e lamp flew between them, going out where it
fell, and for a minute the revolvers spat harmlessly in the remaining
patchwork of moonshine and shadow.

"Get behind trees; shoot low, don't kill him!" shouted the chief from
his saddle. "Now on to him before he can load again. That's it! Pin him!
Throw your revolvers away, or he'll snatch one before you know where you
are! Ah, I thought he was too strong for you! Mr. Hardcastle, I'll put a
bullet through you myself if you don't instantly surrender!"

And the fight ended with the bent man leaning in his stirrups over the
locked and swaying group, as he brandished his revolver to suit deed to
word. It was a heavy blow with the long barrel that finally turned the
scale. In a few seconds Hardcastle stood a prisoner, the handcuffs
fitting his large wrists like gloves, his great frame panting from the
fray, and yet a marvel of monstrous manhood in its stoical and defiant
carriage.

"For God's sake, Cairns, do what you say!" he cried. "Put three bullets
through me, and divide what's on the ground between you!"

"I half wish we could, for your sake," was the reply. "But it's idle to
speak of it, and I'm afraid you've committed a crime that places you
beyond the reach of sympathy."

"That he has!" cried the sergeant, wiping blood from his gray beard.
"It's plain as a pikestaff now; and to think that he was the one to come
and fetch us the very night he'd done it! But what licks me more than
anything is how in the world you found him out, sir!"

The hunchback looked down upon the stalwart prisoner standing up to his
last inch between his two captors: there was an impersonal interest in
the man's bold eyes that invited a statement more eloquently than the
sergeant's tongue.

"I will tell you," said the horseman, smiling down upon the three on
foot. "In the first place, I had my own reasons for knowing that
Stingaree was nowhere near this place on the night of the murder, for I
happen to have been on his tracks for some time. Who knew all about the
dead man's stroke of luck, his insane preference for hard cash, the time
of his return? Mr. Hardcastle, for one. Who swore that he had met
Stingaree face to face upon the run? Mr. Hardcastle alone; there was not
a soul to corroborate or contradict him. Who was in need of many
thousand pounds? Mr. Hardcastle, as I suspected, and as he practically
admitted to me when we discussed the bad season on my arrival. I was
pretty sure of my ma