Bank will come down on the Dell unless Lord Waveryng sends him a thousand pounds at once. Leichardt's Town, and the wedding trip, and the imported bull have cleared him out. No, I should be left to my fate."
"That seems a melancholy state of things," said Hallett, with an embarrassed laugh; "but in the event of such a calamity as your abduction by Moonlight, Miss Valliant, I think there are some of us fellows who wouldn't think twice of selling the last hoof off their runs to buy you back."
The girl laughed too, and blushed. "Perhaps, after all, I shouldn't want to be bought back. Now I am going to tell you"
She seated herself on the lowest boulder of the cairn, and he, holding his horse's bridle, leaned against the cedar tree and listened.
She began, "Goondi coach was stuck up on Thursday night."
"Ah! So that's it. The brutes!"
"Do you mean the bushrangers? No, they didn't behave like brutes. Two men against a coachful. Think! Peter Duncan, the millionaire, was on the coach, and Moonlight made him sign a cheque for £2,000 to be cashed at Goondi Bank."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Hallett, "that was cheek. Well, I'm glad it was Peter Duncan. The old miser. He deserves it."
"Moonlight only robs people who deserve to lose their money, and the Government, and the Banks, who don't miss it," went on Elsie imperturbably. "He protects the widow and the orphan. There was a widow on the coach too. She was an old German woman, and she was hurrying down to Leichardt's Town to say goodbye to her only son. He was to sail in The Shooting Star, and her only chance of seeing him was by catching the Goondi coach the next morning. She had her savings with her to give him. She offered them all to Moonlight if he would get her into Goondi."
"And he took them?"
"No," cried the girl triumphantly. "He gave them all
