y one else. If the passengers were armed, and
all steady and game to stand a flutter, something might be done, but you
don't get a coach-load like that very often. So it's found better in a
general way to give up what they have quietly and make no fuss about it.
I've known cases where a single bush-ranger was rushed by a couple of
determined men, but that was because the chap was careless, and they
were very active and smart. He let them stand too near him. They had
him, simple enough, and he was hanged for his carelessness; but when
there's three or four men, all armed and steady, it's no use trying the
rush dodge with them.

Of course there were other things to think about: what we were to do
with the trinkets and bank-notes and things when we got them--how to
pass them, and so on. There was no great bother about that. Besides
Jonathan Barnes and chaps of his sort, dad knew a few 'fences' that had
worked for him before. Of course we had to suffer a bit in value. These
sort of men make you pay through the nose for everything they do for
you. But we could stand that out of our profits, and we could stick to
whatever was easy to pass and some of the smaller things that were light
to carry about. Men that make 300 or 400 Pounds of a night can afford to
pay for accommodation.

The big houses in the bush, too. Nothing's easier than to stick up one
of them--lots of valuable things, besides money, often kept there, and
it's ten to one against any one being on the look-out when the boys
come. A man hears they're in the neighbourhood, and keeps a watch for
a week or two. But he can't be always waiting at home all day long with
double-barrelled guns, and all his young fellows and the overseer that
ought to be at their work among their cattle or sheep on the run idling
their time away. No, he soon gets sick of that, and either sends his
family away to town till the danger's past, or he 'chances it', as
people do about a good many things in the country. Then some fine day,
about eleven or twelve o'clock, or just before tea, or before they've
gone to bed, the dogs bark, and three or four chaps seem to have got
into the place without anybody noticing 'em, the master of the house
finds all the revolvers looking his way, and the thing's done. The
house is cleared out of everything valuable, though nobody's harmed or
frightened--in a general way, that is--a couple of the best horses are
taken out of the stable, and the next morning th