and demand the return of the opals, or let him get away with them, Michael had not decided, when Charley's hand went to his pocket, and, as it closed over the package of opals, a smile of infantile satisfaction flitted across his face. That smile, criminal in its treachery, enraged Michael more than the deed itself. The candle Charley had been reading by guttered out. He stumbled about the room looking for another. After a while, as if he could not find one, he went back to his chair and settled into it. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the dim pane of the window by which Michael was standing.

Michael's mind seethed with resentment and anger. The thing he had prayed for, that his brain had ached over, had been arranged. Rouminof would not be able to take Sophie away. But Michael was too good a Ridge man not to detest Charley's breach of the good faith of the Ridge. Charley had been accepted by men of the Ridge as one of themselves—at least, Michael believed he had.

George, Watty, the Crosses, and most of the other men would have confessed to reservations where Charley Heathfield was concerned. But as long as he had lived as a mate among them, they had been mates to him. Michael did not want Rouminof to have his stones if having them meant taking Sophie away, but he did not want him to lose them. He could not allow Charley to get away with them, with that smile of infantile satisfaction. If the men knew what he had done there would be little of that smile left on his face when they had finished with him. Their methods of dealing with rats were short and severe. And although he deserved all he got from them, Michael was not able to decide to hand Charley over to the justice of the men of the Ridge.

As he hesitated, wondering what to do, the sound of heavy, regular breathing came to him, and, looking through the window, he saw that Charley had done the last thing he intended to do—he had fallen asleep in his chair.

In a vivid, circling flash, Michael's inspiration came to him. He went across to his hut, lighted a candle when he got indoors, and took the black pannikin he kept odd pieces of opal in, from the top of a bookshelf. There was nothing of any great value in the pannikin—a few pieces of coloured potch which would have made a packet for an opal-buyer when he came along, and a rather good piece of stone in the rough he had kept as a mascot for a number of years—that was all. Michael turned them over. He went to the corner shelf and returned to the table with a cigarette box the same size as the one Rouminof had kept his opals in. Michael took a piece of soiled wadding from a drawer in the table, rolled the stones in it, and fitted them into the box. He wrapped the tin in a piece of newspaper and tied it with string. Then he blew out his candle and went out of doors again.

He made his way carefully over the shingles to Charley's hut. When he reached it, he leaned against the wall, listening to hear whether Charley was still asleep. The sound of heavy breathing came slowly and regularly. Michael went to the back of the hut. There was no door to it. He went in, and slowly approached the chair in which Charley was sleeping.

He could never come to any clear understanding with himself as to how he had done what he did. He knew only a sick fear possessed him that Charley would wake and find him, Michael, barefooted, like a thief in his house. But he was not a thief, he assured himself. It was not thieving to take from a thief.