'This is the horrible man _without_ the name.' 'And who was the man with the name?' 'You mean Clooney O'Keefe, the famous bush-ranger; the man I shot--' 'The man you shot, Mr Nevill!' 'The man I shot _with_, Mrs Osborne. I was about to say _with_. I paused merely to recall his features. He wore a goatee beard and a plug-hat. But the most extraordinary thing about Clooney O'Keefe, the outlawed murderer and robber--' 'With whom you shot, Mr Nevill?' cried Mrs Osborne. 'Accidentally, of course, Mrs Osborne, as one might be shooting at Wimbledon or Inverness-shire in company with the greatest ruffian unhung. The curious thing about Clooney O'Keefe was that, although he was half his time out in the bush, he always wore a blue tight-fitting frock-coat, a flower in his button-hole, and a pair of six-chambered revolvers in his back coat-pockets. He said no gentleman could think of wearing a belt. He had a melancholy end. It created a sensation in the colony.' 'How did he die?' asked Mrs Osborne, with a faint smile. 'One day, while he was resting after robbing a stoutish man, he put his gun on the ground and walked a little way from it, to see if the man whom he had robbed and bound was satisfied, or preferred to be shot rather than run the risk of not being found by anyone before he died of starvation. The man elected to live. Poor Clooney turned round to go back for his rifle, when he saw, to his horror, that a full-grown kangaroo had taken up the loaded weapon, and was pointing it at him, poor Clooney. The creature had, no doubt, seen Clooney cover the traveller with the rifle. The piece might go off at any moment. Clooney drew out one of his revolvers and fired. The bullet struck the trigger of the gun; it went off, and Clooney fell. They put up a monument to the kangaroo, and were very near lynching the traveller when they found him, for being, in a manner, the cause of Clooney's death. These colonial people are a queer lot.' Mrs Osborne rose, and, as he held the door for her, she said, with a smile in passing, 'I am afraid Mr Nevill has been entertaining us with nothing better than travellers' tales.' 'I hope with nothing worse,' he said, bowing low. When the door had been closed he went over to George, and said, 'I am delighted to see you back in your old form again, Osborne. You look as though the heart bowed down with weight of woe had gone in for dumb-bells and come straight in the back again. I hope all is now right between you and Marie?' 'I think so. I have reason to think so.' 'I am delighted. What an awful fool you were to knock your mind into a cocked hat over questions you must take as settled by other men! Did I make a fool of myself--I mean an extra fool of myself--at dinner?' 'No; on the contrary, you got on very well.' 'You don't think I annoyed or displeased your mother?'