estion him on some obscure point, sometimes helping him along with a
comment that threw unexpected light in the dark corners of the story.

"It amounts to this," he said when Cumshaw had finished. "Bradby buried
the gold in this hidden valley of yours. It's so hidden--the valley, I
mean--that you only came on it by accident, and you have no definite
idea as to its whereabouts. It's three or four days' journey into the
mountains, that's all you can say. There's no way of recognising it from
the outside that you know of. Well, I'll tell you this, Mr. Cumshaw.
It's my frank opinion that your clever murderous friend had some way of
finding it again, or he wouldn't have been in such haste to make away
with you. He knew what he was doing, you can depend on it. Now I wonder
if he left any clue?"

"I've got a hazy memory that he left directions somewhere and that I had
them," Cumshaw said despondently, "but I can't say what happened to
them. You must remember that I was wandering about half-delirious for a
long while after I got knocked, and it was years before I got really
right again. I might have lost any note he made; I might have done
anything with it."

"You might have and that's a fact," Mr. Bryce agreed. "Now you say
you've hunted for this valley many times during the last ten years or
so."

Cumshaw nodded. "It seems funny," he said, "but I've never been able to
find it."

"There's nothing funny about it," Bryce told him. "History and fiction
abound with instances of similar miscalculations. I'll guarantee that
there are scores of such places in every continent in the world.
Australia's got just as many as any other place. What made you want to
hunt it up again after all those years?"

"Old associations, I suppose," Cumshaw said half-ashamedly. "While I was
in New South Wales--I went there, you understand, until things blew over
a bit--and my wife was alive, I didn't want anything else but to be near
her. When she died and things began to go wrong with me, I drifted back
here. Money was short. I was living as best I could, and there were the
children to look after, and the sight of the old places brought things
back to my mind. I was beginning to dig bits up from the memory of the
past--the doctors have some fancy name for lapses like mine, though I
could never remember what it was--and then one day I asked myself why
shouldn't I go after the gold? It was as much mine as anyone else's, now
that Bradby was dead, a