e he was at
the Flat who Mrs. Garry was and what she could tell. Nuggan, too, had
taunted him with the change in Ailleen's manner and the reason for
it--the reason this man had named--the mystery surrounding his birth.

His eyes turned again upon the silent form on the stretcher, with the
horribly distorted features and the face moulded in an expression of
merciless hate and cruelty.

Mechanically he approached and pulled the end of the blanket over the
staring face. With a shudder he turned away, and walked back to his seat
by the fire. He was sitting there when, an hour later, Peters and Morton
rode up with a led horse, walking lame, between them.

"Our man was thrown and dodged us in the bush," Peters said as he came
up. "But we collared the horse and the gold. Murray and his mate are
after the other. Hullo!" he broke off, as he glanced over at the figure
under the blanket. "Has he gone?"

Tony nodded.

"Well, I hope the others have too--the mean sneak thieves!" Peters
exclaimed.

"We'd have lynched them if we'd caught them," Morton added.

CHAPTER XIX.

STRANDS IN THE COIL.

Stripped to the waist, in the reek and grime of smoke and sweat, the men
who rushed to the burning store fought with the flames till the dawn.

The country was parched with the drought, and the grass was as dry as
hay; the fences would blaze in long lines of flame if once they were
alight; the standing trees with their drooping leaves were full of oily
sap, and if once the fire reached the open bush, it would sweep for a
hundred miles. And each man knew what that would mean; each man knew how
the flames would roar as they leapt from tree to tree; each man knew how
the fire would glare as it caught the sun-dried grass; how overhead, and
a mile in front, the whirling columns of smoke would roll, choking,
smothering, blinding, till the blood-red glare showed fierce behind, and
everything with life had fled, or stayed and swelled the ashes, on the
desolate, blackened track.

The store was burned to a heap of cinders with all its contents, for the
men let it burn, having no water to throw on it, and no time to use the
water even if the tanks had all been full. It was not to save the store
that they fought; it was not to put the fire out that they toiled and
battled through the night. It was to keep the fire from spreading; to
stamp it out as it ran, in long snake-like lines, licking up the
withered grass; to beat it out as it fl