that ever was lapped in horsehide--swim like a musk-duck, and track like
a Myall blackfellow. Most things that a man can do I'm up to, and that's
all about it. As I lift myself now I can feel the muscle swell on my arm
like a cricket ball, in spite of the--well, in spite of everything.

The morning sun comes shining through the window bars; and ever since he
was up have I been cursing the daylight, cursing myself, and them that
brought me into the world. Did I curse mother, and the hour I was born
into this miserable life?

Why should I curse the day? Why do I lie here, groaning; yes, crying
like a child, and beating my head against the stone floor? I am not mad,
though I am shut up in a cell. No. Better for me if I was. But it's all
up now; there's no get away this time; and I, Dick Marston, as strong as
a bullock, as active as a rock-wallaby, chock-full of life and spirits
and health, have been tried for bush-ranging--robbery under arms they
call it--and though the blood runs through my veins like the water in
the mountain creeks, and every bit of bone and sinew is as sound as the
day I was born, I must die on the gallows this day month.

Die--die--yes, die; be strung up like a dog, as they say. I'm blessed
if ever I did know of a dog being hanged, though, if it comes to that,
a shot or a bait generally makes an end of 'em in this country. Ha, ha!
Did I laugh? What a rum thing it is that a man should have a laugh in
him when he's only got twenty-nine days more to live--a day for every
year of my life. Well, laughing or crying, this is what it has come to
at last. All the drinking and recklessness; the flash talk and the idle
ways; the merry cross-country rides that we used to have, night or
day, it made no odds to us; every man well mounted, as like as not on a
racehorse in training taken out of his stable within the week; the sharp
brushes with the police, when now and then a man was wounded on each
side, but no one killed. That came later on, worse luck. The jolly
sprees we used to have in the bush townships, where we chucked our money
about like gentlemen, where all the girls had a smile and a kind word
for a lot of game upstanding chaps, that acted like men, if they did
keep the road a little lively. Our 'bush telegraphs' were safe to let
us know when the 'traps' were closing in on us, and then--why the coach
would be 'stuck up' a hundred miles away, in a different direction,
within twenty-four hours. Marston's