There was no horse handy, and I'd only
have been carried into my own place a dead man and frightened the life
out of poor Jeanie as well.'

'You're worth a dozen dead men yet, Jim,' I said. 'Keep up your pecker,
old man. We'll get across to the Hollow some time within the next
twenty-four hours, and there we'll be safe anyhow. They can't touch
Jeanie, you know; and you're not short of what cash she'll want to keep
her till this blows over a bit.'

'And what am I to do all the time?' he says so pitiful like. 'We're that
fond of one another, Dick, that I couldn't hardly bear her out of my
sight, and now I'll be months and months and months without a look
at her pretty face, where I've never seen anything yet but love and
kindness. Too good for me she always was; and what have I brought her
to? My God! Dick, I wish you'd shot me instead of the constable, poor
devil!'

'Well, you wasn't very far apart,' I says, chaffing like. 'If that old
horse they put you on had bobbed forward level with him you'd have got
plugged instead. But it's no use giving in, Jim. We must stand up to our
fight now, or throw up the sponge. There's no two ways about it.'

We rattled on then without speaking, and never cried crack till we got
to Nulla Mountain, where we knew we were pretty safe not to be followed
up. We took it easier then, and stopped to eat a bit of bread and meat
the girls had put up for me at Jonathan's. I'd never thought of it
before. When I took the parcel out of the pocket of my poncho I thought
it felt deuced heavy, and there, sure enough, was one of those shilling
flasks of brandy they sell for chaps to go on the road with.

Brandy ain't a good thing at all times and seasons, and I've seen more
than one man, or a dozen either, that might just as well have sawed
away at their throats with a blunt knife as put the first glass to their
lips. But we was both hungry, thirsty, tired, miserable, and pretty well
done and beaten, though we hadn't had time to think about it. That drop
of brandy seemed as if it had saved our lives. I never forgot it, nor
poor Maddie Barnes for thinking of it for me. And I did live to do her
a good turn back--much as there's been said again me, and true enough,
too.

It was a long way into the night, and not far from daylight either, when
we stumbled up to the cave--dead beat, horses and men both. We'd two
minds to camp on the mountain, but we might have been followed up, hard
as we'd ridden, and