vered with stones and branches of trees, which I removed,
and I immediately recognised it to be that of a poor man who used to
work not far from my own claim. I had missed him for more than a week
past, but supposed that he had either gone to other diggings, or was
away prospecting."

"Poor fellow!" said Ned; "but how, in such a matter, can _we_ help you
with advice?"

"Well, you see I'm in difficult circumstances," rejoined the Scot, "for
I feel certain that I could point out the murderer, yet I cannot _prove_
him to be such, and I want your advice as to what I should do."

"Let it be known at once that you have discovered the murdered man at
any rate," said Maxton.

"That I have done already."

"Who do you think was the murderer?" inquired Ned.

"A man who used to live in the same tent with him at one time, but who
quarrelled with him frequently, and at last went off in a rage. I know
not what was the cause, but I heard him vow that he would be revenged.
He was a great coarse fellow, more like a brute than a man, with a black
beard, and the most forbidding aspect I think I ever saw."

"Wot wos his name?" inquired Bill Jones, while the party looked at each
other as if they knew of such a character.

"Smith was the name he went by oftenest, but the diggers called him
Black Jim sometimes."

"Ha! Smith--black beard--forbidding aspect! It strikes me that I too
have seen the man," said Ned Sinton, who related to McLeod the visit
paid to them in their camp by the surly stranger. While he was
speaking, Larry O'Neil sat pondering something in his mind.

"Mister McLeod," said he, when Ned concluded, "will ye shew me the body
o' this man? faix, I'm of opinion I can prove the murder; but, first of
all, how is the black villain to be diskivered?"

"No difficulty about that. He is even now in the colony. I saw him in
a gambling-house half-an-hour since. My fear is that, now the murder's
out, he'll bolt before we can secure him."

"It's little trouble we'd have in preventin' that," suggested Larry.

"The consequences might be more serious, however, than you imagine.
Suppose you were to seize and accuse him, and fail to prove the murder,
the jury would acquit him, and the first thing he would do, on being set
free, would be to shoot you, for which act the morality of the miners
would rather applaud him than otherwise. It is only on cold-blooded,
unprovoked murder and theft that Judge Lynch is severe. It is a