essing, bears painful
evidence of its isolation. The settler's wife little resembles Agnes
Buckley--she is too typically colonial for that. 'She was young, but a
certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore
silent witness to the toils of housekeeping with indifferent servants or
none at all; to the want of average female society; to a little
loneliness and a great deal of monotony.'

The visitor meets another member of the household, Stangrove's unmarried
sister, a beautiful and spirited young woman whose impatience with her
colourless life is outwardly subdued to ironical resignation. 'Another
eventful day for Mr. Redgrave,' she remarks on his return after a day's
riding over the station with her brother; 'yesterday the sheep were
lost--to-day the sheep are found; so passes our life on the Warroo.'

The best argument against Boldrewood's usual treatment of character is
furnished by the great bushranger chief who is the central figure in
_Robbery under Arms_. The author here submits for the first and only
time to that fundamental law of fiction which demands a certain
judicious exaggeration in the characters of a story depending for its
interest mainly on the charm of circumstance. Starlight is at once the
most real and least possible personage to be found in any of
Boldrewood's novels. He becomes real because his character and actions
are conceived in harmony with the romance and pathos of the story.
Though it is obvious enough that there never could have existed a
bushranger with quite so much of the _bel air_, or with a private code
of honour so admirable, the exaggeration is far from obtrusive. He is of
a stature suited to the deeds he performs, and, both he and his exploits
being often closely associated with historical facts, a strong sense of
reality is maintained.

Starlight seems to be a compound of several characters. He has Turpin's
ubiquity, Claude Duval's _sang-froid_, the personal attractiveness of
Gardiner (leader of a gang which made a business of robbing
gold-escorts in New South Wales about forty years ago), and the
humorous daredevilry of the 'Captain Thunderbolt' who obtained notoriety
in the same colony a few years later.

Boldrewood seems to have shrewdly agreed with the dictum of Turpin, that
it is necessary for a highwayman, at all events a captain of highwaymen,
to be a gentleman. But Starlight, unlike Turpin, does not become vain
with success, and is far from bein