as we know how."

"Of course, you're right," she had sighed, "but——"

It was for that "but" Michael was fighting now. He knew what lay beyond it—a yearning for her child to fare a little better in the battle of life than she had. Striding almost unconsciously over the loose, shingly ground, Michael was not aware what direction his steps were taking until he saw glimmering white shapes above the grass and herbage of the plains, and realised that he had walked to the gates of the cemetery.

With an uncomfortable sense of broken faith, he turned away from the gate, unable to go in and sit under the tree there, to smoke and think, as he sometimes did. He had used every argument with Paul to prevent his taking Sophie away, he knew; but for the first time since Michael and he had been acquainted with each other, Paul had shown a steady will. He made up his mind he was "going to shake the dust of the Ridge off his feet," he said. And that was the end of it. Michael almost wished the men had let Jun clear out with his stones. That would have settled the business. But, his instinct of an opal-miner asserting itself, he was unable to wish Paul the loss of his luck, and Jun what he would have to be to deprive Paul of it. He walked on chewing the cud of bitter and troubled reflections.

"Don't let him take her away!" a voice seemed to cry suddenly after him.

Michael stopped; he snatched the hat from his head.

"No!" he said, "he shan't take her away!"

Startled by the sound of his own voice, the intensity of thinking which had wrung it from him, dazed by the sudden strength of resolution which had come over him, he stood, his face turned to the sky. The stars rained their soft light over him. As he looked up to them, his soul went from him by force of will. How long he stood like that, he did not know; but when his eyes found the earth again he looked about him wonderingly. After a little while he put on his hat and turned away. All the pain and trouble were taken from his thinking; he was strangely soothed and comforted. He went back along the road to the town, and, skirting the trees and the houses on the far side, came again to the track below Newton's.

Lights were still shining in the hotel although it was well after midnight. Michael could hear voices in the clear air. A man was singing one of Jun's choruses as he went down the road towards the Punti Rush. Michael kept on his way. He was still wondering what he could do to prevent Paul taking Sophie away; but he was no longer worried about it—his brain was calm and clear; his step lighter than it had been for a long time.

He heard the voices laughing and calling to each other as he walked on.

"Old Ted!" he commented to himself, recognising Ted Cross's voice. "He's blithered!"

When he came to a fork in the tracks where one went off in the direction of his, Charley's, and Rouminof's huts, and the other towards the Crosses', Michael saw Ted Cross lumbering along in the direction of his own hut.

"Must 've been saying good-night to Charley and Paul," he thought. A little farther along the path he saw Charley and Paul, unsteady shadows ahead of him in the moonlight, and Charley had his arm under Paul's, helping him home.

"Good old Charley!" Michael thought, quickly appreciative of the man he loved.

He could hear them talking, Rouminof's voice thick and expostulatory, Charley's even and clear.

"Charley's all right. He's not showin', anyhow," Michael told himself. He wondered at that. Charley was not often more sober than his company, and he had been drinking a good deal, earlier in the evening.

Michael was a few yards behind them and was just going to quicken his steps and hail Charley, when he saw the flash of white in Charley's hand—something small, rather longer than square, a cigarette box wrapped in newspaper, it might have been—and Michael saw Charley drop it into the pocket of his coat.

Paul wandered on, talking stupidly, drowsily. He wanted to go to sleep there on the roadside; but Charley led him on.

"You'll be better at home and in bed," he said. "You're nearly there now."

Instinctively, with that flash of white, Michael had drawn into the shadow of the trees which fringed the track. Charley, glancing back along it, had not seen him. Several moments passed before Michael moved. He knew what had happened, but the revelation was such a shock that his brain would not react to it. Charley, his mate, Charley Heathfield had stolen Paul's opals. The thing no man on the Ridge had attempted, notwithstanding its easiness, Charley had done. Although he had seen, Michael could scarcely believe that what he had seen, had happened.

The two men before him staggered and swayed together. Their huts stood only a few yards from each other, a little farther along the track.

Charley took Paul to the door of his hut, opened it and pushed him in. He stood beside the door, listening and looking down the track for a second longer. Michael imagined he would want to know whether Paul would discover his loss or just pitch forward and sleep where he lay. Then Charley went on to his own hut and disappeared.

When the light glowed in his window, Michael went on up the track, keeping well to the cover of the trees. Opposite the hut he took off his boots. He put his feet down carefully, pressing the loose pebbles beneath him, as he crossed the road. It seemed almost impossible to move on that shingly ground without making a sound, and yet when he stood beside the bark wall of Charley's room and could see through the smeared pane of its small window, Charley had not heard a pebble slip. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, the stub of a lighted candle in a saucer on the bed beside him, and the box containing the opals lying near it as if he were just going to cut the string and have a look at them. The wall creaked as Michael leaned against it.

"Who's there?" Charley cried sharply.

He threw a blanket over the box on the bed and started to the door.

Michael moved round the corner of the house. He heard Potch call sleepily:

"That you?"

Charley growled;

"Oh, go to sleep, can't you? Aren't you asleep yet?"

Potch murmured, and there was silence again.

Michael heard Charley go to the door, look out along the road, and turn back into the hut. Then Michael moved along the wall to the window.

Charley was taking down some clothes hanging from nails along the inner wall. He changed from the clothes he had on into them, picked up his hat, lying where he had thrown it on the floor beside the bed when he came in, rolled it up, straightened the brim and dinged the crown to his liking. Then he picked up the packet of opal, put it in his coat pocket, and went into the other room. Michael followed to the window which gave on it. He saw Charley glance at the sofa as though he were contemplating a stretch, but, thinking better of it, he settled into an easy, bag-bottomed old chair by the table, pulled a newspaper to him, and began to read by the guttering light of his candle.

Michael guessed why Charley had dressed, and why he had chosen to sit and read rather than go to sleep. It was nearly morning, the first chill of dawn in the air. The coach left at seven o'clock, and Charley meant to catch the coach. He had no intention of going to Warria. Michael began to get a bird's-eye view of the situation. He wondered whether Charley had ever intended going to Warria. He realised Charley would go off with the five pound note he had made him, Michael, get from Watty Frost, as well as with Paul's opals. He began, to see clearly what that would mean, too—Charley's getting away with Paul's opals. Paul would not be able to take Sophie away....

In the branches of a shrub nearby, a white-tail was crying plaintively: "Sweet pretty creature! Sweet pretty creature!" Michael remembered how it had cried like that on the day of Mrs. Rouminof s funeral.

Whether to go into the hut, tell Charley he knew what he had done,