e paddock fence were down, and two of the horses
were missing. While most of the men rushed away up to the burning store,
five stayed behind--Tony, Peters, Murray, and two young selectors who
had come in to join the fun.

"It's a tough ride. Who knows the country best?" Peters asked, as he
swung into the saddle.

"Teddy Morton," some one answered shortly; and the selector named, slim,
active, and sunburned, wheeled his horse to the front without a word and
drove his spurs home.

Out along the road he raced, sitting tight in the saddle with the reins
hanging loose, catching rather than hearing on the air as it rushed past
his ears the thud of the horses' hoofs galloping away ahead. Behind him
the others rode, silent, the horses following the leader of their own
instincts. Two miles farther on the faint sounds ahead ceased, and each
one of the five knew that the fugitives had turned from the roadway into
the open bush. They knew the place--there was rugged, broken country a
mile from the road, deep cross gullies with treacherous banks, and
patches of wattle scrub close-growing and dark, where a man might ride
to his death at every stride of his horse. And down the road they raced,
till they saw by the loom of the open bush where the boundary fences
ceased. The leader turned his horse in his stride, and the four behind
turned theirs. A fallen log; a rut; a snag; and one rider's race would
be done; for the pace they were going left no escape if once a horse
came down. Through the low-grown brush they crashed. A rider ducked to
miss a branch that was level with his head; a horse swerved sharp to the
right to dodge an old and charred tree-stump; another propped as it
caught its step to clear a fancied jump--and the riders gripped their
saddle-pads and rode with their hands low down. Somewhere ahead their
quarry raced--and three of them thought of their gold--somewhere ahead
their coming was heard, and murder might lurk in the shade. It might be
a bullet; it might be a spear; it might be a shattered spine; but Morton
stuck to his racing lead, and the four pressed close behind.

Away ahead three others rode, two on stolen mounts. They had seen the
gleam of the fire burst out as they galloped past the Rest; they heard
the shouts of the laughter, and they laughed as they rode away, for they
had robbed the store and set it on fire, and every man of the township
was in at the Rest drinking to the success of the diggers whose gol