er mounted guard in the saddle. But nothing of
importance was discovered by the pair on foot, and nothing seen or heard
by their mounted comrade.

They found the station still astir and faintly aglow in the veiled
daylight of the moon. A cluster of the men stood in a glare at the door
of their hut; the travellers' hut betrayed the like symptoms of
excitement; at the kitchen door were more men with pannikins, and odd
glimpses of a firelit, white-capped face within. But on the broad
veranda sat two young men with their backs to a closed and darkened
window. And behind the window lay all that remained of an elderly man,
whose brown, gnarled face was scarcely recognizable by the newcomers in
its strange smooth pallor, but his grizzled beard weirdly familiar and
still crisp with lingering life.

The coroner arrived in some thirty hours, which had brought forth
nothing new; his jury was drawn from the men's hut and rabbiters'
tents; and after a prolonged but inconclusive investigation, the inquest
was adjourned for a week. But the seven days were as barren as the
first, and a verdict against some person unknown a foregone result. This
did not satisfy the many who were positive that they knew the person;
for Stingaree had been seen a hundred miles lower down, doubtless on his
way back to Victoria, and with his appearance altered in a telltale
manner. But the coroner thought he knew better than anybody else, and
had his way, notwithstanding the manifest feeling on the long veranda
where he held his court.

So jurors and spectators drifted back to hut and tent and neighboring
station, the coroner started in his buggy for Glenranald, and last of
all the police departed, leading the horse which Hardcastle had ridden
home from their barracks, and leaving him at peace once more with his
two young men. But on the squatter the time had told; his table had been
full to overflowing through it all; and he sank into a long chair, a
trifle grayer at the temples, a thought looser in his dress, as the
pugarees of Cameron and Tyler fluttered out of sight.

"I think we might have a drink," he said with a wry smile to Evans, who
fetched the decanter from the store; the jackeroo was called from a
stable which had become Augean during the week, and the three were still
mildly tippling when the store-keeper came to his feet.

"Good Lord!" cried he. "I thought we'd seen the last of the plucky
police!"

"You don't mean to say they're coming b