Waroona Downs was fifteen miles from Waroona township by the road, and ten as the crow flies, the intrusion of a rocky and precipitous range making it impossible to take the shorter and more direct route. One had perforce to use the road, and the road turned and twisted where the level plains were broken by the range, passing, at one stage, through a narrow gorge hemmed in by steep, rock-strewn heights, on which a growth of stunted gums flourished sufficiently to hide the jagged boulders from the road below.

Half-way through the gorge a stream, having its source in a series of springs hidden among the tumbled rocks, swept across the track in a shallow ford. The road dipped to it on both sides, the constant flow of water having stripped away the soil and left a barrier of naked rock which dammed back the stream to form a wide pool sheltered among the hills and fringed by a more luxurious growth of vegetation than clothed the heights above.

The last gleam of the setting sun shed a ruddy tinge on the topmost branches of the trees as Durham reached where the road dipped to the stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, the silence was unbroken.

Durham reined in his horse and sat loosely in his saddle as his glance swept over the tangled masses of undergrowth, the tumbled boulders peeping here and there from amid the shadows, the precipitous sides of the pass, and the broken ruggedness of the ground beyond. But it was not an appreciation of the picturesque, nor a recognition of the poetry in landscape which held him. He saw in the place only such a spot as the men concerned in the robbery of the bank would select for hiding their booty. Within that maze of rock and tree and mountain, how many nooks there must be to serve the purpose.

Had he been occupied only with the matter of the robbery, he would have started there and then to satisfy himself whether his surmise was correct, and whether the missing thousands were not lying perhaps a few yards away, hidden among the undergrowth and boulders. But there was more than the robbery in his mind; it was not alone to make inquiries on the subject that he had ridden away on a journey Brennan could have accomplished equally well. There was a much more personal note in the affair.

Durham was in love, and with a woman he had only met once, and of whom he knew nothing more than her name.

Travelling one day by coach, he had, for a fellow-passenger, a woman. A dozen signs showed him that she was a new arrival in the country, unused to colonial ways, unversed in colonial methods. It was natural for him, at such places as they stopped for meals, to extend to her a share of the attention his official position secured for him. It was also natural for him to drift into conversation with her.

The companion of his coaching experience was named Burke—Nora Burke—she had told him. Nora Burke was one of the victims of the bank robbery, and, apparently, the last person who had had anything to say to the vanished bank manager. It was more to ascertain whether the heroine of the coach journey were the same as the owner of Waroona Downs, than to learn what Eustace had or had not said, that Durham determined to ride out to the station.

Even as his glance wandered over the picturesque scene before him, he was impatient to press on—five miles had yet to be covered before he reached Waroona Downs. He pulled the bridle with a jerk and rode steadily until he was clear of the range. Then he put his horse at a gallop and kept the pace till he saw the gleam of a light from the window of a house set back from the road. In the dusk he could not make out all the detail of the place, but Brennan told him the homestead was the first house he would come to after clearing the range.

He swung on to the side track leading to the house. As he came up to it he saw the figure of a woman silhouetted against the light.

"Is this Mrs. Burke's?" he called out.

"And if it is, what might you want?"

His heart leaped as he heard the answer—despite the sharp ring, sharp almost to harshness, he recognised the voice. It was that of the companion of his coach journey.

A low verandah, about three feet from the ground, ran along the front of the house. It was on the verandah the woman stood. Durham sprang from the saddle, slipped his bridle over a post, and stepped up the short flight of stairs.

The woman had drawn back into the shadow beyond the window. As he advanced, the light from the lamp within fell upon him, revealing to her the uniform he wore.

With a soft, melodious laugh she came forward.

"Why didn't you say you were a trooper?" she said. "I thought——"

"I am Sub-Inspector Durham," he said quickly.

"Oh, indeed," she replied.

She met his glance without a suggestion of recognition in her own.

"I have ridden out to ask you one or two questions in regard to the robbery at the bank, of which I understand you have heard," he said.

"Ask me questions? And pray what have I to do with the robbery, save that I am an unfortunate victim of the dishonesty of men you and the rest of the police ought to be chasing at this very moment? Ask me questions? It's me who has need to ask them of you. Where are my stolen papers? Where——"

"If you will give me your assistance by answering the few questions I wish to ask you, I have no doubt that your papers, and all the rest of the stolen property, will very soon be recovered," Durham said. "I understand you saw Mr. Eustace this forenoon. Will you tell me——"

"Ask Mr. Eustace himself," she retorted. "He can tell you what I said."

She stood in front of him, with her hands hanging down hidden in the folds of her dress.

"I will not detain you long. I have been travelling since early to-day and have to ride back to the township to-night."

"Travelling all day? Sure you must be tired!" she exclaimed. "Come inside and rest—this affair has so upset me I'm forgetting that Irish hospitality ought to be the first rule for Irish folk wherever they may happen to be. Come in, come in."

She led the way into the room where the lamp was burning. As she stepped in through the long open window Durham saw she was carrying a heavy revolver in the half-hidden hand.

"You were evidently prepared for emergencies," he said.

She laughed as she laid the weapon on the table.

"After what happened to-day, Mr. Durham, I'm all nerves. When I heard you riding to the house I was frightened lest it should be some more of the scoundrels coming to see what else they could rob from me. You see, I'm all alone here except for poor old Patsy Malone—he's just a poor half-witted fool who was with my husband and my husband's father before him, and he thinks, poor old creature, that wherever I go he has to go too. I had to bring him out here with me to save the scandal he would have made. Sure, he's harmless enough anywhere, but what could he do if some of those thieving scoundrels rode up here and robbed me of the last few papers and things those bank rascals have not yet had the chance of stealing? But sit down, Mr. Durham, sit down. I'll tell the old fool to get you some tea—a cup won't harm you after your long ride. And maybe you'll take just a bit of something? You'll be hungry."

She was out of the room before Durham could answer, but he heard her calling for her ancient retainer and giving him instructions with the same volubility that she had shown when speaking to him.

"It won't be a minute, Mr. Durham. Luckily the fire was still in, for Patsy was only finished washing the dishes scarcely five minutes ago. And what is the news from the township? Have they caught the robbers yet? Or do you think they have very far to look for them if they really want the man who did it? Now there's a foolish thing for me to say! I forgot. Of course, it's yourself that has come up to catch him. You'll forgive me, Mr. Durham, but I can assure you I never had so great a shock to my nerves as I had to-day. What's to become of me now that all those documents are gone? You see, when I came away my solicitor in Dublin—you see, he was my husband's solicitor and his father's solicitor before him, so, as you may judge, he is an old man, though not so old as old Patsy out there—but, as I was saying, he said——"

She commenced speaking as she entered the room, continued as she walked to the table and sat down, and appeared to Durham as though she were going on indefinitely.

"Will you pardon me one moment," he said. "I left my horse at——"

"Of course, of course," she cried, starting up. "Sure the poor beast will be tired, too, and hungry. Wait, wait, Mr. Durham, I'll send old Patsy——"

"Oh, no, don't trouble. I'll just take the saddle off and turn him into the yard. It's Brennan's horse and had a feed before we started."

He was out on the verandah before she could leave the room.

When he returned, Mrs. Burke was watching a bent and decrepit-looking old man laying the cloth. He gave a furtive glance at Durham as he entered the room.

"Go on with your work, Patsy, go on, and don't dawdle. Don't I tell you Mr. Durham is both tired and hungry? Never mind looking at folk. Go on now."

Patsy mumbled an inaudible reply as he stooped over the table.

"You must bear with him, Mr. Durham," she said as soon as the old man had left the room. "He's been so long with the Burke family he feels he's entitled to know everyone who comes into the place. You see what a fragile old creature he is—and he's all I've got in the place if some of those scoundrels come and attack us."

She jumped out of her seat and paced from one end of the room to the other.

"Sure I was a fool," she exclaimed. "I ought to have asked Brennan to come out. He's half Irish, leastways he's Irish born in Australia, and he'd have understood."

"I don't think you need be afraid, Mrs. Burke," Durham said quietly. "You're not likely to be troubled."

"Oh, you don't know. You're a great strong man and able to fight a dozen maybe. But a lonely woman—haven't they got my papers, and won't they think that there's a lot more in the house and money too, maybe, and jewels? And what is there to keep them from robbing the place and burning it down over our heads, with only that poor old fool out there and a poor weak woman like myself to face?"

He looked at her as she paced to and fro, her handsome figure moving with the grace of a Delilah and her wonderful eyes flashing a greater eloquence than her tongue, as her glance from time to time caught his.

"You need not be afraid," he repeated. "Those responsible for the robbery of the bank will not be anxious to appear anywhere in public for some time."

She stood in the centre of the room where the full glare of the lamp fell upon her.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, "I don't know. I would not trust them. Besides——"

"Besides what?"

"Well, I was thinking that nobody knows who they are for certain, and what difference would it make to them, or to any of us, if they rode down the main street of Waroona under the very noses of yourself and all the troopers in Australia?"

"That is scarcely likely, Mrs. Burke."

"I don't know," she repeated. "You don't know who they are, or you would have them inside the walls of the lock-up. Now tell me, have you any idea?"

"I cannot tell you that, Mrs. Burke. What I can tell you is to put out of your mind entirely any fear that they will pay you a visit."

She shook her head and resumed her walk to and fro.

"Suppose they come?" she exclaimed, halting at the table opposite to him. "Suppose they come at dead of night? I might be murdered in my bed while I was asleep and only know it when I woke up to find myself killed."

Durham laughed.

"It's true, and you know it, Mr. Durham. Sure I never was so shaken and nervous as I am to-night! Could you send Brennan out when you return to the township?"

"I am afraid that is impossible," he said.

"But why? Sure the fellow has nothing to do but sleep, and he may as well sleep here as in his own quarters."

"He is on duty to-night."

"On duty? Now that the bank's robbed, I suppose he's guarding it? The horse is stolen, so you lock the door of the empty stable, Mr. Durham; but where there's a chance of another horse being stolen you let it look after itself as best it may. And that's what you call doing your duty and earning the money we poor unfortunate taxpayers have to provide for you!"

"I am afraid I cannot discuss that matter with you, Mrs. Burke," he said coldly.

"No!" she retorted hotly. "No, you can't. All you can do is to put the only constable in the place to guard an empty bank——"

"There is a reason why Brennan should remain in the township to-night. It is therefore quite impossible for him to come out here—as well as being unnecessary."

She flounced round and resumed her rapid striding until old Patsy appeared with the tea.

"Make haste, now, Patsy, make haste!" she exclaimed. "Sure you are the slowest old fool ever set on the earth to delay and keep people waiting."

The old man, mumbling to himself, set the meal and left the room.

"Now, Mr. Durham, just make yourself at home with such scant hospitality as I can show you. If it was in Ireland, sure I'd give you a meal worth the eating, but here, with me not knowing whether I'm to own this place or not, and without a soul about it save useless old Patsy to do a hand's turn, you'll understand it's only a poor pot-luck sort of spread at the best I can offer. But such as it is, it is offered with a free heart, though you are going to leave me to be murdered by the scoundrels whenever they like to come."

"You will laugh at your fears to-morrow," Durham said as he drew up to the table.

"They are not fears, Mr. Durham. You don't know; you're not Irish, and so don't understand, but Brennan would. It's not fear. It's what we term presentiment. Not all the Irish have it, but only some of them. It's my misfortune to be one of them. I have it. Sure I was tortured the whole of last night, what with anxiety and sleeplessness and worry, and all through that wretched bank affair. It was presentiment. I tried to laugh myself out of it, but as soon as I got into the township this very morning, what did I hear? Of course, you know. Well, now I have just the same feeling that to-night there's to be more dirty work by those thieving scoundrels, and it's here they're coming this time, here—and I'm to be left to their mercy, just one poor weak, defenceless woman and an old half-witted fool of a man. It makes me just——"

She left her sentence uncompleted as she turned away, with a break in her voice, and stood by the open window leading out on to the verandah. As Durham glanced at her he saw her shoulders heave and her hands convulsively clasp.

Through the chill of her forgetfulness the love impulse surged.

"If you are really so distressed about the matter," he said quickly, "if you really fear you will be attacked to-night, I will stay here till the morning."

With a magnificent gesture she faced round from the window and came swiftly towards him, her eyes sparkling, her lips wreathed in a happy smile.

"Oh, what a weight of care you have taken from my mind!" she cried. "I can rest now in peace and comfort without thinking that every moment may be my last on earth."

"But if they come they may kill me. What then?" Durham asked, with a smile which had more than amusement in it.

She flashed her brilliant glance at him, raising her eyes quickly to his and drooping them slowly behind the shelter of the dark, heavy lashes.

"No," she said softly. "You are too brave a man—they will not dare to come while you are here."

"And so your presentiment passes into thin air?" he said.

"It's relieved," she said. "Maybe I'm too timid—that affair has upset me so much. Now tell me, do you really think you know who the thieves are?"

She sat down at the table opposite to him and leaned her chin on her hands, her loose sleeves falling away from her arms and revealing, to the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she repeated her question.

"Do you really think you will find out who the thieves are?" she exclaimed.

"One I already know," he replied, fixing his eyes on her as his square jaws set firm in his effort to refrain from allowing his features to relax into the smile which was hovering so near.

For a moment the lines round her eyes hardened, and the sparkle became a flash before it melted again as a rippling laugh came from her lips.

"How terribly stern you look!" she cried in a mocking voice. "Do you ever think of anything but your work, Mr. Durham?"

"Not when I have anything at all difficult on hand," he replied.

"Then this does puzzle you?"

"It has its difficulties; but, for all that, it is a problem I shall solve."

Again the rippling laugh rang through the room.

"Why, of course! Was there ever a case the police had in hand where they did not have a clue at the very beginning?"

"Several," he answered. "A clever, resourceful criminal, Mrs. Burke, always has the advantage. Where they fail ultimately is in becoming too sure of themselves and too forgetful of the network of snares laid to entrap them and always waiting to trip them."

"I suppose that is so," she said slowly. "I suppose that is so. Poor things—I can't help pitying them, Mr. Durham. One never knows what lies behind their wickedness—what it was which first sent them rolling down the slope that ends—often—on the gallows."

She shuddered as she spoke, averting her face from him.

"This is a dismal subject," he exclaimed. "Let us change it. Will you answer the questions I want to ask you about the bank affair?"

"Ask them. Oh! ask the wretched things and let me get it over. Sure I begin to hate the mention of it," she exclaimed as she shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

Without apparently heeding her objection, he asked her to say whether anyone was in the passage as she passed from the dining-room to the entrance of the bank.

"Of course there was. Didn't I tell Brennan at once?" she said.

"Who was it?"

"His wife."

"Brennan's?"

"Brennan's! No! The bank manager's; she was just outside the door—listening, I'll be bound."

"You are sure of that?"

"Sure that she was listening? Well, isn't she a woman? What else would she be doing?"

"That is all I want to ask you," he said quietly.

She looked at him wonderingly.

"All?" she asked. "You rode out from Waroona merely to ask me that bit of a question?"

He nodded.

"Well, then," she exclaimed, "if that's how you're going to catch the thieves it's good-bye to my papers."

The eyes which met his told of anger and indignation.

"You expected a rigid cross-examination?" he asked, with a smile.

"I expected questions which would have some bearing on the affair," she retorted.

"Your experience in this sort of thing is somewhat limited, Mrs. Burke. A tangled skein is unravelled by following a mere thread, not by tearing at the entire mass. I have hold of a thread, and I am following it."

"And where will it lead you?"

"Where? It does not matter where so long as the tangle is made straight."

"While my papers and my——"

"You need not be uneasy," he interrupted. "They are just as safe as though you held them in your hand."

"Safe for those who stole them," she retorted, with a short, satirical laugh.

"Safe for you," he answered. "You have not been long enough in the country to realise how complete a system of detection we have here. I have never felt more certain of securing both the culprits and the stolen property than I am in this case."

Again she gave a short, satirical laugh.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Of course. You know exactly where the thieves are and where they have hidden what was taken and also where they are hiding. You can put your hands on them whenever you like. One does not need to come to Australia to hear that sort of romance, Mr. Durham; I hoped rather that one would not hear it in Australia, but you police are as capable at blundering and bungling and bluffing here as elsewhere."

"I am neither bungling nor bluffing," he answered quietly.

"You are doing both," she replied warmly. "What are you doing here now? Why have you come bothering me with ridiculous questions? What can I tell you more than the bank people themselves? Or is it that you think I am the thief? Why don't you say at once you suspect me—old Patsy and myself? Sure it would be in keeping with the rest of it—wasting your time and mine by coming out to ask who was in the passage when I left the dining-room! What has that to do with my loss? Do you think I care whether Mrs. Eustace heard what I told her husband? I'd say it to her face if she likes, just as I said it to his. I told him he ought to be arrested, and I say so to you. I'd arrest him and his wife and his assistant and his servant—everyone in the place if I had my way."

He was watching the light flashing in her eyes, watching and admiring. The full rich tones of her voice vibrated with the heat of her words, her bosom rose and fell as in her indignation wave after wave of expression swept across her face, each one intensifying the charm she had for him.

"I suppose you include me in your list of suspects," she blurted out as he did not speak. "Why don't you say so at once? Your questions certainly suggest it."

"Do they?" he asked, with a smile which irritated her.

"Yes, they do. What else do they suggest? It would be quite in keeping with the rest of the business—you riding out here to ask me pointless questions while the people most likely to have been concerned in the robbery are left alone. They are known, I suppose you will say, where I am a stranger, someone you have never seen before——"

"You are wrong," he interrupted, still smiling; "I have seen you before."

Her eyes concentrated on his with keen intensity.

"When? Where?" she asked sharply.

"We were fellow-passengers by a coach four or five months back. You have forgotten me, but I"—now that the personal note had been struck, the note he wished so much to sound and yet shrank from, he was almost carried away by it; by an effort he checked himself, and instead of telling her all that the meeting had meant for him, he added, "I rarely forget a face when I have once seen it."

She flashed a swift glance at him, reading in his eyes, in his face, in his attitude, the confirmation of what she knew from the tone of his voice.

"But you—you do not—remember me," he said slowly as she did not reply. He saw the glance, saw the fleeting questioning light in her eyes, and with the fatuity bred of love-blindness, misread it.

"I do remember—distinctly," she answered softly. "I recognised you as you came on to the verandah. I thought it was you who had forgotten—or did not wish to remember."

As she spoke the last words softly, demurely, she raised her eyes to his and looked steadily at him with no sign on her face of her recent indignation.

"I not wish to remember? I not wish to remember you?" he exclaimed in a ringing tone. "Why—it was because I have never ceased to remember that I came here to-night. Your name was mentioned at Waroona—it was the only clue you gave me when we parted, the only clue I had to follow when I tried to find you, tried to trace you every day since then. I have never ceased to seek for you, never ceased to think of you, nor to remember the day I met you. Had you not been here to-night, had I found it was someone else with a similar name, I should not have forgotten you—I shall never do that—never."

She sat back in her chair, her eyes downcast, a slight frown puckering her brows. He saw the frown as she spoke and it checked his words, but he continued to watch her steadily, noting the graceful, yet seemingly unstudied way in which the wavy mass of her luxuriant hair was coiled on her head, the clear whiteness of her skin, the heavy fringe of her drooping lashes. Even as he watched she raised her eyes to his.

For one brief moment she allowed them to rest, filled with an earnestness and depth of softness that made his pulses leap again.

Impulsively he stretched out his hand to her across the table.

She lowered her glance, and a faint smile flickered round her lips.

"I must away," she said softly, as she arose. "You will need a good night's rest after your long and wearying ride."

He pushed away his chair, as he started abruptly to his feet. The warmth of his impulse went cold.

"I shall start with the dawn or before it," he said, keeping his eyes averted from the glamour of her face. "I have a riding-cloak. I will take this hammock-chair on to the verandah. Don't let me disturb you."

"But you cannot go in the morning without a bite," she replied.

"I shall require nothing," he said brusquely. "I shall be away before you are awake. I am merely staying to set your mind at rest on the question of the house being visited and robbed. Don't let me disturb you—or detain you."

She bent her head slowly and gracefully.

"As you will," she replied in a gentle voice. "Good night, Mr. Durham."

Without waiting for a reply she turned and went from the room, closing the door quietly after her.

He stood where she had left him, staring fixedly at the closed door.

"I was a fool to come, a greater fool to speak," he muttered savagely. "What satisfaction is there in knowing who she is, when——"

He swung round petulantly, diving his hand into his pocket for a pipe. When it was filled and lighted, he dragged his chair out on to the verandah, lowered the lamp flame to a glimmer, pushed-to the window, and lay back in the chair, blowing furious clouds of smoke out upon the night and staring, with unseeing eyes, into the dark.

But always before him there floated the vision of the speaking grey-blue eyes looking at him from the shelter of their dark-fringed lashes; always in his brain he heard the gentle melody of her voice as she had last spoken to him, and always there came to taunt and goad him the jarring memory of the half-mocking way in which she had pushed back upon himself the frank revelation he had made. But though it jarred, it had no power to lessen the fascination she exercised over him. Despite her rebuff, despite the seeming hopelessness of his infatuation, it held him. The more he tried to force it back, the stronger it grew; the greater, the more beautiful and more lovable did Mrs. Burke appear to be.

The jarring note passed from his memory. Under the soothing quiet of the night and the stillness of the bush, looming dark and mysterious against the sky, scarcely less sombre with only the light of the stars to illumine it, his fancy was filled with the image he had carried in his mind for so many months. The weariness of an arduous day added its softening influence, and he drifted out upon the sea of dreams and thence into a deep slumber, while yet his pipe was unfinished.