CHAPTER XIII.

Thus endorsed, Jack began to consider himself to be as fine a fellow as the rest of the world was bent upon making him out to be. He held up his head as in the old days, when debt and he were strangers, and gave his opinion with imposing decision upon all matters, pastoral, social, and political. He was glad now that he had followed M‘Nab’s advice, and shorn the fat sheep. Their wool told up noticeably in the clip, and he trusted that in the coming autumn he should be able to top the market with the first draft of fat sheep from the glorious salt-bush plains which skirted the lonely Bimbalong.

He received a certain amount of satisfaction from observing how reduced was the list of stores and necessaries with which he had been entrusted by M‘Nab. “Why, it’s next to nothing,” said he, as he looked over it; “one would think we were providing for a cattle station except for next year’s shearing requirements. If we have only another decent year or two, the debt will be wiped off, and hey for Europe!” Then, from that vision of the sea, arose the form—as of a Venus Anadyomene—of Maud Stangrove. Would she share his pilgrimage? How enchanting the thought! How divine the companionship! Together would they wander through the cities of the old world, as through the dream-palaces of his boyish days. Paris, with her mingled splendours and luxuries. Rome, calm and majestic, even amid her ruins, as befitted the Mother of Nations. Venice, with mysterious gondolas still floating adown her sea, which is “her broad, her narrow streets,” which still, as in old days of regal pride, and power, and love, is “her black-marble 147stair.” Switzerland, with her pure, white-robed, heaven-gazing Alps, receiving their crimson dawn-blush ere beholding the fresh day-birth of a world. Last of all, but how far from least, “Merrie England,” the great land of their fathers—every legendary and historical feature of which had been graven in his mind from earliest childhood. Bound on such a pilgrimage as this, “with one fair spirit for his minister,” how cheerfully would he abandon, for a season, the dull labours and prosaic thoughts with which his later years had been bedimmed! He thought of Maud’s cultured and receptive mind; her keen spirit of observation; her unfailing cheerfulness; and the deep, unselfish tenderness which he had remarked in her home intercourse. Could he but win this peerless creature to himself; could he but provide for this diamond of purest ray serene the costly setting which alone harmonized with its rank among “earth’s precious things,” he told himself that the sayings of cynics about the ills of humanity would be meaningless falsehoods.

This, perhaps, slightly exalted conception of the probabilities of matrimony, combined with the absence of the central figure, around which such roseate clouds softly circled, tended to abridge Mr. Redgrave’s metropolitan sojourn. He made the novel discovery that ordinary modern society was worldly and frivolous—that club viveurs were selfish and dissipated—that his acquaintances, generally, were destitute of ennobling aims; and that it behoved any man, whose soul cherished a lofty purpose, to follow out a sustained plan unswervingly. To this end he determined, rather ungratefully, considering how powerful a tonic his visit had proved, to abandon the vain city, and betake himself incontinently to the majestic desert and to—Maud Stangrove.

He made an abrupt departure, somewhat to the surprise of that very small section of society which troubled itself with his weal or woe, and appeared suddenly before M‘Nab, who, in his turn, was surprised also.

Mr. M‘Nab was not only astonished at his employer’s short stay in Melbourne, but also at his cheerful and animated demeanour.

“The trip has done you a world of good, sir,” he said. “I 148thought when you went away that it would take you longer to forget our losses.”

“Well, there’s nothing like change of air, and the knowledge of what other people are doing, when you are low. If people spent more money in trains and coaches they would spend less on doctors, I believe. A man who is shut up with his misery broods over it till, like a shepherd, he goes mad some day. When I got to town, I found others had suffered even more heavily, and, of course, that comforted me.”

“And the wool?” inquired M‘Nab.

“Nothing but compliments,” answered Jack. “Never expected to see wool got up like it on the Warroo, and so on. Mr. Shrood prophesied all kinds of triumphs and fancy prices next year. I might have had ten thousand sovereigns to take away in my hat, if I had asked for them. This flood seems to have done a world of damage, and such a trifle as the loss of two or three thousand sheep was voted not worth talking about.”

“It was an awful sacrifice—just a throwing to the fishes of two thousand golden guineas, any way ye look at it,” said, slowly and impressively, the downright M‘Nab. He could never be led to gloss over any shortcomings, losses, or failures, holding them as points in the game of life to be carefully scored, which no player worthy of the name would omit. “You’re welcome to knock half of it off my wages,” he continued, “as I shall always believe that I was to blame for want of care. But I hope we’ll have profits yet that will clear off the score of this and other losses.”

“I am fully confident that we shall, M‘Nab,” said Jack, hopefully; “and I have no notion of making my deficit good out of your screw, though it is manly of you to offer it. You work as hard and do as much as one man can. Whether things go right or wrong, I shall never blame you, be assured. I am free to admit that in your place I should not do half as well. And now, do you want any help for a week or two, for I think I shall ride down to Juandah?”

“I did not expect you back for a month more,” said M‘Nab, smiling to himself; “so I had arranged to do without you, you see. I can get on grandly till we begin to draft the fat sheep for market.”

149Thus absolved and conscience-clear, Mr. Redgrave immediately betook himself to Juandah, where he was received with frank and kindly welcome by everybody. It was fortunate that he had gone to Melbourne after the flood-disaster, as he was now able to treat that damaging blow in a much more light and philosophical fashion than would have been possible to him without the aid of his metropolitan experiences.

“It was rather a facer,” he admitted to Stangrove, who had delicately described their grief at seeing the drowned weaners floating past their windows in scores and hundreds, “but when a fellow has a large operation in hand he must look at the progress of the whole enterprise, and not fix his mind upon minor drawbacks. A single vessel doesn’t matter out of the whole convoy of East Indiamen. The loss of the Royal George had no perceptible influence on the rest of the British navy. I shall shear over sixty thousand sheep next year, with luck, and when I sell shall think no more of those poor devils of weaners than you do of the blacks—probably mythical—that Red Rob slew during your minority.”

“With luck—with luck—as you say,” said Stangrove, rather absently. “But, as we agreed before, luck seems necessary to the working out of your plan, which I admit, at present prices, looks feasible enough. But suppose we don’t get our fair share of luck this year, what then? However, we needn’t anticipate evil. Let’s come in and see the ladies.”

“‘So behold you of return,’ as dear old Madame Florac says,” commenced Maud, looking up from The Newcomes. “How truly fortunate you men are, Mr. Redgrave, that you can get away to some decent abode of mankind every now and then under the pretence of business! Now we poor, oppressed women have to give reasons that will bear the most searching investigation before we are allowed to go anywhere. Men only say vaguely ‘must go—important business,’ and take themselves off.”

“Really, Miss Stangrove, I don’t see but that you, in this nice cool room, with nothing to do but to read about Ethel and Barnes, that grand old cat Lady Kew, and the dear old Colonel, are about as well off as any one I have seen in my travels.”

“That’s all nonsense. We endure life here, of course, 150but look at the delightful change of scene, air, life, people, trees, bread and butter, everything new and fresh that you have had lately. Uniformity is death to some natures. That is why some unhappy individuals of my sex make dismal endings and horrid examples of themselves. Some girl marries the butler, or the stockman, or the music master periodically. Depend upon it, it is nothing but Nature’s protest against the murderous monotony of their daily lives.”

“Maud, Maud,” interposed Mrs. Stangrove, “how can you say such dreadful things? Quite improper, I think. I declare Mr. Redgrave will be shocked and alarmed if you go on so. Really, my dear!”

Jack mildly combated these extreme and unconventional opinions, declaring that some of the most discontented, useless, and life-weary people he had ever seen had enjoyed no end of variety—passed their lives in sight-seeing—been everywhere—and yet were more utterly ennuyés than even Miss Stangrove on the banks of the Warroo.

“Well,” said that young lady, “you see they had only been working out the vanity and vexation of spirit theory, and how dreary a result it was for the Wise King to come to! But I should like ‘to see the folly of it too.’ I think manufacturing one’s own vanity and vexation is more satisfactory than acquiring it second-hand.”

“I wonder if our black friends ever feel bored,” said Jack; “before we came and gave them iron tomahawks it must have taken a fellow a week to chop out a ’possum; so I suppose constant employment conduced to cheerfulness. Still, of late years, food being plentiful, wars traditionary, and travel impossible, game perhaps a trifle scarcer, a sense of impatience of the ‘slow, strong hours’ may have crossed their unused intelligences.”

“It may be, for all we know,” said Mark, who had re-entered and thrown himself upon a sofa, “at the root of the frantic love for ardent spirits which all the younger natives have. The men of a generation or two back, like ‘old man Jack,’ don’t drink. But all the middle-aged and younger ones, more particularly those, by comparison, educated, drink fearfully hard whenever they get the chance.”

“So do all savages,” said Jack; “likewise smoke furiously. Alcohol and tobacco seem particularly attractive to 151their organizations; and they have no power of moderation. ‘Too much of anything is not good,’ said the Red Indian, ‘but too much rum is just enough.’ That’s their idea—all over the world.”

“I suggest that we have exhausted the subject,” mildly interposed Mrs. Stangrove, “and as it is getting cool we might all go for a drive in the break with Mark and the young horses. Can you take us, my dear?”

This was voted a first-rate suggestion. The evening, comparatively cool only, was approaching. So the ladies apparelled themselves suitably, and as Mark let the half-broken team out, without fear of stone or stump, along the glorious, level, sandy out-station track, the rushing air refreshed their senses, jaded by the long, breezeless midsummer day. It was twilight deepening into night as they returned, a very cheerful and animated party. Maud, with the changeful mood of her sex, declared herself again reconciled to existence, and even conscious of pleasurable anticipation as regarded tea.

Jack was catechised after that refection upon the balls, archery-parties, picnics, races, &c., to which he had been on his late visit to town. Maud sang a new song or two which she had managed to get up, buried alive as she assumed herself to be, and John Redgrave was more deeply enthralled than ever.

Stangrove asked him to stay a fortnight or so with them, if he could spare the time; and Jack declared it would be most uncomplimentary to M‘Nab’s management, and the fencing system generally, to suppose that a proprietor was pinned to his homestead like a mere shepherding squatter. So he gratefully accepted the invitation and the opportunity. In spite of the weather—and even the presence of the beloved object cannot render the month of January a pleasant one in Lower Riverina—the days passed in a dreamily luxurious tropical fashion. Jack had an early enjoyable swim in the capacious Warroo, now rippling over sand-bars and pebbles, as if it had never risen with death upon its angry tide. Then the breakfast in the cool darkened room, before the great and resistless glare of the day commenced, was very pleasant. After that period, and until the sun was down, I am free to confess that all the dramatis personæ might as well have been in Madras or Bombay. Outside the heat was awful, and the 152first effect on leaving the shelter of the cottage after ten o’clock a.m., was as if one had suddenly encountered the outer current of a blast furnace. Mark was out on the run, as a matter of course, pretty nearly all day and every day. There were never-ending duties among the sheep, cattle, and horses which did not permit him to make any philosophical reflections upon the heat of the weather. He simply put it out of the question, as he had done from boyhood. Consequently he did not feel it half as much as those who tried by every means to evade it.

Jack did not feel himself called upon to offer to join his host in these daily expeditions. He occasionally, of course, volunteered when his assistance was likely to be useful. But generally he lounged about the house, and made himself generally useful by reading aloud to the ladies, irrigating Mrs. Stangrove’s flower-garden, practising duets with Maud, and generally raising Miss Stangrove from that desolate and vacuous condition into which she had been in danger of falling before his opportune arrival. The riding and the driving parties were of course not abandoned. There was always some period arbitrarily defined as the cool of the evening, when such exercise, even walking by the Warroo under the sighing river-oaks, was suitable and satisfactory. He and Mark had long arguments about all kinds of subjects, in which the ladies now and then took part. Nothing could have been more generally agreeable than the whole thing. But the days wore on, and Jack felt that he had no decent excuse for staying longer; he therefore prepared to depart. He had not seen his way either, much as he longed for an opportunity, to put that very tremendous and momentous question to Maud, to which he had sworn to himself that he would receive a definitive answer before quitting Juandah. Truth to tell, their intimacy had not advanced so quickly as he had hoped. He saw, or thought he saw, that Maud liked his society. But she was so frank and unembarrassed that he mistrusted the existence of any deeper sentiment. He was not altogether without knowledge of the ways of womenkind; and he knew that this frank recognition of the pleasantness of his society was by no means a good sign. He did not feel inclined to ask any girl, obviously non-sympathetic, to marry him, trusting to the unlikeliness of her seeing any decenter 153sort of fellow in these wilds, and to her acknowledged distaste for life on the Warroo. “No, hang it,” he said to himself, “that would be hardly generous. I’ll wait till she shows some sign that she really cares for me—loves me, I mean. If she doesn’t, John Redgrave is not the man to ask her. If she does, she can’t hide it, nor can any woman that ever lived. I know so much of the alphabet.”

Thus hardening his heart temporarily and strategically, Mr. Jack finished copying the last galop, put a finishing touch to the grand arterial system of irrigation borrowed from Ah Sing, which he had engineered for the benefit of Mr. Redgrave’s roses and japonicas, gave Mark Stangrove a real good day’s work at the branding-yard, showed him a new dodge for leg-roping which elicited the admiration of the stockmen, and went on his way, accompanied for a mile or two by his host.

CHAPTER XIV.

Mrs. Stangrove and Maud were sitting in the drawing-room that morning, a little silent and distrait, we may confess, when a man’s footstep was heard on the verandah. “I did not think that Mark would have returned so soon,” said Maud, going to the French window and looking out. She stood there for an instant, and then, turning to her sister a face ashen-white and strangely altered, gasped out a single word—that word of dread, often of doom, in the far, lone, defenceless Australian waste—“Bushrangers!” Mrs. Stangrove gave a moaning, half-muffled cry, and then, obeying the irresistible maternal instinct, rushed into the adjoining apartment where her children were. At the same moment a tall man with a revolver raised in his right hand stepped into the room, and gazed rapidly round with restless eyes, as of one long used to meet with frequent foes. Behind him, closely following, were three other armed men, while a fifth was visible in the passage, thus cutting off all retreat towards the rear.

Maud Stangrove was a girl of more than ordinary firmness of nerve. She strove hard against the spasmodic terror which the feeling of being absolutely in the power of lawless and desperate men at first produced. Rapidly conning over the chances of a rescue, in the event of the working overseer and his men returning, as she knew they were likely to do, at an early hour, having been out at the nearest out-station since sunrise, accompanied by Mark, who had intended when leaving to cut across to them and 155inspect their work, she felt the necessity of keeping cool and temporizing with the enemy.

Steadying her voice with an effort, and facing the intruder with a very creditable air of unconcern, she said—“What do you want? I think you have mistaken your way.”

The robber looked at her with a bold glance of admiration, and then, with an instinctive deference which struggled curiously with his consciousness of having taken the citadel, made answer—“See here, Miss, I’m Redcap; dessay you’ve heard of me. You’ve no call to be afeared; but we’ve come here for them repeating rifles as Mr. Stangrove’s been smart enough to get up from town.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” said Maud, thankful to remember that she had not seen lately these unlucky celebrities in the small-arm way, which, for their marvellous shooting and rapidity of loading, had been a nine-days’ wonder in the neighbourhood.

“Well,” interposed a black-visaged, down-looking ruffian, who had ensconced himself in an easy chair, “some of you will have to know about ’em, and look sharp too, or we’ll burn the blessed place down about your ears.”

“You shut up, Doctor,” said the leader, who seemed, like Lambro, one of the mildest-mannered men that ever “stuck up mails or fobbed a note.” “Let me talk to the lady. It’s no use your fencing, Miss, about these guns; we know all about ’em, and have ’em we will. Mr. Stangrove shot a bullock with the long one last Saturday. You’d better let us have ’em, and we’ll clear out.”

Maud was considering whether it would not be safer to “fess” and get rid of the unwelcome visitors, who, though wonderfully pacific, might not remain so. A diversion was effected. One of the younger members of the band suddenly appeared with the baby—the idolized darling of the household—in his arms.

“Here,” he cried, “I’ve got something as is valuable. I shall stick to this young ’un to put me in mind of my pore family as I’ve been obliged to cut away from.”

Mrs. Stangrove, poor lady, had been keeping close with the older children, flattering herself that this precious infant, then taking the air in his nurse’s arms, was safe from the marauders. She was speedily undeceived by the piercing 156cry which reached her ears, as the affrighted babe, just old enough to “take notice” of the stranger, proclaimed distrust of his awkward, though not unkind, dandling.

Rushing in with frantic eagerness, and the “wrathful dove” expression which the gentlest maternal creature assumes at any “intromitting” with her young, as old Dugald Dalgetty phrases it, Mrs. Stangrove suddenly confronted the audacious intruder, and, seizing the child, tore it out of his arms with so deft a promptitude that the delinquent had no time for resistance. Looking half startled, half sullen, he stood in the same position for a moment, with so ludicrous an expression of defeat and mortification that his companions burst into a fit of unrestrained laughter, while Mrs. Stangrove, in the reaction from her unaccustomed ferocity, clasped the child to her bosom in a paroxysm of tears.

“This here’s all very well,” said Redcap, “but we didn’t come for foolery. If these rifles ain’t turned up in five minutes you’ll be sorry for it. If some of ’em gets to the brandy, Miss,” here he lowered his voice and looked significantly at Maud, “there’s no saying what will happen. Better deal with us while we’re in a good temper.”

Maud believed that the coveted weapons were somewhere upon the premises, although she had spoken truly at the first demand when she averred that she was ignorant of their precise locality. She was aware that a moment might change the mood of the robbers from one of amused toleration to that of reckless brutality. Not wholly ignorant of the terrible legends, still whispered low and with bated breath, of wrongs irrevocable suffered by defenceless households, her resolution was quickly taken.

“Jane,” she said to Mrs. Stangrove, who, helpless and unnerved, was still sobbing hysterically, “if you know where these guns are tell me at once, and I will go for them. It can’t be helped. These men have behaved fairly, and as we can neither fight nor run away, we must give up our money-bags, or what they consider an equivalent. Where are the rifles?”

“Oh, what will Mark say?” moaned out the distracted wife. “If he were only here I should not care. And yet, perhaps, it’s better as it is. If they do not hurt the dear 157children I don’t care what they take. You know best. The rifles are in Mark’s dressing-room, in the shower-bath.”

Maud went out, and presently reappeared with the beautiful American repeaters, one of which had the desirable peculiarity of being able to discharge sixteen cartridges in as many seconds, if needful; the other was a light and extremely handy Snider—“a tarnation smart shooting-iron,” as one of the station hands, who hailed from the Great Republic, had admiringly expressed himself.

Redcap’s eyes glistened as he possessed himself of the “sixteen-shooter,” and handed the Snider to the Doctor.

“All’s well that ends well,” growled that worthy, “we’ll be a match for all the blessed traps between here and Sydney with these here tools; but for two pins I’d put a match in every gunyah on the place, just to learn Stangrove not to be in such a hurry to run in a mob of pore fellers as had got tired of being messed about by those infernal troopers.”

“You’ll just do what I tell you, Doctor,” said Redcap, savagely, “and if I catch one of you burning or shooting without orders he’ll have to settle with me. Hallo! it can’t be dinner-time.”

This last observation was called forth by the appearance of the parlour-maid with the table-cloth and a tray. She was a buxom country girl, without any of that hyper-sensitiveness of the nervous system common to town domestics. A bushranger to her was simply an exaggerated “traveller,” and nothing more. One o’clock p.m. having arrived, it did not occur to her that the family would choose to omit the important midday meal on account of visitors, however unwelcome. She proceeded, therefore, with perfect coolness to lay the cloth, and observing no sign of objection from Maud, presently brought in the dishes, and set the chairs as usual. Maud, thinking that the less fear they showed the better it would be for them, called the children, and motioned to Mrs. Stangrove to take her accustomed place. Simultaneously, Miss Ethel, a quiet little monkey of nine years, being extremely hungry, then and there recited the customary grace, praying God to “relieve the wants of others, and to make them truly thankful for what they were about to receive.”

158Maud afterwards confessed that it cost her a strong effort to repress a smile as she noted the look of undisguised astonishment which came over the faces of Redcap and his men, who probably had not heard for many a year, if ever, that simple benediction.

The Doctor recovered himself first. “I feel confoundedly hungry,” said he; “I suppose we may as well take a snack too.”

“Then come along with me to the kitchen,” said the maid, promptly, with the most matter-of-fact air, opening the door of the passage.

The men stared for a moment as if disposed for equal privileges in the region of communism which they now morally inhabited. But the old instinct was not entirely overpowered, and with one look at Maud’s rigid countenance and the pale face of Mrs. Stangrove, Redcap followed the girl, and signed to his comrades to do likewise.

At this moment one of the bed-room doors opened, and a man entered the room, dressed in a full suit of black. His hair shone with pomatum, and he looked something between a lay reader and a provincial footman.

“Look out,” roared the Doctor, “perhaps there’s more of ’em coming,” as he raised his revolver.

“Come, none of that, Doctor,” said the new-comer; “don’t you never see nothin’ but a cove’s clothes?”

A roar of laughter from the others and the returned Redcap apprised him of his mistake. It was the youngest member of their own band, who, being of a restless disposition, had managed to find his way to the spare room, where he had coolly appropriated a combination suit of John Redgrave’s, and had further anointed himself with a pot of pomatum, which did not belong to that gentleman. This episode improved the spirits both of captors and captives, and, hustling one another like school-boys, the whole gang made their way into the kitchen, where, to judge from the sounds of laughter that issued therefrom, they enjoyed themselves much more than would have been the case in the dining-room.

In about half an hour Maud had the inexpressible gratification of seeing them mount and make off steadily along the road which led “up the river.”

159When they were fairly off Maud felt symptoms of having taxed nature severely. She turned deadly pale as she threw herself upon the sofa, covering her face with her hands, while her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs, as she tried with her full strength of will to control the tendency to “the sad laugh that cannot be repressed.” However, as chiefly happens in those feminine temperaments where the reasoning powers are stronger than the emotional, she succeeded, and bestowed all her regained energy to the support and consolation of her sister-in-law.

While these wonderful things were happening, John Redgrave was peacefully riding along the up river road, thinking of the manifold perfections of his divinity, and little dreaming that she was at that very moment a distressed damsel, in the power of traitors and faitours.

“What a lovely morning!” soliloquized he, “not so warm as it has been; a breeze too. How peaceful everything looks! Really, this is not such a fearful climate as I thought it at first. With a decent house, and one fair spirit to be his minister, a fellow might gracefully glide through existence here for a few years—that is, if he were making lots of money. It would be almost too uneventful, that’s the worst of it—nothing ever happens here. Hallo! what a pace the Sergeant is coming at, and old Kearney too!”

This exclamation was called forth by the sudden appearance of the whole police force which was thought necessary for the protection of a district about a hundred miles square. Jack knew their figures, and indeed their horses, the Sergeant’s gray and the trooper’s curby-hocked chestnut, to well to be mistaken. They raced up to him, and, pulling up short, both addressed him at once—a trifle out of breath.

“Have you seen any travellers on horseback, Mr. Redgrave?” asked the Sergeant.

“If it’s purshuing them ye are, ye’re going right wrong,” blurted out trooper Kearney.

“Seen who? Pursuing what?” demanded Jack. “Why should I pursue anybody?”

“Then you haven’t heard,” said the Sergeant.

“The divil a hear,” interrupted Private Kearney; “sure he doesn’t look like it, and he ridin’ along the road as peaceful as if there wasn’t a bushranger betuxt here and Adelaide.”

160“Bushrangers!” quoth Jack, fully aroused. “I’d forgotten all about them, and near here? Where were they seen last, Stewart?”

“Constable Kearney, will you oblige me by keeping silence, and falling to the rear,” said the Sergeant, majestically, while he proceeded to enlighten Jack as to the probable whereabouts of the gang “from information received.”

“As far as I can make out, sir, and if that scoundrel of a mailman hasn’t put me on the wrong track, they were at Mr. Stangrove’s Ban Ban out-station last night, and have either gone down the river or over to his head-station to-day.”

“His head-station! His head-station!” echoed Jack, in wild tones of astonishment—“no! surely not!”

“Very likely indeed, I think,” said the Sergeant, “it’s just about their dart from Ban Ban—they may be there now.”

“What in the name of all the fiends are we wasting time here for, then?” answered he, in a voice so hoarse and strange that the Sergeant looked narrowly at him to note whether he had been drinking, all forms of eccentricity on the Warroo being referable, in his opinion, founded upon long experience, to different stages of intoxication. “Thank God, I brought my revolver with me—come on, there’s a good fellow.”

Sergeant Stewart had not, indeed, done more than slacken his pace for the time necessary to restore the wind of his horses, pretty well expended by a three-mile heat. He was a cool, plucky, good-looking fellow, and no bad sample of a crack non-commissioned officer of Australian police, a body of men inferior to none in the world for general light cavalry. He was as distinguished-looking in his way as his old namesake, Bothwell, in Old Mortality, whom he resembled in more points than one.

By the time Jack had concluded his sentence, his blood-hackney was pulling his arms off, neck and neck with the Sergeant’s wiry gray, while Mr. Kearney and the doubtful chestnut were powdering away behind, at no great distance.

“It’s lucky we met you,” said the Sergeant; “there are five of them, I hear; three of us are a pretty fair match for the scoundrels.”

“I see you have your rifles,” said Jack; “you don’t generally carry them.”

“No; but this time we thought we were out for a week. 161I only saw the mailman, who gave me the office, early this morning, and came here as hard as we could split. Here comes another recruit, I suppose—by George! it’s Mr. Stangrove.”

So it proved. That gentleman, as unsuspicious as Jack himself, was cantering along a bush track which led into the main “frontage road” at right angles.

“Halloa, Redgrave! turned round since I left you, and our gallant police force too. What’s the row—horse-stealers?”

“Worse than that, I’m afraid, old fellow,” said Jack, going close up. “Redcap and his lot have been seen not far off.”

He stopped—for the sudden spasm of pain which contracted Stangrove’s features was bad to see.

“Good God!” he said, at length, gnawing his set lip; “my poor wife will be frightened to death, and Maud! Let us ride—pray God we are not too late.”

Little was said. The horses, all tolerably well-bred, and possessing that capacity for sustaining a high rate of speed for hours together peculiar to “dry-country horses,” held on, mile after mile, until they sighted a large reed-bed, which occupied a circular flat or bend of the river.

“By gad! here they are,” said the sergeant, “camped on the bank! I can see their saddles; the horses are feeding in the reed-bed. Now if we can get up pretty close before they see us we have them.”

“All right,” said Jack, with the cheerfulness of a man whose spirits are raised by the near approach of danger. “You and Mr. Stangrove get round that clump of gums, and take them in the rear; Kearney and I will sneak along close to the bank, till we’re near enough to charge. I’ll bet a tenner I have the saddles first. Then they are helpless.”

“I think you wouldn’t make a bad general, sir,” said the Sergeant. “Mr. Stangrove, I think we can’t do better.”

Stangrove handled his revolver impatiently, and, with something between a groan and a reply, rode silently on.

“Now, see here, Mr. Redgrave,” said Pat Kearney—a rusé old veteran, who had put “the bracelets” upon many a horse and cattle stealer, and was not now about to have his first fray with bushrangers—“if we can snake on ’em 162before they have time to take to thim unlucky rade-bids—my heavy curse on thim for hiding villains—we have thim safe. They may fire a shot, but they’re unsignified crathers, not like Bin Hall or Morgan.”

“And why shouldn’t these fellows fight?” asked Jack.

“Ye see, now, it’s this a way. Just keep under the bank near thim big oaks—sure that’s iligant. ’Tis a great ornamint to the force ye’d make intirely. Well, as I tould ye, that spalpeen of a Redcap—more by token I put a handful of slugs in him once—has never killed any one yet—nor the others—d’ye see now?”

“I don’t see, Kearney, that it makes much difference—they’re outlaws.”

“Ah! but there’s a dale of differ between men that’s fighting with a halter round their necks, and these half-baked divils that hasn’t more than fifteen years’ gaol to fear, with maybe a touch of Berrima, at the outside.”

“I understand, then; you think that they are more likely to give in after the first flutter than if they were sure to be hanged when caught.”

“By coorse they will; why wouldn’t they? I knew Redcap when he’d think more of duffing a red heifer than all the money in the country. If he seen me, I believe he’d hold up his hands, from habit like.”

“Then you don’t think it a good plan to make bush-ranging the same as murder, and to hang a fellow directly he turns out?”

“Thim that wanted that law made didn’t have their families living on the Warroo,” said the old trooper, sturdily. “How can a couple of men like us thravel and purtect a district as big as Great Britain? And what would turn a raw lot like these devils let loose quicker than a blundering, over-severe law? By the mortial, they see us. Hould on, sir, and we’ll charge them together, like Wellington and the Proosians at Waterloo.”

The robbers had a good strategical position. Their base of operations was the reed-bed, a labyrinth of cane-like stalks which met overhead in the narrow paths worn by the feet of the stock. They were, however, divided in party and in purpose. Two of them had been detailed to fetch up the horses grazing in the reed-bed, and the remainder, 163having just sighted Redgrave and Constable Kearney, stood to their arms with sufficient determination.

On the very edge of the river bank, beneath which the stream ran in a deeper channel than ordinary, were the five saddles of the gang. They had evidently dismounted at this spot, and, after unsaddling, had gone to the edge of the reed brake, where an unusually shady tree afforded them an inviting lounge.

Thus it chanced that Jack’s keen eyes discovered the state of affairs, as he and Kearney prepared to rival Waterloo, on a necessarily limited scale.

“Look here, Kearney,” said he, as they commenced the grand charge, “I mean to throw those saddles into the river. The rascals are a good thirty yards from them. They can’t do much without horses. So you blaze away, and cover me as well as you can.”

“It’s a great move intirely—but watch that divil Redcap; ’tis a mighty nate shot he is—and you’ll be out in the open—bad cess to it.”

Jack’s blood was up, and he did not care two straws for all the Redcaps and revolvers in Saltbushdom. Racing frantically for the accoutrements, he jumped off, and emptied his revolver, save one barrel, at the enemy. Kearney, a cool and experienced warrior, drew off some little distance to the right, and opened business on his own account, not only with his revolver, but with his breach-loading rifle, while his trained horse stood as steady as a Woolwich gunner. Jack, stooping down, coolly threw one saddle after another into the swirling current, where they were swept off before the very eyes of the brigands. As he stood upright, after hearing the “ping” of more than one bullet unpleasantly close, he felt a sharp blow—an electric throb—in his left arm, and realized the fact that a bullet had passed through the muscles near the shoulder.

Inwardly congratulating himself that his right arm was unharmed, Jack drew himself up, and, facing the dropping shots which still hissed angrily around him, his eye fell upon the redoubtable Redcap, who, rifle in hand, had evidently been trying the range of Stangrove’s late purchase in a manner not contemplated by that gentleman. Jack swung round, and lifting his revolver, as if at gallery practice, 164pulled the trigger with that deadly confidence of aim which some men say is never experienced save in snipe-shooting or man-shooting. Bar accidents, the career of William Crossbrand, otherwise Redcap, was ended. Not so, however, was he to be sped. There had been an old forcing-yard built at the spot for the purpose of swimming cattle and horses over the river. A few straggling posts were left. Behind one of these the robber adroitly slipped, and the bullet buried itself in the massive and twisted timber, just on a level with Mr. Redcap’s unharmed breast.

“Sure it was the greatest murder in the world,” said Mr. Kearney, afterwards, with apparent incongruousness. “’Twas a dead man he was, only for that blagguard of a post.”

At this moment the Sergeant and Stangrove—who had been waiting till the two other outlaws came up, driving their hobbled horses before them—made a rush, which was the signal for an advance in line of the attacking party. A few scattered shots were exchanged on both sides. The shooting (let any of my readers try what practice they can make, with the best revolvers, from moving horses) was not anything to boast of. It was soon evident that the bushrangers were not going to fight to the last gasp. They began to slacken fire, and show signs of capitulation. Perhaps the most dramatic incident occurred just before the surrender. The Sergeant had ridden up, neck and neck, with Stangrove to their partially entrenched position, and had exhausted his ammunition in a sharp exchange, when the Doctor stepped forward from behind a tree, and took deliberate aim at him with the Snider.

There was no time to reload. Things looked critical. Stangrove and the others were engaged on their own account; but the Sergeant was equal to the situation; he fell back upon the moral force in which he so enormously excelled his antagonist. Raising his hand in a threatening attitude, and drawing himself up as if on parade, he fixed his stern eyes upon the audacious criminal and roared out—

“You infernal scoundrel, would you dare to shoot me?”

It was a strange and characteristic spectacle. The handsome, soldierly, comparatively refined man-at-arms, sitting upon his horse, affording a perfectly fair mark; the half-sullen, 165half-irresolute criminal, with the power of life and death in his wavering hands; but the mental pressure was too great. The old reverence for the representative of the Law was not all uprooted. A host of doubts and dismal visions of dock and judge, and manacled limbs, and the Sergeant sternly implacable, “reading him up” before a crowded court, rose before his overcharged brain. The conflict was too intense. With a muttered oath he flung down the historic Snider, and stood with outstretched hands, which the alert officer of police immediately enclosed in the gyves of the period.

“You’ve acted like a sensible chap,” said Stewart, patronizingly, as the handcuffs clicked with the closing snap. “I’m not sure that you won’t get off light. You have had the luck not to have killed anybody that I know of since you turned out.”

About the same time Mr. Redcap and the other semi-desperadoes had lowered their flags to Stangrove, his late guest, and Constable Kearney. This last warrior had, like his superior officer, lost no time in securing the prisoners. Four pairs of handcuffs were available for the elder men. The youngest brigand had his elbows buckled together behind his back with a stirrup-leather.

“Bedad! ye’re a great arr-my intirely,” said Mr. Kearney, complacently. “Sure it’s kilt and murthered I thought we’d all be with a lot of fine young men like yees forenint us. But the Docther there hadn’t the heart to rub out the Sergeant; ’tis the polite man he always was.”

“Well, they say taking to the bush is a short life and a merry one,” grumbled out Redcap in a kind of Surrey-side tragedy growl. “I know our time’s been short, and a dashed long way from merry. I’m thankful we ain’t shed any blood—leastways not killed any cove as I knows of.” Here he looked at Jack’s wounded arm, the blood from which had considerably altered the hue of his shooting-jacket.

“Oh! the divil a hanging match there’ll be, if that’s what ye’re thinking of,” said Kearney. “Sure when they didn’t hang Frank Gardiner why would they honour the likes of ye with a rope, and Jack Ketch, and a parson? Cock ye up with hanging indeed! Ye’ll be picking oakum 166or chipping freestone, or learning to make shoes and mats, ten years from now.”

“You have been at my station, I see by the rifles,” said Stangrove; “was that all you took?”

“Nothing else, Mr. Stangrove,” said Redcap, humbly, “as I’m a living man. We’d heard so much about them—that the big one could carry a mile and shoot all day—that we was bound to have ’em. But we done no harm, and the ladies wasn’t much frightened—not the young lady anyhow.”

“It’s lucky for you they were not,” said Stangrove, huskily; “and it may serve you something at your trial. Sergeant, what are you going to do with the prisoners? will you bring them to Juandah to-night?”

“No, sir, I propose to make straight for the gaol at Barrabri; we’ll get to the ‘Mailman’s Arms’ some time before to-morrow morning. It’s the first halt we shall make; so step out, you fellows. The sooner we get to Barrabri the sooner you’ll be comfortably in gaol, where you’ll have nothing to think of till the Quarter Sessions.”

“Good-bye, Sergeant. Good-bye, Kearney. Redgrave, you had better come home with me and get that arm seen to. By the way, Sergeant, leave word at the ‘Mailman’s Arms’ to send on Doctor Bateman, if he’s anywhere about.”

“So far so good,” said Jack, as they turned their horses’ heads towards Juandah. “They were not a very terrific set of ruffians, and had evidently not bound themselves by a dark and bloody oath never to be taken alive.”

“The sharpest shooting seems to have come your way,” said Stangrove, noticing that Jack’s face was growing pale. “I heard a bullet or two whistle near me; but I believe they were sick of their life and anxious to yield decently. I feel mercifully inclined towards them, inasmuch as I believe they let us off cheap at Juandah; whereas, if it had been one of the old gangs——”

“Here we are,” said Jack, as they reined up at the stable door. “Do you know I feel very queer.” Here he dismounted, and moving with some difficulty, that mortal paleness overspread his face which, once seen, is indelibly associated with real or temporary lifelessness, and down 167went Mr. John Redgrave, helpless as a new-born babe, or a young lady menaced by a black beetle.

Stangrove let go his horse, and raised his prostrate guest in his arms (and a most awfully heavy burden be found him) when out rushed Mrs. Stangrove and Maud.

“Oh, my darling, we have had the bushrangers here, the horrid men; they took both the rifles; and one of them took dear baby in his arms and frightened me to death. Have you seen them? And who is that? Why, it’s Mr. Redgrave. Is he wounded?”

“He was hit through the arm, but he is not desperately wounded. He lost some blood and fainted. Oh, you’re coming to; that’s right; sit up, old man, and we’ll soon have you in bed.”

Maud had come forward with a half-cry parting her lips, while her widely-opened eyes were expressive of pained yet warmest sympathy. She could not trust herself to speak, but, kneeling beside the insensible form, bathed Jack’s face with her handkerchief dipped in water, with a woman’s ready wit, and, loosening his neckerchief, watched with deepest earnestness the first faint signs of returning life.

“’Pon my word,” said Jack, as he sat up and stared rather wildly around him, “I feel awfully ashamed of myself to tumble down and give trouble all from a scratch like this. But I suppose it has bled and Sangrado-ed one a bit. It will soon pass off.”

“You have been fighting for us, Mr. Redgrave,” said Maud, with involuntary tenderness in every tone of her voice; “and we must not be ungrateful. Try if you can walk inside now. Lean on me. I am ever so strong, I can tell you.”

Jack did as he was bid, and felt it necessary to avail himself of the rude strength of which Miss Stangrove boasted. Without any great loss of time he found himself on a couch in the spare room, where, with the aid of Mr. and Mrs. Stangrove, he was turned into an interesting invalid, with his arm bound up, pending the arrival of Dr. Bateman.

Part of the evening was spent by the household in his bedroom, and a very pleasant evening it was. Mrs. Stangrove was gravely happy, but inclined to be tearful when recurring to the dear children. Maud and her brother 168took the humorous side of the adventure, and Jack laughed till his arm ached at Maud’s description of the appearance of the younger bushranger as he turned out in part of Jack’s raiment, and the remainder as left by a travelling agent for an orphan asylum.

“‘All’s well that ends well,’” said Stangrove. “I shall not have the same anxious feeling every time the dogs bark now. It might easily have been worse; and, taking them as bushrangers, a decenter lot of fellows I never wish to meet.”

Dr. Bateman came next morning, having fortunately looked in at the ‘Mailman’s Arms’ on his way in from a back block, whither he had been called to set a stockman’s leg, broken only the week before. Hearing of the casualty awaiting him at Juandah, he came on best pace, making running with his wiry iron-legged mustang from the start. The doctor, who had in a general way to minister to the indispositions and accidents of the population of a district about a hundred and fifty miles long and a hundred broad, required to possess the constitutional qualities of his favourite mare. Most of them he did possess, thinking as little of a ride of a hundred miles in a day and a half as she did of carrying him.

“So you managed to get hit, Mr. Redgrave?” quoth he, in a loud cheery voice, bustling in after breakfast. “Infernal scoundrels—never knew such a gang. Never in my life. Worst lot that have taken the bush since old Donohoe’s time.”

“But, doctor,” protested two or three voices in a breath, “you surely mistake—they——”

“What I say I stick to,” interrupted the doctor, with a twinkle in his shrewd gray eye. “Worst gang I ever knew—for a medical man. Why, you are, my dear sir, the only wounded man in the whole district. I’m ashamed of them—the country’s going to destruction. No energy among the natives.”

“Oh, that’s it,” said Stangrove; “I was going to stand up for my friend, the enemy—Mr. Redcap and his merry men; but from your point of view they did behave disgracefully; not a patch upon Morgan, or the Clarkes, or even the virtuous and politically celebrated Frank Gardiner. What do you think of your patient, doctor?”

169“That he is in very good quarters. Pulse marks quicker time to-day than yesterday. Slight touch of fever, only natural; arm inflamed and painful. A week’s quiet, not a day less, will set him right. Would have been a very pretty case had bullet perforated the humerus. As it is, merely amounts to laceration of muscles, minor vessels, and nerves.”

“You’ll stay to-night, doctor, of course?” asked Stangrove.

“No, must go after lunch; have to ride down the river as far as Emu Reach. Man drowned last night—inquest.”

“How was that?”

“Oh, shepherd, of course; frightful amount of lunacy among them. Poor old Pott Quartsley got a great fright last week up Din Din. He went into a shepherd’s hut at dusk and saw him standing just in front of the door. ‘What are you staring at me like that for, you old fool?’ he said. Gave him a slight push. The shepherd turned half round and slid into the same posture, silently, ‘Great God!’ said Quartsley, rushing frantically out, ‘what is all this?’”

“And what was it?” asked Stangrove.

“Why, the man had hanged himself the day before with his bridle-rein fastened to the tie-beam. His feet just touched the ground, and his hat was on his head, so that he looked, in the half-light, exactly like a man standing upright. It had a great effect on old Quartsley.”

“What direction will the result take?”

“That of fencing, I believe. Says he can’t afford to keep expensive luxuries like shepherds any longer. That they’re extravagances are sure to injure the finest property—the soundest constitution in the long run. Says he shall repent, economize, and fence—for the future.”

“Bravo!” said Jack, a little feebly; “if old Quartsley begins to fence you won’t be left behind, Stangrove?”

“I said two years,” answered he, “and in two years I’ll consider the question, not an hour before that time. In the interval don’t you excite yourself. The doctor and I are going to the men’s hut. I’ll send Maud with some cold tea for you.”