ing at me quite
sorrowful with his dark eyes, like a child. 'If you hadn't knocked me
down that last time, Dick Marston, I'd never have done nothing to you
nor Jim. I forgot about the old down. That brought it all back again.
I couldn't help it, and when I see Jimmy Wardell I thought they'd catch
you and no one else.'

'Well, you've made a clean sweep of the lot of us, Warrigal,' says I,
'poor Jim and all. Don't you ever show yourself to the old man or go
back to the Hollow, if you get out of this.'

'He's dead now. I'll never hear him speak again,' says he, looking over
to the figure on the grass. 'What's the odds about me?'

. . . . .

I didn't hear any more; I must have fainted away again. Things came into
my head about being taken in a cart back to Cunnamulla, with Jim
lying dead on one side of me and Starlight on the other. I was only
half-sensible, I expect. Sometimes I thought we were alive, and another
time that the three of us were dead and going to be buried.

What makes it worse I've seen that sight so often since--the fight on
the plain and the end of it all. Just like a picture it comes back to me
over and over again, sometimes in broad day, as I sit in my cell, in the
darkest midnight, in the early dawn.

It rises before my eyes--the bare plain, and the dead men lying where
they fell; Sir Ferdinand on his horse, with the troopers standing round;
and the half-caste sitting with Starlight's head in his lap, rocking
himself to and fro, and crying and moaning like a woman that's lost her
child.

I can see Jim, too--lying on his face with his hat rolled off and both
arms spread out wide. He never moved after. And to think that only the
day before he had thought he might see his wife and child again! Poor
old Jim! If I shut my eyes they won't go away. It will be the last sight
I shall see in this world before--before I'm----

The coroner of the district held an inquest, and the jury found a
verdict of 'justifiable homicide by Sir Ferdinand Morringer and other
members of the police force of New South Wales in the case of one James
Marston, charged with robbery under arms, and of a man habitually known
as "Starlight", but of whose real name there was no evidence before the
jury.' As for the police, it was wilful murder against us. Warrigal and
I were remanded to Turon Court for further evidence, and as soon as we
were patched up a bit by the doctor--for both of us looked like making a
die of