Australian Tales - Setis

very carefully, for he was not accustomed to walking in the bush
barefooted; and many were the wishes — not very cordial ones — which
he sent after the unmerciful thief, who had compelled him to “drown his
brogues, like a pair of blind puppies.” He had not travelled far when he
saw an old rusty, single-barrelled pistol lying on the ground, and close
beside it a long grey cloak which the bushranger had either dropped from
his saddle-bags or thrown away as useless to him.
“Hilloa, what's this thing?” quoth Micky, as he picked up the cloak and
examined it with as much joy and amazement as a wild Figian, who had
just found a barber's poll in a bamboo brake. “It's big enough to kiver me
an Joe Griddle together; how-an-iver, I'll make it fit me soh! an it'll be
handy to hide me nakedness, though there ain't much heat in it.” He then
put it on, and gathered its folds closely about him, with a strip of stringy
bark by way of a girdle. “An this concarn may be handy too, in case I
shall mate any more bushrangers,” continued Mick, picking up the pistol,
and peeping down the barrel with one eye to see if it were loaded. “Shure
it wud be a convanient way of settlin all me sorrows if I was to put this
pisthle into me mouth, and fire aisily down me throat. But it is not
loaded, so I suppose it won't go off.”
The shades of evening were fast closing around when Mick regained
the road; but a full moon was rising, and the sky was clear and bright; so
onward he trudged in the direction of Joe Griddle's hut; very often his
clamorous appetite helped him to picture his old friend Joe, with his new
friend Sandy McGrim and his dog, Nip, sitting down to their substantial
suppers, and much he longed to be sitting with them.
Micky had not travelled far, when on turning an abrupt angle of the
road, he met a colporteur, carrying a valise in one hand and a bushman's
outfit in the other. In a moment Micky conceived the idea of stealing the
latter, and before his better judgment could influence him he had called
upon the stranger to stand and deliver up his swag, under divers horrible
pains and penalties. “Bail up, honey?” shouted Micky in as gruff a voice
as he could assume, at the same time flourishing his pistol about his head
as if it were a shillelah. “Bail up I say, and hand up yer swag, or you'll
catch it, an no mishtake.”
“You surely don't intend to rob me, friend?” said the gentleman, in a
tolerably composed tone of voice. “I fear you will not value the contents
of my valise very much if I give it to you; if you did you would not make
this wicked demand.”
“Troth thin I've been robbed meself to-day of eviry haporth I have in
the worrld,” cried Mick; “an shure you can't grumble if I just take a little
trifle from yerself. I don't care what you've got in yer leather box, ye can
kape that; but I want yor blankets an quart pot and yer vittles, for I'm
gettin cowld and hungry, and savage to boot; so hand up yer swag,
misther, or by the piper I'll shoot off this pisthle, and blow ye into the