built on the ridge overlooking the "Ever
Victorious" battery, with its clamorous stampers pounding away night and
day, the Warden bid Sheila and Grainger goodbye, and rode off with his
hardy white police, leaving Lamington and his black, legalised murderers
to go their own way in pursuit of Sandy and Daylight, and "disperse" the
myalls--if they could find them--such dispersion meaning the shooting of
women and children as well as men.

Now, the truth is, that Grainger should have gone on with the Warden
to the new rush, where his prospecting party was anxiously awaiting his
arrival; but he was deeply in love with Sheila Carolan, and she with
him, although she did not know it. But she was mightily pleased when the
"Ever Victorious" Grainger told her that he was going to take her all
the way to Minerva Downs, as he "wanted to see Farrow about buying a
hundred bullocks to send to the new rush at Banshee Creek." (This was
perfectly true, but he could very easily have dispatched a letter to
Farrow, who would have sent the bullocks to the meat-hungry diggers as a
matter of business.)

As she had stood on the verandah of Grainger's house in the early
morning, watching Charteris and his troopers depart, and listening to
the clang and thud of the five-and-twenty stampers of the new battery
of the "Ever Victorious" pounding out the rich golden quartz, handsome,
swarthy-faced Sub-Inspector Lamington ascended the steps and bade her
good morning.

"So you and Grainger travel with me for another ninety miles or so, Miss
Carolan," he said with undisguised pleasure. "Will you be ready soon?"

"In half an hour."

"Ah, that's right. My boys and I are anxious to get to work," and he
went on to the horse yard.

Sheila could not help a slight shudder as she heard the soft-voiced,
_debonnair_ Lamington speak of his "work." She knew what it meant--a
score or two of stilled, bullet-riddled figures of men, women, and
children lying about in the hot desert sand, or in the dark shades of
some mountain scrub.

Charteris had told her Lamington's story. He was the only survivor of an
entire family who had been massacred by the blacks of Fraser's Island,
and had grown up with but one object in life--to kill every wild black
he came across. For this purpose alone he had joined the Native Police,
and there were dark tales whispered of what he had done. But the
authorities considered him "a good man," and when he and his fierce
troopers rode i