CHAPTER V

There was still, however, one haunting mystery, one problem unsolved, in the solution of which Mrs. Banneret felt more interest than in all the other uncertainties and sensational historiettes put together. Who and what was Mrs. Lilburne? Handsome, strikingly so, indeed—refined—cultured—aristocratic _au bout des ongles_; what strange movement of the hour hand of fate had brought her to the often distasteful work, the dire climatic hardships of a hospital nurse on a West Australian goldfield? Who could doubt her stainless purity who gazed on the banded hair—the calm, brave countenance, equally free from doubt or fear—the sweet, sad eyes which so rarely gave token of the spirit-light which illumined them, at rarest moments, ‘like melancholy stars,’ of which Mrs. Banneret said they always reminded her. Had she lost, by death, by desertion, by treachery, her soul’s idol, to whom she had been vowed in happy, radiant girlhood’s day? What a ‘phantom of delight’ must she then have appeared to her social world—at that entrancing age, when ‘standing with reluctant feet, where the brook and river meet,’ she had so fully realised the poet’s dream!—the dream of all poets that ever strove to paint the delicious embodiment of soul and sense, the flower season of happy, innocent, loveliest girlhood.

However, it was distinctly patent to all the inquiring or admiring minds of Pilot Mount that the oracle, in the case of Nurse Lilburne’s antecedents, was at present dumb, nor could cries or lamentations extract an answer. To Mrs. Banneret once, indeed, she relented so far as to say, ‘Some day you will know, if to any one I may show gratitude for true friendship and womanly sympathy. In the meantime think of me only as Nurse Lilburne. For your husband I have only done what I would have done for the humblest miner. And may God grant that some day I may be counted worthy to receive payment in kind!’

So they parted on the last day of the Bannerets’ sojourn on the great ‘Last Chance’ goldfield, as it was now called,—famed throughout all Australia as the wonderland of that Far South land which had given so many wonders and surprises to the old world, and to the country which had founded it; which a hundred years from its birth, in peril from starvation, from conquest, from criminal surroundings and ignorant misrepresentation, had established an export trade of many millions, and borne sons who fought shoulder to shoulder with Britain’s best troops in defence of the Empire.

Mrs. Banneret was not the only person on the goldfields who was interested in the story of Nurse Lilburne’s life. So attractive, so exceptional a personage could not long remain in such a community, where the men outnumbered the women in the ratio of at least a hundred to one, without being admired, flattered, besieged, indeed, by importunate suitors who were only too willing to condone her past—whatever it might have been. But to all such approaches she was adamant. She quietly put them by, not coldly or haughtily, but with a nun-like aloofness, as if all matters unconnected with her duties were not only impossible of acceptance, but even of consideration. Even the most ordinary civilities, such as a seat in a buggy or pony cart to the Polo Club matches, or the races connected with the club formed for the encouragement of that fashionable game, were quietly declined, even though proffered by the president, a married man, whose wife had always been most friendly and sympathetic. Jim Allerton, whose tandem was the admiration of all beholders, implored her to honour him by accepting a seat to the ground—the day being brilliant, with a cool breeze—the occasion certain to be historical in years to come; such an opportunity would perhaps never occur again: the Governor of West Australia, with his wife and daughter, were to be present. She smiled graciously, and confessed that she could not have refused such an offer—once upon a time—but now—he must excuse her. Jim retired heartbroken, so he said.

He was not the only admirer—the Adonis of the field, Eachin Durward, a tall, handsome, grand-looking Highlander, was known to be devoted to her,—was well-off too,—would have left for Europe _via_ Cairo, and the East generally, if only she would deign to express a wish—a preference for any particular route. But she was dumb as the Sphinx.

As deaf also, to all entreaties of men, as she who sits by the Pyramids—sad, silent, awful in lonely sorrow—in wisdom unspeakable, in experience vast—in knowledge coeval with the æons, whose memorial—save of her, and the eternal pyramidal monuments—hath perished.

* * * * *

Eastward ho! Home again,—blessed word, thrice blessed reality. The hot desert blast—the dust—the heat—the swarming flies—the glaring sun at noon—the scarce less tyrannous heat at even,—all things that bore so hard on frail humanity—all left behind for a season! What a paradise of hope and joy seemed opening before the ‘happy pair,’ in truest re-adjusted sense of the word. And the calm, peaceful savour of all the best joys of life was heightened by the recurring thought that under all things there was the solid foundation of success—success undoubted—ungrudged—won by enterprise and work, a wide-spread treasure-house in which so many of the most honest toilers of earth were permitted, nay, invited to share.

With health assured—indeed benefited by recovery from the dread fever-grip—so rarely relaxed—it seemed apparent that he, Arnold Banneret, ‘never looked better,’ as his friends assured him, than on his return from the Golden West—that fateful Eldorado which numbered so many of the best and noblest of Australia’s—Britain’s—sons among the ‘unreturning brave.’

The voyage completed—the harbour—the haven par excellence of all fair havens, regained, the meeting on the wharf—of the entire family—wild with joy, and shouting all kinds of differing information, in one breath—all rosy with health and frantic with delight, may be left to be imagined by those home-returning parents of similar experiences. Nothing had gone wrong. The household had been discreetly, lovingly, capably managed in the absence of the high-contracting parties of the little state,—that state, when multiplied by thousands and ten thousands, which makes so much in valour, virtue, and stability, in the onward march of Empire.

Again established in their most comfortable house, on one of the heights which overlooked the harbour on the winding highway to the South Head—a dream of beauty by day or starlit night, by sweet moonrise or palest dawn—unequalled, unapproachable beneath the Southern Cross—how pure, how peaceful, how unspeakable was their happiness! What avenues of enjoyment opening out daily, stretching in the future to illimitable distance, filled the perspective!

The New Holland Club, of which Mr. Banneret had for many years been a member, again opened its arms to receive the absent member, whom they thought never again to behold. Reports had reached them that he was dead—not expected to survive, what not? It is not a wholly unpleasant sensation to personally contradict the report of one’s decease,—that report, ‘upon the best authority,’ quoted from the morning papers, that one has been cut off in the flower of one’s youth, or the zenith of one’s fame, as the case may be. Even there the candid friend is not wholly at a disadvantage. ‘No idea that I was such a fine fellow,’ says Horatio, returning, let us say, from Philippi, where he was reported slain. ‘Really,’ drawls the inevitable ‘friend,’ ‘but, you know, dear boy, people exaggerate so fearfully on such occasions!’

It is good to be rich, for some, for many reasons. It is good even to be thought rich, if one is not thereby tempted to spend extravagantly. As mankind are constituted, whether the money is inherited, gained by accident, by the hardly reputable means of gambling, so long as it is known to be there, a certain kind of respect and deference goes along with its possession. Perhaps in Arnold Banneret’s case, whose exploration of an inhospitable desert where men’s lives were but as counters in the game, and had been expended as recklessly, it disposed the critics of the clubs and swagger hotels to regard him as having achieved true distinction. Younger sons and others, who had gone out with hazy ideas of digging a fortune out of the dreary wastes, of which they had heard, and had returned to the city without one, comprehended the preliminary hardships which he must have undergone. They enlarged upon these, in all good faith, until the readers of newspapers and the public generally were disposed to look upon him as a general of Division and a scientific millionaire combined.

‘Heard of him before,’ men would say in the smoking room. ‘Been at the front all his life. Squatter in old days—took up outside country—rows with blacks—bushrangers, that sort of man. Dropped his money when stock went down. Took to the Civil Service later on. Wife and children—so on. Makes up his mind to be Goldfields Warden—tired of that—believed in another cast of the dice—goes to W.A.—and before he’s been there a month, hits on the discovery of the age—the biggest of the century—regular Mount Morgan, y’know.’

‘Mayn’t be quite as big a quarry as that,’ interposes another man—a pastoralist, whose grizzled beard and bronzed countenance has ‘Waste Lands of the Crown’ writ large thereon—‘but told by men, been there and seen, half a dozen fortunes in it,’ and so on, and so on. Thus the hero-worship progressed.

Rich—beyond any of _his_ dreams of avarice—so far, he saw himself so high on the ladder of prosperity that he began to consider how he might benefit those friends and relations (perhaps) whom he had so often pitied, lamenting at the same time his inability to aid them. It was one of the anomalies of life, he had reflected, that people in possession of superfluous means seldom showed much disposition to use them in this way; while those who, like himself, would have taken pleasure in dispensing timely aid seldom had the wherewithal to gratify benevolent intentions. However, if the future yields of the ‘Last Chance’ kept up its present rate, there would be enough, and to spare, for years to come. He could enact the Uncle from India—they are always rich (or used to be)—for the benefit of deserving relations who would be touchingly grateful to the end of their lives. How he could assist all benevolent institutions—repay those who had been kind to him in the early struggles of his life! He had a good memory for such positions and people. Then, after a few years, which he could spend comfortably, not to say luxuriously, in Sydney—he would take the family to England. The boys would be of an age to benefit by public-school training, preparatory to being entered at Oxford or Cambridge. He would buy an estate—not too large, but sufficiently so, to give them the pleasures of English country life, without the drawbacks of having to attend to the responsibilities and details of a large estate. He might even go into parliament—that was to be managed more easily in the old country than in the new one, where the low suffrage, combined with the intense jealousy which wealth and a cultured intellect aroused in the lower-class voters, made it difficult, if not impossible, for their possessor to enter parliament. However, these hopes and enterprises were for the future to justify and develop in action. For the present here was he, Arnold Banneret, back again in Sydney—safe and sound, fully recovered from the fever scourge of outside habitations—wife and children well—heartily enjoying his recovered freedom from anxiety, the society of his friends, and in a moderate way the prestige which had accrued to him as a favourite of fortune, and a successful, energetic, worthy recipient of her gifts.

Of the good things now so lavishly bestowed upon them his wife had her full share. Always ready to indulge her with such pleasures as he could afford, and knowing well that in the matter of expenditure she was far more prudent, as well as practical, than himself—he had relinquished to her willingly in his official days the power to draw on a separate bank account, into which his pay as it came in was deposited. From this she was expected to provide for household expenses—dress—schooling—all things needful for their station in life. He contracted to discharge his private personal expenses,—having subsidiary grants, such as coroners’ and other fees, travelling allowances for the long rides and drives he was obliged to take in connection with mining matters, the settlement of disputes about claims, or reports on the sale of auriferous lands: in fact, upon the thousand and one matters only to be settled satisfactorily by the presence and judicial action of the resident magistrate.

Now, of course, Mrs. Banneret’s bank account was increased—enlarged upon a scale commensurate with the imposing amounts which regularly arrived from the goldfield of Balgowrie in the district of Sturt, in the colony of West Australia. Like most married women, the spending of money gratified her, more especially when she had no doubt of the solvency of the bank account, and the propriety of the manner in which it was disbursed. That the children should be well and handsomely dressed, as became their station in life, was to her a matter not only of right and justice, but of keen enjoyment. That they were enabled to join in such entertainments as were suited to their age, and station in life, was also a part of her satisfaction. They had often, in former days, been denied these innocent pleasures—to her secret mortification. Now and henceforth this disability was abrogated for all future time.

How very delightful it all was! What a glorious thing was life! (Of course there were drawbacks—but they must be expected.) Here Arnold Banneret’s mind reverted to that little hospital at Pilot Mount, to the delirious patient in one bed—suspected in lucid intervals to be himself—to Nurse Lilburne’s grave, compassionate face—to the dead miner but two beds away—to the empty couch, which had been occupied last night!

Thinking of such things, a wave of deep and earnest gratitude to the Lord and Giver of Life for a while took possession of all his faculties, to the exclusion of all merely pleasurable sensations. While sitting in the broad, flower-wreathed verandah, as the evening shadows deepened into those of night, and looking over the waveless water-plain of the harbour, lit up from time to time by the lights of passing steamers—the silence broken but by their warning bells—the deep blue heavens, star fretted, and but faintly luminous in the southern midnight—the hands of the husband and wife stole together; for they were lovers still, though so long wedded. ‘Oh, Arnold!’ said the wife, ‘is not this a fragment of Paradise, after what we have gone through, and do you think it will—it _can_ last? I feel almost too happy. God has indeed answered our prayers—in many an eventide it has been light, but this is the crown—the glory of all our life!’

‘That we have fought our fight fairly—through good and evil hap—I think we are entitled to say, though humbly; and thankfully do I acknowledge God’s mercy and goodness in the troubled times of our married life. But it really looks now as if peace was declared, and the war was over. Let us trust so, and hope that in time to come, as in the past, a hand may be stretched out to save in time of need. May our children who have their lives before them, with all their trials and dangers, be not less happy, less fortunate than we have been!’

* * * * *

Years passed on. The family of Banneret had become accustomed to living at the rate of four or five thousand a year—not by any means so difficult a task as declining from that desirable income to as many hundreds. They were accredited members of the ‘Upper Ten,’ as translated into Australian Society terms.

Their parents having belonged to well-known colonial families, the young people found themselves invited to all the gaieties going. They had many old friends and relatives—some in influential positions—who stood loyally by them, so that in all the more desirable festivities, from a Government House ball or garden party, to the annual regatta in the harbour, the available members of the family were always in the front rank. Races, hunt clubs, tennis matches—golf—water parties—theatricals—church and hospital bazaars,—they enjoyed them all: in moderation, be it spoken, always. There was no reckless abandonment to pleasure, no love of excitement for that reason only. But their temperaments held a strong infusion of _la joie de vivre_, which, along with energy and intelligence above the average, rendered it possible for them to combine much healthy recreation with a reasonable outlook on the great issues of life. The mild but firm parental rule was always available to restrain enthusiasm, to check impulsive imprudence. Thus all things progressed satisfactorily, in an apparently well-balanced mean between comfort and extravagance.

All reasonable indulgence in the pleasures of youth for the young people, with the calm satisfactions of middle age for the seniors, seemed assured. Not only for the present, but for years in advance, their position was unassailable by fate. Mrs. Banneret, to be sure, could not help suggesting from time to time, in a mild, tentative way, that they were _too_ happy, the sky was too bright, the outlook too fair to last—something adverse _must_ happen—it was unnatural that this fairyland, lotos-eating state of matters should remain unchanged!

‘My dear,’ he would make answer, ‘surely you are not going to take the part of the—a—what’s-his-name—at the feast. Must I hire a slave to repeat at intervals, “Arnold Banneret, thou art mortal”? I have never been unthankful for the blessings which in God’s great mercy have been showered upon us. My whole being is permeated with thankfulness. In our small way we have done good according to our lights, in the way of charity and benevolence, to our fellow-creatures. But I decline to be apprehensive, in advance of disaster—for which I may state that I shall not be wholly unprepared. If it comes, we can stand up to it, as we have done before—more than once—without repining or presumption. In the meantime let us enjoy ourselves while we may.’

It was strange—passing strange—as the members of this family had occasion to reflect full many a time and oft, in the aftertime—that immediately after this conversation the great banking disaster which smote cities, towns, villages, throughout Australia, broke like a tidal wave over the land. Ancient mercantile institutions—time-honoured banks—mortgage and agency companies—loan and building companies felt the blow. Banks on deposit, offering high rates of interest, while chiefly unsound, swept thousands of the lesser investors into a whirlpool of ruin. Fine old crusted banks, whose solvency had never been questioned, were whelmed in one common cataclysm.

A panic set in. After the first few banks and loan agencies fell, other banks and institutions hitherto unquestioned thought it good policy to go down before the blast in good company, and so profit by the general overthrow to reconstruct. This latter process consisted in writing off as great a volume of inconvenient liabilities as the shareholding public would permit, without too great an outcry, and starting on a new, unencumbered career—free from vexatious hindrance or liability. They were much in the position of the deeply laden bark that in stormy weather, amid mountainous seas, jettisons the cargo, the weight of which may disturb buoyancy at a critical moment. It is not asserted that all interest due on deposits or debentures was sacrificed. It went into a reserve fund of deferred payments, which, after a decent interval, were eventually paid up. But many of the humbler depositors lost the savings of years, and this was the hardest part of all—being no longer able to pay the calls which were necessary for the financial existence of the institution in question. Perhaps this unsparing treatment, though apparently harsh to individuals, was the safer policy. And at this eventful period, when long-trusted financial houses in Britain tottered to their fall, the Premier of the oldest Australian colony, himself a native-born Australian, took the strong, perhaps unprecedented step of declaring bank-notes to be a legal tender. To the ordinary citizen, much more to the rural depositor, a bank-note had always represented ready cash.

The movement was well timed. It inspired confidence and calmed the apprehension of general as well as individual wreck and ruin. In a sister colony the Government of the day, with paternally indulgent policy, directed all banks to close for three days—presumably to permit time for declaration of a policy. All the banks availed themselves of this, with the exception of _four_, who refused to comply with the quasi-royal edict. Three of them were old and long-established—coeval almost with the birth of the colony and the infancy of the commercial system. The fourth was comparatively new and unknown. Yet it rode out the gale as gallantly as its more dignified compeers. The news was communicated to Mr. Banneret with startling suddenness by one of his school-boy sons, who, returning from town at lunch time, it being the holiday season, greeted him with the question, ‘Father, have you heard the news?’

‘No; what is it?’

‘The Bank of New Holland has stopped payment.’

‘What? The Bank—_that_ Bank! Impossible! Are you sure?’

‘Well, Jack Burton’s brother is accountant. He told me; some of the other fellows knew about it. And the door’s shut. I went to look. Burton says lots of other ones will stop. They are refusing bank-notes at the railway.’

Mr. Banneret groaned. ‘And is this the end of my life’s work?’ he thought—‘a bolt from the blue, and so on. Well, it’s lucky I put that thirty thousand into the British “Reduced Counsels,” as Mr. Weller, senr., called them. Rum time to fall back on Dickens, isn’t it? Might find a worse author, though. We shall have to adopt “Reduced Counsels” literally, it appears. Tell your mother I want her.’

His countenance informed that good wife and trusty mother that _something_ had happened out of the common track of surprises.

‘What is it? Anything the matter with Reggie and Rosamond?’ They were on their way to England by the P. & O. boat _Ispahan_.

‘Well, nothing very serious; but there’s a difficulty about money.’

‘Is that all? How did it come about? No imprudence, I hope?’

‘Not on Reggie’s part. Read his cable—short and strong: “_Credit stopped. Please arrange._”’

‘How did it happen? I feel so relieved. Money’s nothing, compared with health, or accident. I thought Reggie might be ill, or hurt. But tell me.’

‘The main facts are, that all the banks in Sydney, beginning with the Eastern, have stopped payment, provisionally at present, pending reconstruction, liquidation, or some other delayed arrangement, the immediate effect of which is, that nobody can get any money just at present.’

‘What—none at all? Whatever shall we do?’

‘I daresay I can manage a small advance. I put thirty thousand pounds into British Consols, as a stand-by in case of accidents. So we can pay the butcher and baker, at any rate.’

‘But the mine hasn’t stopped?’

‘No, thank God! It’s a pity I banked the last month’s dividend, though. It’s going better than ever. So, when next month’s comes in, I can put it into a trust account. Meanwhile I have wired a draft for £500 to Reggie.’

‘Poor things! It must have given them a cruel shock.’

‘Yes, indeed; but some of their fellow-passengers must have had a worse one. Hard lines to have to come back when they were half-way home, like the Thompsons and Franklins. Poor Mrs. Franklin! She was only telling me last week what a round of the Continent she and the girls proposed.’

* * * * *

This cyclonic disturbance abated in time; matters moved on again in their accustomed order. But there were wrecks left behind—mercantile, moral, and political—which no future prosperity could re-establish. Long was it indeed before the fatal year of 18— was even partially restored, much less forgotten. But, as Mrs. Banneret truly said, ‘Money counts as nothing in family history compared with health.’ And this was only a temporary inconvenience, as the Bank of New Holland paid up all liabilities eventually, with interest up to date. Paterfamilias betook himself to one of the banks which had weathered the storm, and found that with the promise of removing the account of the ‘Last Chance’ Gold Mining Company to their long-established corporation, he could have practically all the money he needed. Which was certainly satisfactory. So the Banneret family went on their way rejoicing, and denied themselves, as ‘before the war,’ nothing in reason. The younger boys and girls went to high-class schools, as before; learned all the extras and accomplishments; played football, tennis, hockey, and cricket; rowed and yachted in the harbour; took the whole round of exercises in mind and body for which no people in the British Empire are more eager than the youthful Australian.

It was now nearly five years since Arnold Banneret had seen the mine—the centre and source of the family fortunes. He had been kept fully posted up in its progress and development, in the size and splendour of the city which had arisen around Pilot Mount, the grand scheme of water supply which had been successfully completed, the electric lighting of public and private buildings, streets, etc., but he thought it advisable to have personal evidence as to all these wonders and miracles. Besides, he was getting rather tired of the almost too easy and prosperous routine of his daily life. Travel had always been the very breath of his nostrils, the very salt and savour of his life. He would try the tonic again.

* * * * *

How different were all things from the rude discomfort of his first visit!—the earlier stages and stopping-places grown from camps to villages, from villages to towns, from towns to cities having mayors and aldermen; telegraph and post offices, court-houses and churches, in almost, as the newly arrived traveller considered, unnecessary profusion. However, the gold returns had kept up—that was the main, the chief consideration. This month’s return from the field had been the largest yet. Other centres of gold production had been discovered, and were advancing along the road to riches and recognition. There had been cases of excessive capitalisation, of course; but nothing that had in any way trenched upon the reputation or resources of the parent mine.

Arnold Banneret arrived late, and preferred to dine and sleep at the Palace Hotel—as, of course, the leading caravanserai at the city was named.

Here, though partly prepared for a series of surprises, he was genuinely amazed at the luxurious details of the apartments and the comparative excellence of the cuisine: fresh fish brought daily by train from the coast, packed in ice; fruit forwarded in the same way; the duly-kept saddle of mutton—the sirloin,—all good of their kind. Though the tariff savoured rather of a recent war, the retiring traveller was not disposed to find fault. The service generally was good, the attendance most creditable. Having slept the sleep of the just (and the tired-out), and arranged for an early breakfast, he left for Pilot Mount in a hired buggy, behind a pair of fresh, well-groomed horses.

A hot climate has its days of tyranny and oppression, but there are compensating advantages—even in summer. By leaving shortly after sunrise, you secure a sample of climate which is little short of perfection,—especially, as in this particular experience, where there is no wind. The sun appeared to be slowly, almost imperceptibly, disengaging his golden sphere from the mists and vapours of the lower world, and as he rose regally from his couch, all nature appeared to welcome the life-giving presence of the fire-worshipping god. Far as eye could see, over the mighty sweep of plain that stretched to the horizon, were the evidences of recent occupation, more or less connected with the great industry which had lured the army of toilers, that Mr. Banneret saw before him, into the gold-seekers’ ranks—some destined to fortune, some to poverty, sickness, and death. In his own case, how nearly had his career come to an untimely end! His heart swelled with thankfulness as he remembered the hospital experiences—the lonely boding days, the faithful watchers by his couch, the unspeakable relief of convalescence.

As he neared the monolith which had been the pillar of hope and guidance in his journey through the wilderness, he was conscious of a certain feeling of disappointment in noting the comparatively small size of the encampment round the mine. He had expected a township of larger proportions, and had not reckoned on the attraction of the Great Aqueduct, recently completed, which will always stand as a monument to the courage and foresight of the Minister who planned and carried it through to successful fulfilment. May he live to crown his life-work with the completion of that other great undertaking with which his name will be always indissolubly connected! Worthily and suitably should the name be venerated, as of one who, himself a son of the soil, had, as an explorer, dared the perils of that waterless desert region.

Not being tied to time on this occasion, and having the satisfaction of seeing all things going well with the mine, Mr. Banneret permitted himself a season of leisure and recreation, so to speak, which suited his personal tastes. He carefully inspected the machinery and general working of the ‘Reward Claim,’ as among the mining community it was generally known; the hundred head of stamps, the Diehl process of extraction, which inexorably dragged the last grain of the precious metal from the crushed rock. The wages men, the shift, and underground ‘boss,’ respectively and individually, were carefully noted and interviewed by him. Practised in the art of eliciting information and making acquaintance with the various and heterogeneous population of a goldfield, he from time to time noted, quietly and unobtrusively, many of the leaders and men of mark in the community. The results of this inquiry, he deemed, might be of value to him in time to come.

In his peregrinations he met with many individuals whom he had known or heard of under different circumstances. The majority of these were unaffectedly pleased to see him—even, rather to his surprise, some of those to whom he had been compelled officially to award pains and penalties. This seemed to make no difference in the cordiality of their recognition. Offenders under such circumstances rarely bear malice, as long as they believe in the justice and impartiality of the decision. The criminal classes, as a body, do not harbour revengeful feelings against administrators of justice. Their common expression is: ‘It’s the law, and it’s his business to carry it out. It’s all in the day’s work.’ True, they do not approve of the official ‘going out of his way’ to arrest a convict. To any ordinary advantage, taken in pursuit or capture, they do not object. ‘It’s his business to run us in, and ours to get away,’ they admit. ‘But he ought to play the game.’ If he fails in this particular, they conspire to be revenged. And as colonial history tells us, they are prone to inflict terrible vengeance in such cases.

It was strangely interesting in its way for the retired magistrate—so unobtrusive of dress and manner, as he rambled from camp to camp in the early mornings or late afternoons, when the wind had ceased and the sun had lost his fiercer rays—to come across the men or women whom he had known under such different conditions of life and occupation in the long-dead days of his earlier life. Some had risen curiously high, while others had fallen unspeakably low.

It was pathetic to mark the sudden gleam of recognition, impossible to suppress, that lit up the eyes, and for an instant transformed the features of the ‘old hand,’ well known—_too_ well known, in fact—to the police of more than one colony; the half-humble, half-defiant change of manner, as if to say, ‘I am free now, and unless I get into fresh “trouble” neither you nor any living man can touch me.’

To such he made a point of speaking a few words, such as, ‘Doing well, Connor? Fine field this? Anything fresh turned up?’ Whatever the answer, it would merely mean that he, the Commissioner, the man of dread and awful powers in days gone by, had simply recognised him: that it depended wholly upon his future conduct whether that fact would tend to his injury. More than one of such former acquaintances sought him out at his hotel, and trusted that he would not ‘put the police’ on him. He was earning an honest living, and sending money to his wife and family in Melbourne, Sydney, or Hobart, as the case might be. ‘My good fellow,’ Mr. Banneret would reply, ‘as long as you behave yourself, I would much rather that you did well than not. You are getting another chance here, far away from people that know you and what you have been. It is no business of mine to inform the police, or any one else. Don’t drink; work hard—I know you can do _that_—and see that your people in Melbourne are not starving while you’re living comfortably here.’

‘No fear, sir! I sent ’em twenty pound last mail.’ So the man of a chequered career went back to his tent with his heart lightened, and a renewed resolve to go straight and reform—if indeed such a changing of spots of the proverbial member of the carnivora were possible. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. In any case his heart was softened, and the impulse to a better life, faint though it might have been, was distinct.

One day he came upon a claim of four men’s ground at which the shareholders had evidently been working hard, judging by the size of their ‘tip.’ The men on top were, apparently, new arrivals, judging by their fresh complexions and ruddy faces.

‘Now, Sailor Bill!’ said the taller man, ‘what are you a-thinkin’ of?—the clapper’s gone twice—to haul up. Dick Andrews ’ll know you’re wool-gathering agin, same as you was when you lowered the bucket yesterday, without puttin’ the “sprag” in, and nearly finished him.’

‘Hang Dick, and you too! I was a-thinkin’ if it was true as I seen in the paper—as the p’leece was agoin’ to make a raid, as they call it, upon the runaway sailors on the field here. There’s a goodish lot, you know. They won’t get me. Afore I’d go home in that old tub as I come out in, with that devil of a skipper and his mate as is worse, I’d chuck myself down the deepest hole in the field, and make an end of it.’

‘Better show them cornstalk fellers, as they call theirselves, that an Englishman can do any work as they can, and handle any tools. It don’t do to let ’em have the laugh at us, Bill.’

‘Well, I’ll give my mind a bit closer to it after this, but the chaps work like navvies—and it’s not the only trade they’ve larnt, I can see. Wonder what they’ve been at afore they come here?—there’s summat queer about ’em, I’ll swear.’

‘Don’t know and don’t care. They’re hard-workin’ smart hands at mining work—and that’s all we care about. There goes the double clapper—it’s dinner time.’

Up came the bucket to the brace, with the man referred to as ‘Dick’ therein—a tall man, fully six feet in height, or perhaps an inch over. He was well made, though he carried but little flesh, and had the air of being fully acquainted with mining and pastoral matters. He wore a beard, with a full moustache hiding his mouth and withholding the expression of his face from the casual observer.

He spoke with the drawling intonation peculiar to the natives of New South Wales, more especially those reared in the country towns of the interior. His features were regular, his eyes grey and apparently unobservant, though, like those of other races remote from cities and the haunts of men, there were few objects, or incidents, which were not quickly and comprehensively revealed to their vision. The countenance was impassive, as of a man who was not desirous of imparting his thoughts to chance comrades, and at the same time too little interested in the minor matters of life to furnish conversation about them. His hair and beard, of a fair or light brown hue, were streaked with grey. Verging upon middle age, he was probably a few years older, though the activity which he showed when roused to exertion forbade the idea. Indifferent and careless as to surroundings as he appeared to the ordinary observer, there was a hint of calm watchfulness about his air and lounging pose which, as of a hunter in ‘Injun country,’ conveyed the idea that it would be difficult to take him by surprise.

The Commissioner looked fixedly at him. The man returned his gaze with a quiet steadiness, at once remote from fear or defiance, yet as one ready for the next movement, whether hostile or pacific.

‘I see you know me, sir,’ said the man; ‘it’s a good few years since we met last. You won’t give me away?’—and here the expression changed to that of a hunted creature, which, driven into the last stronghold, has yet the defiant courage of the wolf quarry amid the baying hounds.

‘My good fellow, you don’t suppose I bother myself about likenesses for all the people I’ve met during the last twenty years. I may have seen you, or some one like you, before; but I’m a mine-owner now, and I don’t know that I could swear to you positively. But _if_ you’ve done anything in another colony, under another name, that has brought you into trouble with the police, don’t get into any scrapes here; and if ever you’re arrested again, it won’t be through me, mind that.’

‘God bless you, sir!’ said the man. ‘You’ve not changed. If I’m “copped” again, it won’t matter, for I’ll be a dead man.’

Mr. Banneret walked away—rather hastily, as though he could not trust himself to say more. ‘Poor devil!’ he said to himself—almost audibly—‘I wonder how he will end? The odds are a hundred to one against him; that’s a good paying claim, I hear, and he may—only _may_—save up his share. He’s afraid to drink for fear of letting out secrets—there’s a price on his head too—a big reward—which some of his own “friends” wouldn’t mind handling. Well, there’s the last of the lawless lot. “’Tis pity of him too,” as the Douglas said.’ It was rather past the hour of the mid-day meal when he regained Pilot Mount, and his face still wore an expression of doubt, almost of anxiety, as he entered the tent, where Mr. Newstead’s lively chatter, and Southwater’s more serious observations about business matters, and the probable month’s ‘clean up,’ chased the cloud from his brow.

Not only smoothly, but on the crest of the wave of prosperity, with fair wind, and every sail set, sped on the ‘Last Chance’—that argosy in special favour with gods and men.