desperado sat
trembling on his hoary screw, revolvers ready, while the red eyes of the
coach dilated down the road; and as often had the cumbrous ship pitched
past unscathed. The week-kneed and weak-minded youth was too vain to
feel much ashamed. He was biding his time, he could pick his night; one
was too dark, another not dark enough; he had always some excuse for
himself when he regained his room, still unstained by crime; and so the
unhealthy excitement was deliciously maintained. To-night, as always
when he sallied forth, the deed should be done; he only wished there was
a shade less moon, and wondered whether he might not have done better to
wait. But, as usual, the die was cast. And indeed it was quite a new
complication that deterred this poor creature for the last time: he was
feverishly expecting the coach when a patter of hoofs smote his ear from
the opposite quarter.

This was enough to stay an older and a bolder hand. Oswald tucked in his
guns with unrealized relief. It was his last instinct to wait and see
whether the horseman was worth attacking for his own sake; he had room
for few ideas at the same time; and his only new one was the sense of a
new danger, which he prepared to meet by pocketing his pistols as a
child bolts stolen fruit. There was no thinking before the act; but it
was perhaps as characteristic of the naturally honest man as of the
coward.

Stingaree swept through the trees at a gallop, the milk-white mare
flashing in the moonlit patches. At the sight of her Oswald was
convulsed with a premonition as to who was coming; his heart palpitated
as even his heart had never done before; and yet he would have sat
irresolute, inert, and let the man pass as he always let the coach, had
the decision been left to him. The real milk-white mare affected the
imitation in its turn as the coach-horses never had; and Oswald swayed
and swam upon a whinnying steed. . . .

"I thought you were Stingaree!"

The anti-climax was as profound as the weakling's relief. Yet there was
a strong dash of indignation in his tone.

"What if I am?"

"But you're not. You're not half smart enough. You can't tell me
anything about Stingaree!"

He put his eye-glass up with an air.

Stingaree put up his.

"You young fool!" said he.

The thoroughbred mare, the eye-glass, a peeping pistol, were all
superfluous evidence. There was the far more unmistakable authority of
voice and eye and bearing. Yet the voice at least