n with a member of the mounted police. The dispute ended with
the death of the policeman, who succumbed to injuries received. As
Moonlighter Dick was characteristically remorseless, his courage and
cunning were understood to verge upon the inhuman, and his band was
composed of the most utterly abandoned ruffians the history of the
country afforded; only two of them had not been hanged, and these two
justified their inclusion by having richly deserved hanging several times
over.

Across the flat and past the toll-bar, where the light sleep of Dan, the
tollman, was not disturbed by the creeping band, Moonlighter led his
outlaws warily, then struck the long bush road between two lines of
straggling fence running with all sorts of lists and bends, going on and
on endlessly, according to the belief of the boys of Waddy. The road was
overhung by tall gums and nourished many clumps of fresh green saplings,
about which the tortuous cart-track wound in deep yellow ruts, baked hard
in summer, washed into treacherous bog in winter. Here caution was not
necessary, and there were divers fierce hand-to-hand attacks on clumps of
scrub representing a vindictive and merciless police, out of which
Moonlighter and his men issued crowned with victory and covered with
glory. A scarecrow in a wayside orchard was charged with desperate
valour, and only saved from instant destruction as a particularly hateful
police spy by the sudden intervention of the leader.

'Back, men!' he cried imperiously. 'Moon lighter never makes war on women!'

He pointed to the protecting skirt in which the scarecrow was clad, and
his bold bad men drew off and retired abashed.

For the next half-mile Moonlighter led his men in stealthy retreat from
an overwhelming force of troopers armed to the teeth. Tracks had to be
covered and diversions created, and there was much hiding behind logs and
in clumps of scrub; indeed, the police were only foiled at length by the
exertion of that subtle strategy for which Moonlighter was notorious.

It was after one o'clock in the morning when Cow Flat was reached. The
little township slept, steeped in darkness, beside its sluggish strip of
creeping 'slurry' miscalled a creek. Beyond, on the rise, a big mine
clattered and groaned, and puffed its glowing clouds of steam against the
sky; but Cow Flat had settled down into silence after the midnight change
of shifts, and a mining township sleeps well. For all that it was a
stealthy