Robbery Under Arms quotes

I’m blessed if ever I did know of a dog being hanged, though, if it comes to that, a shot or a bait generally makes an end of ’em in this country. Ha, ha! Did I laugh?

What a rum thing it is that a man should have a laugh in him when he’s only got twenty-nine days more to live⁠—a day for every year of my life.

Well, laughing or crying, this is what it has come to at last. All the drinking and recklessness; the flash talk and the idle ways; the merry cross-country rides that we used to have, night or day, it made no odds to us;

It’s only natural. He was rash, or Starlight would never have dropped him that day. Not if he’d been sober either. We’d been drinking all night at that Willow Tree shanty. Bad grog, too!

When a man’s half drunk he’s fit for any devilment that comes before him.

Drink! How do you think a chap that’s taken to the bush—regularly turned out, I mean, with a price on his head, and a fire burning in his heart night and day—can stand his life if he don’t drink?

Anyhow, I must make a start. How do people begin when they set to work to write their own sayings and doings?

There’s been a deal more doing than talking in my life⁠—it was the wrong sort⁠—more’s the pity.

Well, let’s see; his parents were poor, but respectable. That’s what they always say. My parents were poor, and mother was as good a soul as ever broke bread, and wouldn’t have taken a shilling’s worth that wasn’t her own if she’d been starving.

He thrashed him unmerciful as he did us boys. Still the dog was that fond of him you’d think he’d like to die for him there and then.

But dogs are not like boys, or men either⁠—better, perhaps.

Well, we were all born at the hut by the creek, I suppose, for I remember it as soon as I could remember anything.

Father was one of those people that gets shut of a deal of trouble in this world by always sticking to one thing.

If he said he’d do this or that he always did it and nothing else. As for turning him, a wild bull halfway down a range was a likelier try-on. So nobody ever bothered him after he’d once opened his mouth.

Father was one of those people that gets shut of a deal of trouble in this world by always sticking to one thing. If he said he’d do this or that he always did it and nothing else.

As for turning him, a wild bull halfway down a range was a likelier try-on.

So nobody ever bothered him after he’d once opened his mouth. They knew it was so much lost labour. I sometimes thought Aileen was a bit like him in her way of sticking to things. But then she was always right, you see.

He had half-a-dozen children, and, though he was not up to much, he wasn’t that bad that he didn’t want his children to have the chance of being better than himself.

I’ve seen a good many crooked people in my day, but very few that, though they’d given themselves up as a bad job, didn’t hope a bit that their youngsters mightn’t take after them.

Curious, isn’t it? But it is true, I can tell you.

Now this was very bad for us boys.

Lads want plenty of work, and a little play now and then to keep them straight. If there’s none, they’ll make it; and you can’t tell how far they’ll go when they once start.

Well, Jim and I used to get our horses and ride off quietly in the afternoon, as if we were going after cattle;

… odd feeling seemed to come over my mind, and if it had been the devil himself standing on the dead limb it could not have had a worse effect on me as I stopped there, uncertain whether to turn to the right or the left.

We don’t often know in this world sometimes whether we are turning off along a road where we shall never come back from, or whether we can go just a little way and look at the far-off hills and new rivers, and come home safe.

I remember the whole lot of bad-meaning thoughts coming with a rush over my heart, and I laughed at myself for being so soft as to choose a hardworking, pokey kind of life at the word of a slow fellow like George, when I might …

If anything could have turned me then it would have been this. It was almost like giving her life for ours, and I don’t think she’d have valued hers two straws if she could have saved us.

There’s a great deal said about different kinds of love in this world, but I can’t help thinking that the love between brothers and sisters that have been brought up together and have had very few other people to care about is a higher, better sort than any other in the world.

There’s less selfishness about it—no thought but for the other’s good. If that can be made safe, death and pain and poverty and misery are all little things.

Father never took any notice of the poor brute as he came limping along the stones.

Woman or child, horse or dog, it’s the same old thing⁠—the more any creature loves a man in this world the worse they’re treated.

It looks like it, at any rate. I saw how it was; father had given Crib a cruel beating the night before, when he was put out for some trifling matter, and the dog had left him and run home.

Well, I didn’t quite like leaving the old chap in the middle of the work like that. I remember thinking, like many another young fool, I suppose, that I could draw back in time, just after I’d tackled this job.

Draw back, indeed! When does a man ever get the chance of doing that, once he’s regularly gone in for any of the devil’s work and wages?

He takes care there isn’t much drawing back afterwards. So I said—

We led our horses behind them, and the dog walked along, saving his sore feet as well as he could, and never tried to bite a beast once he got within the walls. He looked quite satisfied, and kept chuckling almost to himself.

I really believe I’ve seen dogs laugh.

Once upon a time I’ve read of they’d have taken poor Crib for a familiar spirit, and hanged or burnt him. Well, he knew a lot, and no mistake. I’ve seen plenty of Christians as he could buy and sell, and no trouble to him.

Hunter’s cattle, and thought he and old Crib could bring them in by themselves. And a mighty good haul it was. Father said we should share the weaners between the three of us; that meant £50 a piece at least.

The devil always helps beginners.

We put through a couple of days pleasantly enough, after our hardish bit of work. Jim found some fishhooks and a line, and we caught plenty of mullet and eels in the deep, clear waterholes.

When they were in the yard we had a good look at his own horse—a good look—and if I’d been a fellow that painted pictures, and that kind of thing, I could draw a middlin’ good likeness of him now.

By George! how fond I am of a good horse⁠—a real well-bred clinker.

I’d never have been here if it hadn’t been for that, I do believe; and many another Currency chap can say the same—a horse or a woman—that’s about the size of it, one or t’other generally fetches us.

Only sit at home and do nothing, or else go out and watch the grass witherin’ and the water dryin’ up, and the stock dyin’ by inches before your eyes. And no change, maybe, for months.

The ground like iron and the sky like brass, as the parson said, and very true, too, last Sunday.

Then the youngsters, havin’ so much idle time on their hands, take to gaffin’ and flash talk; and money must be got to sport and pay up if they lose;

and the stock all ramblin’ about and mixed up, and there’s a temptation to collar somebody’s calves or foals, like we did that first red heifer. I shall remember her to my dying day.

It seems as if I had put that brand on my own heart when I jammed it down on her soft skin.

Anyhow, I never forgot it, and there’s many another like me, I’ll be bound.

All the same, it would have paid us better if we’d read a little more and put the bullocking on one side, at odd times.

A man can learn as much out of a book or a paper sometimes in an hour as will save his work for a week, or put him up to working to better purpose.

I can see that now—too late, and more’s the pity.

So we all got on first-rate, and anybody would have thought that there wasn’t a more steady-going, hardworking, happy family in the colony. No more there wasn’t, while it lasted.

After all, what is there that’s half as good as being all right and square, working hard for the food you eat, and the sleep you enjoy, able to look all the world in the face, and afraid of nothing and nobody!

We were so quiet and comfortable till the winter was over and the spring coming on, till about September, that I almost began to believe we’d never done anything in our lives we could be made to suffer for.

“Oh, Dick!” said Aileen, “I can’t bear to hear you make a joke of that kind of thing. Don’t we all know what it leads to!

Wouldn’t it be better to live on dry bread and be honest than to be full of money and never know the day when you’d be dragged to gaol?

”

… can’t stand the cage of what’s called honest labour, which means working for someone else for twenty or thirty years, never having a day to yourself, or doing anything you like, and saving up a trifle for your old age when you can’t enjoy it.

I don’t wonder youngsters break traces and gallop off like a colt out of a team.

Besides, sometimes there’s a good-looking girl even at a bush public, the daughter or the barmaid, and it’s odd, now, what a difference that makes.

But there’s other men that can’t do that sort of thing, and it’s no use talking. They must have life and liberty and a free range.

There’s some birds, and animals too, that either pine in a cage or kill themselves, and I suppose it’s the same way with some men.

They can’t stand the cage of what’s called honest labour, which means working for someone else for twenty or thirty years, never having a day to yourself, or doing anything you like, and saving up a trifle for your old age when you can’t enjoy …

She was a Troubadour, it seems; there never was a Troubadour yet that wouldn’t buck and bolt, and smash himself and his rider, if he got a fright, or his temper was roused.

Men and women, horses and dogs, are very much alike. I know which can talk best.

As to the rest, I don’t know whether there’s so much for us to be proud of.

People that won’t stick at anything in some ways will be that soft and good-feeling in others—ten times more so than your regular good people.

Anyone that thinks all mankind’s divided into good, bad, and middlin’, and that they can draft ’em like a lot of cattle⁠—some to one yard, some to another⁠—don’t know much.

There’s a mob in most towns though, I think, that wants boilin’ down bad. Some day they’ll do it, maybe; they’ll have to when all the good country’s stocked up.

“ ’Tain’t no ways likely,” says father. “They’re the sleepiest lot of chaps in this frontage I ever saw. It’s hardly worth while touching them. There’s no fun in it. It’s like shooting pheasants when they ain’t preserved.

There’s no risk, and when there’s no risk there’s no pleasure.

Anyway that’s my notion.”

He may have had his faults, but we never seen ’em. I believe a deal that was said of him wasn’t true, and nothing won’t ever make me believe it.”

These kind of people will stand up for you all the days of your life, and stick to you till the very last moment, no matter what you turn out to be.

Well, there’s something pleasant in it; and it makes you think human nature ain’t quite such a low and paltry thing as some people tries to make out.

Then we had nothing to think about when we woke in the morning but to get in the cows; and didn’t we enjoy the fresh butter and the damper and bacon and eggs at breakfast time!

It seems to me the older people get the more miserable they get in this world.

If they don’t make misery for themselves other people do it for ’em; or just when everything’s going straight, and they’re doing their duty first-rate and all that, some accident happens ’em just as if they was the worst people in the world.

That is, if I was contented,” he went on to say, with a sort of a groan.

There never was a greater mistake in the world, I believe, than for a man to let a woman know how much he cares for her.

It’s right enough if she’s made up her mind to take him, no odds what happens.

“

It’s all a toss up⁠—like our lives; married or lagged, bushwork or roadwork (in irons), free or bond.

We can’t tell how it will be with us this day year.”

“I’ve half a mind to shoot myself,” says Jim, “and end it all. I would, too, only for mother and Aileen.

What’s the use of life that isn’t life, but fear and misery, from one day’s end to another, and we only just grown up?

It’s d⸺d hard that a chap’s brains don’t grow along with his legs and arms.”

“I’ve half a mind to shoot myself,” says Jim, “and end it all. I would, too, only for mother and Aileen. What’s the use of life that isn’t life, but fear and misery, from one day’s end to another, and we only just grown up?

It’s d⁠⸺⁠d hard that a chap’s brains don’t grow along with his legs and arms.

”

The curlews set up a cry from time to time; but they didn’t sound so queer and shrill as they mostly do at night.

I don’t know how it was, but everything seemed quiet and pleasant and homelike, as if a chap might live a hundred years, if it was all like this, and keep growing better and happier every day.

I remember all this so particular because it was the only time I’d felt like it for years, and I never had the same feeling afterwards—nor likely to.

The jury all went out. Then another case was called on, and a fresh jury sworn in for to try it. We sat in the dock. The judge told Starlight he might sit down, and we waited till they came back.

I really believe that waiting is the worst part of the whole thing, the bitterest part of the punishment.

I’ve seen men when they were being tried for their lives—haven’t I done it, and gone through it myself?—waiting there an hour—two hours, half through the night, not knowing whether they was to be brought in guilty or not.

The first I heard was Starlight’s voice again, just as cool and leisurely as ever. I never heard any difference in it, and I’ve known him speak in a lot of different situations.

If you shut your eyes you couldn’t tell from the tone of his voice whether he was fighting for his life or asking you to hand him the salt.

When he said the hardest and fiercest thing—and he could be hard and fierce—he didn’t raise his voice; he only seemed to speak more distinct like. His eyes were worse than his voice at such times.

That makes no change in them—not much, I mean. If they sleep it’s all right; if they don’t sleep anything must be happiness after the life they have escaped.

“Happy are the dead” is written on all prison walls.

What I suffered in that first time no tongue can tell. I can’t bear now to think of it and put it down. The solitary part of it was enough to drive any man mad that had been used to a free life.

If anything could have given a man’s heart a turn the right way that would have done it. I felt again as if someone cared for me in the world, as if I had a soul worth saving.

And people may talk as they like, but when a man has the notion that everybody has given him up as a bad job, and has dropped troubling themselves about him, he gets worse and worse, and meets the devil halfway.

“Richard Marston, I cannot tell how grieved I am to see you here. Both papa and I were so sorry to hear all about those Momberah cattle.”

Well, first of all, we had to get the cell door open. That was the easiest part of the lot.

There’s always men in a big gaol that all kinds of keys and locks are like large print to.

They can make most locks fly open like magic; what’s more, they’re willing to do it for anybody else, or show them how. It keeps their hand in; they have a pleasure in spiting those above them whenever they can do it.

… too full to talk, much less laugh, with the thought of being out of that cursed prison and on my own horse again, with the free bush breeze filling my breast, and the free forest I’d lived in all my life once more around me.

I felt like a king, and as for what might come afterwards I had no more thought than a schoolboy has of his next year’s lessons at the beginning of his holidays.

It might come now. As I took the old horse by the head and raced him down the mountain side, I felt I was living again and might call myself a man once more.

“Wasn’t sure about it,” says Jim, “and when you ain’t it’s safest to hold your tongue.

There’s a good many things we all do that don’t want talking about.

”

He said we had all fine times before us now for a year or two, any way. That was a good long time. After that anything might happen. What it would be he neither knew nor cared.

Life was made up of short bits; sometimes it was hard luck; sometimes everything went jolly and well.

We’d got our liberty again, our horses, and a place to go to, where all the police in the country would never find us. He was going in for a short life and a merry one.

“Not if I know it,” said the boy; “

I want to see life before I die.

I’m not going to keep on milling and slaving day after day all the year round. I’ll cut it next year as sure as a gun. I say, won’t you let me ride a bit of the way with ye?”

“What’s the Captain going to do?” she said suddenly. “He doesn’t look able to bear up against hardship like the rest of you.

What beautiful small hands he has, and his eyes are like sleeping fires.

”

They know this, yet they won’t keep straight, or can’t—whichever it is.

Men and women are queer things, there’s no mistake; and the more life you know, the less you’re able to understand the rights of it.

then we must settle on something and buckle to it more businesslike. We’ve been too helter-skelter lately, Jim and I. We was beginning to run risks, got nearly dropped on more nor once.”

There’s no mistake, it’s a grand thing to wake up and know you’ve got nothing to do for a bit but to take it easy and enjoy yourself.

No matter how light your work may be, if it’s regular and has to be done every day, the harness’ll gall somewhere; you get tired in time and sick of the whole thing.

There’s no mistake, it’s a grand thing to wake up and know you’ve got nothing to do for a bit but to take it easy and enjoy yourself.

No matter how light your work may be, if it’s regular and has to be done every day, the harness’ll gall somewhere; you get tired in time and sick of the whole thing.

Jim and I knew well that, bar accidents, we were as safe in the Hollow as we used to be in our beds when we were boys.

When we got round the rock the track was plain again; it had been well worn once, though neither foot nor hoof much had been along it for many a year.

It takes a good while to wear out a track in a dry country.

The gully widened out bit by bit, till at last we came to a little round green flat, right under the rock walls which rose up a couple of thousand feet above it on two sides.

Bit by bit he had gone on, not liking or caring for the thing one bit, but following the lead of others, till he reached his present pitch.

How many men, and women too, there are in the world who seem born to follow the lead of others for good or evil! They get drawn in somehow, and end by paying the same penalty as those that meant nothing else from the start.

The finish of the whole thing was this, that we made up our minds to turn out in the bushranging line. It might seem foolish enough to outsiders, but when you come to think of it we couldn’t better ourselves much.

That’s what they can’t stand; and liquor, for a bit, mind you—say a few hours or so—takes all that kind of feeling clean away. Of course it returns, harder than before, but that says nothing. It can be driven away.

All the heavy-heartedness which a man feels, but never puts into words, flies away with the first or second glass of grog.

If a man was suffering pains of any kind, or was being stretched on the rack (I never knew what a rack was till I’d time for reading in gaol, except a horse-rack), or was being flogged, and a glass of anything he could swallow …

After the first week’s rest, which was real pleasure and enjoyment, we began to find the life too dull and dozy. We’d had quite enough of a quiet life, and began to long for a bit of work and danger again.

Chaps that have got something on their minds can’t stand idleness, it plays the bear with them.

I’ve always found they get thinking and thinking till they get a low fit like, and then if there’s any grog handy they try to screw themselves up with that.

Father made off on a line of his own. We took the two horses we’d ridden out of the Hollow, and made for that place the shortest way we knew. We could afford to hit out—horseflesh was cheap to us—but not to go slow.

Time was more than money to us now⁠—it was blood, or next thing to it.

As it turned out we all got safe into the Hollow before dark; pretty well tired out the lot of us was.

When he gave it out they had to take it and be content. Then he used to ride away and not trouble his head any more about it; and after a bit of barneying it all seemed to come right.

Men liked to be talked to straight, and no shilly-shally.

What I didn’t like so much was the hunting about of the poor devils that had not got what they called a licence—a printed thing giving ’em leave for to dig gold on the Crown lands.

It was grand, and the girls laughed till they cried again. Well, those were merry days; we did have a bit of fun sometimes, and if the devil was dogging us he kept a good way out of sight.

It’s his way at the start when fellows take the downward track.

We got back safe enough, and father opened his eyes when he saw the roll of notes Starlight counted over as the price of the colts. “Horse-breeding’s our best game,” says the old man, “if they’re going to pay such prices as this.

Then came the number—68 y⸺e—. That looked like the age of the dead man; he was always called as old when he died, father said; but I’d seen men no older than that that looked a hundred.

Grief, hard living, and a rough life, will put ten years on any man’s life quick enough, you take my word for it.

“Well if it wasn’t years, what was it?”

The rest we could bring home. Starlight was awful fond of black duck and always had them cooked with every care. “You might just as well have good cooking and reasonable comfort as the other thing,” he used to say. “

Circumstances may have prevented us from being honest that’s no reason why we should be slovenly and barbarous in our habits as well.

”

“Never mind my hands, Dick,” she said, smiling at me so sweet and pitiful-like. “That’s not the worst of it. They keep my heart from aching.

The harder I work the better I feel. It’s trying to do without honest labour that we were all born to that makes more than half the sin and misery in the world.

”

“Of course, it was their duty, in a general way,” as Jim said. But I had the feelings of a man for all that.

And even if a fellow has done what’s wrong and knows it, he don’t like to be treated like a wild beast.

I didn’t say much, but I brooded over things a good deal, and bided my time till something else turned up. It wasn’t long before a chance came, and I took it.

He’d had a small station once, and might have done well (I was going to say) if he’d had sense enough to go straight. What rot it all is!

Couldn’t we all have done well, if the devils of idleness and easy-earned money and false pride had let us alone?

Father said his bargain with these chaps was that he should send down to them when anything was up that more men was wanted for, and they was always to meet him at a certain place.

Mrs. Mullockson had turned into quite a fashionable lady since the Melbourne days; dressed very grand, and talked and chaffed with the commissioner, the police inspectors, and goldfield officers from the camp as if she’d been brought up to it.

People lived fast in those goldfields days; it don’t take long to pick up that sort of learning.

The Prospectors’ Arms became quite the go, and all the swell miners and quartz reefers began to meet there as a matter of course.

and though they rubbed shoulders with us every day, no one had eyes sharp enough to see that James Henderson and his brother Dick—mates with the best men on the field—were escaped prisoners, and had a big reward on them besides.

Nobody knew it, and that was pretty nigh as good as if it wasn’t true.

So we held on, and made money hand over fist. We used to go up to the hotel whenever we’d an evening to spare, but that wasn’t often.

seeing it grow bigger keeps many a fellow straight, and he gets to like adding to it, and feels the pull of being careful with his money, which a poor man that never has anything worth saving doesn’t.

Poor men are the most extravagant, I’ve always found.

They spend all they have, which middling kind of people just above them don’t. They screw and pinch to bring up their children, and whatnot; and dress shabby and go without a lot which the working man never thinks of stinting himself in.

A girl’s first sorrow when something happened to her love! They never look quite the same afterwards. I’ve seen a good many, and if it was real right down love, they were never the same in looks or feelings afterwards.

They might “get over it,” as people call it; but that’s a sort of healing over a wound. It don’t always cure it, and the wound often breaks out again and bleeds afresh.

Jeanie didn’t look so bad, and she was that glad to see Jim again and to find him respected as a hardworking well-to-do miner that she forgot most of her disappointments and forgave him his share of any deceit that had been practised upon her …

Jim and his wife moved over to the cottage in Specimen Gully; the miners went back to their work, and there was no more talk or bother about the matter.

Something always happened every day at the Turon which wiped the last thing clean out of people’s mind.

Either it was a big nugget, or a new reef, or a tent robbery, a gold-buyer stuck up and robbed in the Ironbarks, a horse-stealing match, a fight at a dance-house, or a big law case.

Poor mother! she had a hard time of it if ever anyone ever had in this world, and none of it her own fault as I could ever see.

Some people gets punished in this world for the sins other people commit.

I can see that fast enough. Whether they get it made up to ’em afterwards, of course I can’t say. They ought to, anyhow, if it can be made up to ’em.

Some people gets punished in this world for the sins other people commit. I can see that fast enough. Whether they get it made up to ’em afterwards, of course I can’t say. They ought to, anyhow, if it can be made up to ’em.

Some things that are suffered in this world can’t be paid for, I don’t care how they fix it.

More than once, too, there was a line or two on a scrap of paper slipped in Aileen’s letters from Gracey Storefield.

Kate went out to Specimen Gully to see her sister pretty often, and they sat and talked and laughed, just as they did in old times, Jeanie said.

She was a simple little thing, and her heart was as pure as quartz crystal.

I do really believe she was no match for Kate in any way. So the days went on.

What you’ve done you’re sure of, no matter how it mayn’t suit you in some ways, nor how much better you expect to be off where you are going to. You had that and had the good of it.

What the coming time may bring you can’t reckon on.

All kinds of cross luck and accidents may happen. What’s the use of money to a man if he smashes his hip and has to walk with a crutch all his days?

You had that and had the good of it. What the coming time may bring you can’t reckon on. All kinds of cross luck and accidents may happen.

What’s the use of money to a man if he smashes his hip and has to walk with a crutch all his days?

I’ve seen a miner with a thousand a month coming in, but he’d been crushed pretty near to death with a fall of earth, and about half of him was dead.

Now and then a dog would bark—now a revolver would go off.

It was never quiet on Turon diggings, day or night.

Well, there they all were, tents and diggers, claims and windlasses, pumps and waterwheels. I had been happy enough there, God knows; and perhaps I was looking at it all for the last time.

Well, there they all were, tents and diggers, claims and windlasses, pumps and waterwheels. I had been happy enough there, God knows; and perhaps I was looking at it all for the last time.

As I turned and made down the hill into the black forest that spread below me like the sea, I felt as if I was leaving everything that was any good in life behind with the Turon lights, and being hunted once more, in spite of myself, into a desert of darkness and despair.

“Not they. They split and took across towards the Mountain Hut, where you all camped with the horses. I didn’t see ’em; but I cut their tracks. Five shod horses. They might be here tomorrow.”

A bush telegraph ain’t a bad thing.

They’re not all as good as Billy the Boy. But the worst of ’em, like a bad sheep dog, is a deal better than none.

When I took the parcel out of the pocket of my poncho I thought it felt deuced heavy, and there, sure enough, was one of those shilling flasks of brandy they sell for chaps to go on the road with.

Brandy ain’t a good thing at all times and seasons, and I’ve seen more than one man, or a dozen either, that might just as well have sawed away at their throats with a blunt knife as put the first glass to their lips.

But we was both hungry, thirsty, tired, miserable, and pretty well done and beaten, though we hadn’t had time to think about it. That drop of brandy seemed as if it had saved our lives.

He will appear on the Judgment Day leading Rainbow, I firmly believe. Why he should be so confoundedly anxious about my welfare I can’t make out—I can’t, really. It’s his peculiar form of mania, I suppose.

We all suffer from some madness or other.

”

“Poor old Jim, he’s a deal too good for the place. Sad mistake this getting married.

People should either keep straight or have no relatives to bear the brunt of their villainies.

‘But, soft,’ as they say in the play, ‘where am I?’ I thought I was a virtuous miner again. Here we are at this devil-discovered, demon-haunted old Hollow again—first cousin to the pit of Acheron. There’s no help for it, Dick.

“Of course, the old story,” he says, throwing his cigar away, and giving a half laugh—such a laugh it was, too. “Captain Starlight again, I suppose.

The paltry vanity of leadership, and of being in the front of my fellow-men, has been the ruin of me ever since I could recollect.

If my people had let me go into the army, as I begged and prayed of them to do, it might have been all the other way.

A man on foot or a flock of sheep always keeps frightening ’em farther and farther from the old beat till they get back into a bit of back country or mallee scrub and stop there for good.

Cattle and horses and men and women are awful like one another in their ways, and the more you watch ’em the more it strikes you.

Another day or two idling and card-playing, another headache after too much grog at night, brought us to a regular go in about business, and then we fixed it for good.

I felt sorry when I see him, and thought what he’d gradually come to bit by bit, and where he’d most likely end, all along of the first money he had from father for telegraphing.

But after all I’ve a notion that men and women grow up as they are intended to from the beginning.

All the same as a tree from seed.

“Well, my lads,” he said, “you’ve done me the great honour to elect me to be your captain. I’m willing to act, or I shouldn’t be here.

If you’re fools enough to risk your lives and liberties for a thousand ounces of gold a man, I’m fool enough to show you the way.

”

I knew the writing; there was no more. I could see what Gracey meant, and wished over and over again that I had the chance of going straight, as I’d wished a thousand times before, but it was too late, too late!

When the coach is running down hill and the brake’s off, it’s no use trying to turn.

We had all our plan laid out and settled to the smallest thing. We were to meet near Eugowra Rocks a good hour or two before the escort passed, so as to have everything ready.

made us feel as if we weren’t plain Dick and Jim Marston, but regular grand fellows, in a manner of speaking.

What fools men are when they’re young⁠—and sometimes after that itself⁠—to be sure.

We started at daylight, and only stopped once on the road for a bite for ourselves and to water the horses, so that we were in good time. We brought a little corn with us, just to give the horses something;

It was a shame to see them there (and us too, for the matter of that), but there was no get away now.

There will be fools and rogues to the end of the world, I expect.

Even Moran looked a bit brighter than he did last time. He was one of those chaps that a bit of real danger smartens up. As for Burke, Daly, and Hulbert, they were like a lot of schoolboys, so full of their fun and larks.

But she knew him, and though he showed her no mercy and rode her till she was close up dead many a time, she’d do more for him than anyone else.

It’s the old story all the world over; it’s not them that cares most for others that gets the best served.

The other way on, as far as I see. She was pretty well up in front for a mare, and had a goodish shoulder, well-laid back, and her legs and feet were like iron.

A thousand pounds a head was a good price certainly!

We were worth as much as so many imported bulls (Starlight said) to any men that could round us up and run us in.

We were becoming more valuable, too, every day, in a manner of speaking; and there was no saying how much we mightn’t be worth if we put in a few more years at our present profession.

Then it got that cold we could hardly sit on our horses for trembling. The sky grew blacker and blacker.

The wind began to whistle and cry till I could almost swear I heard someone singing out for help.

Nulla Mountain was as black as your hat, and a kind of curious feeling crept over me, I hardly knew why, as if something was going to happen, I didn’t know what.

She had suffered a lot by him and us too; but, like most women, the very moment anything happened to any of us, even to dad, everything flew out of her head, except that we were sick or sorry and wanted her help.

Help, of course; wasn’t she willing to give that, and her rest and comfort, health, even life itself, to wear herself out, hand and foot, for anyone of her own family?

So poor Aileen made her way up all alone to the old scrub stockyard.

We had a good light when we got to the drop down into the Hollow. The sun was just setting, and if we’d had time or thought to give to the looks of things, no doubt it was a grand sight.

All the Hollow was lighted up, and looked like a green sea with islands of trees in it.

The rock towers on the other side of the range were shining and glittering like as if they were made of crystallised quartz or diamonds—red and white.

At a time like this they come racing and tumbling out like a flock of sheep out of a yard when the hurdle’s down. What a dashed queer thing human nature is when you come to think of it.

That a man should be able to keep his tongue quiet, and shut the door on all the sounds and images and wishes that goes racing about inside of his mind like wild horses in a paddock!

One day he’ll be smiling and sensible, looking so honest all the time. Next day a knock on the head or a little vein goes crack in the brain (as the doctor told me);

That was the best chance I ever had. Well, I don’t say as I haven’t had others—plenty in this country, and good ones too; but it was too late—I’d got set.

When a man’s young, that’s the time he can be turned right way or wrong. It’s none so easy afterwards.

”

“It always astonishes me,” said Starlight, “how any human being can consent to live, year after year, the same life in the same place. I should go mad half-a-dozen times over.

Change and adventure are the very breath of my nostrils.

”

“I have never been anywhere or seen anything, hardly so much as a church, a soldier, a shopwindow, or the sea, begging his pardon for putting him last.

But oh! what a splendid thing to be rich; no, not that altogether, but to be able to go wherever you liked, and have enough not to be troubled about money.

”

“The sun is going down behind the great rock tower,” Aileen says, as if she hadn’t heard him. Perhaps she didn’t. When people have a lot on their minds they’re half their time thinking their own thoughts. “How all the lovely colours are fading away.

Life seems so much like that⁠—a little brightness, then gray twilight, night and darkness so soon after.

”

If we’d only kept straight! Ah, there was where the whole mistake lay.

It often seems to me as if men and women ought to have two lives⁠—an old one and a new one⁠—one to repent of the other; the first one to show men what they ought to keep clear of in the second.

When you think how foolish-like and childish man or woman commits their first fault, not so bad in itself, but enough often to shut them out from nearly all their chances of good in this world, it does seem hardish that one life should end …

He always swore he’d been lagged innocent for his first offence, and had to do five years for stealing a horse he’d never seen. However, he’d shook many a one he never was had for, so that made it even.

But, somehow, I’ve always found that a man thinks nothing much about doing time for what he knows he’s rightly punished for.

But he never forgets being made to suffer—and hard lines it is—for what he hasn’t done. And that injustice’ll rankle in a man’s heart for years and years—perhaps all his life—I and make him tenfold a worse criminal than he would have been.

But he never forgets being made to suffer—and hard lines it is—for what he hasn’t done. And that injustice’ll rankle in a man’s heart for years and years—perhaps all his life—I and make him tenfold a worse criminal than he would have been.

So there’s no mistake⁠—magistrates and judges and all that lot ought to be as careful as they can; for, you’d better believe me, it’s far and away better to let two or three bad ’uns off now and again than to convict the wrong man.

However, Starlight stashed the row before long, and blew the old man up a bit for being venturesome himself and going out for the letters when any boy could have boned him, and then giving it, us for doing just the same thing.

It’s best to have both. I know that.

But keeping a child from learning to read and write is like putting out his eyes for fear he might want to walk about and take the wrong road, and be dashed to bits down a drop.

A man that has his eyes may go wrong—he often does—like our lot, but a blind man must go wrong, you’d think, or else must have someone to lead him about, a dog or a child, all his life.

“You’re a good fellow, Richard, and stanch, but you’re like your father—you haven’t any imagination. I see half-a-dozen ways of doing the whole thing. Besides, our honour’s concerned.

I never made a promise yet, for good or for evil, that I didn’t carry out, and some have cost me dearly enough, God knows.

Fancy running our horses and going to the ball under the noses of the police—the idea is delicious!”

I see half-a-dozen ways of doing the whole thing. Besides, our honour’s concerned. I never made a promise yet, for good or for evil, that I didn’t carry out, and some have cost me dearly enough, God knows.

Fancy running our horses and going to the ball under the noses of the police⁠—the idea is delicious!

”

He’d been head man in a good racing stable, but drink had been the ruin of him—lost him his place, and sent him out here. He could be trusted to go right through with a job like ours, for all that.

Like many men that drink hard, he was as sober as a judge between one burst and another.

And once he took over a horse in training he touched nothing but water till the race was run and the horse back in his box.

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.

And a horse race, don’t they love it? Wouldn’t they give their souls almost—and they do often enough—for a real flyer, a thoroughbred, able to run away from everything in a country race.

The horse is a fatal animal to us natives, and many a man’s ruin starts from a bit of horseflesh not honestly come by.

But our racing ain’t going forward, and the day’s passing fast. As I said, everybody was looking at the horses—coming along with the rush of the thoroughbred when he’s “on his top” for condition; his coat like satin, and his legs like iron.

The Sydney horses were first and second, the diggers’ favourite third; but old Rainbow, lying well up, was coming through the ruck hard held and looking full of running. They passed close by us.

What a sight it is to see a dozen blood horses in top condition come past you like a flash of lightning! How their hoofs thunder on the level turf!

How the jockeys’ silk jackets rustle in the wind they make! How muscle and sinew strain as they pretty near fly through the air!

“Well done, the Turon Star!” says Starlight, after he read it all out. “I call that very fair. There’s a flavour of good feeling underneath much of that nonsense, as well as of porter and oysters.

It does a fellow a deal more good than slanging him to believe that he’s human after all, and that men think so.

”

I looked at our men. As they stepped on to the floor of the hall and looked round Mrs. Knightley smiled.

She looked to me like an angel from heaven that had come by chance into the other place and hadn’t found out her mistake.

I saw Starlight start as he looked at her.

“Suppose we talk it over,” says Starlight, very quiet, but I knew by the first word that he spoke something was coming. “Daly dropped, and it can’t be helped. Accidents will happen.

If you play at bowls you must take rubbers.

It has been a fair fight; no one can say otherwise. Let us put it to the vote. I propose that Mr. Knightley’s offer be accepted. Not that I intend to take a shilling of the money.”

The dewdrops on the grass and all the twigs and shoots of the trees looked as if it was covered with diamonds and rubies as the sun began to shine and melt some of them. My horse stepped along limber and free.

“O Lord,” I says to myself out aloud, “what a happy cove I might be if I could start fresh⁠—knowing what I know⁠—and not having all these things against me!”

When I got on to the tableland above Rocky Flat I took a good look at the whole place.

I never thought the old place could have showed out the way it did. But money can do a lot. It ain’t everything in this world. But there’s precious little it won’t get you, and things must be very bad it won’t mend.

A man must have very little sense if he don’t see as he gets older that character and money are the two things he’s got to be carefullest of in this world.

If he’s not particular to a shade about either or both of ’em, he’ll find his mistake.

“It’s hard to say,” she went on, more as if she was talking to herself than to me; “I feel that.

Bad example⁠—love of pleasure⁠—strong temptation⁠—evil company⁠—all these are heavy weights to drag down men’s souls to hell.

Who knows whether I should have been better than the thousands, the millions, that have fallen, that have taken the broad road that leads to destruction. Oh!

We hadn’t a long time to be in the old Hollow now. It had been a good friend to us in time of need, and we was sorry in a kind of way to leave it.

We were going to play for a big stake, and if we lost we shouldn’t have another throw in.

Our horses were in great buckle now; they hadn’t been doing much lately. I had the one I’d brought with me, and a thoroughbred brown horse that had been broken in the first season we came there.

“A first-rate idea,” says he. “I’m dashed if I don’t do it.

There’s nothing like making one’s exit in good form.

How savage Morringer will be! Thank you for the hint, Dick.”

I was sorry for it when I came to think. I daresay I might have got him round with a little patience and humbugging.

It’s always a mistake to lose your temper and make enemies; there’s no knowing what harm they may do ye.

People like us oughtn’t to throw away a chance, even with a chap like Warrigal. Besides, I knew it would vex Starlight, and for his sake I would have given a trifle it hadn’t happened.

Next morning it was “sharp’s the word,” and no mistake. I felt a deal smarter on it than yesterday.

When you’ve fairly started for the road half the journey’s done.

It’s the thinking of this and forgetting that, and wondering whether you haven’t left behind the t’other thing, that’s the miserablest part of going a journey; when you’re once away, no matter what’s left behind, you can get on some way or other.

The birds whistled, and called; the same long strings of waterfowl was flying far overhead, heading down to the marshes, low down the Macquarie, that Jim and I used to wonder at when we were boys.

Everything was full of life and enjoying itself but us.

Why should we be out of it? Could we have helped it—beginning, as we did, when we were quite little chaps, and hardly knew right from wrong?

Many a night when I’d been camped with cattle I’d watched it go lower and lower and change in its shape like till the stars that were on the top of it, the first half of the night, were lowest down.

It’s the bushman’s clock⁠—that cross of stars is.

Many a long cold night I’d been glad enough to have it to go by.

When I rode up to it no one had been there lately.

The stars were shining on the water between the gloomy-looking forest of dead trees with their branches sticking out against the sky, and a wind coming up before the dawn, whistling through them.

Lonely and deserted enough it looked—my word—as if no one had ever been there since the beginning of the world.

So you didn’t know me, eh? We’re both changed a bit. You look pretty fresh on it.

A woman loses her looks sooner than a man when she goes to the bad.

And Jim too,” she goes on; “only to fancy poor old Jim turning up here too! One would think you’d put it up to meet at the township on some plant of that sort.”

“Let him do that,” says Jim, “and I’ll be his servant to the day of my death. But I’m afeard it isn’t to be any more than going to heaven right off.

It’s too good, somehow, to come true; and yet what a thing it is to be leading a working honest life and be afraid of no man!

I was very near like that in Melbourne, Dick,” he says;

Well, this has been a thundering long yarn, hasn’t it? All my whole life I seem to have lived over again. It didn’t take so long in the telling; it’s a month today since I began.

And this life itself has reeled away so quick, it hardly seems a dozen years instead of seven-and-twenty since it began.

It won’t last much longer. Another week and it will be over. There’s a fellow to be strung up before me, for murdering his wife. The scoundrel, I wonder how he feels?