2
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
: Settling Accounts.
Illustrations
Reuben Whitney Acquitted of the Charge of Burglary. The Ladies Saved from the Malay's Crease. A Fight with the Black Fellows. Jim Notes the Bush Rangers' Plans for Mischief.
Preface.
In this tale I have left the battlefields of history, and have written a story of adventure in Australia, in the early days when the bush rangers and the natives constituted a real and formidable danger to the settlers. I have done this, not with the intention of extending your knowledge, or even of pointing a moral, although the story is not without one; but simply for a change--a change both for you and myself, but frankly, more for myself than for you. You know the old story of the boy who bothered his brains with Euclid, until he came to dream regularly that he was an equilateral triangle enclosed in a circle. Well, I feel that unless I break away sometimes from history, I shall be haunted day and night by visions of men in armour, and soldiers of all ages and times.
If, when I am away on a holiday I come across the ruins of a castle, I find myself at once wonde