es and was much consoled.

Dick was taken away in Manager Holden's trap and lodged in gaol at
Yarraman; and when the news leaked out, as it did towards evening, Waddy
had a new sensation, and quite the most startling one in its experience.
Before the women went to bed that night they had found Dick guilty of
robbing the Silver Stream of thousands of ounces of gold and perpetrating
a murderous assault on Harry Hardy. The news brought Joe Rogers and
Ephraim Shine together at their secret meeting-place in the corner
paddock--Rogers much disturbed and puzzled, Shine shaken almost out of
his wits.

'I'm goin' to bolt, I tell you!' cried the searcher.

Rogers gripped him roughly.

'Bolt,' he said, 'an' you're doomed--done for. Hell! man, can't you see
you'd be grabbed in less'n a day? With that mug an' that figure you'd be
spotted whatever hole you crept into.'

'I know, I know; but it'll come anyhow--it'll come!

'Not so sure, unless you blab in one of these blitherin' fits. What does
that kid know? Nothin'. He's found our gold, an' he's hid it away. He
wants to keep it, an' you know what a stubborn devil he is. This is just
a try on, an' they'll get nothin' out o' Dick Haddon. If they do they get
the gold, an' we're all right if we don't play the fool.'

Rogers's reasoning was very good as far as it went; but the discovery of
the boy's footprints in the drives had been kept a close secret, or even
he might have admitted the wisdom of bolting without delay.

Dick spent a day and two nights in the cell at the watch-house in
Yarraman. Public report at Waddy was to the effect that every influence
short of torture had been used in the effort to induce him to divulge the
truth, and not a word had he spoken. His mother and Mrs. Hardy and Harry
had all visited him in the cell, and had failed to persuade him to open
his lips. His callousness in the presence of his poor mother's distress
was described in feeling terms as unworthy of the black and naked savage.
All this was much nearer the truth than speculation at Waddy was wont to
be; and when Dick was restored to his home in the flesh on Saturday at
noon and permitted to run at large again without let or hindrance, Waddy
was amazed and indignant, and Waddy's criticism of the methods of the
police authorities was scathing in the extreme.

The boy was driven home by the sergeant, the same who had been
commissioned to quell the Great Goat Riot.

'He's looking pulled down,'