guests of their wits; they stood as if petrified. The wounded
trooper rose slowly from the floor--it occurred to no one to offer to
help him--staggered a few steps into the room, and fell again, and lay
amongst the guests, his blood dyeing the carpet at their feet. Mean while
Marcia had not moved; but now her white face had the expression of one
listening with the intensity of an unspeakable fear for the message of
death, and the sergeant in command was groping for the door, still dazed
from the blow he had received, and almost blinded by the blood flowing
from his wound.

Outside two troopers had jumped into their saddles, and were off in hot
pursuit of the fugitive, who had galloped out of the thick cover of the
orchard on Galah, Ryder's beautiful gray, and was riding at a breakneck
pace for the heavily-timbered country to the east. It was a stern chase,
and once Trooper Casey came so near to overhauling the gray horse that he
ventured a revolver shot; but after that the hunted man drew away, and
the troopers lost sight of him in the timber. The pursuit was maintained
for about an hour, and then the pursuers came upon Galah trotting quietly
back towards Boobyalla, riderless and without a saddle. Imagining that
Solo had been swept from the horse by the limb of a tree, the troopers
made a long search, and while they sought, Yarra--for it was he who had
led the police away on this wild-goose chase--had doubled on his
pursuers, and was making a bee-line for the station again on foot. He was
found in his bed at home two hours later, cowering under the blankets,
pretending an overpowering fear of the shooting and the blood.

Walter Ryder, when he passed through the window, sprang from the veranda,
and dashed into the garden. A voice called to him to stand in the name of
the law, and a revolver bullet clipped his shoulder, but he ran on until
the thick growth of trees and shrubbery quite covered him, then, turning
sharply to the left, he hid in the hollow of an old gum-tree, the creeper
overgrowing which offered a perfect screen. From here he uttered the
mopoke's call, repeating it twice. He had made himself familiar with all
the advantages the garden and orchard offered a hunted man ere he had
been a week at Boobyalla. Ryder remained in this hiding-place for some
time. He heard the thunder of Galah's hoofs and the cries of the
troopers. Yarra had timed his break from cover to a second. When the
sound of the chase died out i