me down at the wrong time.'

'Look here, old fellow,' says Mr. Knightley, 'leave him behind and take
this black horse the boy's on; he's one of the finest hacks you ever
crossed. I refused sixty guineas for him the other day from Morringer.'

'Thanks, very much,' says Starlight, brightening up a bit; 'but I hardly
like to deprive you of him. Won't you want him yourself?'

'Oh, I can manage without him,' says Mr. Knightley. 'I'll let you have
him for fifty and allow you ten pounds for your screw. You can add it on
to your I O U, and pay it in with the other.'

We all laughed at this, and Moran said if he was dealing with Mr.
Knightley he'd get him a pound or two cheaper. But Starlight said, very
serious-like, that the arrangement would suit him very well. So he had
his saddle shifted, and the groom led back the bay and turned him loose
in the paddock.

We mounted then, and it looked as if we were all matched for a race to
the Black Stump. Moran had a good horse, and when he set him going in
the first bit of thick timber we came to, it took a man, I tell you, to
keep him in sight. Starlight made the black horse hit out in a way that
must have been a trifle strange to him unless he'd been in training
lately. As for Mr. Knightley, he took it easy and sailed away on one
side with Joe Wall and me. He played it out cool to the last, and wasn't
going to hurry himself for anybody.

Half-an-hour before sundown we rode up to the Black Stump. It was a
rum-looking spot, but everybody knew it for miles round. There was
nothing like it anywhere handy. It was within a reasonable distance of
Bathurst, and not so far from a place we could make to, where there was
good shelter and hiding too, if we were pushed.

There were two or three roads led up to it, and crossed there--one from
Bathurst, one to Turon, and another straight into the forest country,
which led range by range to Nulla Mountain. We could see on a good way
ahead, and, though there was no one at the tree when we came, a single
horseman was riding along the road for Bathurst. We all drew rein round
the stump. It had been a tremendous big old ironbark tree--nobody knew
how old, but it had had its top blown off in a thunderstorm, and the
carriers had lighted so many fires against the roots of it that it had
been killed at last, and the sides were as black as a steamer's funnel.
After a bit we could make out the doctor's short-tailed, mousy mare and
him powdering along at