‘Hi, Dick What were you doing with that bag here?’

‘Never had it nowhere near here,’ answered Dick.

‘Come, recollect; you put it down for a spell.’  ‘Didn’t,’ said Dick.  ‘Went straight along the side, an’ dropped it into the shaft.’

’But look—­there’s hair on the top of this rock and a tuft on the corner.  Mustn’t tell me a cow would roost there, my lad.’

‘Don’t care—­’twasn’t me.’

Downy sat on the rock for a moment in a brown study, and the crowd, which had made itself comfort able in one end of the quarry and up one side, sat in awed silence, watching him closely, like a theatre audience waiting for some wonder-worker to perform his feats of magic.

The detective did nothing astonishing.  After collecting a portion of the hair he deposited it carefully in his pocket-book, deposited the book just as carefully in his breast-pocket, and then climbed out of the quarry and marched away towards the township; and the crowd, relieved from the restraint imposed by the law as personified in him, gathered about the stone and examined it wisely, discovering a much longer and more significant sermon in it than Downy had ever suspected, and finding marrow-freezing suggestiveness in the marks of rust upon the face of the rock, which were declared by common consent to be bloodstains.  Waddy confidently expected the gold-stealing case to culminate in the discovery of a particularly atrocious murder, and Ephraim Shine was selected as the probable victim.  It was held by many that so good a man as the superintendent had seemed to be could not reasonably be suspected of consorting with a sinner like Joe Rogers with criminal intentions, and the idea that he had been murdered by the real thieves under peculiarly shocking circumstances was held to be more feasible, and was, in addition to that, highly satisfactory from a dramatic point of view.

The investigations of the people stopped short at the entrance to the shaft, where Peterson mounted guard and warned them off in the name of the law, and meanwhile Hardy and McKnight were pegging out the land preparatory to applying for a lease.

Downy went straight from the quarry to Shine’s house, and, much to his surprise, found the missing man’s daughter there.  Christina had altered much during the last few hours:  her face was now quite colourless, grief had robbed it of its sweet simplicity, and the buoyant ingenuousness had fled from her eyes.  A new character was legible there, a strength of will more in keeping with her fine presence.  The almost childlike sympathy was gone, and in its place was a trace of suffering and evidence of the deeper forces of her nature.  The detective eyed her keenly, with surprise and interest, and saluted her in his most respectful manner.

‘You have had the—­eh, misfortune to meet me before, Miss Shine,’ he said.

Christina merely bowed her head.

’I am Detective Downy.  I have a warrant for the arrest of Ephraim Shine.  I wish to search the house.’