were to stick up the next monthly gold escort. That was all. We knew
it would be a heavy one and trusted to our luck to get clear off
with the gold, and then take a ship for Honolulu or San Francisco. A
desperate chance; but we were desperate men. We had tried to work hard
and honest. We had done so for best part of a year. No one could say we
had taken the value of a halfpenny from any man. And yet we were not let
stay right when we asked for nothing but to be let alone and live out
the rest of our lives like men.

They wouldn't have us that way, and now they must take us across the
grain, and see what they would gain by that. So it happened we went out
one day with Warrigal to show us the way, and after riding for hours and
hours, we came to a thick scrub. We rode through it till we came to an
old cattle track. We followed that till we came to a tumble-down slab
hut with a stockyard beside it. The yard had been mended, and the rails
were up. Seven or eight horses were inside, all in good condition. As
many men were sitting or standing about smoking outside the old hut.

When we rode up they all came forward and we had it out. We knew who was
coming, and were ready for 'em. There was Moran, of course, quiet and
savage-looking, just as like a black snake as ever twisting about with
his deadly glittering eyes, wanting to bite some one. There was Daly
and Burke, Wall and Hulbert, and two or three more--I won't say who
they were now--and if you please who should come out of the hut last but
Master Billy the Boy, as impudent as you like, with a pipe in his mouth,
and a revolver in his belt, trying to copy Moran and Daly. I felt sorry
when I see him, and thought what he'd gradually come to bit by bit, and
where he'd most likely end, all along of the first money he had from
father for telegraphing. But after all I've a notion that men and women
grow up as they are intended to from the beginning. All the same as a
tree from seed. You may twist it this road or that, make it a bit bigger
or smaller according to the soil or the way it's pruned and cut down
when it's young, but you won't alter the nature of that tree or the
fruit that it bears. You won't turn a five-corner into a quince, or a
geebung into an orange, twist and twine, and dig and water as you like.
So whichever way Billy the Boy had been broken and named he'd have
bolted and run off the course. Take a pet dingo now. He might look very
tame, and follow them that fee