Of course there were other things to think about: what we were to do with the trinkets and bank-notes and things when we got them—how to pass them, and so on. There was no great bother about that. Besides Jonathan Barnes and chaps of his sort, dad knew a few “fences” that had worked for him before. Of course we had to suffer a bit in value. These sort of men make you pay through the nose for everything they do for you. But we could stand that out of our profits, and we could stick to whatever was easy to pass and some of the smaller things that were light to carry about. Men that make £300 or £400 of a night can afford to pay for accommodation.

The big houses in the bush, too. Nothing’s easier than to stick up one of them—lots of valuable things, besides money, often kept there, and it’s ten to one against anyone being on the look-out when the boys come. A man hears they’re in the neighbourhood, and keeps a watch for a week or two. But he can’t be always waiting at home all day long with double-barrelled guns, and all his young fellows and the overseer that ought to be at their work among their cattle or sheep on the run idling their time away. No, he soon gets sick of that, and either sends his family away to town till the danger’s past, or he “chances it,” as people do about a good many things in the country. Then some fine day, about eleven or twelve o’clock, or just before tea, or before they’ve gone to bed, the dogs nark, and three or four chaps seem to have got into the place without anybody noticing ‘em, the master of the house finds all the revolvers looking his way, and the thing’s done. The house is cleared out of everything valuable, though nobody’s harmed or frightened—in a general way, that is—a couple of the best horses are taken out of the stable, and the next morning there’s another flaring article in the local paper. A good many men tried all they knew to be prepared and have a show for it; but there was only one that managed to come out right.

We didn’t mean to turn out all in a minute. We’d had a rough time of it lately, and we wanted to wait and take it easy in the Hollow and close about for a month or so before we began business.

Starlight and I wanted to let our beards grow. People without any hair on their faces are hardly ever seen in the country now, except they’ve been in gaol lately, and of course we should have been marked men.