nd active figure, carried himself with
the ease of a thorough horseman, and nodded to one or two persons of his
acquaintance, and checking his horse at the principal butcher's, ordered
some meat to be sent in that evening.

Mark could trace no resemblance in the face to that of the young fellow
he remembered. It was a quiet and resolute one. If this were Bastow,
he had lost the sneering and insolent expression that was so strongly
impressed on his memory. It might be the man, but if so, he was greatly
changed. Mark's first impression was that it could not be Bastow; but
when he thought over the years of toil and confinement in the convict
prison, the life he had led in the bush, and the two years he had passed
since he returned home, he imagined that the insolence of youth might
well have disappeared, and been succeeded by the resolute daring and
dogged determination that seemed to be impressed on this fellow's face.

Mark paused fifty yards before he reached the inn. In a few minutes he
saw Chester coming along. There was no one else in sight.

"Is it Bastow?" he asked, as the officer came up.

"It's Bastow sure enough, sir. But he is so changed that if I had not
had him in my mind I should not have recognized him. I calculate that a
man who has gone through what he has would have lost the expression he
had as a boy. He must have learnt a lot in the convict prison, and
the fact that he headed the mutiny and escaped from the searchers and
managed to get home showed that he must have become a resolute and
desperate man. All those burglaries, and the way in which he has several
times stopped coaches single handed, show his nerve and coolness. I had
all that in my mind as he came along, and his face was pretty much as I
expected to see it. He is a cool hand, and I can understand how he has
given us the slip so long. There is none of the shifty look about his
eyes that one generally sees in criminals, no glancing from side to
side; he rode with the air of a man who had a right to be where he was,
and feared no one. He will be an awkward customer to tackle if we do not
take him by surprise."

"Yes, I agree with you there. However, he won't have much chance of
using either his pistols or his strength. Here is Malcolm coming, so I
will walk away for a few minutes, and let you go in first. You can tell
the ostler now that you will have your horse put in at nine o'clock. I
have been thinking, by the way, that we had better t