e at shearing time, disguised
as swagsmen, to the coast. But when we thought it over carefully in the
mornings, particularly when we were a bit nervous after the grog had
died out of us, it seemed a rather blue look-out.

There was the whole countryside pretty thick with police stations,
where every man, from the sergeant to the last-joined recruit, knew
the height, size, colour of hair, and so on of every one of us. If a
suspicious-looking man was seen or heard of within miles the telegraph
wires could be set to work. He could be met, stopped, searched, and
overhauled. What chance would any of us have then?

'Don't flatter yourselves, my boy,' Starlight said, when we'd got the
length of thinking how it was to be done, 'that there's any little
bit of a chance, for a year or two at any rate, of getting away. Not a
kangaroo rat could hop across from one scrub to another if there was
the least suspicion upon him without being blocked or run into. Jim, old
man, I'm sorry for you, but my belief is we're quartered here for a year
or two certain, and the sooner we make up our minds to it the better.'

Here poor old Jim groaned. 'Don't you think,' he said, quite timid-like,
'that about shearing-time a man might take his chance, leading an old
horse with a swag on, as if he wanted to get shearing in some of the big
down-the-river sheds?'

'Not a bit of it,' says Starlight. 'You're such a good-looking,
upstanding chap that you're safe to be pulled up and made answer for
yourself before you'd get fifty miles. If you rode a good horse they'd
think you were too smart-looking for a regular shearer, and nail you at
once.'

'But I'd take an old screw with a big leg,' pleaded Jim. 'Haven't I
often seen a cove walking and leading one just to carry his blankets and
things?'

'Then they'd know a chap like you, full of work and a native to boot,
ought to have a better turn-out--if it wasn't a stall. So they'd have
you for that.'

'But there's Isaac Lawson and Campbelltown. You've seen them. Isaac's an
inch taller than me, and the same cut and make. Why shouldn't they shop
them when they're going shearing? They're square enough, and always was.
And Campbelltown's a good deal like Dick, beard and all.'

'Well, I'll bet you a new meerschaum that both men are arrested on
suspicion before shearing. Of course they'll let them go again; but,
you mark my words, they'll be stopped, as well as dozens of others. That
will show how close the