s, if those fools have not smothered them. I'll see to that. I'll be
away with the dawn. Mind you, no one is to know."

"You can be sure of that, sir," Brennan answered.

CHAPTER XVI

LOVE'S CONQUEST

In the grey half light which is neither night nor day, Durham saddled
his horse in the station yard.

No one was stirring in the township as he passed slowly along the road,
but lest there should happen to be anyone who might see him, he turned
into the bush at the first opening he came to. Only then did he set his
horse at a faster pace, riding direct for the range to pick up the track
leading to the hidden pool.

The air was soft and cool, with filmy streaks of vapour floating amid
the trees. As he cantered along, the mist rose and formed a pearly haze
overhead into which there came a tinge of pink, dissipating it, before
the colour could grow into a deeper tone, to reveal the clear sky, blue
as a sapphire and bright with the first rays of the rising sun.

In long swinging strides his horse carried him easily, and his spirits
rose above the gloom which had weighed upon him since the evening before
when, for the third time, he had been foiled by the mysterious Rider.

There had been little sleep for him during the night. Had the discovery
of Eustace and the raid of the town been the only events of the day he
might have succeeded in banishing them from his mind sufficiently to
allow himself to sleep. But there was more than these, disquieting as
they were, to fill him with restlessness. The way in which Mrs. Burke
had rebuffed him on the previous evening, the hostility of manner she
had displayed towards him up to the time he and Brennan left Waroona
Downs, weighed upon him.

He could not account for the change which had come over her. From the
time he arrived from Taloona she had always shown kindliness and
gentleness towards him, even when, during the early days of his
convalescence, he had been impatient and exacting. Nor could he find a
reason for the change in the brief profession he had made of his love
for her. Had that been the cause she would, he argued, have shown it the
morning after; but she had met him then with the same light-hearted
raillery with which she had greeted him every morning he had been in her
house. Only when Brennan arrived on the scene had she suddenly developed
antagonism.

There must be some other reason for her anger than his declaration of
love. For hours he had sought f