t do it.' Many others were wild when they heard the thing
proposed; but while they raved and argued, the pit began to send up a
reek of smoke like the mouth of hell, and then the master gave orders
to close the shaft, and a hundred women knew they were widows, and went
weeping home.

"And Jack got well. And after the old man died, we came out here. Jack
has gotten a public-house in Yass, and next year I shall go home and
live with him.

"And that's the yarn about the fire at the Southstone Pit."

We applauded it highly, and after a time began to talk about lying
down, when on a sudden we heard a noise of horses' feet outside; then
the door was opened, and in came a stranger.

He was a stranger to me, but not to my servant, who I could see
recognized him, though he gave no sign of it in words. I also stared at
him, for he was the handsomest young man I had ever seen.

Handsome as an Apollo, beautiful as a leopard, but with such a peculiar
style of beauty, that when you looked at him you instinctively felt at
your side for a weapon of defence, for a more reckless, dangerous
looking man I never yet set eyes on. And while I looked at him I
recognised him. I had seen his face, or one like it, before often,
often. And it seemed as though I had known him just as he stood there,
years and years ago, on the other side of the world. I was almost
certain it was so, and yet he seemed barely twenty. It was an
impossibility, and yet as I looked I grew every moment more certain.

He dashed in in an insolent way. "I am going to quarter here to-night
and chance it," he said. "Hallo! Dick, my prince! You here? And what
may your name be, old cock?" he added, turning to me, now seeing me
indistinctly for the first time, for I was sitting back in the shadow.

"My name is Geoffry Hamlyn. I am a Justice of the Peace, and I am at
your service," I said. "Now perhaps you will favour me with YOUR name?"

The young gentleman did not seem to like coming so suddenly into close
proximity with a "beak," and answered defiantly,--

"Charles Sutton is my name, and I don't know as there's anything
against me, at present."

"Sutton," I said; "Sutton? I don't know the name. No, I have nothing
against you, except that you don't appear very civil."

Soon after I rolled myself in a blanket and lay down. Dick lay at right
angles to me, his feet nearly touching mine. He began snoring heavily
almost immediately, and just when I was going to give him a