The party, handling their guns in readiness to fire, on the slightest alarm, at any living object that might present itself, were now within thirty or forty yards of the house, and had halted to reconnoitre; when the sergeant, who had been on his knees for several minutes before, with his piece at his eye, said softly, “Now,” and fired.  Whether he had aimed at the foremost man of the gang, I do not know; but if so, he had missed him, for he still stood firm.  At this person, however, I now levelled, fired, and down he came.  In the next instant the shots were rapping thick and fast from the different windows of the house.

The bushrangers, taken by surprise, paused for an instant, returned two or three straggling shots, and then fled in the utmost consternation and disorder.  We kept pelting after them for a few minutes, and then, quitting the house, gave them chase, with a whooping and hallooing that must have added in no small degree to their terror.  In this chase we overtook two that had been severely wounded, and came upon a third near the skirt of the wood, who, after running so far, had dropped down dead.  The others, who had fled, some of whom, we had no doubt, were also wounded, escaped by getting into the forest, where it was no use looking for them.  The two wounded men we made prisoners, and carried back to the house.  As we were returning, we came upon the man whom I had brought down.  Being extended motionless on the ground at full length, we thought him dead, and were about to pass on, intending to leave him where he lay till the morning, when I thought I heard him breathing.  I knelt down beside him, looked narrowly into his face, and found that he was still living.  On discovering this, we had the unfortunate man carried to the house; and having placed him on a mattress, staunched the bleeding of his wound, which was on the right breast, and administered a little brandy and water, which almost immediately revived him.  He opened his eyes, began to breathe more freely, and in a short time was so far recovered as to be able to speak, although with difficulty.

The excitement of the fray over, if the late affair could be so called, my heart bled within me for the unhappy wretch who had been reduced by my hand to the deplorable condition in which he now lay before me.  My conscience rose up against me, and would not be laid by any suggestions of the necessity that prompted the deed.  In my anxiety to make what reparation I could for what now seemed to me my cruelty, I sat by the miserable sufferer, ready and eager to supply any want he might express, and to administer what comfort I could do him in his dying moments; for that he was dying, notwithstanding the temporary revival alluded to, was but too evident from his ghastly look and rapidly glazing eye.

It was while I thus sat by the unhappy man, and while silently contemplating his pallid countenance, by the faint light of a lamp that hung against the wall of the apartment, that I suddenly thought I perceived in that countenance some traces of features that I had seen before.  Whose they were, or where I had seen them, I did not at first recollect.  But the idea having once presented itself, I kept hunting it through all the recesses of my memory.  At length Digby occurred to me.  But no, Digby it could not be.  Impossible.