I have heard of such.“—Cymbeline.
Mrs. Stangrove and Maud were sitting in the drawing-room that morning, a little silent and distrait, we may confess, when a man’s footstep was heard on the verandah. “I did not think that Mark would have returned so soon,” said Maud, going to the French window and looking out. She stood there for an instant, and then, turning to her sister a face ashen-white and strangely altered, gasped out a single word—that word of dread, often of doom, in the far, lone, defenceless Australian waste—“Bushrangers!” Mrs. Stangrove gave a moaning, half-muffled cry, and then, obeying the irresistible maternal instinct, rushed into the adjoining apartment where her children were. At the same moment a tall man with a revolver raised in his right hand stepped into the room, and gazed rapidly round with restless eyes, as of one long used to meet with frequent foes. Behind him, closely following, were three other armed men, while a fifth was visible in the passage, thus cutting off all retreat towards the rear.
Maud Stangrove was a girl of more than ordinary firmness of nerve. She strove hard against the spasmodic terror which the feeling of being absolutely in the power of lawless and desperate men at first produced. Rapidly conning over the chances of a rescue, in the event of the working overseer and his men returning, as she knew they were likely to do, at an early hour, having been out at the nearest out-station since sunrise, accompanied by Mark, who had intended when leaving to cut across to them and inspect their work, she felt the necessity of keeping cool and temporizing with the enemy.
Steadying her voice with an effort, and facing the intruder with a very creditable air of unconcern, she said—“What do you want? I think you have mistaken your way.”
The robber looked at her with a bold glance of admiration, and then, with an instinctive deference which struggled curiously with his consciousness of having taken the citadel, made answer—“See here, Miss, I’m Redcap; dessay you’ve heard of me. You’ve no call to be afeared; but we’ve come here for them repeating rifles as Mr. Stangrove’s been smart enough to get up from town.”
“I don’t know anything about them,” said Maud, thankful to remember that she had not seen lately these unlucky celebrities in the small-arm way, which, for their marvellous shooting and rapidity of loading, had been a nine-days’ wonder in the neighbourhood.
“Well,” interposed a black-visaged, down-looking ruffian, who had ensconced himself in an easy chair, “some of you will have to know about ’em, and look sharp too, or we’ll burn the blessed place down about your ears.”
“You shut up, Doctor,” said the leader, who seemed, like Lambro, one of the mildest-mannered men that ever “stuck up mails or fobbed a note.” “Let me talk to the lady. It’s no use your fencing, Miss, about these guns; we know all about ’em, and have ’em we will. Mr. Stangrove shot a bullock with the long one last Saturday. You’d better let us have ’em, and we’ll clear out.”
Maud was considering whether it would not be safer to “fess” and get rid of the unwelcome visitors, who, though wonderfully pacific, might not remain so. A diversion was effected. One of the younger members of the band suddenly appeared with the baby—the idolized darling of the household—in his arms.
“Here,” he cried, “I’ve got something as is valuable. I shall stick to this young ’un to put me in mind of my pore family as I’ve been obliged to cut away from.”