“And what did he think of it all?”

“Oh, he was a new chum; hadn’t been a year out. Not a bad cut of a young feller. He was awful shook on Mad; but she wouldn’t look at him. He said if it was in England the whole countryside would rise up and hunt such scoundrels down like mad dogs; but in a colony like this people didn’t seem to know right from wrong.”

“Did he, indeed?” says Starlight. “Ingenuous youth! When he lives a little longer he’ll find that people in England, and, indeed, everywhere else, are very much like they are here. They’ll wink at a little robbery, or take a hand themselves if it’s made worth their while. And what became of your English friend?”

“Oh! he said he was going on to Port Phillip. There’s a big diggings broke out there, too, he says; and he has some friends there, and he thinks he’ll like that side better.”

“I think we’d better cut the Sydney ‘side,’ too,” says. Starlight. “What do you say, Maddie? We’ll be able to mix up with these new chum Englishmen and Americans that are coming here in swarms, and puzzle Sergeant Goring and his troopers more than ever.”

“Oh! come, now! that would be mean,” says Maddie. “I wouldn’t be drove away from my own part of the country, if I was a man, by anybody. I’d stay and fight it out. Goring was here the other day, and tried to pick up something from father and us about the lot of you.”

“Ha!” says Starlight, his face growing dark, and different-looking about the eyes from what I’d ever seen him, “did he? He’d better beware. He may follow up my trail once too often. And what did you tell him?”

“We told him a lot of things,” says the girl; “but I am afeared they was none of ‘em true. He didn’t get much out of us, nor wouldn’t if he was to come once a week.”

“I expect not,” says Jim; “you girls are smart enough. There’s no man in the police or out of it that’ll take much change out of you. I’m most afraid of your father, though, letting the cat out of the bag; he’s such an old duffer to blow.”

“He was nearly telling the sergeant he’d seen a better horse lately here than his famous chestnut Marlborough, only Bella trod on his toe, and told him the cows was in the wheat. Of course Goring would have dropped it was Rainbow, or some well-bred horse you chaps had been shaking lately.”