1 files changed, 4478 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/38791-8.txt b/38791-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6ec81a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38791-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4478 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bushranger's Secret, by Mrs. Henry Clarke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Bushranger's Secret
+
+Author: Mrs. Henry Clarke
+
+Illustrator: W. S. Stacey
+
+Release Date: February 8, 2012 [EBook #38791]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUSHRANGER'S SECRET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: cover art]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "SO YOU HAVEN'T LEFT ME TO THE CROWS"  Page 159]
+
+
+
+
+
+The Bushranger's Secret
+
+
+BY
+
+MRS. HENRY CLARKE
+
+
+Author of "The Ravensworth Scholarship"
+  "The Mystery of the Manor House" &c.
+
+
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED BY W. S. STACEY_
+
+
+
+
+BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
+
+GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
+
+_Printed and bound in Great Britain_
+
+
+
+
+  BOOKS OF THIS SERIES
+
+
+  _BOYS_
+
+  The War of the Axe.                    J. Percy-Groves.
+  Hammond's Hard Lines.                  Skelton Kuppord.
+  The Bushranger's Secret.               Mrs. Henry Clarke.
+  The Penang Pirate.                     John C. Hutcheson.
+  In the Hands of the Malays.            G. A. Henty.
+  In the Hands of the Cave Dwellers.     G. A. Henty.
+  Dick Chester.                          G. I. Whitham.
+  For the Old School.                    Florence Coombe.
+  Sturdy and Strong.                     G. A. Henty.
+  Marooned on Australia.                 E. Favenc.
+  In the Great White Land.               Dr. Gordon Stables, R.N.
+  The Captured Cruiser.                  C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.
+  Westward with Columbus.                Dr. Gordon Stables, R.N.
+  Hal Hungerford.                        J. R. Hutchinson.
+  Dr. Jolliffe's Boys.                   Lewis Hough.
+  Olaf the Glorious.                     Robert Leighton.
+
+
+  _GIRLS_
+
+  The Two Dorothys.                      Mrs. Herbert Martin.
+  Susan.                                 Amy Walton.
+  The Hawthorns.                         Amy Walton.
+  Penelope and the Others.               Amy Walton.
+  The Ravensworth Scholarship.           Mrs. Henry Clarke.
+  The Eversley Secrets.                  Evelyn Everett-Green.
+  The Mystery of Kittle-Boy.             Jennie Chappell.
+  A Soldier's Daughter.                  G. A. Henty.
+  Comrades from Canada.                  May Wynne.
+  An Unexpected Hero.                    Elizabeth J. Lysaght.
+  The Ferry House Girls.                 Bessie Marchant.
+  Meg's Friend.                          Alice Corkran.
+
+
+  _BOYS AND GIRLS_
+
+  Into the Haven.                        Annie S. Swan.
+  A Pair of Clogs, and other Stories.    Amy Walton.
+  That Merry Crew.                       Florence Coombe.
+  Our Friend Jim.                        Geraldine Mockler.
+  The House of the Five Poplars.         Lucy Crump.
+  Three Bears and Gwen.                  May Wynne.
+  Tony's Chums.                          May Wynne.
+  When Auntie Lil took Charge.           May Wynne.
+  The Eagle's Nest.                      S. E. Cartwright.
+  Three's Company.                       May Wynne.
+  The Lady Isobel.                       Eliza F. Pollard.
+
+
+  BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
+
+  LONDON GLASGOW BOMBAY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+Chap.
+
+    I.  A Fugitive
+   II.  Tempted!
+  III.  At Warrandilla
+   IV.  In Quest of Treasure
+    V.  Deadman's Gully
+   VI.  The Treasure Found
+  VII.  Deserted!
+ VIII.  Lost in the Bush
+   IX.  Facing Death
+    X.  A Grim Sort of Picnic
+   XI.  A Ruthless Villain
+  XII.  Under Green Boughs
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"SO YOU HAVEN'T LEFT ME TO THE CROWS" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"HERE, GIVE IT ME BACK," SAID THE BUSHRANGER
+
+THE MEETING IN "DEADMAN'S GULLY"
+
+A TREACHEROUS BLOW
+
+
+
+
+THE BUSHRANGER'S SECRET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A FUGITIVE.
+
+Two men were sitting together in a small outlying hut on one of the
+great grazing farms of South Australia.  The hut was a comfortless
+place.  The floor was of beaten earth.  Two bunks for sleeping were
+fixed to the log wall.  Above one of the bunks hung the framed
+photograph of a comely woman, with two bright-faced lads leaning
+against her.  It was the only picture on the walls.  A rough table
+stood opposite the window, and behind the table was a wooden bench.
+Above the bench there was a shelf, and a stand for guns.
+
+The men were sitting on the bench.  They had not long returned from a
+hard day's riding.  The elder man was leaning back against the wall in
+a heavy sleep.  The other, a slender, dark-eyed fellow, hardly more
+than a lad, was looking at him with a gloomy contemptuous irritation in
+his glance.
+
+"Better asleep than awake, though," he muttered to himself, after a
+moment.  "What can he talk about but cattle and horses?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and got up from his seat and stretched
+himself.  The dog lying at the older man's feet, with its paw resting
+on one of them, raised its head sharply at Gray's movement, but did not
+attempt to get up even when Gray went to the door and opened it,
+letting the light of their lamp flow out in a steady stream.
+
+All round the hut stretched the gray level grass-lands, rolling away in
+vast monotony to a far horizon.  A wide sky arched over them, in which
+the stars were shining with a soft yet brilliant splendour.  Gray
+glanced carelessly up at that glorious sky.  He believed himself to be
+endowed with a keen sense of the beautiful.  He prided himself on his
+distaste for ugly surroundings.  When he had earned the fortune he had
+come to Australia to earn he meant to prove to the world how keen and
+true his artistic tastes were.  But he glanced carelessly up at the
+shining stars.  They had no message for him.
+
+After standing in the doorway a moment he turned back into the hut,
+shutting the door behind him with a sudden bang that made Harding start
+up, rubbing his eyes.
+
+"Why, I must have been asleep!" he said with a surprised air.  He drew
+himself up to his full height, towering like a good-tempered giant over
+Gray's slight figure.  "I'm tired out, and that's a fact," he added
+apologetically.  "I think I'll turn in."  Gray did not answer.  He
+flung himself down on the bench and began to pare his finger-nails,
+looking at each finger critically as he finished it, and taking no
+notice of Harding.  The elder man regarded him doubtfully.
+
+"In a wax, old man?" he said in a deprecating voice.  Gray flung him a
+vicious look over his shoulder, and returned to his nails.  Harding's
+face had a very tender expression in it as he advanced a step and put
+out his hand to touch the young man's shoulder.
+
+"If it's anything I've done," he began in a shuffling, awkward, kindly
+tone--
+
+Gray turned upon him with startling suddenness.
+
+"Anything you've done?" he demanded, squaring his arms on the table,
+and fixing his dark glance on Harding.  "You needn't flatter yourself
+that I care a rap for what you do or don't do.  Turn in, and leave me
+to myself."
+
+"Come, come, Gray, don't take a fellow like that.  You're tired out; I
+can see you're just tired out."
+
+"I _am_ tired out," responded Gray grimly.  "Tired of it all.  Tired
+and sick of you along with the rest of it.  A pretty life this is to
+live.  A pretty companion you make, don't you?"
+
+"Well, well, things may better soon," said the other soothingly.  "I
+wish I was more book-learned for your sake, old fellow.  But that's
+past wishing for, ain't it?  And you'll have to make the best of me for
+a spell."
+
+"Best or worst, I can't endure this life any longer," returned Gray
+impatiently.  "I'll ride over to the station to-morrow and give it up;
+or end it quicker than that perhaps;" and he glanced up with a dark
+look at the loaded gun lying across the shelf.
+
+Harding knew Gray well enough to be able to disregard that look, but he
+spoke very seriously.
+
+"You'll not be such a foolish lad as to throw up your berth in a fit of
+temper.  This won't last much longer.  You will be called in to the
+station in a week or two and given a better post; and it's your duty to
+stick on here till you're called in, you see."
+
+"Duty!"  Gray flung the word at him like a missile.
+
+Harding's mild eyes looked at him in gentle reproof.
+
+"It's a fine thing to do, my lad.  No man can do more if he lived in a
+king's palace.  And a man who does his duty is greater than a king."
+
+"That's all rubbish, talk like that," returned Gray sharply.  "You just
+drop it, Harding."
+
+He got up, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, and leant against
+the wall.  His eyes went round the hut.
+
+"A king's palace!" he said with a hard laugh.  "Verily it needs strong
+imagination to think of such a place here.  What a hole to live in!
+But I'll not stand it much longer."
+
+Harding did not answer this time.  He went up to his bunk and took from
+under the pillow his little shabbily bound Bible and sat down to read
+his evening chapter.
+
+Gray watched him moodily; but in a moment his attention was drawn off
+by the strange behaviour of the dog, which, when Harding had sat down
+on his bunk, had crawled under it.
+
+But it had come out again almost at once, and now stood in the middle
+of the hut, with its head bent and its ears upraised in the attitude of
+intent listening.
+
+"What's the matter with the dog?" said Gray.  "He hears somebody."
+
+Harding looked up.
+
+"Nobody ever comes this way; it's out of the track.  Come here, Watch.
+You're dreaming, old fellow."
+
+The dog turned its head and looked at its master, gave a slow wag of
+its tail to show that it heard his voice, and then with a dash it
+sprang at the door, barking fiercely.
+
+Harding got up and flung back the door.  His movement was so sudden,
+that a man who had crept up to the hut and was now leaning against the
+door had no time to recover himself, and staggered forward into the
+hut.  Watch retreated, still growling fiercely, but restrained from
+attacking the stranger by a gesture of its master.  Gray made a clutch
+at the gun above his head, but the next moment withdrew his hand.  That
+pitiful, abject, trembling fugitive was not a man to take arms against.
+
+The stranger staggered across the hut and crouched down against the
+opposite wall, breathing in short hurried pants.  His face was
+painfully thin, and as white as death.  From a long jagged wound, half
+hidden by his matted hair, blood was trickling in a dark slow stream.
+The clothes he wore were torn to tatters.  You could see his skin
+through the rents.
+
+He crouched back against the wall, hugging his arms against his breast,
+and looking from Gray to Harding with a wild agonized entreaty in his
+eyes.  It was the look of a hunted animal appealing for mercy rather
+than the look of a man asking help of fellow-men.  He was evidently
+unable to speak.  He tried to articulate something, but his baked,
+blistered lips refused their office.
+
+"He's just done for," said Gray.  Harding nodded, and going up to the
+pannikin of cold tea on the shelf took out some in a cup and held it to
+the stranger's lips.  He drank it up greedily and then words came to
+him.
+
+"Don't give me up," he cried out in a strange hoarse scream, and fell
+along the floor huddled up in a dreadful heap.
+
+The two men looked at each other.
+
+"It's plain enough to see what he is," said Gray with a slight shrug of
+the shoulders.  "Shall we have to entertain the rest of the gang, do
+you think?"
+
+"The police, more likely, lad.  They're close on his track, I fancy."
+
+He bent over the man and straightened him out.  Gray did not attempt to
+help him; he stood looking down at the wretched fugitive with a cold
+unsympathizing curiosity in his handsome face as he said:
+
+"He isn't dead, is he?"
+
+As he spoke the man opened his eyes and gazed up at them.  Wild
+gleaming dark eyes they were, looking all the darker for the haggard
+pallor of his face.  He raised himself on his elbow and made a clutch
+at his breast.  There was something hidden there, and he kept his hand
+closed upon it.
+
+Harding put the cup with more tea to his lips again, and again he drank
+greedily.  Then he tried to raise himself into a sitting posture, but
+sank back on the floor.
+
+"I'll cheat the beaks after all," he said hoarsely.  A grim smile
+flickered over his face.  "I swore I'd never be caught."
+
+He looked from one man to the other.
+
+"They'll make no gallows-bird o' me," he added with a sort of hoarse
+chuckle.  He still kept his hand clutched upon his breast.  Gray
+noticed the action, and a vivid curiosity rose up in him to know what
+the man kept so jealously hidden there.  He must have shown this in his
+face, for the man addressed him sharply.
+
+"What are you starin' at, eh?  Do you think I've got the Kohinoor
+hidden about me?  Well, I ain't got it."
+
+"I don't think anything about you, my man," replied Gray loftily.  He
+turned to Harding.  "What are we going to do with him?"
+
+"Lend me a hand and we'll lift him on my bunk," said Harding.
+
+"I'll lie here," broke from the man.  "You just leave me alone."  He
+pushed away the food Harding offered him.  "I can't swallow.  Just
+leave me alone."
+
+Gray shrugged his shoulders and walked to the door.  The man's eyes
+followed him with a suspicious glance.
+
+"Thinks himself a fine gentleman, it's plain," he muttered.  Then he
+beckoned to Harding.  "Do you know Princes Street, Adelaide, mate?" he
+whispered.
+
+Harding nodded.
+
+"No. 5 Princes Street, top floor.  You give two knocks.  Write that
+down."
+
+Harding took out his worn pocket-book and wrote it down.  The man lay
+staring up at him, then with a sudden effort, as if his mind was at
+last made up, he dragged a tattered scrap of yellow paper from his
+breast and held it up to Harding.
+
+"Send it--_there_," and he feebly nodded at the pocket-book in
+Harding's hand.
+
+Gray was still standing in the doorway, looking out over the level
+pastures.  He half expected to hear the gallop of well-trained horses,
+the shout of authoritative voices; but all was still, the police had
+missed the track.  He shut the door and came back into the hut.
+
+"Make your mind easy, my friend," he said in a half-sneering tone.
+"It's all quiet outside."
+
+The man gave him a dark look and raised himself towards Harding.
+
+"Here, give it me back," he said, with a hasty snatch at it.  "Your
+pal's no call to see it."
+
+[Illustration: "HERE, GIVE IT ME BACK," SAID THE BUSHRANGER]
+
+Harding had raised the paper towards the lamp-light, and was looking
+scrutinizingly at it.  It seemed to be a rough map.  There was a wavy
+line that evidently represented the course of a ravine or gully, and on
+each side were jagged marks that betokened rising ground.  Right across
+the paper ran the words in large ill-formed characters:
+
+"_Deadman's Gully._"
+
+About the middle of the paper there was a sort of big blot, and
+underneath in smaller words was written:
+
+"_Big gum.  Dig five feet due south from hole._"
+
+Gray came leisurely up to Harding's side.
+
+"What is it?" he said, holding out his hand for the paper.
+
+A scowl came over the face of the man on the ground.  He flung himself
+upward and snatched the paper from Harding's hand with a violent oath.
+The effort was too much for him, and he fell back groaning and
+helpless.  But he still kept the paper clutched in his right hand, and
+his eyes fixed themselves on Gray with something of the look of a
+trapped wild beast.
+
+"Keep off, can't you!" he gasped out.  "A pretty gentleman you are,
+pryin' and sneakin' like that."
+
+Gray stood over him, looking down upon him with a cold cynical regard
+that seemed to madden the man.
+
+"Better step back and leave him to me," whispered Harding.
+
+Gray laughed.
+
+"All right! but play fair, old fellow."
+
+Harding's mild eyes looked their wonder at him, but Gray only laughed
+again and went back to the table, where he sat with his head propped on
+his hands watching the two.
+
+Harding dragged his box out from under his bunk and sat down on it.
+The man lay still for a moment and then painfully raised himself into a
+sitting posture against the wall.
+
+"Look here," he said.  "Do you think I'm dyin'?"
+
+"Yes," said Harding briefly.
+
+"Before mornin'?"
+
+"I don't believe you have many hours to live."
+
+"Right, that's what I think myself.  I've cheated the beaks, eh?"
+
+Harding was silent.  The man looked sharply at him.
+
+"You've got that address written down?"
+
+"Yes, but I can't send that paper."
+
+"You can't send it?"
+
+The words dropped slowly from the man's lips.
+
+"Of course I can't," returned Harding.  "You know that well enough."
+
+"You won't send it," repeated the man again, with a dull rage in his
+voice.  The paper was still clutched in his hand, and he looked at it
+and then up at Harding.  "There's a fortin in it," he whispered under
+his breath.  "Bill 'ull go shares.  Here, you take it.  You go to 5
+Princes Street, top floor, and ask for Bill Clay.  He'll go shares, and
+thankful."
+
+Harding made no attempt to take the paper.  He merely said:
+
+"Tear it up if you like, but if you give it to me I shall hand it over
+to the police."
+
+The man stared at him with a fierce incredulity in his gleaming dark
+eyes.
+
+"There's a fortin in it," he repeated, as if the words must convince
+Harding of his foolishness--"a fortin, mate.  And you carn't miss the
+place.  Bill, he knows Deadman's Gully."
+
+He held out the paper, but Harding shook his head and said:
+
+"You are wasting your words."
+
+"You won't send it?  Look here, just look here."  He stopped to moisten
+his dry lips, and then went on:
+
+"You've heard of Tom Dearing?"
+
+Harding nodded.  It was the name of a noted bushranger, whose last
+crime had been a daring robbery of the chief bank of Adelaide.
+
+"Well, I'm Tom Dearing.  Now you know."
+
+Harding gazed silently at him.  He could not get the right words to
+speak, but it did not need words to make Dearing understand the intense
+ardent desire to help him that was flooding Harding's soul.  It
+affected the man strangely.  He forgot the buried treasure for a
+moment.  The paper fluttered out of his hand and fell on the floor as
+he cried:
+
+"You're sorry for me; sorry for _me_!"
+
+"I'm dead sorry for you, lad," said Harding with slow fervent
+utterance.  "You've been spending your life in getting trash like
+that"--he waved his hand toward the paper.  "And now you've got to die,
+and go before God.  He'll be sorry for you too.  If I'm sorry, a man
+like me, what must God's sorrow be for such a life as yours has been!
+Don't think about that hateful money, lad.  Let it lie where you've
+laid it if you like."
+
+Harding took the paper up and thrust it back into the man's fingers as
+he said:
+
+"Tear it up.  But you've got a chance to show you're ashamed for what
+you've done.  Give the money back to those you stole it from.  'Tis all
+you can do now to make amends."
+
+The man gazed irresolutely at him.
+
+"You talk mighty fine, but what's to hinder you grabbin' the whole
+blessed lot?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+That single word said everything.  Dearing stared fixedly at Harding
+for a moment, and then thrust the paper into his hand.
+
+"Here, take it," he said.  "And if there's anything good you've got to
+say to me, let's hear it.  I'll listen to you, old man.  You act up to
+what you talk of."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+TEMPTED!
+
+Dearing died next day just after sunrise.  They buried him down by the
+creek, out of sight of the hut.
+
+"So that's the end of Mr. Tom Dearing," said Gray, as they turned away
+and walked back towards the hut.  "He didn't manage well, did he?"
+
+Harding gave him one of his pained, wondering looks.
+
+"Don't talk like that, dear lad," he said, "you don't mean it, you
+know."
+
+Gray gave a laugh that had not much mirth in it
+
+"What a fellow you are, Harding!  You insist on everybody being as
+virtuous as yourself.  But I mean exactly what I say.  Why did Mr. Tom
+Dearing take to robbing his neighbour unless he could insure himself
+against being found out?  It may be bad to be a rogue; it's
+unpardonable to be known for one."
+
+"What difference does it make in the sin, lad?" said Harding, with a
+sorrowful look at him.  "And it's the sin we've got to think of."
+
+"Yes, I know that's your view," said Gray, with a scarcely concealed
+sneer.  "But it's a sadly old-fashioned one, my dear fellow."
+
+Harding was silent.
+
+"It's only the fear of being found out that keeps men honest," Gray
+went on after a moment.  "We're told, from our youth up, that 'Honesty
+is the best policy,' and most of us are sensible enough to believe
+it--and so we're honest."
+
+"Don't you believe it, lad?" burst with emphasis from Harding; and not
+even Gray's flippant rejoinder, "Not believe that 'Honesty is the best
+policy?' you can't mean that?" was able to check his eagerness to
+speak.  He stopped in the path and laid his hand on Gray's arm, more
+moved than Gray had ever seen him before.
+
+"You wouldn't talk like that if you'd seen that poor fellow die, Gray,"
+he said.  "There's more difference between doing right and doing wrong
+than just that you get punished for wrong-doing if you're found out.
+Sin drags a man down, lad; it eats the manhood out of him.  It makes a
+ruin of what's best in him."
+
+The words fell on ears dull to their meaning.  And Harding was quickly
+silent; speech was always a difficult thing to him.  He had never
+spoken so earnestly to Gray before.
+
+When they came back to the hut Harding took out the tattered sheet of
+yellow paper from his breast-pocket and placed it in the small desk
+upon the shelf.
+
+"One of us must take that over to the station," he said.  "The bank
+authorities will be glad enough to get it."
+
+Gray had heard enough of the conversation between Harding and Dearing
+to know what the paper was about, though Harding had not mentioned it
+before.
+
+He stood at the door, swinging his heavy stock-whip in his hand.
+
+"I should like to have a look at it," he said carelessly.
+
+"So you shall, lad.  And I think you'd better go over with it.  But
+we'll talk of that to-night."
+
+"What made him hide the money, do you know?" he asked.
+
+"He didn't say.  The police were after him, I expect, and he hoped to
+be able to get back sometime and dig it up."
+
+"I wonder if he had told any of his friends and acquaintances?" said
+Gray, looking up at the desk where Harding had put the map.  "If so, I
+wouldn't give much for the bank's chance of getting the money."
+
+"He hadn't told a soul," was Harding's answer.  "He wanted me to send
+the map to some mate of his, but he thought better of that afterwards."
+
+"Better?"  Gray lifted his dark eyebrows.  "What does the bank want
+with the money?  It's rich enough to stand the loss.  It isn't as if he
+had robbed a poor man, you know.  It's the best thing I've heard of
+him, his wanting to send that map to his mate."
+
+"Stolen money does no good to anybody," said Harding rather shortly.
+
+"It didn't do any good to him at any rate," said Gray.  He moved from
+the door to let Harding pass.  "I suppose we must start," he went on
+with a yawn.  "Another day of this hateful stock-riding! and another
+day of it to-morrow, and the next day, and the next day!  How am I
+going to stand it, I wonder?"
+
+Harding had disappeared into the stable, and Gray said the last words
+to himself.  There was a heavy frown on his handsome young face, bitter
+discontent in his dark eyes.  When Harding brought his horse to him he
+scarcely thanked him, and he rode away by his side in sullen silence.
+
+When they returned that night, Harding was too fagged out to talk of
+anything.  He went off into a heavy sleep directly after supper, and
+Gray found it impossible to wake him sufficiently for rational
+conversation.
+
+The desk in which he had placed the paper was not locked, and Gray took
+out the paper and sat down by the lamp to study it.  It was very easy
+to understand.  Anyone who knew Deadman's Gully could not fail to find
+the treasure, Gray thought to himself.
+
+And his thoughts ran on something like this:
+
+"Suppose I had found this map, not knowing whose it was, and had gone
+to dig in Deadman's Gully on the chance, what a wonderful and blessed
+change it would have made in my life?  No more hateful stock-riding; no
+more dreary days spent with this dull-witted Harding; but a glad return
+to civilized England, and a rich cultured life in congenial society.
+If it only had happened so!  Yet, even now--?"
+
+But there Gray's thoughts took pause.  The secret was not his alone.
+It was shared by Harding.  Even if Harding would allow him to--  But
+Harding would not, and there was an end of it.
+
+They arranged at breakfast next morning that Gray should ride over to
+the station the day after and carry the paper with him.  From the
+station it could be easily sent in to the inspector of police with the
+report of Dearing's death.
+
+Gray got the paper down for another look at it.
+
+"I believe I've heard you speak of Deadman's Gully, Harding."
+
+"That's most likely, old man.  I know the place well.  I was stationed
+within a mile of it once.  You know Rodwell's Peak?"
+
+"Haven't the honour," said Gray flippantly.  He got up and put the
+paper back in the desk.  "Rodwell's Peak and Deadman's Gully!  The
+Australian mind isn't gifted with imagination in regard to names."
+
+"Deadman's Gully got its name rightly enough.  It was the haunt of a
+gang of bushrangers.  A track runs right by the mouth of it, and they
+buried the travellers there that they waylaid.  That wasn't in my time,
+but I've heard old Jebb speak of it.  He went with the police there
+once.  A lonely dismal spot, he said, between high rocks, with a few
+trees in the middle."
+
+"Our friend Dearing knew the spot well, it seems."
+
+"Yes; but he didn't belong to that lot.  He used it as a hiding-place,
+I fancy.  He'd had a miserable life from what he told me."
+
+Gray was putting on his boots, and apparently paying but little
+attention to Harding's remarks.
+
+"I suppose you could find it, though?" he said carelessly.
+
+"Easily enough.  You've just got to follow the track till Rodwell's
+Peak is right in front of you.  You've never been in the uplands, have
+you, Gray?" Harding broke off to say.  "It's grand scenery.  You ought
+to go there one day."
+
+"Suppose we go there now."
+
+Gray had finished putting on his boots, and was taking his whip down
+from the nail.  He said it laughingly, looking back at Harding over his
+shoulder.  Harding, who was washing the dishes at the table, returned
+his laughing look with a wondering glance.
+
+"How could we?  Who'd look after the stock?"
+
+"Leave them to take care of themselves, the ugly brutes," went on Gray
+in the same laughing way.  "Let us run up to Deadman's Gully and
+appropriate that coin, Harding.  What do you say to that plan, eh?"
+
+Harding laughed, but half-sadly.
+
+"I believe you'd make a joke of anything, lad.  But don't joke about
+that money.  It don't seem right."
+
+"It isn't a joke the bank would appreciate at any rate," returned Gray,
+with another laugh.
+
+He did not continue the subject
+
+"You get a talk with Mr. Morton, lad," said Harding to him, as they
+stood outside the hut, ready to start for their day's work.  "He'll
+listen to you, I know.  Tell him you're tired of the work here."
+
+"What's the good of telling him that?" returned Gray, with a shrug of
+his shoulders.  "I'm tired of work everywhere--tired and sick of this
+horrible country, and everything and everybody in it."
+
+"Well, Morton might help you to a post in Adelaide," said Harding, who
+had been much troubled by Gray's constant despondency of late.  "You'd
+have better company there.  It's more like England, you know."
+
+"What post could he get me in Adelaide?" returned Gray, with a bitter
+irony in his tone.  "And do you think it would be any pleasure to me to
+sit in an office and see the carriages driving by?  I had enough of
+that in England.  No, I'd be off to the diamond fields if I'd the cash
+for the journey.  Do you think Morton would lend me that?"
+
+Harding shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+"I wish I knew how I could help you, lad.  I can't bear to see you like
+this.  I wish Polly was here.  She'd know how to talk to you better
+than I do."
+
+Gray cast a scornful look at his companion's troubled face.  It rankled
+in his heart that Harding should pity him.
+
+"Are we going to stand talking here all day?" he said irritably.
+"Aren't you going to get the horses out?"
+
+They rode off in different directions that morning.
+
+Gray went on a long round.  His ride took him to a distant part of the
+run, from which he could get a glimpse of the far-off mountains.  The
+peak towering up in the blue air so far above its fellows was Rodwell's
+Peak.  Gray remembered now that Harding had pointed it out to him when
+they had been together at this spot.  He checked his horse and paused
+for some time gazing at the peak.  Close under it was Deadman's Gully!
+Gray knew well enough how deceptive distance was in that clear air.  He
+knew how far off those hills really were; but the sight of Rodwell's
+Peak seemed to bring the money close within his grasp, to give the
+convict's story a reality it had wanted before.  It was with a darker
+face, and a heart overflowing with bitterness, that he left that spot
+and turned his horse's head homewards.
+
+Harding was not at home when he returned.  This was a new cause for
+vexation, for Gray had to light the fire and prepare the tea, a task he
+hated.  It was with a muttered curse against Harding that he set about
+it, and he was ready with a very unpleasant greeting for him when he
+should at last appear.
+
+Gray was very slow and awkward over his unaccustomed work; but tea was
+at last got ready.  Gray finished his meal, and still Harding had not
+come.
+
+It was getting dark now; the stars were coming out; the wide outlines
+of the pastures were growing indistinct.  Gray went outside the hut and
+looked searchingly in the direction from which he expected Harding to
+come.  But there were no signs of him.
+
+Up to this point Gray had not even wondered at his lateness; he had
+only felt annoyed at it.  But now a wild thrill went over him.  Had
+something happened?  Had Harding met with some accident?
+
+Gray caught hold of the top rail of the fence to steady himself as the
+thought swept over him.  It brought such a throbbing of wild hope with
+it that Gray recoiled at his own feelings, but the feelings remained.
+He could not crush them out.  He knew--even while the knowledge
+horrified him--he knew that if Harding did not return, if some dark
+fate had overtaken him, that he would be glad--yes, glad!  For then the
+secret would be his alone.  Then there would be nothing to prevent him
+from taking possession of the buried treasure.
+
+But it was early yet.  He and Harding, Gray reflected, had often been
+out together as late; only, Harding had said so decidedly that he
+should be back long before dusk.  What could be keeping him?
+
+Gray left the hut and walked for some distance along the grassy plain,
+but he could see nothing, hear nothing.  He "coo'eed" once or twice,
+but there was no answer.  All was dark and still under the starry sky.
+
+He went back, and sat down in the hut and waited.  Once or twice he
+thought of taking his horse and riding out to search for Harding.  But
+that would be of no use, he reflected.  Harding had had a wide stretch
+of country to cover.  It was a million chances to one that he could
+find him.  So Gray sat still and waited.
+
+Towards midnight he rose, drawn by a horrible sort of fascination, and
+took the paper from Harding's desk.  He spread it out on the table, and
+sat down to study it.  The more he looked at it the more easy it all
+seemed to be.  It was such an absolutely safe thing.  No one could
+possibly know the contents of that paper but himself and Harding.  If
+Harding never came back he would be the sole owner of the secret.
+
+Gray made his plans as he sat there with his eyes fixed on the faded,
+dirty sheet.
+
+He would destroy the paper--he did not need to keep it now; he knew its
+contents too well.  Then he would give up his work at the first
+opportunity, and after waiting a certain time would make his way to
+Deadman's Gully, get the money, and be off to England.  Then he would
+begin to live his life in earnest.
+
+Dazzling visions of that new life began to rise before Gray.  Not a
+life of vulgar dissipation--Gray was not that sort of man; he loathed
+coarseness and riot--but a life of cultured ease, of refined luxury,
+rich in all the beautiful things that wealth could bring him.
+
+A sudden noise without brought him back with a shock to present
+surroundings.  He rose hurriedly and pushed the paper back in the desk.
+He thought Harding had returned.  But it was only his own horse moving
+uneasily in the stable.  It was missing its companion, and was restless
+and unhappy.
+
+Gray soothed it as well as he could, and then went out once more to
+look across the plain.  But dark and silent the land lay beneath the
+stars.  No sound, no movement.
+
+Gray went back into the hut and sat down again; but he did not touch
+the paper any more.  The certainty that Harding would never return
+began to grow upon him, and he was frightened at himself.  It was as if
+his half-formed wishes had brought about Harding's fate.
+
+The hours passed, and at last the dawn came--a clear, beautiful dawn,
+with a fresh wind blowing over the grass and a rosy radiance flooding
+the sky.
+
+Gray went out once more to look along the horizon.  This time his
+search was not in vain.  Almost at once he discerned a small moving
+object against the sky.  It was moving slowly towards the hut.  Gray
+knew at once what it was.  It was the dog, and Harding must be close
+behind.
+
+The dog came slowly on, moving with heavy, dragging steps, very unlike
+its usual joyous bounds; and it was quite alone.  Gray could see no
+other moving thing along the plains.  The dog had come back, but not
+its master.
+
+Gray hurried forward to meet it.  He saw the dog leap up when it caught
+sight of him, and make a dash forwards, but before it had gone a dozen
+steps it slackened its pace again and began to drag itself slowly
+forward as if utterly worn out.
+
+It was a pitiable object to look at.  Its beautiful coat was matted
+with blood and dust.  One of its ears was almost torn away, and its
+body was covered with wounds.  But it dragged itself onward, moaning
+now and then, until it got near Gray.  Then it sank down on the grass
+and lay there, faintly wagging its tail, and fixing its eyes on Gray
+with a pathetic, supplicating glance.
+
+It was plain to see that the dog had been attacked and sorely wounded.
+Gray surmised that one or more of the herd had turned savage, and in
+conflict with them Watch had got his wounds.  He bent over the dog and
+unfastened its spiked collar.
+
+"Poor old fellow, what--?"
+
+He broke off suddenly.  A scrap of paper fastened by a string to the
+collar caught his eye.  Some words were scrawled on it:
+
+"_Badly hurt.  Watch will show--_"
+
+There was an attempt at another word or two but they were illegible.
+
+Gray read the paper and let it flutter from his fingers to the ground.
+The next moment he picked it up again, and crushed it between his
+fingers.
+
+He had not made up his mind what to do; but the thought flashed through
+him as he saw the paper lying on the ground, that it might be necessary
+to destroy it, if--
+
+If what?  Gray hardly dared finish the thought, even in the secrecy of
+his own soul.
+
+The dog followed his actions with a dumb pathetic glance, and then
+slowly struggled to its feet.  It stood looking up at Gray, lifting one
+paw towards him with an indescribable air of supplication in its whole
+attitude.  Then it turned, and began to move in the direction it had
+come from, looking round at every painful step to see if Gray would
+follow.
+
+A rush of pitiful feeling swept over Gray.  He ran back towards the hut
+with one thought uppermost in his mind, to get his horse and go with
+the dog.  Everything else was forgotten.  When he had run a short
+distance he looked round at Watch and whistled.  The dog was lying on
+the grass regarding him, but it refused to come at his whistle.
+
+Gray stood still, and began to argue with himself.  It was absurd to
+start at once.  Watch would die on the way.  It would be far better to
+wait for some hours till the poor creature was rested.  Harding, in all
+probability, was already dead.  Still he would go--of course he would
+go; but not just yet.  It would be the height of absurdity to start
+just now.  He would fetch Watch some water and food where it lay, if he
+could not get the dog to go back to the hut.
+
+He whistled again, but Watch made no response.  It lay with its head
+between its paws, and its eyes still fixed on Gray.
+
+"Stay there, then," muttered he impatiently, and went on towards the
+hut.  The dog was still lying in the same place when he brought the
+food and water for it.  It ate and drank greedily, and then rose and
+shook itself with a glad, eager movement, and ran a few steps forward.
+It was pitiful to see the change that went over the dog when on turning
+its head it saw that Gray was walking steadily back towards the hut.
+It lay down again, and gave a series of short barks and then a long
+pitiful howl when it found that Gray still went steadily on.
+
+Gray did not turn round this time.  He went into the hut, and sat down
+to think the matter over.  What was the use of going with the dog at
+all? he began to say to himself.  Would it not be better to go over to
+the station at once? or, better still, go later on in the day, so as to
+reach the station in the evening when the men would have come in from
+their work?  Yet--was not every moment precious?  If he went at once
+with the dog, might he not be in time?
+
+He sat thus, swaying to and fro between different decisions, till a
+violent scratching at the door roused him.  He got up and flung back
+the door.  Watch stood there with drooping tail, and eyes full of dumb
+entreaty.  Gray shut the door sharply on him.  "Lie down, sir!" he
+exclaimed imperatively.  The sight of the dog filled him with rage.
+Watch whined once or twice; but then came silence.
+
+Gray sat down again at the table.  "I will not go," he said to himself.
+And he put the thought of Harding from him, and tried to plan how he
+would carry out his scheme.  But suddenly, before he was aware, a wave
+of remorseful shame came over him, and he sprang to his feet as one
+awaking from some hideous dream.  He grasped his whip and hurried to
+the door; but,--
+
+The dog was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AT WARRANDILLA.
+
+An hour after, Gray was riding swiftly across the plains on his way to
+the station.  He was urging on his horse with voice and hand and spur,
+riding as if for dear life, yet even while he rode he was making up his
+mind to keep back from Mr. Morton all knowledge of Dearing's map.  Of
+Dearing's death he was bound to tell him, but he would say nothing of
+the map.  If Harding was found it would be so easy to say he had
+forgotten it in his anxiety; if Harding--  Gray did not finish the
+sentence to himself, but he determined to keep back the map.
+
+It was not much past noon when the plains began to give place to
+undulating ground, richer in vegetation, and with great clumps of
+dark-foliaged trees here and there; and it was soon after that that
+Gray caught his first glimpse of the river, and saw the roofs of the
+station gleaming in the sunlight.
+
+Mr. Morton had spent the morning watching the men at work on the new
+cottages he was building near his own house for his head shepherds and
+stock-keepers.  They were comfortable, roomy cottages, looking down on
+the river, with gardens before them, which Mr. Morton intended to be as
+well stocked and as pretty as his own.
+
+"They will be finished in another week," he said to his wife.  He had
+come back to the house across the garden, and found her sitting in the
+shady verandah.  "And I have made up my mind, Minnie, who's to have the
+one we meant for Murray."
+
+Mrs. Morton put down her needle-work, and looked eagerly at her
+husband.  Murray had lately left them to start a run of his own, and
+Mr. Morton had been undecided who should take his post.
+
+"I shall give it to Harding," he said.  "I'll ride over and tell him so
+to-morrow.  You'll like having him on the station, won't you?"
+
+"I am very glad indeed," said little Mrs. Morton with energy.  "And how
+delighted he will be.  He will be able to get everything ready before
+his wife and boys get here.  They don't leave England till next week.
+He was telling me all about them when last he was over here."
+
+"Oh, I knew he was a great favourite of yours, my dear," said her
+husband with a well-pleased look.  "And if he isn't as sharp as some,
+he is as true as steel.  I thought it all over this morning, and I
+believe he's my best man."
+
+Mrs. Morton was called into the house at that moment, and her husband
+strolled into the garden to await his summons to the mid-day meal.  He
+had not been there many moments when his quick ear caught the sound of
+rapid hoof-beats on the road below the house.  A gate from the garden
+led into the road, and Mr. Morton hurried towards it.  Gray had
+intended to ride up to the other side of the house, but when he saw Mr.
+Morton at the gate he checked his horse and flung himself off.  There
+was no need for him to speak for Mr. Morton to know he brought bad
+news.  His whole frame was trembling as he stood steadying himself by
+his horse; his lips were white as death.
+
+"Something has happened to Harding, is that it?" exclaimed Mr. Morton
+when Gray had twice tried to make his voice audible and failed.
+
+"I fear so," Gray gasped out.  "He has not come back.  He started
+yesterday morning for Big Creek, and he has not come back."
+
+Gray had determined beforehand what to say, but he had not known it
+would be so difficult.  His eyes fell before Mr. Morton's glance, as if
+that glance could read his soul.  But Mr. Morton had never felt so
+warmly towards Gray as he did at that moment.  He was a better fellow
+than he had thought him, he said to himself, to feel Harding's
+disappearance so keenly.
+
+"Look here, my lad," he said kindly, "you go into the house and ask
+Mrs. Morton to give you something to eat.  You're just tired out, you
+know, and won't be fit for anything till you've had a rest.  Oh, you
+shall go with us," he added as he saw Gray's hesitating look.  "But we
+can't start for another hour.  I must send over to Billoora for a man
+or two.  Don't be so downhearted about it, Gray.  We shall find him,
+never fear."
+
+But Mr. Morton's cheerful prophecy was not destined to be verified.
+The search for Harding was long and thorough--and fruitless.  His horse
+was found lying dead, with an ugly wound in its neck from the horn of a
+bull; but Harding and his dog were gone.
+
+Gray grew very worn and haggard in those weeks of waiting.  His youth
+went from him.  They attributed his changed looks at the station to his
+grief for Harding.  It was enough to unhinge any man, they said--that
+mysterious loss of his mate.  And in this explanation they were partly
+right.  At first, Gray's remorse was almost more than he could bear.
+He was one of the most eager in the search-party.  He rode day after
+day across those barren wastes of back-country, and spared no effort to
+find some sign of the missing man.  But when the search was at last
+given up as hopeless, when those on the station began to take Harding's
+death for granted, and life began to flow on in the ordinary channel,
+then Gray's mind went back to the map he had destroyed, and the
+treasure hidden in Deadman's Gully.
+
+He was thinking of it one afternoon as he was riding across to Billoora
+on an errand for Mr. Morton.  It was a clear beautiful afternoon, and
+the air on the grassy uplands was fresh and bracing.  Gray might have
+taken the river road, which was a mile or two nearer, but it would have
+led him past the cottages, and he could not bear to look at them--the
+remembrance that Harding was to have had one of them was too
+exquisitely painful.  But on the uplands there was nothing to remind
+him of Harding--the richly-green rolling wooded pastures were
+altogether unlike the gray plains round the hut.
+
+Gray gazed about him and thought of England.  If he got that money he
+would go back there; his mind was fully made up on that point.  And
+though he had not yet said so in so many words to himself, he knew he
+intended to get the money.  Only the day before he had refused a new
+post offered to him by Mr. Morton, and said that he wished to leave the
+station in a week or two.  And this afternoon, for the first time since
+Harding's disappearance, he allowed himself to dwell on the great and
+wonderful change the finding of the treasure would make in his life.
+
+Absorbed in these thoughts he did not notice the approach of a man
+along the grassy track.  The man was walking slowly and painfully,
+carrying a bundle over his shoulder.  He was a small, wiry,
+narrow-shouldered man, with a thin peaked face, from which a pair of
+small eyes looked keenly out from under thick reddish eyebrows.  He had
+caught sight of Gray long before Gray saw him, and after walking some
+distance towards him, he sat down on the bank and waited for him to
+come up.  Gray checked his horse to speak.
+
+"You look tired, my man."
+
+Gray's tone of cool superiority was not resented by the wayfarer.  He
+got up and came nearer.
+
+"I've had a longish tramp," he said in a thin, not unpleasant voice.
+"I'm bound for Warrandilla, Mr. Morton's place.  I've begun to fear as
+how I've missed my road."
+
+"Oh, you're all right!" Gray returned indifferently; "the station is
+just over the rise there.  You'll see it in a mile or so."
+
+The man looked in the direction Gray pointed, and then turned his eyes
+again on Gray's face.  Curious, shifty, cunning eyes they were--eyes
+that went well with the narrow, cruel mouth, and the sharply-pointed
+chin.
+
+"Perhaps you're Mr. Morton yourself, sir," he said ingratiatingly.
+"You deserve to be, I'm sure."
+
+"No such luck," said Gray with a laugh, not ill pleased at the man's
+suggestion.  "But you'll find him at home if you go on.  I've just left
+him."
+
+Gray was about to ride on, when the man spoke again.
+
+"I won't detain you a minute, sir, but perhaps you can tell me if I've
+got a chance of some work over there."
+
+"It depends on what you can do, and who you are, you know," said Gray,
+with a brief comprehensive glance over the man's figure.
+
+"You'd better not try to play any tricks with Morton if you want him to
+help you.  That's a friendly bit of advice I'll give you."
+
+"Thank you, sir; I'll remember it," was the humbly-spoken answer,
+though there was a sudden gleam in the pale blue eyes that Gray did not
+see.  "I've heard along the road what a good employer he is.  They were
+tellin' me at Billoora last night about the poor cove what was lost.  I
+suppose there's no chance that he'll ever be found now, sir?"
+
+Gray felt the colour going out of his cheeks at the sudden reference to
+Harding.
+
+"I'm afraid not," he said hurriedly.  "But I must go on.  There's your
+road straight in front of you.  You can't miss it."
+
+The man had put his hand on the neck of the horse, and he still kept it
+there.
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke, sir.  I can see as how you're a friend of his, and
+I wish I'd held my tongue.  But 'tis his mate I pities most.  How's he
+bearin' it now, sir?  They was tellin' me he's nigh broken-hearted."
+
+Gray stared blankly at the man for a moment without answering.  Then he
+recovered himself and said with some haughtiness, "I would rather not
+talk of it, my man.  Just let my horse go, will you?  I'm in a hurry."
+
+The man stepped back instantly with a word of apology, and Gray rode on
+without looking back.  If he had turned his head he would have seen his
+late companion gazing after him with a satirical smile on his crafty
+face.
+
+"We'll have some more talk afore long, my fine gentleman," he was
+saying.  "You didn't think, did you, that I knowed who you was?  Them
+men at Billoora aren't half-bad at a description."
+
+And with a laugh Mr. Lumley, as he chose to call himself at that
+particular moment, went on his way.
+
+He was bent on staying at Warrandilla for a time, and would have tried
+his hand at any work offered to him, but as it turned out the work he
+could do best was just the work that was wanted, and he got regular
+employment at once.  Mrs. Morton was devoted to her garden, and Lumley
+was really a clever gardener; so that, though she could not help
+agreeing with her husband's verdict about the man, she was eager to
+keep him.
+
+Lumley made no secret of his past "misfortunes."
+
+He had been shipped to the colony while it was still a convict station,
+and his record was by no means a good one since his first term had been
+worked out.
+
+"But I have never had a good chance before, madam," he said to Mrs.
+Morton, trying to keep his shifty eyes fixed in a straightforward look
+upon her face.  "I've never had a good kind friend like you before.
+Please God, I'll do well now."
+
+And though Mrs. Morton distrusted his professions of reform, she found
+him a clever steady workman, and one most anxious to please.  He became
+one of the most frequent attendants at the religious services which Mr.
+Morton held two or three times a week in the little chapel next his
+house.
+
+If Mr. Morton had been a different sort of man the new gardener might
+have gone on to worse hypocrisy still, but there was something in his
+employer's strong keen face that kept him back from that.
+
+As Lumley put it to himself, "Shammin' religion is no go with him."
+
+It was about three weeks after Lumley's appearance at the station that
+Gray's time for departure came.  Everyone was very kind to him; their
+kindness and sympathy cut him to the heart.  They tried to comfort him
+by telling him that no one could have shown more energy in the search
+than he had, that nothing had been left undone, and that Harding
+himself would have been the last to wish that his friends should grieve
+too much.  In some such strain Mr. Morton talked to him when he went to
+the house to bid him good-bye.
+
+"You must cheer up, my lad," he said kindly.  "You have done all you
+could.  No man can do more."
+
+Gray made no reply, nor did he raise his gloomy eyes to meet the
+pleasant kindly glance of his employer.  Mr. Morton went on: "So you
+are thinking of going back to the old country, Gray.  Well, there ought
+to be room there for a man like you; and I don't wonder at your wanting
+to get away from here after what's happened."
+
+"I am not sailing for a month or so," said Gray.  He spoke hurriedly,
+clearing his throat before he could articulate the words properly.  "I
+think of taking a trip into the mountains.  I don't feel equal to the
+voyage just now."
+
+"Well, take care of yourself; and let us know how you get along."  He
+took Gray's hand and pressed it warmly.  "God bless you, my lad!"
+
+Gray looked up into his face with such a strange, wild, miserable
+glance that Mr. Morton started.  He put his hand on the young man's
+shoulder and looked earnestly at him.
+
+"What is it, Gray?  There is something troubling you.  Can I help you?"
+
+But Gray drew back.
+
+"There is nothing," he said coldly.
+
+"But there _is_ something," Mr. Morton said to his wife that evening.
+"Can Gray be keeping back something about Harding, Minnie?  I confess I
+am not altogether satisfied with the result of the search.  Harding was
+not a man to get lost in the Bush; he knew the country too well.  And
+yet--"
+
+"You don't suspect Harding of pretending to be lost?" said his little
+wife with an amazed look.
+
+"No, no; Harding was not a man to do that sort of thing.  I never
+suspected anything till I saw Gray's face this afternoon.  But there is
+some mystery; and Gray knows more than he has told.  I feel sure of
+that."
+
+"What shall you do?" asked Mrs. Morton, with a startled look on her
+pretty face.
+
+"What can I do?"
+
+"You don't think Gray--"
+
+"Don't put it into words, Minnie.  I have no right to think anything.
+But his face startled me.  No man ever looked like that who hadn't got
+some great trouble weighing on him.  And he wasn't so devoted to
+Harding as all that, you know.  It surprised me to see how much he felt
+it."
+
+"I always thought he patronized Harding; believed himself too good for
+him."
+
+"Oh, I know you never liked Gray much," returned her husband, "Harding
+liked him though.  He must have something in him."
+
+To get back to his own quarters Gray had to cross the garden.  It was
+looking its loveliest this afternoon.  The turf was as green if not as
+smooth as the turf of an English lawn, and the glow of colour was more
+brilliant than any English garden could show.  Gray loved flowers.  But
+he passed through that beautiful garden without a glance right or left,
+with his eyes bent upon the ground.
+
+Not far from the gate which he would have to pass through Lumley was
+busy cutting the grass with a hand-machine.  He had been working in
+another part of the garden when Gray had gone up to the house, but had
+caught sight of him as he crossed to the verandah steps.  Soon after he
+left the work he was about in order to cut the grass by the gate.
+
+It was a curious trait in his vicious character that he really loved
+his gardening work.  He had come to the station for a definite purpose,
+a purpose nearly fulfilled--he was leaving the place at dawn next
+morning--yet he was working busily still in the pleasant evening light,
+anxious to leave the grass in perfect order.  Mrs. Morton never had
+such a good gardener again.  He was not working too busily, however, to
+be unmindful of Gray's approach.  He watched him with a crafty sidelong
+look as he came swinging down the path, and when he was quite close to
+him he touched his cap as an English servant might have done in
+respectful greeting.  He had saluted Gray in the same manner before,
+and Gray had been curiously pleased by it.
+
+"Good evening, my man," he said loftily and would have passed on.  But
+Lumley stepped out on the path.  He had taken off his cap and he turned
+it round and round in his hands as he spoke.
+
+"Beggin' your pardon, sir," he said humbly, "But I was wantin' to speak
+to you.  I took the liberty of callin' on you this afternoon, but you
+was out."
+
+"What is it you want?" said Gray.  "I am leaving the station to-morrow,
+you know."
+
+"That's the very reason, sir."  He looked up suddenly from under his
+bushy eyebrows.  "I'm leavin' the station too.  Perhaps you didn't know
+that, sir?"
+
+"I hadn't heard it," said Gray indifferently.  "Aren't you comfortable
+here, then?"
+
+"It isn't what I've been used to, sir.  I've been a gentleman's
+servant.  Gentlemen as knows how to treat a servant.  _Real_
+gentlemen."  Then came again the sudden crafty look.
+
+"That was in England, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir, before my 'misfortunes' came upon me.  I had many good
+places; and that's the sort of work which suits me best.  I'm goin' to
+try to get a place again, sir."
+
+"Indeed," said Gray, a little impatient at all this.
+
+"And when I heard as you'd come into a fortune, sir, I says to myself,
+'Mr. Gray'll be wanting a servant, and if he would take me on how
+blessed I should be!'"
+
+Gray's face had turned an ashy white.
+
+"What are you talking of?" he said sharply.  He recovered himself with
+an effort, and added in a milder tone: "I expect I'm poorer than you
+are, Lumley.  I've hardly enough to live on myself, let alone a
+servant."
+
+"Indeed, sir!  I'm very sorry, for if anybody would grace a fortune
+'twould be you, sir."
+
+He turned his cloth cap round and round in his hands as he added:
+
+"Then you don't want a servant, sir?"
+
+Gray laughed out.
+
+"Most decidedly not, my man.  But I must go on, I'm busy."
+
+Lumley stood in his way and did not move.
+
+"If I didn't want any wages, sir?  I'd like to go along with you, if
+only for the journey down to Adelaide.  I'd serve you faithfully, sir."
+
+"It's utterly impossible--out of the question," exclaimed Gray with a
+wave of the hand.  "Besides, I'm not going to Adelaide."
+
+"Indeed, sir!"
+
+It had been a slip of the tongue, which Gray repented at once.
+
+"It's altogether out of the question, my good fellow," he said.  "You
+must have been dreaming to think of it.  Now, will you let me pass?  I
+have a great deal to do."
+
+Lumley stepped aside.
+
+"I wish you humbly good-bye, sir, and good luck.  There's riches in
+your face, sir; I see 'em as plain as can be.  You'll think of me when
+the good times come."
+
+Gray turned a quivering face upon him.
+
+"What do you mean?" he gasped, and then he stopped and gave an unsteady
+smile.  "I'll certainly think of you when my riches come, my man.  It's
+an easy promise to make."
+
+He waved his hand in hurried farewell and hastened along the path.
+Lumley stood looking after him with an evil glance.
+
+"You will think of me, my fine gentleman, and no mistake."
+
+And he chuckled harshly to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+IN QUEST OF TREASURE.
+
+Gray's spirits rose when he had left the station behind him and found
+himself riding along the well-worn track towards the hills, that showed
+themselves in clear outline against the brightening morning sky.
+
+With a good horse under him and the fresh wind blowing on his face, he
+found it easy to convince himself that it would not have made any
+difference if he had gone back with the dog.  He found it easy to look
+forward instead of backward, to make resolutions about using the money
+well, instead of indulging in vain repentance for the past.
+
+It was a clear beautiful morning.  The country Gray was riding through
+was very unlike the level pastures he had lived on for months.  It was
+undulating and richly wooded.  Here and there a stream, full and strong
+in this joyous spring-time, flashed white in the dawn.  Westwards rose
+the great hills, blue in the distance, the hills towards which Gray was
+riding.  It was a country to make glad the heart of man, where he might
+richly enjoy the fruits of his labour.
+
+It was not thickly settled as yet.  Gray passed but few houses in that
+day's far ride, and it was long past dusk when he rode up to Mr.
+Macquoid's, who owned the run next to Mr. Morton's, and where Mr.
+Morton had advised him to stop that night.
+
+Gray received a warm welcome.  Tea was brought for him into the
+pleasant sitting-room, where Mr. Macquoid's wife and daughters were
+eager to hear Gray's account of Harding's disappearance.  Mr. Macquoid
+had sent out a search-party on his own account, for he knew Harding
+well.
+
+It irritated Gray savagely to find how warm and eager an interest they
+all took in the lost man.  He could have spent such a delightful
+evening in that charming house, with those pretty girls.  The piano was
+open, and Gray was fond of music and could sing well.  It would have
+delighted him to prove to them his musical abilities.  And the books in
+the low book-cases, the etchings and engravings on the walls, the
+periodicals and newspapers fresh from England, that lay heaped on the
+round table by the window, showed that the Macquoids had a keen
+cultured interest in literature and art.  Gray could have talked to
+them of so many things, showed them so easily how wide his knowledge
+was, how correct his taste.
+
+But they would talk of nothing but Harding.  They seemed to think it
+was the only subject Gray could feel any interest in just then.  He was
+thankful when the evening was over.
+
+His next resting-place was a small station close under the shadow of
+the hills.  Here only vague rumours of Harding's loss had come, and
+Gray found it easy to say nothing of his connection with the lost man.
+
+A strange thing happened to him that night.  He was put to sleep in a
+small room opening on the rough verandah that ran round the house.  It
+was a hot still night, and the window was left open.  Gray lay awake
+for the first part of the night.  He was restless and excited and could
+not sleep.  But towards morning he fell into a heavy dreamless slumber,
+from which he was roughly awakened by a sharp, sudden noise.
+
+He started up in bed and looked round the room.  A man was standing
+with his back to him in the act of picking up the chair he had just
+thrown over.  In the dim starlight Gray could just see him as he bent
+over the chair.  With a sharp exclamation Gray sprang out of bed and
+made a dash at him.  But the man was too quick.  He wriggled out of
+Gray's grasp as a snake might wriggle out of its captor's clutch, and
+keeping his head well down, that Gray might not see his face, he dashed
+out of the window and across the court-yard.  Gray saw him disappear
+over the fence, and run swiftly down the hollow.
+
+He struck a light and carefully examined the room.  His purse was safe.
+Everything in his pocket was left intact.
+
+Gray's story caused great excitement next morning.  There had never
+been an attempt at robbery in the station before.
+
+"It must have been a black fellow," Mr. Stuart said.  But Gray was
+certain it was no black man.  If it had not been absurd to think of
+such a thing, he would have said it was Lumley, the Mortons' gardener.
+
+But he dismissed that idea as absurd and impossible.
+
+His next day's ride took him into the heart of the hill-country.  The
+track was far less clearly marked here, and often difficult to follow.
+It ran through deep lonely ravines walled in by precipitous heights of
+dark rock, and along the sides of mighty hills from which glimpses
+could be got of still higher hills, towering up into the still blue
+sky.  Some of the hills were darkly wooded, others were clothed in rich
+grass and flowering shrubs almost to the summits; others again, and
+these more numerous as Gray rode on, were bare of blade or leaf, heaped
+with dark scarred rocks, waterless, desolate.
+
+Gray missed his road once or twice that day; and once he was unable to
+cross a furious torrent which had swept down the frail bridge laid
+across it, and was forced to make a long round.
+
+There was a small cottage in these parts kept by M'Pherson, an old
+stock-keeper of Mr. Macquoid's.  Gray had hoped to leave it far behind
+him in this day's journey, but he was only too glad to see it when he
+had at last regained the track just after sunset.  He and his horse
+were both tired out.
+
+The old man came to his cottage door as Gray clattered up the hilly
+path.  He looked at Gray, and then beyond him.
+
+"Ye're kindly welcome, lad.  But hasna your mate come up wi' ye?"
+
+Gray looked involuntarily behind him.  The path stretched away lonely
+and desolate in the gathering darkness.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked; turning a pale face on M'Pherson.  "I am
+quite alone."
+
+"Weel, weel; there was a callant here no' sae lang syne, speering after
+ye.  Aye, 'twas you he meant.  A weel set-up, black-haired chap, he
+said, riding a roan horse wi' a white blaze in front."
+
+Gray got off his horse and stood with his hand upon the bridle.
+
+"I know no one about here.  You must be mistaken," he said.  But he
+said it falteringly, and a cold sweat broke out upon his brow.  The
+idea had flashed upon him that it might be Harding who was tracking his
+footsteps.
+
+"What was he like?" he asked, as carelessly as he could.
+
+"A soft-spoken callant wi' reddish hair--a puir thin sort o' body wi' a
+ferrety face.  Sae ye didna luke for him?  Weel, weel, maybe it's no a
+maitter for greeting that ye havena come across him.  I wadna hae gi'en
+muckle for his honesty.  But ye wull be wanting a meal, lad, and your
+bonnie horse too.  Yon's the stable.  A gude man is gude to his
+beastie, and ye'll no be wanting me to assist."
+
+He bustled into the house without waiting for Gray to speak.  He would
+have waited long, for Gray was too startled to speak.  He began to
+think it must be Lumley who was following him.  He slowly led his horse
+to the stable and made it comfortable, and then went back to the house.
+He stopped at the door to look back into the dusk.
+
+The house was built in a green hollow carved out of the side of a steep
+hill.  The ground rose steeply behind the place, rising up into a
+jagged ridge against the sky.  In front there was a small flat meadow
+immediately before the house; then the ground fell almost precipitously
+and then rose again, with only a narrow ravine between.  The opposite
+hills were higher than the hill under which the cottage was built, and
+frowned above it in heavy overhanging masses of rock.  As Gray looked
+up he could only distinguish the vague dark outlines of the gloomy
+hills.  A thousand men might have been hidden in the hollows and he
+would have been none the wiser.  He listened intently, but there was no
+sound of human life.  The wind had fallen, and the rush of the stream
+at the bottom of the ravine was the only sound that struck his ear.
+
+M'Pherson had a comfortable meal prepared for him, late as it was.  But
+Gray could not eat.  He was too excited and uneasy.  He tried to get a
+clear description of the man who had asked for him, but M'Pherson could
+tell him little more.  The man had come to the door about four in the
+afternoon.  He explained that he was expecting to come up with a friend
+along that road, and wanted to know how far he was ahead.
+
+"He seemed verra oneasy when I told him I'd set eyes on naebody the day
+lang.  I tauld him ye must hae gone the ither road."
+
+"I missed my way."
+
+"Aye, 'twas that made ye sae late.  And sae ye arena acquent wi' the
+man?  'Tis verra strange."
+
+Yes, it was very strange.  The more Gray thought of it the more
+alarming it seemed.  And then quite suddenly an explanation came to
+him, which, while it did not remove the annoyance of the occurrence,
+robbed it of all its more alarming elements.  The explanation was
+this:--
+
+Lumley had evidently conceived an absurd dog-like affection for him.
+The fellow had not taken his refusal to have him as a servant as a
+final one, and was following him in the hope that he might still be
+taken on.  He had not dared to come face to face with Gray.  Perhaps
+when he had entered the room at Mr. Stuart's (for Gray was now
+convinced that it was Lumley he saw) he intended to make one more
+appeal, but Gray's sudden wakening had startled him too much.
+
+Gray's face cleared as he forced himself to accept this explanation as
+the true one.  He stretched himself with the air of one who throws off
+a burden.
+
+"I'll turn in," he said, yawning as he spoke.  "But I'll have another
+look at my horse first."
+
+"Aye, do, my lad.  But ye needna feel oneasy aboot your horse.  Sandy
+here"--and he looked down at the old sheep-dog at his knee--"wull hear
+ony step that comes near the house, be it e'er sae saft."
+
+Gray shuddered as his glance fell on the dog.  He was looking up at his
+master just as Watch used to look at Harding.
+
+"Ye arena that fond o' dogs," said the old man quickly.  He had noticed
+Gray's look.  "But Sandy's nae common dog.  I could tell you mony a
+tale o' his cleverness."
+
+He patted the dog's head and looked across at Gray, who had resumed his
+seat and was staring fixedly into the fire.  He had turned deadly pale.
+M'Pherson's shrewd kindly eyes dwelt on him for a moment.  Gray was
+conscious of the look and roused himself with an effort.
+
+"How far is it to Daintry's Corner?" he asked abruptly.
+
+Daintry's Corner was close to Rodwell's Peak, and Gray was making that
+the apparent end of his journey.
+
+"Aboot a maitter o' twal mile or sae.  Ye'll win it by mid-day the
+morn."  He paused a moment and then added: "Ye look ower pale, my lad,
+for sic journeying amang the hills.  Ye wad do weel to tak' a bit rest;
+and it's lang since I've set een on a braw lad like you.  A day or
+twa's rest wi' me wad freshen you up."
+
+Gray hastily declined the invitation, and then, feeling he had been too
+abrupt, he said:
+
+"I am sailing for England in a month, and I want to get a good idea of
+your hill scenery.  I've lived on the plains a great deal, and this is
+my first opportunity."
+
+"Eh!  I ken what the plains are.  I lived nigh the allotted span o'
+life upon them--saxty years I lived there.  I cam from Scotland a bairn
+o' seven, and I lived on the Macquoid estate till I cam up here."
+
+"Whatever made you leave your home for this lonely spot?" Gray asked,
+glad to keep the old man talking about himself to prevent any more
+curious inquiries about his own doings.
+
+"Ye wadna understand if ye werena born amang the hills, lad.  The
+gudewife, she kent how I felt, and when the Lord took her hame the
+hills seemed to ca' more and more on me.  It's no lonely here; there's
+voices everywhere.  Did ye ever think, my lad, o' the way the Bible
+speaks of hills an' a' high places.  'The shadow o' a great rock in a
+weary land.'  Yon's a grand passage; but the fu' meaning naebody can
+understand wha hasna kent the thirst and heat o' a waterless desert.
+Were ye ever lost in the Bush, lad?"
+
+Gray stared across at him in angry bewilderment.
+
+"Never," he said abruptly.
+
+"Ye may be thankful; 'tis a terrible place.  The skies like brass abune
+your head; the grund like parchment under your feet.  I was a lost man
+amang those deserts once.  Four days I wandered through dry and thirsty
+places.  Eh, sirs, 'twas a terrible time!  But the Lord brought me
+through; thanks be to His holy name!"
+
+Gray did not speak.  The old man's words had called up in clear vision
+those endless deserts of scorched sand, where the very herbage was
+hateful to look upon, and the blessed light became a consuming fire.
+Had Harding, faint with his wounds, wandered helplessly there till he
+fell to rise no more?
+
+M'Pherson got up and reached down the great Bible that lay by itself on
+the shelf above his head.
+
+"'Tis time for evening worship, my lad.  I'll read ye a chapter."
+
+He sat down and placed the Bible on the table, and put on his
+silver-rimmed spectacles.  Gray leant back in his chair and folded his
+arms, and prepared himself to listen.  The old man looked at his face,
+and then turned over the leaves of his Bible with a sigh.
+
+"I'll read ye what has often been a comfort to me, my lad," he said.
+
+But Gray's eyes had fallen on the sheepdog, and he had seen it drag
+itself up, with ears upraised and head pointed at the door, in the very
+attitude of Watch that night the fugitive Dearing had been outside the
+hut.
+
+"Look at the dog!" he stammered out to M'Pherson.  "He hears someone
+outside the house."
+
+"That's verra onlikely," said M'Pherson with a calmness that was
+intensely irritating to Gray.
+
+"He isn't much use as a dog if he makes that fuss for nothing," Gray
+returned.
+
+"Weel, weel, we are baith getting auld thegither."
+
+M'Pherson rose as he spoke and went to the door to open it.
+
+"You are not going out?" Gray cried.
+
+The old man turned a wondering face upon him.
+
+"Wad ye keep the door barred on sic a nicht as this, if there's onybody
+outside i' the wind and rain?  A braw laddie like you suld hae nae
+fears: ye suld leave that to the women, puir feeble folk."
+
+Gray's face grew scarlet at the rebuke.  He said no more, and M'Pherson
+opened the door and peered out into the dark, stormy night.  He shouted
+once or twice, but there was no answer nor sound of footsteps.  If the
+dog had heard footsteps they had now ceased; and only the voices of
+wind, and rain, and rushing torrent came up the glen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+DEADMAN'S GULLY.
+
+Gray reached Daintry's Corner before noon on the following day.  For
+some miles before reaching his destination his road had lain through a
+deep narrow gorge, with gigantic walls on each side of almost
+perpendicular rock.  Much of the rock was bare, and of a sullen,
+cheerless brown, but here and there trees sprang out of hollows and
+showed green against the rock, and dark-leaved climbing plants flung
+their long arms from crevice to crevice, and hung in gloomy wreaths
+along the broken ground.
+
+The morning had come with sunshine and gentle breezes, but no sunshine
+reached this frowning ravine, and the air there was damp, and heavy,
+and close.
+
+The ravine had run in an almost straight line for some miles, and Gray
+was beginning to weary for its end, when he suddenly checked his horse
+with a start of amazement and dismay.  Some few hundred yards before
+him the ravine apparently came to a full stop.  A great precipice rose
+up before him closing up the end of the gorge--a precipice far too
+steep for any track to run over it.
+
+Gray began to think he had come to a cul de sac, and that he should be
+obliged to retrace his steps, but before doing so he determined to ride
+on to the foot of the precipice before him and examine the ground
+carefully.
+
+A new surprise awaited him there.  He found that the gorge took a
+sudden turn here, in fact, ran on at right angles to its former course,
+though considerably narrower and closed in by walls of rock higher and
+gloomier than ever.
+
+The bottom of this new part of the gorge was not open and grassy, but
+studded thickly with enormous trees clad in dark heavy foliage.  It was
+a gloomy spot to enter, and Gray hesitated; yet it was evident the
+track went this way.  There was the mark of a horse's footstep just
+before him, freshly made too!
+
+Gray's eyes fell on this as he was looking along the ground, and he
+sprang off his horse to more closely examine it.  Some one had
+evidently passed here quite lately.  As Gray looked he saw that the
+footsteps ceased a short way up the glen, and that when they ceased the
+ground was slightly broken away as if horse and rider had tried to
+climb the cliff.  With a rush of sudden, unexplainable terror, Gray
+looked up the steep impassable wall of rock.  Horse and rider had gone
+that way!  But how?--and for what purpose?  He listened intently, but
+no sound came to his ear that spoke of a living presence.  An
+oppressive silence reigned on every side.
+
+Gray was no coward, but the blood forsook his cheek and his knees
+trembled under him.  Who was it that was haunting him thus?  He dared
+not make any answer to himself.  He dared not stay longer in that dark
+and silent spot.  Taking his horse by the bridle he led him hastily
+onwards, picking his way with difficulty through the mighty tree-trunks
+and among the wave-worn boulders that lay between them.  The trees grew
+so near together that it was impossible to see more than a yard or so
+ahead.
+
+Gray was stumbling blindly on, with the belief growing in him that the
+gorge was impassable, and that he would be forced to go back past that
+spot in the cliffs which chilled him to think of; when suddenly the
+light grew brighter through the trees, a keen breeze blew upon his
+face; in a few steps, the trees ended, and the gorge ceased.  Gray
+found himself standing on a rocky platform commanding a glorious view.
+There lay the hills, rising range after range before him, bathed in the
+sunshine of early noon.  It was a wonderful prospect--a sight to make
+one's heart leap up; and Gray stood entranced, drinking in all its
+beauty, forgetting himself and his errand.
+
+But not for long.  He had soon to consider his path; and, as he looked
+round him with that purpose in his mind, all the glory seemed to die
+out of the scene, and his pleasure in it passed away.  For this must be
+Daintry's Corner, Gray concluded.  He must be very near the end of his
+journey.
+
+He looked keenly along the ranges of hills in front of him, but he
+could not see the towering battlements of Rodwell's Peak.  That must
+lie behind him.  M'Pherson had directed him to a small settlement some
+miles beyond Daintry's Corner.  Gray could see the roofs of the houses
+over the slope of one of the lower hills to the right of him.  He
+determined he would spend the night there if he could reach it in time,
+but his first business was to find Rodwell's Peak, and then to search
+for Deadman's Gully.  Once the exact spot was reached, he hoped soon to
+find the treasure.  Gray did not anticipate much difficulty in taking
+it away.
+
+The robbery of the Bank at Adelaide by Dearing had made a great
+sensation at the time.  He had carried off more than £30,000 in gold
+and notes; and he had managed to change much of the gold and all the
+notes for Bank of England notes, whose numbers were not known.  The
+notes Gray could easily carry away and much of the gold.  The remainder
+he had determined to leave behind him safely buried.  It was better to
+lose a part than run the risk of discovery by weighting himself too
+much.  A few hours would suffice for this, he thought, then he
+determined to go down to the settlement for the night, and make his way
+to Adelaide by another route.  Nothing should prevail upon him to go
+back the same way: he had long ago decided that, and recent events had
+made his determination more fixed than ever.
+
+But now to reach Rodwell's Peak!  Gray carefully examined the ground,
+and made up his mind that his road lay along the rocky platform or
+terrace on which the gorge had ended, and which seemed to run along the
+hills through which the gorge had cleft its way.  He made a rough
+calculation, and then decided to follow the terrace in its westerly
+direction.  He called his horse, which had begun to graze on the short
+sweet grass that clothed the gentle slopes above the terrace, and set
+off on the road he had chosen.
+
+If he had looked backwards down the gloomy ravine he had just left
+behind him, he might have seen a face looking cautiously out through
+the dark boughs of the trees--an evil sallow face with reddish slanting
+eyebrows.  But Gray did not look back.  He was too excited at the near
+fruition that awaited his hopes.  All the fears that had assailed him,
+all the remorse that had been growing up in him disappeared as mists
+disappear before the morning sun.  He mounted his horse and rode gaily
+along the broad even platform, whistling as he went.  The platform or
+ledge continued for some time, sloping almost imperceptibly downwards
+till it ended in a wide, grassy, meadow-like valley, with a giant
+eucalyptus in the midst of it.  Through the valley a stream went
+singing--every ripple making a line of silver in the sunshine.
+
+Gray crossed the valley, stopping to let his horse drink at the stream,
+and to take a draught himself.  The hills beyond the valley were strewn
+in places with great boulders, but it was easy to find a path, and Gray
+made good progress for a time.  Then the way became rougher and more
+precipitous, but Gray pushed hurriedly on; for over the shoulder of the
+next hill rose the jagged crest of Rodwell's Peak.  He knew the
+knife-like edge of the lower summit, the towering outlines of the peak
+itself.  Now a well-defined track began to disclose itself running in
+easy curves down the hill and along the rocky bottom.
+
+Gray rode more slowly, his heart beating wildly.  This must be the
+track Harding had spoken of, leading from the settlements below.  He
+kept a sharp look-out, but no sign of a gully disclosed itself, though
+Rodwell's Peak rose well in front.
+
+The valley, at the bottom of which the track ran, had been wide at
+first, with sloping shelving sides, richly covered with foliage.  But
+now it was narrowing fast; the sides were growing steeper and steeper,
+and the vegetation less abundant Gray rode slowly, stopping every now
+and then to examine the rocks for an opening between them.  It could
+not be far off.  Looking down the valley the towering crest of
+Rodwell's Peak was all that could be seen.  It rose at the mouth of the
+valley like a mighty sentinel guarding the fortress of the hills.  But
+though Gray carefully examined the rocks on either side, he could find
+no trace of a gully running between them.
+
+He rode on until he reached the point where the valley ended, and the
+land began to shelve upwards before him.  He saw that the track ran
+across the shoulder of Rodwell's Peak, but he did not follow it.  It
+was useless to do that.  He felt certain that the opening into
+Deadman's Gully lay in the valley behind him.
+
+He turned his horse and rode backwards.  As he turned, a sharp sound
+caught his ears, and he checked his horse to listen.  It ceased
+instantly, and though he stopped there for some moments listening
+intently it did not recur.  The sound had been like the beat of a
+horse's hoofs against hard rock.  But there was no sign of horse or
+rider to be seen.  The valley was silent, save for the hoarse cry of a
+magpie among the trees and the rush of a stream in the distance.
+
+Gray rode slowly back, but he did not pursue his search with any
+vigour; he had been too much startled by that sudden sound.  He tried
+to reason himself into believing that it was a mere hallucination of
+hearing, that the fall of a stone down the steep hill had been mistaken
+by him for the clatter of a horse's feet.  But reason as he would the
+conviction remained strong within him that it was a horse he had heard,
+and he was looking more carefully, as he rode down the valley, for
+other signs of a horseman's presence, than for the opening into
+Deadman's Gully.
+
+It was quite accidentally that, about half-way down the valley, he
+noticed a crevice in the rocks, on his left hand, thickly hung with
+creepers.  It was more a crack in the rock than a crevice, so narrow
+was it, and only by looking some distance up could it be seen at all,
+for its lower portion was entirely hidden by a curtain of hanging
+foliage.  But it was the only opening of any sort that Gray had
+discovered, and he determined to examine it more closely, though it
+seemed absurd to suppose that this could be the entrance he sought.
+
+He rode up to the bottom of the fissure and dragged aside the heavy
+creepers.  A wild thrill went through him as he discovered that the
+crack widened towards the ground into an opening just large enough for
+a man and horse to pass through.  Gray could not see where the dark
+passage before him led, for after a few yards it took a sudden turn to
+the right, but he determined at once to make a thorough investigation.
+
+He got off his horse and cut away with some difficulty enough of the
+curtaining foliage to allow an easy passage through.  Then, with a long
+fearful look up and down the lonely valley, he entered the cleft.  His
+entrance disturbed a vast number of bats, that flew shrieking out of
+the damp hollows of the rocks and whirled wildly round him.  Their
+cries had an eerie sound well in keeping with the gloomy spot.  But
+Gray pushed doggedly on, soothing his good horse with voice and hand,
+and becoming more and more convinced that he was on the right track.
+
+After some distance the passage widened, and he began to see broad
+daylight ahead of him.  A few yards more and he came out into a narrow
+valley heaped with rocks.
+
+It was a gloomy, dreadful place, shut in by high, bare, precipitous
+cliffs.  The passage by which Gray had just entered seemed to be the
+only mode of access: no human foot could scale those dark overhanging
+cliffs.  There was but little vegetation.  Some coarse grass grew in
+the hollows and on the ledges of the rocks, and a gray-leaved
+repulsive-looking bramble spread its gnarled branches thickly along the
+uneven bottom of the gully.
+
+But Gray looked in vain for the mighty tree he had expected to see,
+towering up in the midst of the valley.  There were no trees of any
+kind in the place.  Yet Gray felt sure that he had reached the right
+spot, and a discovery he made after a brief survey supported his
+opinion.  This was a ruined hut built under the shelter of a shelving
+piece of rock.  It was a hut built of logs; the roof was partly off and
+the roughly made door was lying rotting on the ground.  This deserted,
+ruinous hut only added a new touch of desolation to the dreary gully.
+Gray involuntarily shivered as he stood before it and his horse tugged
+restlessly at the bridle.
+
+He fastened the horse securely to the door-post and stepped into the
+hut.  The floor was of beaten earth.  It was heaped up now with the
+_débris_ of the fallen roof, but Gray could see where the rude hearth
+had been and where a half-smouldered log still lay.  The walls were
+intact.  They were strongly built of heavy logs fastened securely
+together.  The hut might have been built for a miniature fortress, so
+strong were its walls.
+
+Who had built the hut?  Where had the logs come from that formed its
+walls?  Gray carefully considered these questions.  He remembered now
+that Harding had told him of some big trees that were in the gully when
+a gang of bushrangers, who had made the place their home, had been
+broken up.  There were trees in the gully then.  What had become of
+them?
+
+Gray stepped hastily out and carefully examined the ground.  It did not
+take him long to find the scarred trunks of a few trees hidden by the
+brambles.  He cut away the brambles, and tried by measuring to decide
+which had been the largest tree.  But he could not decide.  The trunks
+were all about the same size.  Either the trunk of the largest tree had
+been taken away altogether, or it had not been much larger than the
+trunks of the other trees.
+
+Wearied out by his search, Gray returned to the hut.  He sat down on
+one of the fallen rafters of the roof and considered what it was best
+to do next.  He was beginning to feel hopeless.  The direction had
+seemed so clear on Dearing's map.  He had been so certain that he would
+easily find the treasure if he once could reach the gully.  Yet here he
+was, apparently as far off as ever from the attainment of his hopes.
+
+Some hours had now passed since Gray entered the gully.  The afternoon
+was drawing to a close.  There were only a few hours of daylight before
+him.
+
+Gray had brought a little food with him, pressed upon him by the kindly
+old Scotsman.  He took down his knapsack and ate the food.  It was no
+matter of regret to him that he had only a sufficient store for one
+meal.  Nothing would have induced him to spend the night in the gully.
+Even now, in the broad daylight, an unreasoning terror was taking hold
+of him.  Every little sound, the movement of his horse, the cry of a
+bird as it flapped its way across the sky, the rustle of the long grass
+in the hollows of the cliffs, even his own footsteps as he moved to and
+fro, struck upon him with a sense of fear.  He could have sworn once
+that he had heard a footstep that was not his own, a slow and wary
+footstep, among the brambles.  So sure was he, that he sprang to the
+door and looked out.  There was nothing to be seen.  And with a bitter
+laugh at his own fears he went back and sat down.  But he made up his
+mind there and then that he would not stay much longer in the gully.
+He would not have spent the night there for all the wealth the world
+could offer him.
+
+He had now to consider what was best to do in the short period of
+daylight that lay before him.  It seemed a hopeless task to dig south
+of each of the trunks in the gully, yet what else was there to be done?
+It was best for him to set about it at once.  He decided this, and yet
+he sat still.  He could not make up his mind to go out into the gully
+again.  The place was becoming a horror to him.
+
+As he sat thus on the broken rafter, thinking miserably of the task
+before him, his eyes fixed themselves on the little window of the hut.
+It was the only window and was very small.  It was, in fact, a hole
+drilled in one of the beams.
+
+With that strange power the mind has, of carrying on two trains of
+thought at once, Gray found himself, in the midst of his weary thoughts
+about the hidden treasure, wondering why the window had been made so
+small and such an odd round shape.  The explanation quickly occurred to
+him.  The hut had been built by men who were in daily fear of capture.
+It had been built not so much as a shelter from the weather, for there
+were deep caves in the rocks that would have served that purpose, but
+as a means of defence.  Safe inside the hut, with the door shut and
+that small window guarded by a good rifle, one man might have defied a
+score.
+
+Gray guessed, and guessed truly, that Dearing had built the hut.  The
+gang of bushrangers who had formerly used the gully for their
+lurking-place had lived in the caves.  The gully was an unknown place
+then, and having once reached it all fear of detection was over.  But
+when once the place was discovered, some means of defence within it was
+necessary, and Dearing had built this place.
+
+Gray remembered Dearing's face as he staggered into the hut, the look
+of abject horrible fear upon it.  What days and nights he must have
+spent in this gully, watching, waiting, no rest, never safe for a
+single moment!
+
+"Poor wretch!" Gray murmured to himself.  "What a life to live!"  And
+his thoughts went back, by force of sudden contrast, to the life of
+another lonely man.  He remembered how M'Pherson had answered, with a
+glad, deep peace in his old face, "It's no lonely here.  There's voices
+everywhere."
+
+Gray would not dwell on that.  He rose, throwing back his head and
+straightening himself with a quick proud gesture.  He told himself he
+had no part or lot with the fears of Dearing, any more than with that
+strange faith that kept M'Pherson glad in his lonely old age.  There
+was no need for him, he said to himself, to have the fear of man before
+his eyes; and if he need not fear man, what was there to fear?
+Nothing.  He repeated it to himself.  Nothing.  It was only women and
+uneducated men who believed in the supernatural.
+
+Yet even as he said it his face turned an ashy white; the great
+sweat-drops broke out upon his brow, his knees trembled under him.  He
+had heard again the sound of a cautious footstep and the rustle of the
+brambles as if some hand was moving them.  He rushed to the door of the
+hut and looked round; but as before all was still and silent.  He gave
+a loud shout, but no answer came, save the echo from the rocks.  He
+waited there some moments, but he saw no sign of a human presence.
+
+Yet he was now absolutely certain he had heard a footstep.  The very
+hair began to rise on Gray's head, a freezing terror seized hold of
+him.  A moment before he had feigned to disbelieve in the supernatural,
+but now, in an agony of mortal fear, he cried out to himself that it
+was no living man who was dogging him thus.  A living man he could have
+faced, but not this mysterious visitant from the world beyond the grave.
+
+In a calmer moment Gray might have reasoned with himself, but he did
+not stop to reason now.  He felt he must escape from this horrible
+place at once, or madness would come upon him.  His horse was still
+tied to the door-post, and was cropping the thin grass that grew up
+between the crevices in the rocky platform on which the hut was built.
+Gray hurriedly unfastened him and led him towards the entrance to the
+gully.  He had gone a short distance when he remembered he had left his
+knapsack and pistol-case on the floor of the hut.  All the money he
+had, a scanty store, was in the knapsack.  He could not leave it behind.
+
+Still holding the horse by the bridle he went hurriedly back.  He flung
+the rein over the door-post and made one step into the hut.  Then he
+fell back with a sharp and sudden exclamation.  The hut was no longer
+empty.  Leaning in an easy attitude against the window with a revolver
+in his hand stood Lumley, the ex-gardener of the Mortons.
+
+[Illustration: THE MEETING IN "DEADMAN'S GULLY"]
+
+There was a sardonic grin on his thin peaked face.
+
+"So you have come back of your own accord, Mr. Gentleman Gray," he
+said.  "I was just about to order you back."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE TREASURE FOUND.
+
+Gray's first feeling was one of intense, overpowering relief.  That
+dreadful terror which had beset him left him when he saw that it was
+indeed Lumley who had followed him.  He spoke sharply:
+
+"What do you mean by following me up like this, and skulking in the
+brambles?  It was a dangerous game, mind you!  I might have sent a shot
+into them just now, you know."
+
+Lumley looked at him and laughed.
+
+"You're a pretty fellow to go bushranging.  When did you look at your
+pistols last, eh?"
+
+Gray caught up his pistols and looked at them.  The charges had been
+tampered with.  They were useless.
+
+Lumley stood regarding him with vicious amusement in his foxy eyes.
+
+"You'd best have stuck at an honest trade, mate," he said.  "You're no
+good at bushranging at all.  It's been too easy to take you in.  You
+needn't look at 'em any more, you know.  I made 'em safe enough at
+Stuart's place."
+
+Gray dropped the pistols on the ground.
+
+"How dare you?" he began in a choked voice.  Then he checked himself.
+"I'll trouble you to tell me what you mean," he said.  "And--"
+
+He made a dash to snatch the revolver from Lumley's hand, but Lumley
+was too quick for him.  He jumped back and levelled the weapon full at
+Gray.
+
+"Stand where you are or I'll fire," he said coolly.  "Move a limb, and
+you'll have a bullet into you."
+
+Gray stood still.  A cold sweat broke out upon his brow.  Lumley had
+dropped all disguise now.  The evil soul of the man looked out from his
+face.
+
+"That's better," he said.  "Just stand there, will you?"  He seated
+himself on some of the fallen _débris_, still keeping his revolver
+pointed at Gray.
+
+"Now we'll have a comfortable little talk together, mate," he said.
+"You can sit down now if you like."
+
+Gray looked round and carefully chose a seat.  The pallid look of
+terror had gone from his face.  He had recovered his calmness and his
+power of thought.  He saw clearly enough that he was in Lumley's power.
+He guessed his reason for following him; and he had determined on his
+course of action.  If Lumley chose to insist upon it, he would tell him
+Dearing's secret and leave him to get the money if he could; and he
+would go straight to the nearest station and inform against him.  Not
+for all the money in the world, Gray declared to himself, would he put
+his reputation into this man's keeping.
+
+"That's right, mate.  Now we'll be comfortable," said Lumley, with a
+grin, "and we'll talk about the business that's brought me here.  You
+know what it is well enough."
+
+"Well, I can make a pretty good guess," Gray said, carefully selecting
+a cigar and proceeding to light it.  "But you'll have to tell me
+plainly, you know, before going any further."
+
+The change in Gray's manner was too striking to escape Lumley.  He
+looked at him with a steady crafty look before answering.
+
+"There ain't no money hid here, I s'pose?  You're on a pleasure toor,
+ain't you?  That pick in your knapsack is for ge'logical specimens,
+ain't it?"
+
+Gray carefully flicked a little ash from the end of his cigar, and then
+looked up.
+
+"You are quite wrong, Lumley.  That pick is not meant for geological
+specimens at all.  It's meant to be used for digging up a large sum of
+money hidden somewhere about here.  Unfortunately I don't know where."
+
+"You don't?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea.  Perhaps you know?"
+
+Lumley glared at him like a wild beast.
+
+"Was that why you were going away?"
+
+Gray nodded.
+
+"Tom Dearing didn't tell you where 'twas hid?  Don't you try to deceive
+me, man.  I'll not stand it.  I'll have that swag if I've got to swing
+for it to-morrow.  What made you go proddin' and pryin' round those old
+trunks for, eh?  You tell me that."
+
+"With all the pleasure in life, my man.  But I should like to hear a
+few things from you first.  How did you get to know of this money?  I
+may not be far wrong in supposing you an accomplice of our good friend,
+lately deceased, Mr. Tom Dearing?"
+
+"I'd wring your neck for tuppence," Lumley muttered savagely.
+
+Gray looked up at him with a pleasant smile.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+Gray was beginning to feel thoroughly satisfied with himself again.  He
+felt himself very much more than a match for Mr. Lumley.
+
+That individual made no reply to his last inquiry.
+
+"So you want to know how I got on this job.  I'll tell you quickly
+enough.  Dearing made a dying speech and confession, didn't he?"
+
+"Something of the kind."
+
+"He'd do that for sure and certain.  That was his way.  He was always
+half-hearted, Tom was.  P'r'aps he didn't mention a pal of his, Bill
+Clay, eh?"
+
+"I think he did, now I come to think of it.  I suppose you are that
+gentleman.  Is Clay your real name, or one of your many aliases?"
+
+"You're right, mate.  I'm Bill Clay, as you'll find out before you're
+done with me," said Lumley, with a savage look.  "I wasn't in that
+business with the bank, but Tom told me he'd hidden the money; but he
+didn't tell me where he'd hid it, d'you see.  _You've_ got to tell me
+that, Mr. Gentleman Gray."
+
+Gray leisurely took his cigar from his mouth and said:
+
+"With pleasure, my man, if I knew it myself; but you see I don't."
+
+Lumley gave him a savage frown.
+
+"Think I'm going to believe that?  Look here, I'm in a hurry, and
+you've just got to tell me all you know.  If you don't, I'll--"
+
+He lifted the revolver again with a significant gesture.
+
+Gray did not speak for a moment.  His hand might have trembled slightly
+as he stroked his moustache, but he showed no other sign of agitation.
+Lumley watched him narrowly.
+
+"Ain't you goin' to tell me?" he said.
+
+"Yes I am," said Gray; "on one condition."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Unload that pretty little weapon of yours, and hand it over to me.  I
+don't trust you, you see, Mr. Lumley, alias Clay.  You might find it
+convenient to leave this place all by yourself.  Dead men tell no
+tales."
+
+"Good for you they don't, ain't it?" Lumley answered darkly.
+
+Gray looked sharply up.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I don't mean anything.  But you're a pretty fellow, ain't you, to crow
+over me?"
+
+The taunt was more than Gray could bear.
+
+"What do you mean?" he exclaimed again, with sharper emphasis as he
+leapt to his feet.  "How dare you?"
+
+Lumley laughed out--a rough, coarse, jeering laugh, which filled Gray
+with sickening, helpless rage.
+
+"Don't you be afraid of me," he said; "a partner's always safe with me.
+I don't set up to be a virtuous cove like you, but a partner's always
+safe with me.  We'll go shares, mate--share and share alike.  That's a
+fair offer, ain't it?"
+
+His manner was as coarse and offensive as he could make it.  He seemed
+to find delight in the sort of torture he was inflicting on Gray.
+
+Gray seated himself again and tried hard to recover his coolness.
+After all, he told himself, he had but to bear Lumley's insults for a
+time.  He had but to wait till they reached a settlement for this
+hideous partnership to be over.
+
+"It seems to me we are wasting good time, my man," he said, in the
+lofty tone that so nettled Lumley.  "I don't pretend to understand your
+innuendoes, but let that pass.  What you want is the money, isn't it?"
+
+"What _I_ want?  You don't want it; no, of course not?  You didn't come
+here to get it?"
+
+Lumley laughed.
+
+"I certainly came here to get it.  There's a considerable reward
+offered for its recovery, as I daresay you know.  I intended to claim
+that reward."
+
+Lumley looked at him in silence for a moment, and then burst out into
+another laugh.
+
+"You are a cove!" he said, when his mirth would let him speak.  "So
+that's your game, is it?  Bah!"
+
+He spat on the ground in fierce derision, and then with a sudden change
+of manner he came close up to Gray.
+
+"Stow all that nonsense, lad.  Tell me what Dearing said, and be quick
+about it.  We're goin' to be fond partners, share and share alike.
+Come, shell out this minute!"
+
+Gray looked up at him; then he took out his note-book and rapidly
+reproduced the map he had destroyed, and handed it to Clay without a
+word.  The light was fading, and he took it to the door to examine it.
+Gray's eyes followed him with a savage concentrated hate in them.
+
+It was the man's coarse scorn of himself that was hardest to
+bear--harder even than the knowledge that he had lost the money he had
+sacrificed so much to gain.  Gray had been accustomed to the admiration
+of his fellow-men.  He had been liked and respected wherever he had
+been.  It was horrible to him to be the object of this convict's coarse
+taunts and sneers.  He, who had so prided himself on his clean name and
+unblemished record, had fallen low indeed.  And he could not feel that
+the taunts were undeserved.  Slowly and grudgingly, just for a moment,
+the curtain that hid his true self was lifted for Gray, and with a
+shudder he confessed that Lumley did him no wrong in claiming
+partnership with him.
+
+His gloomy thoughts were broken into by a chuckle from Clay.
+
+"I always said he was the 'cutest of us all," he declared in an
+admiring tone, as he came back to Gray.  "Too soft for me.  We lost a
+goodish pile once because he wouldn't use these little beauties," and
+he touched the revolver in his hand.  "But that 'cute he was; up to
+every trick of the profession.  You couldn't understand this, couldn't
+you?"
+
+He did not wait for an answer, but went on in a quicker tone.
+
+"Of course you couldn't; you'd have been searching here for a month of
+Sundays if I hadn't kindly come to help you.  '_Big Gum Tree_.'  Ha!
+ha!  Tom was 'cute, to be sure."
+
+Gray did not speak; he did not even look up.
+
+"Don't be down on your luck, my lad," said Clay jocosely; "there's
+enough for both of us.  It'll be more than the reward, any way," and he
+chuckled with a cruel sort of mirth.  "You've got a handy little pick
+in that knapsack of yours; just fetch it, will you?"
+
+"Get it yourself!"
+
+Clay gave him a fierce threatening look.
+
+"None of your airs and graces here, young man.  You do what I tell you,
+or it'll be the worse for you."
+
+He sat down on the block of wood opposite Gray, folded his arms and
+added:
+
+"You're the junior partner, and you'll just wait on me, my fine fellow.
+You go and fetch me that pick to begin with."
+
+Gray ground his teeth with helpless rage, but he got up and took the
+pick from his knapsack.  It was a small slender tool, but very strong.
+Clay looked at it approvingly.
+
+"Now, you dig up that hearth-stone, mate, and you'll see what you'll
+see."
+
+"The hearth-stone?"
+
+"You do what I tell you," returned Lumley with a nod.  "You go and dig
+up that hearth-stone."
+
+Gray flung down the pick.
+
+"I won't do anything of the sort.  I won't stand any more of this sort
+of treatment.  You may shoot me if you like"--for Lumley had raised his
+revolver--"but do your bidding I won't."
+
+Gray fully expected, even half-wished for, a shot from the revolver
+Lumley held up at him for a moment.  But the convict changed his mind.
+He put the weapon in his pocket and got coolly up.
+
+"Well, if you won't I must," he said, and went over to the hearth-stone
+that lay buried under a heap of earth and timber.
+
+Gray sank down on the fallen rafter and buried his face in his hands.
+No man can look on death and bear an unchanged front, not even the
+bravest and the most prepared, and Gray was not of these.  For a brief
+moment he had believed that death was close to him.  It was to Lumley's
+interest to kill him now that he knew where the gold was, and there had
+been murder in his eyes as he had looked across at Gray.  And Gray sat
+with his hands clasped over his eyes, in sick, horrible fear at the
+thought of himself lying cold and stiff, with eyes staring blindly up
+at the sky; his soul gone--where?
+
+At the other end of the hut Clay was busy.  He dashed away the heap of
+rubbish on the hearth-stone, and digging the pick into the loose earth
+round it, dragged it up without much difficulty.  A cry of exultation
+broke from him as he did so.  Embedded in the ground below the
+hearth-stone lay a small tin box, bound round and round with whipcord.
+To drag up the box, cut the already decaying cord, and wrench open the
+cover was the work of a moment.  Two or three wrappings of thick brown
+paper lay over the contents of the box.  He tore these off, and
+clutched at what lay beneath.
+
+"Come here, partner," he shouted; "what do you say to this, eh?"
+
+Gray slowly rose and came towards him.  How he had anticipated the
+moment when this money should lie before him!  There it was, and he
+looked at it with a shudder.
+
+Lumley emptied the contents of the box on the floor before him, and
+began eagerly to count over the notes and gold.
+
+"A prime catch, eh?" he remarked, as he caught up a handful of
+sovereigns and let them fall back in a glittering heap.  "We'll be able
+to cut a dash on this, partner.  Look at this nugget!  And the flimsy
+is all safe--  Tom took care of that; there ain't one of the numbers
+known."  And he held up the banknotes to Gray with a grin.  "Better
+than the reward after all, my boy, even the half of it, though not
+_quite_ so good as the whole lot.  You thought you were going to grab
+it all, didn't you?  You were a green un to think so.  Why, I've
+followed you up from the moment I heard of Tom's death.  I knew he'd
+leave some paper or other to tell where 'twas.  Tom wasn't greedy, not
+he."  He went on with the examination of the treasure while he spoke;
+counting the gold and notes, and putting the nuggets into a heap apart.
+Presently he looked up with his cunning smile at Gray's dark face.
+
+"You don't ask me, partner, how I came to hit on the hearth-stone."
+
+"How was it?" said Gray indifferently.  The gold might have been
+withered leaves, the notes blank pieces of paper for all the interest
+he could feel in them.
+
+"'Twas a good job for you I followed you," returned Lumley cheerfully.
+"You might have prodded round till doomsday.  I knew what Tom meant by
+'_hole in Big Gum_,' d'you see.  That big log there with the window was
+from the biggest gum of the whole lot we cut down.  And the window was
+the hole.  Ain't it plain as daylight now, eh?"
+
+"Plain enough."
+
+It was getting dusk outside, and Lumley got up and went to the door of
+the hut.
+
+"We'd best be starting, partner," he said over his shoulder.  "There's
+nothing out against me that I know of, but I'd rather not be seen by
+daylight with you just at present, as you'll understand."
+
+Gray hardly heard the words.  He picked up his knapsack from the floor.
+
+"I'll start this minute.  I suppose you have got a horse?"
+
+Lumley came back to the money before he answered.  He began to divide
+it into two heaps.
+
+"Yes, I've got a horse, partner, a pretty good one too.  We scared you
+pretty well just now, eh? down along the track.  My horse can climb
+like a 'possum, and I didn't want you to see me then."
+
+The man's manner had changed again.  It was smoother and more refined.
+It was as if he had slipped on a mask, and Gray's loathing of him
+increased as he marked the sudden easy transition.  His coarseness was
+almost better than this oily softness.  It maddened Gray.
+
+"You needn't divide that money," he broke out in a sudden impulse of
+miserable rage.  "I'll have none of it.  And if I leave this place
+alive I'll give you over to the police.  You mark my words!"
+
+Lumley looked up at him with a quiet smile.
+
+"Two of us can play at that game, my fine fellow!"  Then his manner
+changed quickly from softness to ferocity.  "You young fool, you!
+Don't you know the police are after you?  They may be outside this, for
+aught I know, this minute.  Anyway, they're close upon your track."
+
+Gray stepped fiercely towards him.
+
+"You lie!" he gasped out.
+
+"You'd better ride down to Ford's to-night and find out," returned
+Lumley in a sulky, indifferent tone; "you'll have a warm welcome!"
+
+"It's false!" Gray almost shouted the words.  "They have no reason."
+
+Lumley looked up at him with a grin.
+
+"That's a pretty statement for you to make, partner.  Anyway, there's a
+warrant out against you.  Not for this pretty stuff alone, mind
+you--suspicion of _murder_!"
+
+His crafty, cruel eyes fixed themselves on Gray's pallid twitching face.
+
+"Murder of your mate, partner.  'Twas a pity you had to do it, for it's
+a hanging matter; but he was an obstinate chap, I expect.  Pious and
+all that."
+
+"They believe I murdered Harding?" Gray gasped out.
+
+"Don't take on, partner," returned Clay cheerfully; "murder will out,
+as they say.  And the police haven't got you yet.  You trust to me: I
+know a track that'll take us out safe enough.  I daresay you feel
+queer, though.  It's unpleasant to be tracked by the police.  I'm used
+to it, but I don't like it.  I expect you wouldn't have done it if
+you'd thought you'd have been found out; eh, partner?"
+
+It overwhelmed Gray to find that he could be suspected of a
+cold-blooded treacherous murder.
+
+"You think--you dare to think--" he broke out, and then his voice
+failed him.
+
+Had he not, in very purpose and act, been the murderer of his mate?
+The words of angry defence faltered on his tongue.  He stood
+self-convicted, seeing for the first time all the horror of his
+act--unable to say a word to clear himself of the charge Lumley brought
+against him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DESERTED!
+
+A vast sun-scorched plain stretching away in endless miles under a
+blazing sky.  A waterless desert, where the horses sunk fetlock-deep in
+shifting sand, or were cruelly pricked by the thorny leafless shrub
+which was the only living plant to be seen.  No trees; no flowers; no
+grass; no sparkle of water far or near.  Such was the land Gray and
+Lumley were riding through, four days after leaving Deadman's Gully.
+
+In dull despair Gray had submitted to Lumley's plan for escaping the
+police.  It had never occurred to him to disbelieve Lumley's statement.
+There seemed no reason for the lie, and he remembered Mr. Morton's
+sudden keen glance at him the night he left the station.  If it had
+leaked out that he had gone searching for Dearing's hidden treasure,
+they might well suspect him of ridding himself of Harding.
+
+Gray's confidence in himself had altogether gone.  Dull despair had
+taken possession of him.  The past he could not bear to think of.  The
+future made him shudder when he looked along the dreary years.  What
+was there left for him to live for?
+
+They had passed the hill-country on the second day, and were now
+crossing a portion of that arid region which lies to the north-west of
+the mountains.  Clay had brought with him a stock of food sufficient
+for a week or more.  There was no danger of starvation.  It was water
+that failed them.
+
+A consuming thirst came upon Gray as the sun rode higher and higher in
+the heavens.  It was ten hours since he had tasted water, and his lips
+and throat were becoming baked and painful.
+
+"You are sure you know the track?" he said to Lumley, checking his
+horse to look round him.
+
+A light heat-mist was quivering over the plains.  The air was intensely
+hot and dry.
+
+Lumley stopped his horse too.
+
+"Thought you were never goin' to speak again," he said jeeringly.  "I
+know the track well enough.  We shall see water in another twenty-four
+hours, take my word for it."
+
+Gray marvelled within himself how it was possible to follow any track
+in such a place as this.  They had been riding for miles and miles
+without seeing a tree or a hillock, or even a dry water-course.  One
+mile was exactly like any other mile.  But he said nothing more to his
+companion.  Silence was a boon Gray craved almost as much as he longed
+for water.  At first Lumley had thrust his talk upon him, and found
+pleasure in the misery he inflicted on Gray by his coarse jokes and
+cruel jeers.  But he had grown more silent lately, and for the last
+hour or so had not spoken at all.
+
+He was riding now a little in advance of Gray, looking round him with
+somewhat anxious eyes.  He was looking for a group of cypress-trees.
+He felt sure they were riding in the right direction, but he had a
+strong reason for wishing to see them rise on the horizon before
+another halt.  When once he saw them his course would be clear and
+easy.  He would know his position exactly, and reach water in an hour
+or two.
+
+Gray saw that his companion was looking for some landmark; but Lumley
+said nothing of the object of his search.  He had never mentioned the
+cypress-trees to Gray.  Gray had asked him once how he would guide
+himself across the desert, and he had refused to answer.
+
+"You'd like to make off by yourself, wouldn't you?" he had said with a
+jeering laugh; "stick a knife into me, and leave me for the flies to
+feed on?  No, no, partner; we'll jog on together.  You sha'n't serve me
+as you served your mate.  Not if I know it."
+
+Gray had given up asserting his innocence of Harding's actual murder.
+His words had not the slightest effect on Lumley.  It was not that he
+pretended to believe in Gray's guilt Gray saw, and saw truly, that his
+companion actually believed that he had murdered Harding in cold blood
+and buried him in some secret place.  Clay had only laughed at his
+declarations of innocence.
+
+"What's there to make such a fuss about, partner?  I never did see such
+a cove for making believe.  But you can't take Bill Clay in, my lad.  I
+can tell a rogue directly I set eyes on him.  By fellow-feeling, you
+see."
+
+The day grew hotter and hotter.  The air that blew against their faces
+as they rode along was dry and scorching.  It was like riding in a
+heated furnace.  Suddenly Lumley gave a shout.  He had seen on the
+horizon, through the quivering heat-mist, three cypresses pointing with
+black fingers to the sky.  He knew as he looked that it was but an
+illusion, a mirage.  But he knew, too, that the real cypresses, of
+which he saw the shadows, were in that direction, and not so very far
+off.
+
+Gray saw the cypresses in the same moment.
+
+"Trees!" he cried eagerly--for where trees grew water must be near.
+
+"You're a pretty fellow to go bush-riding," grumbled Lumley.  "They
+ain't trees--not real ones, so to speak.  They're clouds."
+
+And Gray saw for himself how misty the dark outlines were; and even as
+he looked he saw the mirage disappear.  But he marked the point in the
+horizon at which the mirage had appeared, and was astonished to see
+Lumley suddenly turn his horse in a totally different direction.
+
+"Surely it would be better to go that way.  There must be water near."
+
+"Go by yourself, then," snarled Lumley, over his shoulder; "and a good
+riddance too."
+
+He rode sulkily on and Gray followed him.  When they had gone a few
+miles Clay's horse gave a stumble, and Clay sprang off.
+
+"He's dead beat," he said.  "We'll rest here."
+
+"But---" Gray began, and then he stopped.  What was the use of
+speaking?  He was forced to trust to Lumley's guidance.
+
+They lay down on the baked scorched soil, hobbling their horses that
+they might not wander far.  Gray flung himself on the sand, face
+downwards, careless of the hot sun that poured upon him.  Lumley went a
+few paces off to a bed of polygonum, the gloomy leafless bramble of the
+wilderness.  He scooped out a hollow in the sand below the bramble and
+lay down there in the tiny oasis of shadow he had thus obtained.
+Unseen of Gray he took a bottle he had secreted in his pocket and drank
+the few drops remaining in it, then corked it and put it back.  Then he
+turned upon his side and slept.
+
+He was sleeping still when Gray roused himself from the heavy stupor of
+despair that had come upon him and sat up.  There lay the grim horrible
+wilderness all about him.  A short distance off the horses were
+standing with drooping heads and panting sides.  In the scanty shadow
+of the bramble Lumley lay asleep.
+
+Gray got up and walked to Lumley's side, and stood looking down on the
+evil face as if his eyes were drawn there by some horrible fascination.
+The convict slept heavily, his face turned upwards to the sky.  Gray
+saw that his lips were wet.  He had water, then!  Gray had suspected
+that he had, but he did not try to find out where it was hidden.  He
+turned away with a shudder and flung himself down upon the ground again.
+
+It was growing dusk when Lumley woke from that heavy sleep.  He started
+up wildly and looked round him.  For days he had kept awake fearing
+treachery from Gray if he let sleep overcome him.  Now he had been
+sleeping for many hours.  The sun had been blazing in a clear sky when
+he fell asleep; now the sky was covered with thick gray clouds, and
+night was close at hand.  He looked round him and saw at once the two
+horses.  A second glance showed him Gray lying with his face upon one
+arm not far from him.  Lumley approached, and saw that he was asleep.
+
+He bent over him to satisfy himself the sleep was not feigned, and then
+turned towards the horses.  It was not difficult to catch them, and he
+had prepared to mount when an idea struck him.  Taking a scrap from his
+pocket, the page on which Gray had reproduced Dearing's map for him, he
+scrawled a few words, putting the paper on his saddle to write.  Then
+he softly approached Gray, and stuck the paper into the sand by a
+branch of bramble.  When this was done he crept back again to the
+horses.
+
+He remained looking at them reflectively for a moment.  His own horse
+stood with drooping head and panting sides, evidently nearly done for,
+but Gray's horse had borne the long journey well.  Lumley had already
+fastened the bag containing the money and the pistols to his own
+saddle, but now he shifted it to the other.  Gray's horse turned an
+uneasy glance on him as he did so; and Lumley had a little difficulty
+in mounting it.  But he got into the saddle at last, and taking the
+bridle of his own horse in his hand he rode away, giving a backward
+look now and then to the man he was deserting.
+
+Night came, a thick starless night with clouds hanging low over the
+desert.  A cool wind came with the clouds and blew on Gray, and he
+slept.  He was worn out, and he slept hour after hour.  The dawn was
+breaking when he at last awoke.  His sleep had been so deep, so
+dreamless, that in it he had forgotten all that had happened.  But
+memory came quickly back.  He started up and looked round for Lumley
+and the horses.
+
+All was still, with a stillness unknown save in desert lands.  The
+silence was profound.  In the gray dawn he could see the plains with
+perfect distinctness.  He looked round him from horizon to horizon.
+There was no living thing in sight.  He was alone.
+
+He understood instantly what had happened.  Lumley had deserted him.
+His first feeling was one of absolute relief.  He had escaped from that
+hateful bondage.  It was not for some moments that he realized the
+hopelessness of his position.  Ignorant of the track, alone, on foot,
+without water or food, what hope was there for him of escaping from the
+desert?  Gray knew how little hope there was.  As he had deserted
+Harding, so he in turn had been deserted.  As Harding had perished, so
+he too would perish.  He looked his fate in the face with the calmness
+of despair.
+
+Before he had fallen asleep he had made up his mind to give himself up
+to the police and meet the charge brought against him if once he
+escaped from the wilds.  It seemed to him now as if God had refused him
+a chance of proving his repentance.  He was to perish in the
+wilderness, an outcast from God and man.
+
+He sank down on the ground again, and sat there with his elbows on his
+knees, his head propped on his hands, staring steadily before him.  In
+the dawn the wide level spaces of the wilderness resembled the pastures
+that had surrounded their hut.  Gray found himself remembering his life
+there with intense clearness.  He saw Harding busy about the hut, ever
+cheerful, ever ready.  He saw him among the cattle, strong of hand,
+alert of eye.  He saw him riding home in the twilight, talking of his
+wife and his little lads; turning in his stirrups to give a word of
+cheer to Watch; or bearing Gray's grumbling talk with cheerful patience.
+
+What depths of steadfast affection there were in the heart of that
+rough man!  Once when Gray was ill he had tended him like a woman.  He
+had sat beside him night after night in unwearying affection.  Gray
+remembered how he had lifted him from bed to chair, as he might have
+lifted a child.  He seemed to feel the pressure of his hand on his
+shoulder still as he stood over him, pressing him to eat some dainty he
+had prepared, to see his rugged kindly face bending over him.  What
+would he not give for a sight of that kind face now, and a touch of
+that strong honest hand?
+
+Gray's stony despair gave way; the hard, desperate look on his face
+softened.  He burst into bitter tears.  His frame shook with the
+strong, terrible crying of despairing grief.
+
+But the tears did him good; they cleared his brain, and made it
+possible for him to think of what was best for him to do.  He no longer
+felt inclined to give up without a struggle for life.  He got up from
+the ground and looked round him with a new strength.  It was then he
+saw the note Lumley had stuck into the sand beside him.  He picked it
+up and read it.  It was only a few scrawled words:
+
+"_The police ain't after you at all, Mr. Gentleman Gray, so you can
+clear out of the Bush as soon as you like.  I'll not split on you, and
+you won't on me, I guess._
+
+"_N.B.  Dead men tell no tales._"
+
+The words were perfectly clear in the pale morning light.  Gray read
+them and then threw the paper away with a shudder.  He felt no anger
+against Lumley, only a sick horror that made anger impossible.  What
+Lumley had done was what he himself had done.  He deserved his fate.
+
+The knowledge that the police held no warrant against him, that the
+story was but a trick of Lumley's to get him into the Bush, affected
+him strangely little.  He had made up his mind to tell the whole story
+if ever he got back to the haunts of men again.  The confession he had
+to make would be a purely voluntary one now; that was his chief thought
+as he read Lumley's letter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LOST IN THE BUSH.
+
+Gray lost no time in starting forwards.  The choice of direction made
+by him was determined by remembering the cypresses of which they had
+seen the mirage.  He believed that they had been a landmark to Clay,
+and that his turning in another direction was but a feint.
+
+It was difficult for Gray to decide the exact direction.  The sky was
+heavy with clouds, and no sun could be seen behind them.  But he
+carefully calculated as well as he could whereabouts on the horizon the
+trees had appeared, and turned towards that point.
+
+He knew enough of Bush stories to know the tendency of wanderers there
+to travel in a circle; and in this sterile waste, where every mile was
+like every other mile, Gray felt he might travel round and round and
+never know it.  To prevent this he dug shallow holes with his knife
+here and there, and stuck boughs of the bramble in them, so that he
+might recognize the spot if he came to it again.
+
+Towards noon the clouds gradually dispersed and the sun blazed down
+upon him.  This bettered his position in one way, as he could now be
+sure of walking forward, but it increased the torment of thirst until
+it became almost unendurable agony.  He struggled on till past noonday,
+but no dark cypresses lifted themselves on the sky-line.  The desert
+stretched round him in its blank, dreadful loneliness.  The blazing sun
+beat down upon him, making sight a torture.  He could go no further.
+He flung himself down on the unsheltered burning sand and hid his eyes
+from the light.
+
+Towards evening the clouds gathered again, and he rose and struggled
+on.  He walked many miles that night, and towards dawn lay down and
+slept.  The second day passed much as the first had done.  The sky
+cleared again, and the fury of the sun beat down upon him.  He
+struggled on for a time, and again gave up the struggle and lay down
+and waited for evening.
+
+On the third day his agony of thirst had become unbearable.  He knew
+that in a few more hours death must end his sufferings if he could not
+reach water.  With grim determination he battled on that day through
+the flaming sunshine and gave himself no rest.  Every moment he
+expected to see the cypresses rise on the horizon; and he was sweeping
+it with his glance when his eye fell on a white object fluttering on
+the wind from shrub to shrub.  At first he could not discern what it
+was--his bloodshot weary eyes refused their office---but on approaching
+nearer he saw it was a piece of paper.  It fluttered across his path.
+He picked it up with a horrible foreboding.  It was Lumley's letter,
+written on the back of the map he had drawn in the hut.
+
+It was just possible the wind had carried it onwards to cross his path.
+Gray made an effort to think that this was so.  But a few staggering
+steps further on brought him to the shallow holes in which the brambles
+stood upright.  He had come back to the place from which he had
+started!  All hope died within him as he saw those hollows.  He sank
+down on the sand to wait for death.
+
+He was lying face downwards on the sand, with his arms flung out before
+him, when a low distant sound suddenly broke the stillness.  He started
+up and looked wildly round.  The twilight had fallen, and he could not
+distinguish objects clearly; but as he strained his gaze from side to
+side the sound came again to his ears--the sound of a horse galloping
+at full speed across the desert.
+
+Gray could now distinguish from what direction the sound came, and he
+hurried forward, hope once more rising up in him.  Was it Lumley come
+back to help him, repentant for his desertion?  Or was it some lost
+traveller like himself, seeking a way out of these dreadful wilds?  Or
+had Lumley sent a party to search for him from the nearest station,
+while going onwards himself to safety?  Gray asked himself these
+questions as he hurried on through the gathering darkness.  He still
+could hear the galloping hoofs, and for a time they seemed to come
+nearer and nearer.  But suddenly he became aware that they were
+receding from him--the sound was becoming fainter and fainter, it was
+dying away in the distance.
+
+Gray stopped.  A cry of despair broke from him, and then, summoning all
+his strength, he raised a loud "Coo-ee!"
+
+The shrill shout died away upon the air and left profound stillness
+behind it.  Gray could no longer hear the faintest sound of the horse's
+hoofs.  Either the rider had stopped to listen to his call or had gone
+on beyond hearing.  Gray moistened his baked and blistered lips, and
+then again shouted.  The shout again died away, leaving intense
+stillness behind it.  But this time the stillness only lasted for a
+moment.  There came a faint answering cry, far-off and indistinct, but
+unmistakably the cry of a human voice.
+
+Gray once more hurried forward.  The ground was growing rougher; it was
+broken up into hillocks, and his progress was less rapid.  After a time
+he stopped and called again, and again heard the answering call.  He
+was no longer alone in the wilderness; friendly help was near.
+
+The moon rose as Gray hurried on, rose in full splendour, making the
+plain almost as light as day.  Gray looked in vain for what he had
+hoped to see--the outline of horse and rider against the pale silvery
+glow of the sky.  There was no horse anywhere to be seen; there was
+nothing to be seen but the low bushes and the bunches of dry grass, and
+the great circle of the desert against the horizon.  But as Gray stared
+round him, refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes, the shout
+came again--came with a mocking ring in it that made Gray's blood run
+suddenly cold.  He knew the voice now: it was Lumley's voice.  But it
+was as cruel and mocking as ever.  Gray's dream of help from him
+vanished like a breath as he heard it.
+
+He stumbled on across the sand hillocks, and presently could discern a
+huddled figure on the ground, with its back propped up against a
+hillock.  The moonlight was full on the haggard blistered face that
+looked up at Gray with twitching lips.
+
+"Welcome, partner," were Lumley's first words.  "You didn't expect to
+see me again, did you now?"
+
+Gray made no answer.  He was too far gone in despair to have even a
+flicker of curiosity as to how Lumley came to be lying there.  But
+Lumley proceeded to enlighten him.  He thrust forward his foot, from
+which he had cut away the boot, and Gray could see that it was
+discoloured and badly swollen.
+
+"I owe that to your cursed horse," he said, in a sulky, vindictive
+tone.  "Just as I'd hit upon the track again, too."
+
+Gray cast a wide glance over the moonlit plains before he spoke.  But
+no horse was visible.
+
+"He flung you, I suppose?" he said, in a quiet, expressionless tone.
+"I could have warned you not to play any tricks with him.  Where is
+your own horse?"
+
+The absence of vindictiveness from Gray's manner puzzled Lumley.  He
+stared up at him, wondering what it meant.
+
+"Dead," he said sulkily after a moment.  "I'd better have stuck to you
+after all, you see, mate.  But I'd have sent after you the first chance
+I had.  I meant to do that all along."
+
+He had paused before adding the last sentence, and his manner had
+suddenly altered, had become smooth and conciliating.
+
+Gray did not attempt to answer him.  He moved away a few paces and
+flung himself down on the ground, and sat with his head propped on his
+hands, staring straight in front of him.  Lumley watched him in
+silence.  His face showed none of the dull despair that had settled on
+Gray's, but was alight with fierce excitement.  And the glance he bent
+on Gray was a strange one.  There was hate in it, and longing, and a
+torturing doubt.
+
+"You're pretty bad, ain't you, partner?" he said at last.  "Had a bad
+time since we parted, I daresay."
+
+"Did you expect me to have a good time?" Gray answered without looking
+at him.
+
+"Missed the track?  Been wanderin' round and round?  Just what happened
+to me, you see, though I thought I was dead sure of my way.  But I got
+my right bearings again--if it hadn't been for that horse of yours--"
+
+He was tearing up fiercely the scanty grass beside him as he spoke, and
+there broke out a sudden fury in his face.  But he thrust back the oath
+that came to his lips, and spoke, after a pause, in the same
+conciliating tone.
+
+"We've had bad luck, both on us, haven't we, partner?  And my bad
+luck's been yours; for I'd have sent back for you.  I only meant to
+frighten you a bit."
+
+"What's the good of talking about it?" Gray said wearily.  "It'll soon
+be over for both of us now.  Another day must see the last of it."
+
+He just turned his head to speak, and then went back to his old
+position, his eyes staring hopelessly across the silent waste.  His
+apathy seemed to rouse Lumley to a sort of frenzy again.  With an
+effort that forced a groan from him he dragged himself a pace forwards
+and plucked Gray by the sleeve.
+
+"You'd not sit there long if you knew what I know, you fool," he burst
+out.  "Didn't I tell you I found my bearings again?  Didn't you hear me
+say it?"
+
+His excitement communicated itself to Gray.  He turned round with a
+wild questioning glance.
+
+"Do you mean--For God's sake tell me the truth!  Do you know where we
+are?  Is that it?"
+
+He had not sprung up, but life and energy had come back to him.  His
+hands clenched, his shoulders straightened themselves.  He had it in
+him, he felt, to make a good fight for life yet.
+
+Lumley grew cool as he saw the hope leap into Gray's face.  He let go
+his sleeve and sank back against the hillock.
+
+"Suppose I do know," he said in the old mocking tone; "what then,
+partner?"
+
+Gray stared at him without speaking, and Lumley repeated the question:
+
+"What then, partner?"
+
+Gray was silent.  He had fixed his eyes on Lumley's face, as if his
+glance could drag out the truth from him.  Lumley gave him back glance
+for glance.  Then he suddenly bent down and drew a rough circle on the
+sand.  Gray drew close, bending towards the circle with intent eyes.
+
+"That's where we are, partner, d'ye see?" said Lumley, making a hole
+with his finger in the middle of the circle; "and here's the moon,"
+making another mark.  "You're follerin' me so far, eh?"
+
+"Yes, go on," said Gray breathlessly.
+
+Lumley gave him a quick look from under his bushy eyebrows, and then
+bent over the plan again.
+
+"Do you remember them trees we saw just afore we parted?" he said,
+looking on the ground as he spoke.  "'Twas the sight of them made me
+sure we was in the right road.  I made tracks for them when we parted
+company."
+
+He looked up furtively at Gray again.
+
+"You got that bit of a note I wrote you, partner?"
+
+Gray hardly heard the words.
+
+"Never mind that.  Go on, go on!" he hurried out with passionate
+eagerness.
+
+He was sure now that Lumley knew in which direction the trees lay, knew
+where water was to be obtained.
+
+Lumley looked into his face with a sardonic grin.  He had grown cooler
+and cooler as Gray's excitement rose.
+
+"What's the hurry, partner?" he said; "there's nobody as I knows on
+who's likely to interrupt us.  Well, as I was sayin', I made straight
+for them trees, but somehow I missed the track.  That cloudy weather
+put me out, you see; and 'twasn't till near sundown last night I got
+sight of them."
+
+He stopped, gave a rapid glance round the horizon, and then bent over
+the sand again.
+
+"They can't be far off then?" asked Gray, who had followed his glance
+with breathless impatience.
+
+"Too far off for me anyways," Lumley answered, with a quick upward look
+at him.  "I'd tried that afore I answered your call, partner.  Did you
+think 'twas me, now, when you got an answer?  I knew 'twas you in a
+minute."
+
+"I don't know; I forget.  What's the good of wasting time like this?"
+cried Gray, getting suddenly on his feet.  "Tell me which way to go.  I
+can do it now, but in another hour or two it will be too late.  Which
+way?  Be quick!"
+
+"It can't be more than half a dozen miles or so," returned Lumley in a
+slow reflective tone that almost drove Gray out of his senses with
+impatience.  "You make a bee-line for the trees, and then strike off to
+the left where the ridge is, and it's just over the ridge that there's
+water.  Yards of it, partner, all shining and sparkling in the
+moonlight.  Why, you could be close to it in an hour almost.  And
+there's no mistake about it; it isn't no salt-pan, but fresh water fit
+for a king to drink.  I've seen it afore me all the time I've been
+lyin' here.  Can't you see it, partner?"
+
+It was a maddening vision which Lumley's words had called up before
+Gray.  A cool stretch of limpid, shining water--there it lay before
+him, close to him.  He was kneeling down by it, plunging his fevered
+face into it, slaking the thirst that was burning his life away.  And
+it meant life, that cool, delicious draught; it meant more than
+life--it meant opportunity for atonement, for undoing, as far as in him
+lay, the wrong he had done, for proving his repentance a real and
+lasting one.
+
+Lumley was stooping over the sand, but his eyes were on Gray's face,
+and he saw all the eagerness in it.  He saw it, and interpreted it
+according to his own nature.  He broke into a harsh laugh, and with a
+sweep of one hand on the sand, he destroyed the rough chart he had made.
+
+"You'd like to start this minute, wouldn't you, partner? and the crows
+might make their meal off me.  I saw a flock of them nigh here
+yesterday; they're waiting for their feast.  You wouldn't like to
+disappoint them, would you?"
+
+Gray did not comprehend him in the least.
+
+"Don't waste time like this," he said imploringly; "let me be off at
+once.  I could be back to you by sunrise if I have good luck.  And you
+have a bottle about you, haven't you?  Let me have it.  And who
+knows?--I may fall in with the horse."
+
+Lumley laughed again.
+
+"So you may, partner, so you may.  'Twas the smell of the water that
+drove him frantic, I believe.  He made straight for it.  And there's
+the swag upon him, and the pistols, and the grub.  You'll be well set
+up if you come across the horse."
+
+A sudden terror had come upon Gray as he listened to this speech of
+Lumley's, and looked down upon his sneering, evil face.
+
+"You are playing with me!" he burst out, and the cold sweat stood out
+upon his brow as he said it.  "You know nothing of the water!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+FACING DEATH
+
+Lumley paused a moment before answering that last speech of Gray's.
+Then his tone was mild and smooth.
+
+"What's the good of talking like that, mate?  But just look there."  He
+pointed to his foot again as he spoke.  "Does it look as if 'twould
+carry me half a dozen miles?  Or a mile?  Or a couple of yards?  And
+I've hurt my side as well.  Broke a rib or two, maybe.  I tried
+crawlin' a while ago, but I couldn't even manage that.  I'm no better
+than a log--only fit for the crows, partner.  What's the good of water
+to me when I can't get at it?"
+
+His tone was so mild and reasonable that Gray felt no difficulty in
+answering him.
+
+"But half a dozen miles is nothing to me.  Give me that bottle.  I'll
+be back before sunrise."  He paused a moment, and then as he saw the
+expression in the other's face he added impetuously, "I swear it.  Good
+heavens, Lumley, you don't think I would desert you?  You don't think
+that?"
+
+The fury that had once or twice swept away Lumley's coolness had come
+upon him again, and he no longer cared to restrain it.  He lifted
+himself, shaking one clenched fist towards Gray.
+
+"Do you think I'd trust you for a single minute, you smooth-tongued
+hypocrite!" he screamed.  "You'd be glad enough to leave me lyin' here,
+wouldn't you?  But you're not going to get the chance, Mr. Gentleman
+Gray.  We'll stick together, like partners should.  The crows sha'n't
+feast on me alone, I'll tell you that."
+
+Gray made no attempt to answer him just then.  When Lumley stopped
+speaking and sank back with a groan of pain on the sand, Gray turned
+and walked away a few paces, and stood trying to get some mastery over
+the trembling sick misery that seemed ready to overpower him.  There
+was no anger in his heart against the man whose deep, laboured breaths
+he could still hear behind him.  It was only natural, Gray said to
+himself, that he should believe him capable of deserting him.  He had
+deserved to be thought willing to commit even such a baseness as that.
+
+Yet if he could not convince Lumley that he was to be trusted, there
+was nothing but death for both of them.  Gray had felt incapable of
+reasoning with his companion for the moment, incapable even of speech.
+He had felt ready to give up the struggle--to let it all end there.
+But as he stood fighting manfully with his weakness, strength came to
+him--power to will and act as a brave man should.  The far-off
+moon-clear skyline, the stars faintly shining in the upper blue, the
+solemn moonlight, the rustle of the wind in the dry grasses, all seemed
+to have a message for him--to whisper hope, to lift him out of himself,
+to give him courage to make another fight for life.
+
+He went back to Lumley, and sat down again where he had sat before.
+
+"Listen to me a moment, Lumley," he said.  "You say you know where
+water is?"
+
+"_Say_ I know?  I _do_ know, partner; you may lay your life to that,"
+responded Lumley harshly.
+
+He had been lying watching Gray, wondering what his next move would be.
+Gray's quiet manner was a surprise to him.
+
+"Very well, you do know.  Now, I will tell you what I am going to do.
+I shall wait a few moments for you to tell me where it lies--"
+
+"You may wait a hundred years if you like," broke in Lumley with a
+savage look.
+
+"And then I mean to set off to try and find it for myself," went on
+Gray, as if Lumley had not spoken.  "You have told me too much if you
+did not mean to tell me more.  I shall walk six miles in one direction,
+and if I do not get in sight of the trees, I shall walk back and try
+again.  I must hit upon them at last, you know."
+
+"You'd never do it," said Lumley scoffingly.  "You're nigh beat
+already.  You'd die in your tracks."
+
+"You're wrong there," returned Gray, with a quiet confidence that had
+its due effect on his companion.  "I shall not be walking aimlessly,
+you see, and in this moonlight there's no fear of going over the same
+ground again.  I am convinced I shall reach the water in time enough
+for myself.  It is you who will probably suffer for keeping back the
+information you possess."
+
+"What d'ye mean by that?" broke from Lumley fiercely.
+
+"Just this," said Gray, keeping his glance steadily fixed upon him: "if
+I could reach this water without delay I should be able to get back to
+you with a supply; but if I wear out my strength in getting there, I
+may not be able to get back to you in time.  Surely you can see that?"
+
+Lumley glared at him like a trapped beast.
+
+"You're just the one to come back, ain't you?" he exclaimed.  "A cove
+what murdered his own mate for a bit of flimsy.  You're one to be
+trusted, ain't you?"
+
+"You must believe that if you will," said Gray calmly.  His voice
+faltered as he went on after a momentary pause.  "I betrayed my
+mate--the truest, best mate man ever had; but I'll be true to you,
+Lumley, if you'll give me the chance.  I am not the man I was."
+
+The only answer Lumley vouchsafed to that was a harsh mocking laugh.
+Gray did not speak again, and they sat in silence for some moments,
+while Lumley dragged up his injured foot and rubbed it, keeping a
+furtive scrutiny on Gray's determined face.  When he had first heard
+Gray's call and answered it, he had not made up his mind as to whether
+he should trust him or no, and through their first talk he had wavered
+to and fro--now feeling ready to risk the chance that Gray would come
+back to him, now savagely vowing within himself that they should both
+die, almost within sight of the water that would be life to them,
+rather than Gray should alone escape.  At the last this savage mood had
+conquered, and he had felt it impossible to trust Gray with his
+precious secret.
+
+But now he began to see clearly enough that he had outwitted himself.
+The trees were so near, and such a striking landmark, that Gray was
+certain to find them if he had strength enough to persevere for some
+hours in the search; and that he had strength enough, Lumley could not
+but believe as he looked at his quiet resolute face.
+
+The silence continued for some moments.  It was broken by Gray.
+
+"I think I have given you time enough," he said, getting deliberately
+on his feet.  "Now, which is it to be, Lumley?  I shall start in
+another moment."
+
+A fierce oath escaped Lumley's lips.
+
+"I'll not be left to rot here," he snarled out.  "I'll walk it somehow.
+Give me your arm, partner."
+
+He made a clutch at it, and dragged himself slowly and painfully to his
+feet.  The agony of movement turned Lumley's face to the clammy hue of
+death, but he would not give way to the pain.  He essayed to walk
+forward, but after the first step Gray stood still.
+
+"You can't do it, Lumley.  It is madness to attempt it."
+
+Lumley glared at him for a moment, and then suddenly yielded.
+
+"You're right, partner; I'm beat.  You've got the best of it this time.
+Now help me back again, and I'll tell you all I know."
+
+Gray helped him back to the hillock, and put his foot in as comfortable
+a position as possible.
+
+"I'll be back to you before many hours are over, Lumley.  I'll make all
+the haste I can," he said, his tone softened by a sudden pity for the
+disabled man.
+
+Lumley looked up at him with implacable eyes.
+
+"Ill believe you when I see you, mate.  But you've bested me all round,
+and I've got to trust you, you see."
+
+He dragged out the flat bottle from his pocket, and held it up to Gray.
+
+"Turn your back on the moon and walk straight on; and if I ever see you
+again you're a bigger fool than I take you for."
+
+"I shall come back," Gray said briefly.
+
+He pocketed the bottle, and turned sharply away in the direction Lumley
+had pointed out.
+
+He was hardly conscious of fatigue as he pressed across the sandy
+waste.  Even the torture of thirst had grown less since hope had come
+to him.  He hurried on with strong, eager footsteps, expecting every
+moment to see the trees lift themselves against the sky.  Once the
+terrible thought came to him that Lumley had been deceiving him all the
+time, and his story of the water was a lie; but as he remembered
+Lumley's looks and words, and recalled the intensity of excitement in
+his face when he had left him, he knew that there was indeed water
+close at hand.  Then, again, when he seemed to have been walking for a
+long time, and the horizon still lay before him bare and unbroken, he
+began to suspect that Lumley had wilfully misled him, and the water lay
+in another direction.
+
+But it was almost immediately after this that his foot struck against a
+shrub, and looking down he saw he had come upon a banksia, a sign, as
+he was bushman enough to know, that better country was close ahead.
+The green leaves of the pretty little shrub were a welcome sight, and
+it was shortly after passing this that he saw the tops of the cypresses
+begin to show themselves against the sky-line, as the mast of a ship
+lifts first above the sea-line.
+
+Gray pushed on with renewed energy, and it was not long before he was
+close to the gloomy trees.  A cloud of birds, the crows Lumley had
+spoken of, rose from the trees as Gray approached, and flew screaming
+over his head.  He listened to their harsh voices with a shudder, and
+hastily struck away to the left, where a low ridge crossed the plain
+and hid what lay beyond.
+
+It took him some time to reach and breast the ridge, and his strength
+was nearly at an end when he at last gained the top and looked down on
+the shallow valley below.  He could not see the shining stretch of
+water Lumley had spoken of, the valley was too thickly covered with
+shrubby undergrowth for that.  But even in the moonlight Gray could see
+that this undergrowth was densely green, and that the trees that sprang
+above it were full of life and vigour.
+
+And as he descended the ridge he came upon a faint track through the
+underwood--a native track, Gray felt sure, and one that led to the
+water.  He hurried along it, piercing deeper and deeper into the dark
+recesses of the wood.  But the darkness had no terrors for Gray.  He
+felt the track under his feet, and pressed boldly onward, pushing away
+the interlacing boughs with his hands as he went.  And presently there
+came a faint light through the trees ahead, and in a few more steps he
+came out into a little open space, and saw the reflection of the
+moonlight in a round, deeply-fringed pool close before him.
+
+For the moment he saw nothing but the glimmering sheen of that water.
+He flung himself down with a cry, and plunged his face in it.  It was
+stagnant, it was thick with mud and floating weeds, but it was fresh,
+and to Gray it was purest nectar.  He had self-control enough left not
+to drink too much at once, but he lay by the side of the pool with
+hands and arms buried deep in it, utterly oblivious for the moment of
+everything but the mere physical delight the water brought to him.
+
+How long he lay there he never knew.  He could never recall that time
+except as a vague memory.  He could remember breaking out of the wood
+and seeing the little moonlit pool before him, but after that it was
+all confused.  What brought him back to clear consciousness was a
+movement somewhere on the other side of the pool, where the branches of
+a tree cast a flickering shadow on the grass.  Gray started up, dizzy
+and trembling; but his first glance showed him what it was.  His horse
+had found its way to the water before him, drawn by some sure and
+marvellous instinct, and now had drawn close again to the pool, gazing
+across at its master with mild recognizing eyes.
+
+Gray cautiously approached it, fearing it might start away; but it
+showed no desire to escape.  It arched its neck and whinnied joyfully
+when Gray came close.  It was evidently delighted to feel its master's
+hand again.  Gray stood by its side, patting it and speaking to it,
+finding strange delight in its joyful welcome.  The wallet containing
+the money still hung at the saddle, with the rough bag in which Lumley
+had carried the food.
+
+Gray, standing by the horse, took out some food and hurriedly ate it.
+He would not trust himself to sit down again; he felt that sleep might
+suddenly overcome him unawares.  When he had eaten a few morsels--he
+found it too difficult to swallow to be able to eat much--he carefully
+filled the bottle he carried, and the larger bottle that was in the bag
+with the food, drank a deep draught himself and allowed his horse to
+drink, and then, holding the horse by the bridle, he began to pick his
+way along the path by which he had come.
+
+The horse followed him quietly; it was only when they emerged from the
+wood and began to ascend the slope of the ridge that it showed the
+first signs of unwillingness.  Gray had to encourage it by voice and
+hand before he could prevail upon it to take the upward path.
+
+Gray was able to discern more clearly now how worn out the poor
+creature was by all it had gone through.  He felt an impulse once to
+let it have its way, and let it remain in the valley, but he dismissed
+the impulse at once.  The horse was too useful, too necessary to be
+dispensed with.
+
+They reached the brow of the ridge, and there Gray rested for a while.
+He had not mounted the horse, he had determined to go on leading it for
+some time longer at least.  He doubted if it had strength left to carry
+him.  He stood beside the horse with the bridle in his hand, and looked
+down upon the vast plain stretching away from the foot of the ridge.
+
+Up to that point Gray, since finding the horse, had acted
+instinctively, almost as an automaton might act.  He was so worn out,
+so numb with privation and fatigue, that he had not gone in thought
+beyond the present moment.  But now it was as if a cloud had lifted
+from his brain; he saw the whole position in a glance.  What had been
+his heart's dearest wish was fulfilled for him.  All he had coveted,
+all he had betrayed his mate Harding to get, was at last within his
+grasp.  He had but to turn his horse's head away from that silent,
+secret-keeping bush, and the gold was safely his.
+
+Gray did not thrust the thought from him; he let his mind dwell upon
+it, he regarded it steadily; for his eyes had been opened to see in
+what the real happiness and worth of life consisted.  Through suffering
+and humiliation he had learnt to measure things at their right value.
+In contact with a man who had deliberately chosen evil to be his good
+he had been taught what evil meant.  The temptation that had once been
+too strong for him was no longer a temptation.  He could see the full
+baseness of it now.  Better death, better open confession and a
+dishonoured name, than life and honour bought by treachery and guile.
+
+The trees stood up dark and funereal against the cloudless sky.  His
+path lay beneath them, and on towards the moonlit east.
+
+"Come, we must start, old fellow," Gray said to the reluctant horse,
+and he began to descend the slope of the ridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A GRIM SORT OF PICNIC.
+
+The dawn was breaking when Gray approached the spot where Lumley lay.
+He had walked the whole distance, for his horse was evidently too
+dead-beat to carry him.  He had had no difficulty in keeping to the
+right track.  Indeed he had calculated so well, that when he first
+stopped and "coo-eed" to make sure he was going right, Lumley's answer
+had come from a point straight ahead, and no considerable distance off.
+
+Lumley had seen him before that call.  Though he had told himself again
+and again that Gray would never come back, that it was too much in his
+interest to leave him there to die, his eyes had anxiously watched the
+western horizon.
+
+There had been something in Gray's look when he had spoken his last
+words that had impressed Lumley powerfully, and so it was not
+altogether a surprise to him when he at last could distinguish a dark,
+moving object against the sky.  The surprise came later when he was
+able to discern that Gray was leading his horse with him.
+
+A strange change came over Lumley's face when he realized that; his
+thin lips set themselves together, his brows contracted with a frown of
+anxious thought, his eyes grew like the stealthy, waiting eyes of a
+beast of prey which has not the strength to attack its victim in the
+open, but lurks in ambush and springs upon it unawares.
+
+With that look on his face he watched Gray approaching him through the
+clear rosy light of the sunrise, but it was gone before Gray came near
+enough to see his face clearly.  He made an effort at a smile of
+grateful welcome.
+
+"So you haven't left me to the crows, partner?" he said, raising
+himself on his elbow as he spoke to grasp the bottle Gray held out to
+him.  "I'm glad enough to see you, I can tell you that."
+
+Gray nodded silently, and then went back to the horse and took the bags
+from the saddle.  He brought them to the spot where Lumley was lying,
+and flung them down at his side.  He saw that Lumley had done little
+more than wet his lips from the bottle, but that he had torn some
+strips from the lining of his coat, and was proceeding to pour water on
+them with a careful hand.
+
+"You'd better let me do that for you," Gray said quietly.  "And there
+is more water, Lumley; take another pull.  I can fill the bottles again
+if they are empty before you can move."
+
+He had knelt down as he spoke, and taken the wet rags from Lumley's
+hand to bind round his injured foot.
+
+"The horse will have to carry me," said Lumley after watching Gray's
+bandaging for a moment.  "You found him by the water, didn't you,
+partner?"
+
+"Yes, close by it."
+
+Lumley eyed the horse with a quick furtive glance, and then looked at
+Gray again.
+
+"Did you tramp it all the way, partner?  I'd have let the horse save my
+legs if I'd been you."
+
+"He's dead beat," Gray said briefly.  "He had enough to carry."
+
+Lumley's eyes turned involuntarily to the bags at his side.  He had
+avoided looking at them since Gray had placed them by him.
+
+"'Tis a mercy we've got the grub all right, ain't it, partner?" he
+said.  "Though I'm blessed if I feel a bit peckish.  'Twas water I
+wanted."
+
+He drank a little from the bottle and corked it again.  Gray marvelled
+at the self-control he showed in taking so little.
+
+"I'd finish that bottle right away if I were you, Lumley," he said.
+"It's only a few mouthfuls after all.  I sha'n't want any more for a
+good time yet."
+
+Lumley took another sip and then put the bottle away from him.
+
+"'Tain't good to take too much at once, partner.  And so you found it
+pretty easy, eh?  Now, how far should you reckon it?"
+
+"Perhaps eight or nine miles."
+
+Gray had finished his bandaging, and had opened the bag containing the
+food.  As he sat down on the ground near Lumley he pushed the wallet of
+money from him with his elbow, but Lumley did not give it a glance.
+Neither he nor Gray had yet referred to it.
+
+"Here's the other bottle of water," Gray said, taking it out and
+sticking it in the sand.  "And here's the damper."  He took out some of
+the dry uninviting scraps and laid them close to Lumley.  "There's
+nothing else," he added, looking into the bag.
+
+Lumley gave a quick glance at the bag.
+
+"Didn't I put the pistols there, mate?  I haven't got 'em about me."
+He spoke carelessly.
+
+"Oh, they're here," Gray returned.  "But that's all the food left.
+Still, there's enough to last us for a day or two."
+
+"A kind of grim sort of picnic, isn't it?" said Lumley with a grin, as
+he took up a bit of damper.  He ate a few mouthfuls and then drew out
+the bottle for another sip.  "Here's to you, partner," he said with an
+awkward nod at Gray, "and good luck to both on us."
+
+Gray returned his nod, but made no answer in words.  Lumley put back
+the bottle again, and watched him for a moment from beneath his heavy
+brows.
+
+"You don't bear no malice, I hope, mate?" he said suddenly.
+
+Gray raised his heavy eyes and looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"I was pretty rough on you last night," went on Lumley in a persuasive,
+apologetic tone; "but I was drove up in a corner, you see.  I'd served
+you so bad that I reckoned you'd be glad enough to pay me out.  Though
+I'd have sent back for you from the nearest station, partner.  I meant
+that all along."
+
+Gray did not believe him, but he did not think it worth while to tell
+him so.
+
+"We'll let bygones be bygones, Lumley," he said in a friendly tone.
+"We've both had a hard time of it, but it's nearly over now, I hope.
+And you'll be able to trust me for the future."
+
+"So I shall, so I shall, partner," returned Lumley rapidly.  "'Tisn't
+many as would have come back--not after they'd got the horse and
+everything.  What a bit of luck 'twould have been for you if you'd come
+back and found me dead.  Didn't you hope you would, now?"
+
+"No," said Gray.  He got slowly up and looked round for a hillock that
+would give him a little shelter from the sun.  "I must get a sleep," he
+said.  "I shall be fit for nothing till I've had that.  I'm dizzy for
+want of it."
+
+Lumley was staring up at him with sudden fierce suspicion in his
+glance.  A new thought had struck him.  Ever since he had seen Gray
+with the horse he had been wondering what had made him come back.  Such
+refusal of good fortune seemed inexplicable to him.
+
+"You didn't come across the police, did you?" he said.  "You've not set
+a trap for me?"
+
+But even as he said it he saw how unfounded his suspicion was, and the
+sudden fierceness left his face, giving way to the anxious, apologetic
+look it had worn all through his late talk with Gray.
+
+"I haven't seen anyone," Gray said indifferently.
+
+He moved away as he spoke, and Lumley watched him settle himself for a
+sleep a little distance off.  Gray lay down with his back to him, under
+the scanty shade of a hillock, and drew his hat over his eyes.
+
+Lumley watched him intently till he had satisfied himself that he had
+fallen into a deep sleep.  Then he made a quick clutch at the wallet of
+money, and drew it close to him.  He hurriedly counted it over, giving
+furtive looks at Gray the while.  Once Gray moved, and he crushed the
+notes he held back into the bag, and pushed the bag from him.  But Gray
+did not move again, and after a pause he resumed his counting.  When he
+had satisfied himself that the money was all there he replaced it in
+the wallet, which he put back into its original position.
+
+He then, in the same cautious, hurried way, examined the pistols, and
+replaced them in the bag.  He left them there for a moment, then took
+one out again, and thrust it into his pocket.  But he changed his mind
+after a short consideration, took out the pistol from his pocket and
+replaced it in the bag.  Then he poured some water on the rags Gray had
+bound round his foot, took a sparing sip from the bottle, and having
+corked it and pushed it back into the sand, turned himself round to get
+a sleep; and almost at once sleep, heavy and dreamless, came to him.
+
+Many hours elapsed before either of the men awoke.  It was Gray who
+came back to consciousness first.  He was roused by the glare of the
+sun on his face, and sitting drowsily up he saw that it had travelled
+right across the sky while he slept, and was now declining towards the
+west.  His next glance showed him the horse languidly cropping the dry
+grass some few paces off, and Lumley asleep with one arm flung up above
+his head.
+
+But almost at once, before his eyes had travelled away from him, Lumley
+awoke.  He raised himself quickly, looking round him with a wild
+suspicious stare and thrusting out a hand to clutch the bag of money at
+his side.
+
+Gray got up and slowly approached him.
+
+"How is your foot?" he asked.
+
+"Bad," returned Lumley with a groan.
+
+He said no more, and Gray sat down by him in silence.  Lumley drew up
+his foot and began to wet the bandages again.
+
+"The pain's worse than ever," he muttered, without looking at Gray.
+
+"The water will do it good," replied Gray.
+
+He drew the bag of food towards him as he spoke.  "I believe I can eat
+something now," he said.  "That sleep has done me any amount of good."
+
+"How long have you been awake?" asked Lumley, with one of his quick
+glances.
+
+"Not more than two minutes.  I must have slept pretty nearly all day by
+the look of the sun."
+
+"That's just what you've done, partner," returned Lumley, without
+saying he had done the same.  He looked across at the horse.  "What do
+you think of him?" he asked, with a nod towards it.  "Doesn't look up
+to much in my opinion."
+
+"I think the sooner we can start the better," answered Gray.  "The poor
+old fellow can get nothing here.  What do you think?  Could you manage
+to mount him?"
+
+Lumley shook his head in decided negative.
+
+"Let's see what my foot's like to-morrow, partner.  I couldn't stand on
+it to-day to save my life."
+
+"The sooner we get off the better," Gray returned.
+
+Lumley made no reply to this.
+
+"You found the water just as I said, didn't you?" he asked presently.
+"'Tis years agone since I was in this part, but I was sure of it."
+
+"I expect the place is a good deal overgrown since then," replied Gray.
+"You can't see any water from the ridge, but there's a track leading to
+it.  I had no difficulty."
+
+Lumley listened intently, but did not pursue the subject of the water.
+
+"There's a station not so far off.  We'll have to get on there and rest
+a bit," was his next remark.
+
+"You know the way I suppose?" asked Gray.
+
+"I know it well enough.  You won't get lost again, I promise you."
+
+He was slowly rubbing his leg as he spoke, with his face turned from
+Gray.
+
+"Couldn't I find it by myself?" said Gray after a moment.  "They'd send
+a wagon back for you."
+
+Lumley gave a curious sort of chuckle.
+
+"We'll see, partner, we'll see.  We won't part company again unless
+we're forced to.  And while I think about it, there's a little point
+we've got to settle."  He stopped rubbing his leg, and turned his pale
+blue eyes full on Gray.  "What about this?"  He touched the wallet of
+money with his elbow.  "Share and share alike, eh?"
+
+Gray had been expecting a question of this sort.  He returned Lumley's
+glance as steadily as he could.
+
+"I shall tell the whole story to the first responsible person we meet,
+and hand the money over to him for safe keeping."
+
+"Which story are you goin' to tell, if I may make so bold as to ask?"
+said Lumley with an ugly smile.  "You've forgot, maybe, about the
+reward you meant to claim.  You told me that was all you wanted when
+first we met, you know, mate."
+
+"I told you a lie.  I meant to steal the money just as much as you
+did," returned Gray quietly.  He waited a moment, and then went
+nervously on.  "I need not mention your name to the authorities,
+Lumley, but I wish you could come to see as I do.  When a man's been
+face to face with death, as you and I have, he begins to learn the
+truth about himself."
+
+Gray's voice faltered before he stopped speaking, and he did not say
+all he had wished to say.  Lumley's cold mocking glance was too hard to
+bear.
+
+"You're as good as a parson, ain't you, partner?  But you've always
+took the virtuous line, ever since we've been together.  Why, the first
+time I set eyes on you you preached to me; and now you're at it again!
+I never did see such a chap for sermons."
+
+Gray's face grew scarlet.
+
+"You can't think worse of me than I do of myself," he returned; "but I
+mean what I say about the money, Lumley,--I mean every word of that."
+
+"Well, you're master, I s'pose," the other returned with an odd look
+that Gray remembered afterwards.  "But no tricks, mind; no going in for
+the reward when my back's turned, mate; though, p'r'aps, you'll not get
+the chance."
+
+"I think I've proved to you whether or not you can trust me now," said
+Gray, with just a touch of the old superiority in his tone.
+
+Lumley gave a short laugh.
+
+"Yes, you'd best stick to the virtuous line, partner.  You're not cut
+out for any other; you're too soft-hearted and afraid.  P'r'aps you
+thought my ghost would haunt you unless you came back--but I don't
+believe in ghosts, mate."
+
+Gray made some answer, he hardly knew what, and presently he got up and
+moved away.
+
+A shiver went over him once or twice as he stood talking to his horse,
+who had come up to him as he left Lumley.  He had involuntarily
+recalled Lumley's mocking, incredulous look when he had tried to speak
+of the change his sufferings had wrought in him.
+
+Next morning Lumley complained that his foot was worse than ever, and
+that it would be impossible for him to mount the horse that day.  Gray
+did his best to persuade him at least to try, but with no effect.  And
+Lumley positively declined to let Gray ride on to the station.
+
+"I shall be able to start to-morrow," he declared; "and we can do all
+right till then."
+
+There followed a day that Gray found very hard to bear.  The moments
+seemed to lengthen themselves out into hours, the hours into weeks--the
+day seemed as if it would never end.  It passed at last, and the night
+came--a lovely moonlight night like the last.
+
+Gray had not slept during the day, and he hardly expected to sleep
+during the night; he felt too feverishly eager for the morning.  But
+sometime after midnight he fell into a troubled, restless slumber.  It
+was still bright moonlight when he awoke; the east showed no sign of
+dawn.
+
+He woke suddenly with a strange sense of terror upon him.  He started
+up, and looked suspiciously round.  The horse was there, not far from
+the spot where he had last seen it, but Lumley was no longer lying
+against the hillock, and in his first hasty glance Gray failed to find
+him.  But a rough laugh broke on his ear.
+
+"Don't go off your head with fright, partner," called out Lumley, who
+was crouching on the ground close beside the horse.  "I've just been
+tryin' my strength a bit.  We can start at sunrise, if you like."
+
+Gray walked slowly across to him.
+
+"How did you manage to get here?" he said wonderingly.
+
+Lumley had got hold of the bridle of the horse, but he let it go as
+Gray approached.
+
+"Crawled on my hands and feet," he said.  "And a pretty hard bit of
+work it's been."
+
+Gray could see he was much exhausted.  His face was deathly pale, and
+there were great drops of sweat upon it, brought there by the pain he
+had gone through.  He had been trying to mount the horse by his unaided
+efforts, and had given up the attempt in despair just before Gray woke.
+But he did not tell Gray this, and Gray did not guess it.
+
+"You should have waited till I could help you," Gray said after a
+moment.  "I hardly understand how you can have got so far.  Your foot
+must be much better."
+
+He was still looking down on Lumley with a wondering look He saw that
+he had fastened the wallet of money round his shoulders, and was half
+lying upon it with one arm tightly grasping it.
+
+"P'r'aps you think I was tryin' to clear off?" said Lumley sulkily;
+"what would be the good of tryin' that.  You know the way now, don't
+you?  You'd be pretty soon on my tracks.  And, besides, I'm not much
+better than a log; I can't do without you yet, partner."
+
+Suspicion after suspicion flashed through Gray's mind, only to be
+dismissed at once.
+
+It was impossible, he said to himself, that Lumley could be meditating
+foul play against the man who had saved his life.  And, besides, it was
+as he said, he could not do without him.
+
+Lumley read his thoughts correctly enough.
+
+"You needn't stare at a cove like that," he said in the same sulky
+tone.  "You were so mighty anxious to get off I thought I'd try what I
+could do.  And we can start at sunrise, mate.  You'll not have much
+longer to spend in company with me; you'll be glad of that, won't you?
+I'm not good enough for the likes of you."
+
+"Couldn't we start before sunrise?" Gray said quietly; "it's almost as
+light as day now."
+
+"It'll be dark as pitch in another hour when the moon goes down.  And I
+want a rest," returned Lumley; "I'm not goin' to stir from here till
+sunrise for anybody, Mr. Gentleman Gray."
+
+His sulky rage reassured Gray more than smooth language would have
+done, as Lumley perhaps had guessed.
+
+"Very well, at sunrise, then," he said, and turned away to lie down
+again in his old place.
+
+The moon went down, and, as Lumley had said, there followed an hour of
+darkness in which the stars shone forth with undimmed splendour.
+
+Gray lay on the ground staring up at them.  A little way off Lumley was
+stealthily watching him, wondering what his thoughts were.  But Gray
+had forgotten Lumley--he was thinking of Harding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A RUTHLESS VILLAIN.
+
+It was just before sunrise that they started on their way; Lumley
+riding the horse, and Gray walking by the horse's side.  It was with
+great difficulty that Gray had managed to get his companion on the
+horse.  Lumley had made it more difficult than it need have been.  He
+was anxious that Gray should believe his foot was much worse than it
+really was.  The night before he had found himself quite capable of
+getting rapidly along on hands and feet, and even of standing for a
+moment, holding on by the horse.
+
+"Goes like a lamb, don't he?" he said to Gray as they went across the
+plain.  "No fear of his kicking up his heels again, is there?"
+
+"Not much," said Gray with a pitiful look at the poor worn-out creature.
+
+"Well, he won't run off with anything this time," said Lumley with a
+laugh; "I've taken care of that.  But he'll go straight for the water
+again, that's what he'll do, and carry me with him."
+
+Lumley spoke again after a moment
+
+"You might go after that wagon when we get to water, partner.  What do
+you think of that plan, eh?"
+
+"I think it's the best plan."
+
+"And you could take the money with you, couldn't you?  I suppose you
+wouldn't leave it with me?"
+
+"I had better take it," Gray answered heavily.
+
+Lumley darted a suspicious glance at him.
+
+"You're down in the mouth, ain't you, partner?  You'd better be advised
+by me."  He stopped the horse.  "Come, mate, let's strike a bargain.
+Share and share alike.  Half of it's a pretty pile for any cove.  And
+who'd be the wiser or the worse for it?  You go off to England and live
+like the gentleman you are.  I'll not blow on you, and nobody else
+knows a word about it.  Come, there's a fair offer; and I mean it, mind
+you."
+
+Gray looked steadily up at him.
+
+"It's no good, Lumley; nothing you could say would tempt me.  You're
+wasting your words."
+
+A sulky frown settled on Lumley's face.  He jerked on the horse.
+
+"Wastin' my words, am I?  I won't waste any more of 'em.  You can do as
+you like."
+
+They went on in silence for some time.  Gray broke it.
+
+"There are the trees," he said.
+
+Lumley gave a sudden start, and Gray saw his face change colour.
+
+"I didn't expect 'em so soon," he said huskily.  He stared at them with
+a gloomy troubled look, and then glanced at Gray, who was walking on a
+pace or two ahead with his head sunk on his breast.  Lumley's hand
+stole to his pocket.  There was a pistol there.  He gripped it, then
+let it go and dragged his hand away.
+
+"Look here, partner," he cried out hoarsely.
+
+Gray turned round.
+
+"You'll leave us the reward?  The bank will pay it in a jiffy, and glad
+enough.  You ain't goin' to be fool enough to lose us that?"
+
+Gray's face set in stern determination.
+
+"You are wasting your words, as I told you just now.  What claim have
+we to the reward?  They don't reward thieves for returning what they
+stole.  I have told you what I mean to do.  I shall do it."
+
+Lumley's hand had gone back to his pocket, and lay hidden there.  He
+did not speak again for some moments.  They were full in sight of the
+trees now, and to the left the low ridge had become visible.
+
+"We'd better strike off here, I think," said Gray.  "It will be easier
+for the horse a little lower down."
+
+They turned as he suggested.
+
+"It's pretty close now, ain't it?" asked Lumley huskily.
+
+"Just over the ridge.  The track was plain enough, even by moonlight,
+We can't miss it."
+
+Lumley made no answer, but the moment after he came to a stand-still.
+
+"What's the matter with the horse?" he exclaimed.  "It's dead lame."
+
+Gray turned round and looked at it
+
+"A stone in the hoof, perhaps," he said, bending down to take a look.
+
+The moment he stooped Lumley drew out his pistol and took aim at him.
+Gray's life was saved by the horse.  As he bent down and lifted up the
+hoof it made a sudden, violent swerve away from him.  It was at that
+moment Lumley pulled the trigger.  The bullet whistled past Gray's
+head, and he sprang up, dazed and horrified, but quite unhurt, and made
+a clutch at Lumley's arm.  But the arm was already lifted with the
+smoking pistol in it, and it descended with crushing force on Gray's
+upturned brow.  Lumley had no need to repeat the blow.  Gray fell back
+without a groan, and lay upon the earth as senseless and motionless as
+one already dead.  For the moment Lumley thought he was dead.
+
+[Illustration: A TREACHEROUS BLOW]
+
+"He brought it on himself," he muttered, as he stared down at the still
+figure.  And then added, "I'll make sure; it's safest."
+
+He levelled his pistol again, but he did not fire.  His arm fell by his
+side.  He could not fire.  An oath at his own weakness broke from his
+lips.  He thrust from him the pity that had taken the strength from his
+arm, and raised the pistol again.  He meant to fire this time.  But his
+opportunity was gone.  The horse had been straining at the reins ever
+since he had fired, and now with a sudden jerk it got its head free and
+bolted off at a wild gallop along the bottom of the ridge.  Lumley
+clutched at the reins again, but the horse was beyond control, and he
+had the utmost difficulty in keeping his seat.  He tried to turn the
+horse up the ridge, but the frantic animal rushed blindly on.  It was
+mad with terror.
+
+The blow had badly stunned Gray, and it was some time before he
+recovered consciousness.  Even then he could not recall clearly what
+had happened or where he was, but lay looking up at the sky, trying
+vainly to get his confused thoughts clear.
+
+After a few moments he raised himself slowly and languidly on his arm,
+and looked round him.  The trees were close at hand.  There were crows
+sitting on them watching him, and on the sand not far off him two or
+three more had stationed themselves.  Quite near them there lay
+something that Gray recognized with a thrill.  It was the pistol Lumley
+had dropped as the horse dashed away.
+
+Gray could remember it all now.  He lived over again that terrible
+moment when the bullet had sung past his ear, and he had leapt up to
+clutch Lumley's murderous arm.  But where was Lumley?
+
+Gray raised himself into a sitting posture as he asked himself that
+question, and looked up the ridge, half expecting to see Lumley just
+crossing it to the water below; but the ridge showed no signs of him or
+of the horse.  Yet as Gray looked and listened he could plainly hear
+the sound of galloping hoofs, just as he had heard them two nights
+before.
+
+He turned his head away from the ridge, and looked in the opposite
+direction.  And then with a cry he staggered to his feet.  The horse
+was coming rapidly towards him with Lumley clinging to it, his body
+thrown forwards, his arms clutching the horse's neck.
+
+"Help me!  Save me!  Stop the horse!" broke in shrill cries from the
+lips of the terrified man as he was whirled past Gray.
+
+Gray staggered forward and made a clutch at the hanging rein; but he
+might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind.  The horse dashed past
+him along the ridge, in the path it had traversed before, and then, as
+before, swerved aside and rushed away into the Bush.
+
+Gray sank back upon the ground, and covered his face with his hands.
+He could do nothing.
+
+It was not long before he heard the sound of the returning hoofs.  He
+struggled to his feet once more and looked.
+
+The horse was coming back on its path, swaying wildly from side to
+side, with foaming mouth and staring eyeballs; and this time no
+terrified, white-faced suppliant was clinging to its back shrieking out
+to Gray for help.  The horse was riderless!
+
+Riderless!  But what was that dark lifeless weight hanging by the
+stirrup, dragged across sand and bramble as the horse staggered on?  A
+sickening, paralysing fear took possession of Gray as he saw and knew.
+He stood with his eyes fixed upon it unable to move.
+
+The horse staggered on, but not far.  It suddenly gave a dreadful cry
+and fell.  There was a struggle, a moan, and then it lay still, as
+still as the dead body by its side.
+
+Gray drew near, drew close.  He looked down upon the face of the man
+who had deserted him, and attempted to murder him.  Then with
+difficulty he dragged the body from under the horse and straightened it
+out.  The wallet containing the money fell from the shoulders of the
+dead man as he did so, and opened, showing the gold and notes.  Gray
+did not even look at them.  He laid the body out in decent fashion, and
+covered the dreadful face.
+
+Then he stumbled away across the sands, caring not whither he went,
+caring only to get away from the spot where the dead man lay.  His eyes
+were burning and throbbing, there was a great singing in his ears.  He
+sank down again.  His limbs refused to carry him further.  Then came a
+sudden silence, a great darkness, and he knew no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+UNDER GREEN BOUGHS.
+
+When Gray came to himself again he was lying on a bank of green herbage
+under the shadow of a mighty tree.  The boughs kept up a pleasant
+murmuring.  Bright-hued birds were flitting to and fro, now in the
+shadow, now in the sunshine.  Through the waving boughs Gray could see
+a blue sky shining.
+
+It was all so beautiful, so unlike the scene on which his eyes had
+closed, that he could not believe it to be real.  It was a fevered
+dream, he said to himself; and presently he would awake and see the
+vast sun-baked plains stretching round him in their awful loneliness,
+and _that thing_ lying not far off beside the horse.
+
+But the dream lasted!  He slept and woke again, and still the trees
+waved above him and the birds fluttered to and fro.  He could even hear
+now the tinkling of bells not far off, such as oxen wear upon their
+heads.  He lifted himself on his elbow, for he was too weak to rise,
+and looked round him.  As he raised himself he saw a dog lying a few
+feet off, with its head between its paws, gazing at him with brown
+intelligent eyes.  Gray fell back on the bank.  The dog might have been
+Harding's dog.  The sight of him brought back the past again.  He
+remembered all he had done, and the wish rose in him that he had died
+like Lumley, that--
+
+But the thought was never finished, for at that moment a hand was laid
+upon his shoulder, a cheery voice sounded in his ears.  Gray dropped
+his hands and looked up with a wild glad cry.  It was Harding's self
+who stood at his side!--thinner, paler, with white streaks in his brown
+hair that were new to Gray, but Harding's very self.
+
+"Don't speak, don't try to speak, my lad," he said, sitting down by
+Gray and taking his hand.  Gray held that rough brown hand tight,
+putting his other hand over it, and looking into Harding's face with
+eyes that could scarce believe the reality of the joy that had come to
+him.  But memory came to cloud the rapture of that first moment.
+
+"I am not fit to touch your hands, Harding," he said in a low voice.
+But he did not attempt to let go his grasp, and Harding stretched out
+his other hand and laid it on his shoulder.
+
+"You mustn't talk, old fellow; you've been ill, you know.  No, I won't
+hear anything just now," he added, as Gray attempted to speak; "I'm
+spokesman just now.  Don't you want to know--"  He made a sudden,
+awkward stop, and then continued lamely:
+
+"I'm all right, you see.  Got picked up by some friendly black fellows.
+I'd hurt my leg, you see, and couldn't walk.  They carried me with them
+till I could tell them who I was.  I had a touch of fever, and was out
+of my head for a time; but they nursed me well.  I was off my head a
+while, you see, and they carried me along with 'em.  We were crossing a
+bit of the bush when I got myself again.  And I found--"  Harding
+stopped and cast a hasty, commiserating glance at Gray.  "Well, I found
+that map you'd drawn, and the letter on t'other side.  It didn't take
+me long to put two and two together, you know."
+
+Gray had turned from him and hidden his face.  Harding stretched out
+his hand again and put it on his shoulder.
+
+"Well, I got two of the trackers, clever fellows, and we hit upon your
+trail; and found you, you see."
+
+"Did you--did you--"  Gray could not finish.
+
+"We buried him," Harding said shortly.  "And I've got the money in the
+wagon.  We sent over to Ford's for a wagon.  You were close to water,
+lad, if you'd only known it."
+
+"I knew it," said Gray; "we had water."
+
+Harding looked inquiringly at him.
+
+"It's a long story," said Gray.  A shudder went over him, and he
+hurried on.  "He got out of the track when he left me, and I found him.
+The horse had thrown him, and he had hurt his foot, but he knew where
+the water was and I got it.  And I found the horse by the water."
+
+Harding put his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Did he give you that blow, lad?"
+
+Gray nodded, and Harding asked no more questions just then.
+
+Gray remained silent for a moment, then he turned his face to Harding.
+
+"I have got to tell you--"
+
+"I won't hear, lad.  You've said a lot in your fever, and I won't hear
+any more just now.  I can see how it's all happened."
+
+Watch was lying at his master's feet, and here he looked up with a
+short bark and a delighted wag of his tail.  Harding pulled his ears.
+"I don't know how Watch managed to live through it all; but he did--old
+faithful fellow!"  And then Harding's face turned scarlet.
+
+He would have got up to move away, but Gray held his hand fast.
+
+"The dog was faithful," he said in a low tone, "while I--  No; you must
+let me speak, Harding."
+
+"Not now, my lad; you are not fit for it."
+
+"I got your letter."
+
+Gray said the words firmly, almost roughly; then his voice faltered,
+and he went brokenly on:
+
+"God has been merciful to me, a sinner.  He sought me wandering, set me
+right; He showed me what I'd done when--when I thought it was too
+late."  He stopped a moment, then his voice strengthened itself.  "I
+had made up my mind to confess everything if ever I got back.  I little
+thought I should be able to confess it to you.  Do you understand me,
+Harding?  I got that letter."
+
+"My poor lad!"
+
+It was all Harding could say.
+
+"I did not deliberately say I would not go," went on Gray; "but it was
+just the same.  I put it off, and put it off; and then Watch
+disappeared, and I was _glad_.  You know why?"
+
+Harding nodded sadly.
+
+"It all seemed easy then.  If I had been successful--I don't know--I
+hope even then I might have found myself out; but I was sent into the
+wilderness--I was brought face to face with the fruits of sin."  Gray
+shuddered as he spoke.  "I saw myself as I was, Harding."
+
+"My poor lad!" said Harding again.
+
+There was silence between them for a while; then Gray spoke again.
+
+"I mean to live a different life, Harding.  You will have to help me.
+The first thing is to tell Mr. Morton everything."
+
+"Yes, lad, except one thing.  I won't have that told.  No, I insist on
+that, old fellow.  Let's forget it.  Promise me never to speak of it.
+I never shall.  You didn't mean to do it, you know."
+
+Gray shook his head.
+
+"About the money," went on Harding quickly.  "Well, you'd best tell Mr.
+Morton; and the bank can have it all right.  And we'll go back to the
+run, Gray, until Polly and the lads come.  Thank God, she had started
+before a letter could reach her.  She will have been spared this time
+of suspense."
+
+"Morton won't have me back," said Gray under his breath.
+
+"Yes, he will.  It's the best thing you can do, lad.  If you go off by
+yourself--"
+
+"If you will have me--if Morton will let me, it is what I most desire,"
+said Gray brokenly.
+
+"Then, that's all right," Harding said.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Bushranger's Secret, by Mrs. Henry Clarke
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUSHRANGER'S SECRET ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38791-8.txt or 38791-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/7/9/38791/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.