and chucked away the key, first telling the manager not
to make a row for ten minutes or we might have to come back again. He
was a plucky fellow, and we hadn't been rough with him. He had sense
enough to see that he was overmatched, and not to fight when it was
no good. I've known bankers to make a regular good fight of it, and
sometimes come off best when their places was stuck up; but not when
they were bested from the very start, like this one. No man could
have had a show, if he was two or three men in one, at the Ballabri
money-shop. We walked slap down to the hotel--then it was near the
bank--and called for drinks. There weren't many people in the streets at
that time in the afternoon, and the few that did notice us didn't think
we were any one in particular. Since the diggings broke out all sorts
of travellers a little out of the common were wandering all about the
country--speculators in mines, strangers, new chums of all kinds; even
the cattle-drovers and stockmen, having their pockets full of money,
began to put on more side and dress in a flash way. The bush people
didn't take half the notice of strangers they would have done a couple
of years before.

So we had our drinks, and shouted for the landlord and the people in
the bar; walked up to the police station, took out our horses, and rode
quickly off, while father was nearly five miles away on a cross-road,
making Mr. White's trotters do their best time, and with seven or eight
thousand pounds' worth of gold and cash under the driving seat. That, I
often think, was about the smartest trick we ever did. It makes me laugh
when I remember how savage the senior constable was when he came home,
found his sub in a cell, the manager and his clerk just untied, the bank
robbed of nearly everything, and us gone hours ago, with about as much
chance of catching us as a mob of wild cattle that got out of the yard
the night before.

Just about dark father made the place where the man met him with the
trap before. Fresh horses was put in and the man drove slap away another
road. He and Warrigal mounted the two brown horses and took the stuff in
saddle-bags, which they'd brought with 'em. They were back at the Hollow
by daylight, and we got there about an hour afterwards. We only rode
sharp for the first twenty miles or so, and took it easier afterwards.

If sticking up the Goulburn mail made a noise in the country, you may
depend the Ballabri bank robbery made ten tim