er and
exploits of Stingaree. The sallow and neurotic face would brighten with
morbid enthusiasm at the bare mention of the desperado's name. The
somewhat dull, dark eyes would lighten with borrowed fires: the young
fool wore an eye-glass in one of them when he dared.

"Stingaree," he would say, "is the greatest man in all Australia." He
had inherited from his father a delight in uttering startling opinions;
but this one he held with unusual sincerity. It had come to all ears,
and was the subject of that episcopal compliment which Oswald took as an
affront. The impudent little choristers supported his loss by calling
"Stingaree!" after him in the street: he was wise to keep his eye-glass
for the house.

There, however, with a few even younger men who admired his standpoint
and revelled in his store of criminous annals, or with his patient,
inscrutable mother, Oswald Melvin was another being. His language became
bright and picturesque, his animation surprising. A casual customer
would sometimes see this side of him, and carry away the impression of a
rare young dare-devil. And it was one such who gave Oswald the first
great moment of his bush life.

"Not been down from the back-blocks for three years?" he had asked, as
he showed a tremulous and dilapidated bushman how to play the instrument
that he had bought with the few shillings remaining out of his check.
"Been on the spree and going back to drive a whim until you've enough to
go on another? How I wish you'd tell that to our high and mighty Lord
Bishop of all the Back-Blocks! I should like to see his face and hear
him on the subject; but I suppose he's new since you were down here
last? Never come across him, eh? But, of course, you heard how good old
Stingaree scored off him the other day, after he thought he'd scored off
Stingaree?"

The whim-driver had heard something about it. Young Melvin plunged into
the congenial narrative and emerged minutes later in a dusky glow.

"That's the man for my money," he perorated. "Stingaree, sir, is the
greatest chap in all these Colonies, and deserves to be Viceroy when
they get Federation. Thunderbolt, Morgan, Ben Hall and Ned Kelly were
not a circumstance between them to Stingaree; and the silly old Bishop's
a silly old fool to him! I don't care twopence about right and wrong.
That's not the point. The one's a Force, and the other isn't."

"A darned sight too much force, to my mind," observed the whim-driver
with some w