think we should have brought the
old chap along with us?"

The sergeant shook his head. "What'd be the good?" he said. "He couldn't
do any more than he's done already."

He swung round in his saddle and faced the troop. "Now, men," he said,
"we've got to put our best foot foremost. Those 'rangers are somewhere
ahead of us, making for the mountains. Keep your eyes skinned, for you
never know the minute we'll catch up to them. They can't have such a big
start of us, and they're heavily loaded at that."

The troopers unslung their carbines and examined the loading, then,
satisfied that every preparation had been made, they set spurs to their
horses and cantered up the track that led to the ranges.

It was Mr. Abel Cumshaw who first discovered the pursuers. Early in the
afternoon the two men commenced to ascend the mountains proper. Just
before they disappeared into the belt of timber that fringed the slopes
the younger man turned in his saddle and cast one last backward glance
at the valley they had left beneath them. Far away below them, in among
the misty shapes of the distant trees, he caught a glimpse of a
collection of dark little dots whose unfamiliar look puzzled him. He
called Mr. Bradby's attention to them, and that gentleman glanced at
them in an offhand way and pronounced them to be kangaroos.

"Come on," he added in a different tone. "Hurry up with you there!"

Mr. Cumshaw had no intention of moving until he was fully satisfied in
his own mind that the little black dots were really kangaroos. Something
seemed to whisper that they weren't.

"They're not kangaroos," he said with conviction. He had caught the
glint of sunlight on metal, a brass button of a man's uniform, or
perhaps the polished barrel of a carbine.

"Oh," said Mr. Bradby, "so you've tumbled."

"They're police," Mr. Cumshaw stated. "That's what they are."

"Didn't you know that, Abel? I guessed it as soon as I saw them. I'd
never confuse a trooper with a kangaroo. I only said that to--well, I
didn't want to scare you unnecessarily."

"You needn't be afraid of that," said Mr. Cumshaw airily. "I'm in the
game for good or ill, and I'm taking all risks equally with you. It's as
much my funeral as yours."

"It doesn't matter whose funeral it is," Jack Bradby said impatiently.
"We've got to get away and do it smart. You must remember that neither
of us knows anything at all about this country, and it's ten to one that
those infernal police