take your own way, I suppose,' he said good-humouredly. 'We won't quarrel, if I can help it. But I hope you won't have reason to regret not taking my advice. Have you heard who the new Police Magistrate is?'
'His name is Mac, something or other; comes from Tasmania, and knows every escaped convict in the colonies by sight, they say.'
'Oh, Launceston Mac! Is that the P.M. who is to reign over us? No doubt he's a good man, but a little too fond of appearing to know everybody, and awfully severe. He's too quick in his decision, for my taste. I feel like the sergeant in Rob Roy, who considers that, "Were it the Bailie's own case, he would be in no such dashed hurry."'
'Oh, well, there are plenty of rascals here and to spare. He may try his hand on them, and welcome.'
'There's a new Sergeant of Police, too,' he continued. 'Can't remember his name; something like Barrell or Farrell. They say he's a "regular terror," as Joe Lawless expressed it.'
'Frank Dayrell! Is he come?' asked Hastings, with a change of tone. 'I used to know him in a wild district out back, before the gold. There was great joy when he left Wanaaring.'
'Why, what was the matter with him? I heard he was a very smart, active officer.'
'All that,' said Hastings, 'but more besides—much more. Sergeant Francis Dayrell bore the name of being one of the most unscrupulous, remorseless men that ever touched a revolver. When he has duty to do, he's all right. But, above everything, he must have a conviction. If he can manage that, with his prisoner, well and good. If not—caveat captivus.'
'Whatever he is,' answered Lance, 'it won't matter much to us. We can afford to pay for "Miner's Rights" now,' he added laughingly, 'and there's nothing else likely to bring us within the talons of the law.'
'I wouldn't make too sure of that,' his companion returned half musingly, and with a strangely altered expression. 'Dayrell is a most extraordinary man.'
That there was, in the early days of the great Australian gold irruption, a large proportion of remarkable and exceptional characters on all the goldfields, few who have the faintest recollection of that socially volcanic period will be found to deny. It could hardly have been otherwise. Adventurers of every sort and condition, of all ages and both sexes, from every clime and country, had there congregated at these wondrous auriferous centres. The first year's manual labour, which all essayed as the recognised form of ticket in the lottery, saw many of the unused toilers disgusted or discouraged. Meanwhile, a demand arose for competent persons to fill appointments the emoluments attached to which were calculated on war prices. The public and private service were both undermanned. Hence, every day well-born and well-educated mining amateurs relinquished the pick and shovel to become gentlemen, so to speak, once more. The more fortunate became Goldfield Commissioners, Police Magistrates, Customs Officers, Clerks, Agents, Storekeepers, Inspectors of Police, Auctioneers, and what not. The salaries were large; the profits extraordinary—in many cases far exceeding the gains of the ordinary miner. The rank and file of the unsuccessful applicants, fully equal, if not, in some cases, superior to the fortunate competitors, contented themselves with becoming police-troopers, store clerks and assistants, coach-drivers, billiard-markers, or barmen. In all these conventionally humble situations they were, if sober and shrewd, enabled to save money and lay the foundation of future opulence. The police force—more particularly the mounted division—was popular with the more aristocratic waifs. It afforded a reasonable degree of leisure, a spice of danger, and the privilege of posing in quasi military array, besides riding a well-appointed charger and wearing a showy uniform. Among the privates and, so to speak, non-commissioned officers of the force were to be found, therefore, a large proportion of what, in a regular army, would have been called soldiers of fortune. They were occasionally impatient of discipline, wild and reckless in their habits, given to occasional brawling, drinking, and dicing, much as were the Royalist soldiery in the days of the first Charles. But, like them, they were brave to recklessness, cool and daring amid fierce and lawless crowds, and of all that strangely gathered band the wildest and most untamed spirit, yet the coolest, the most rusé, deadliest sleuth-hound, by general acclaim and common report, was Sergeant Francis Dayrell.
Tall and slight, with fair hair and beard, and a false air of almost effeminate softness in his blue eyes, he was wonderfully active and curiously muscular as compared with his outward appearance. That he had received the education of a gentleman all could perceive. Of his family nothing was known. Ever reticent about his own concerns, he was not a man to be interrogated. An admirable man-at-arms—promoted, indeed, in consequence of some exceptional deed of power, the taking, indeed, of a desperate malefactor single-handed; he was an unsparing martinet to those below him, merely respectful to his superiors in rank, and habitually hard and merciless to the criminals with whom he had to deal. With the exception of occasional boon companions, with whom, at intervals, he drank deeply, and, it was alleged, gambled for high stakes, he made no friends and had no intimates. Solitary, if not unsocial, he was generally feared if not disliked, and the mixed population of the goldfield, many of whom, doubtless, were conscious of 'sins unwhipt of justice,' united in giving the sergeant a very wide berth indeed. Such was the man who had suddenly been transferred to the police district which included Growlers' Gully and its vicinity.
Among his friends, the Lawlesses, Lance was not long in perceiving that the sergeant's advent was not regarded as a wholly unimportant circumstance. He rather wondered to hear the tone of mingled dislike and bitterness with which the affair was discussed.
'Not that they,' Ned Lawless, the eldest of the brothers, and, in a sense, the leader of the party, laughingly remarked, 'had any call to be afraid, but there were friends of theirs, quiet, steady-going farmers and drovers, upon whom this cove, Dayrell, had been tremendously hard—treated them dashed unfairly indeed. So that if, by chance, his horse came home some day without him, he, for one, would not be surprised, nor would he be inclined to go into mourning for him.'
'If he only does his duty, though,' Lance could not help answering, 'that ought not to make Dayrell unpopular.'
'There's ways and ways of doing things,' returned Ned. 'I quarrel with no man for doing his duty—that he's paid for. But this man's a—— dog, and I'd shoot him like a crow if he came messing round me, and think nothing of it either.'
Trevanion couldn't quite understand the savage tone with which these words were uttered; he thought that something had occurred to put Ned out, as he was habitually a good-tempered fellow. When he went to Kate for an explanation, he found himself no nearer to a solution.
'I hate the sight of him,' she said, 'with his soft voice and sneering ways. I believe he'd hang us all if he could. He nearly "run in" a young man we knew on the other side, and him as innocent about the duffing as the babe unborn. He'll get a rough turn yet, if he doesn't look sharp, and serve him right, too.'
'But you have no cause to mind his coming here, Kate,' he said in a bantering tone. 'You've never stolen a horse, or "stuck up" anybody—isn't that the expression?—(except me, you know). I wonder you girls don't admire a handsome man like Dayrell.'
'I wouldn't mind laying him out for his coffin,' said the girl vengefully. 'I might admire his features then. But,' and here her face assumed, for a few seconds, an expression which caused her companion to gasp in amazement, 'his turn may come yet, and if Frank Dayrell dies in his bed he's a luckier man than some of us think he'll be. By Jove!' she exclaimed suddenly, 'if that isn't him, and almost close enough to hear me. He's the devil himself, I do believe.'
By a curious coincidence the unconscious object of this discussion had emerged from a by-track, and, suddenly reining up, rode slowly past the pair. Whatever his moral qualities he was utterly point device as a man-at-arms. His tall erect figure and manège horsemanship were well
