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[Gun Eden]

<div>Nothing could have afforded a finer hearing of the quality and thecompass of her voice, and she knew of old how well it suited her; yet atthe outset, from the sheer excitement of her suspicion, Hilda Bouveriewas shaky to the point of a pronounced tremolo. It wore off with thelengthening cadences, and in a minute the little building[Pg 9] was burstingwith her voice, while the pianist swayed and bent upon his stool withthe exuberant sympathy of a brother in art. And when the last rich notehad died away he wheeled about, and so sat silent for many moments,looking curiously on her flushed face and panting bosom.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Hilda snatched her eyes from Stingaree, and was sorry for Mrs. Clarksonfor the first time in their acquaintance. The new ball-dress of bridalsatin was no whiter than its wearer's face, which had aged several yearsin as many seconds. The[Pg 23] squatter leant toward her with uplifted hands,loyally concerned for no one and for nothing else. Between the coupleSir Julian might have been conducting without his bâton, but with botharms. Meanwhile, the flashing eye-glass had fixed itself on MissBouverie's companion, without resting for an instant on Miss Bouverie.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>Ebooks For Download Sharpest Sting (English</div><div></div><div>DOWNLOAD: https://t.co/lLQvrENLlK </div><div></div><div></div><div>"The next item, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is another pianofortesolo by this young lady. We'll let you off that, Miss Bouverie, sinceyou've got to sing. The next song on the programme is called 'TheUnrealized Ideal,' and the music is by our distinguished visitor andpatron, Sir Julian Crum. In happier circumstances it would have beensung to you by Mrs. Montgomery Clarkson; as it is, I call upon MissBouverie to realize her[Pg 27] ideal and ours, and on Sir Julian Crum toaccompany her, if he will."</div><div></div><div></div><div>To and fro, over the lip of the closing well, back into the throat ofthe deepening hole, went the buckets for many a night; and by day FergusCarrick employed his best wits to make an intrinsically anomalousposition appear natural to the world. It was a position which he himselfcould thoroughly enjoy; he was largely his own master. He had dailyopportunities of picking up the ways and customs of the bush, and anightly excitement which did not pall as the secret task approachedconclusion; but he was subjected to much chaff and questioning from theother young bloods of Glenranald. He felt from the first that it waswhat he must expect. He was a groom with a place at his master's table;he was a jackeroo who introduced station life into a town. And theelement of underlying mystery, really existing as it did, was detected[Pg 44]soon enough by other young heads, led by that of Fowler, the keen bankclerk.</div><div></div><div></div><div>He might have known it already, but for one difficulty. They had diggedtheir pit to the generous depth of eight feet, so that a tall prisonercould barely touch the trap-door with extended finger-tips; andStingaree (whose latest performance was no longer the Yallarook affair)was of medium height according to his police description. The trap-doorwas a double one, which parted in the centre with the deadly precisionof the gallows floor. The difficulty was to make the flaps closeautomatically, with the mouse-trap effect of Macbean's ambition. It wasmanaged eventually by boring separate wells for a weight behind thehinges on either side. Copper wire running on minute pulleys let intogrooves suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, andpowerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. Thelever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reachedby thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward on aspring.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Vanheimert had been in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so farfrom the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full ofsand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm whichalready shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks therewere none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned brownerand more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket andran for the fence as for his life. He had only left it in order to campwhere his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundredyards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which thebushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he wasgroping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collisionwith invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wonderingwhere the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise toretrace his steps and try again. And while he wondered a fit of coughingdrove the dust from his mouth like smoke; and even as he coughed the[Pg 71]thickening swirl obliterated his tracks as swiftly as heavy snow.</div><div></div><div></div><div>The stars seemed unnaturally bright and busy[Pg 80] as Vanheimert stole intotheir tremulous light. At first he could distinguish nothing earthly;then the tents came sharply into focus, and after them the ring ofimpenetrable trees. The trees whispered a chorus, myriads strong, in achromatic scale that sang but faintly of the open country. There werepalpable miles of wilderness, and none other lodge but this, yet thepsychological necessity for escape was stronger in Vanheimert than thebodily reluctance to leave the insecure security of the bushrangers'encampment. He was their prisoner, whatever they might say, and thesense of captivity was intolerable; besides, let them but surprise hisknowledge of their secret, and they would shoot him like a dog. On theother hand, beyond the forest and along the beaten track lay fame and afortune in direct reward.</div><div></div><div></div><div>And, divesting himself of his shooting-coat, he tossed it across for theother's inspection; he wore neither waistcoat nor hip-pocket, and hisinnocence of arms was manifest when he had turned round slowly where hestood.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Meanwhile the country was changing even with their now leisurelyadvance. The timbered flats in the region of the river had merged into agully which was rapidly developing into a gorge, with new luxuriantgrowths which added greatly to the density of the forest, suggesting itsvery heart. The almost neutral eucalyptian tint was splashed with thegay hues of many parrots, as though the gum-trees had burst into flower.The noise of running water stole gradually through the murmur of leaves.And suddenly an object in the grass struck the sight like a lanternflashed at dead of[Pg 128] night: it proved to be an empty sardine tin prickedby a stray lance from the slanting sun.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>"He must be let out, and it may save his mother's life; but if he weremine," exclaimed the Bishop, "I would rather he had done the other deed!But what about you?" he added, suddenly, his eyes resting on hissardonic visitor, who had[Pg 250] disguised himself far less than his horse."It will mean giving yourself up."</div><div></div><div></div><div>Darlinghurst Jail had never immured a more interesting prisoner than theback-block bandit who was tried and convicted under the strange styleand title which he had made his own. Not even in prison was his realname ever known, and the wild speculations of some imaginative officialswere nothing else up to the end. There was enough color in theirwildness, however, to crown the convict with a certain halo of romance,which his behavior in jail did nothing to dispel. That, of course, wasexemplary, since Stingaree had never been a fool; but it was somethingmore and rarer. Not content simply to follow the line of leastresistance, he exhibited from the first a spirit and a philosophy uniqueindeed beneath the broad arrow. And so far from decreasing with theyears of his captivity, these attractive qualities won him friend afterfriend among the officials, and privilege upon privilege at their hands,while amply justifying the romantic interest in his case.</div><div></div><div></div><div>At last there came to Sydney a person more[Pg 254] capable of an acuteappreciation of the heroic villain than his most ardent admirer on thespot. Lucius Brady was a long-haired Irishman of letters, bard andbookworm, rebel and reviewer; in his ample leisure he was also the mostenthusiastic criminologist in London. And as President of an exceedinglyesoteric Society for the Cultivation of Criminals, even from London didhe come for a prearranged series of interviews with the last and themost distinguished of all the bushrangers.</div><div></div><div></div><div>"Keep to my points of contact with the world, about which something isknown already, and you shall have the whole truth of each matter," saidthe convict. "But I don't intend to give away the altogether unknown,and I doubt if it would interest you if I did. The most interestingthing to me has been the different types with whom I have had what itpleases you to term professional relations, and the very different waysin which they have taken me. You read character by flashlight along[Pg 255] thebarrel of your revolver. What you should do is to hunt up my variousvictims and get at their point of view; you really mustn't press me tohark back to mine. As it is you bring a whiff of the outer world whichmakes me bruise my wings against the bars."</div><div></div><div></div><div>The criminologist gloated over such speeches from such lips. It wouldhave touched another to note what an irresistible fascination the barshad for the wings, despite all pain; but Lucius Brady's interest inStingaree was exclusively intellectual. His heart never ached for aroving spirit in confinement; it did not occur to him to suppress adetail of his own days in Sydney, down to the attractions of an Italianrestaurant he had discovered near the jail, the flavor of the Chiantiand so forth. On the contrary, it was most interesting to note the playof features in the tortured man, who after all brought his torture onhimself by asking so many questions. Soon, when his visitor left him,the bondman could follow the free in all but the flesh, through everycorridor of the prison and every street outside, to the hotel where youread the English papers on the veranda, or to the little restaurantwhere the Chianti was corked with oil which the waiter removed with awisp of tow.</div><div></div><div></div><div>His Excellency of the moment was a young nobleman of sportingproclivities and your true sportsman's breadth of mind. He was immenselypopular with all sects and sections but the aggressively puritanical andthe narrowly austere. He graced the theatre with his constant presence,the Turf with his own horses. His entertainment was lavish, and inquality far above the gubernatorial average. Late life and soul ofexalted circle, he was hide-bound by few of the conventional trammelsthat distinguished the older type of peer to which the Colonies had beenaccustomed. It was the obvious course for such a Governor and hiskindred lady to insist upon making the great Miss Bouverie their guestfor the period of her professional sojourn in the capital; and asemi-Bohe[Pg 266]mian supper at the Government House was but a characteristicfinale to her first great concert.</div><div></div><div> dd2b598166</div>