or it, cudgelling his brain to discover
an explanation; but only now, as he cantered along through the bush with
his spirits rising in harmony with the glories of an Australian dawn,
did illumination come to him.

"Oh, my love, why have you come so late to me!"

Through the sombre shade of his brooding there flashed the memory of
the scene when he had heard those words spoken. Like the touch of a
magic wand the memory changed gloom to sunshine, shadow into light.

It was not because he had professed his love for her that she had been
displeased; it was because he was going from her, leaving her house,
parting with her perhaps for all time.

What a fool he had been not to know that earlier. Of course, she had
repelled him when he had spoken on the previous evening, repelled him,
not because she resented, but because she, like all of her sex, could
not yield the truth at the first asking.

Yet why should he have doubted with the memory of that earlier scene in
his mind? He asked himself the question and answered it frankly.

He doubted for the reason that still he did not know whether that memory
was of a real scene, or was merely a figment of a delirium-haunted
brain. If he could be sure, then no more need he doubt; but how was he
to be sure? There was only one way--only one person in all the world who
could tell him whether he was right or not--Nora Burke alone could say
whether he had been dreaming.

Some day he would ask her to tell him, some day, after he had asked and
compelled her to answer that other question which had now become
insistent. For the time the mystery of the Rider occupied a second place
in his thoughts; yet the trend of his mind unconsciously brought it
again to the front.

The mission on which he had set out was one which might clear away the
initial obstacle in the pathway of his love; he might locate the
hiding-place of the Rider; might secure a clue to his identity; might,
by great good fortune, discover the stolen money.

If he could only do that, if he could only go back to the bank with the
news that he had recovered the stolen gold, five thousand pounds would
be his. Then he would be able to go to Mrs. Burke without the feeling,
unbearable to a man of his temperament, that he, a poor man, was
aspiring to one who had money, and who might attribute to that money the
secret of his fascination.

By the time the sun showed above the trees, he was up to the outlying
spurs of the range