I shall not. I never meant to--I did mean you to sit out six--but
you're the most gallant little idiot I've ever struck. Besides, you come
from the old country, like myself!"

And a sigh floated into the keen morning air as he looked his last upon
the lad through the celebrated monocle.

"Then I'll shoot myself when I'm free," sobbed Fergus through his
teeth.

"Oh, no, you won't," were Stingaree's last words. "You'll find it's not
a bit worth while."

And when the mounted police and others from Glenranald discovered the
trussed youngster, not an hour later, they took the same tone. And one
and all stopped and stooped to peer at the two bullet-holes in the post,
and at something underneath them, before cutting poor Fergus down.

Then they propped him up to read with his own eyes the nailed legend
which first helped Fergus Carrick to live down the indiscretion of his
letter to Largs, and then did more for him in that Colony than letter
from Queen Victoria to His Excellency of New South Wales. For it ran:--

"THIS IS THE GAMEST LITTLE COCK I HAVE EVER STRUCK. HE
HAD ME CAPTIVE ONCE, COULD HAVE SHOT ME OVER AND OVER
AGAIN, AND ALL BUT TOOK ME ALIVE. MORE POWER TO HIM!

"STINGAREE."

"To the Vile Dust"

Vanheimert had been in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so far
from the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full of
sand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm which
already shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks there
were none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned browner
and more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket and
ran for the fence as for his life. He had only left it in order to camp
where his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundred
yards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which the
bushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he was
groping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collision
with invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wondering
where the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise to
retrace his steps and try again. And while he wondered a fit of coughing
drove the dust from his mouth like smoke; and even as he coughed the
thickening swirl obliterated his tracks as swiftly as heavy snow.

Speckled eyeballs stood out of a sanded face as Vanheimert saw himself
adrift and d