for want of work,' said
he. 'It would be a charity to me to sit on her back for a hundred
miles or so, and then I should know you'd have no temptation to use
that hand.'

"'You're far too good!' I protested.

"'You're A. J. Raffles,' he said.

"And if ever there was a prettier compliment, or a finer instance of
even Colonial hospitality, I can only say, Bunny, that I never heard of
either."

He sipped his whiskey, threw away the stump of his cigarette, and lit
another before continuing.

"Well, I managed to write a line to W. F. with my own hand, which, as
you will gather, was not very badly wounded; it was simply this third
finger that was split and in splints; and next morning the doctor
packed me off on a bovine beast that would have done for an ambulance.
Half the team came up to see me start; the rest were rather sick with
me for not stopping to see the match out, as if I could help them to
win by watching them. They little knew the game I'd got on myself, but
still less did I know the game I was going to play.

"It was an interesting ride enough, especially after passing the place
called Whittlesea, a real wild township on the lower slope of the
ranges, where I recollect having a deadly meal of hot mutton and tea,
with the thermometer at three figures in the shade. The first thirty
miles or so was a good metal road, too good to go half round the world
to ride on, but after Whittlesea it was a mere track over the ranges, a
track I often couldn't see and left entirely to the mare. Now it
dipped into a gully and ran through a creek, and all the time the local
color was inches thick; gum-trees galore and parrots all colors of the
rainbow. In one place a whole forest of gums had been ring-barked, and
were just as though they had been painted white, without a leaf or a
living thing for miles. And the first living thing I did meet was the
sort to give you the creeps; it was a riderless horse coming full tilt
through the bush, with the saddle twisted round and the stirrup-irons
ringing. Without thinking, I had a shot at heading him with the
doctor's mare, and blocked him just enough to allow a man who came
galloping after to do the rest.

"'Thank ye, mister,' growled the man, a huge chap in a red checked
shirt, with a beard like W. G. Grace, but the very devil of an
expression.

"'Been an accident?' said I, reining up.

"'Yes,' said he, scowling as though he defied me to ask any more.

"'And a nasty