was somehow familiar
to the ear of Oswald, who stuttered as much when he was able.

"I must have heard it before, or have I dreamt it? I've thought a good
deal about you, you know!"

To do him justice, he was no longer very nervous, though still
physically shaken. On the other hand, he began already to feel the
elation of his dreams.

"I do know. You've thought your soul into a pulp on the subject, and you
must give it up," said Stingaree, sternly.

Oswald sat aghast.

"But how on earth did you know?"

"I've come straight from your mother. You're breaking her heart."

"But how can _you_ have come straight from _her_?"

"I've come down for another melodeon. I've got to have one, too."

"Another----"

And Oswald Melvin knew his drunken whim-driver for what he had really
been.

"The yarn I told you about myself was true enough," continued Stingaree.
"Only the names were altered, as they say; it happened to the other
fellow, not to me. I made it happen. He is hardly likely to have lived
to tell the tale."

"Did he really try to betray you after what you'd done for him?"

"More or less. He looked on me as fair game."

"But you had saved his life?"

Stingaree shrugged.

"We rode across him."

"And you think he perished of dust and thirst?"

Stingaree nodded. "In torment!"

"Then he got what he jolly well earned! Anything less would have been
too good for him!" cried Oswald, and with a boyish, uncompromising heat
which spoke to some human nature in him still.

But Stingaree frowned up the moonlit track. There was still no sign of
the coach. Yet time was short, and the morbid enthusiast was not to be
disgusted; indeed, he was all enthusiasm now, and a less unattractive
lad than the bushranger had hoped to find him. He looked the white screw
and Oswald up and down as they sat in their saddles in the moonshine: it
seemed like sunlight on that beaming fool.

"And you think of commencing bushranger, do you?"

"Rather!"

"It's a hard life while it lasts, and a nasty death to top up with."

"They don't hang you for it."

"They might hang me for the man I put back in the vile dust from whence
he sprung. They'd hang you in six months. You've too many nerves. You'd
pull the trigger every time."

"A short life and a merry one!" cried the reckless Oswald. "I shouldn't
care."

"But your mother would," retorted Stingaree, sharply. "Don't think about
yourself so much; think about her for a change."

Th