es Brentwood?"

"How do your breeches do, Cecil?" answered Jim; "that is a much more
important question, By-the-bye, let me introduce you to Mr. Halbert.
Also, allow me to have the honour to inform you that my sister Alice is
come home from school."

"I am aware of that, and am come over to pay my respects. Sam, leave me
alone. If I were to disarrange my dress before I was presented to Miss
Brentwood, I would put a period to my existence. Jim, my dear soul,
come in and present me. Don't all you fellows come mobbing in, you
know."

So Jim took Cecil in, and the other young fellows lounged about the
door in the sun. "Where have you come from, Charley?" asked Sam.

"I have been staying at the Mayfords'; and this morning, hearing that
you and your father were here, we thought we would come over and stay a
bit."

"By-the-bye," said Sam, "Ellen Mayford was to have come home from
Sydney the same time as Alice Brentwood, or thereabouts. Pray, is she
come?"

"Oh, yes!" said Charles; "she is come this fortnight, or more."

"What sort of a girl has she grown to be?"

"Well, I call her an uncommonly pretty girl. A very nice girl indeed, I
should say. Have you heard the news from the north?"

"No!"

"Bushrangers! Nine or ten devils, loose on the upper Macquarrie, caught
the publican at Marryong alone in the bush; he had been an overlooker,
or some such thing, in old times, so they stripped him, tied him up,
gave him four dozen, and left him to the tender mercies of the
blowflies, in consequence of which he was found dead next day, with the
cords at his wrists cutting down to the bone with the struggles he made
in his agony."

"Whew!" said Sam. "We are going to have some of the old-fashioned work
over again. Let us hope Desborough will get hold of them before they
come this way."

"Some of our fellow-countrymen," said Halbert, "are, it seems to me,
more detestably ferocious than savages, when they once get loose."

"Much of a muchness--no better, and perhaps no worse," said Sam. "All
men who act entirely without any law in their actions arrive at much
the same degree, whether white or black."

"And will this Captain Desborough, whom you speak of, have much chance
of catching these fellows?" asked Halbert.

"They will most likely disperse on his approach if he takes any force
against them," said Sam. "I heard him say, myself, that the best way
was to tempt them to stay and show fight, by taking a small force
again