Page:Australian Emigrant 1854.djvu/137

 by telling him he would surely be hanged.—"You will swing," said he, "as sure as a gun—in fact, much surer than that old iron tube of your's."

"Just light some leaves, lads, and let us see this fellow's face."

A blaze was soon made, and the surprise of Raymond was extreme when it lighted up the horror-stricken features of the felon-lawyer Jarrol.

He was in the midst of explaining to his companions the reason of his confusion, when they were all rendered speechless by hearing a voice close by them exclaim "On your lives don't move a limb."

All eyes were bent upon the figure of a tall man who stood before them, his gun levelled and within a few feet of their heads. Hugh and Slinger had no difficulty in recognising the form and features of Bayley. Stooping down, yet still prepared for immediate action, he raised the prostrate Jarrol and lifting him upon one of his shoulders, he stalked away into the darkness, with his face still bent upon the wonder-stricken travellers. It was not before his form was nearly lost in the gloom that Dodge seized a gun and was preparing to follow, but he was restrained by Slinger.—"That fellow deserves all his luck," he said, "bushranger or whatever he is, who ventured so much to save a comrade."

"I should like to have picked off the lawyer for all that," said Dodge.

It becomes necessary for us to explain the causes which bring Bayley again before our readers.

When the bailiff succeeded in escaping from the scrub, which he did at an angle of the creek contiguous to Bayley's tree, it is not surprising that the watchful eye of the bush-ranger, who still found it convenient to occupy his old