"If you will kindly sit down," cried the chaplain, "like everybody else, I shall at once explain the apparent irregularity upon which you were doubtless about to comment."
Carmichael glowered through his glasses for a few seconds, and then resumed his seat with a shrug and a murmur, happily inaudible to all but his two immediate neighbors.
"On his way here this morning," the chaplain went on, "his lordship met with a misadventure from which he has not yet recovered sufficiently to address you as he fully hoped and intended to do to-day." At this all eyes sped to the Bishop, who stood certainly in a drooping attitude at the chaplain's side, his episcopal hands behind his back. "Something happened," the glib spokesman continued with stern eyes, "something that you do not often hear of in these days. His lordship was accosted, beset, and, like the poor man in the Scriptures, despitefully entreated, not many miles beyond your own boundary, by a pair of armed ruffians!"
"Stuck up!" cried one or two, and "Bushrangers!" one or two more.
"I thank you for both words," said the chaplain, bowing. "He was stuck up by the bushranger who is once more abroad in the land. Really, Mr. Carmichael——"
But the manager of Mulfera rose to his full height, and, leaning back to get the speaker into focus, stuck his arms akimbo in a way that he had in his most aggressive moments.
"And what were you doing?" he demanded fiercely of the chaplain.
"It was I who stuck him up," answered the soi-disant chaplain, whipping a single glass into his eye to meet the double ones. "My name is Stingaree!"
And in the instant's hush which followed he plucked a revolver from his breast, while the hands of the sham bishop shot out from behind his back, with one in each.
The scene of the instant after that defies ordinary description. It was made the more hideous by the frightful imprecations of Carmichael, and the short, sharp threat of Stingaree to shoot him dead unless he instantly sat down. Carmichael bade him do so with a gallant oath, at which the men immediately behind him joined with his two companions in pulling him back into his chair and there holding him by main force. Thereafter the manager appeared to realize the futility of resistance, and was unhanded on his undertaking to sit quiet, which he did with the exception of one speech to those behind.