ds the house.

For an instant he seems to have idly wondered who they were, and have
had time to notice a thickset gaudily dressed man, who rode in front of
the others, when the kitchen-door was thrown suddenly open, and the old
hut-keeper, with his grey hair waving in the wind, run out,
crying,--"Save yourself, in God's name, Master Cecil. The Bushrangers!"

Cecil raised his clenched hands in wild despair. They were caught like
birds in a trap. No hope!--no escape! Nothing left for it now, but to
die red-handed. He dashed into the house with the old hut-keeper and
shut the door.

The black lad ran up to a little rocky knoll within two hundred yards
of the house, and, hiding himself, watched what went on. He saw the
bushrangers ride up to the door and dismount. Then they began to beat
the door and demand admittance. Then the door was burst down, and one
of them fell dead by a pistolshot. Then they rushed in tumultuously,
leaving one outside to mind the horses. Then the terrified boy heard
the dull sound of shots fired rapidly inside the building (pray that
you may never hear that noise, reader: it always means mischief), and
then all was comparatively still for a time.

Then there began to arise a wild sound of brutal riot within, and after
a time they poured out again, and mounting, rode away.

Then the black boy slipt down from his lair like a snake, and stole
towards the house. All was still as death. The door was open, but, poor
little savage as he was, he dared not enter. Once he thought he heard a
movement within, and listened intently with all his faculties, as only
a savage can listen, but all was still again. And then gathering
courage, he went in.

In the entrance, stepping over the body of the dead bushranger, he
found the poor old white-headed hutkeeper knocked down and killed in
the first rush. He went on into the parlour; and there,--oh, lamentable
sight!--was Cecil; clever, handsome little Cecil, our old favourite,
lying half fallen from the sofa, shot through the heart, dead.

But not alone. No; prone along the floor, covering six feet or more of
ground, lay the hideous corpse of Moody, the cannibal. The red-headed
miscreant, who had murdered poor Lee, under George Hawker's directions.

I think the poor black boy would have felt in his dumb darkened heart
some sorrow at seeing his kind old master so cruelly murdered. Perhaps
he would have raised the death-cry of his tribe over him, and burnt
him