ly know that you have done it."

"Why, he knew me at once!"

"Nonsense! He had never seen you before; he doesn't remember his
father."

"Do you suppose he hasn't seen pictures, and heard plenty? No, no; all
the rest's a true bill; but Captain Bovill I've lived, and Captain
Bovill I'm going to die."

Moya looked at him closely. She could not help shuddering. He saw it,
and the fear of death laid hold of him, even as he sweltered in the
heat.

"With a lie on your lips?" said Moya, gravely.

"It's the truth!"

"You know it isn't. Own it, for your own sake! Who can tell how long I
shall be gone?"

"You shan't go! You shan't go!" he snarled and whined at once. And he
clutched vainly at her skirts, the effort leaving him pale as death, and
in as dire an agony.

"I must," said Moya. "There's the horse; the saddle's quite near; you
shall have all the help that I can bring you, with all the speed that's
possible."

She moved away, and the ruthless sun played on every inch of him once
more.

"I'm burning--burning!" he yelled. "Have I been in hell upon earth all
these years to go to hell itself before I die? Move me, for Christ's
sake! Only get me into the shade, and I'll confess--I'll confess!"

Moya tried; but it was terrible; he shrieked with agony, foaming at the
mouth, and beating her off with feeble fists. So then she flung herself
bodily on an infant hop-bush, and actually uprooted it. And with this
and some mallee-branches she made a gunyah over him, though he said it
stifled him, and complained bitterly to the end. At the end of all Moya
knelt at his feet.

"Now keep your promise."

"What promise?" he asked with an oath, for Moya had been milder than her
word.

"You said you would confess."

"Confess what?" he cried, a new terror in his eyes. "I'm not going to
die! I don't feel like dying! I've no more to confess!"

"Oh, yes, you have--that you're not his father--nor yet Captain Bovill."

"But I tell you I am. Why--" and the pallid face lit up suddenly--"even
the police know that, and you know that they know it!"

It was a random shot, but it made a visible mark, for in her instinctive
certainty of the main fact Moya was only now reminded that Rigden
himself had told her the same thing. Her discomfiture, however, was but
momentary; she held obstinately to her intuition. The police might know
it. She knew better than the police; and looking upon their quarry, and
going over everything as she look