Australian Tales - Setis

its, not bigger nor gum leaves.”
“I call upon you in the Queen's name to surrender,” said one of the
horsemen. “I arrest you for horse-stealing; and if you don't drop your
arms this instant I'll shoot you dead.”
“Wheugh!” whistled Micky, dropping his pistol, “that's it, is it, me
jewell? Ho, ho, ho! I beg yer pardons, soh. I thought ye were thieves, ye
look just like em. It's all right frinds; I'll pritty soon explain iverythin to
yez. It's a mishtake altogether, an if ye'll jist git off an take a pot of tay
wid me, I'll tell yez all about it; then you can trot home agin, an save
yourselves a hape of thruble and botheration.”
The troopers dismounted, but instead of accepting Micky's kind
invitation to tea, they seized and handcuffed him, then commanded him
to sit down while they caught his horse.
“Och murther!” groaned Micky, “what for do yez put these bracelets
on to me? I won't rin away, nivir fear. I didn't stale the horse at all, not I
faith; an if ye'll jist sit down, as I axed ye before, I'll tell ye all about it,
an ye'll see in a jiffy that I'm as innicent as the horse himself, every bit.”
“It's my duty to caution you, that anything you say will be produced in
evidence against you,” said the trooper, kindly.
“To be shure, honey! that's jist what I want, produce every haporth ov
it, that's a good sowl.” He then began a rambling version of the way he
got the horse, and expressed his anxiety to see the owner of it, to confirm
his story, and return him his books, which were worth a stud of horses.
“You'll see him to-morrow safe enough,” said the trooper. “Now then,
here's your horse, mount and come with us.”
Micky mounted, and away they rode at a moderate pace, and a long
weary ride it was. For some time Mick employed all his eloquence in
defence of his honesty, but finding that it was entirely wasted upon the
troopers, that they were as stolid as dead stumps to all his appeals to their
“common sinse,” he concluded that they had got no sinse at all; so he
rode the rest of the journey in silence. Some hours after dark they entered
a small straggling township, and stopped at the door of the lock-up;
therein they incarcerated poor Micky, and fastened him to a chain. After
one or two attempts to enlist the sympathies of the lock-up keeper, but
finding him as iron-hearted as the troopers, Micky ate his allowance of
victuals, then lay down upon some straw, and thought of his kind friend
Mr. Hopewell, and upon all the good words he had spoken to him, until
his heart grew as cheerful as if he had all he wanted in the world at his
command.
The next day, about noon, he was unchained and escorted to the Courthouse,
followed by a concourse of idlers and newsmongers. The Court
waited some time in vain for the arrival of a second J.P., when the
magistrate present, after a consultation with the prosecutor (who had
been accommodated with a seat on the bench), decided to hear the case