as you got nearly through Bargo Brush on the old road there was a
stiffish hill that the coach passengers mostly walked up, to save
the horses--fenced in, too, with a nearly new three-rail fence, all
ironbark, and not the sort of thing that you could ride or drive over
handy. We thought this would be as good a place as we could pick, so we
laid out the whole thing as careful as we could beforehand.

The three of us started out from the Hollow as soon as we could see in
the morning; a Friday it was, I remember it pretty well--good reason I
had, too. Father and Warrigal went up the night before with the horses
we were to ride. They camped about twenty miles on the line we were
going, at a place where there was good feed and water, but well out of
the way and on a lonely road. There had been an old sheep station there
and a hut, but the old man had been murdered by the hut-keeper for some
money he had saved, and a story got up that it was haunted by his ghost.
It was known as the 'Murdering Hut', and no shepherd would ever live
there after, so it was deserted. We weren't afraid of shepherds alive or
dead, so it came in handy for us, as there was water and feed in an old
lambing paddock. Besides, the road to it was nearly all a lot of rock
and scrub from the Hollow, that made it an unlikely place to be tracked
from.

Our dodge was to take three quiet horses from the Hollow and ride them
there, first thing; then pick up our own three--Rainbow and two other
out-and-outers--and ride bang across the southern road. When things were
over we were to start straight back to the Hollow. We reckoned to be
safe there before the police had time to know which way we'd made.

It all fitted in first-rate. We cracked on for the Hollow in the morning
early, and found dad and Warrigal all ready for us. The horses were in
great buckle, and carried us over to Bargo easy enough before dark. We
camped about a mile away from the road, in as thick a place as we could
find, where we made ourselves as snug as things would allow. We had
brought some grub with us and a bottle of grog, half of which we
finished before we started out to spend the evening. We hobbled the
horses out and let them have an hour's picking. They were likely to want
all they could get before they saw the Hollow again.

It was near twelve o'clock when we mounted. Starlight said--

'By Jove, boys, it's a pity we didn't belong to a troop of irregular
horse instead of this rott