Inside the room Mr. Crosby had just risen from his chair; there was an evil look of triumph on his shiny, crimson face. He slipped his watch back into his pocket as he rose.

"Two minutes to twelve; nothing can help it now. Wandaroo is mine!"

As he spoke, whilst the very words were on his lips, the door burst open, and panting, breathless, sweating with the heat and labour, Alec and the other men dashed headlong into the room. His hat was off, his curly hair was tumbled, his eyes gleamed with happiness and intolerable excitement, and his voice rang high with a mad triumph.

"Hold hard! 'tis not, for your price is there!" As he spoke he and the other men threw down their burdens—the room shook with the ponderous weight—and many of the bags bursting open with the fall poured their treasure of gold in a stream at Crosby's feet.

For a moment there was a thrilling silence in the room. The feelings of all were too high-strung for words. The first to break it was Mr. Crosby; his face was grey and ghastly, his whole figure had become altered and stricken in that one minute. In a dry, shrill voice, he whined to Tuckle—

"I won't have it; I refuse it. Must I take it?"

"I fear you must. English coin is so scarce in the Colony that the Government at Brisbane has decided that, for a time, gold, such as this, is legal tender at £4 the ounce."

Macleod laughed. "Wull ye tak' the whole amoont wi' ye noo?"

"Send it after us to Bateman," said Tuckle, speaking for Crosby, as he went out to get their horses.

Martin saw that his uncle had received a cruel blow, and that he looked ill and very aged, and, feeling pity for him, he offered him the support of his arm, but the old man flung it aside and tottered from the room alone.

The action was typical of his life. He had always spurned that which should have been his greatest happiness. He never saw his nephew again, for after reaching Bateman that day, overwhelmed with chagrin and futile passion, he was struck down with the fit the doctors had foretold. He died before Martin could reach him, and before he could alter, had he wished to do so, the will which made his nephew his sole heir. So that after all the gold for which the boys had been in quest did not go out of the family, for the morning that Martin and Margaret—sound friends and true lovers—became one, "till death does them part," Alec and Geordie received back from their new brother the title-deeds of Wandaroo, which he had found amongst his uncle's papers, and for which he steadily refused to take an ounce of the—to him—unnecessary gold.

THE END.

Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.