“My word, Dick,” he said, “I wished for a bare-backed horse, and a deep gully, then; but it wasn’t to be. There was no horse handy, and I’d only have been carried into my own place a dead man and frightened the life out of poor Jeanie as well.”

“You’re worth a dozen dead men yet, Jim,” I said. “Keep up your pecker, old man. We’ll get across to the Hollow some time within the next twenty-four hours, and there we’ll be safe anyhow. They can’t touch Jeanie, you know; and you’re not short of what cash she’ll want to keep her till this blows over a bit.”

“And what am I to do all the time?” he says so pitiful like. “We’re that fond of one another, Dick, that I couldn’t hardly bear her out of my sight, and now I’ll be months and months and months without a look at her pretty face, where I’ve never seen anything yet but love and kindness. Too good for me she always was; and what have I brought her to? My God! Dick, I wish you’d shot me instead of the constable, poor devill”

“Well, you wasn’t very far apart,” I says, chaffing like. “If that old horse they put you on had bobbed forward level with him you’d have got plugged instead. But it’s no use giving in, Jim. We must stand up to our fight now, or throw up the sponge. There’s no two ways about it.”

We rattled on then without speaking, and never cried crack till we got to Nulla Mountain, where we knew we were pretty safe not to be followed up. We took it easier then, and stopped to eat a bit of bread and meat the girls had put up for me at Jonathan’s. I’d never thought of it before. When I took the parcel out of the pocket of my poncho I thought it felt deuced heavy, and there, sure enough, was one of those shilling flasks of brandy they sell for chaps to go on the road with.

Brandy ain’t a good thing at all times and seasons, and I’ve seen more than one man, or a dozen either, that might just as well have sawed away at their throats with a blunt knife as put the first glass to their lips. But we was both hungry, thirsty, tired, miserable, and pretty well done and beaten, though we hadn’t time to think about it. That drop of brandy seemed as if it had saved our lives. I never forgot it, nor poor Maddie Barnes for thinking of it for me. And I did live to do her a good turn back—much as there’s been said again me, and true enough, too.