‘That envelope is so unfortunate,’ said the lawyer.

‘Most unfortunate.’

’Perhaps we shall get some one before the day comes who will tell the jury that any marriage up at Ahalala must have been a farce.’

All this was unsatisfactory, and became so more and more as the weeks went by.  The confidential clerk whom the Boltons had sent out when the first threat reached them early in November,—­the threat conveyed in that letter from the woman which Caldigate had shown to Robert Bolton,—­returned about the end of March.  The two brothers, Robert and William, decided upon sending him to Mr. Seely, so that any information obtained might be at Caldigate’s command, to be used, if of any use, in his defence.  But there was in truth very little of it.  The clerk had been up to Nobble and Ahalala, and had found no one there who knew enough of the matter to give evidence about it.  The population of mining districts in Australia is peculiarly a shifting population, so that the most of those who had known Caldigate and his mode of life there were gone.  The old woman who kept Henniker’s Hotel at Nobble had certainly heard that they were married; but then she had added that many people there called themselves man and wife from convenience.  A woman would often like a respectable name where there was no parson near at hand to entitle her to it.  Then the parsons would be dilatory and troublesome and expensive, and a good many people were apt to think that they could do very well without ceremonies.  She evidently would have done no good to either side as a witness.  This clerk had found Ahalala almost deserted,—­occupied chiefly by a few Chinese, who were contented to search for the specks of gold which more ambitious miners had allowed to slip through their fingers.  The woman had certainly called herself Mrs. Caldigate, and had been called so by many.  But she had afterwards been called Mrs. Crinkett, when she and Crinkett had combined their means with the view of buying the Polyeuka mine.  She was described as an enterprising, greedy woman, upon whom the love of gold had had almost more than its customary effect.  And she had for a while been noted and courted for her success, having been the only female miner who was supposed to have realised money in these parts.  She had been known to the banks at Nobble, also even at Sydney; and had been supposed at one time to have been worth twenty or thirty thousand pounds.  Then she had joined herself with Crinkett, and all their money had been supposed to vanish in the Polyeuka mine.  No doubt there had been enough in that to create animosity of the most bitter kind against Caldigate.  He in his search for gold had been uniformly successful,—­was spoken of among the Nobble miners as the one man who in gold- digging had never had a reverse.  He had gone away just before the bad time came on Polyeuka; and then had succeeded, after he had gone, in extracting from these late unfortunate partners of his every farthing that he had left them!  There was ample cause for animosity.