When they were fairly off Maud felt symptoms of having taxed nature severely. She turned deadly pale as she threw herself upon the sofa, covering her face with her hands, while her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs, as she tried with her full strength of will to control the tendency to “the sad laugh that cannot be repressed.” However, as chiefly happens in those feminine temperaments where the reasoning powers are stronger than the emotional, she succeeded, and bestowed all her regained energy to the support and consolation of her sister-in-law.
While these wonderful things were happening, John Redgrave was peacefully riding along the up river road, thinking of the manifold perfections of his divinity, and little dreaming that she was at that very moment a distressed damsel, in the power of traitors and faitours.
“What a lovely morning!” soliloquized he, “not so warm as it has been; a breeze too. How peaceful everything looks! Really, this is not such a fearful climate as I thought it at first. With a decent house, and one fair spirit to be his minister, a fellow might gracefully glide through existence here for a few years—that is, if he were making lots of money. It would be almost too uneventful, that’s the worst of it—nothing ever happens here. Hallo! what a pace the Sergeant is coming at, and old Kearney too!”
This exclamation was called forth by the sudden appearance of the whole police force which was thought necessary for the protection of a district about a hundred miles square. Jack knew their figures, and indeed their horses, the Sergeant’s gray and the trooper’s curby-hocked chestnut, to well to be mistaken. They raced up to him, and, pulling up short, both addressed him at once—a trifle out of breath.
“Have you seen any travellers on horseback, Mr. Redgrave?” asked the Sergeant.
“If it’s purshuing them ye are, ye’re going right wrong,” blurted out trooper Kearney.
“Seen who? Pursuing what?” demanded Jack. “Why should I pursue anybody?”
“Then you haven’t heard,” said the Sergeant.
“The divil a hear,” interrupted Private Kearney; “sure he doesn’t look like it, and he ridin’ along the road as peaceful as if there wasn’t a bushranger betuxt here and Adelaide.”
“Bushrangers!” quoth Jack, fully aroused. “I’d forgotten all about them, and near here? Where were they seen last, Stewart?”