ome material there cannot be any doubt, but the fictitious bushranger
is far from being in any respect a mere copy of the real one. In
Starlight's relations with women, for instance, there is nothing but
what is manly and honourable, whereas one of Gardiner's exploits was the
seduction of a settler's wife, a beautiful woman whom he induced to
elope with him to a remote district in Queensland. And, further, none of
the sensational incidents connected with his capture--his escape under a
legal technicality from the death-penalty suffered by some of his
associates, his imprisonment for twelve years and subsequent exile--are
made use of in the novel.

The narrative method adopted in _Robbery under Arms_ has so much
contributed to the success of the story as to be worthy of some
comparison with the ordinary style of the author. The limitations
imposed by the choice of a narrator with no pretensions to education or
sentiment, and writing in the first person, proved in this case salutary
rather than disadvantageous. They repressed Boldrewood's usual tendency
to excessive detail, and kept his attention closely fixed on the drama
of the story.

The occasional deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in the
grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy
piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in
Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life
from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which this
view is presented lies the strength and lasting merit of what might
otherwise have been little better than a commonplace series of
sensational episodes.

Starlight and the Marstons, as we see them, are reckless and dangerous
criminals, but they are not exactly the 'bloodthirsty cowards' and
'murderers' known to the press and police of the period. The little they
can plead in excuse for their lives is plainly stated, while no
complaint is urged against their fate, or attempt made to obscure its
obvious lesson. Grim old Ben Marston's career illustrates one of the
results of the stupidly cruel system of transporting persons from
England to the colonies for petty offences which in these days are
punished by a slight fine, and his sons are types of a class who were
far from being as irreclaimable as their offences made them appear. 'Men
like us,' Dick Marston is once made to say, 'are only half-and-half bad,
like a good many more in this world. They are