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And to the amazement of all, the gang was headed by a man who seemed the very counterpart of Harold, not, perhaps, quite so tall, but with much the same complexion and outline, though he was somewhat older, and had the wild, fierce, ruffianly aspect of a bushranger.
By the ladies he was considered rough: as Mrs. le Terry had put it to Miss Ponsonby, he was a kind of too terrible bushranger without the romance! He was gauche, he knew, and he hated the tea-parties. They talked about things of which he knew nothing; he was too sincere to cover his convictions with the fatuous chatter that passed, in Fallacy Street society, for brilliant wit.
The old bushranger drew a pistol and held it in his hand for a moment, and then, turning to his companions, said, "You ain't going to see me shot 'cos I want to 'friend as good a man as was ever transported? How do we know how soon we may want a prayer or two to help fix things up in the other world." "Let him have the prayers," muttered the gang, with one accord. "What harm can they do?"
He was obliged to lean on Van Diemen's assertion, that he had not robbed and had not murdered, to be comforted by the belief that he was not once a notorious bushranger, or a defaulting manager of mines, or any other thing that is naughtily Australian and kangarooly. He sat at the dinner-table at Elba, eating like the rest of mankind, and looking like a starved beggarman all the while.
Give his cords an extra twist, men, for his impudence." Murden uttered the words with an expression of disgust that did not fail to convince the bushranger of the estimation in which he was held. "You think, I suppose," Nosey said, with an angry scowl, "that you will have the pleasure and triumph of carrying me to Melbourne alive; you are mistaken."
She would argue about it till the day she died, and then she said with her dying breath: 'It wasn't Brummy Usen. No more it was he was a different kind of man; he hadn't spunk enough to be a bushranger, and it was a better man that was buried for him; it was a different kind of woman, holding up a different kind of branch, that was tattooed on Brummy's arm.
"The impudent scoundrel!" was the general exclamation, and I think that the reader will agree with the guests, and pronounce the bushranger a bold man, and one of considerable address and nerve.
It was a nervous time, but we had not long to wait before we heard the dull sound of galloping feet, and several horses came in sight, followed by the big bushranger mounted on a powerful steed. I could nowhere see Vinson, so that he at all events would have a chance of escaping. The horses came rushing on, and as they got near the fire separated, some on one side, some on the other.
"And what inducements do you hold out, if I give you the information?" asked the robber, dryly. "I do not promise you your life, but I think that I can get the sentence put off a few months," the lieutenant replied. "And you suppose that I will reveal on such conditions?" demanded the bushranger, impudently. "I do; you have every thing to gain, and nothing to lose."
He rushed to the rope, and pulled away at it with such good will that the bushranger was raised from the ground a few inches, and by the spasmodic movement of his feet, I saw that he was choking, and could exist but a few minutes longer. "Are you mad?" I asked of Murden; "you have no authority to hang the man; the courts of Melbourne will make a noise about the matter, be assured."
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