ely in his saddle as his glance
swept over the tangled masses of undergrowth, the tumbled boulders
peeping here and there from amid the shadows, the precipitous sides of
the pass, and the broken ruggedness of the ground beyond. But it was not
an appreciation of the picturesque, nor a recognition of the poetry in
landscape which held him. He saw in the place only such a spot as the
men concerned in the robbery of the bank would select for hiding their
booty. Within that maze of rock and tree and mountain, how many nooks
there must be to serve the purpose.

Had he been occupied only with the matter of the robbery, he would have
started there and then to satisfy himself whether his surmise was
correct, and whether the missing thousands were not lying perhaps a few
yards away, hidden among the undergrowth and boulders. But there was
more than the robbery in his mind; it was not alone to make inquiries on
the subject that he had ridden away on a journey Brennan could have
accomplished equally well. There was a much more personal note in the
affair.

Durham was in love, and with a woman he had only met once, and of whom
he knew nothing more than her name.

Travelling one day by coach, he had, for a fellow-passenger, a woman. A
dozen signs showed him that she was a new arrival in the country, unused
to colonial ways, unversed in colonial methods. It was natural for him,
at such places as they stopped for meals, to extend to her a share of
the attention his official position secured for him. It was also natural
for him to drift into conversation with her.

The companion of his coaching experience was named Burke--Nora
Burke--she had told him. Nora Burke was one of the victims of the bank
robbery, and, apparently, the last person who had had anything to say to
the vanished bank manager. It was more to ascertain whether the heroine
of the coach journey were the same as the owner of Waroona Downs, than
to learn what Eustace had or had not said, that Durham determined to
ride out to the station.

Even as his glance wandered over the picturesque scene before him, he
was impatient to press on--five miles had yet to be covered before he
reached Waroona Downs. He pulled the bridle with a jerk and rode
steadily until he was clear of the range. Then he put his horse at a
gallop and kept the pace till he saw the gleam of a light from the
window of a house set back from the road. In the dusk he could not make
out all the detail of th