d he looked as she does
now; besides that, there is not a scratch or bruise on her body, so she
couldn't have received any hurt unless it was an internal one when she
was thrown. Here's the place," and then he started back, for lying at
the foot of the tree was the panting, trembling figure of Nell Lawson.

She had tried to get there before them to efface all traces of her
deadly work.

"What are you doing here, Mrs. Lawson?" said Ballantyne, sharply; "we
sent over for you; don't you know what has happened?"

The strange hysterical "yes" that issued from her pallid lips caused
Ballantyne to turn his keen grey eyes upon her intently. Then something
of the truth must have flashed across his mind, for he walked up to the
tree and looked into the tin.

"Good God!" he said, "poor little woman!" and then he called to
Haughton. "Come here, and see what killed her!"

Haughton looked, and a deadly horror chilled his blood: lying in the
bottom of the tin was a thick, brownish-red death adder. It raised
its hideous, flatted head for a moment, then lowered it, and lay there
regarding them with its deadly eye.

"How did it get there?" he asked.

Ballantyne pointed to Nell Lawson, who now stood and leant against a
tree for support.

Haughton sprang to her side and seized her hands.

"Are you a murderess, Nell? What had she done to you that you should
take her innocent life? She was nothing to me--she was Ballantyne's
wife."

She looked at him steadily, and her lips moved, then a shrill, horrible
laugh burst forth, and she fell unconscious at his feet.

That day Haughton left Mulliner's Camp for ever.

*****

Perhaps this story should have another ending, and Nell Lawson have met
with a just retribution. But, as is the case of many other women--and
men--with natures such as hers, she did not. For when old Channing lay
dying she nursed him tenderly to the last, and perhaps because of this,
or for that he could never understand why blue-eyed Kate had never
come back, he left her all he had, much to the wondering admiration of
honest, dull-witted Bob, her husband, who almost immediately after
the old man's death, when returning home one night from the "Booming
Nugget," filled with a great peace of mind and a considerable quantity
of bad rum, fell down a shaft and broke his neck, after the manner of
one of old Channing's bullocks--and then she married Ballantyne.

Everything seems to come to him who waits--especially if