you're wise, Wallings. I don't want your blood on my head; but if you
must----" But Wallings rode at him at a gallop. Two of the troopers
fired point-blank at Moonlight, and both shots told. He never moved, but
just lifted his rifle. Wallings threw up his arms, and fell off his
horse a dying man. As Moonlight was sinking, the leader of the troopers
said: "Now you may as well tell us what your name is." But he shook his
head, and died with the secret.' He was 'a gentlemanly fellow,' probably
one of that unhappy class of young Englishmen of good birth and no
character who are exiled to the colonies for their sins, and there often
acquire new vices or sink into obscurity.

When Archibald Forbes was in New Zealand a few years ago, he met a
peer's son who was earning his 'tucker' as a station-cook. A Chinaman,
aspiring to better things, had vacated the billet in his favour! It is
interesting to note the use Boldrewood makes in his novel of the
suggestion afforded by the bushranger's concealment of his identity.
When Starlight is overcome in his last attempt at escape, the curiosity
long felt concerning his past life seems for the third time in the story
about to be gratified. But the reader is once more and finally
disappointed. The bushranger has given his last messages, and is dying
with some of the indifference to existence which has characterised him
throughout the story.

'I say, Morringer, do you remember the last pigeon-match you and I
shot in, at Hurlingham?'

'Why, good God!' says Sir Ferdinand, bending down, and looking into
his face. 'It can't be! Yes; by Jove! it is----'

He spoke some name I couldn't catch, but Starlight put a finger on
his lips, and whispered:

'You won't tell, will you? Say you won't.'

The other nodded.

He smiled just like his old self.

'Poor Aileen!' he said, quite faint. His head fell back. Starlight
was dead!

Boldrewood's characters, as he has said himself, are constructed from
many models. And the Marstons are, it seems, the only personages he has
drawn solely from life. Gardiner, with whom some readers have
identified Starlight, was, it is recorded, 'a man of prepossessing
appearance and plausible address, who had many friends even among the
settlers never suspected of sympathy with criminals, while many of the
fair sex regarded him as a veritable hero.'

That the romantic life of this noted criminal furnished Boldrewood with
s