g enamoured with his profession.
Indeed, he is quite with the orthodox view of it. He is a bushranger,
apparently, because he no longer hopes or desires to resume his rank in
certain aristocratic circles from which, by occasional hints, we are
informed that he has fallen. He indulges in no lugubrious
moralisings--he is far too agreeable a person for that--but exhibits
just the required touch of romance by letting you know that in his past
there is a sadness which a career of excitement and danger is necessary
to enable him to forget. Having been won over as a sympathiser and
admirer, the reader is ready to believe that at worst the dashing
outlaw could never have been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author has
carefully kept him from participation in the grosser acts of lawlessness
of which his revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more typical
bushranger, is guilty. Cattle-stealing and highway robbery as supervised
by Starlight are allowable, and even meritorious, in so far as they
afford him opportunities to practise some facetious deception on the
police. Such raids are not crimes, but comedies.

There is excellent fun in his posing as 'Charles Carisforth, Esq., of
Sturton, Yorkshire, and Banda, Waroona and Ebor Downs, N.S.W.,' while
awaiting the arrival at Adelaide of the 1,100 head of stolen cattle, or
as the 'Hon. Frank Haughton,' one of 'the three honourables' on the
Turon gold-field. The rash daring and cleverness of these disguises
furnish a combination of amusement and dramatic interest not approached
in anything else that Boldrewood has written. Starlight's presence at
dinner with the gold-fields commissioner and police magistrate at
Turon, when 'in walked Inspector Goring,' the officer who had been so
long and patiently seeking him elsewhere, and his appearance at Bella
Barnes' wedding, after a reward of a thousand pounds has been offered
for his capture, are scenes which remain vivid in the memory long after
the more commonplace adventures of the lords of Terrible Hollow have
lost their distinctness or been forgotten.

Next to his humour and courage, the qualities which most endear this
picturesque marauder to the reader are the happy fierceness with which
he commands the respect of his retainers, and his politeness and
gallantry to women. When a robbery is to be effected, the plans are laid
with sound generalship, but there is no unnecessary violence or loss of
good manners. His conduct at the plunderi