face turned full towards him. Then he forgot the music and looked long
at the face, and at last rose, and stole silently to where his horse was
tied in the scrub. He mounted, and turning towards the house muttered:
"A little more of this, and good-bye to my nerves! But it's pleasant to
have the taste of it in my mouth for a minute. How would it look in
Roadmaster's biography, that a girl just out of school brought the rain
to his eyes?" He laughed a little bitterly, and then went on: "Poor
Barbara! She mustn't know while I'm alive. Stretch out, my nag; we've
a long road to travel to-night."

This was Edward Golding, the brother whom Barbara thought was still in
prison at Sydney under another name, serving a term of ten years for
manslaughter. If she had read the papers more carefully she would have
known that he had been released two years before his time was up. It was
eight years since she had seen him. Twice since then she had gone to
visit him, but he would not see her. Bad as he had been, his desire was
still strong that the family name should not be publicly reviled. At his
trial his real name had not been made known; and at his request his
sister sent him no letters. Going into gaol a reckless man he came out a
constitutional criminal; with the natural instinct for crime greater than
the instinct for morality. He turned bushranger for one day, to get
money to take him out of the country; but having once entered the lists
he left them no more, and, playing at deadly joust with the law, soon
became known as Roadmaster, the most noted bushranger since the days of
Captain Starlight.

It was forgery on the name of his father's oldest friend that had driven
him from England. He had the choice of leaving his native land for ever
or going to prison, and he chose the former. The sorrow of the crime
killed his mother. From Adelaide, where he and Barbara had made their