THE BOY IN THE BUSH.
"The impudent scoundrel! Just look at this, mamma. I should like to see him at it," exclaimed Sydney Lawson in great wrath, as he handed his mother a very dirty note which a shepherd had brought home. On coarse, crumpled grocer's paper these words were written in pencil:
"Master Sidney i Want your Mare the chesnit with the white starr, soe You Send her to 3 Mile flat first thing Tomorrer Or i Shall Have to cum an Fetch Her.
"Warrigal."
"Sam says," Sydney went on to say, "that the fellow was coward enough to give it him just down by the slip-panels. He wouldn't have dared to talk about sticking us up if he hadn't known father was away. Send him my mare Venus! I seem to see myself doing it!"
Sidney Lawson, who made this indignant speech, was a tall, slim lad of fourteen. He and his mother had been left in charge of the station while his father took some cattle to Port Philip.
Sydney was very proud of his charge; he thought himself a man now, and was very angry that Warrigal, a well-known desperado, should think he could be frightened "like a baby."
Warrigal was a bushranger who with one or two companions wandered about in that part of New South Wales, doing pretty much as he liked. They stopped the mail, and robbed draymen and horsemen on the road by the two and three dozen together. The police couldn't get hold of them.