Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/91

 his discharge. But, here again, Fate (or else blind Chance, which she too often resembles) was against him. 'Fortune's my foe,' he might have quoted, with reason, had such literary morceaux been in his line.

One of the shearers from Tandara, being a smart bushman, had escaped, in the uncertain light and confusion of the mêlée, and discovering the horses of the party, feeding by themselves, in an angle of the station fence, caught the quietest of the lot, annexed a stray halter, and ran them into a yard. He then returned to the insurgents, and mingling with the crowd, managed to warn his comrades, except Bill, who was wedged in between two armed men, with another at his back, by special instruction of Stoate. Leaving unostentatiously, they escaped notice, and providing themselves with saddles and bridles from the numbers which lay on the ground outside of tents, or on horizontal limbs of trees, departed quietly, and by sundown were many a mile away on the road to the next non-Union station. They would not have abandoned their companion had they the least idea of what he was likely to undergo at the hands of the law; but the last thought that could have entered into their heads would be that he was liable to arrest and trial in connection with the burning of the steamer. So, believing that they might run serious risk by remaining among the excited, dangerous crowd, at the same time being powerless to do him any good, they decided to clear off.

As there was sworn evidence to incriminate him without available witnesses to testify in his favour, the Bench had no alternative but to commit William Hardwick for trial at the next ensuing Assize Court, to be holden at Wagga Wagga. Thither, with the other prisoners, ruffians with whom he could neither sympathise nor associate, was poor Bill, manacled and despairing, sent off in the up-river coach, a prey to anxiety and despondent imaginings.

What would be Jenny's feelings when she saw in an extract from the Wilcannia Watchman, too faithfully copied into the Talmorah Advertiser:—

'Arrest and trial before the Bench of Magistrates at Tolarno. William Hardwick, John Jones, J. Abershaw,