Viewed from the point on the track where first it came into sight, there was a certain pictorial attractiveness about the place which roused curiosity and interest—the contrast of the green of the cultivation patch with the prevailing neutral greys and yellowy-browns of the gum-tree forest; the simple form of the hut standing distinct and clear against the darker line of shade caused by the solid growth of bush beyond; and the quiet and apparently peaceful solitude of the whole scene appealing to the imagination. Nearer inspection left the solitude untouched, but robbed the picture of all else. Once, tradition averred, a hardy, daring denizen of Birralong had ventured out to the Three-mile for a yarn and a smoke with Slaughter. It was in the days when he had lately taken up the land, and when the glamours of proprietorship should have been still thick upon him, and when the neighbourly act of a brother settler ought to have been greeted with a friendly warmth. But the adventurer rode back to Birralong distressed and distrait, refusing, or failing, to put into words for the benefit of others his experience at the lonely Three-mile. All that he could express was conveyed by the pursing up of his lips, the nodding of his head in the direction of Slaughter's residence, and the exclaiming, solemnly and sadly, "Him? A melancholy bandicoot ain't in it." That, and the influence of Slaughter's bearing and conversation, when he was in the township, had upon the community effectually prevented any one else making the attempt to penetrate into the solitude of the Three-mile; and Slaughter lived his own life, in his own way, and no one knew more of it than had been learned in the first year of his residence in the district.

He was a customer of Marmot's, and that gave him the right to sit and smoke and yarn on the verandah of the store when he was in the township. He never passed his tobacco round, and rarely took an active part in the yarning, save to put in a few curt, cutting sentences that at first roused a sense of anger in his hearers, till they fell back under the protection of the phrase that "it was only Cold-blood Slaughter," and ignored the words that grated. He ran a "tally" at the store for the few necessaries of his life, and every six months cleared it with money which came in a letter for him from a city in a southern colony. It was the one link which existed between Slaughter and the outside world, that half-yearly letter, and its contents the one unsolved riddle in the annals of Birralong. With the regularity of the date itself the letter appeared, bearing the Sydney postmark on the cover, and as regularly Slaughter allowed it to rest a few days at the store, as though he knew both the mental anxiety it caused the habitués of the verandah as they tried to worry out some feasible explanation of its appearance, and the moral struggle its presence caused Marmot, who, as postmaster, felt bound by every tie of duty to hold it inviolate for the addressee, while, as the centre of Birralong gossip, he yearned to fathom the secret of its source, even at the cost of opening it. During all the years which had elapsed since Slaughter first came upon the scene the struggle had gone on, and still the mystery was unsolved and the riddle unread. Never had an occasion offered itself when anything could be learned from an outside source, and Slaughter himself was too cold and isolated an individual to be melted into confidence.

To those who gave any thought to the matter it was evident that, save for the unexpected appearance of outside information, the mystery of Slaughter's existence prior to his arrival at the Three-mile would remain unsolved, just as the chilling demeanour with which he surrounded himself would remain unpenetrated. But in Birralong, as in other parts of the world, it was the unexpected that happened.

The township one day was profoundly moved by the information, which passed with the rapidity which is only possible for gossip in a small community, that the schoolmaster had been struck down and lay dying. No one was especially surprised at that, for every one knew that he was suffering from a lung complaint which had not yielded to the influence of the pure, dry air of the district, and so was bound to carry him off sooner or later; for, as a travelling medical man had once observed, the consumptive who did not get well in the eucalyptus-scented air of inland Australia deserved to die, if only for the perversity of refusing Nature's kindliest aid! A ruptured blood-vessel certainly assisted in the collapse of Godson, but it was not even that which so astounded Birralong.

The sick man, knowing himself to be at death's door, had called for one thing, pleaded for one thing, prayed for one thing, and that the presence of Cold-blood Slaughter.

For some time the combined population of Birralong wondered, until, indeed, Ailleen rushed down from the cottage, where her father lay, to the roadway in front of the school, where the inhabitants of the township stood, and taunted them with being heartless cowards and listless fools to ignore the pleadings of a dying man.

"If you're not man enough to do what he asks," she said fiercely to Marmot, "you're postmaster, so do your duty and deliver that;" and she flung at the abashed storekeeper a letter addressed to Slaughter.

Without waiting for his answer, she swung round and ran back to the cottage, and the men of Birralong, looking sheepishly at one another, fidgeted uneasily as Marmot took up the letter.

A selector's boy, riding into sight at the moment, was hailed.

"Take that out to Cold-blood Slaughter at the Three-mile, and I'll give you a shilling when you come back," Marmot said; and the boy rode off.

Then they sat, wherever there was shade, and waited, uneasy lest the quick-tongued Ailleen should again swoop down upon them with anger which they knew was just, and yet unable to do otherwise than wait, if only to see whether Slaughter would come, and what he would do when he did come.

A cloud of dust rapidly advancing along the road was the first intimation of his approach, and as it came nearer they caught the sound of the galloping horse. He rode right up to the school-house gate and jumped out of the saddle. Marmot and his companions gathered round the gate as though to intercept him, till they saw his face. Then they fell back, and made way for him as he strode up the path towards the cottage, following him with their eyes, silent before the fascination of the terrible expression on his face. They were men whose minds worked slowly and in stolid grooves; men who pondered heavily over the prosaic occurrences which made up the monotonous routine of their lives; men who had no grasp of more subtle phenomena than those which formed the ordinary sequence of events in the restricted limits of their commonplace experiences. How, then, could they grasp in a moment, let alone comprehend, the sudden transformation of Slaughter from a soured and indifferent man to one of keen, quick, resolute character, whose tightly closed lips and lowering brow only emphasized the flash and glitter of his eyes?

They watched him as he passed up the pathway, with a stride and a swing so different from his ordinary listless dawdle. They heard the sound of his heavy tread on the boards of the cottage verandah. Then there was a silence, and the heavy wits of each of the waiting men strove to grasp sufficient of the spectacle to put his thoughts into words and ask for his comrades' help to understand. But before that could be done Slaughter again appeared coming down the pathway. He walked towards them, the frown gone from his face, and his eyes wide open and staring. A yard from them he stopped.

"He's dead," he exclaimed, in a hard, strained voice. "Dead—and I was too late."

The first words roused their interest, the last touched such sensibilities as they had. The figure of the man before them, strangely altered and moved, with the scornful bitterness they had learned to regard as his characteristic gone from his face, struck into their dull minds as something akin to a rebuke for their indifference to Ailleen's repeated requests for them to carry out a dying man's wish. The man was dead now, and Slaughter's words "too late" made them wince.

"It's a bad business," some one mumbled. "It's a bad business—for Yaller-head," he added, by way of diverting the suspicion of personal shortcomings.

"We'll see her through," Marmot said. "We'll——"

He stopped abruptly as he met Slaughter's glance; and the others looked from one to the other—from Marmot, disconcerted and uneasy, to Slaughter, whose face was set and hard in an expression that conveyed even to the men of Birralong the fact that they were in the presence of something which over-ruled them and subjugated them into a state of mental inferiority. The verbose Marmot, wordless; the listless Slaughter, dominant. It was a psychological crisis that humbled and abashed them.

They could only stand silent and expectant for the new development. The return of Slaughter to the cottage, this time with slow steps and bowed head, did not appeal to them as a development, and with that obtuse folly which is the birthright of the stolid, they straggled up the path after him. They were able to see into the room without going on to the verandah, and as each one glanced into it, he saw enough to rebuke him and make him turn back and walk sedately and quietly to the roadway.

When Slaughter reached the cottage the second time and looked into the room, Ailleen was on her knees crouched down beside the low bed on which lay the still form of her dead father. She held in both her hands one of his, and her head was resting on them, the wealth of golden hair, broken loose from its restraint, welling round and over them. Slaughter, as he came to the doorway, took the old felt hat from his head, and tried to walk on tip-toe lest his heavy boots should make too much noise.

With bowed head and averted glance he slowly walked from the door across the room, and round to the side of the bed where the girl was kneeling. She, hearing his footsteps, looked up for a moment, and then hid her face again. But he did not notice it. He walked on, with his eyes cast down, till he was beside her, when he sank on to his knees also, and gently touched her arm with his hard, rough hand.

"I ain't no stranger, miss—I ain't no stranger," he began, in a voice which was a curious blend of his ordinary harsh tones with a soft and quivering sympathy. "We're none of us strangers to you, miss, leastways me."

He paused uneasily, half hoping she would move or speak; but only the sound of a choked sob came to him, and he shivered. It was the moment when the curious crowd outside glanced into the silent room.

"Cold-blood Slaughter they calls me, miss," he went on presently, "for they say I ain't a feeling man; but it's only a name, miss. I've come here now, miss—here—to tell you, first from all of us, second from—me. We ain't no strangers, miss. We're all your friends, and—we—we'll see you through."

Again he paused, looking up timidly at the mass of golden hair which was gently trembling as the girl's emotions chased one another through her heart and being; he saw that, and beyond it, just over it, the still, white features of the dead man's face—and he lowered his glance again.

"Maybe my story'll help you, miss, for no one's ever heard it yet. I could only tell it—to you, and—here—now. They didn't call me Cold-blood Slaughter once; I was a soft chap then, and I loved a woman who loved me, till another came and lied, and I—I was Cold-blood Slaughter then. It was all a lie—God forgive the teller, for I can't—but the woman I loved believed it, and I went away—came here and took up the Three-mile, and kept it to myself, till—till she came here—she—the woman I loved—and she came as another man's wife."

His voice was growing hard in spite of the quiver that was in it; but the quiver was due to another emotion than that which had caused it at first, and he, realizing it, checked his utterance till the growing anger was subdued.

"She saw me once, miss, and turned from me, and I—I never saw her again. I kept away. Then she died, miss, and left a daughter behind, her daughter, just like her, more like her the more she grew, and then—then—the father died. I thought he never knew till he—told me—told me she'd told him she knew it was a lie, and asked me to be good to her daughter, for her sake, and—and—I've come."

He ceased, but did not dare to look up, lest he should meet her eyes as she raised her head to answer him. He was kneeling, stiffly, sitting back on his heels with his back straight, his arms hanging down at his sides, and his hands clasping the old grey felt hat. His head was leaning forward, and two tears ran down his sunburned cheeks to the tangled thickness of his grizzled beard. In the room no sound broke the stillness.

"I never knew till to-day she'd found it was a lie—I never knew she'd turned away because she was—she'd found out it wasn't true; and I've been a hard man all the time because I didn't know. Now, I'd like to put things straight, just tidy up a bit. I'm no sort of a hand at making things smooth, but maybe you won't feel us strangers now, and we'll do the best we can."

It was all he had to tell, all he could say; but it seemed so small and useless to him when the girl neither spoke nor moved. He waited in silence for her to give some sign that she heard and understood, and receiving none, looked up. She was kneeling as she had been when first he came into the room, as still as the other figure on the bed. He reached out his hand and touched her arm.

"Miss," he said, as he touched her; but there was neither sound nor movement in response. "Miss," he repeated, as he put his hand round her arm lest his touch had not been apparent to her, "we're none of us strangers, leastways——"

The grip on her arm might have been firmer than he meant; he might unconsciously have pushed her; but as he began to repeat again the formula of his sympathy, the only phrase which came to him through the mists of his sorrow and perplexity, Ailleen moved from her kneeling position as she slipped, pale and insensible, to the floor.

For a moment Slaughter looked at her. Then he sprang to his feet, and rushed, wild-eyed and panic-stricken, out of the room, across the verandah, and down the pathway to the road. The news of Godson's death having spread through the township, almost the entire population, men and women, were gathered round the gate. Marmot, anxious in some way to relieve the uncomfortable feeling he experienced since Slaughter had, as he thought, complained of being sent for too late, had kept them all back from going up to the cottage to proffer their help—a restraint the women members of the community especially resented.

As Slaughter appeared, running bareheaded down the pathway, they turned towards him; but he only pointed back to the cottage, and mumbled something they could not understand. The women hastened up, and, finding Ailleen lying in a dead faint on the floor, carried her between them into her own room. While they revived her, others of the community undertook the remaining responsibilities, for tropical heat leaves brief time for mourning ceremonies.

Slaughter, left to himself, loosened his horse from where some one had hitched him to the fence, and led him, walking slowly, down the township road and away in the direction of the Three-mile. He walked on, with the reins loosely looped over his shoulder, the horse, as though it knew his mood, measuring its steps to his, and keeping its head just level with him. The warm, dry air, scarcely more than a breath of wind, caught the dust as it rose from their footsteps, and drifted it, in a filmy, moving cloud, all around and over them. The horse snorted now and again as it felt the irritation in its nostrils, and blinked its eyes, until they were almost closed, to escape it; but Slaughter walked on oblivious to the dust, to the heat, to the time, to everything, save the growing consciousness of a dull mental pain that was beginning to gnaw and goad him into a state of mind very different to that which had held him while he was offering his sympathy to Ailleen. The years of bitter solitude, the years of cynical brooding over the wrongs that had come into his life, had built up an influence over him that was not to be dissipated by a momentary wave of sympathetic impulse. More than that, the sympathetic impulse had not been allowed to expend itself; as it developed it had been checked by the apparent unresponsiveness of its object, until, at the moment of its greatest vitality, it was abruptly arrested by the shock of Ailleen's collapse. And in that it was in keeping with all the other experiences Slaughter had known whenever the softer side of his nature, the love impulses of his being, were called into activity; always there had been a check put upon him which made the exercise restrained and restricted up to the time when a final shock had effectually arrested it, and turned his love and kindliness back, turned them away from their natural outlet to force them in upon themselves, until, in the succeeding turmoil and confusion, only bitterness and lonely brooding resulted.

Over the whole distance between the school-house and the solitary Three-mile he walked on, brooding and bitter. The action of the woman who turned from him when she first saw him after her arrival at Birralong, came to be viewed in a less charitable light than it was when he spoke of it to Ailleen. Then he said she turned away because she had learned she had wronged him; now in his thoughts he galled himself by attributing her action to fear and shame, and aggravated his sense of injury by recalling, again and again, that the man who had married her had kept for years the message she had sent on her deathbed. Disjointedly and incoherently, but always bitterly, he brooded and piled item on item, until there came to him the memory of the other, the memory of the woman who had first set his life awry.

A few kind sentences; a touch of human sympathy; a token of kindly impulse and generous open-heartedness at that moment when his better nature was stirred, and Slaughter might have forgotten in the warmth of the present the chill gloom of the past. But there was no one near him to give the necessary trend to the direction of his thoughts and emotions; nothing came to him save the recollection of the one whose jealous fancy had let loose all the hard cruelty of his nature; and Slaughter finished his walk with his mind seething in revengeful malice against the memory of the woman who had wrought his ruin.

He turned his horse into the paddock, force of habit impelling him to remove the saddle and bridle, the storm of his memory preventing him from even realizing that he did so. With the bridle on his arm, and the saddle under it, he walked to the hut and kicked the door open. On the threshold he stopped. Two men sat at the rough table in the middle of the room, and, as the door opened, the man with his back to the doorway turned in his seat and rose to his feet.

The saddle fell from Slaughter's arm, unnoticed; the presence of the second man was unrealized; for only could Slaughter stand and stare at the man who faced him—a man with a brutal head and black, heavy brows.

"You don't seem too pleased to see an old mate," he said, with something of a snarl in his voice.

"You!" Slaughter exclaimed.

"Yes, me; and why not?" replied the other, quickly and hotly.

"There's nothing between you and me—nothing," Slaughter said slowly.

"Is that so?" the man replied. "Well, I fancy I'm wrong, then, for I thought that the work Kate Blair had done was enough to make both of us learn——"

Slaughter started at the name, started forward, and then checked himself, though his face went hard and his hands clenched, and his eyes gleamed brighter than they did when he faced Marmot a few hours earlier. The man saw—and stopped.

"Go on," Slaughter cried, with a savage energy.

"I only talk to a mate I can trust," the man answered. "I didn't come here because it's your hut. We struck it on the road, and called in for a boil of the billy, and finding no one in, borrowed what we wanted. Seeing it's yours, and we ain't welcome, we'll move along. If the taint of Kate Blair in both our lives don't make us mates, why, it's so long to you and——"

He saw the lips press closer together and the frown grow deeper as Slaughter heard the name again, and he went on—

"But maybe you're friends with her now, friends with the"—he laughed, not too musically—"the woman who well-nigh hanged you."

The taunt let loose the rage and fury that had been gradually growing in Slaughter's mind; let loose from his restraint all the passionate emotions stirred and re-stirred by the events of the day; and before the storm of fierce denunciation to which he gave vent, one of the two men quailed, and strove to edge nearer the door. The black-browed man stood still, watching Slaughter as he raved, with an evil smile lurking round the corners of his thin lips.

When, from sheer exhaustion, the enraged Slaughter paused for a moment, he had his words ready.

"Good," he said. "You've not forgotten. More have I. Now that I know you, I'll tell you. I'm going back to make things square. Will you join me?"

Slaughter looked at him, his rage still rankling and burning.

"Going back?" he said. "Back? What! back to Sydney?"

The man laughed.

"Sydney!" he exclaimed. "Why, you fool, she's not in Sydney. She left there nearly thirty years ago. She's here—or hereabouts."

Slaughter, quivering, staggering, trembling, clutched at his throat as he heard the words.

"Here!" he shouted. "Here, within reach of me, when I——"

"Hereabouts, I said," the other exclaimed roughly. "Keep your wits, and listen."

The interruption checked his words, but could not check the red fury that was surging through Slaughter's overstrung brain. The man who, in the presence of Ailleen's sorrow, had been gentle and soft-hearted, was now, in the presence of the full force of embittered memory, swayed only by one impulse, conscious only of one thing. Hate, an unreasoning madness of hate, was upon him, and to soothe that hate, to satisfy the craving it engendered, the object of it, sacrificed as a victim, was alone capable.

The power of the other man's voice checked his words; the power of the other man's eyes, staring steadily into his from beneath the black band of the heavy brows, checked his wandering glance. He essayed to speak; the words choked in his throat. He strove to leap forward and rush from the hut into the sunlight beyond; but the place seemed to spin round him. A red film spread before his eyes; a roaring crash of sound filled his ears; his lungs gasped for the air they could not breathe; and it seemed as though his brain burst his skull asunder as he reeled and fell like a log to the floor.

Looking down at him where he lay, the man with the brutal head said to his companion, in a tone of callous indifference—

"There was a streak of luck in it, Tap, my son, for we've struck a better man than your mate Walker, and a man who's with us to the end."

"No, I don't; but I say there's no gold in it. No more than there is in the creek way-back. There's no gold in the country. Let the others find it out for themselves; but now Walker's turned up no good, and we're all mates in the swim, I'll tell you straight. The whole game was a bit of bluff."

"Here, steady, young feller," Palmer Billy said, as he swung his swag to the ground and faced Gleeson. "Let's have a plain talk about this. What's your game, anyhow?"

"You told me——" Peters began, when Gleeson interrupted him.

"You want the yarn, and I'll tell you," he said.

"What's the good of waiting here?" Tony exclaimed. "It's nearly time for dinner, and you can yarn then. Let's push on to the creek, if there is one, and have a feed and yarn then."

"Young feller, my lad," Palmer Billy observed, turning towards Tony, "you've the head of a jayneus. In course. Who wants to yarn with a full tucker-bag outside and none under the waistbelt? Shove along."

He swung his swag on to his shoulder again and resumed the walk, the others following, Gleeson silent and morose.

The view of Palmer Billy was correct. A creek, full of clear water running over a sandy bed, flowed through the scrub; and while a fire was being lit to boil the billy, Peters went a short distance along the banks of the creek. When he came back he looked at Gleeson.

"You say you've been here?" he asked.

"No," Gleeson answered. "I say there's no gold in this creek or the other. It was all bluff—only the game's gone wrong."

"Don't be too sure," Peters said. "We had no chance of prospecting the other creek, with the mob jumping every one's claims, but I'm on to wager this is no bluff. There's gold in that creek; not in tons, maybe, but enough to give us wages, and good wages, for more than a week or two."

"You don't say!" exclaimed Palmer Billy, standing up beside the fire over which he had been stooping, as he watched for the water in the billy to come to the boil.

"You're wrong," Gleeson retorted. "I tell you the whole thing was bluff. The hole we dug was salted, and the creek was to be salted for a bit; and then, when the rush set in, the news was to have been published and our claim offered for sale, and bought, and offered again, just as the big find was made, the find that was planted in the hole. Only Walker's turned wrong, and Tap, the chap we left to do the salting, has cleared with the gold; and if you hadn't stood by me in the row, I should have cleared too, and left you to get out of the way of the mob as best you could. Only you stood by me and Walker shied, so he can face the mob and the music, and we'll clear. But there's no gold in this creek. There may be a bit in the other; Tap may have dropped some of the stuff we were fools enough to trust with him; but I'll swear he never came here, so how could any gold get here?"

The three stood looking at him, Palmer Billy open-mouthed and open-eyed.

"And you calls yourself a miner?" he said, with scornful emphasis.

"No, I don't," Gleeson retorted. "I'm a mining expert—that's my business. There's money in that; there's none in mining; and I'm after money, if you want to know."

The outspoken frankness of the man momentarily checked the feeling of anger or antagonism that was rising in the minds of the other three. Tony, with the memory of what he had heard in Birralong of the engineers of wild-cat schemes, winced at the discovery that his leader was only a specimen of the tribe after all.

"What's the use of talking? You're after the same lay yourselves," Gleeson went on. "It's money you want, only you haven't got the savee to see the quickest way to get it."

Palmer Billy, his hat at the back of his head and his face working, moved a couple of steps nearer Gleeson.

"See here, young feller," he began. "I'm more than fifty by a long chalk, and I've been mining since I was fifteen; mining, I say—earning every slab of damper and pannikin of tea I've swallerd, not to mention 'bacca and sometimes a bender on rum, by as tough a share of graft as a man wants whose muscles ain't flabby. Fifty times I've struck a duffer on one field or another; twenty times I've struck a good show that petered out in a week; three times I struck it rich—rich enough to set me up if I'd stuck to the find, but always I've been had—had by darned dirty I-talyans from the towns on the coast, who've come up with their glib tongues and doctored tangle-foot and bested me, me and my mates, and shunted us to yacker and graft while they fattened on our find. And for years I've waited for the chance of meeting one of those scabs, just to get a bit even on one of them. There's three of you here, and there's one of me, but——"

"Don't make no error," Peters exclaimed quickly. "I'm a miner myself. I joined this show as a fair deal, and so did the lad there."

"Good for you," Palmer Billy replied. "The lad maybe don't know, but you and I don't want telling what's the pay for mining sharks. Here, put up your dooks," he added, as he sparred up to Gleeson.

"We're mates, don't I tell you?" Gleeson said. "I'm on for a square deal. I'm full of the others. I'll stand in——"

Palmer Billy, sparring round him in the approved methods of Boulder Creek, came within reach and hit. Behind the blow there was a lifetime of outraged humanity, as well as the strength of a toil-trained, toughened frame, and Gleeson fell like an ox under the pole-axe. He lay where he fell, and Palmer Billy, far from satisfied at such a brief exercise of his pugilistic talents, stirred him with his foot.

"Here, no sleepy 'possum tricks, if you please," he said, with what he considered appropriate politeness demanded by the occasion. "There's two more waitin' after me, and I ain't through yet. I don't want to keep you waiting. Get up and have yer smile out."

But Gleeson made no response, and Peters came over and looked at him. Palmer Billy's bony fist had left an unmistakable mark on the bridge of his nose, and the closed eyelids were already thickened and discoloured.

"You've punished him for the three of us," Peters said.

"Punished him? Don't you believe it," Palmer Billy answered. "I've only begun. He's going to learn what mining means before I've done with him, and then you two can take him on, and after that the boys over the rise. He's going to enjoy himself, I tell you, now we know who he is."

"It's no good hammering a chap like that; he wouldn't stand up to a black-fellow," Tony, who had been watching the proceedings, observed. "If there's gold in the creek, why——"

"That's just it," Palmer Billy interrupted. "If there's gold in the creek, he'll get it out while we take charge of it. He's used to all pay and no work. This journey he'll have all work and no pay. Oh, you're waking up, are you?" he added, as Gleeson recovered his senses sufficiently to make an ineffectual effort to rise. "Let me give you a hand," he went on, as he grabbed Gleeson by the back of his collar and jerked him on to his feet, where he stood, swaying to and fro and holding his head with both hands. "Now, maybe, you'll go on with this little affair," Palmer Billy continued. "Not that I want to hurry yer. Take your own time, only just say when you're ready to go on."

Gleeson, still dazed, looked round at the three standing in front of him. His head was throbbing with the knock-down blow he had received, and he had not yet had time to gather the exact meaning of his sensations. The words Palmer Billy used suggested journeying, and somewhere in the muddled confusion of his mind there was a decided impulse to journey.

"I'm ready now," he said indistinctly, as he dropped his hands. "I'm only waiting for you."

Palmer Billy, watchful, suspicious, and wroth, heard the words and saw the movement. He cut both short by getting his blow in before the ruse he believed Gleeson was trying to use could develop. The second smashing blow in his face, for which he was totally unprepared, sent Gleeson again to the ground, and also brought home to him the fact that he was very much at a disadvantage, and to a man who was by no means loth to profit by it.

He was not a fighter, either by instinct or training. In the matter of words he might hold his own, and, to any one who believed him, appear a man of great strength and courage. But when, by any mischance, he stumbled across an opponent who knew enough to correctly estimate the value of his professions, and who was self-reliant and sturdy enough to face him and challenge a proof of his assertions, Gleeson retired, or, failing escape, subsided rapidly. Usually his tact, as he called it, was successful in extricating him from positions where an exercise of brute force was imminent against him; he had never before been called on to cope with such a situation as he now realized he was in.

The second blow, directed more at his mouth, had not had the stupefying effect of the first, though it brought him to the ground with what Palmer Billy regarded as expert thoroughness. As he lay there, he understood the turn matters had taken; he was in the middle of what he had always managed to avoid, a rough-and-tumble bout of fisticuffs, and with a man stronger and more expert than himself. He partly raised his head from the ground in order to ascertain the disposition of the other two members of the party. He saw them behind Palmer Billy, looking on with apparent indifference to what was transpiring, and realized that they were certainly not on his side.

Palmer Billy, as he saw Gleeson raise his head, stepped over to him.

"You'd like to get up, I take it," he said, and reached down to catch him by the collar.

"Don't hit me. I never did you any harm," Gleeson whined, shrinking from the extending hand which he expected was about to administer another blow, and hiding his face on his arms.

Palmer Billy, standing up, glanced round at the other two with a look of scorn on his face.

"What price that?" he asked, with a mixture of savagery and contempt in his voice. "Here, get up," he went on before they could answer him, as he stirred Gleeson roughly with his foot. "Get up on to yer bended knees, or I'll sink a shaft through you as you lay."

Gleeson, fearful and subdued, scrambled up as he was told.

"Now," said Palmer Billy, with a fine tone of indignant authority, "we'll go on to the second portion of this 'ere drama. Pass me over them straps, my lad," he added, turning to Tony, and pointing to the weather-worn thongs he had bound round his swag.

As soon as he had them, he placed one in a noose round Gleeson's neck, and drew it tight enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to check breathing.

"You hold this, lad," he said to Tony, who took the loose end of the strap and, just to see that it was all secure, jerked it slightly.

"I haven't done you harm," Gleeson began to whine; "I haven't done you harm. I'll do anything——"

"Dry up," Palmer Billy snarled. "We'll tell you when to talk."

Taking up one of the picks, he stepped in front of Gleeson, and held the pick so that the point of it rested on the crown of his head. Peters, following a hint, took up another, and stood by the side, holding it over his shoulder as though ready to strike.

"Now then, you scab of a mining shark," Palmer Billy said, in the full force of his raucous voice, "you'll say what I bid you, or we'll sink a shaft through your skull and see where your brains lie. D'ye hear?"

Gleeson, muddled, dazed, and terrified, mumbled out that he had never done them any harm.

"We ain't talking about that, because there ain't no talk in it. We ain't sharks, but you are, and we're just going to teach you something of what work is like. First you'll tell us just what your game was and who were in it. Then we'll tell you what we'll do."

"You're choking me," Gleeson whined. "I can't breathe, and you're breaking my head. I never did——"

"What was your game?" Peters interrupted to ask.

"I told you. I never meant to harm you. It was a fair deal. The claim was to be sold between ourselves, and then the big find was to be made and the claim sold again, only to some one else, and then——well, that's all. There's nothing wrong in that. It's done every day in mining. It's the only thing that pays in mining. Grubbing for nuggets is no good. Not one in ten thousand makes anything out of that; any fool can make a pile out of the other, if he only does it properly. I know the ropes. I'll put you all into a good thing later on, you see; something with more money in it than you'll make in a lifetime at grubbing after nuggets. You trust me. I'm square. I don't want to harm you. We're all mates, and——"

"Who were standing in over this swindle with you?" Peters asked.

"It wasn't a swindle. It was a fair speculation—a good open deal, and it would have made the fortune of every one who had the savee to see through it. Where's the swindle to sell what others want to buy and at their own valuation? We don't ask them to buy. We don't put up the price. We only tell people what a good thing we've got, and let it get known that so much gold has been found on our claim. If they come in and offer us big sums for our chance, and we take the offer, where's the swindle?"

Palmer Billy, moved to intense indignation, dropped the pick he was holding, and walked away for ten yards, swinging round and coming back with an angry stride.

"Swear, you slippery-tongued shark, you; swear by all the bones in your body that if you——"

The oath, whatever it might have been, was never completed nor administered, for his emotions becoming too much for him to hold in check, Palmer Billy sprang upon Gleeson, and gave vent to his feelings in a manner which was more satisfying to him than a mere oratorical outburst. Had he been allowed to complete his intention, the future career of Gleeson would not have been connected with mining swindles. For a time Peters and Tony, neither being predisposed in favour of Gleeson, stood by watching the chastisement Palmer Billy meted out, undisturbed by the cries for mercy and the yells of pain which the resounding blows of the raging digger called forth from his victim. It was only when both cries and yells ceased, and Gleeson lay senseless and inert, that they interfered.

"You're only wasting it," Peters said quietly, as he took hold of Palmer Billy's arm. "He can't feel it now."

Tony caught the other arm in time to prevent it delivering a blow at the man who had interrupted Palmer Billy's pleasant entertainment of thrashing one of a tribe who had so often lured him to destruction.

"Darned dirty I-talyan," he gasped, as he struggled to break away and re-open the campaign on the prostrate Gleeson.

"Give him a chance," Peters said. "Let him get his wind. There'll be none left for us to go for if you don't ease up a bit."

"That's fair, boys; that's fair," Palmer Billy exclaimed. "It's your go next; I'll stand by while you have your go."

"But what have you left for us?" Tony asked, as he let go Palmer Billy's arm.

Gleeson, very much bruised and dishevelled, lay on the broad of his back, breathing heavily.

"Put him in the shade, with a bucket of water on his head. He'll understand what honest mining means when he wakes up," Palmer Billy remarked, as he looked down at the prostrate figure.

They carried him into the shadow of the scrub and poured some water from the creek over his head. Then they left him to recover, while they gave their attention to the meal which had been so unceremoniously postponed.

When they had finished, they turned their attention again to Gleeson. But they had not hurried over their meal, having little care or consideration for him; and he, recovering consciousness while yet they were engaged, felt no qualms about making his retreat as quickly and as quietly as possible. Aching in every bone, and with every muscle bruised, he crept away through the shelter of the scrub, not daring to look for the swag he had thrown down, or the hat which had been knocked from his head. There was only one instinct or desire in his being—the instinct which drives the wounded rat back to its hole to die, the instinct of self-preservation working in its meanest range. His swagger and bluster had been hopelessly crushed out of him by the vigour of Palmer Billy's attack; and to have been, as he considered, twice deserted by his own comrades, rendered his subjugation even more complete.

By the time that his flight was discovered he had over half an hour's start. The opinion as to the direction he had taken was unanimous—he must have gone back to the other creek to join his mate Walker.

"You slip over and pass the word along the creek," Palmer Billy said to Tony. "Tell the boys we were keeping him for them to deal with when they found how they'd been sold. They'll be about fit to boil him when they find out they're all sold."

"If a few of them come along," Peters said, "we can run him down in a few hours, and then we can——"

"Roast him," Palmer Billy interrupted savagely.

"Better let him get bushed. It's a hundred chances to one if he'll travel far after the hammering you gave him," Tony said.

"No, that would be cruel," Palmer Billy exclaimed. "He's only a mining shark, but still, white men ain't cruel."

So Tony left them, and returned to the creek in full expectation of finding Gleeson there before him. But as he approached the slope which extended down from the level track to the creek, he was astonished to see his own horse and Gleeson's quietly feeding, with their bridles, broken, trailing from their heads. To catch and mount his own was soon accomplished, and he rode on to the creek.

His approach was entirely ignored by the men along the banks, and he sat still on the bare back of his horse for a time looking with amazement before him.

Up the creek and down the creek men were stooping over the water, and many of them standing in it, as they washed, in every description of utensil, from a billy-lid to a soft felt hat, the gravel they obtained from immediately beneath the scanty turf on the banks. There was no talking, no shouting, no quarrelling. Behind each man there was a small patch where the turf had been turned back so as to enable the gravel to be scooped up, and the energies of every one seemed to be wholly devoted to the washing of the gravel, handful by handful, while the eyes were strained to catch a sight of the smallest particle of gold in the muddy swirl the gravel and water made in the article used for a dish. The intentness with which the work was done; the feverish movements of the men; the quick gestures and the grasping care exercised by them over the gravel,—all suggested that their anticipations had been realized, and they were really obtaining gold from the dirt.

Tony rode nearer the line of men. One had a small square of flannel open on the ground beside him, with a stone at each corner to prevent its being blown away, and in the centre Tony saw a small but steadily growing pile of yellow metal. Another man was using the lid of his billy as a dish to wash the gravel, while into the billy itself he was putting what he picked out of the slush. Yet another, as low down on his luck, perhaps, as it was possible even for a Boulder Creeker to be, was washing the gravel in his old felt hat, and had stripped the shirt from his back to lay on the ground as a receptacle for the gold he found; and the pile on the shirt showed he had struck a promising patch.

Everywhere it was the same; everywhere the men were silent and busy, and everywhere they were finding gold. The discovery drove all idea of Gleeson out of Tony's head, and he turned his horse back towards the rise, and rode rapidly up it and across to the scrub where he had left Peters and Palmer Billy.

"They're on gold; there's gold all along the creek," he shouted out, as he galloped up to where the two were standing.

For answer Peters held out the lid of the billy-can, and Tony saw in it four large nuggets and a quantity of coarse gold dust.

"That came out of the first two dishes," he said.

"We've struck it rich since you've been away, lad, struck it rich, which is all through killing that damned shark," Palmer Billy cried, capering up to him. "But—what price?" he exclaimed, as he stopped and stared at the horse. "Where did you raise this?"

"Down by the creek. Gleeson's was there as well," Tony answered.

"It's your own horse?" Peters said. "The one that was stolen?"

"That's so," Tony replied. "But there were only the two, and I left Gleeson's where it was."

"It's right into our hands," Peters went on. "We were just yarning about it as soon as we saw there was gold in the creek."

"Tucker, lad, tucker," Palmer Billy interrupted. "We're going to work along the creek while the stores last, but there's only enough for a few days, and we were wondering. Now it's all straight. You can ride off for enough to keep us going for a month if needs be."

While the stores lasted they worked in the creek; when the stock became so low as to threaten a famine, Tony, with the gold already won in his possession, started off, riding bare-backed for the spot where the saddles had been "planted," and carefully avoiding the men along the other creek. Finding the saddles where they had been left, he took his own and rode away towards Birralong, anticipating the entertainment he would have at the expense of the wise men who had prophesied so freely about the results of following up a wild-cat scheme.

The sun was nearing the horizon when he came out on the Birralong road, after a short cut across country, a little above the township. He made direct for Marmot's store, on the verandah of which he saw that several men were gathered. As he rode up, they looked round at him with apparent indifference, not even replying to the wave of the hand he gave when they turned their heads towards him. It did not occur to him that, as he was coming from the direction of Taylor's Flat, each of the men believed that he had returned to the selection after discovering that the gold-field yarn was all a wild-cat scheme, as they had prophesied, and had been lying low at the selection ever since, keeping out of the way until something else should have transpired so as to prevent them dwelling on the folly he had shown. The coolness the men displayed nettled him, and he rode up to the store in a free, careless fashion, while Marmot and his companions sat still looking at him, resenting the fact that he should not have come in at once and given them the opportunity of reminding him, constantly and plainly, that they had "told him so" before he set out on the trip with gully-raking dead-beats.

"How are you?" he called out to them, as he reined in his horse by the row of posts, but made no move to alight. "I'll be round in the morning with a pack-horse for some stores and tools we want," he added, addressing Marmot, who had not moved from the tobacco-box by the door. The indifference displayed towards him was irritating.

"Well, aren't you coming in?" Marmot said after a moment's silence.

"No; I'm just riding over first to see—to see how Godson's been all the time," Tony replied, as he pulled his horse's head round towards the road.

"Godson? Why, here—Tony, hold on," Marmot called out, as he jumped up and, stepping off the verandah, caught hold of a stirrup-leather just as Tony was moving his horse forward.

All the other men had also risen, and were standing staring at Tony in a manner that was as unintelligible to him as their previous indifference.

"Get off and come in," Marmot was saying. "We ain't quite clear on things, it seems to me. Where have you come from?"

Tony jerked his head towards the west.

"Away down the creek—I can't say nearer," he answered.

"Not from the Flat?"

"No; I'm going on there later. I——"

"Here, you come inside," Marmot said quickly. "You come inside, and hold yourself together."

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Come up here, lad; there's news for you to hear," some one called from the verandah; and Tony, undecided and uneasy, got out of the saddle and walked on to the verandah where the men were still standing.

Marmot waved him to the tobacco-box.

"Godson's dead," he said.

"And buried," Smart added, with pardonable pride, for he was the local undertaker as well as saw-miller.

Tony, sitting on the tobacco-box, gazed at them open-mouthed.

"It was sudden—it's curled Cold-blood Slaughter clean up," Cullen put in as further explanation.

"And Yaller-head—she's gone to Barellan," another man, wishing to have some share in the proceedings, put in.

It was the last remark which brought Tony to his feet.

"Sit down, lad; sit down," Marmot explained. "We had to break it gently lest it scared you. Sit down and have a smoke. We're all with you."