ness had set in by the time she had got the mail from the landlord
of the "Booming Nugget," and turned her horse's head into the track that
led over the ridge to the old workings.

*****

Two hours before daylight, Kate Channing's horse walked riderless up
to the sliprails of Calypso Downs, and the stockman who had kept awake
awaiting her return, went out to let his young mistress in.

"Got throwed somewhere, I suppose," he grumbled, after examining the
horse. "This is a nice go. It's no use telling the old man about it,
he's too sick to be worried just now, anyway."

Taking a black boy with him, and leading Kate's horse, he set out to
look for her, expecting, unless she was hurt, to meet her somewhere
between the station and Mulliner's Camp. Just as daylight broke, the
black boy, who was leading, stopped.

"Young missus been tumble off horse here," and he pointed to where
the scrubby undergrowth on one side of the track was crushed down and
broken.

The stockman nodded. "Horse been shy I think it, Billy, at that old
fellow post-office there?" and he pointed to the old mail tin, which was
not ten feet from where Billy said she had fallen off.

"Go ahead, Billy," said the stockman, "I believe young missus no catch
him horse again, and she walk along to Mulliner's."

"_Yo ai_," answered the black boy, and he started ahead. In a few
minutes he stopped again with a puzzled look and pointed to Kate
Channing's tracks.

"Young missus been walk about all same drunk."

"By jingo, she's got hurted, I fear," said the stockman. "Push ahead,
Billy."

A hundred yards further on they found her dead, lying face downwards on
the track.

Lifting her cold, stiffened body in his arms, the stockman carried
his burden along to Ballantyne's house. Haughton met him at the door.
Together they laid the still figure upon the sofa in the front room,
and then while the stockman went for Nell Lawson, Haughton went to
Ballantyne's bunk and awoke and told him. His mouth twitched nervously
for a second or two, and then his hard, impassive nature asserted itself
again.

*****

"'Tis a terrible thing this, Ballantyne," said Haughton,
sympathetically, as they walked out together to see the place where she
had been thrown.

"Yes," assented the other, "dreadful. Did you hear what Channing's black
boy told me?"

"No!"

"He says that she has died from snake-bite. I believe him, too. I saw a
boy die on the Etheridge from snake-bite, an