ht have been a disembodied spirit he turned on
his heel, seized the reins Mr. Cumshaw threw him and vaulted into the
saddle. As softly as two shadows the horses melted into the night, their
muffled hoofs making no sound on the hard earth.

Ten minutes later one of the horsemen, grown tired of the unearthly
inaction and suspecting something of what had happened, slewed his head
round very cautiously. In a flash he realised the position and imparted
his discovery to his companions.

"We can't follow them," the leader said. "We're unarmed. Furthermore
we've got no idea which way they went. The only thing we can do is to
get back to the nearest police station and report."

The man who had first discovered the absence of the bushrangers had been
employing his time in examining the ground for traces of the gang, and
very shortly he came across the tracks that the precious pair had made
earlier in the evening. An exclamation from him drew the others to the
spot. By the flickering light of a match they inspected the hoof-marks,
and then the leader of the party gave vent to a snort of disgust.

"There's only two of them," he said. "What fools we've been!"

"They completely took us in," remarked another member of the party.

"That's so," agreed a third, "but we can't make people understand. If we
tell them how two men stuck us up, we're going to look a lot of goats. I
For one think we'd better keep the number to ourselves, or, better
still, we might say that there was a big party of them."

One or two demurred at this, but the bulk of the party knew well the
ridicule that the truth would attach to them, and the result was that
between them a story carrying the marks of probability was invented,
and, thus armed against the laughter of the State, the party set out for
the nearest town.

In the meanwhile Bradby and Cumshaw had doubled back on their tracks and
were heading for the Grampians. Though neither of them had explored the
mountains before, they were quite satisfied from what they knew of the
general formation of the country that there were gullies, even valleys,
where an army might lie hidden. So confident were the two adventurers
that there was no danger of pursuit that they did not press forward at
anything like a reasonable speed. They took things easy. Somewhere about
two o'clock in the morning they halted and removed the blanket-pads from
their horses' hoofs. Mr. Cumshaw was just going to throw them into the
bus