An illustration of how little Boldrewood was inclined to idealise either his characters or their surroundings is afforded by the account of Redgrave's first visit to the home of the Stangroves, his neighbours on the Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush inn of the period where drunkenness was the normal condition of everyone, from the owner to the stable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly slab building roofed with corrugated iron, 'stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare sandy plain.' It faced the dusty track which did duty as a highroad; at the back of the slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a receptacle for rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking pigs lay in the verandah or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate vicinity of the front-entrance. 'What, in the name of wonder,' inquired Jack of himself as he rode away, 'can a man do who lives in such a fragment of Hades _but_ drink?' The home of the Stangroves, though less depressing, bears painful evidence of its isolation. The settler's wife little resembles Agnes Buckley--she is too typically colonial for that. 'She was young, but a certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore silent witness to the toils of housekeeping with indifferent servants or none at all; to the want of average female society; to a little loneliness and a great deal of monotony.' The visitor meets another member of the household, Stangrove's unmarried sister, a beautiful and spirited young woman whose impatience with her colourless life is outwardly subdued to ironical resignation. 'Another eventful day for Mr. Redgrave,' she remarks on his return after a day's riding over the station with her brother; 'yesterday the sheep were lost--to-day the sheep are found; so passes our life on the Warroo.' The best argument against Boldrewood's usual treatment of character is furnished by the great bushranger chief who is the central figure in _Robbery under Arms_. The author here submits for the first and only time to that fundamental law of fiction which demands a certain judicious exaggeration in the characters of a story depending for its interest mainly on the charm of circumstance. Starlight is at once the most real and least possible personage to be found in any of Boldrewood's novels. He becomes real because his character and actions are conceived in harmony with the romance and pathos of the story. Though it is obvious enough that there never could have existed a bushranger with quite so much of the _bel air_, or with a private code of honour so admirable, the exaggeration is far from obtrusive. He is of a stature suited to the deeds he performs, and, both he and his exploits being often closely associated with historical facts, a strong sense of reality is maintained.