"'No, Tom,' he said, 'I am a villain in allowing
certain thoughts to cross my mind.'

"'What do you mean?' I said.

"'This,' says he: 'I believe Lizzy has been
taken away, and is perhaps murdered.'

'"Be a man, Harry,' I answers. ' Do you
suspect any one?'

"He did not answer, but mounted his horse,
and we rode away. That long night through
we rode about 'cooeying,' and many a narrow
escape we had from tumbling down the deep
holes. We met others, too, as busy as we were,
on the same errand. But we all returned
without success.

"That evening, as we sat in the marquee
taking some refreshment, I said to Harry:

"'You recollect what you said to me last
night?'

"Says he, 'And are you not of my mind?'

"'Listen to me, Tom,' I said. 'Jimmy is
now at Rooke's station, about thirty miles off.
He's the best tracker in the colonies. Bring
him into the marquee, and whoever took the
child away, Jimmy will track better than a
blood-hound.'

"'No good, Tom,' says he. 'Look at the
crowds of people that have been here since;
every track of last night is gone.'

"'Never mind,' I answers. 'Jimmy must be
got. It's our only chance.'

"Harry rode over, and got the black fellow.
He could speak English very well, and understood
in an instant what he had to do. It was
very curious to see how he commenced his
work. He spent at least an hour about the
bunk that Lizzy had been sleeping on. Then
he got up and led the way slowly towards a
scrub not more than two hundred yards off. We
entered it; he went on until he came to a spot
where he stopped, as though uncertain. After
some time, he went out of the scrub at right
angles to our road into it, and led the way right
to a deep-sunk hole that had been deserted some
weeks before.

"I have often thought that Harry and I were
in a kind of stupor all this time (although we
saw and noted everything that was done), for it
seems to me now that only a moment passed
until I saw men letting the black fellow down
by a rope, saw him come up again with something
that had golden hair hanging on his arm,
heard my poor Harry utter the most awful
scream of mortal agony that ever rang through
my ears, and after that I didn't hear any more."

(Here the mosquitoes, confound them, were
very hard at work.)

"Well, sir, there was an inquest—Wilful murder
against some person or persons unknown.

"The question was, who was the murderer?
Harry and I had no doubt about it, and several
were of our opinion. The suspected man had left
the gully, it appeared, early on the day of the murder,
although one woman said she saw him coming
back long after the others had seen him go.
However, there was no shadow of law-evidence
against him, and we could do nothing.
Rewards were offered, detectives sent up—all to
no purpose. Peggy did not recover her senses
for a long time, and she never was told the
worst part of the case. Harry seemed to live
only for the purpose of discovering his child's
destroyer. We took Peggy down to the sea-
coast, got her the best medical advice, and,
after we saw that she was mending, we determined
to leave her with the kind, good people
we lodged with, and to go to visit new diggins
we had just heard of.

"And now, sir, I am going to tell you one of
them things you read about in novels; but I
often say that novels is foolish things compared
with rale life. The evening before we were to
start, Peggy, with her poor weak hands, was
rummaging among her packages for some things
to give to Harry for his journey. Suddenly
she began to cry and sob so bitterly that Harry
ran over to her, and says:

"'What is the matter with you, my poor
darling?'

"But Harry began to sob himself, for his
wife had just taken out by mistake the little
frock that the blessed child had been murdered
in. He threw it down on the table to support
his wife, and I heard something like metal
strike the candlestick. What made me pay
attention to it I cannot tell, but there, half hid
by the little waist-belt, was something round
and shining.

"'Harry,' says I, 'come here for a moment.
Do you recognise this?'

"Of course he did; so did I. It was the
top of Cornish's tobacco-pipe, of a style that no
one could ever fail to notice.

"'Tom,' says Harry, as white as a sheet,
'where did you get this?'

"'It must have got entangled in the waistbelt,'
I said, in a whisper, 'when he was carrying
her, and got hidden between the belt and
the frock. Your throwing it down made it
come half out.'

"'What will you do with it?' I said again.
'Hand it to the police, of course?'

"'No fear,' Harry answers. 'The lawyers
would be safe to get him off. They would
make it out that the child found it, or that the
guilty party put it there on purpose to divert
attention from him, and many other things of
the kind. No, Tom; I know two policemen
who will find him.' He looked very hard into
my face as he said this.

"'I think I know them, too,' I said. 'When
will they set out?'

"'To-morrow morning, Tom, and no mis-
take.'

"The next morning the two policemen set
out. One of them was called—O yes, he was
called Griffin, and the other—call him Hobbs
if you like. It did not take such experienced
bush-constables long to find out that Cornish,
was living, under another name, on the station
of a Mr. Courtenay, as stockman. They steered
in that direction, and in a day or two reached
the station.

"They asked about a stockman called Walsh.
lHe had left that very day. Would Mr.