We tied him and the young fellow fast, legs and arms, and laid them down on the floor while we went through the place. There was a good lot of gold in the safe all weighed and labelled ready for the escort, which called there once a month. Bundles of notes, too; bags of sovereigns, silver, and copper. The last we didn’t take. But all the rest we bundled up or put into handy boxes and bags we found there. Father had come up by this time as close as he could to the backyard. We carried everything out and put them into his express waggon; he shoved a rug over them and drove off, quite easy and comfortable. We locked the back door of the bank and chucked away the key, first telling the manager not to make a row for ten minutes or we might have to come back again. He was a plucky fellow, and we hadn’t been rough with him. He had sense enough to see that he was overmatched, and not to fight when it was no good. I’ve known bankers to make a regular good fight of it, and some times come off best when their place was stuck up; but not when they were bested from the very start, like this one. No man could have had a show, if he was two or three men in one, at the Ballabri money-shop. We walked slap down to the hotel—then it was near the bank—and called for drinks. There weren’t many people in the streets at that time in the afternoon, and the few that did notice us didn’t think we were anyone in particular. Since the diggings broke out all sorts of travellers a little out of the common were wandering all about the country—speculators in mines, strangers, new chums of all kinds; even the cattle-drovers and stockmen, having their pockets full of money, began to put on more side and dress in a flash way. The bush people didn’t take half the notice of strangers they would have done a couple of years before.