I cannot explain why just at that instant my heart gave a thump. There was nothing for it to thump about. Cumshaw, toiling up the slope, for all his woe-begone look, was the most ordinary figure imaginable, and there was nothing in the landscape to excite or rivet attention. It was a white dawn, and, though the rain had ceased long before, everything was still dull and grey. In the hollows the mist lingered and hung between us and the further view like a great white curtain. That and the advancing Albert Cumshaw completed the picture, a picture that was neither interesting nor sensational. Yet at the sight, as I've already stated, my heart jumped queerly and unaccountably. Do coming events really ever cast their shadows before them? Are we sometimes granted visions of "the things beyond the dome?" I do not know, and, even if I did, I would not care to express a definite opinion in my own case. I have seen things dangerously like coincidences happen so often in my own experience that I have grown chary of either affirming or denying that there is something more than chance at the bottom of it all. Still the fact remains that twice within twenty-four hours the same queer feeling crept over me, and on each occasion the course of events proved that it was premonition. But that is running a shade ahead of the story.

I ran down the slope to meet Cumshaw, and the first thing I noticed was that there was a great livid bruise across his right temple.

"You've got a nasty knock there on your forehead," I greeted him, in the casual self-contained fashion of the men who live in the open.

He answered me with one of those laughs that are nothing more than almost soundless chuckles.

"Is it hurting?" I enquired with a trace of anxiety in my voice.

"Hurting, hell!" he said impolitely. "Of course it is."

"How did you do it? Was it an accident?"

"I don't look as if I did it just for amusement, do I?" he snarled.

"It hasn't improved your temper, my lad," I said under my breath. Aloud I remarked: "We're all in much the same boat. Miss Drummond's had a stiff time of it, and I've got all my bruises where you can't see them, but I can assure you that they hurt all the same."

At the mention of Moira a shadow passed over his face. Frankly I could not quite understand his attitude towards her. At first I was rather of the opinion that he was in love with her, but latterly I hadn't been so sure, for he had had the decency to suppress his feelings once he found how the land lay. The mere mention of her name calmed him down wonderfully. He even seemed a little ashamed of his outbursts of temper.

"I might have remembered that I wasn't the only one in the party," he said. "But then I came a fearful cropper, and on top of it I've been out in the rain all night."

"We were a little luckier." I told him. "We found an overhang and that kept off most of the rain. All the same I wouldn't mind a chance of drying myself."

"And we're likely to get that," he said with some asperity. "All our goods are God knows how many miles behind. I've got a box of matches in my pocket, but they're just about as useful here as they would be at the bottom of the sea."

"Come now," I said, "it's not as bad as all that. We've got a lady to take care of, and we've got to shuffle our brains about a bit and see what we can do. We'll never get anywhere by standing still railing at our fate."

"Well, you're in charge, Carstairs," he told me. "It's up to you."

"It is," I admitted, "and as the first step towards success I might point out to you that the mist is lifting."

He wheeled round at that with greater agility than I expected, seeing that by his own account he was still feeling pretty dicky. The mist was lifting in truth, and yellow spears of sunlight were thrusting themselves through like hat pins run through cloth.

"It'll be the better part of half an hour before the place's clear," he asserted, with one eye cocked at the sky and the other watching me.

"In the meanwhile we'd better go back to Miss Drummond and set her mind at rest," I suggested.

He trudged along at my elbow with a step that lacked its usual buoyancy, but the sidelong glances I stole at him every now and then showed me that he was fast recovering his spirits. The bruise on his forehead, seen now close at hand and in a better light, was not the fearsome thing I had at first taken it to be. True, it lent him an air of general disrepute, but then none of us were quite fit for the drawing-room. Even Moira, sheltered as she had been, showed very much the worse for wear. She greeted Cumshaw with a cheery smile, the bravest thing about her I thought, and a ready question as to his adventures. But he could tell her little more than that he had gone over the edge with us and rolled away until he brought up against the stone or whatever it was that had bruised his face so nicely. Our own story, what there was of it, was soon told, and a few glances about us showed that in the murk of the night and rain we had missed our footing and shot off the track a dozen feet or so to the level ground below. Above us waved the tall shapes of kingly gums, and below us lay vast spaces of bracken. Beyond that we could form little idea as to our position, though the mist was slowly drifting away now.

"The best thing to do, I suppose," I remarked, "is to get back to last night's camping-place and see what we can find of the stores. Of course we shouldn't have left them, but it's no use being wise after the event. We've to go back as quick as we can now, and maybe we can dig up something warm. That's supposing that everything isn't too wet to be used."

"As I remarked before, it's up to you," Cumshaw threw at me. "Lead on, Carstairs."

"If you can show me any way back to the main track, I'll lead on with pleasure," I told him. "There's none visible that I can see, and I don't fancy that my eyes are over dull."

Cumshaw said something under his breath, but before I could drop on him for it Moira interposed. "How about walking round at the foot of this ridge and seeing where it'll lead us to?" she suggested.

"That's as fine a plan as any," I answered. "We'll try it."

We did. We sauntered along listlessly for the best part of an hour, and then it struck me all of a sudden that we were rising rapidly.

"We're on the wrong track," I said, stopping short. "We didn't come down as steep a slope as this last night."

"You're right there, Carstairs. We didn't," Cumshaw said, stopping short and looking about him with a puzzled air.

"Why not keep right on?" Moira advised. "It's just possible that we're working back to the track."

"We'll give it a chance," I said, after chewing the suggestion over in silence for a few minutes. "We'll keep on for ten minutes or so, and if it gets any worse we can always go back."

The ground became rougher at every step and finally in despair I called a halt. The sun was well up by this and the mist had cleared away from the hills, though filmy vapors still lingered in what I knew must be the hollows. In front was a causeway, strewn with boulders, and beyond that what I took to be a sea of wattles. I could see no use in progressing further in that direction, and I said so as succinctly as I could. Cumshaw was inclined to argue, but the consensus of opinion was against him. The outcome of it was that we decided to retrace our steps. Before we did so I suggested looking about for something that would give us an indication of our present position.

I stumbled on it quite by accident. Another step further and I would have fallen down the funnel-shaped opening that gaped at my feet. I drew back just in time to save myself, and for the second time that morning my heart gave a jump. To think that we had gone so close to missing it altogether! The thing, so to speak, had lain at our feet all the time. I turned about and searched the landscape for my companions. Moira was visible in the near distance; the wattles had swallowed Cumshaw.

"Cumshaw, Moira, I've found it!" I called at the top of my voice.

Moira whipped round at the sound of my voice. I waved to her and she came running towards me. A second later I saw Cumshaw come out of the shadows, and I yelled at him with all the power of my lungs. I don't know what he must have thought of the yelling, dancing, frantically waving figure that caught his eye. He must have fancied for a moment that I had gone mad. Then, in a flash, so he says, the truth dawned on him, and he in his turn sprinted towards me, the one idea uppermost in his mind being that the valley must have been found. At the same instant my soul was singing "Eureka!" and Moira was weeping and laughing at the same time.

"Cumshaw," I cried, as he came within speaking distance, "if that's not the funnel that your father and Bradby left the valley by you can call me a goggle-eyed Chinaman."

And then somehow we all seemed to be talking together.

"That must be the valley down under the wattles."

"I knew we'd find it."

"It only shows that one should never give in."

"If we hadn't fallen down that slope last night...."

"If I hadn't kept going when you all wanted to turn back, you mean."

"It's found now and that's the best part of it."

I must confess that I lost my head just as the others did. I should have known better, I suppose, than to go yelling out our discovery at the top of my lungs, but knowing's one thing and doing's altogether different. I've seen miners on the Lakekamu shouting themselves hoarse over even less of a discovery, seasoned men who knew how and when to hold their tongues. Could tyros like ourselves be blamed for what we did? I don't think so.

"That's the funnel right enough," Cumshaw said. "There can't possibly be two of the same kind in the same district. I'm sure this is the one; it's been described too often to me for there to be any mistake about it. But what's puzzling me is the valley. There doesn't seem to be much of one here. All I can see is wattles, wattles whichever way I look."

"There's one way to settle it," I said in an aside to him, and I looked at Moira.

He gathered from my warning glance that I had something to say I didn't want her to hear, so he shifted out of earshot with me.

"There's things you don't want a girl to see," I explained as we walked off; "but if this is the valley the skeletons of those two horses should be down there somewhere," and I pointed over the edge of the funnel.

"I'll go down," he said with alacrity. "I guess it's my go. It's time I took some sort of a risk."

"You surely don't expect there'll be anything wrong?" I queried.

"I can't say," he answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "Anyway, I think you'd better get back to Miss Drummond. She's looking over this way, and in a minute or so she'll be asking awkward questions, if you don't go and tell her something."

"All right," I agreed. "Look as slippy as you can, but be careful. An injured man is always more or less of a nuisance, you know."

He grinned cheerfully at that, and then, without another word, turned on his heel and made off towards the funnel. I walked back to Moira.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked me suspiciously. "What's Mr. Cumshaw after?"

"He's going down through that funnel-shaped thing," I answered. "He wants to see what's at the end of it."

The golden-brown eyes regarded me thoughtfully for a space and then: "Why didn't you go yourself instead of sending him?" she asked.

"It was his suggestion," I said defensively. "He seemed to think he had a better right than anyone else, so I didn't argue with him about it. I let him go."

"We could all have gone," she hinted.

"We could have," I agreed, "but we didn't."

In the meantime Cumshaw had lowered himself carefully down into the opening, felt about a bit with his feet, found a foothold, and then swung easily down from projecting ledge to projecting ledge. He emerged quite unexpectedly into a tangled mass of wattle. That puzzled him much, as it had puzzled me a few minutes previously; the elder Cumshaw's tale contained no mention of wattle save the golden barrier at the further side of the valley. Yet here was wattle as far as the eye could reach. It looked as if a generous scientist, like the man in H. G. Wells' "Food of the Gods," had let loose some power capable of forcing on this abnormal growth. The valley itself was in an undulating sea of vegetation. Had it been early in September the place would have been a vast expanse of golden glory, but as it was late March the dominant color note was that of grey-green. Under the circumstances it was as clear as daylight how the elder man had missed the place. It was buried under the rank growth, and all definable features, as we learnt later—everything that could be used as a leading mark—had disappeared or been swamped by the wattles. The bushes were not so thick about the lower entrance to the funnel as to impede Cumshaw's movements, and so he began to look about him in the hope of locating the one thing that would definitely identify the place. The horses had been shot close to the wall of rock, and it was a practical certainty that some trace of their bodies would be found in the vicinity. Ten minutes' close search brought to light a pile of bones that might or might not be those of the missing animals—Cumshaw had no knowledge of anatomical structure and so did not feel quite clear on that point—but the remarkable feature about them in his eyes was that they were all more or less blackened, and amongst them he found a heap of lime-dust, which he took to be bones reduced to their elemental form by the application of great heat. Still he felt justified in regarding the identity of the place as being sufficiently established, and without wasting any more time he returned the way he had come.

"There's no doubt about it," I agreed when I heard his tale. "This is the valley right enough. I vote on going down there at once. The old hut can't be far away, and it'll be somewhere for us to camp in and fix up our clothes. And that reminds me that one of us'll have to go back for our stores and extra clothes. There's no need for both of us to go; one will do. However that can wait until we find the hut."

"I'm not hungry," Moira said, "and I think my clothes are practically dry. The sun's coming out now, and I don't see why we should feel any the worse for last night's adventures if we only take reasonable care of ourselves."

"If that's the case," I remarked, "let us go down by all means."

I sent Cumshaw down first, as he was the only one of us who was familiar with the place, and then I handed Moira down to him. Or, rather, I helped her down; Moira at the best of times is no light weight. For a moment we stood blinking at the entrance to the funnel, and then Moira caught my arm in her impulsive way and cried, "Come on, Jim! Let's enter into Paradise!"

I smiled at her quaintness and made to follow her, but Cumshaw interposed quickly. "Not that way," he said. "This is the way." He glanced at me as he spoke, and I realised that he was taking us by a path that would lead us away from the mouldering bones.

The ground was rough underfoot, and the matted cover of vegetation that effectually hid stray boulders from view made it all the worse. In places the wattle grew over our heads in a profusion that was almost tropical, and more than once we would have lost our way had I not taken our bearings at the start, and thus was able to guide the party by means of my pocket-compass.

"In your father's day there was a wood hereabouts," I said to Cumshaw presently. "There doesn't seem to be one now."

"There doesn't," he said. "Can you understand how practically the entire physical features of the place have changed so much?"

"Frankly I can't. But they apparently have, and that's about all we can say. We'll just have to keep our eyes open and trust to luck."

"Our luck seems to have held good so far," Moira said, turning to me with high hope in her face.

"Mind your footing," I said warningly. "You want to watch every inch of the way. There's all sorts of rocks and boulders under this stuff."

"I'll be careful," she smiled, and scarcely were the words out of her mouth than her foot caught in something. She pitched forward on her face before I could spring to her assistance. I lifted her up carefully, but she seemed none the worse for her fall.

"I don't know what it was that tripped me," she confided. "It wasn't a boulder or anything of the sort. I think it was a log of wood, yet my foot seemed to catch underneath it."

I was on the point of offering a suggestion, but something held me silent, and instead I dropped down on my knees and felt feverishly in the undergrowth. Of course it was a silly thing to do—there might have been snakes and all manner of noxious crawling things there—but I didn't think of that at the time. I was too intent on solving the riddle. My hand touched something.... I straightened up and faced the others.

"Moira and Cumshaw," I said. "I've found the hut. That's a piece of it there." Bending down, I dragged to light a rough-hewn beam that possibly had been the threshold plank. It was weather-worn, and in places the fungus had grown thickly on it; but I could see for all that that it had been warped and twisted and charred in the blaze of a fire. Three pairs of eyes met across the plank, and three lips put the same idea into words.

"There's been a fire here," we said in chorus.

"And that," I added on my own account, for the benefit of the others who had not jumped to the same conclusion as I had, "and that explains everything that's puzzled us since we entered the valley. There's been a bush fire here at some period during the last twenty years. It destroyed the hut, it burnt down the wood, and it made that pile of lime you found, Cumshaw."

"What pile was that?" Moira queried quickly. "I didn't see any."

"Mr. Cumshaw passed a pile in the bushes as we came along," I said off-handedly. "The heat must have rendered the stones down."

She accepted my explanation at its face value.

"No wonder the place remained hidden," I ran on. "If you'll look over east, where there should be a lone tree, you won't find any. It's wattle everywhere you look. The fire cleared out all the trees and forced the wattle on in their place. If you came by here on any side but the one we came by you'd take this to be just an ordinary hollow full of wattle."

"You're talking nothing else but wattle," Cumshaw interrupted. "What has the wattle to do with the fire anyway?"

"Why, don't you see?" I cried. "Without the fire there wouldn't have been any wattle here. The seed'll lie dormant in the ground for years sometimes; it takes great heat to germinate them. That's why wattle always springs up in profusion after there's been a bush fire. The same thing happens with grass, the coarser kinds, though to a lesser extent."

"I see," he said gravely. "It means that we are back just where we began."

"It doesn't mean anything of the sort," I said quickly. "All this is in our favor. We're better off than we were before."

"I don't see how that is," he replied.

"But it is," I persisted, "and I'll show you why when the time comes. And now there's plenty to be done. One of us has to go back for the provisions that we left behind last night, and the other's got to stop here with Miss Drummond and run up a bit of a bark humpy that'll keep off the wind and won't let the rain through. Now if you're as hungry as I am you'll understand just how pressing the need of that food is. It's you or I, Cumshaw. Which of us is to go?"

"I'll toss you," Cumshaw offered.

I nodded, and he drew a coin from out his pocket and spun it in the air.

"Heads!" I called.

We bent down over it. "It's tail," said Cumshaw. "I go back for the food," I said.

I straightened up and spoke seriously to the pair of them. "Cumshaw," I said, "do as much as you can while I'm away, and keep one eye on the horizon all the time. You must remember that there's always danger about; the luck's been with us so far, but it may turn any minute, and our rivals are just the sort of men who'd come on you suddenly and shoot before you could say 'Jack Robinson.' And as for you, Moira, keep out of harm's way and do what you can towards keeping a good lookout. I'm going across to the other side, as I reckon that we must have travelled round the valley last night."

"You'll be careful, won't you, Jim, dear?" Moira whispered.

"Aren't I always careful?" I said. "It's you that's got to watch out. Now, one kiss, dear. I'll be back as soon as I can possibly manage it."

Five minutes later I had gained the further wall of the valley, and found that, with the help of the bushes, it was the easiest thing imaginable for an active man like myself to haul himself up over the ridge and drop on the track which Abel Cumshaw and the late Mr. Bradby had trodden so many years before. I took my bearings carefully, then snapped up my pocket-compass and set off down the road with as jaunty a swing as I was capable of. I had long got over my stiffness, and now that the sun was shining brightly I began to feel more confident than ever that all was going well. If it had not been for the terrible way in which the dread purpose of our rivals had been brought home to us already I would have felt absolutely at ease. As it was I did not let my rosy anticipations of the future interfere at all with my sense of caution.