Part 49

"But whom do you know of my household?"

"Mrs. Melvin. I have had the honor of meeting her twice, though each time she was unaware of the dishonor of meeting me. The last time I promised to try to save her unhappy son from himself. I found him waiting to waylay the coach, told him who I was, and had ten minutes to try to cure him in. He wouldn't listen to reason; insult ran like water off his back. I did my best to show him what a life it was he longed to lead, and how much more there was in it than a loaded revolver. He wouldn't take my word for it, however, so I put him out of harm's way, up in a tree; and when the coach came along I gave him as brutal an exhibition of the art of bushranging as I could without spilling blood. I promise you it was for no other reason. What did I want with watches? What were a few pounds to me? I dropped the lot that the lad might know."

The Bishop started to his gaitered legs.

"And he's actually innocent all the time?"

"Of the deed, as the babe unborn."

"Then why in the wide world----"

Dr. Methuen stood beggared of further speech. His mind was too plain and sane for immediate understanding of such a type as Oswald Melvin. But the bushranger hit off that young man's character in half-a-dozen trenchant phrases.

"He must be let out, and it may save his mother's life; but if he were mine," exclaimed the Bishop, "I would rather he had done the other deed! But what about you?" he added, suddenly, his eyes resting on his sardonic visitor, who had disguised himself far less than his horse. "It will mean giving yourself up."

"No. You know me. You can spread what I've told you."

The Bishop shifted uneasily on his hearth-rug.

"I may not see my way to that," said he. "Besides, you must have run a lot of risks to do this good action; how do you know you haven't been recognized already? I should have known you anywhere."

"But you have undertaken not to raise an alarm, my lord."

"I shall not break my promise."

There was a grim regret in the Bishop's voice. Stingaree thought he understood it.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't thank me, pray!" Dr. Methuen could be quite testy on occasion. "I have other duties than to you, you know, and I only answer for my actions during the actual period of our interview. There are many things I should like to say to you, my brother," a gentler voice went on, "but this is hardly the time for me to say them. But there is one question I should like to ask you for the peace of both our souls, and for the maintenance of my own belief in human nature." He threw up an episcopal hand dramatically. "If you earnestly and honestly wished to save this poor lady's life, and there were no other way, would you then be man enough to give yourself up--to give your liberty for her life?"

Stingaree took time to think. His eyes were brightly fixed upon the Bishop's. Yet they saw a little bedroom just as plain, an English lady standing by the empty bed, and at its foot a portrait of himself armed to the teeth.

"For hers?" said he. "Yes, like a shot!"

"I'm thankful to hear it," replied the Bishop, with most fervent relief. "I only wish you could have the opportunity. But now you never will. My brother, if you look round, you will see why!"

Stingaree looked round without a word. In the Bishop's eyes at the last instant he had learned what to expect. A firing-party of four stocking-soled constables were drawn across the opened French windows, their levelled rifles poking through.

The bushranger looked over his shoulder with a bitter smile. "You've done me, after all!" said he, and stretched out empty hands.

"It was done before I saw you," the Bishop made answer. "I had already sent for the police."

One had entered excitedly by an inner door.

"And he didn't do you at all!" cried the voice of high hysteria. "It was I who saw you--it was I who guessed who it was! Oh, father, why have you been talking so long to such a dreadful man? I made sure he would shoot you, and you'd still be shot if they had to shoot him! Move--move--move!"

Stingaree looked at the strong-minded girl, shrill with her triumph, quite carried away by her excitement, all undaunted by the prospect of bloodshed before her eyes. And it was he who moved, with but a shrug of the shoulders, and gave himself up without another sign.

The Moth and the Star

Darlinghurst Jail had never immured a more interesting prisoner than the back-block bandit who was tried and convicted under the strange style and title which he had made his own. Not even in prison was his real name ever known, and the wild speculations of some imaginative officials were nothing else up to the end. There was enough color in their wildness, however, to crown the convict with a certain halo of romance, which his behavior in jail did nothing to dispel. That, of course, was exemplary, since Stingaree had never been a fool; but it was something more and rarer. Not content simply to follow the line of least resistance, he exhibited from the first a spirit and a philosophy unique indeed beneath the broad arrow. And so far from decreasing with the years of his captivity, these attractive qualities won him friend after friend among the officials, and privilege upon privilege at their hands, while amply justifying the romantic interest in his case.

At last there came to Sydney a person more capable of an acute appreciation of the heroic villain than his most ardent admirer on the spot. Lucius Brady was a long-haired Irishman of letters, bard and bookworm, rebel and reviewer; in his ample leisure he was also the most enthusiastic criminologist in London. And as President of an exceedingly esoteric Society for the Cultivation of Criminals, even from London did he come for a prearranged series of interviews with the last and the most distinguished of all the bushrangers.