ne of a bloodless victory, her
intercession for the father, her meeting with the son.

The prospect dazzled her. It had its gravely precarious aspect. But one
thing at a time. She had done her best; no ultimate ill could come of
it; of that she felt as certain as of the fact that she was sitting in
her saddle and blindly following an escaped criminal through untrodden
wilds.

Suddenly she discovered that she was not doing this exactly. She had not
consciously diverged, and yet her leader was bearing down upon her with
a scowl.

"Why don't you follow me?" he cried. "Do you want to get bushed in Blind
Man's Block?"

"I wasn't thinking," replied Moya. "It must have been the horse."

Bovill seized the bridle.

"It's a fool of a horse!" said he. "Why, we're quite close to the fence,
and it wants to head back into the middle of the block!"

Moya remarked that she did not recognise the country.

"Of course you don't," was the reply. "You came the devil of a round,
but I'm taking you straight back to the fence. Trust an old hand like
me; I can smell a fence as a sheep smells water. You trust yourself to
me!"

Moya had already done so. It was too late to reconsider that. Yet she
did begin to wonder somewhat at herself. That hairy hand upon the
bridle, it lay also rather heavily on her nerves. And the mallee shrub
showed no signs of thinning; the open spaces were as few as ever, and as
short; on every hand the leaves seemed whispering for miles and miles.

"We're a long time getting to that fence," said Moya at length.

The convict stopped, looked about him in all directions, and finally
turned round. In doing so his right hand left the bridle, but in an
instant the other was in its place. Moya, however, was too intent upon
his face to notice this.

"I'm afraid I've missed it," said he calmly.

"Missed the fence?"

"It looks like it."

"After what you said just now? Oh, what a fool I was to trust you!"

Their eyes were joined for the next few seconds; then the man's face
relaxed in a brutal grin. And Moya began to see the measure of her
folly.

"Hypocrite!" she gasped.

"Don't call names, my dear. It's not kind, especially to your
father-in-law that is to be!"

Moya shuddered in every member except the hand that gripped her
whalebone switch. The gold-mounted handle was deep in her flesh.

"Leave go of my bridle," she said quietly.

"Not just yet, my dear."

The whalebone whistled through the air, and