'I do not. I—'

He was interrupted by the report of a revolver out in the darkness. The trooper at the French window remained upright for a moment, then fell to his knees, and then forward upon the carpet. For two or three seconds all eyes but Lucy's and Ryder's were fixed upon the window, and there was apprehension in every face. Lucy's eyes were upon Ryder's hands; she saw the handcuff fall from one, saw him swing with a sudden, swift movement of the right arm, and the heavy manacle struck the trooper at his side on the temple, and the man fell without a groan. Then Ryder made a dash for the French window, and was gone before a hand could be raised to stay him. Lucy, who had had some understanding of his plan before he acted upon it, followed him swiftly, closing the windows after him; and she stood there, confronting the people, pale, but with determination in her face and the flash of courage in her eyes. The trooper from the other side dashed across the room, faltered for a moment, perceiving that time would be lost in a struggle with the girl, and then turned and rushed back through the door. The suddenness of all this had robbed the majority of the guests of their wits; they stood as if petrified. The wounded trooper rose slowly from the floor—it occurred to no one to offer to help him—staggered a few steps into the room, and fell again, and lay amongst the guests, his blood dyeing the carpet at their feet. Mean while Marcia had not moved; but now her white face had the expression of one listening with the intensity of an unspeakable fear for the message of death, and the sergeant in command was groping for the door, still dazed from the blow he had received, and almost blinded by the blood flowing from his wound.

Outside two troopers had jumped into their saddles, and were off in hot pursuit of the fugitive, who had galloped out of the thick cover of the orchard on Galah, Ryder's beautiful gray, and was riding at a breakneck pace for the heavily-timbered country to the east. It was a stern chase, and once Trooper Casey came so near to overhauling the gray horse that he ventured a revolver shot; but after that the hunted man drew away, and the troopers lost sight of him in the timber. The pursuit was maintained for about an hour, and then the pursuers came upon Galah trotting quietly back towards Boobyalla, riderless and without a saddle. Imagining that Solo had been swept from the horse by the limb of a tree, the troopers made a long search, and while they sought, Yarra—for it was he who had led the police away on this wild-goose chase—had doubled on his pursuers, and was making a bee-line for the station again on foot. He was found in his bed at home two hours later, cowering under the blankets, pretending an overpowering fear of the shooting and the blood.

Walter Ryder, when he passed through the window, sprang from the veranda, and dashed into the garden. A voice called to him to stand in the name of the law, and a revolver bullet clipped his shoulder, but he ran on until the thick growth of trees and shrubbery quite covered him, then, turning sharply to the left, he hid in the hollow of an old gum-tree, the creeper overgrowing which offered a perfect screen. From here he uttered the mopoke's call, repeating it twice. He had made himself familiar with all the advantages the garden and orchard offered a hunted man ere he had been a week at Boobyalla. Ryder remained in this hiding-place for some time. He heard the thunder of Galah's hoofs and the cries of the troopers. Yarra had timed his break from cover to a second. When the sound of the chase died out in the distance, Solo walked quietly to the corner of the orchard opposite to that from which the black boy had started, where a horse was standing. This was Wallaroo. The saddle had been hastily thrown on to the entire's back, and the bridle was looped over a post. Ryder fastened the girths, buckled the bridle securely, and, mounting the horse, walked him to the slip panels, keeping well under cover of the trees. When about a quarter of a mile off, he stirred Wallaroo to a canter, but kept to the track thickly seared with new hoof-prints, so that it should be impossible for any but a clever tracker to follow him. After riding for about three miles, he bore to the right along the course of a small creek, and made his way into the ranges up a deepening gorge, the sides of which were clothed with heath and scrub, and ribbed thickly with the trunks of tall gums as straight as lances, shooting high into the air, and spreading their branches in the moonlight over two hundred feet above him. He turned from this gorge into a narrower ravine, which widened into a gully. Ryder continued for another half-mile to where three or four gigantic rocks thrown together formed a sort of natural stronghold with a rampart of white gums. Here he dismounted. Having rolled a boulder from a niche in the rocks, he drew out a rope, and with this tethered Wallaroo. Then, after removing the bit from his mouth and loosening the girths, he left the horse to graze.

The niche in the rocks was well stocked with food, and contained a rug, a bottle of brandy, several small parcels of ammunition, two revolvers, a few other articles, a miner's 'rig-out,' and the false beards Ryder had been in the habit of using as disguises.

Having removed the suit he was wearing, Ryder bathed and dressed the wound in his shoulder as best he could. He put on the digger's clothes, and, wrapping himself in the rug, lay under the sloping rock on a couch of dry bracken, and slept as if in a comfortable bed and at peace with the world.

The sun was throwing oblique rays into the heath on the side of the gully when Ryder awoke. He found his bridle-arm very stiff and painful, and dressed the wound again. He breakfasted on biscuits and smoked fish, and drank water flavoured with brandy. The greater part of that day he spent collecting fodder for Wallaroo, and leading the horse about to those spots where the grass was most luxuriant. He was waiting with absolute confidence and the greatest composure. The vicissitudes of his life had taught him patience.

At about a quarter past ten that night Ryder was sitting on the rug with his back to the rock, smoking reflectively, when a voice called almost at his elbow:

'Hist! Yarra bin come, boss!'

'Good boy!' Ryder replaced his revolver on a convenient ledge, and as Yarra appeared before him, grinning in-the moonlight, he added a few words of thanks and of praise in the native tongue.

'What happen by Boobyalla?'

'Mine bin chase it that feller all day.' Yarra pointed at Solo, and his white teeth glittered like tiny mirrors. 'Track him longa trooper plenty far.' He pointed beyond Boobyalla 'My word, Yarra make it big one damn fool that trooper.' The thought of the manner in which he had tricked the police tickled the black boy, and he emitted a yell of laughter that startled the Bush sleepers for a mile round, and filled the trees with movements and murmurs of complaint. Ryder, knowing the susceptibilities of the race, to gratify the boy laughed too.

'Yarra plenty clever,' he said.

'My word! Yarra follow track all away topside Shepherd's Scrub. Go this way, that way, make much plurry humbug. Say: "This feller gone lame, limp it bad. Some time he creep by scrub, lie down." Trooper go search it scrub all day, nex' day, nex' day. They catch it that fellar by'n-by.' Again he pointed at Ryder, and again his laugh echoed in the gorge. 'Mine tink it trooper search him scrub plenty long time. Boss tink I go hunt by scrub to-morrow, mine come sit down longa here.'

All of which meant that Yarra had been employed by the troopers to follow the track of Ryder, and had led them as far astray as possible, and left them with the impression that the fugitive was wounded and lying in hiding in Shepherd's Scrub, a dense ti-tree growth to the north-east of Boobyalla, extending for two or three miles.

Ryder rewarded his accomplice with a nobbler of brandy and a cigar, and the black sat smoking with a grand air, while the former explained that he would remain where he was until his arm was in a more serviceable state, trusting to Yarra to keep him apprised of what was going forward, and to warn him instantly danger threatened. During the last few hours the idea of inducing Lucy Woodrow to visit him there in the Bush had been stirring in Ryder's mind, and he reckoned upon turning his wound to good advantage. For the troopers he had the greatest contempt, and his confidence in Yarra was absolute. The half-caste remained with him for about an hour, and then returned into the gorge, and keeping to the bed of the creek picked up his horse, a sober old cattle nag, where he had left him at the foot of the range.

Yarra returned to Wat Ryder early in the forenoon of the following day. The trooper the boy shot at the window was being nursed at Boobyalla, the others were away beating the scrub. The half-caste brought with him a wild duck he had trapped, and set about cooking this in its feathers. The two dined together shortly after mid-day, and the sun was streaming into the gully, the air was heavy with the odour of wild musk, and the Bush was as silent as if no life remained in the intense heat. Ryder had risen, and was looking at Wallaroo standing with his nose in the shade of a gum-butt, fighting the avaricious flies with his tail. At that instant a loud report rang along the gully, and Ryder staggered a few paces, and fell with his back to one of the boulders, stunned. A bullet ricocheting from the rock had struck him in the neck. Yarra threw himself forward, face downward, at a space between the boulders. He saw a wreath of smoke in the gully and a slight movement in the thick growth, and fired twice, but the distance was too great for a revolver. The enemy, whoever he was, was armed with a gun. The half-caste listened for a moment, and his black eyes searched the gully. Then he heard the beat of a horse's hoofs. A look of enlightenment came to his face. There was one horseman only; he was riding at a pace which, in such country, threatened death at every stride.

The boy looked at Ryder, pointing back in the direction from which the shot had come.

'That feller mine boss,' he said, and fear tinged his blackness a slaty gray.

Ryder had slipped to a sitting position—one hand held a blood-stained handkerchief to his neck, the other clutched a revolver. He was white to the lips, but his eyes blazed with life and the passion of a wounded lion.

XXII

RYDER knew himself to be badly hurt; he realized that he was in a desperate situation, a situation from which it would require all his cunning to extricate himself. The plans he had formed were abandoned, and even while suffering the first shock of the wound his mind was busy. He had been attacked by one man; his enemy knew he was not alone, and was not sure of the effect of his shot, otherwise he would not have fled. The outlaw felt that he might rely upon immunity from further attack for some time, and meanwhile all the strength and energy remaining to him must be devoted to the task of reaching another refuge. In Macdougal be had met an enemy of a kind he had never before been called upon to deal with. The squatter was indefatigable in pursuit of his vengeance, evidently an expert Bushman, and bent upon dealing retribution with his own hand. Wat Ryder wasted no time in fruitless lamentation over his folly in not having made good his escape while the opportunity offered. Already he had lost much blood. The muscle on the right side of the neck was badly lacerated. First of all, the wound must be dressed. For years he had been prepared for an exigency of this sort, and was never without materials for the treatment of serious hurts. With Yarra's assistance, the wound was washed with a lotion, closed as well as possible, and then carefully bandaged, without the waste of a moment.

Ryder lay with his revolver by his side. He knew perfectly that he might be engaged in a life or death struggle at any moment, and was prepared to die by his own hand the instant the fight became hopeless.

'Go, Yarra; pick up his track; find which way he has gone; come back one minute.'

He knew there was no occasion to warn the half-caste, in whom the instincts of his mother's people were paramount. Yarra was a child of the Bush; nothing would escape his eye or his ear, and at the same time he would be as swift and as secret as a snake.

While the boy was away Ryder wrote a note in pencil addressed to Lucy Woodrow. Yarra was back within five minutes.

'Him Boss belonga me all right. Him run longa gully, catch up horse by ole man blackbutt, ride longa gorge same debble chase him,' reported the half-caste.

'Right, right! Yarra plurry fine feller!' said Ryder. 'Now we go up over small spur, down by gorge, sit down little stone cave near big splash. Pretty quick you come back, catch Wallaroo, lead him down to the gorge along down the creek. Make a track by the bank some time, turn him in pool where black fish sit down, and ride back up creek again, and tie horse up by big rock same monkey bear. Then to-night you creep down by Boobyalla, knock on Miss Lucy's window, gib Miss Lucy this letter. No one else must see. If Miss Lucy say yes, when sun jumps up to-morrow you take Wallaroo down by wattle track, gib her horse, come back sit down by me. Yarra catch hold all that?'

Yarra nodded brightly. 'My word, mine know him all right,' he said.

'Yarra always good friend by me?'

'My word!'

The climb over the spur that divided the outlaw's first retreat from the gorge proved a terrible task for the wounded man. For some distance the boy followed him, obliterating his tracks; but before the journey was half completed Ryder required all the assistance the half-caste could give him, and he reached the small cave in the side of the gorge, about a mile and a half from its entrance, in an exhausted and feverish condition. There Yarra gave him drink, and, having made him a comfortable bed, left him with a revolver by his side, and returned for Wallaroo and Ryder's belongings. The boy followed the instructions he had received faithfully, and was with the outlaw again before sundown, watching over him with an interest he had never before felt in any human creature. Ryder knew now that his life depended upon the boy's fidelity, and that there was only one other person in the world upon whom he could rely in his extremity—Jim Done.

We left Done in a poor condition to help any man—lying in Kyley's tent, enfeebled by sickness, clinging to Aurora's fingers as some sort of anchorage in a fragile world. When he awoke again Aurora was still by his side. He grew quite accustomed to waking and finding her there, and in his waking moments for two or three days he clasped her fingers with an almost infantile helplessness. The first stages of recovery were slow, and in them his chief delight was to lie watching his nurse, scarcely conscious of anything beyond. He found her very worn, and she looked old. Few of the qualities that had impelled him to call her Joy remained in this anxious face. She attended to him assiduously; but she was only a nurse, nothing of a lover, and presently he found himself wondering at her lack of emotion, fretting for the absent caress with an invalid's petulance. As his strength returned, Aurora permitted Mary Kyley to assume the larger share of the nursing, and Jim was told what news there was, excepting the truth about poor Mike. It was Ryder who had informed Aurora that Done and his friends were in the stockade, where he had seen them during the Saturday afternoon. Mary read a letter from the Peetrees inviting Jim to join them at Blanket Flat—where they had taken his and Mike's belongings—when he was strong enough to get about. According to Mrs. Ryley's version of this letter, Mike was with the Peetrees.

Eventually Jim was strong enough to sit up for a while, and in the course of a few days Ben helped him out into the open, and the pure, hot sunshine seemed to pour new life into his veins. It was after this that Done missed Aurora. Mrs. Ben said she had gone away for a few days to recruit; but eventually, when Jim was hobbling about, she admitted that she did not know where the girl had gone, and believed that she might not come back.

'But why?' said Jim—' why go away without a word, without giving me a chance to thank her for what she has done?'

'Thank her!' said Mary, with some contempt. 'Are you thinking the poor girl wanted thanks from you?'

'It is strange that she should leave in this way,' answered Done impatiently.

'There's nothing strange in it, man; it's just natural. You never understood how much that girl cared for you, Jimmy. If you did, perhaps you would know what it meant for her to be working herself to a ghost over your bed there while you babbled of love to another woman.'

'I did?'

'Did you? Night and day. It was Lucy, Lucy, Lucy—always Lucy. Lucy with the brown hair and the beautiful eyes—Lucy the pure, and sweet, and good. Never a word of Joy—never the smallest word of the woman who was beating the devil off you, you blackguard!'

'But I was delirious! Surely——'

'True, you were wandering; but it's only when a man's mad or drunk that one gets the truth out of him about women. "There's not a thought of me left in his heart, Mary!" said the poor girl.'

'She was wrong—wrong!' he protested.

'Not a bit, boy! 'Twas the pure girl had all your soul. Heavens! and how you rubbed it in about her purity and goodness! Mother of us! let a man be so infernally bad that the very fiend sniffs at him, but he'll bargain with the impudence of an archangel for the pure girl.'

'And she went away for this?'

'Sure enough. Aurora's the sort to hide her hurts. When she can't fight over them, she'll not cry a whimper.'

'That's true; and I've hurt her deepest of all.'

Mary detected the expression of his face with quick alarm. She had said too much.

'There, there, Jimmy boy,' she said anxiously; 'we mustn't be forgetting that Joy's the strong sort. She'll come again, fresh and rosy and merry as ever—bet your life on it.'

Jim went into the tent that had been his sick-room, and sat for over an hour in deep thought, and his thoughts were all of Aurora. He missed her—missed her at every turn, and in every hour of his convalescence. As a reward for her love and tenderness, he had afflicted her with the greatest bitterness her brave heart could bear. His eyes were fixed upon the floor, and eventually discovered two oval objects half buried in the hard earth. He stooped to pick them up, and found them to be the halves of the locket that contained Lucy Woodrow's miniature. The case had been stamped into the floor with the heel of a boot, the pieces were torn apart, and the portrait ground off the ivory on which it was painted. With the fragments of the locket in his hand, Jim pursued a new train of thought, but there was no comfort in it. He recalled Joy's words: 'I won't bind the strange man you may be to-morrow.' Her love had been too strong for her philosophy. What of his? Had he ever seriously considered the possibilities of a life wholly apart from her? His mind flew to Lucy, but by no effort could he devote his thoughts to either of the women who had so deeply influenced him.

It was no longer possible to keep the truth about Mike Burton from the invalid, and Mary broke the news to him as gently as she could, The shock seemed to stun Jim's sensibilities for a time. As the numbness wore off, a bitter, blind hatred grew in his heart against the men he chose to regard as Mike's murderers, and he had a ferocious longing for vengeance. Again law and order, the forces of society, had intervened to embitter him. His subsequent sorrow over his mate was deep and lasting. He felt now that although their friendship had been free of demonstrativeness, it had been warmed with a generous sincerity.

Done awakened one day, with some sense of fear, to the knowledge that he was drifting back into a morbid condition. He found he had bred a disposition to brood over his weakness. The loss of Mike and the disappearance of Aurora were becoming grievances that he cherished with youthful unreason. He determined to rejoin the Peetrees at once, and, although far from being his old self physically, began to make preparations for the return to Jim Crow.

'There's somethin' I'd like you to be doin' fer me afore you go, mate,' said Ben Kyley to Jim one evening.

'Well, you know I'll do it.

'I reckoned you would. You see, I've been thinkin' of marryin' my wife, an' I'd like you to be bes' man.'

'You've been thinking!' cried Mary. 'No, Jimmy, I've been doing the thinking: Kyley merely agrees. One of these days we're going to build a big hotel in Ballarat, and settle down. It won't be till the rushes peg out, as they're bound to do in time; but certificates of marriage are getting quite common amongst married people here, and we thought it would be as well to be in the fashion.' Mrs. Ben laughed boisterously.

'Well,' said Jim, smiling, 'a couple who disagree as pleasantly as you do can't go far wrong in marrying.'

'The customers at a decent family hotel would expect it, I think,' Mary added soberly.

'Jonathan Prator married his wife a week 'r two back, an' he's skitin' about it,' grumbled Ben.

So Jim remained for the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Kyley, which was quite a public ceremony. He was Ben's best man, and he gave the rosy bride the prettiest brooches, rings, and bangles he could buy in Ballarat, and left, the blushless couple to the enjoyment of their honeymoon with his warmest blessing. Mary nearly smothered him in a billowy hug as he was trying to thank them for their goodness.

'Leave a kind word for my poor girl,' she said, 'and the minute she comes back I'll write you.'

'Tell her I shall be a miserable devil till I hear of her dancing jigs on Mary Kyley's bar counter again,' said Jim. 'And tell her she wrongs me when she says there is nothing of her in this heart of mine. She is an ineradicable part of it.'

Done found the Peetrees working a fairly profitable mine at Blanket Flat, a sort of tributary field to Jim Crow, and situated about three miles distant from the original rush. Harry stood in with Done, and the two pegged out a claim and set to work; but Jim did not derive the satisfaction he had expected from this return to his friends and his familiar pursuits. His weakness clung to him, and he was subject to pains in the head. His missed Mike more than ever now, and permitted the idea that he had blasted Aurora's happiness to worry him a good deal. He remembered the blithe heartiness of the girl in the early days of their acquaintance, and the image of the pale, worn face he had last seen haunted him with an abiding reproach. He could not enjoy the life, the scenes, and the companionship that had delighted him, and believed the capacity would never come back to him.

He had been on Blanket Flat less than a fortnight when one morning Harry thrust his head into the tent.

'Blowed if there ain't a lady here to see you, Jim!' he said.

'A lady?' Jim's first thought was of Aurora. 'Don't you know her?'

He stepped from the tent as he spoke, and was astonished to find that his visitor was Lucy Woodrow. She was riding a splendid bay horse, and leading a small, sturdy-looking chestnut, and was dust-stained and tired. Her face was gray with anxiety. She did not smile as he approached her, but held a letter towards him.

'Read,' she said. 'He says you will understand.'

'But, Lucy, won't you dismount? You are tired.'

'For pity's sake, waste no time! Read!'

He unfolded the note, and read:

'DEAR MISS WOODROW,

'I am seriously wounded, and lying helpless. My life is in danger. There is one man who will save me; there is one woman whom I can trust to go to him. You are that woman. I appeal to all that is good, kind, and merciful in you to help me. Believe nothing you have heard. I am the victim of circumstances—circumstances of the most terrible kind. Only be the sweet, tender woman you have always seemed to me. Ride to Jim Done at Blanket Flat as soon as possible in the morning; bring him to me. I know he will not hesitate when he knows that I am crippled in the Bush, and at the mercy of my enemies. The boy will explain the rest.

'Your unfortunate friend,

'WALTER RYDER.'

'The half-caste boy at the station, who knows where Mr. Ryder is hidden, brought that to me,' Lucy said. 'He met me at a gorge leading into the range this morning with this horse. The boy is to meet us at the mouth of the gorge and take us to him. He escaped from Boobyalla when the troopers came, and hid in the Bush. He was seen and shot in the neck, but found another hiding-place, and is waiting for you. You will come?'

She had spoken in a hard, unimpassioned voice, as if repeating a lesson; only her eyes betrayed the intense feeling that possessed her.

'I will go,' he answered. 'Hadn't you better have some tea and something to eat? It is a long ride.'

'No, no,' she said; 'we cannot spare a moment.'

'I insist.' He put up his hands to help her. His words were quiet, but his tone was masterful. She looked into his face, and obeyed him. 'Better rest a while now than break down later—and I do not know the way. Harry,' he called, turning to his mate, 'will you give the horses a drink? You have not pressed them?' he said to Lucy.

'No; I was afraid, knowing they would have to carry us back.'

'My mate will change the saddles. I must ride the stronger horse. Meanwhile, get something to eat. We have just breakfasted; there is tea in the billy.'

He showed neither hurry nor agitation, he displayed no feeling, but, watching him narrowly, Lucy was convinced of his great earnestness, and the strain of anxiety that had gripped her heart like a band of steel relaxed. She breathed freely. Part of the burden had gone to him, and he would bear it.

Jim felt himself strong again in the face of this great need. Apart from the tie of blood, he owed Ryder the best service of which he was capable—his very life, if need be—but he did not question the matter, even in his own heart, and it was not till Blanket Flat lay four or five miles behind them that he sought further information from his companion. They had ridden in silence, Lucy overwrought, thinking only of the wounded man hunted like a beast, perhaps dying in the Bush, Jim endeavouring to decide upon a plan of action. The news had not greatly surprised him; ever since Ryder's declaration of his identity Done had foreseen some such possibility.

'Do you know the reason of the attempt to arrest Ryder?' said Jim, breaking the long silence.

'The troopers called him Solo. I have heard of a notorious gold robber of that name. Mrs. Macdougal says a new shepherd called Brummy recognised him.' She gave Done a concise account of the arrest and Ryder's escape. 'That is Wallaroo you are riding,' she said in conclusion, 'and Mr. Macdougal is furious over his loss. I believe it was he who shot Mr. Ryder.'

'If Ryder dies, I'll kill Macdougal!'

Lucy turned sharply, and looked at Jim. He had spoken the words in a tone sounding almost casual, curiously incongruous with their grim significance. She knew that he meant what he had said, and her heart sank.

'You would not be so mad,' she said.

'Let us push on,' he replied, disregarding her comment.

Lucy had experienced no difficulty in finding Jim. Since his visit to Boobyalla she had been three times to Jim Crow with parties on horseback, and knew the country well.

They reached the mouth of the gorge at about eleven o'clock, and had ridden only about two hundred yards along the bed of the creek, when Yarra arose from a clump of scrub-ferns at Lucy's side.

'Come longa me,' he said. 'Boss Ryder plenty sick.'

Yarra had left the outlaw two hours earlier. Ryder was then tossing feverishly on his rough couch. The small cave in which he lay was situated some thirty yards up the side of the gorge, and the hot morning sun reached it early, converting it into an oven of stone. The wounded man was suffering acutely; his wound had become a burning agony that had no longer a limit: the pain of it penetrated his whole being. Soon after the black boy's departure Ryder ceased to toss and turn, movement only increasing his torment. He now lay very still on the floor of the cave; his eyes had a feline lustre in the dim light, his face was as white and hollow as that of a corpse, saving for the fever spot that burned in either cheek. Gradually his mind was drifting from his danger and his sufferings—it was fashioning strange images, mere dreams, but startlingly realistic. From the first one or two he reverted to sanity and to a fleeting sense of his position, and then the images trooped in again, the visions reappeared—beautiful visions of coolness, and sweetness, and shade that, it seemed later, only came to tantalize him. He was now a soul in hell, tortured with the sight of clustering green trees and flowing streams. Through all these dreams one sweet sound prevailed. He recognised it at length: it was the music of falling water—beautiful, cold, clear water, falling in thin sheets from the high rock and breaking into snow on the edge of the deep stone basin. He lifted himself upon his hands and listened. Yes, there was a waterfall below him, so near that he might almost reach and dip his fingers into it, and he was set in flame that lapped him round, licking his face, dipping its forked tongue into the hollows of his eyes, penetrating to his heart, and coursing in all his veins. He was mad to stay there and suffer, when he might slip from the grip of the fiend, and lave his limbs in the pool and drink from the cascade. Ryder dragged himself from the cave, upsetting the water the half-caste had placed near his bed as he did so. The water ran over his fingers, but he did not heed it. Outside he raised himself to his feet with the help of a tree, and, staggering a few paces down the slope, pitched on his face, cutting his mouth badly on the stones. The wound in his neck opened, and the blood oozed from the bandages, smearing his hands as he dragged himself along.

It was like some wild beast with a mortal wound in its breast slowly crawling to the water to die. Every few yards he thought the stream was reached and dipping his mouth to drink, cut his lips oh the granite. He had come to the level ground banking the creek, and was almost at the edge of the basin, when a figure appeared on the brink of the waterfall above him. The figure looked hardly human, bent down, watching Ryder's movements in the attitude of a curious ape.

Macdougal sprang down the rocks with an agility in keeping with his apelike appearance, and interposed between the creeping man and the water.

Ryder turned aside, and again Macdougal interposed. Three times this happened, and the squatter had a grin on his small terrier's face; he was deriving malicious amusement from the bewilderment of the fever-stricken wretch at his feet. In his left hand he held a revolver.

Ryder raised a hand, and, clutching Monkey Mack, made an effort to regain his feet. The other helped him, and clinging to his enemy for support, the outlaw looked at Macdougal. The latter thrust his face forward, and again there was a red gleam under the shadows of his heavy brows.

'Ye know me, man,' he said.

Ryder was staring with eyes in which there was a dawning of consciousness, and, steadying him with one hand, the squatter dipped some water in his hat, and dashed it in the other's face.

'Ye know me!' he said with fierce eagerness. 'Ye know me! Man, ye must know me—Macdougal! Look at me. Ay, ye know me well!'

There was recognition in Ryder's eyes; they were intent upon those of his foe, and, clutching him by the shoulder, Macdougal continued:

'Well ye know me, and well ye know what I mean to do by ye. I'm about to kill ye, Mr. Walter Ryder, an' no harm will come to me for the killin'. Man, man, but it's a sweet thing to kill your enemy, an' to be paid well for the doin' of it! Ah, I'm right sure ye know me now. I would na' have ye die by another hand, for 'tis me ye wronged most. I know my wrongs, ye foul villain, an' it's in my mind to carry your carrion head to Melbourne for the money they've set upon it. Ye mind me! ye mind me! Good! good!'

Macdougal's face was literally convulsed with the fury of his hate; he spat at Ryder as he spoke, and then, with the swiftness and the strength that had marked them in health, the outlaw's fingers fastened upon his hairy throat. The long, thin hands clamped themselves upon his neck, and for a moment Monkey Mack was helpless in the agonies of suffocation. Then his left hand pointed the revolver at Ryder's ear; there was a sharp report, and the outlaw fell limply, and rolled back upon the flat water-worn rock, his shattered head to the stone, his arms out thrown, his lifeless face turned up to the blue sky.

XXIII

MONKEY MACK stood for a few seconds gazing down upon the dead man, unconscious of the fact that at the moment his shot was fired Lucy Woodrow and Jim Done had come suddenly upon the scene around one of the huge boulders with which the gorge was strewn. He was recalled to himself by the exclamation of horror uttered by the girl, and discovered Jim, revolver in hand. Turning, he fled up the right side of the gorge, where the timber offered good cover. Jim raised his revolver, and took deliberate aim at the flying figure, but Lucy seized his arm and bore it down, and, clinging to him, she cried:

'No, no! for God's sake, not that!'

Jim tore himself from her with bitter words, and the next moment they saw Macdougal riding furiously along the side of the gorge, swinging his apparently maddened horse through the thick timber with marvellous dexterity. Done uttered a cry, and ran for the horses, and Lucy followed him, calling piteously. She saw Jim spring upon Wallaroo and turn his head down the gully, and, knowing his intention, snatched the revolver from Yarra's hand and fired at the stallion. The shot took effect in the horse's neck, and he plunged forward, throwing Jim heavily, and, rolling on his side, lay half submerged in the water of the creek.

Done was stunned and shaken by the fall, and it was some minutes before he quite recovered. Then, turning upon Lucy in the blind fury that filled his soul, he said:

'You have saved that foul murderer, and while he lives I swear I'll never forgive you!'

She made no reply, but followed Jim to Ryder's side, trembling in every limb, with a bursting pain at her heart and a feeling of utter desolation upon her. Done knelt by the dead outlaw, looking into the white face, and remembered standing as a boy gazing into another dead face wonderfully like this, the face of his mother. He felt no sorrow; there was room in his soul only for his black wrath. For some minutes he remained kneeling, with set teeth, his hands clenched, his blood hot with rage. When he arose Lucy was by his side, but her eyes were bent upon the dead man.

'You stood between me and my brother's murderer,' he said.

She looked at him vaguely, as if she had not heard aright, and passed a faltering hand across her eyes.

'Your brother's murderer?' she said.

'The man lying there is my brother. For no crimes for no wrong against man or woman, his life was made a horror to him. And this is the end, butchered by a foul beast.'

'Don't!' she murmured. She put out her hands appealingly, and continued in a choking voice: 'I can bear no more. All my strength is gone. For pity's sake, no more, no more!' She turned from him, and, falling to her knees, sank her face upon Ryder's breast, and gave way to a fit of sobbing that shook her from head to foot. Her attitude was one of complete abandon; one hand lay upon the cheek of the dead outlaw, suggesting an ineffable caress.

Done sat upon a rock, watching her without understanding. Yarra, who had stolen near to Ryder's body, crouched upon the rock, staring intently at the face of his friend. Presently Jim noticed that Lucy was lying inert, and he lifted her to the pool and bathed her forehead with the cool water. Yarra brought a pannikin and a bottle containing brandy from the cave, and Jim poured a little of the spirit between the girl's lips. Lucy revived after a few minutes, and lay for a time in the shade before she was strong enough to walk.

'I must go,' she said with a strange listless ness.

'Take the boy with you,' Jim answered. 'He will see you safely to Boobyalla.'

'And you?' she asked.

'There is something for me to do here.'

She looked at the body, and said, 'Yes, yes, of course,' but the only expression in her face was one of utter weariness.

He helped her on to the horse. She did not thank him. No words of farewell were spoken, but as the horse moved away he said:

'Contrive to let Yarra bring me a shovel.'

'Yes.'

'At least the brute beast shall not have the price of his head

'No.' She repeated the word quite mechanically. 'No, no!'

Done returned to his brother. He lifted the body into the shade, and composed the limbs, and then seated himself and gave his mind over to bitter reflection. Ryder's face exerted a strong influence upon him. In death it had assumed a delicacy almost effeminate. It was the face of a saint and an ascetic. What was most evil in him had been grown in the forcing-house of vice and crime society had set up, and for being the thing it had made him society had butchered him like a mad dog. Jim recognised Monkey Mack only as the instrument of society. His logic may not have been perfect: his mind was in no state to deal with ethical nuances; he saw only the ruined life, remembered what Ryder had endured, and, above all, that he had been an innocent man, crushed, tortured, brutalized into an enemy of the law and the existing order. He felt himself capable of taking up his brother's fight. In his heart he was resolved to seek out Macdougal and kill him. That much must be done. He never questioned his capability for murder, and it is probable that had the chance come to him in cold blood his spirit would have failed him.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Yarra returned with pick and shovel, and Jim had already selected the spot for Ryder's resting-place, beside a great boulder above the waterfall. There he started to dig the grave.

'Him brother belonga you?' asked Yarra.

'Yes,' said Jim.

'Good feller,' continued Yarra, and his black eyes gleamed maliciously. 'Boss belonga me kill him. You kill mine Boss?' Perhaps it was the remembrance of the many kicks and cuts he had received at the hands of Monkey Mack that inspired the impish eagerness in Yarra's face, perhaps his affection for the dead man moved him.

Jim Done looked at the boy curiously. 'Boss belonga you sit down by Boobyalla?' he asked.

Yarra shook his head. 'No fear,' he said. 'Yarra stop 'way pretty quick when Boss bin there.'

'Suppose Yarra catch up track of Boss belonga him, come back when sun jump up, tell me.'

'My word! Budgery that! Mine tink it Boss yabber-yabber longa trooper.'

Yarra set off at once, and Done continued his work. He was determined that the grave should be deep enough to protect the body froth burrowing animals, and secret enough to save it from human brutes eager for the price on Solo's head. This task was not complete when Yarra returned, his eyes ablaze with excitement.

'Hell bin jump up, mine tink it!' he cried. 'Boss belonga me sit down there all right. You come!'

'You know where Macdougal is?'

'My word! Come longa me.'

Jim took up his revolver and followed the half caste, leaving the body between the sheets of bark with which he had fashioned a rude coffin.

'Boss close up here,' said Yarra as they scrambled up the side of the gorge, after following the creek for about a quarter of a mile. The boy proceeded with out caution, and presently they came upon a saddled horse lying under a big white gum. The animal' neck was broken; evidently it had collided with the tree when at a gallop.

'Boss make big smash up here,' said Yarra. He pointed to a huddled, shapeless heap lying amongst the scrub-ferns at a distance of about twenty feet.

Done stood over the body of Macdougal, and felt for a moment a resentment against the Fates that had robbed him of his revenge. The squatter had dreaded the probability of confederates coming to the assistance of the outlaw, and his ride for safety had been absolutely desperate. He lay within a quarter of a mile of the waterfall, and had been killed on the spot. His head was crushed and hideous. Done turned from the sight with a shudder.

Jim buried Ryder by the light of the moon. He spent the night in the gorge, but slept little, and Yarra, who had all the superstitions of his mother's race, crouched close to the white man, and his teeth chattered with fear the whole night through. He had conceived the idea that the spirit of Macdougal had taken possession of the gorge, and for the future the place must be a haunt of terror to him. After daybreak, with the boy's assistance, Done hid all traces of the new-made grave, and by this time he was grateful for the food Yarra brought from the cave. Breakfast strengthened him greatly. He had eaten nothing for close upon twenty hours, and the exhaustive experiences of that time told heavily upon his enfeebled frame. As a result of his night's reflection and the judgment that had come with cooler blood, he was determined to visit Lucy at the station. Yesterday's bitterness towards her had been real enough, but he assured himself that it was the effect of the extraordinary excitement worked in his brain by the events of the day. This morning there was upon him a physical and moral apathy: the reaction left him without interest. The invalid lassitude possessed him again, and he stood over his brother's grave for a few minutes, without feeling any recurrence of the resentments that had so recently blazed within him.

Lucy met him in the garden; she was still pale, but showed no sign of physical weakness.

'I treated you brutally,' he said abruptly. I am sorry; I was mad with rage.'

'I know; I understood then. You know I am sorry for you.'

'You saved Macdougal for my own sake, not for his,'

'Yes. Innocent or guilty, your brother was an outlaw, Legally, Macdougal was justified in killing him, but if you kill Macdougal it will be murder. Ah! that terrible thought has gone from your mind?'

'Yes; Macdougal is dead.'

'Dead!' She caught his hand, and looked into his face with terror. 'You have killed him!'

'No. His horse must have collided with a tree as he galloped down the gorge. Yarra found him.'

'Thank God vengeance was not left to you!'

'It is best. I have buried my brother. The whereabouts of his grave must be kept secret.'

'Tell me where he lies.' She spoke with eagerness. 'I swear none shall know from me!'

Done was impressed by her emotion, and the picture of her sobbing figure prostrate over the body of the outlaw was recalled to his mind. 'Under the great round boulder above the waterfall to the left, just where the shadow falls at noon,' he said. 'Better never speak of his death even. I have warned Yarra, and I think he will be faithful.'

'You can trust me.' She paused for a moment falteringly, and then continued with an effort and in a low voice: 'I must respect the grave, for in it my heart is buried. More than my heart,' she continued with passion—' a part of my very soul. I loved him!' She had made this confession, feeling that it was her duty to let Jim know that the tenderness she had felt for him had been swept away in the tide of an overwhelming love for the other.

Whatever Done's feelings may have been, neither face nor voice betrayed him. 'Good-bye,' he said, and turned away.

She followed him a few paces, and seized his arm.

'You are not going with unkindness in your heart?' she pleaded.

'No,' he answered. 'I am very sorry for you.'

'I want your friendship always.'

It is yours.'

He held her hands in his, and noticed that there were tears upon her cheeks. He was certainly sorry for her; it was pitiful to think that her new happiness had been wrecked in this way, but he could not overcome the coldness that was about him; and so they parted on the spot where a few months earlier Jim had said good-bye with a heart full of love and longing.

XXIV

A BITTER time followed with Jim Done. He had rejoined Harry Peetree at Blanket Flat, and continued working there; but his strength returned slowly, and the joy of life had fled from his heart again, leaving him more miserable than he had been as a youth in his native village. In those days his resentments helped to sustain him; he took pride in the spirit with which he faced the enmity of the people, and not a little comfort came to him from the egotism he had cultivated as a refuge from the common contempt. Now the fighting spirit was gone all hatred had gone with it, and his self-confidence had degenerated. For a few weeks after Ryder's death he made a deliberate effort to stir himself into a state of passionate revolt, dwelling long upon the barbarous sufferings his brother had endured, drawing upon his affection for Mike Burton to stimulate his fading emotions; but he failed to lift himself out of the slough of despond into which he had fallen.

Jim fled from his nurses too early, and the trials he subsequently endured served to retard his restoration. He had pretty good health, without either strength of body or spirit. Half an hour's work at the windlass wearied him, and this weariness irritated him with a dull, abiding anger. He spent much of his time when not at work lying on his bunk. The life on the field was not different from that which had delighted him at Diamond Gully; there was the same cheerfulness amongst the men, the shanties flared at night, and the diggers roared, and gambled, and drank with no less enthusiasm. He alone was changed.

These moods and the manner of life he was leading fostered a most unhealthy habit of introspection. He was for ever examining his emotions. He thought much about Lucy Woodrow, and of the love he had borne her, but without sorrow for the loss of her. He tried to account for the fact that there was no grief in his heart on Lucy's accounts whilst keeping Aurora jealously in the background. He was unconsciously dishonest to himself in these self-examinings, and one day this dawned upon him. He laughed over the discovery, laughed aloud at himself, but the amusement was grim.

'So, then, it is Aurora I need after all,' he said in satirical soliloquy, 'and my soul has been playing the hypocrite these few weeks. What a marvel of constancy is man! Lucy is lost to me, and secretly the baffled heart sneaks back to the other love.'

Behind all this was a fretful longing for the past happiness to which the new country, the new conditions, Aurora Mike, and his own abounding vitality, had contributed. He shunned the conditions, and was angry because the object eluded him. Done, in his sick desire to know himself ceased to be truly himself. Had he been content with the fact that he loved Aurora and needed her—needed her love, her beauty, her fine joyousness and splendid vitality—the rest would have been easy.

He had written from Ballarat to Mike Burton's family in New South Wales, and at about this time there came a letter from a relative, asking his assistance in Melbourne to secure the money lying to Burton's credit in the bank. Jim went to Melbourne, and a quiet trip and the change improved him considerably. When he returned again there was a letter from Mary Kyley, It was brief:

'DEAR JIMMY,

'We are at Tarrangower. Joy is back with us, well and strong again, and as pretty as a picture; but the mischief is she doesn't forget the boy who isn't fit to kiss the boots she wears—meaning your self, you scamp! 'Tisn't a far ride! Maybe you'll come one of these fine Sundays.

'Your middle-aged friend,

'MARY KYLEY.'

Jim spent nearly three days over that letter, and then determination came suddenly on top of much contrary argument. He would go. No sooner had he made up his mind than a consuming eagerness to see Aurora seized him. All other considerations were lost. He must go at once, take her in his arms, plead with her with all the fervour of his heart, compel her with every argument love could advance, beseech her with all the humility of the conquered to be his wife.

Now his love of Lucy appeared as a mere aberration. His overwhelming eagerness for life, for new faces, scenes, sensations, had whirled him from the true path of his happiness. Thank God, it was not too late! Joy alone was his true mate, his true love, the real need of his being, and he had never loved her as now. The passion came back upon him like a dammed torrent. His impatience made his mate open his eyes in grave wonder.

'I want to reach Tarrangower before noon to' morrow, Harry,' he said. 'Can it be done?'

'You could cover the distance in 'bout five hours on a decent horse. But what's struck you, ole man?'

'The idea that I've been playing the melancholy fool. I've been questioning life, bargaining with it like a suspicious huckster —suspecting, doubting, rejecting, instead of opening wide my arms and taking the good to me wherever it offered.'

'I dunno what you're drivin' at, Jim; but if it means you're goin' to cheer up I'm all-fired glad to hear it. You've been as miserable as a dingo in a springer since Eureka.'

'It means that, Harry. Can we get horses?'

'We—meanin' me too?'

'Yes; you'll come with me? I don't know the lay of the country, and I must go.'

'Oh, I'll go fast enough. You can get horses from Croker, but they'll cost you a bite.'

This was on Saturday. Jim was in Tarrangower an hour before noon on Sundays The first digger they met directed them to Mary Kyley's tent. Mary was busy preparing dinner, but dropped everything, and rushed at the visitors, half' smothering Jim in a motherly hug.

'Murder! you're looking peeky and thin, Jimmy!' she cried.

'Never mind me, Mrs. Ben; I'm all right. Where's Joy?'

'She's gone for a bit of a walk in the sun.'

'Could I find her?'

'Deuce take your impatience! This isn't flattering to me!'

'Harry will comfort you. I want Aurora, and I want her badly. If she doesn't want me, you'd better have left me to die when I had the good chance down there at Eureka, Mary Kyley.'

'That's good to hear. On my soul, I like the ring of it! Keep round the bend of the hill to the left. You'll see her among the saplings.'

He found her within a few minutes. Seeing her in the distance, he ran like a schoolboy, and arrived at her side breathless. She was sitting on a log; her hat was at her feet. She was radiant with health and colour again. It seemed to him that she had a peculiar affinity with the sunshine. He sank on his knees, seizing her hands, speaking nothing, seeking a verdict in her face. She slipped her hands from his and clasped them about his neck, and her face sank down to his.

'Oh, ma bouthal, you have come back to me,' she murmured.

'Yes, I've come back, Joy he said hoarsely.

'And with the true light in eyes.'

'With my soul full of love for you, my Joy.'

'And the other?'

'There is no other! There never was another! There was a childish waywardness, a summer madness—God knows what! But I know now Joy, that you are mistress and master of me, that without you I am worthless. I want you, my darling.'

'You have me!—you have me, Jim! Every beat of the heart of me!'

She pressed her face to his, and their first kiss had not the rapture of that kiss. In it mingled the old sweet emotions, and new ones born of sorrow that were sweeter still.

'I only understood one side of my love for you,' he said presently. 'I had to be taught the rest in a hard school.'

'I knew you would come back to me, sooner or later. You have come soon.'

'You knew?' He looked at her wonderingly for a moment, but the surprise passed. It only seemed strange that he had not recognised all along how inevitable was his return. 'Now that I have come I go no more,' he said. 'I cannot spare you from my side. I want the ties. I would clamp you to my heart with iron if I could.'

'Arrah! 'tis a happy girl I am, Jimmy,' she whispered. 'Hush! d'ye hear the song in heart?'

He laughed at the brogue, and pressed his lips amongst her thick hair.

'I want you for my wife,' he said.

She clung to him closely in silence for a moment and then he raised her gently and they walked back to the tent, hand in hand.

Nearly a year later Mr. and Mrs. Done were in Melbourne together when the Petral sailed for England. Amongst the ship's passengers were Mrs. Donald Macdougal, her two children, and Lucy Woodrow. Mrs. Macdougal, a wealthy and attractive widow, had sold Boobyalla, and intended to make her home in England. Lucy was still her companion, and, bidding them farewell, Jim was glad to know that the girl was well and not unhappy.

Jim and Aurora followed the rushes for some years after their marriage, and when they settled down in a substantial house at Ballarat, Done long regretted the canvas walls and the stir and gaiety of the tented fields.

By this time Ballarat was a prim town of many churches and strong Wesleyan proclivities, and Eureka had been justified by the concession of nearly all that the diggers fought for. One-armed Peter Lalor was a staid Parliamentarian and a stout Constitutionalist now, and the grave in which Micah Burton and the other rebels lay buried was an honoured spot. But by this time, too, new interests had been born into Done's life, new existences had been incorporated with his own, and he had a quaint fellowship with the youngsters, for in his heart remained a sneaking delight in the folly that is the scorn of fools. There were people who called Joy a hoyden at forty, but she retained the invincible soul of the woman who laughs.



THE END