To help pass the time the two worked a little in the drive, breaking down about a hundredweight of the quartz ridge that had cut in across the narrow face.  The stone showed gold freely.  At another time this would have occasioned the wildest jubilation, but now everything was secondary to the wonder inspired by what they had seen in Waddy, combined with their dread of the results of last night’s work.  It was well on in the afternoon when they were joyfully startled by the sound of a whistle in the shaft.

‘Hello, below there!’ cried a voice, and a few seconds later Parrot Cann, too excited to go through the usual formalities, rattled down and landed in a heap at Dick’s feet.

‘What’s up?’ asked Dick eagerly, as Parrot crept into the drive.

‘Oh, I say,’ gasped Parrot, ‘youse fellers are in fer it!’

‘How?  Who split?  What’re the troopers doin’?’

‘They’re after youse.’

‘After us!’ Peterson’s face paled at this corroboration of his worst suspicions.

‘My oath!  Gable’s in gaol at Yarraman; Phil an’ Jacker an’ Ted’s been took, an’ now they’re after you.’

Fer what?’

‘Rob’ry under arms, the feller said, an’ shooting with intent’ r somethin’.

Dick whistled incredulously.  Here was fame, here was glory.  His favourite authors were justified, and yet there was the dark side; thought of his mother came with a sharp twinge.

‘Who went an’ split—­Ted?’

‘None o’ the Company,’ said Parrot.  ’The troopers came to arrest Gable’s mates, thinkin’ they was men, an’ Toll-bar Sam told who you was.  He saw you all last night.’

‘Did they take Ted, an’ Jacker, an’ Phil right away?’

’Um.  Off to Yarraman.  You don’t know what a row’s on.  It’s awful.  Them fellers what captured Gable told a yarn about a gang o’ bushrangers’n a terrible fight, an’ swore Gable was the blood thirstiest of ’em all.  The Yarraman Mercury printed a special paper this mornin’, with all about the outbreak of a new gang o’ bushrangers in great big type, an’ every one’s near mad about it, ‘sept those what’s laughin’.’

The boys gazed at each other for a few moments in silence.  It took some time to grasp the astounding facts.  They were real bushrangers, their escapades had been printed in the papers, they were actually being pursued by bona fide troopers on flesh-and-blood horses—­what more could ambitious youth demand?

Dick’s unconquerable romanticism upheld him; he had achieved distinction, and the prospect of deluding and outwitting the police after the manner of his most brilliant heroes filled him with delight; but Billy Peterson was awed and out of spirits.

‘It’s all right, Billy,’ said Dick, ’they’ll never find us here.  We can defy ’em all fer weeks.’

‘Yes,’ said Billy bitterly, ‘but I’m hungry!’

‘You didn’t bring no crib, Parrot.’  Dick had made it a rule that the necessities of a shareholder temporarily in difficulties and hiding in the mine were to be attended to by the free members of the Company or others who, like Parrot Cann, were admitted to the Company’s councils.