"Let it!" was the verdict of some. "It's all the crimson carnal things
are good for."

But the riders still rode and the footmen ran. There was a clatter of
hoofs on the short white bridge looming ghostly ahead, and then, at
a weird interval, the rattle and rumble of wheels, with no hoof-beats
accompanying. The yells grew fainter. Harry's leader was a good horse,
of the rather heavy coachhorse breed, with a little of the racing blood
in her, but she was tired to start with, and only excitement and fright
at the feel of the "pull" of the twisting wire kept her up to that
speed; and now she was getting winded, so half a mile or so beyond the
bridge Harry thought it had gone far enough, and he stopped and got
down. The van ran on a bit, of course, and the loop of the wire slipped
off the hooks of the pole. The wire recoiled itself roughly along the
dust nearly to the heels of Harry's horse. Harry grabbed up as much of
the wire as he could claw for, took the mare by the neck with the other
hand, and vanished through the dense fringe of scrub off the road, till
the wire caught and pulled him up; he stood still for a moment, in
the black shadow on the edge of a little clearing, to listen. Then he
fumbled with the wire until he got it untwisted, cast it off, and moved
off silently with the mare across the soft rotten ground, and left her
in a handy bush stockyard, to be brought back to the stables at a late
hour that night--or rather an early hour next morning--by a jackaroo
stable-boy who would have two half-crowns in his pocket and afterthought
instructions to look out for that wire and hide it if possible.

Then Harry Chatswood got back quickly, by a roundabout way, and walked
into the bar of the Royal, through the back entrance from the stables,
and stared, and wanted to know where all the chaps had gone to, and what
the noise was about, and whose trap had run away, and if anybody was
hurt.

The growing crowd gathered round the van, silent and awestruck, and some
of them threw off their hats, and lost them, in their anxiety to show
respect for the dead, or render assistance to the hurt, as men do, round
a bad accident in the bush. They got the old man out, and two of them
helped him back along the road, with great solicitude, while some walked
round the van, and swore beneath their breaths, or stared at it with
open mouths, or examined it curiously, with their eyes only, and in
breathless silence. They muttered, and ag