Leading the way, he sprang up the cellar stair, out at the hut-door, and
across the bridge, followed closely by his party.

"Hooroo!" yelled Paddy Flinders, as if in the irrepressible ardour of
the chase, but in reality to give Brixton intimation of the pursuit, if
he should chance to be within earshot.

The well-meant signal did indeed take effect, but it came too late. It
found Tom still seated in absorbed meditation. Rudely awakened to the
consciousness of his danger and his stupidity, he leaped up and ran
along the path that Betty had described to him. At the same moment it
chanced that Crossby came upon the same path at its river-side
extremity, and in a few moments each ran violently into the other's
arms, and both rolled upon the ground.

The embrace that Crossby gave the youth would have been creditable even
to a black bear, but Tom was a match for him in his then condition of
savage despair. He rolled the rough digger over on his back,
half strangled him, and bumped his shaggy head against the
conveniently-situated root of a tree. But Crossby held on with the
tenacity of sticking-plaster, shouting wildly all the time, and before
either could subdue the other, Gashford and his men coming up stopped
the combat.

It were vain attempting to describe the conflict of Brixton's feelings
as they once more bound his arms securely behind him and led him back to
Paul Bevan's hut. The thought of death while fighting with man or beast
had never given him much concern, but to be done to death by the rope as
a petty thief was dreadful to contemplate, while to appear before the
girl he loved, humiliated and bound, was in itself a sort of preliminary
death. Afterwards, when confined securely in the cellar and left to
himself for the night, with a few pine branches as a bed, the thought of
home and mother came to him with overwhelming power, and finally mingled
with his dreams. But those dreams, however pleasant they might be at
first and in some respects, invariably ended with the branch of a tree
and a rope with a noose dangling at the end thereof, and he awoke again
and again with a choking sensation, under the impression that the noose
was already tightening on his throat.

The agony endured that night while alone in the dark cellar was
terrible, for Tom knew the temper of the diggers too well to doubt his
fate. Still hope, blessed hope, did not utterly desert him. More than
once he struggled to his knees an