Part 45

The anti-climax was as profound as the weakling's relief. Yet there was a strong dash of indignation in his tone.

"What if I am?"

"But you're not. You're not half smart enough. You can't tell me anything about Stingaree!"

He put his eye-glass up with an air.

Stingaree put up his.

"You young fool!" said he.

The thoroughbred mare, the eye-glass, a peeping pistol, were all superfluous evidence. There was the far more unmistakable authority of voice and eye and bearing. Yet the voice at least was somehow familiar to the ear of Oswald, who stuttered as much when he was able.

"I must have heard it before, or have I dreamt it? I've thought a good deal about you, you know!"

To do him justice, he was no longer very nervous, though still physically shaken. On the other hand, he began already to feel the elation of his dreams.

"I do know. You've thought your soul into a pulp on the subject, and you must give it up," said Stingaree, sternly.

Oswald sat aghast.

"But how on earth did you know?"

"I've come straight from your mother. You're breaking her heart."

"But how can you have come straight from her?"

"I've come down for another melodeon. I've got to have one, too."

"Another----"

And Oswald Melvin knew his drunken whim-driver for what he had really been.

"The yarn I told you about myself was true enough," continued Stingaree. "Only the names were altered, as they say; it happened to the other fellow, not to me. I made it happen. He is hardly likely to have lived to tell the tale."

"Did he really try to betray you after what you'd done for him?"

"More or less. He looked on me as fair game."

"But you had saved his life?"

Stingaree shrugged.

"We rode across him."

"And you think he perished of dust and thirst?"

Stingaree nodded. "In torment!"

"Then he got what he jolly well earned! Anything less would have been too good for him!" cried Oswald, and with a boyish, uncompromising heat which spoke to some human nature in him still.

But Stingaree frowned up the moonlit track. There was still no sign of the coach. Yet time was short, and the morbid enthusiast was not to be disgusted; indeed, he was all enthusiasm now, and a less unattractive lad than the bushranger had hoped to find him. He looked the white screw and Oswald up and down as they sat in their saddles in the moonshine: it seemed like sunlight on that beaming fool.

"And you think of commencing bushranger, do you?"