The glowing pipe lit a wild brown beard and mustache, thickly streaked with gray, a bronzed nose, and nothing more.  Indeed, it was only at each inhalation that so much stood out upon the surrounding screen of impenetrable blackness.  Langholm kept his distance, stick in hand, his gaunt figure as invisible as the overhanging trees; but his voice might have belonged to the most formidable of men.

“As yet,” said he, sternly, “I think very little of either you or your letter.  Who are you, and what do you mean by writing to me like that?”

“Steady, mister, you do know my name!” remonstrated the man, in rather more respectful tones.  “It’s Abel—­John William—­and as much at your service as you like if you take him proper; but he comes from a country where Jack isn’t the dirt under his master’s feet, and you’re no master o’ mine.”

“I don’t want to be, my good fellow,” rejoined Langholm, modifying his own manner in turn.  “Then you’re not a Northborough man?”

“Not me!”

“I seem to have heard your voice before,” said Langholm, to whom the wild hair on the invisible face was also not altogether unfamiliar.  “Where do you come from?”

“A little place called Australia.”

“The devil you do!”

And Langholm stood very still in the dark, for now he knew who this man was, and what manner of evidence he might furnish, and against whom.  The missing links in his own secret chain, what if these were about to be given to him by a miracle, who had discovered so much already by sheer chance!  It seemed impossible; yet his instinct convinced Langholm of the nature of that which was to come.  Without another word he stood until he could trust himself to speak carelessly, while the colonist made traditional comparisons between the old country as he found it and the one which he wished he had never left.

“I know you,” said Langholm, when he paused.  “You’re the man I saw ‘knocking down your check,’ as you called it, at an inn near here called the Packhorse.”

“I am so!” cried the fellow, with sudden savagery.  “And do you know where I got the check to knock down?  I believe he’s a friend of yours; it’s him I’ve come to talk to you about to-night, and he calls himself Steel!”

“Isn’t it his real name?” asked Langholm, quickly.

“Well, for all I know, it is.  If it isn’t, it ought to be!” added Abel, bitterly.

“You knew him in Australia, then?”

“Knew him?  I should think I did know him!  But who told you he was ever out there?  Not him, I’ll warrant!”

“I happen to know it,” said Langholm, “that’s all.  But do you mean to tell me that it was Mr. Steel to whom you referred in your letter?”

“I do so!” cried Abel, and clinched it with an oath.

“You said ‘they.’”

“But I didn’t mean anybody else.”

Langholm lowered his voice.  Neither foot nor hoof had passed or even sounded in the distance.  There was scarcely a whisper of the trees; an ordinary approach could have been heard for hundreds of yards, a stealthy one for tens.  Langholm had heard nothing, though his ears were pricked.  And yet he lowered his voice.