But other country gentlemen, like Mr. Falkland, were quite of a different pattern. If they all acted like him I don’t think we should any of us have reigned as long as we did. They helped and en couraged the police in every possible way. They sent them information whenever they had received any worth while. They lent them horses freely when their own were tired out and beaten. More than that, when bush-rangers were supposed to be in the neighbourhood they went out with them themselves, lying out and watching through the long cold nights, and taking their chance of a shot as well as those that were paid for it.

Now there was a Mr. Whitman that had never let go a chance from the start of running their trail with the police, and had more than once given them all they knew to get away. He was a native of the country, like themselves, a first-class horseman and tracker, a hardy, game sort of a chap that thought nothing of being twenty-four hours in the saddle, or sitting under a fence watching for the whole of a frosty night.

Well, he was pretty close to Moran once, who had been out by himself; that close he ran him he made him drop his rifle and ride for his life. Moran never forgave him for this, and one day when they had all been drinking pretty heavy he managed to persuade Wall, Hulbert, Burke, and Daly to come with him and stick up Whitman’s house.

“I sent word to him I’d pay him out one of these fine days,” he drawled out, “and he’ll find that Dan Moran can keep his word.”

He picked a time when he knew Whitman was away at another station. I always thought Moran was not so game as he gave him self out to be. And I think if he’d had Whitman’s steady eyes looking at him, and seen a pistol in his hand, he wouldn’t have shot as straight as he generally did when he was practising at a gum tree.

Anyhow, they laid it out all right, as they thought, to take the place unawares. They’d been drinking at a flash kind of inn no great way off, and when they rode up to the house it seems they were all of ‘em three sheets in the wind, and fit for any kind of villainy that came uppermost. As for Moran, he was a devil un chained. I know what he was. The people in the house that day trembled and shook when they heard the dogs bark and saw five strange horsemen ride through the back gate into the yard.

They’d have trembled a deal more if they’d known what was coming.

Chapter XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVI