Inside the leather was human skin, said to be flayed off a chap by cannibals somewhere, which was a splendid thing to have for your own, if it was true; and in the belt a place had been specially made for a knife. Freckles, of course, had a knife in it--a “bowie” knife that made you cold to see. He never used it, but kept it ready, and said if a keeper ever caught him he possibly might have to. In addition to these things he carried in his coat-pockets a little spirit-lamp and a collapsible tin pot and a bag of tea. He said tea was the very life of men in the bush, and that often after a hard escape, when he was out of danger, he would get away behind a woodstack or under banks of a stream, or some such secret place, and brew a cup and drink it, and feel the better for it. Lastly, Freckles had a flat lead mask with holes for the eyes and mouth, which he always fitted on when trespassing. He said it was copied from the helmet Ned Kelly, the King of the Bushrangers, used to wear, but it was not bullet-proof, but only used for a disguise. We were in the same dormitory, and one night, when all the chaps had gone to sleep, he dressed up in these things and stood where some moonlight came in, and certainly looked jolly. Once, as an awful favor--me being smaller than him, and not fast enough to run away from a man--he let me come and see what he did when bushranging on a half-holiday in winter. “I sha’n’t run my usual frightful risks with you,” he said, “because I might have to open fire to save you, and that would be very disagreeable to me; but we’ll trespass a bit, and I’ll shoot a few things, if I can. I don’t shoot much, only for food.” He made me a mask with tinfoil off chocolate smoothed out and gummed on cardboard; but I had no weapons, and he said I had better not try and get any. We started for the usual walk. Chaps were allowed to go through a public pine-wood to Merivale; but half through, by a place where was a board which warned us to keep the path, Freckles branched off into some dead bracken, and squatted down and put on his mask. I also put on mine. Then he fastened his air-gun together and loaded it, and told me to walk six paces behind him and do as he did. His eyes were awfully keen, and now and then he pointed to a feather on the ground, or an old nest or a patch of rum fungus or a crab-apple still hanging on the tree, though all the leaves were off. Once he fired at a jay and missed it, then fell down in the fern as if he was shot himself, and remained quite motionless for some time. He told me that he always did so after firing, that he might hear if anybody had been attracted by the sound. It was a well-known bushman’s dodge. Once we saw a keeper through a clearing, and Freckles lay flat on his stomach, and so did I. He knew the keeper well, and told me that he had many times escaped from him. We waited half an hour, and turned to go back a different way from that of the keeper.