e is your boss' (meaning Mr. Troubridge)? 'One of
the real right sort,' says I. 'Then see here,' says he, 'I'll tell you
something: the head man of that there gang is at this minute a-sitting
yarning with your boss in the parlour.' 'The devil!' says I. 'Is so,'
says he, 'and no flies.' So I sings out, 'Mr. Troubridge, those sheep
will be out;' and out he came running, and I whispers to him, 'Mind the
man you're sitting with, and leave me to pay the score.' So he goes
back, and presently he sings out, 'Will, have you got any money?' And I
says, 'Yes, thirty shillings.' 'Then,' says he, 'pay for this, and come
along.' And thinks I, I'll go in and have a look at this great new
captain of bushrangers; so I goes to the parlour door, and now who do
you think I saw?"

"I know," she said. "It was that horrible villain they call Touan."

"The same man," he answered. "Do you know who he is?"

She found somehow breath to say, "How can I? How is it possible?"

"I will tell you," said Lee. "There, sitting in front of Mr.
Troubridge, hardly altered in all these long years, sat George Hawker,
formerly of Drumston,--your husband!"

She gave a low cry, and beat the hard rail with her head till it bled.
Then, turning fiercely round, she said, in a voice hoarse and strangely
altered,--

"Have you anything more to tell me, you croaking raven?"

He had something more to tell, but he dared not speak now. So he said,
"Nothing at present, but if laying down my life----"

She did not wait to hear him, but, with her hands clasped above her
head, she turned and walked swiftly towards the house. She could not
cry, or sob, or rave; she could only say, "Let it fall on me, O God, on
me!" over and over again.

Also, she was far too crushed and stunned to think precisely what it
was she dreaded so. It seemed afterwards, as Frank Maberly told me,
that she had an indefinable horror of Charles meeting his father, and
of their coming to know one another. She half feared that her husband
would appear and carry away her son with him, and even if he did not,
the lad was reckless enough as it was, without being known and pointed
at through the country as the son of Hawker the bushranger.

These were after-thoughts, however; at present she leaned giddily
against the house-side, trying, in the wild hurrying night-rack of her
thoughts, to distinguish some tiny star of hope, or even some glimmer
of reason. Impossible! Nothing but swift, confused clouds