between the
Major and his wife, and had a long private and confidential
conversation with them.

"How," I began, "is Tom Troubridge?"

"Tom is perfectly well," said the Major. "He still carries on his old
chronic flirtation with Mary; and she is as ready to be flirted with as
ever."

"Why don't they marry?" I asked, peevishly. "Why on earth don't they
marry one another? What is the good of carrying on that old folly so
long? They surely must have made up their minds by now. She knows she
is a widow, and has known it for years."

"Good God! Hamlyn, are you so ignorant?" said the Major. And then he
struck me dumb by telling me of all that had happened latterly: of
George Hawker's reappearance, of his identity with the great
bushranger, and, lastly, of his second appearance not two months before.

"I tell you this in strict confidence, Hamlyn, as one of my oldest and
best friends. I know how deeply your happiness is affected by all this."

I remained silent and thunderstruck for a time, and then I tried to
turn the conversation:--

"Have you had any alarm from bushrangers lately? I heard a report of
some convicts having landed on the coast."

"All a false alarm!" said the Major. "They were drowned, and the boat
washed ashore, bottom upwards."

Here the Doctor broke in: "Hamlyn, is not this very queer weather?"

When he called my attention to it, I remarked that the weather was
really different from any I had seen before, and said so.

The sky was grey and dull, the distances were clear, and to the eye it
appeared merely a soft grey autumnal day. But there was something very
strange and odd in the deadly stillness of all nature. Not a leaf
moved, not a bird sang, and the air seemed like lead. At once Mrs.
Buckley remarked,--

"I can't work, and I can't talk. I am so wretchedly nervous that I
don't know what to do with myself, and you know, my dear," she said,
appealing to her husband, "that I am not given to that sort of thing."

Each man looked at his neighbour, for there was a sound in the air now
a weird and awful sound like nothing else in nature. To the south arose
upon the ear a hollow quivering hum, which swelled rapidly into a roar
beneath our feet; there was a sickening shake, a thump, a crash, and
away went the earthquake, groaning off to the northward.

The women behaved very well, though some of them began to cry; and
hearing a fearful row in the kitchen I dashed off there, followed by
the Doct