had the pluck!" he
murmured, as he dropped that _Australasian_ and took up the next week's.
He was filled with admiration, but soon a frown and then an oath came to
put an end to it. "The little beast," he cried, "he'll kill that woman!
He can't have kept it up." He sorted the papers for the latest of all--a
sinful publican saved them for him--and therein read that Oswald Melvin
had been committed for trial, and that his only concern was for the
condition of his mother, which was still unchanged, and had seemed
latterly to distress the prisoner very much.

"I'll distress him!" roared Stingaree to the mallee. "I'll distress him,
if we change places for it!"

Riding all night, and as much as he dared by day, it was some hundred
hours before he paid his third and last visit to the Melvins'
music-shop. He rode boldly to the door, but he rode a piebald mare not
to be confused in the most suspicious mind with the no more conspicuous
Barmaid. It is true the brown parts smelt of Condy's Fluid, and were at
once strange and seemingly a little tender to the touch. But Stingaree
allowed no meddling with his mount; and only a very sinful publican,
very many leagues back, was in the secret.

There were no lighted windows behind the shop to-night. The whole place
was in darkness, and Stingaree knocked in vain. A neighbor appeared upon
the next veranda.

"Who is it you want?" he asked.

"Mrs. Melvin."

"It's no use knocking for her."

"Is she dead?"

"Not that I know of; but she can't be long for this world."

"Where is she now?"

"Bishop's Lodge; they say Miss Methuen's with her day and night."

For it was in the days of the Bishop's daughter, who had a strong mind
but no sense of humor, and a heart only fickle in its own affairs. Miss
Methuen made an admirable, if a somewhat too assiduous and dictatorial,
nurse. She had, however, a fund of real sympathy with the afflicted, and
Mrs. Melvin's only serious complaint (which she intended to die without
uttering) was that she was never left alone with her grief by day or
night. It was Miss Methuen who, sitting with rather ostentatious
patience in the dark, at the open window, until her patient should fall
or pretend to be asleep, saw a man ride a piebald horse in at the gate,
and then, half-way up the drive, suspiciously dismount and lead his
horse into a tempting shrubbery.

Stingaree did not often change his mind at the last moment, but he knew
the man on whose generosit