’Sure, ‘twould be sorrer an’ torinint fer that same Shine if you laid thim hands on him now, me boy.’

Harry started to his feet and commenced to fondle the trooper’s horse, fearing to follow the train of thought that had possessed him lest he should betray himself.  Shortly after Sergeant Monk returned.

 ‘No go,’ he said.  ‘Anything turned up here, Casey?’

‘Niver a shmell av anythin’, sor,’ answered the trooper.

’Well, we can raise this siege, Hardy.  That boy was mistaken, sure enough.’

‘If he wasn’t having a game with us,’ answered Harry.

’Urn, yes; that’s likely enough among these young heathens of Waddy.  But Downy will be here again in the morning; we’ll see what he makes of it.’

Harry followed the police as they rode away, and returned slowly to his home.  His anxiety for Chris’s sake, and his profound sympathy for her, did not serve to quell the wild elation dancing in his veins, the triumphal spirit awakened by the knowledge of her love and fired by her kisses.

Chris, sitting alone in the house, her face buried in her hands, felt, too, something of this exultation; but she nerved herself to look into the future, and saw it grim and starless.  She saw herself the daughter of the convicted thief, the thief who had only narrowly escaped having to stand his trial for murdering her lover; the thief who had shifted the burden of his guilt on to the shoulders of an innocent man, the brother of her love.  Could she ever consent to be Harry’s wife after that? she asked herself with sudden terror.  Then she shut out the thought, and her heart sang:  ’He loves me!  He loves me! ’and there was joy in that no danger could destroy.

Detective Downy was in Waddy again on the following morning, his trip to Yarraman having been taken with the idea of interviewing Joe Rogers in prison and endeavouring to worm out of him some intelligence that might assist in the discovery of Ephraim Shine.  But Rogers either knew nothing or could not be persuaded to tell what he knew, so the effort was fruitless.

After hearing the story of the previous night, Downy sent for Billy Peterson and questioned him closely; but the boy insisted that he had told the truth, and was quite positive it was the searcher’s voice he heard.  The detective was puzzled.

‘You made a close hunt about the house?’ he said to Sergeant Monk.

‘In every nook and corner.’

’Yet there must be something in this boy’s yarn.  Shine is certainly in hiding somewhere near here.  If he had made a run for it he must have been seen, and we should have heard of him before this.  There might be a dozen holes in those quarries into which a man could creep.  We must go over them.  Don’t leave a foot’s space unsearched.’