do you think of it?"

The glowing pipe lit a wild brown beard and mustache, thickly streaked
with gray, a bronzed nose, and nothing more. Indeed, it was only at each
inhalation that so much stood out upon the surrounding screen of
impenetrable blackness. Langholm kept his distance, stick in hand, his
gaunt figure as invisible as the overhanging trees; but his voice might
have belonged to the most formidable of men.

"As yet," said he, sternly, "I think very little of either you or your
letter. Who are you, and what do you mean by writing to me like that?"

"Steady, mister, you do know my name!" remonstrated the man, in rather
more respectful tones. "It's Abel--John William--and as much at your
service as you like if you take him proper; but he comes from a country
where Jack isn't the dirt under his master's feet, and you're no master
o' mine."

"I don't want to be, my good fellow," rejoined Langholm, modifying his
own manner in turn. "Then you're not a Northborough man?"

"Not me!"

"I seem to have heard your voice before," said Langholm, to whom the
wild hair on the invisible face was also not altogether unfamiliar.
"Where do you come from?"

"A little place called Australia."

"The devil you do!"

And Langholm stood very still in the dark, for now he knew who this man
was, and what manner of evidence he might furnish, and against whom. The
missing links in his own secret chain, what if these were about to be
given to him by a miracle, who had discovered so much already by sheer
chance! It seemed impossible; yet his instinct convinced Langholm of the
nature of that which was to come. Without another word he stood until
he could trust himself to speak carelessly, while the colonist made
traditional comparisons between the old country as he found it and the
one which he wished he had never left.

"I know you," said Langholm, when he paused. "You're the man I saw
'knocking down your check,' as you called it, at an inn near here called
the Packhorse."

"I am so!" cried the fellow, with sudden savagery. "And do you know
where I got the check to knock down? I believe he's a friend of yours;
it's him I've come to talk to you about to-night, and he calls himself
Steel!"

"Isn't it his real name?" asked Langholm, quickly.

"Well, for all I know, it is. If it isn't, it ought to be!" added Abel,
bitterly.

"You knew him in Australia, then?"

"Knew him? I should think I did know him! But who told you he was e