--all steam and
hurry-scurry; it starves the country.'

'Quite right, Jonathan,' says Starlight, throwing his leg over Rainbow,
and chucking the old groom a sovereign. 'The times have never been half
as good as in the old coaching days, before we ever smelt a funnel in
New South Wales. But there's a coach or two left yet, isn't there? and
sometimes they're worth attending to.'

He bowed and smiled to the girls, and Rainbow sailed off with his
beautiful easy, springy stride. He always put me in mind of the deer I
once saw at Mulgoa, near Penrith; I'd never seen any before. My word!
how one of them sailed over a farmer's wheat paddock fence. He'd been in
there all night, and when he saw us coming he just up and made for the
fence, and flew it like a bird. I never saw any horse have the same
action, only Rainbow. You couldn't tire him, and he was just the
same the end of the day as the beginning. If he hadn't fallen into
Starlight's hands as a colt he'd have been a second-class racehorse, and
wore out his life among touts and ringmen. He was better where he was.
Off we went; what a ride we had that night! Just as well we'd fed and
rested before we started, else we should never have held out. All
that night long we had to go, and keep going. A deal of the road was
rough--near the Shoalhaven country, across awful deep gullies with
a regular climb-up the other side, like the side of a house. Through
dismal ironbark forests that looked as black by night as if all the
tree-trunks were cast-iron and the leaves gun-metal. The night wasn't as
dark as it might have been, but now and again there was a storm, and the
whole sky turned as black as a wolf's throat, as father used to say. We
got a few knocks and scrapes against the trees, but, partly through the
horses being pretty clever in their kind of way, and having sharpish
eyesight of our own, we pulled through. It's no use talking, sometimes
I thought Jim must lose his way. Starlight told us he'd made up his mind
that we were going round and round, and would fetch up about where we'd
started from, and find the Moss Vale police waiting there for us.

'All right, Captain,' says Jim; 'don't you flurry yourself. I've been
along this track pretty often this last few months, and I can steer by
the stars. Look at the Southern Cross there; you keep him somewhere on
the right shoulder, and you'll pull up not so very far off that black
range above old Rocky Flat.'

'You're not going to