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'If there isn't that villain himself I was talking about to you, sir!'

'What do you mean?' I said.

'Why, I told you those blacks we heard of at the Lake yesterday, and who came to attack ours, wanted to kill one man in particular. That's him! His name is Bobby Peel, and he's the biggest rascal in the whole country round. It's a wonder he's alive yet, for when we left the run for this last trip to town, six or seven weeks ago, the black police were after him; and yet there he stands, as cool as you please, as if he hadn't ever killed a white man. Look at him!' he added, as his mate came up with his team.

'Why, it's Sir Robert! So he isn't settled yet. It isn't for want of trying; for if he's been shot at once, he has been twenty times at least. He'd a been dead long ago, only for our super, who won't let our men shoot him, as any one of them would only be too glad to do. There's not a place in the whole country round where he durst show himself, only ours.'

'How is that?' I asked.

'Because he's allers been a-robbing the out-station huts, sneaking in when the hut-keeper's away. He's a capital rider; and he'd get horses as he'd stole planted away in the bush, tethered handy; and he gallops off thirty miles one way, and robs a hut, and then gallops back and shows himself at our station. Then, when the squatters complain to our super about it, he says, "It couldn't ha' been Bobby, cos Bobby was at my head station that day you say your hut was robbed." Then next day, perhaps, away goes Master Bobby another way, and plays the same game! You see he isn't like the other blacks, who're afraid to travel alone after dark on account of the "devil-devils" they believe walk at night in the bush. But he was bowled out at that game at last, not long before we started this trip, and the super threatened he'd shoot him himself if he heard tell of any more of his games!'