"

"Did she break it off, or did you?"

"She--she married."

"She married Eustace, while she was practically engaged to you?"

"While she was actually engaged to me."

"Then he must have known of your existence?"

"I assume so, but--well, nothing was ever said about it between us. I
will tell you exactly what happened. The letters I had written to her,
the presents I had given her, and her engagement ring, were returned to
me in a packet through the post with a piece of wedding-cake. Until I
came here and met her, I did not know to whom she was married. Whether
Eustace knew we had once been engaged I do not know. I never referred to
it."

"You never knew that, in applying for an assistant, he named you
personally to the general manager of the bank and gave as a reason a
long-standing friendship?"

The look of astonishment which showed on Harding's face was sufficient
answer.

"Yet it is what happened--I have the information from your general
manager."

CHAPTER V

MRS. BURKE'S PRESENTIMENT

Waroona Downs was fifteen miles from Waroona township by the road, and
ten as the crow flies, the intrusion of a rocky and precipitous range
making it impossible to take the shorter and more direct route. One had
perforce to use the road, and the road turned and twisted where the
level plains were broken by the range, passing, at one stage, through a
narrow gorge hemmed in by steep, rock-strewn heights, on which a growth
of stunted gums flourished sufficiently to hide the jagged boulders from
the road below.

Half-way through the gorge a stream, having its source in a series of
springs hidden among the tumbled rocks, swept across the track in a
shallow ford. The road dipped to it on both sides, the constant flow of
water having stripped away the soil and left a barrier of naked rock
which dammed back the stream to form a wide pool sheltered among the
hills and fringed by a more luxurious growth of vegetation than clothed
the heights above.

The last gleam of the setting sun shed a ruddy tinge on the topmost
branches of the trees as Durham reached where the road dipped to the
stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and
turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was
full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the
rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, the silence was
unbroken.

Durham reined in his horse and sat loos