In the grey half light which is neither night nor day, Durham saddled his horse in the station yard.

No one was stirring in the township as he passed slowly along the road, but lest there should happen to be anyone who might see him, he turned into the bush at the first opening he came to. Only then did he set his horse at a faster pace, riding direct for the range to pick up the track leading to the hidden pool.

The air was soft and cool, with filmy streaks of vapour floating amid the trees. As he cantered along, the mist rose and formed a pearly haze overhead into which there came a tinge of pink, dissipating it, before the colour could grow into a deeper tone, to reveal the clear sky, blue as a sapphire and bright with the first rays of the rising sun.

In long swinging strides his horse carried him easily, and his spirits rose above the gloom which had weighed upon him since the evening before when, for the third time, he had been foiled by the mysterious Rider.

There had been little sleep for him during the night. Had the discovery of Eustace and the raid of the town been the only events of the day he might have succeeded in banishing them from his mind sufficiently to allow himself to sleep. But there was more than these, disquieting as they were, to fill him with restlessness. The way in which Mrs. Burke had rebuffed him on the previous evening, the hostility of manner she had displayed towards him up to the time he and Brennan left Waroona Downs, weighed upon him.

He could not account for the change which had come over her. From the time he arrived from Taloona she had always shown kindliness and gentleness towards him, even when, during the early days of his convalescence, he had been impatient and exacting. Nor could he find a reason for the change in the brief profession he had made of his love for her. Had that been the cause she would, he argued, have shown it the morning after; but she had met him then with the same light-hearted raillery with which she had greeted him every morning he had been in her house. Only when Brennan arrived on the scene had she suddenly developed antagonism.

There must be some other reason for her anger than his declaration of love. For hours he had sought for it, cudgelling his brain to discover an explanation; but only now, as he cantered along through the bush with his spirits rising in harmony with the glories of an Australian dawn, did illumination come to him.

"Oh, my love, why have you come so late to me!"

Through the sombre shade of his brooding there flashed the memory of the scene when he had heard those words spoken. Like the touch of a magic wand the memory changed gloom to sunshine, shadow into light.

It was not because he had professed his love for her that she had been displeased; it was because he was going from her, leaving her house, parting with her perhaps for all time.

What a fool he had been not to know that earlier. Of course, she had repelled him when he had spoken on the previous evening, repelled him, not because she resented, but because she, like all of her sex, could not yield the truth at the first asking.

Yet why should he have doubted with the memory of that earlier scene in his mind? He asked himself the question and answered it frankly.

He doubted for the reason that still he did not know whether that memory was of a real scene, or was merely a figment of a delirium-haunted brain. If he could be sure, then no more need he doubt; but how was he to be sure? There was only one way—only one person in all the world who could tell him whether he was right or not—Nora Burke alone could say whether he had been dreaming.

Some day he would ask her to tell him, some day, after he had asked and compelled her to answer that other question which had now become insistent. For the time the mystery of the Rider occupied a second place in his thoughts; yet the trend of his mind unconsciously brought it again to the front.

The mission on which he had set out was one which might clear away the initial obstacle in the pathway of his love; he might locate the hiding-place of the Rider; might secure a clue to his identity; might, by great good fortune, discover the stolen money.

If he could only do that, if he could only go back to the bank with the news that he had recovered the stolen gold, five thousand pounds would be his. Then he would be able to go to Mrs. Burke without the feeling, unbearable to a man of his temperament, that he, a poor man, was aspiring to one who had money, and who might attribute to that money the secret of his fascination.

By the time the sun showed above the trees, he was up to the outlying spurs of the range and nearing the ridge along which he had previously followed the tracks of the two horsemen. With the knowledge he had gained how the track turned and twisted, he set his horse to the rising ground, and rode steadily and cautiously until he arrived at the summit of the steep immediately above where the creek entered the pool.

Below him was the narrow sandy strip running round the edge of the water, and even from where he was he could see the marks of the horses' hoofs upon it. His glance wandered from the shore over the surface of the pool. It was a long sheet of water, more an exaggerated reach in a stream than a lake, for except along the sandy margin below him, the water everywhere rippled right up to the dense verdure-clad slopes of the hills.

A curious discolouration appeared in a streak across the pool at the far end. The otherwise clear water was marred by a ledge of rock which stretched from one side of the pool to the other and came so near the surface as to give a suggestion of muddiness to the water.

Dismounting, he led his horse to a sheltered gully, and securely tethered him to a tree. Then, with his carbine on his arm and his revolver pouch unfastened, he walked down to the dry bed of the creek and followed it to the mouth.

Fresh marks were on the soft ground near the water, coming from the end of the pool where the streak of muddy water showed, and passing onwards round the pool. He decided to go in the same direction, and for a few yards walked along the level before he discovered other hoof-prints, equally clear, going the opposite way. The horseman, whoever he might be, had both come and gone within the past few hours, but Durham was uncertain which way had been the last.

Leaving the level ground he forced a way through the thick herbage growing on the bank above and crept forward. As he went he obtained through the foliage an occasional glimpse of the track below, until the bank rose so steeply and the vegetation became so dense that he had to climb higher to move along at all. Presently he came to an easier grade, and was able to see once more the margin of the pool, but he was surprised to discover that all marks of the horses had ceased.

He crept down to the water. Looking back, he saw that the bank, on the top of which he had been, ran out to the water's edge, forming a barrier across the track and terminating in a steep bluff jutting out into the pool.

Crouching almost to the ground, Durham crawled through the undergrowth until he reached the summit of the bluff, and was able to see once more the narrow sandy strip which skirted the bank and formed the margin of the shore.

Peering through the low-growing shrubs he saw how the bluff fell away in a precipitous descent on the other side down to where the narrow strip widened out into a level space screened by a clump of bushes reaching from the high bank to the water. The whole of this space was trampled upon, and it was evident that horsemen had been there frequently and recently.

A step forward showed him something more. Right under the bank a dark patch showed. It was the mouth of a cave.

He listened intently, but no sound came to him, and he again crept forward until he was able to see into the cave. It was low-roofed, and formed by rocks which had fallen loosely together, and over which vegetable soil had accumulated.

Satisfied it was empty, he advanced boldly towards it. As he pushed between the shrubs which grew close up to it, he caught sight of what, in the shadow, looked like a crouching man. In a moment his carbine was thrown forward and he was about to challenge, when he realised he was aiming at a heap of clothes.

He stepped into the cave. The clothes lay in a carelessly thrown heap, and with them, half hidden, was a false beard of long yellow hair.

Picking it up, he held it at arm's length. So the Rider was disguised after all!

The flimsy thing brought clearly back to him the features of the man as he had twice seen him. The close-clipped fair hair, the light sandy eyebrows, the peculiarly light lashes which gave so sinister an expression to the eyes, were distinct; but when he tried to reconstruct the face as it would be without the beard, he was baffled. The form of the nose, the moulding of the chin, the shape of the mouth, had been hidden by the disguise, and without a knowledge of them Durham could not grasp fully what the man was like. As Harding had expressed himself, when describing the face he had seen at the window of the bank, it was the impression of a familiar face disguised, and yet a familiar face which could not be located.

Beyond that he could not go.

He picked up the clothes and examined them. They were of nondescript grey, such as can be bought by the hundred at any bush store in Australia, and were similar to what the man was wearing the night he visited Waroona Downs. The hat was missing, as Durham expected it would be. The pockets were empty.

Replacing the articles as nearly as possible in the position in which he found them, Durham turned his attention to the cave itself.

The floor was rough and uneven. What sand clustered in the hollows was too much trampled upon to reveal any detail of the feet that had walked upon it.

There were innumerable nooks and crannies where articles could be stored, but in every instance they contained nothing. Nowhere could he find anything more than the clothes.

He went to the mouth and stood peering round to see if there was another similar cave near, but everywhere else the ground rose solid and unbroken.

In the open space under the shelter of the bluff where the ground had been so much trampled by horses, the wheel-marks of a vehicle also showed. He walked over and examined them carefully.

They were the marks of what was evidently an old and rackety conveyance. One of the wheels was loose and askew on the axle, with the result that it made a wobbly mark on the ground, while the tyres on all the wheels were uneven in width and badly worn.

"Almost as ancient as old Dudgeon's rattle-trap," Durham said to himself as he looked at the marks.

The story, fanciful as he had regarded it at the time, of the buggy driven by two men with a pair of white horses, the story told by the travelling bushmen the day the bank robbery was discovered, recurred to him. If this was the vehicle in which the gold had been carried off, and the wheel-marks he was looking at had been made by it, then that gold was probably secreted somewhere in his immediate vicinity.

The thick-growing shrubs and stunted gums made it difficult for him to see far from where he stood. The level stretch along the margin of the pool showed clear enough, but around him the vegetation was so dense that, unless he had some clue to guide him, to prosecute a search within it was like trying the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

During the time that had elapsed since those wheel-marks had been made they had been greatly obliterated, but it was still possible to distinguish where the vehicle had been stopped, for the horses had turned suddenly, and the wheels cut deep as they came round. He stepped to the spot. Later tramplings had removed all clear traces of footmarks. Nothing was now to be learned from that source.

His eyes swept along the line of shrubs which fringed the open space. A twig, snapped near the stem, dangled, its leaves brown and withered. It was a finger pointing where someone had forced a way through.

Durham went down on his knees beside the shrub. Near the root the bark had been stripped for a couple of inches, the scar showing brown, while in the soil the impression of a heavy boot was just distinguishable.

On hands and knees he pushed his way between the stems. Other footmarks, old and faint, showed, and he crept along with his eyes on them. Some weeks before there had evidently been much coming and going through the scrub at this point. Looking straight ahead he saw the grey sheen of a sun-dried log. He stood up. The thick undergrowth reached to his armpits, but through it, a couple of yards from where he stood, and ten from the spot where the wheel-marks turned, was the fallen trunk of an old dead tree.

Such a log, hollow for the greater part of its length and absolutely hidden by the shrubs growing round it, was exactly the place where anything could be secreted, and remain secreted, for an indefinite period.

Pushing his way carefully through the tangle of shrubs he came upon it at the root end. It had evidently fallen in some bygone bush-fire, the jagged charred fragments showing where it had snapped off close to the ground. The fire had eaten its way into the heart of the timber and there was space enough in the cavity for a man to crouch.

Stooping down, Durham peered into it. At the far end he saw, indistinctly, a confused mass, pushed up closely. He reached in, but could not touch it, without creeping into the opening.

He looked round for something that would serve as a rake to pull the articles out, but there was no loose stick sufficiently long near to hand, and he did not want to cut one. Higher up the bank he saw one that would suit his purpose and went to get it.

As he returned with it in his hand he saw, at the other end of the log, a patch of white on the ground. Going over to it he found it was caused by a chalky powder which clustered thickly near the tree.

This end of the log was also hollow, and in the cavity were a couple of bags which, when he pulled them out, he found to be full of the chalky powder.

The white horses flashed into his mind as he looked at it.

"The cunning scoundrel!" he exclaimed. "Even the horses were disguised."

He replaced the bags, and went to the root end of the tree. With his stick he was able to reach the objects stored in the hole, and pulled one out.

By the weight he knew what he had found, before he opened it—the bag was full of gold.

Slowly he drew everything out of the place. All the gold taken from the bank and from Taloona lay at his feet, together with a miscellaneous collection of jewellery wrapped up in a small square of canvas. But there was no sign either of papers or bank-notes.

It was out of the question for him to attempt to remove the treasure to the bank there and then. All he could do was to make it as secure as possible until, at a later day, he could return with a conveyance and carry it back to the town.

On the far side of the bluff he discovered a crevice formed by an overhanging ledge. It was a place even more difficult to trace than the fallen tree, and here he placed everything, keeping only a gold watch which bore Harding's name. Then, having obliterated, as nearly as he could, every mark which would be likely to reveal the hiding-place, he made his way back to his horse.

He rode to the margin of the pool, and walked along the track until he was opposite the streak of mud stain in the water. The horse and wheel-tracks turned towards it and, standing up in his stirrups, Durham saw that the water shoaled with a wide ledge of rock running directly into the pool.

Putting his horse to it, the water was barely a foot deep on the rock all the way across to the opposite bank. Here the horse and wheel-tracks reappeared, turning sharp to the left through the bush, and passing over a dwarf ridge from the summit of which he caught sight of the mountain road where it turned down to the ford.

Still following the tracks, they led him once more to the water's edge. He entered it, and continued close to the shore until he suddenly emerged on to the rock which formed the break in the road over which the stream rippled.

He rode on to the road and reined in his horse near the spot where he had first seen the pool the night he was on his way to Waroona Downs. Had he not just ridden along the track round the edge of the water, he would not have believed it was there, so absolutely was it hidden from the roadway.

For a moment he hesitated whether to go on to Waroona Downs or return to the township at once, and arrange for the treasure to be removed. But the anxiety gnawing at his heart decided for him and he wheeled his horse and set off at a canter for the station.

As he came out to the level road he saw, riding towards him, the object of his regard. Mounted on a fine dark chestnut she was coming along at a hand gallop. She waved her hand as she caught sight of him, and he pulled up to wait for her, watching, with more than admiration, the magnificent seat she had and the easy grace with which she managed her horse.

"Oh, Mr. Durham, I'm so glad to see you," she cried as she came up. "I am in such trouble about that old reprobate. Sure he's gone and I'm just after riding into town to see if he is getting more of the wretched drink. If I find him——"

"Brennan will have him if he is in there, Mrs. Burke. You need not be uneasy. I'll inquire as soon as I return. I am on my way——"

"Oh, but I can't," she interrupted. "What would they say if ever it got to Ireland that I let the old fool fall into the hands of the police over a trifle like this—for it's only a trifle they would call it in Ireland, Mr. Durham. Sure if it were known there, and you may be certain he'd leave no stone unturned to make it public, they'd boycott me and all my belongings, if they didn't do something worse."

"Then it would be better for you not to go back there," he said, smiling at her.

She gave him a sidelong glance with her head on one side.

"Not go back there? And what should I be doing anywhere else with all my responsibilities waiting over there for me?" she asked coquettishly.

"You may have responsibilities over here as well, some which would——"

"Oh, now, you're making fun of me, Mr. Durham," she exclaimed. "What's a bit of a place like this with never even a single pig on it, let alone all the sheep and cattle it ought to have, to keep me from my own home? When I get stock on the place it might keep me here, but sure where's the money to come from to buy the creatures if I don't go back and sell everything I possess to pay for them?"

"Won't you turn back, Mrs. Burke? I was riding out to see you. I want to—ask you something."

"Ask me something? What, more police questions? No, no thanks, Mr. Durham. They don't agree with my constitution—nor my temper."

"It is not a police question," he said seriously. "It is to do—with—with yourself."

A merry peal of mocking laughter answered him.

"Come along now, come to the township with me before they get poor old Patsy where it would break his honest old heart to be."

She started her horse.

"Come along now," she called over her shoulder, flashing a mischievous glance back at him.

He had no alternative but to follow, and he cantered to her side.

"It would teach him a good lesson, Mrs. Burke, if you let him spend a few days in the lock-up," he said. "It would give him a chance to get really sober, whereas, if he keeps on getting drink, you will have him out of his mind."

"Now you're trying to frighten me, Mr. Durham. Sure, what sort of a man is it I've met this morning? I believe you'd like to see old Patsy inside a cell, and then maybe you'd be after me too."

"I might be," he answered.

"What would you give me? Six months hard or just a caution?"

"I should offer you something entirely different," he said in a serious tone of voice. "I should offer you——"

"Oh, yes, it's a lot you police people offer folk. Sure they have to take what is given them, whether they like it, or want it, or not."

"I may not always be one of the police people, as you term us," he said.

"Are you thinking of joining the ministry?" she exclaimed. "I'd like to hear you preach your first sermon, Mr. Durham. I'd come twenty miles in the rain for it."

The mockery in her voice irritated him, and his face showed it.

"Oh, now, Mr. Durham, don't talk nonsense. What would become of the place if you left the force of which you are such an ornament? It's fairy tales you are telling me. And you have never said a word yet about your journey. What news did you hear when you reached Waroona?"

"I suppose you have not heard about Eustace?" he asked.

"Eustace? What's the matter with Eustace now?"

"He was found yesterday."

The jerk she gave the bridle brought her horse back on his haunches, and Durham was a couple of lengths past her before he could bring his horse round. When he turned she was allowing her horse to walk, the bridle hanging loose.

"Eustace was found yesterday?" she asked in a dazed tone as she came up to him. "Found yesterday? Is that the news you had to give me?"

"It was not to tell you of that I was on my way to Waroona Downs," he replied. "Though I should probably have mentioned it."

"Where was he found, Mr. Durham? I suppose he is arrested now?"

All the raillery had gone from her voice, which had grown so sorrowful that he looked at her wonderingly.

"He was not alive when he was found," he said quietly, still watching her.

Her hands convulsively clutched the bridle, and her mouth twitched.

"Oh, Mr. Durham, how awful! What a terrible thing! Oh, poor Mrs. Eustace! Sure I'm glad I'm going into the town, for I'll be able to see the poor thing. Is she much upset? But she is sure to be."

"It is a great trial for her. She will be very glad to see you, I should think," he answered.

"Oh, well, well; what a funny thing life is, Mr. Durham. One never knows. It's all a muddled-up sort of affair at the best. If only people could do what is in them to do, instead of being placed in positions where there is only sadness and trouble crowding in on them and crushing them out of existence! It's a weary world, very, very weary."

"We can only take it as we find it, and make the best of it," he said. "You must not allow this to worry you. Perhaps, after all, it is the best thing that could have happened for him. There are worse things than death. Think what it would have been for Mrs. Eustace had he been captured and sent to penal servitude. Her whole life would have been ruined. We see so much of that in cases where the husband gives way. It is the wife who suffers most, Mrs. Burke."

"Oh, I know, I know," she exclaimed in a tone so full of sadness that he feared he had touched on some secret grief.

He rode beside her in silence, not knowing what to say lest he added to her distress, but yet tormented by the idea that he should speak out what was in his heart and learn, once and for all, whether his hopes were to be realised or shattered. Keeping slightly behind her, he was able to watch her without her knowing it. She was staring between her horse's ears, her lips tightly closed, her head erect, and her cheeks pale. Lost, apparently, in the reverie his words had called up, she seemed to have forgotten his presence as a mile went by without her turning her head or opening her lips.

But she had not forgotten he was there. At a turn in the road she uttered a sharp exclamation and held out her hand, pointing.

"Oh, it is too bad," she exclaimed bitterly. "It is too much for anyone to bear. Look at that!"

Away down the road Durham saw a horse and rider. The horse was making its own way, the rider having as much as he could do to keep in the saddle. He was swaying from side to side, occasionally waving his arms in the air and howling out a tuneless ditty in a strident cracked voice.

"Old Patsy," Durham said shortly.

"Oh, what will I do?" she exclaimed.

"Better let me take him back and give him a few days where he will have time to recover his senses, I think," he said.

She flashed a furious glance at him.

"I shall do no such thing," she snapped. "The best thing you can do is to get out of sight before he sees you. He hates you, Mr. Durham. Irishmen of his class always hate the police. The sight of you will only aggravate him in his present state."

"He is not in a fit state to return with you," Durham said.

"Oh, I can manage him if I'm left alone with him," she replied.

"But I shall not leave you with him," he said firmly.

"You must; you must," she exclaimed sharply. Then, as though a mask had fallen from her, the expression of her face changed and she leaned towards him, laying her hand on his bridle arm. "Oh, yes, please, for my sake. For the sake of—of what I said you—you were not to mention again—will you—please will you do this?"

Her wonderful eyes, soft and melting with a look of appeal, were turned full upon his; her red lips pouted and her voice thrilled with a winning gentleness.

"Please, please do this for me. I would not ask it, only I know—I know—I can ask you."

Her voice sank to a whisper, more alluring, more devastating upon him than when she spoke before. So taken aback, and yet so elated was he at her change of manner, that he could not answer her at once.

"You were coming to tell me again—I read it in your face. Oh, do this for me now. Leave me alone with him. Come and see me to-morrow. Come and tell me then—tell me—what I want to hear."

"Nora!"

The word escaped him in a gasp. What she wanted to hear! Were his ears playing him false? Was he dreaming? He had his hands on hers, holding it with a grip of a strong man stirred to the depths, crushing the fingers one on the other, but there was no waver in the eyes that looked with so much entreaty into his.

"Leave me now before he sees you, before he gets here. I can manage him best alone. Look, he is hastening. Oh, don't wait. Ride away into the bush. I appeal to you—in the name of my love for you. Dearest—go!"

The tumult surged up and over him; had she bidden him at that moment to ride into the jaws of death, he would have galloped, shouting his delight. Nothing else counted with him then, nothing but her wish. Bending down he pressed her hand to his lips.

"Go—go—quickly—dearest!" he heard.

"Till to-morrow, Beloved, till to-morrow," he answered, as, pulling his horse's head round, he drove his spurs home and plunged into the bush, racing in the wild abandon of his joy.

What did it matter that a drunken old Irishman was saved from arrest? He would probably have contented himself with warning the old reprobate to get home as quickly and as quietly as he could. But she did not know that. All she could do was to think how to save her foolish servant from the penalty of his folly—how like her that was, how like the great warm-hearted noble creature she was! Pride in her, pride, love, adoration, welled up in his heart. The yearning of his soul was satisfied, the longing of his being set at rest.

Her love was his! In that knowledge all the contradictions of her attitude became clear. She had only sought to hide the truth from him lest he should think her too easily won. He laughed aloud as he galloped.

Too easily?

No matter how great the sacrifice he had been called upon to make, it would have ranked as nothing if, at the end of it, her open arms were waiting to enfold him. But there was no sacrifice, no toll to be exacted from him. Of her own initiative she had sounded the note which called him to her and made her his. To-morrow he would ride out to her, not alone to give her the pledge of his affections, but to carry to her the tidings of his discovery. Although he had not yet recovered her papers, he would be able to assure her that he would have them as soon as he captured the man who stole them, the man who had murdered Eustace, the Rider whose hiding-place he had discovered.

For there was no doubt in his mind about that capture. Once let the gold be safely removed to the bank, he would return to the cave and wait till, as he was certain would happen sooner or later, the Rider came for his disguise.

Then Nora Burke should have her papers returned in safety, and he would have won more than the promised five thousand pounds reward.