Explore "The Squatter's Dream" by Rolf Boldrewood on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Soft! What are you? / Some villain mountaineers? / I have heard of such. " -- _Cymbeline_.
Mrs. Stangrove and Maud were sitting in the drawing-room that morning, a little silent and distrait, we may confess, when a man's footstep was heard on the verandah. "I did not think that Mark would have returned so soon," said Maud, going to the French window and looking out. She stood there for an instant, and then, turning to her sister a face ashen-white and strangely altered, gasped out a single word -- that word of dread, often of doom, in the far, lone, defenceless Australian waste -- "Bushrangers! " Mrs. Stangrove gave a moaning, half-muffled cry, and then, obeying the irresistible maternal instinct, rushed into the adjoining apartment where her children were. At the same moment a tall man with a revolver raised in his right hand stepped into the room, and gazed rapidly round with restless eyes, as of one long used to meet with frequent foes. Behind him, closely following, were three other armed men, while a fifth was visible in the passage, thus cutting off all retreat towards the rear.