A Bushranger at Bay
"Generally, I fear; it's the whole meaning of the act," confessed Stingaree, still the dandy in tone and phrase. "But there have been exceptions."
"Exactly!" quoth Kentish. "And there's going to be another this afternoon!"
Stingaree hurled the stump of his cigar into the scrub, and without a word the villain was born again, with his hard eyes, his harder mouth, his sinister scowl, his crag of a chin.
"So you come back to that," he cried, harshly. "I thought you had more sense; you will make me tie you up before your time."
"You may do exactly what you like," retorted Kentish, a galling scorn in his unaltered voice. "Only, before you do it, you may as well know who I am."
"My good sir, do you suppose I care who you are?" asked Stingaree, with an angry laugh: and his anger is the rarest thing in all his annals.
"I am quite sure you don't," responded Kentish. "But you may as well know my name, even though you never heard it before." And he gave it with a touch of triumph, not for one moment to be confounded with a natural pride.
The bushranger stared him steadily in the eyes; his hand had dropped once more upon the butt of
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