ara
Golding was not mentioned, nor was any reference made to her until the
moment of parting. Then the elder man said: "Sir, your consideration
and delicacy of feeling have moved me, and touched her. We have not been
blind to your singular kindness of heart and courtesy, and--God bless
you, my friend!"

On his way back to Wandenong, Osgood heard exciting news of Roadmaster.
The word had been passed among the squatters who had united to avenge
Finchley's death that the bushranger was to be shot on sight, that he
should not be left to the uncertainty of the law. The latest exploit of
the daring freebooter had been to stop on the plains two members of a
Royal Commission of Inquiry. He had relieved them of such money as was
in their pockets, and then had caused them to write sumptuous cheques on
their banks, payable to bearer. These he had cashed in the very teeth
of the law, and actually paused in the street to read a description of
himself posted on a telegraph-pole. "Inaccurate, quite inaccurate," he
said to a by-stander as he drew his riding-whip slowly along it, and
then, mounting his horse, rode leisurely away into the plains. Had he
been followed it would have been seen that he directed his course to
that point in the horizon where Wandenong lay, and held to it.

It would not perhaps have been pleasant to Agnes Osgood had she known
that, as she hummed a song under a she-oak, a mile away from the
homestead, a man was watching her from a clump of scrub near by; a man
who, however gentlemanly his bearing, had a face where the devil of
despair had set his foot, and who carried in his pocket more than one
weapon of inhospitable suggestion. But the man intended no harm to her,
for, while she sang, something seemed to smooth away the active evil of
his countenance, and to dispel a threatening alertness that marked the
whole personality.

Three hours later this same man crouched by the drawing-room window
of the Wandenong homestead and looked in, listening to the same voice,
until Barbara Golding entered the room and took a seat near the piano,
with her face turned full towards him. Then he forgot the music and
looked long at the face, and at last rose, and stole silently to where
his horse was tied in the scrub. He mounted, and turning towards the
house muttered: "A little more of this, and good-bye to my nerves! But
it's pleasant to have the taste of it in my mouth for a minute. How
would it look in Roadmaster's biograp