s guilt on to the shoulders of an innocent man, the brother
of her love. Could she ever consent to be Harry's wife after that? she
asked herself with sudden terror. Then she shut out the thought, and her
heart sang: 'He loves me! He loves me! 'and there was joy in that no
danger could destroy.

Detective Downy was in Waddy again on the following morning, his trip to
Yarraman having been taken with the idea of interviewing Joe Rogers in
prison and endeavouring to worm out of him some intelligence that might
assist in the discovery of Ephraim Shine. But Rogers either knew nothing
or could not be persuaded to tell what he knew, so the effort was
fruitless.

After hearing the story of the previous night, Downy sent for Billy
Peterson and questioned him closely; but the boy insisted that he had
told the truth, and was quite positive it was the searcher's voice he
heard. The detective was puzzled.

'You made a close hunt about the house?' he said to Sergeant Monk.

'In every nook and corner.'

'Yet there must be something in this boy's yarn. Shine is certainly in
hiding somewhere near here. If he had made a run for it he must have been
seen, and we should have heard of him before this. There might be a dozen
holes in those quarries into which a man could creep. We must go over
them. Don't leave a foot's space unsearched.'

The troopers spent several hours in the quarries, moving every stone that
might hide the entrance to a small cave, and leaving no room for a
suspicion that Shine could be lying in concealment there. For a Dick,
who, in consideration of the seriousness of recent events with which he
had been directly concerned, enjoying a week's holiday, superintended the
hunt from the banks; but he wearied of the work at length, and crossed
the paddocks to join the men busy in the new shaft. Harry Hardy,
McKnight, Peterson, and Doon were sinking to cut the dyke discovered by
the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company. The mine had been christened the
Native Youth; Dick, as the holder of a third interest, felt himself to be
a person of some consequence about the claim, and discussed its prospects
with the elder miners like a person of vast experience and considerable
expert knowledge, using technical phrases liberally, and not forgetting
to drop a word of advice here and there. It might have been thought
presumptuous in the small boy, but was nothing of the kind in the
prospector and discoverer of the lode.

The big sha