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'By the Lord Harry, no! said the trooper, a young man who saw no reason not to be sociable. 'It's the most surprisin' thing out where he's got to. They've been all round him, reg'lar cordon-like, and he must have disappeared into the earth or gone up in a balloon to get away. It took us a week's travelling or more to get to Berrima. Sometimes we were all night in the coach as well as all day.
'I never thought that Jim Marston was to come to this to be afraid to tell a fat, greasy-looking fellow like that innkeeper what his real name was. Seems such a pitiful mean lie, don't it, Dick? 'It isn't so bad as being called No. 14, No. 221, as they sing out for the fellows in Berrima Gaol. How would you like that, Jim?
Then Moran sits down and has a smoke, and looks over at 'em. 'You don't remember me, Mr. Hagan? says he, in his drawling way. 'No, says the poor chap, 'I don't think I do. 'But I remember you devilish well, says Moran; 'and so you'll find afore we leave this. Then he took another smoke. 'Weren't you warder in Berrima Gaol, says he, 'about seven year ago? Ah! now we're coming to it.
We were all armed, too, now. Jim had seen to that. If we were caught, we intended to have a flutter for it. We were not going back to Berrima if we knew it. So we turned in, and slept as if we were never going to wake again. We'd had a glass of grog or two, nothing to hurt, though; and the food and one thing and another made us sleep like tops.
In 1849 an indisputable testimony was added to these opinions by a Mr. Smith, who was then engaged in some iron works, near Berrima, and who brought a splendid specimen of gold in quartz to the Colonial Secretary.
From never thinking about anything or caring what came uppermost, he seemed to have changed all on the other tack and do nothing but think. I'd seen a chap in Berrima something like him for a month or two; one day he manned the barber's razor and cut his throat. I began to be afraid Jim would go off his head and blow his brains out with his own revolver.
We'd two minds to camp on the mountain, but we might have been followed up, hard as we'd ridden, and we didn't like to throw a chance away. We didn't want the old man to laugh at us, and we didn't want to do any more time in Berrima not now, anyhow. We'd been living too gay and free a life to begin with the jug all over again.
'My mind is made up, Richard I have decided irrevocably. Of course, you needn't come, if you see objections; but I'll bet you my Dean and Adams revolver and the Navy Colt against your repeating rifle that I do all I've said, and clear out safe. 'Done! I said. 'I've no doubt you'll try; but you might as well try to pull down the walls of Berrima Gaol with a hay-rake.
'See here, Billy, I said, 'here's another pound for you, and there'll be a fiver after if you stick well to me to-day. I won't let Jim be walked off to Berrima without a flutter to save him. It'll be the death of him. He's not like me, and he's got a young wife besides. 'More fool he, Dick. What does a cross cove want with a wife?
He had been backward and forward a good deal with father before we got clear of Berrima, and that's how poor Maddie had come to take the fancy so strong and set her heart upon him. It must be hard lines for a woman to stand by, in a church or anywhere else, and see the man she loves given away, for good and all, buckled hard and fast to another woman.
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