to avoid him, and saw in that action further reason for his suspicion that her declaration of affection had been a mistake or perhaps a deliberate deception.  ‘I deceived them all.  I lied to everybody,’ she said.  The young man stiffened himself with chill comfortless pride, and made no effort to seek her out.  He loved her, he told himself, but was no whimpering fool to abase himself at the feet of a woman who was careless, or might be even worse—­pitiful.

Joe Rogers reserved his defence and was committed to stand his trial at the forthcoming sessions in about a fortnight’s time, charged with gold-stealing, wounding Harry Hardy, and shooting at Trooper Casey.

Harry returned to his work.  He made no further calls at the homestead to inquire after Christina, but heard from Dick that she had not returned to Waddy, but was staying in Yarraman till after the trial.  Mrs. Haddon expressed an opinion that the poor girl felt the disgrace of her position keenly, and dreaded to face the people of the township where her father had been accepted as a shining light for so many years, and where she had always commanded respect and affection.

As the time for the trial approached Harry found himself hungering for a sight of her face again.  Pride and common-sense were no weapons with which to fight love.  At best they afforded only a poor disguise behind which a man might hide his sufferings from the scoffers.

The trial occupied two days.  The prisoner was defended by a clever young lawyer from Melbourne, who fought every point pertinaciously and strove with all his energy and knowledge and cunning to represent Joe Rogers as the victim of circumstances and Ephraim Shine—­especially Ephraim Shine—­who was a monster of blackened iniquity, capable of a diabolical astuteness in the pursuit of his criminal intentions.  The story of the boy Haddon was absolutely false in representing Rogers as having assisted in the theft of the gold produced.  The boy was a creature of Shine’s; that was obvious on the face of his evidence and the evidence of Miss Shine and Detective Downy.  Shine had had the lad in his toils, otherwise why had he taken such precautions to shield the man, and why had he given him warning of the approach of the troopers?  Rogers’ story was entirely credible, he said.  It was to the effect that Shine had confessed to him that he had robbed the mine of a quantity of gold and had been robbed in turn by the boy Haddon, who was his real accomplice.  He solicited the aid of the unfortunate prisoner to recover the treasure, and offered him half the gold as a reward.  The prisoner was tempted and he fell.  His action towards the boy at the Piper Mine was taken merely to induce him to disclose the whereabouts of the lost booty, and the shooting at Trooper Casey was an accident.  Rogers had acted on blind and unreasoning impulse in snatching up the gun on the approach of the police, believing his complicity with Shine in the effort to recover the hidden loot had come to light, and the discharge of the weapon was purely involuntary.