district a discordant, jarring note, common
enough in more crowded centres of population, but absent up to that
moment from the annals of the sober, clean-living inhabitants of the
bush township. And the men who gathered on Marmot's verandah to settle
all the problems and the squabbles of the locality, met to marvel and to
wonder; for they who, in their wisdom, had anticipated all things; they
who had solved all questions affecting the welfare of the district; they
who had laid bare the skeleton of every secret for miles around--had met
and heard, in painful and perplexed silence, the story of a greater
secret than they had yet encountered, and a secret beside which, as it
were, they had been living for months past without even dreaming of its
existence.

When first it came to them through the medium of a floating shred of
gossip that had filtered through to the Carrier's Rest, they were too
much affected for words. Only could they sit and smoke in silence, each
man turning the story over and over in his mind until his pipe went out,
and under cover of the smokeless silence he slipped away into the
darkness and went home, mournful and abashed; until at last Marmot
awakened from the reverie into which he had fallen, and discovered that
he was alone as well as silent.

By the next evening they had recovered somewhat, and discussed the story
in all its detail, grown the richer and more comprehensive by the
silence of the night before. Each one had some little touch, some
poignant item, to add to the general outline; and when they separated
that night, the shred of gossip had become the completed romance which
lived ever afterwards in the traditions of the township.

The hero was Slaughter; the heroine Nellie Murray; and the theme, the
shattering of idyllic bliss by the deceit of a faithless lover.

From the day of the schoolmaster's death Slaughter had been a greater
conundrum than ever to the men of Birralong. His visits to the store had
become less and less frequent, and his bearing, when he did come, more
and more distant and reserved. Not even the story of the diggers'
arrival and dispersing interested him; not even the audacity of the
robbery of the miner's gold from the constable's cottage, and the
fruitlessness of the subsequent chase after the robbers, moved him. He
listened silently and listlessly to the account of Tony's departure with
his mates to seek for a fresh fortune in the place of the one they had
lo