most of the occasions the swag contained a goodly amount
of gold. Once he came back with a brand new saddle and six hundred
dollars' worth of gold, which nobody ever came to claim. The owner said
that Stepney was the most profitable horse he ever owned. He paid for
himself several times over, and whenever they ran short of saddles, all
they had to do was to use Stepney as a trap and 'set' him in the
paddock, with entire confidence that he would catch a saddle within a
day or two."

"That recalls a story about the way the miners used to try to deceive
the bushrangers," said the doctor; "I refer particularly to those who
were on their way to the coast with gold in their possession. They used
to bore holes in the shafts or frames of their carts and conceal the
gold in these holes, and sometimes they managed to hide quantities of
gold dust between the inner and outer soles of their boots. One miner
took the padding out of his horse's collar and inserted eighty ounces of
gold in the hollow. He jogged along the road to Melbourne, suffering a
good deal of trepidation at first, but finally arrived within twenty
miles of the city with his treasure, and began to feel safe.

"While he was driving slowly along with his cart he was overtaken by a
man on horseback, who explained that he was in a hurry, as the police
were after him for a fight he had been concerned in with another man.
His horse was exhausted and he would give the miner ten pounds to
exchange horses.

"As the animals were of about equal value, the miner assented and
proceeded to unharness his horse. When he took off the collar the other
man seized it, put it on his horse and jumped into the saddle, which he
had not removed; then he rode away, to the astonishment of the angry
miner, waving his hand and saying by way of farewell:--

"'The collar is all I wanted, friend. I don't care to make any horse
trade now.'

"You are doubtless aware," said their Ballarat friend, "of the
operations of the bushrangers, and how the police used sometimes to
torture those that they captured in order to make them reveal the secret
of the hiding place of their gold. They tell a story of a fight between
a gang of bushrangers and the police in which the leader of the robbers,
known as 'Kangaroo Jack,' was mortally wounded. He was lying on the
ground dying; there could be no mistake about that. The police captain,
I will call him Smith, but that wasn't his name, sat down by his side
a