'Blest if I seen a speck of him till he fired the revolver just over my head,' said the driver afterwards. 'I was that startled I wonder I didn't fall off the box.'
No harm was done on that occasion, save to Her Majesty's mails, and the correspondence of the lieges. My informant gathered up the strewed parcels and torn sheets into a large sack next morning, and forwarded them to the nearest post-office.
In Morgan's whole career there is not recorded one instance of even the spurious generosity which, if it did not redeem, relieved the darkness of other criminal careers. He had apparently not even the craving for companionship, which makes it a necessity with the ordinary brigand to have a 'mate' towards whom, at any rate, he is popularly supposed to exhibit that fidelity which he has forsworn towards his kind. Rarely is it known that Morgan pursued his depredations in concert with any one. He may have had confederates, harbourers he must have had, but not comrades.
He was never known to show mercy or kindness towards women. When they were present at any of his raids, he seems either to have refrained from noticing them or to have derided their fears. There is no record of his having suffered their entreaties to prevail, or to have ceased from violence and outrage at their bidding.
Subtle, savage, and solitary as those beasts of prey which have learned to prefer human flesh, and once having tasted to renounce all other, Morgan lurked amid the wilds, which he had made his home, ever ready for ruffianism or bloodshed—a fiend incarnate—permitted to carry terror and outrage into peaceful homes, until his appointed hour of doom. This was the manner of it.
Morgan's Death, told by the Manager.
Peechelbah Station, on the Murray, was a big scattered place, a regular small town. There was the owner's house—a comfortable bungalow, with a verandah all round. He and his family had just come up from town. My cottage was half a mile away. I was the Manager, and could ride or drive from daylight to midnight, or indeed fight, on a pinch, with any man on that side of the country. I was to have gone up to the 'big house' to have spent the evening. But it came on to rain, so I did not go, which was just as well, as matters turned out.
I was writing in my dining-room about nine o'clock when a servant girl from the house came rushing in. 'What's the matter, Mary?' I said, as soon as I saw her face. 'Morgan's stuck up the place,' she half whispered, 'and he's in the house now. He won't let any one leave the room; swore he'd shoot them if they did. But I thought I'd creep out and let you know.'
'You're a good lass,' I said, 'and have done a good night's work, if you never did another. Now, you get back and don't let on you've been away from your cups and saucers. How does he shape?'
'Oh, pretty quiet. Says he won't harm nobody. They're all sitting on the sofa, and he's got his pistols on the table before him.' And back she went.