he get hit, Warrigal?'

'That----Sergeant Goring,' said the boy, a slight, active-looking chap,
about sixteen, that looked as if he could jump into a gum tree and back
again, and I believe he could. 'Sergeant Goring, he very near grab us
at Dilligah. We got a lot of old Jobson's cattle when he came on us. He
jump off his horse when he see he couldn't catch us, and very near drop
Starlight. My word, he very nearly fall off--just like that' (here he
imitated a man reeling in his saddle); 'but the old horse stop steady
with him, my word, till he come to. Then the sergeant fire at him again;
hit him in the shoulder with his pistol. Then Starlight come to his
senses, and we clear. My word, he couldn't see the way the old horse
went. Ha, ha!'--here the young devil laughed till the trees and rocks
rang again. 'Gallop different ways, too, and met at the old needle-rock.
But they was miles away then.'

Before the wild boy had come to the end of his story the wounded man had
proved that it was only a dead faint, as the women call it, not the
real thing. And after he had tasted a pannikin full of brandy and water,
which father brought him, he sat up and looked like a living man once
more.

'Better have a look at my shoulder,' he said. 'That----fellow shot like
a prize-winner at Wimbledon. I've had a squeak for it.'

'Puts me in mind of our old poaching rows,' said father, while he
carefully cut the shirt off, that was stiffened with blood and showed
where the bullet had passed through the muscle, narrowly missing
the bone of the joint. We washed it, and relieved the wounded man by
discovering that the other bullet had only been spent, after striking
a tree most like, when it had knocked the wind out of him and nearly
unhorsed him, as Warrigal said.

'Fill my pipe, one of you. Who the devil are these lads? Yours, I
suppose, Marston, or you wouldn't be fool enough to bring them here. Why
didn't you leave them at home with their mother? Don't you think you and
I and this devil's limb enough for this precious trade of ours?'

'They'll take their luck as it comes, like others,' growled father;
'what's good enough for me isn't too bad for them. We want another hand
or two to work things right.'

'Oh! we do, do we?' said the stranger, fixing his eyes on father as if
he was going to burn a hole in him with a burning-glass; 'but if I'd a
brace of fine boys like those of my own I'd hang myself before I'd drag
them into the pit afte