suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, and
powerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. The
lever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reached
by thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward on a
spring.

It may be conceived that all this represented the midnight labors and
the constant thought of many weeks. It was now the beginning of the cool
but brilliant Riverina winter, and, despite the disparity in their
years, the two Scotsmen were fast friends. They had worked together as
one man, with the same patient passion for perfection, the same delight
in detail for its own sake. Almost the only difference was that the old
fellow refreshed his energies with the glass of whiskey which was never
far from his elbow after banking hours, while the young one cultivated
the local excess of continual tea. And all this time the rascally
Stingaree ranged the district, with or without his taciturn accomplice,
covering great distances in fabulous time, lurking none knew where, and
springing on the unwary in the last places in which his presence was
suspected.

"But he has not yet robbed a bank, and we have our hopes," wrote Fergus
to a faithful sister at Largs. "It may be for fear of the revolvers with
which all the banks are provided now. Mr. Macbean has been practising
with ours, and purposely put a bullet through one of our back windows.
The whole township has been chafing him about it, and the local rag has
risen to a sarcastic paragraph, which is exactly what we wanted. The
trap-door over the pit is now practically finished. It's too complicated
to describe, but Stingaree has only to march into the bank and 'stick it
up,' and the man behind the counter has only to touch a lever with his
foot for the villain to disappear through the floor into a prison it'll
take him all his time to break. On Saturday the cashier and the clerk
are coming to dinner, and before we sit down they are to be shown
everything."

This was but a fraction of one of the long letters which Fergus
despatched by nearly every mail. Silent and self-contained as he was, he
had one confidante at the opposite end of the earth, one escape-pipe in
his pen. Not a word of the great secret had he even written to another
soul. To his trusted sister he had never before been quite so
communicative. His conscience pricked him as he took his letter to the
post, and he had it registered on no o