could speak of this life-and-death hazard
as a scrape! She looked at him with admiring eyes; her personal triumph
had put an end to her indignation.

"My poor Lea! I wonder how much she has heard? I shall have to tell her
nearly all; she can wait for me at Melbourne or Adelaide, and I can
pick her up on my voyage home. It will be no joke without her until
then. I give her up for your sake!"

Stingaree hung his head. He was a changed man.

"And I," he said grimly--not pathetically--"and I am a convict who
escaped by violence this afternoon."

Hilda smiled.

"I met Mr. Brady the other day," she said, "and I heard of him to-night.
He is not going to die!"

He stared at her unscrupulous radiance.

"Do you wonder at me?" she said. "Did you never hear that musical people
had no morals?"

And her smile bewitched him more and more.

"It explains us both!" declared Miss Bouverie. "But do you know what I
have kept all these years?" she went on. "Do you know what has been my
mascot, what I have had about me whenever I have sung in public, since
and including that time at Yallarook? Can't you guess?"

He could not. She turned her back, he heard some gussets give, and the
next moment she was holding a strange trophy in both hands.

It was a tiny silken bandolier, containing six revolver cartridges, with
bullet and cap intact.

"Can't you guess now?" she gloried.

"No. I never missed them; they are not like any I ever had."

"Don't you remember the man who chased you out and misfired at you six
times? He was the overseer on the station; his name may come back to me,
but his face I shall never forget. He had a revolver in his pocket, but
he dared not lower a hand. I took it out of his pocket and was to hand
it up to him when I got the chance. Until then I was to keep it under my
shawl. That was when I managed to unload every chamber. These are the
cartridges I took out, and they have been my mascot ever since."

She looked years younger than she had seemed even singing in the Town
Hall; but the lines deepened on the bushranger's face, and he stepped
back from her a pace.

"So you saved my life," he said. "You had saved my life all the time.
And yet I came to ask you to do as much for me as I had done for you!"

He turned away; his hands were clenched behind his back.

"I will do more," she cried, "if more could be done by one person for
another. Here are jewels." She stripped her neck of its rope of pearls.
"And