside, that you
+owed your start to me; now one thinks of it, it must have been a rather
+striking advertisement; and I reflected that not another soul in Sydney
+can possibly owe me anything at all. So I came straight to you, without
+thinking twice about it. Criminal as I have been, and am, my one thought
+was and is that I deserve some little consideration at your hands."
+
+"You mean money?"
+
+"I have not a penny. It would make all the difference to me. And I give
+you my word, if that is any satisfaction to you, I would be an honest
+man from this time forth!"
+
+"You actually ask me to assist a criminal and escaped convict--me, Hilda
+Bouverie, at my own absolute risk!"
+
+"I took a risk for you nine years ago, Miss Bouverie; it was all I did
+take," said Stingaree, "at the concert that made your name."
+
+"And you rub it in," she told him. "You rub it in!"
+
+"I am running for my life!" he exclaimed, in answer. "It wouldn't have
+been necessary--that would have been enough for the Miss Bouverie I
+knew then. But you are different; you are another being, you are a woman
+of the world; your heart, your heart is dead and gone!"
+
+He cut her to it, none the less; he could not have inflicted a deeper
+wound. The blood leapt to her face and neck; she cried out at the
+insult, the indignity, the outrage of it all; and crying she darted to
+the door.
+
+It was locked.
+
+She turned on Stingaree.
+
+"You dared to lock the door--you dared! Give me the key this instant."
+
+"I refuse."
+
+"Very well! You have heard my voice; you shall hear it again!"
+
+Her pale lips made the perfect round, her grand teeth gleamed in the
+electric light.
+
+He arrested her, not with violence, but a shrug.
+
+"I shall jump out of the window and break my neck. They don't take me
+twice--alive."
+
+She glared at him in anger and contempt. He meant it. Then let him do
+it. Her eyes told him all that; but as they flashed, stabbing him, their
+expression altered, and in a trice her ear was to the keyhole.
+
+"Something has happened," she whispered, turning a scared face up to
+him. "I hear your name. They have traced you here. They are coming! Oh!
+what are we to do?"
+
+He strode over to the door.
+
+"If you fear a scandal I can give myself up this moment and explain
+all."
+
+He spoke eagerly. The thought was sudden. She rose up, looking in his
+eyes.
+
+"No, you shall not," she said. Her hand flew out behind her, and in two
+seconds the brilliant room had click-clicked into a velvet darkness.
+
+"Stand like a mouse," she whispered, and he heard her reach the inner
+door, where she stood like another.
+
+Steps and voices came along the landing at a quick crescendo.
+
+"Miss Bouverie! Miss Bouverie! Miss Bouverie!"
+
+It was his Excellency's own gay voice. And it continued until with much
+noise Miss Bouverie flung her bedroom door wide open, put on the light
+within, ran across the boudoir, put on the boudoir light, and stooped to
+parley through the keyhole.
+
+"The bushranger Stingaree has been traced to Government House."
+
+"Good heavens!"
+
+"One of your windows was seen open."
+
+"He had not come in through it."
+
+"Then you were heard raising your voice."
+
+"That was to my maid. This is all through her. I don't know how to tell
+you, but she leaves me in the morning. Yes, yes, there was a man, but it
+was not Stingaree. I saw him myself through coming up early, but I let
+him go as he had come, to save a fuss."
+
+"Through the window?"
+
+"I am so ashamed!"
+
+"Not a bit, Miss Bouverie. I am ashamed of bothering you. Confound the
+police!"
+
+When the voices and steps had died away, Hilda Bouverie turned to
+Stingaree, her whole face shining, her deep blue eyes alight.
+
+"There!" said she. "Could you have done that better yourself?"
+
+"Not half so well."
+
+"And you thought I could forget!"
+
+"I thought nothing. I only came to you in my scrape."
+
+After years of imprisonment he could speak of this life-and-death hazard
+as a scrape! She looked at him with admiring eyes; her personal triumph
+had put an end to her indignation.
+
+"My poor Lea! I wonder how much she has heard? I shall have to tell her
+nearly all; she can wait for me at Melbourne or Adelaide, and I can
+pick her up on my voyage home. It will be no joke without her until
+then. I give her up for your sake!"
+
+Stingaree hung his head. He was a changed man.
+
+"And I," he said grimly--not pathetically--"and I am a convict who
+escaped by violence this afternoon."
+
+Hilda smiled.
+
+"I met Mr. Brady the other day," she said, "and I heard of him to-night.
+He is not going to die!"
+
+He stared at her unscrupulous radiance.
+
+"Do you wonder at me?" she said. "Did you never hear that musical people
+had no morals?"
+
+And her smile bewitched him more and more.
+
+"It explains us both!" declared Miss Bouverie. "But do you know what I
+have kept all these years?" she went on. "Do you know what has been my
+mascot, what I have had about me whenever I have sung in public, since
+and including that time at Yallarook? Can't you guess?"
+
+He could not. She turned her back, he heard some gussets give, and the
+next moment she was holding a strange trophy in both hands.
+
+It was a tiny silken bandolier, containing six revolver cartridges, with
+bullet and cap intact.
+
+"Can't you guess now?" she gloried.
+
+"No. I never missed them; they are not like any I ever had."
+
+"Don't you remember the man who chased you out and misfired at you six
+times? He was the overseer on the station; his name may come back to me,
+but his face I shall never forget. He had a revolver in his pocket, but
+he dared not lower a hand. I took it out of his pocket and was to hand
+it up to him when I got the chance. Until then I was to keep it under my
+shawl. That was when I managed to unload every chamber. These are the
+cartridges I took out, and they have been my mascot ever since."
+
+She looked years younger than she had seemed even singing in the Town
+Hall; but the lines deepened on the bushranger's face, and he stepped
+back from her a pace.
+
+"So you saved my life," he said. "You had saved my life all the time.
+And yet I came to ask you to do as much for me as I had done for you!"
+
+He turned away; his hands were clenched behind his back.
+
+"I will do more," she cried, "if more could be done by one person for
+another. Here are jewels." She stripped her neck of its rope of pearls.
+"And here are notes." She dived into a bureau and thrust a handful upon
+him. "With these alone you should be able to get to England or America;
+and if you want more when you get there, write to Hilda Bouverie! As
+long as she has any, there will be some for you!"
+
+Tears filled her eyes. The simplicity of her girlhood had come back to
+the seasoned woman of the world, at once spoiled and satiated with
+success. This was the other side of the artistic temperament which had
+enslaved her soul. She would swing from one extreme of wounded and
+vindictive vanity to this length of lawless nobility; now she could
+think of none but self, and now not of herself at all. Stingaree glanced
+toward the window.
+
+"I can't go yet, I'm afraid."
+
+"You sha'n't! Why should you?"
+
+"But I still fear they may not be satisfied downstairs. I am ashamed to
+ask it--but will you do one little thing more for me?"
+
+"Name it!"
+
+"It is only to make assurance doubly sure. Go downstairs and let them
+see you; tell them more details, if you like. Go down as you are, and
+say that without your maid you could not find anything else to put on. I
+promise not to vanish with everything in your absence."
+
+"You do promise?"
+
+"On my--liberty!"
+
+She looked in his face with a very wistful sweetness.
+
+"If they were to find me out," she said, "I wonder how many years they
+would give _me_? I neither know nor care; it would be worth a few. I
+thought I had lived since I saw you last . . . but this is the best fun
+I have ever had . . . since Yallarook!"
+
+She stood for a moment before opening the door that he unlocked for her,
+stood before him in all her flushed and brilliant radiance, and blew a
+kiss to him before she went.
+
+The Governor was easily found. He was grieved at her troubling to
+descend at such an hour, and did not detain her five minutes in all. He
+thought she was in a fever, but that the fever became her beyond belief.
+Reassured on every point, Miss Bouverie was back in her room but a very
+few minutes after she had left it.
+
+It was empty. She searched all over, first behind the curtains, then
+between the pedestals of the bureau, but Stingaree was nowhere in the
+room, and the bedroom door was still locked. It was a second look behind
+the curtains that revealed an open window and the scratch of a boot upon
+the white enamel. It was no breakneck drop into the shrubs.
+
+So he had gone without a word, but also without breaking his word; for,
+with wet eyes and a white face, between anger and admiration, Hilda
+Bouverie had already discovered her bundle of notes and her rope of
+pearls.
+
+
+There are no more tales of Stingaree; tongue never answered to the name
+again, nor was face ever recognized as his. He may have died that night;
+it is not very likely, since the young married man in the well-appointed
+bungalow, which had been broken into earlier in the day, missed a suit
+of clothes indeed, but not his evening clothes, which were found hung up
+neatly where he had left them; and it is regrettable to add that his
+opera-glasses were not the only article of a marketable character which
+could never be found on his return. There is none the less reason to
+believe that this was the last professional incident in one of the most
+incredible criminal careers of which there is any record in Australia.
+Whether he be dead or alive, back in the old country or still in the
+new, or, what is less likely, in prison under some other name, the
+gratifying fact remains that neither in Australia nor elsewhere has
+there been a second series of crimes bearing the stamp of Stingaree.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The following typographical errors present in the original
+edition have been corrected. No other changes have been made
+to the text.
+
+   In Chapter I, a quotation mark was removed after "could that
+   be possible?", "You had beter play this yourself" was changed
+   to "You had better play this yourself", and a quotation mark
+   was added after "And hangs below her waist".
+
+   In Chapter III, "You might, prehaps, have preferred" has been
+   changed to "You might, perhaps, have preferred".
+
+   In Chapter V, a quotation mark was added after "I was just
+   thinking the same thing", and "succeded at the most
+   humiliating moment" was changed to "succeeded at the most
+   humiliating moment".
+
+   In Chapter VI, a quotation mark was added before "He may have
+   wished to clear his character."
+
+   In Chapter VII, "Stingareee was perfectly right" was changed
+   to "Stingaree was perfectly right".
+
+   In Chapter VIII, a quotation mark was added after "it was
+   just about here it happened", and "seemed the samest policy"
+   was changed to "seemed the safest policy".
+
+   In Chapter IX, "allowed to proceeed on a pressing journey"
+   was changed to "allowed to proceed on a pressing journey",
+   "when the spirit had beeen wine" was changed to "when the
+   spirit had been wine", and "The Bishop seeemed nettled and
+   annoyed" was changed to "The Bishop seemed nettled and
+   annoyed".
+
+   In Chapter X, "whenever I have sung in jublic" has been
+   changed to "whenever I have sung in public".
+
+
+
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