while directly after Mrs Braydon and her daughters entered, Janet going
at once to her brother and whispering:

"Thank you, Nic: it was very good and brave."

"Ah," cried Lady O'Hara, "what's that ye're saying, gyurl, to this young
criminal?"

"I was only speaking to my brother, Lady O'Hara," said Janet
indignantly.

"Only shpaking to your brother. I heard you. Only, eh? I only guess
what you said. Ye're encouraging him in his wickedness and his rising
against the law. Nic, my boy, you've behaved very badly; you're a
disobedient son, and a bad citizen, and I ought to be very angry; but
somehow I can't, for I like the spirit in you."

"But you wouldn't have had me betray that poor fellow, whom I believe to
be innocent, Lady O'Hara," cried Nic, in choking voice, "and give him up
to be flogged, and sent back to the chain gang?"

"Bedad, I wouldn't," cried the lady, turning very Irish, and dragging
him to her, she gave him a sounding kiss. "I'd have called ye no boy of
mine if ye had, and your mother wid the gyurls say the same, don't ye,
my dears?"

"Oh yes," came in chorus.

"But it's all very wrong, Nic; I say so who am the governor's wife; and
this black sheep-thayving convict of yours'll be coming and killing us
all in our beds."

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

RIGHT WINS.

One idea uppermost in Nic's mind was that he must go and warn Frank
Mayne that his father was back, that the governor was at the station
with two men, that--as he had since heard--a party of mounted police
were coming up to scour the country for escaped convicts, and of course
they would search for him as well.

But how to warn him and tell him that he was sure Brookes must have been
always watching, and knew pretty nearly if not surely of his
hiding-place?

Nic felt that he could not go to the cavern tunnel, nor even approach
it. Brookes would for certain be on the look-out, and the trouble would
be made worse.

The governor had said that Nic should have a week for consideration, and
three days glided by rapidly without an allusion being made by the
doctor, who took Sir John about with him for long rides, and in every
way expressed his satisfaction at the state of affairs about the
station.

"You've done wonders, Nic," he said; but the boy felt no better. There
was that sensation of being half guilty always to the front, and there
were times when he felt as if he would rather the seven days had come to
an end, the subject bee