Isn't it good enough for you? If you're going to stick a man up for a watch, why can't you stick him up for a first-class one?"

He was about to hand me my own watch, but withdrawing his hand, said, "I'll not give it to the man; you take it and give it back to him yourself like a man."

Looking daggers at me, Hart handed me my watch. And by this time I thought it was wise on my part to seek safe quarters. Making my way to the other side of the town, I found a number of my friends, who had been wondering what had become of me, and when I related my adventures they only blamed me for my folly in running such a risk for the sake of a horse.

I was rewarded, however, for all my trouble. Ned Kelly gave orders soon afterwards for the saddle to be taken from Miss McD-'s horse and put on his own. And he left the animal for which I had interceded fastened to the lamp-post, where my friend found it in the evening after the gang had taken their departure.

Ned Kelly and Steve Hart being well under the influence of drink, now carried things with a high hand, terrifying the townsfolk with their threats and daring gestures. Late in the afternoon, after singing a bushrangers' song and giving the sergeant's wife strict injunctions that she was not to liberate her husband till seven o'clock, the four members of the gang joined and rode away to the Wunnamurra station, five miles from the town. There they demanded the manager and accountant of the bank; for, having heard that they had left the town, they took it for granted that they would make for the nearest station.

Having satisfied themselves that the officials of the bank were not on the premises, they then rode away in the direction of Tocumwal, the crossing-place on the Murray.

It was now high time that the people of Jerilderie should endeavour to put themselves into communication with the outer world. The first thing to be done was to connect the telegraph wires. But this was no easy thing to do, seeing that nothing but wreckage was strewn along the road from the telegraph office to the place of junction with the main line. At the time appointed the imprisoned police and telegraph operators were set at liberty, and arrangements were at once made to open up the necessary communication. A band of armed men protected the office, while many willing hands extemporised a line along the whole course of wreckage. This done, a message was wired to Sydney, Melbourne, Wagga-Wagga, and other police centres, and very soon hundreds of well-mounted troopers were concentrating on the principal crossing of the Murray.

But no signs whatever of the gang could be discovered. The most natural conjecture was that as soon as possible the desperadoes would cross from the plain and open county of Riverina back to the wild country of Strathbogie. But it turned out that such was not the case. While police attention was being directed to the Murray Crossing the gang took up their position about sixteen miles from Wunnamurra in a dense pine

forest, where on the third day after the raid they were accidentally discovered by a friend of mine. When seen by him they were just ready for a start. Plunging through the unknown depths of the bush, they soon made the river far above the place where they well knew the police would be on the look-out for their coming. Having during the darkness of the night crossed into the rough country on the Victorian side, they were soon perfectly secure amid their old familiar haunts.

And now, as before, many months passed without anything definite as to the actual whereabouts. of the gang. The only thing tangible was that Kate Kelly was in constant communication with her brothers, and that a network of accomplices. were working in the interests of the gang.

It was finally in consequence of the false conduct of one of these accomplices that the gang was broken up.

A man named Skerritt, one of the most trusted, put himself in communication with the policeauthorities in Melbourne, and offered for certain considerations to betray the gang. Accordingly a little band of troopers was stationed in his hut, which was situated some eight miles from Beechworth, in the lonely Woolshed Valley. But soon after these arrangements had been made the Kellys got to know that Skerritt was playing the game of traitor, and they determined to destroy him for his pains. Late one night they made their way to Skerritt's hut. Ned Kelly drew nearthe door and called Skerritt by name, who, recognising Ned's voice, at once came to the door. But as soon as he opened it he fell dead by Kelly's. rifle ball. Catching a glimpse of the troopers in the hut, Ned challenged them to fight it out. The troopers, however, thinking that discretion was. the better part of valour, kept to their shelter, and did all in their power to barricade the doors. and windows.

Of course no time was now to be lost on the part of the Kellys, for they well knew that ere long tidings of their bloody deed would beflashed to Melbourne.

Ned Kelly, commander-in-chief that he was, conceived the idea of destroying the police train. on its way to Beechworth. With this object in view he led his associates by night through the forest to a small township called Glen Rowan, many miles from the scene of the murder, on the main trunk line of railway, some distance below its junction with the branch line to Beechworth.

Here he secured the police barracks and the railway station, making prisoners of all and sundry whom he found in the little hamlet. Pressing into his service a strong gang of navvies, he led them to a great curve on the line a halfmile beyond the township, and then just at the head of a gorge he ordered them to tear up the rails. This being done, he conducted the party back to the hotel which he had secured as headquarters, and there awaited results.

Amongst those imprisoned was a Mr. Curnow, Government teacher in the place. He having had occasion to come into town for medicine for his sick wife, got hold of the sympathetic side of Ned Kelly's nature by representing the case of the

sick woman. Ned told him he might go home with the medicine and take care of his wife. This brave man no sooner had attended to the requirements of his wife than he took a lantern, and providing himself with candle and matches, hastened along the line of rails in the direction of Melbourne. And then he waited until he heard the distant rumble of the wheels of the pilot-engine, for the authorities, on receiving intelligence of the murder, had hastily prepared a police train, and in advance dispatched an engine to clear the way. Curnow now lighted the candle and held the lantern high above his head. The signal was seen by those on the pilot-engine, who, on hearing of the situation of affairs, put back, and bringing the train to a stand, made the police superintendent acquainted with the facts.

The Kellys, who were securely barricaded within the walls of the hotel which overlooked the little railway station, greatly rejoiced when they heard the approaching train, for they fully anticipated the express would dash through the station and soon rush to its destruction down the terrible gorge. But to their surprise and dismay the train suddenly halted at the platform, and out poured a stream of well-armed troopers, who at once opened fire upon the building indicated by Curnow. The gang, nothing daunted, at once returned the fire of the police. At the first volley the superintendent fell wounded, and ere long a ball from a police rifle, entering the bar-room window, laid Byrne lifeless on the floor.

Throughout the night the firing was kept up on either side. One of the sons of the keeper of the house, and an old man, a servant, were shot. Ned Kelly himself received a severe wound in the arm, which prevented him from using his rifle. But notwithstanding the strong body of police which surrounded the house, he managed to effect his escape. Thinking, however, it would not be fair to leave his comrades in the time of their extremity, in the early grey of the morning he returned to the scene. As he made his way slowly down the hill-side, being encased in rudelyconstructed armour, with a tall nail-can for a helmet, the troopers, who were occupying positions behind the large forest trees, could not make him out. Some said it was an apparition. But as he drew near a heavy fire was opened upon the strange-looking object. Not until he was close to the muzzles of the rifles did he falter; then, a ball having entered his ankle-joint, he fell, and several of the police running up and pulling off the helmet, discovered it to be the veritable Ned Kelly!

Being secured, the wounded man was quickly dispatched to Melbourne by special train; but what about the others?

It was already well known that Byrne was dead, and that only two men could be in possession of the premises. But when the firing ceased from the hotel-which it did in the early morning-the police imagined that this silence was only a ruse to get them to enter the building. They telegraphed to headquarters for a cannon to be sent immediately, that with it they might wreck the frail wooden structure. This request was refused; and then one more courageous than the others

lighted a torch, and, running quickly to the door, threw it in, and soon the hotel was in flames.

At this very juncture a passenger train arrived, and by it came a Roman Catholic priest, bound for Sydney, who, on learning the sad circumstances, said to the police standing round, “If none of you will go and see if the men are dead or alive, I will." Up to the burning mass he hurried, and, entering the bar-room, there he saw the bodies of Byrne, Dan Kelly, and Steve Hart, lying across each other. Single-handed, he saved them from the devouring element.

By this time many of the Kelly sympathisers had gathered round, and were eagerly watching the proceedings. As soon as the bodies were produced they demanded them, and so deeply had the public mind been struck with terror at the unprecedented doings of the Kelly gang, that the request was granted. Without the least formality in shape of inquest, the mutilated remains were quickly conveyed into the mountains of the Kelly country and there buried by those who had for nearly three years aided them in their cruel conflict with law and order.

Ned Kelly was subsequently tried, and, being found guilty of several murders, was condemned to be hanged. As the judge was passing sentence upon him, having occasion to refer to that awicl tribunal before which he would soon have to appear, Kelly, with an air of utter carelessness, retorted, "Yes, your honour, and I will soon meet you there!" Sir —, the judge, who was then in good health, shortly afterwards suddenly expired.

And so the bold bushranger and cold-blooded murderer, Ned Kelly, whose clever generalship in a very bad cause had kept the two Governments of Victoria and New South Wales in a state of unrest for nearly three years, received the just reward of his doings. "He was hanged by the neck till he was dead, dead, dead!"

After the destruction of the Kelly gang an official inquiry was made into all the doings of the police throughout this novel reign of terror. and many things in no way calculated to bring honour upon the representatives of law and order were brought to light. Numbers were dismissed from the force, while several officers were degraded.

As to the reward which had been offered, as might have been expected, the heroic man Curnow received the greater portion, while the worthy black-trackers from Queensland came ir for their due share. The keeper of the hote destroyed by fire could secure no compensation whatever, it being proved that she incited the gang to keep up the firing on the police.

In common justice it must be admitted that Ned Kelly possessed qualities which, if they had been properly directed, would doubtless have raised him to an honourable position. But, alas! all his antecedents and all the early associations of his life were unfavourable. He was nursed, so to speak, in the lap of crime. breathel the very atmosphere of lawlessness, am trained to prey upon society. In the reaped as he had sown.

el

"COME

here, children, out of the sun, and I'll tell you a story. Come in, you'll all get headaches.' So she used to get us together (there were nine of us, and great little fidgets, like all children) into the house; and there she'd sit on the floor and tell us one of the stories I tell you. But then she used to make them last much longer, the different people telling their own stories from the beginning as often as possible, so that by the time she'd got to the end she had told the beginning over five or six times. And so she went on, talk, talk, talk, Mera Bap reh! Such a long time she'd go on for, till all the children got quite tired and fell asleep. Now there are plenty schools to which to send the children, but there were no schools when I was a young girl; and the old women, who could do nothing else, used to tell them stories to keep them out of mischief."

This quotation from the narrator of the "Hindoo Fairy Legends" in "Old Deccan Days" may well be described as one of those touches of Nature that make the whole world kin. In this Indian grandmother we see a type of myriads of dear old grannies in all ages and all climes; last depositary of the traditions of the ages, their stories are full of the suffering of humanity. For my part, I know nothing which bears such perpetual witness to the truths of the Kingdom of Heaven as the few simple thoughts which reign throughout universal folk-lore.

But story-telling, as we are about to see, has not been confined to the old; it has been and is a widely-spread profession among men, giving birth to epic poetry and the drama. And none more popular; from the monarch satiated with every pleasure to the wandering savage, all listen with pleasure to the man who has a story to tell. Like he wedding guest in the " Ancient Mariner," nen will stop in the midst of the most pressing or he most serious business to listen to a story. In aris I came across a financial paper wholly evoted to information about public securities, nd the premium offered to its subscribers was a andsome copy of the "Arabian Nights."

This is one of the latest proofs of the human petite for tales, but all history and every literare is full of examples to the same effect. If we ok at any catalogue on the subject we shall find llections not only under the names of innuerable authors, and from every nation, but every ssible title exhausted to distinguish one collecn from another.

When the Canterbury Pilgrims are taking their oper at the Tabard, in Southwark, the evening ore their departure the host proposes

"That eche of you to shorten with youre way, an this viage, shal tellen tales tway the erCanterbury ward, I mene it so,

d homeward he shal tellen other two,

Of aventures that whilom have befalle,
And which of you that bereth him best of alle,
That is to sayn that telleth in this cas
Tales of best sentence and most solas,
Shal have a souper at youre aller cost,
Here in this place sitting by this post,

When that ye comen again from Canterbury."

How many authors since Chaucer have made use of this universal propensity as a mise-en-scène for their inventions! But it was by no means original with Chaucer, who took the idea from the "Decameron." Boccacio, with an even more intense realisation of the human passion for taletelling, puts his collection into the mouths of ten persons-seven young women and three young men-who had fled from Florence to a country villa during the fearful plague of 1348.

Thus in the nineteenth century the greedy worshippers on the Bourse of Paris are just as ready to divert themselves with a story as, in the fourteenth, were the jocund pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, or a group of dissolute Florentines in the midst of the plague.

And wider still the passion rages. Round their camp fires gather the Koranna Hottentots, the Australian savages, the wandering Arabs, and the Red Indians, enjoying exactly the same sensations as a company of English rustics sitting round the open hearth of a Sussex cottage listening to granny's ghost stories.

It may indeed be questioned whether the cultured races and classes possess the gift in a higher degree than the savage or the untutored. Those who have studied the savage find that invention is no rare trait in his character. Sir George Grey found that it was just in proportion to the amount of food he gave him. But, on the other hand, prolonged starvation might produce the same effect, or anything which led to derangement of the nervous system. Perhaps, indeed, the terrible condition of the digestive organs into which savages fall from want of food or improper food may account for their extraordinary hallucinations. Not that the poor savage needs dream to imagine horrors, seeing he is so beset by monsters.

May not the stories, for example, of giants and ogres which so often appear in folk-lore be due to the existence of human creatures of a type such as are still sometimes depicted in the histories of savage races, and have been met with in our own days? That the terror of his oppressors weighs on the mind of the poor savage until he sees in them an incarnation of the powers of darkness, we have a proof in Mozambique, where the native word for the Devil is Muzunba-maya, or Wicked White Man; and they make hideous little images-white, of course-of the demon slavedealer.

But if stories such as that Tertullian refers to when he speaks of the Towers of Lamia, that

made people dream of an ogress that eats children; or our own Jack the Giant-killer, with its

"Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman,

Be he live or be he dead,

I'll grind his bones to make my bread;"

or the German monster who lived in the little house of spice-wood, or their frightful kindred in every land, are a grotesque shadow of the brutal tyranny under which so many thousands of the weaker among savages have lived, there are plenty of other stories which suggest a singular gentleness of soul among them, rendering their sufferings all the sadder.

66

"There was once," says a story current among the Chippeway Indians, a hunter so ambitious that his only son should excel all by endurance, that when the boy had to go through the usual fast preparatory to choosing his guardian-spirit, the father urged him to persist even after he had gone eight days without food. Exhausted nature, however, could hold out no longer, and when the hunter came the next day his son was dead, and under the form of a robin had flown to the top of the hut. He entreated his father not to mourn. 'I shall be happier,' he said, 'in my present state than I could have been as a man. I shall always be the friend of men and keep near their dwellings. I could not gratify your pride as a warrior, but I will cheer you by my song. I am now free from cares and pains, my food is furnished by the fields and mountains, and my path is in the bright air.'"

Story-telling is so natural that for the existence of a vast number of old tales we need no other explanation than the universal desire to amuse and to be amused-the universal love of the wonderful, and the pleasure most feel in playing on this strange organ.

Story-telling, however, in its higher forms, has another origin, and is the rudimentary faculty which makes the poet and the historian. The first stories of this kind resembled those that came from the lips of the patriarchs of the tribe who "told in the ears of their sons and of their sons' sons what things the Lord had wrought in Egypt and the signs which He had done among them."

But the time quickly came when among their posterity appeared men specially gifted with the historic and poetic faculty. In the beginning these bards united both the priestly and bardic character. They were regarded as cognisant of the past, the present, and the future, as endowed, in fact, with prophetic power. The bardic faculty, gushing out at first like the mountain stream, quiets down at last into a mere ebb and flow of the same waters. So in India the bards have long been nothing more than reciters of the sacred poems. Idolatry of the written word being carried so far in India that to know perfectly the Ramayana and the Mahabarata is to attain perfection; its very sounds ennoble the Soudra who chances to hear them. This being the case, it is not strange that even rajahs themselves should strive for bardic honours. Zalim

Sing, who at the beginning of this century was ousted by a usurper from the throne of Merwan, excelled all the bards of Oodipoor.

This royal bard has left a striking story of the presence of mind, prowess, and physical strength of the Rajpoot women. But, as Colonel Tod, the Froissart of the Rajpoot tribes, has shown, honour to women is a striking feature in Indian legend. Nowhere in all romantic fiction shall we find a character more courageous, more spirited, or more faithful, than brave Seventee Bai. Her story is charmingly told in "Old Deccan Davs." The Vizier's daughter does more wonderful deeds than any Knight of the Round Table, and in a manner more gracious and disinterested, finally laying all her honours down at the feet of a poltroon of a husband who had forsaken her in a jungle and had become a wandering fakeer.

Such tales as these, and others of a more humorous character, are no doubt the stock-intrade of the popular story-teller in India, who wants nothing more for his properties than a rug to shield him from the sun and a picture wherewith to attract the crowd.

I cannot resist giving a bit from one of these stories, as illustrating Hindoo humour.

A blind man and a deaf man enter into partnership; they go together into the jungle, where they find a washerwoman's donkey and a big chatter (a jar). They appropriate both, and going a little farther find an ants' nest with such remarkably fine ants that the deaf man puts four of the biggest into his snuffbox as presents for his friends. Soon after a thunderstorm comes on and they take refuge in a lofty building that looks like a temple. Unfortunately it is the palace of a very powerful rakshas, the Indian name for a demoniacal ogre. They had hardly got inside and fastened the door before the rakshas came home and was much surprised at finding himself bolted out.

"Ho! ho!" cried he to himself; "some men have got in here, have they! I'll soon make mincemeat of them." So he began to roar in a voice louder than the thunder, and he cried, "Let me into my house this minute, you wretches; let me in, let me in, I say," and to kick the door and batter it with his great fists. But though his voice was very powerful, his appearance was still more alarming, insomuch that the deaf man, who was peeping at him through a china in the wall, felt so frightened that he did not know what to do. But the blind man was very brave (because he couldn't see), and went up to the door, and called out, "Who are you? and what do you mean by coming battering at the door in this way, and at this time of night?" "I'm: rakshas," answered the rakshas, angrily, "and this is my house Let me in this instant, or I'll kill you." All this time the deaf man, who was watching the rakshas, was shivering and shaking in a terrible fright, but the blind man was very brave (because he couldn't see), and he called out again, "Oh, you're a rakshas, are you! Well, if you're rakshas, I'm bakshas; and bakshas is as good as rakshas." "Bakshas!" roared the rakshas. "Bakshas! Bakshas! What nonsense is this? There is no such creature as a bakshas!" "Go away," replied the blind man, “and don't dare to make any further disturbance, lest I punish you with a vengeance; for know that I'm bakshas! bakshas is and rakshas's father." My father?" answered the shas. "Heavens and earth! Bakshas, and my father! heard such an extraordinary thing in my life. father and in there? I never knew my father was bakshas!" "Yes," replied the blind man, "go a

66