he found a melancholy satisfaction in the belief that she would pity him, and probably shed a few tears over the sorrows of a noble and generous youth driven to crime by persecution, and outlawed through the machinations of an unscrupulous constabulary.  So real could he make these sentimental fancies that her keen sorrow for him filled him with acute emotions of self-pity, and a large tear actually rolled down his freckled nose.

Suddenly romance was swept out of his mind, and wonder and fear possessed him.  Throwing himself forward, he crept noiselessly to a rotten trunk over grown with suckers that lay between him and the Red Hand shaft, and, raising himself on his hands, peered through the bushes.  A belt of pale golden light, thrown by the rising moon between the converging tips, lay right across the mouth of the shaft; and up through the rusty bark of the door were thrust a thin long hand and a bony arm.  As Dick gazed, trembling and amazed, a second hand appeared.  He heard the rattle of a chain, the click of a lock; then the door was thrust upwards and let noiselessly back upon the timber.  Now a man’s head came into view, and up out of the shaft crawled a figure that Dick recognised in spite of the precautions taken.  Reaching into the darkness of the shaft, the man, who remained on his knees in a crouching position, drew up a skin bag containing something of considerable weight apparently; then came another head, and a second man slid, snake-like, from the shaft.  At the sight of the second, Dick, whose heart seemed to have swollen within him to an enormous size, gasped aloud; he heard a warning ‘Hush!’ from the shaft, and lay perfectly still.  The door was closed, the lock clicked again, and when he ventured to look the two men were stealing away towards the quarry.  The boy crept after them to the extent of the trunk behind which he was hidden, and when he looked again they had disappeared.  Creeping silently in the shadows and amongst the scrub ferns, Dick followed until, resting a moment, he heard distinctly the words: 

‘Why did you hit him again?  Good God! did you want to kill him?’ The voice was Ephraim Shine’s.

’No.  That won’t kill him.  Don’t be so blasted chicken-hearted I didn’t want to be seen, you ass!’ Dick knew the voice for that of Joe Rogers, whose face he had seen in the moonlight.

’The lick I gave him was enough; it must ‘a’ stunned him.’  Shine spoke in a low voice.

‘D’yer think he recognised you?’ asked Rogers hoarsely.

‘No, I was in the shadder.  I d’know, though—­I d’know.’

‘Listen here, an’ take a grip on that screamin’ woman’s tongue o’ yours.  It don’t matter whether he saw you ’r didn’t see you, ’cause he won’t live t’ tell it.’

’Oh, Heaven!  Oh, Lord!  Oh, Lord!  I didn’t mean that—­I swear to Heaven, I on’y meant to stun him!’

‘I know yer didn’t.  Pull yerself together, you quiverin’ idiot.  D’ye think I meant to do murder?’