'Because the jury fetched him in guilty without leaving the box, and the
judge give him seven years. You wouldn't find this old varmint a-doin'
no such foolishness as that.'

Here he looks at Crib, as was lyin' down a good way off, and not letting
on to know anything. He saw father's old mare brought up, though, and
saddled, and knowed quite well what that meant. He never rode her unless
he was going out of the Hollow.

'I believe that dog could stick up a man himself as well as some fellows
we know,' says Starlight, 'and he'd do it, too, if your father gave him
the word.'

. . . . .

While we were taking it easy, and except for the loneliness of it as
safe as if we had been out of the country altogether, Moran and the
other fellows hadn't quite such a good time of it. They were hunted from
pillar to post by the police, who were mad to do something to meet
the chaff that was always being cast up to them of having a lot of
bush-rangers robbing and shooting all over the country and not being
able to take them. There were some out-of-the-way places enough in the
Weddin Mountains, but none like the Hollow, where they could lie quiet
and untroubled for weeks together, if they wanted. Besides, they
had lost their gold by their own foolishness in not having better
pack-horses, and hadn't much to carry on with, and it's not a life that
can be worked on the cheap, I can tell you, as we often found out. Money
comes easy in our line, but it goes faster still, and a man must never
be short of a pound or two to chuck about if he wants to keep his
information fresh, and to have people working for him night and day with
a will.

So they had some every-day sort of work cut out to keep themselves
going, and it took them all their time to get from one part of the
country where they were known to some other place where they weren't
expected. Having out-and-out good hacks, and being all of them chaps
that had been born in the bush and knew it like a book, it was wonderful
how they managed to rob people at one place one day, and then be at some
place a hundred miles off the next. Ever so many times they came off,
and they'd call one another Starlight and Marston, and so on, till the
people got regularly dumbfoundered, and couldn't tell which of the gang
it was that seemed to be all over the country, and in two places at the
same time. We used to laugh ourselves sometimes, when we'd hear tell
that all the travellers pass