We listened, with the wind howling outside, to F---'s horrid
second-hand story, of how one fine day up country, eight or ten
men,--station hands,--were "stuck up" by one solitary bushranger,
armed to the teeth. He tied them up one by one, and seated them all
on a bench in the sun, and deliberately fired at and wounded the
youngest of the party; then, seized with compunction, he unbound one
of the captives, and stood over him, revolver in hand, whilst he
saddled and mounted a horse, to go for a doctor to set the poor
boy's broken leg. Before the messenger had gone "a league, a
league, but barely twa',"--the freebooter recollected that he might
bring somebody else back with him besides the doctor, and flinging
himself across his horse, rode after the affrighted man, and coolly
shot him dead. I really don't know how the story ended: I believe
everybody perished; but at this juncture I declared it to be
impossible to sit up any longer to listen to such tragedies, and
went to bed.

Exactly at midnight,--the proper hour for ghosts; burglars, and
bushrangers, and such "small deer" to be about, everybody was
awakened simultaneously by a loud irregular knocking, which sounded
with hollow reverberations all through the wooden house.
"Bushrangers!" we all thought, every one of us; for although
burglars may not usually knock at hall-doors in England, it is by no
means uncommon for their bolder brethren to do so at the other end
of the world. It is such a comfort to me now, looking back on that
scene to remember that our stalwart cadet was as frightened as
anybody. _He_ stood six feet one in his stockings, and was a match
for any two in the country side, and yet, I am happy to think, he
was as bad as any one. As for me, to say that my heart became like