Dick received the news in silence, and they walked homewards together.

‘What’ll I do with this?’ asked Dick at Hardy’s gate, producing a parcel from under his vest.

‘Hide it away, an’ keep it dark.  Not a word must be said to hurt her.’

‘Good,’ answered the boy.  ‘I know a cunnin’ holler tree.  So long, Harry.’

‘So long, mate.’

Dick liked the word mate; it touched him nearly with its fine hint of equality and community of interests; it seemed to suit their romantic conspiracy, too, and sent him away with a little glow of pride in his heart.

When Harry re-entered his own home he found his mother seated as he had left her.  She arose and approached him, placing a hand on either shoulder.

‘Well, my boy?’

’Well, mother?

‘You have seen her?’

’Yes.  I’ve taken her to the homestead.  She is dazed.  It seems as if she no longer cared.’

‘It will pass, Henry.’

‘You think my love will pass?’

‘All this seeming great trouble.’

 ‘It’ll pass, mother, if she comes back to me; never unless.’

‘The sins of the fathers,’ sighed Mrs. Hardy as he turned from her to his own room, like a wounded animal seeking darkness.  ’The sins of the fathers.’

CHAPTER XXIII.

Next morning all Waddy knew of the arrest, and it was felt that the game was nearly played out.  Dick’s confession was published in the same issue of the Yarraman Mercury and public opinion in the township had decided against the searcher in spite of his long and faithful service as teacher and superintendent.  The murder theory was reluctantly abandoned.

Harry Hardy called at the homestead to inquire after Chris before going to work, and was told that she was much rested but not yet up.  At dinner-time he heard that she had been driven into Yarraman by Jock Summers to be near her father; the fact that she had left him without a word or a line seemed to confirm his worst suspicion, and again her words, ‘I deceived them all.  I lied to everybody,’ returned to mock him.  Harry had no quality of patience:  he was impetuous, a fighter, not a waiter on fortune; but here was nothing to fight, and in his desperation he did battle on the hard ground.

They had cut the dyke in the new shaft at a shallower depth than Dick’s Mount of Gold drive, and here Harry expended those turbulent emotions that welled within him, working furiously.  Whether handling pick or shovel, toiling at the windlass, or ringing the heavy hammer on the drill, he wrought with a feverish energy that amazed his mates, who ascribed it all to an excusable but rather insane anxiety to test the value of their mine in the mill.  For their part they were very well satisfied with the golden prospects, and quite content to ‘go slow’ in the certain hope of early affluence.