Now the police was away, all but a couple of young fellows—I went and had a look to make sure—that didn’t know any of us by sight, I thought we might enjoy ourselves for once in a way without watching everyone that came nigh us. And we did enjoy ourselves. I did, I know; though you’d think, as we carried our lives in our hands, in a manner of speaking, the fun couldn’t have been much. But it’s a queer world! Men like us, that don’t know what’s to happen to them from one day to another, if they can only see their way for a week ahead, often have more real pleasure in the bit of time they have to themselves than many a man has in a year that has no call to care about time or money or be afraid of anybody.

As for Starlight, if he’d been going to be hung next week it would have been all one to him. He’d have put off thinking about it until about an hour before, and then would have made all his arrange ments and done the whole business quietly and respectably, with out humbug, but without any flashness either. You couldn’t put him wrong, or make him do or say anything that was out of place.

However, this time nobody was going to be hung or took or any thing else. We’d as good as got a free pardon for the time being, now the police was away; no one else would have meddled with us if we’d had our names printed on our hats. So we made the most of it, I expect. Starlight carried on all sorts of high ropes. He was introduced to all the nobs, and I saw him in the grand stand and the saddling-paddock, taking the odds in tens and fifties from the ringmen—he’d brought a stiffish roll of notes with him—and backing the Dawson stable right out.