are not quite clean. You did promise the other lady marriage.'

'No doubt. No doubt I was a fool; and I paid for my folly. I bought her
off. Having fallen into the common scrape,--having been pleased by her
prettinesses and clevernesses and women's ways,--I did as so many other
men have done. I got out of it as best I could without treachery and
without dishonour. I bought her off. Had she refused to take my money, I
should probably have married her,--and probably have blown my brains out
afterwards. All that has to be acknowledged,--much to my shame. Most of
us would have to blush if the worst of our actions were brought out
before us in a court of law. But there was an end of it. Then they come
over here and endeavour to enforce their demand for money by a threat.'

'That envelope is so unfortunate,' said the lawyer.

'Most unfortunate.'

'Perhaps we shall get some one before the day comes who will tell the
jury that any marriage up at Ahalala must have been a farce.'

All this was unsatisfactory, and became so more and more as the weeks
went by. The confidential clerk whom the Boltons had sent out when the
first threat reached them early in November,--the threat conveyed in
that letter from the woman which Caldigate had shown to Robert
Bolton,--returned about the end of March. The two brothers, Robert and
William, decided upon sending him to Mr. Seely, so that any information
obtained might be at Caldigate's command, to be used, if of any use, in
his defence. But there was in truth very little of it. The clerk had
been up to Nobble and Ahalala, and had found no one there who knew
enough of the matter to give evidence about it. The population of mining
districts in Australia is peculiarly a shifting population, so that the
most of those who had known Caldigate and his mode of life there were
gone. The old woman who kept Henniker's Hotel at Nobble had certainly
heard that they were married; but then she had added that many people
there called themselves man and wife from convenience. A woman would
often like a respectable name where there was no parson near at hand to
entitle her to it. Then the parsons would be dilatory and troublesome
and expensive, and a good many people were apt to think that they could
do very well without ceremonies. She evidently would have done no good
to either side as a witness. This clerk had found Ahalala almost
deserted,--occupied chiefly by a few Chinese, who were contented to
search