han we found
you. And that, I hold, is more than you had any right to expect. So
long!"

The thickening storm had swallowed man and horse once more. Vanheimert
looked round. The second man and the second horse had also vanished. And
his own tracks were being obliterated as fast as footmarks in blinding
snow. . . .

A Bushranger at Bay

The Hon. Guy Kentish was trotting the globe--an exercise foreign to his
habit--when he went on to Australia for a reason racy of his blood. He
wished to witness a certain game of cricket between the full strength of
Australia and an English team which included one or two young men of his
acquaintance. It was no part of his original scheme to see anything of
the country; one of the Australian cricketers put that idea into his
head; and it was under inward protest that Mr. Kentish found himself
smoking his chronic cigar on the Glenranald and Clear Corner coach one
scorching morning in the month of February. He thought he had never seen
such a howling desert in his life; and it is to be feared that in his
heart he applied the same epithet to his two fellow-passengers. The one
outside was chatting horribly with the driver; the other had tried to
chaff the Hon. Guy, and had repaired in some disorder to the company of
the mail-bags inside. Kentish wondered whether these were the types he
might expect to encounter upon the station to which he had reluctantly
accepted an officious introduction. He wished himself out of the absurd
little two-horse coach, out of an expedition whose absurdity was on a
larger scale, and back again on the shady side of the two or three
streets where he lived his normal life. The fare at wayside inns made
the thought of his club a positive pain; and these pangs were at their
sharpest when Stingaree cantered out of the scrub on his lily mare, a
blessed bolt from the blue.

Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up" without a
word, but with revived interest in life. He noted the pusillanimous
pallor of the driver and his friend, and felt personally indebted to the
desperado who had put a stop to their unpleasant conversation. The
inside passenger made a yet more obsequious surrender. Not that the trio
were set any better example by their noble ally, who began by smiling at
the whole affair, and was content to the last in taking an observant
interest in the bushranger's methods. These were simple and in a sense
humane; there was no personal rob