from the first hour of his captivity. Not
a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were
received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and
supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was
ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last
refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a
tree that it was no longer necessary for him to spend a moment in the
red eye of the sun. He could follow a sufficient shade from dawn to
dusk. His boots were restored to him; a blanket was permitted him day
and night; but night and day he was sedulously watched, and neither
knife nor fork was provided with his meals. His fare was relatively not
inferior to that of the legally condemned, whose notorious privileges
and restrictions served the bushrangers for a model.

And Vanheimert clung to the hope of a reprieve with all the sanguine
tenacity of his ill-starred class, though it did seem with more
encouragement on the whole. For the days went on, and each of many
mornings brought its own respite till the next. The welcome announcement
was invariably made by Howie after a colloquy with his chief, which
Vanheimert watched with breathless interest for a day or two, but
thereafter with increasing coolness. They were trying to frighten him;
they did not mean it, any more than Stingaree had meant to shoot the new
chum who had the temerity to put a pistol to his head after the affair
of the Glenranald bank. The case of lucky Fergus, justly celebrated
throughout the colony, was a great comfort to Vanheimert's mind; he
could see but little difference between the two; but if his treachery
was the greater, so also was the ordeal to which he was being subjected.
For in the light of a mere ordeal he soon regarded what he was invited
to consider as his last days on earth, and in the conviction that they
were not, began suddenly to bear them like a man. This change of front
produced its fellow in Stingaree, who apologized to Vanheimert for the
delay, which he vowed he could not help. Vanheimert was a little shaken
by his manner, though he smiled behind the bushranger's back. And he
could scarcely believe his ears when, the very next morning, Howie told
him that his hour was come.

"Rot!" said Vanheimert, with a confident expletive.

"Oh, all right," said Howie. "But if you don't believe me, I'm sorrier
for you than I was."

He slouched away, but Vanheimert h