The True Story of the KellyGang of Bushrangers Chapter 13 page 6

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In the meantime Ned Kelly and Byrne were engaged in appropriating all the money in the bank, making Living show them where it was to be found. When some £700, the teller’s cash, had been taken, Mr Elliot, the local schoolmaster, entered the bank and was told by Kelly to jump over the counter. He professed himself unable to do so, but the sight of Ned Kelly’s revolver muzzle gave him unwonted activity, and after all he found it possible. Kelly, who again expected to get £10,000, was unsatisfied with the teller’s cash and demanded more from Living, who told some plucky though useless falsehoods, saying that nothing of any value was in the safe, but Kelly refused to believe him and brought in the manager, getting from him the duplicate key. The other he had already obtained from Living. From the safe £1,450 was taken, and also a number of bank books, which, in spite of remonstrances, Kelly burnt, probably being under the impression that he was thereby doing a good turn for poor debtors of the bank.

While the outlaws were in the office Mr Rankin and Mr Gill, two townsmen, entered and were told to bail up, but instead of obeying they made a bolt into the street. Rankin was caught and very roughly handled by Kelly who took him into the hotel, and making him stand apart from the others against a wall in the passage, said he would shoot him. Rankin, who was a well known merchant and a justice of the peace, behaved most pluckily in these trying circumstances, and all the other prisoners begged Kelly not to fire. He made a great show of unwillingness to be merciful; one would suppose in order to inspire salutary fear, for even his spirit of domineering vanity could scarcely induce him to commit murder for such trifling cause as a momentary refusal to obey him. Whatever his real intentions may have been, the prisoners spent a most uncomfortable time, for Dan Kelly and Hart were quite anxious to fire into them for the offence of interceding for Rankin, and Ned Kelly declared that before he left he was going to shoot Richards and Devine. In fact he said his object in coming to the town had been simply to kill them, and that the robbing of the bank was a mere incident in his visit.

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