rham expected it would
be. The pockets were empty.

Replacing the articles as nearly as possible in the position in which he
found them, Durham turned his attention to the cave itself.

The floor was rough and uneven. What sand clustered in the hollows was
too much trampled upon to reveal any detail of the feet that had walked
upon it.

There were innumerable nooks and crannies where articles could be
stored, but in every instance they contained nothing. Nowhere could he
find anything more than the clothes.

He went to the mouth and stood peering round to see if there was another
similar cave near, but everywhere else the ground rose solid and
unbroken.

In the open space under the shelter of the bluff where the ground had
been so much trampled by horses, the wheel-marks of a vehicle also
showed. He walked over and examined them carefully.

They were the marks of what was evidently an old and rackety conveyance.
One of the wheels was loose and askew on the axle, with the result that
it made a wobbly mark on the ground, while the tyres on all the wheels
were uneven in width and badly worn.

"Almost as ancient as old Dudgeon's rattle-trap," Durham said to himself
as he looked at the marks.

The story, fanciful as he had regarded it at the time, of the buggy
driven by two men with a pair of white horses, the story told by the
travelling bushmen the day the bank robbery was discovered, recurred to
him. If this was the vehicle in which the gold had been carried off, and
the wheel-marks he was looking at had been made by it, then that gold
was probably secreted somewhere in his immediate vicinity.

The thick-growing shrubs and stunted gums made it difficult for him to
see far from where he stood. The level stretch along the margin of the
pool showed clear enough, but around him the vegetation was so dense
that, unless he had some clue to guide him, to prosecute a search within
it was like trying the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

During the time that had elapsed since those wheel-marks had been made
they had been greatly obliterated, but it was still possible to
distinguish where the vehicle had been stopped, for the horses had
turned suddenly, and the wheels cut deep as they came round. He stepped
to the spot. Later tramplings had removed all clear traces of footmarks.
Nothing was now to be learned from that source.

His eyes swept along the line of shrubs which fringed the open space. A
twig, s