that had escaped."

"The two!" cried Moya in high excitement. "The two! I keep forgetting
there were two of them; you see you never said so when you came to the
station."

"I wanted to keep it all to myself," confessed the crest-fallen
sergeant. "I only told two living men who I thought it was that I was
after. One was my sub--who guessed--and the other was Mr. Rigden."

"Were the two men who escaped anything like each other?"

"Well, they were both old lags from the _Success_, and both superior men
at one time; old particulars who'd been chained together, as you might
say, for years; and I suppose that sort of thing does beat a man down
into a type. However, their friendship didn't go for much when they got
outside; for Gipsy Marks murdered Captain Bovill as sure as emu's eggs
are emu's eggs!"

"Murdered him!" gasped Moya; and her brain reeled to think of the hours
she had spent with the murderer. But all was clear to her now, from the
way in which Rigden had been imposed upon in the beginning, to the
impostor's obstinate and terrified refusal to own himself as such to the
very end.

"Yes, murdered him on the other side of the Murray; the body's only just
been found; and meanwhile the murderer's slipped through my fingers,"
said the sergeant, sourly; "for if it wasn't poor old Bovill I was
after, at all events it was Gipsy Marks."

Moya sprang to her feet.

"It was," she cried; "but he hasn't slipped through your fingers at all,
unless he's dead. He wasn't when I left him two or three hours ago."

"When you _left_ him?"

"Yes, I found him, and was with him all the morning."

"In Blind Man's Block--with that ruffian?"

"He took my horse and my water-bag, and left me there to die of thirst;
but the dear horse turned the tables on him--poor wretch!"

"And you never told me!"

"I am trying to tell you now."

And he let her finish.

But she would not let him go.

"Dear Sergeant Harkness, I can't pretend to have an ounce of pity left
for that dreadful being in Blind Man's Block. A murderer, too! At least
I have more pity for some one else, and you must let me take him away
before you go."

"Impossible, my dear young lady--that is, before communicating with Mr.
Cross."

"About bail?"

"Yes."

"What was the amount named this morning?"

"Fifty pounds."

"Give me a sheet of paper and a stamp, and I'll write a cheque myself."

Harkness considered.

"Certainly that could be done," he said at leng