The Storm Bursts.

Poor little Cecil Mayford had left us about nine o’clock in the morning of the day before this, and, accompanied by Charles Hawker, reached his mother’s station about eleven o’clock in the day.

All the way Charles had talked incessantly of Ellen, and Cecil joined in Charles’s praises of his sister, and joked with him for being “awfully spooney” about her.

“You’re worse about my sister, Charley,” said he, “than old Sam is about Miss Brentwood. He takes things quiet enough, but if you go on in this style till you are old enough to marry, by Jove, there’ll be nothing of you left!”

“I wonder if she would have me?” said Charles, not heeding him.

“The best thing you can do is to ask her,” said Cecil. “I think I know what she would say though.”

They reached Mrs. Mayford’s, and spent a few pleasant hours together. Charles started home again about three o’clock, and having gone a little way, turned to look back. The brother and sister stood at the house-door still. He waved his hand in farewell to them, and they replied. Then he rode on and saw them no more.

Cecil and Ellen went into the house to their mother. The women worked, and Cecil read aloud to them. The book was “Waverley;” I saw it afterwards, and when supper was over he took it up to begin reading again.

“Not that book to-night, my boy,” said his mother. “Read us a chapter out of the Bible. I am very low in my mind, and at such times I like to hear the Word.”

He read the good book to them till quite late. Both he and Ellen thought it strange that their mother should insist on that book on a week-night; they never usually read it, save on Sunday evenings.

The morning broke bright and frosty. Cecil was abroad betimes, and went down the paddock to fetch the horses. He put them in the stock-yard, and stood for a time close to the stable, talking to a tame black lad, that they employed about the place.

His attention was attracted by a noise of horses’ feet. He looked up and saw about a dozen men riding swiftly and silently across the paddock towards the house.

For an instant he seems to have idly wondered who they were, and have had time to notice a thickset gaudily dressed man, who rode in front of the others, when the kitchen-door was thrown suddenly open, and the old hut-keeper, with his grey hair waving in the wind, run out, crying — “Save yourself, in God’s name, Master Cecil. The Bushrangers!”

Cecil raised his clenched hands in wild despair. They were caught like birds in a trap. No hope! — no escape! Nothing left for it now, but to die red-handed. He dashed into the house with the old hut-keeper and shut the door.

The black lad ran up............