ay
what I'm going to say.' Then she told me all that was in her heart about
Starlight. He and she had made it up that if he could get away to a
foreign country she would join him there, and take mother with her.
There was to be no marrying or love-making unless they could carry out
that plan. Then she told me that she had always had the same sort of
feeling towards him. 'When I saw him first I thought I had never seen
a man before--never one that I could care for or think of marrying. And
now he has told me that he loves me--loves me, a poor ignorant girl that
I am; and I will wait for him all my life, and follow him all round the
world. I feel as if I could die for him, or wear out my life in trying
to make him happy. And yet, and yet,' she said, and all her face grew
sad, and put on the old look that I knew so well, so hopeless, so full
of quiet bearing of pain, 'I have a kind of feeling at my heart that it
will never be. Something will happen to me or to him. We are all doomed
to sorrow and misfortune, and nothing can save us from our fate.'

'Aileen, dear,' I said, 'you are old enough to know what's best for
yourself. I didn't think Starlight was on for marrying any woman, but
he's far and away the best man we've ever known, so you can please
yourself. But you know what the chances are. If he gets clear off, or
any of us, after what's been done, you're right. But it's a hundred to
one against it.'

'I'll take the odds,' says she, holding up her head. 'I'm willing to
put my life and happiness, what little there's left of it, on the wager.
Things can't well be worse.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I ought to tell you--I must tell you something
before we part, though I'd a deal rather not. But you'll bear it better
now than in a surprise.'

'Not more blood, more wickedness,' she said, in a half-whisper, and then
she looks up stern and angry-like. 'When is this list of horrible things
to stop?'

'It was none of our doing. Moran and Daly were in it, and----'

'And none of you? Swear that,' she said, so quick and pitiful-like.

'None of us,' I said again; 'nor yet Warrigal.'

'Then who did it? Tell me all. I'm not a child. I will know.'

'You remember the man that was rude to you at Rocky Flat, and father and
he fired at one another?'

'Of course I do, cowardly wretch that he was. Then Moran was waiting for
them up the gully? I wondered that they did not come back next day.'

'They never came back,' I said.

'W