the same road as that by which she had come with Trant. She saw when they had got into the rocky gallery which she and Trant had entered by the hole in the precipice that in several places there were deep clefts and chasms going as it were into the heart of the mountain, and scarcely noticeable in the dimness. It was into one of these fissures that Blake led her, and she now perceived that this was an opening into the outer world almost more closely hidden than the one by which she had entered—a narrow winding passage twisting round abutting boulders, but practicable for a well-trained horse, and no doubt the entrance which the bushrangers had used. It opened into a little clear space, partly girt with rocks, and partly hemmed in by the bunya scrub, where Elsie saw a rough track had been cut.
The half-caste was waiting here holding the bridles of two horses, while a third was tethered to a sapling close by. One of those he held she recognized as Abatos: the other was the animal she had ridden at the picnic.
"I brought the Outlaw, as you see," said Blake ; "but I couldn't manage a side saddle. I know, however, that you are a good horsewoman, and I think we might arrange something in the shape of a pommel."
He undid a sort of valise, strapped on to the dees of the saddle in fashion to serve as a safeguard in the case of a buckjumper, and doubling and re-strapping it, made a tolerable imitation of a single pommel. He lifted Elsie, and gave her the reins, then mounted himself, and they followed Jack Nutty, who on the third horse disappeared into the bunya scrub.
The track would have been absolutely undiscoverable to one who did not know it. No trees had been felled; only the spreading branches had been cut so as to allow the passage of horsemen in single file. The black bunyas rose dense on either side, forbidding prickly pyramids so close together as to lose the effect of sombre grandeur they might otherwise have had. At the distance of a yard or two there would be no sign of the track if it had been possible even to penetrate a yard or two. No wonder, Elsie thought, the
