The thrilling youth fired
question and leading question like a cross-examining counsel in a fever
to conclude his case. The tea arrived, but the whim-driver had to help
himself. His host neglected everything but the first chance he had ever
had of hearing of Stingaree or any other bushranger at first-hand.

"And how long were you there?"

"About a week."

"What happened then?"

The whim-driver paused in doubt renewed.

"You will never guess."

"Tell me."

"They waited for the next dust-storm, and then cast me adrift in that."

Oswald stared; he would never have guessed, indeed. The unhealthy light
faded from his sallow face. Even his morbid enthusiasm was a little
damped.

"You must have done something to deserve it," he cried, at last.

"I did," was the reply, with hanging head. "I--I tried to take him."

"Take your benefactor--take him prisoner?"

"Yes--the man who saved my life."

Melvin sat staring: it was a stare of honestly incredulous disgust. Then
he sprang to his feet, a brighter youth than ever, his depression melted
like a cloud. His villainous hero was an heroic villain after all! His
heart of hearts--which was not black--could still render whole homage to
Stingaree! He no longer frowned on his informer as on a thing accursed.
The creature had wiped out his original treachery to Stingaree by
replacing the uninjured idol in its niche in this warped mind. Oswald,
however, had made his repugnance only too plain; he was unable to elicit
another detail; and in a very few minutes Mrs. Melvin was back in her
place, though not before flicking it with her handkerchief, undetected
by her son.

It was certainly a battered and hang-dog figure that stole away into the
bush. Yet the creature straightened as he strode into star-light
undefiled by earthly illumination; his palsy left him; presently as he
went he began fingering the new melodeon in the way of a man who need
not have sought elementary instruction from Oswald Melvin. And now a
shining disk filled one unwashed eye.

Stingaree lay a part of that night beside the milk-white mare that he
had left tethered in a box-clump quite near the town; at sunrise he
knelt and shaved on the margin of a Government tank, before breaking the
mirror by plunging in. And before the next stars paled he was snugly
back in older haunts, none knowing of his descent upon those of men.

There or thereabouts, hidden like the needle in the hay, and yet
ubiquitous in th