e--I wasn't in that."

"Where did he hide?" Durham asked.

"In the yard--where Eustace was--you never looked there."

A convulsive shudder ran through her.

"But to-night--where were you going to-night when I met you?" he asked.

"To kill Dudgeon. Dad only just got home. I could die happy if I only
had."

Again her frame quivered, and she was racked with a fierce struggle to
get her breath. She lay against him, her head resting in the hollow of
his arm, her eyes closed, and her mouth twitching.

"Tell him," she whispered between her panting gasps. "Tell
him--I--tried----"

He touched her hands lying limply in her lap; they were icy cold. Her
head was growing heavy on his arm and her lips were turning blue. He
moistened them once more with rum as her breathing became almost
imperceptible.

For a moment her eyes opened and looked into his with an expression of
wonderful tenderness.

"Dudgeon is already dead," he whispered gently.

She started and tried to sit up, but could only raise her head.

"Dead," she whispered. "Dead!"

Then, as though the news galvanised her waning strength into one last
tumultuous effort, she flung out her arms and sat up, with wide-open
eyes staring fixedly into space.

"Dad! Dad!" she cried. "You did--you did, Dad. Oh, thank----"

Her arms fell, her head lolled forward, and her body lurched against
Durham as, with a broken, gasping sigh, she collapsed into a nerveless,
jointless thing.

He bent his head and placed his ear to her breast above her heart. There
was not the faintest throb, and he took his arm from around her. As he
did so she rolled over, her face upturned towards the moon, at which her
wide-open eyes stared and her mouth gaped.

The Rider of Waroona was dead!

With bowed head and aching heart Durham bent over her.

All the love of his nature which had lain dormant for so long had gone
out to this woman, enfolding her, idealising her, until she became to
him the completement of his being, the one incentive for all which was
noble within him, the mainspring of his life, the lode-stone of his
ambitions. To have won her would have been his dearest and proudest
achievement; to have had her love would have made existence for him a
never-ending stream of happiness and joy.

As a sun new risen from the night she had come into his life, bringing
light and warmth and peace where there had been only coldness and
unrest. So he had dreamed of her only that morning; so