"Touan?" repeated Mary. "Why, that's the great bushranger, that is out to the north; is it not?"
"The same man, cousin! And there I sat hob and nob with him for half an hour in the 'Lake George' public-house. If Desborough had come in, he'd have hung me for being found in bad company. Ha! ha! ha!"
"My dear partner," she said, "what a terrible escape! Suppose he had risen on you?"
"Why I'd have broken his back, cousin," said Tom, "unless my right hand had forgot her cunning. He is a fine man of his weight: but, Lord, in a struggle for life and death, I could break his neck, and have one more claim on Heaven for doing so; for he is the most damnable villain that ever disgraced God's earth, and that is the truth. That man, cousin, in one of his devil's raids, tore a baby from its mother's breast by the leg, dashed its brains out against a tree, and then—I daren't tell a woman what happened." [Note: Tom was confusing Touan with Michael Howe. The latter actually did commit this frightful atrocity; but I never heard that the former actually combined the two crimes in this way.]
"Tom! Tom!" said Mary, "how can you talk of such things?"
"To show you what we have to expect if he comes this way, cousin; that is all."
"And is there any possibility of such a thing?" asked Mary.
"Why not? Why should he not pay us the compliment of looking round this way?"
"Why do they call him Touan, Tom?" asked Charles.
"Can't, you see," said Tom, "the Touan, the little grey flying squirrel, only begins to fly about at night, and slides down from his bough sudden and sharp. This fellow has made some of his most terrible raids at night, and so he got the name of Touan."