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Rh outer doors at which the store-s could unload without entering the yard; in another moment Tom had both women out in the open, with the front west angle of house between them and the palisade. Even the burning hut was thus hidden from their view. Yet the voice of Hookey Simpson sounded dreadfully close.

“You shall lay it on yourselves,” he was shouting out. “Let the man who had the last fifty come forward and lay on the first.”

“That’s me,” said Macbeth’s voice. “Gi’e us the cat!”

There was none.

“Then the auld cove’s cane.”

Tom had seized Miss Sullivan by the arm.

“I don’t stir!” she declared. “Not one step!”

“Then worse will come of it.”

“But my father!”

“It’s idle threats—they don’t mean a word of it.”

“Ah, miss, come on!” urged Peggy in an agony for Tom.

“She shall!” he muttered, with the nozzle of one pistol against the lady’s neck; and so between them they got her to the back of the house, and thence across the open space to the stables. As they ran Tom turned his head, and just saw one end of a chain of ruddy convict faces, all horribly intent upon some unseen spectacle before the palisade.

The stable proper faced the open gate through which the bushrangers had ridden. Their saddled horses stood two in a stall, and Tom was backing out a couple when he discovered Peggy meddling with a third. He told her three would not be wanted.

“An’ what about you?”

“I stay with my mates.”