In December, the outlaws stuck up a sheep station, and robbed the bank at Euroa. In February, 1879, they surprised the police station at Jerilderie, locked two policemen in the cells, disguised themselves as constables, captured the town, imprisoning a crowd of people in the hotel, then sacked the bank, and rode away shouting and singing with their plunder. By this time the rewards offered for their capture amounted to eight thousand pounds, and the whole strength of the Victoria police was engaged, with native trackers, in hunting them. Had these wicked robbers ever showed rudeness to a woman, or plundered a poor man, or behaved meanly with their stolen wealth, they would have been betrayed at once to the police, but the Australians are sportsmen, and there is a gallantry in robbery under arms that appeals to misguided hearts. The four bad men were so polite to all women, so kindly to unarmed citizens, so humorous in their methods, so generous with their gold, so daring in making war against a powerful British state, that they were esteemed as heroes. Even bad heroes are better than none at all, and they were not betrayed even by poor folk to whom the rewards would have been a fortune. For two years they outwitted the whole force of police, scouts and trackers at a cost to the state of one hundred fifteen thousand pounds. But with all this the best of Australian manhood was engaged in the hunt, and the real heroes of this adventure were the police, who made no moan through months of outrageous labor and suffering in the mountains. Superintendent Hare, in charge of the hunt, made friends with a kinsman of the outlaws, a young horse-thief, named Aaron Sherritt. This lad knew all the secrets of the outlaws, was like a brother to them, and yet, so worshiped Mr. Hare that he served with the police as a spy. In treachery to his kinsmen, he was at least faithful to his master, knowing that he went to his own death. He expected the outlaws to come by night to the house of Joe Byrne’s mother, and led Mr. Hare’s patrol, which lay for the next month in hiding upon a hill overlooking the homestead. Aaron was engaged to Byrne’s sister, was daily at the house and slowly a dim suspicion dawned on the outlaw’s mother. Then the old woman, uneasily searching the hills, stumbled into the police bivouac, and saw Aaron Sherritt, the spy, asleep in that company. His dress betrayed him to her, a white shirt, breeches and long boots, impossible to mistake. And when he knew what had happened, the lad turned white. “Now,” he muttered, “I am a dead man.” Mrs. Byrne sent the news of Aaron’s treachery to her outlawed son in the hills. On June twenty-sixth, the spy was called out of his mother’s cabin by some one who cried that he had lost his way. Aaron opened the door, and Joe Byrne shot him through the heart.