for a few hours, if the police came along quick.'

'It's a good thing they started at once,' says I. 'Them boys are very
useful sometimes, and blackfellows too.'

I went off then, and had a laugh to myself. I was pretty middling
certain it was Billy the Boy and Warrigal. Starlight had wrote the note
before we started, only I didn't think they'd be game to deliver it
themselves.

Now the police was away, all but a couple of young fellows--I went and
had a look to make sure--that didn't know any of us by sight, I thought
we might enjoy ourselves for once in a way without watching every one
that came nigh us. And we did enjoy ourselves. I did, I know; though
you'd think, as we carried our lives in our hands, in a manner of
speaking, the fun couldn't have been much. But it's a queer world!
Men like us, that don't know what's to happen to them from one day to
another, if they can only see their way for a week ahead, often have
more real pleasure in the bit of time they have to themselves than many
a man has in a year that has no call to care about time or money or be
afraid of anybody.

As for Starlight, if he'd been going to be hung next week it would have
been all one to him. He'd have put off thinking about it until about an
hour before, and then would have made all his arrangements and done the
whole business quietly and respectably, without humbug, but without
any flashness either. You couldn't put him wrong, or make him do or say
anything that was out of place.

However, this time nobody was going to be hung or took or anything else.
We'd as good as got a free pardon for the time being, now the police
was away; no one else would have meddled with us if we'd had our names
printed on our hats. So we made the most of it, I expect. Starlight
carried on all sorts of high ropes. He was introduced to all the nobs,
and I saw him in the grand stand and the saddling-paddock, taking the
odds in tens and fifties from the ringmen--he'd brought a stiffish roll
of notes with him--and backing the Dawson stable right out.

It turned out afterwards that he'd met them at an inn on the mountains,
and helped them to doctor one of their leaders that had been griped. So
they took a fancy to him, and, being free-hearted sort of fellows, asked
him to keep them company in the drag, and let one of the grooms ride his
horse. Once he started he kept them alive, you may be sure, and by the
time they got to Turon they were ready to go round t