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Rh of this iron-gang was a major of gunners, too fat for service, and too gouty to sustain his distended body on his legs; he therefore superintended operations from a bath-chair, in which a blue-jacketed mess-man had to trail him about the works. Major Honeybone had recognised Nat, and had ordered the mess-man to hurry to the spot, but not to seem in a hurry. The major was himself a sufficiently hard and cantankerous man, but some sense of justice he had, and he considered Castle Sullivan one of the angriest plague-spots in a plague-spotted land. The present occasion filled him, therefore, with the greatest glee. He had long desired an opportunity of giving one or other of the Sullivans a piece of his mind, and here was young Sullivan trespassing on the works.

“Go slower,” said the major, making up his mind what to say, and not to say it all at once, as Mr. Nat turned in his saddle. Their greeting was in consequence not uncivil, though the major blandly ignored the coarse, ringed hand obtruded by the other.

“You heard of the outrage the other night at Castle Sullivan?” began Mr. Nat.

“By bushrangers?” observed Major Honeybone.

“By bushrangers; only one of them escaped; and there he is!” roared Nat, pointing savagely at Tom.

“Really?” remarked the major, wilfully unmoved. “Dear me! It was from you he came here—like half my gang—for absconding, I understood?”

“We didn’t know it then.”

“That he was one of the bushrangers?”

“Yes.”

“But you know it now?”

“We do so!”