from the battery, on a seldom used track that led to an
abandoned alluvial workings, a stained and weather-worn biscuit-tin had
been nailed to an iron-bark tree. In the prosperous days of Mulliner's
it had been placed there by the diggers as a receptacle for letters, and
its location there saved the mailman a long _detour_ to their camp.
At present poor loving Kate Channing and Dick Haughton were the only
persons who ever looked into it. After getting the station letters from
the landlord of the "Booming Nugget," Kate would ride through the bush
and come out on the track just opposite; then, bending down from her
horse, she would peer eagerly into the tin to see if a letter had been
left there for her. Generally there was not. So, with a sad, wistful
look in her blue eyes, she would drop her own tenderly-worded letter in
and ride away home.

Twice Nell Lawson had seen her passing over the ridge towards the old
workings, and had wondered what had taken her so far off the road; and
on each of these occasions she had seen Dick Haughton follow in the same
direction shortly after. He was never away more than half an hour. The
first time she simply wondered, the next she grew suspicious, and as she
saw him returning went and stopped him. As she threw her arms around his
neck she felt the rustling of a letter that lay loosely in the front of
the dungaree jumper he always wore when at work. She said nothing, but
determined to watch, and one day, with the bitterest hatred gathering
at her heart, she saw Kate Channing ride up to the tin on the iron-bark,
look carefully inside, and then drop in a letter. And as Nell Lawson
could not read she let it lay there untouched. But from that hour murder
lay in her passionate heart.

That evening, as she entered Bob Lawson's humpy, her husband, a big,
heavy-featured man, looked up and saw the ghastly pallor of her face.

"Why, what's the matter wi' 'ee, Nell? You be lookin' quite sick-loike
lately. Tell 'ee what, Nell, thee wants a cheange."

"Mulliner's be a dull pleace," she answered, mechanically.

"Aye, lass, dull as hell in a fog. Mebbe I'll take thee somewheres for a
spell."

*****

For nearly another week she nursed her hatred and planned her revenge;
and Haughton, as he saw the dark rings forming under her eyes, and the
cold, listless manner as she went about her work, began to experience a
higher phase of feeling for her than that of the mere passion which her
beauty had fi