Page:Hornung - Stingaree.djvu/290

 So the song ended; and in the ultimate quiet the need of speech came over Stingaree.

The Unrealized Ideal, he informed a neighbor.

"Rather!" rejoined the man, treating the stale news as a mere remark. "We never let her off without that."

"I suppose not," said Stingaree.

"It's the song the bushranger forced her to sing at the back-block concert, and it made her fortune! Good old Stingaree! By the way, I heard somebody behind me say he had escaped. That can't be true?"

"The newsboys were yelling it as I came along late."

"Well," said Stingaree's neighbor, "if he has escaped, and I for one don't hope he hasn't, this is where he ought to be. Just the sort of thing he'd do, too. Good old sportsman, Stingaree!"

It was an embarrassing compliment, eye to eye and foot to foot, wedged in a crowd. The bushranger did not fish for any more; neither did he wait to hear Hilda Bouverie sing again, though this cost him much. But he had one more word with his neighbor before he went.

"You don't happen to know where she's staying,