handsome roan thoroughbred which he rode as a charger. High boots, very carefully polished, with bit, stirrup-irons, and sabre-scabbard glittering in the sun, showed the military completeness of his equipment. At his sword-belt hung a serviceable navy revolver, while from toe to chin-strap no smallest detail was omitted.
As his eye fell on Lance and the girl, he nodded and laughingly raised his helmet.
'Well, Miss Lawless—we mustn't say Kate now, I expect—have you had a ride after moonlighters lately? I expect Mr. Trevanion doesn't know what the meaning of the word is. However, you and Ned will soon enlarge his limited colonial experience.'
As the trooper rode slowly past them, his well-bred high-conditioned horse arching his neck and champing the bit which had stopped him so suddenly, the girl turned pale in spite of her angry look, and lowered her defiant eyes. Without speaking more or altering his careless seat and steady regard, he sauntered slowly on, with one foot dangling sideways in the stirrup. For an instant his eyes met those of Trevanion, who, irritated by the whole bearing of the man and a certain ill-concealed air of authority, said, 'I daresay you'll know me again. May I ask what reason you have for favouring Miss Lawless and me with your particular attention?'
The sergeant's features slightly relaxed, though his eyes maintained the same cold, penetrating inscrutable expression which had so annoyed Lance, as he replied—
'Kate Lawless and I are old acquaintances, perhaps I can hardly say friends. As for you, we may possibly be better acquainted in future. But if you take my advice—that of a well-wisher, little as you may suppose it—you'll stick to your claim, and be careful in your choice of associates.'
Before the angry reply, which was rising to his lips, could find utterance, the sergeant struck his charger lightly across the neck with his glove and cantered off, raising his helmet in a half-mocking salute to Kate Lawless.
'Insolent scoundrel,' said Lance, 'if he dares to address me again I'll knock him off his horse. If I was in my own country I'd show him the difference in our positions. But in this confounded country things are turned upside down with a vengeance. But what did he mean by saying you and he were old acquaintances?'
'He be hanged,' said the girl, whose colour and courage had apparently returned. 'We never were nearer friends than to pass the time of day. But he was stationed once on Monaro, where we all lived, and, of course, he came to the place now and then. I think he was a bit sweet upon Tessie, but she couldn't stand him and so he dropped coming to Mountain Creek. He's not worth minding, any road. We'd better finish our walk and get home for tea, I'm thinking.'
It was the early summer. The winter had been cold and wet. The Ballarat climate is by no means of that exceptional mildness which the Briton innocently believes to characterise the whole of Australia, making no allowance for widely diverging degrees of elevation and latitude. It had been severe beyond the usual average, wild and tempestuous. But now, all suddenly the delicious warmth of the first summer months made itself felt. Day after day witnessed the riotous growth of pasture and herbage, the blooming of flowerets before the joyous sorcery of a southern spring. Their path lay through the primeval woodland, bordered by an emerald carpet studded with flower-jewels and redolent with balsamic forest odours. As the shadows lengthened and the birds' notes sounded clear and sweet through the evening stillness, the girl's voice, as she told of wild rides and solitary experiences in their mountain home, had a strangely soft and caressing tone.
CHAPTER VII
Following closely upon this little episode, a fresh discovery in Number Six demonstrated to Lance Trevanion that whatever else was raw, unfurnished, and disagreeable in Australia, the colony of Victoria generally, and Growlers' Gully, in the district of Ballarat, particularly, were the easiest places to make fortunes in, out of a book of fairy tales. Each week the yield of the claim grew richer, the balance at the bank to the credit of Trevanion and party became larger. So imposing was it that Lance seriously thought of selling his share in the claim to his mate, even if he lost a thousand or two by it. Jack Polwarth was a good fellow, and what, indeed, did a little money matter any more than an odd handful of precious stones to Sinbad in the valley of diamonds? He would be at home with his friends in, say, half a year. That is if he returned by India, took a look at the Himalayas, saw Calcutta and Madras; or why not viâ Honolulu, getting by heart the new world, including the Garden of Eden as exhibited in the isles of the southern main, before reappearing triumphant in the old. What would his father say now? Where would be his cousin Estelle's misgivings, that unswerving friend and lady-love whose letters had been as constant as her heart? What a heavenly change would it be once more to the ineffable beauty and refinement of English society after the rude environment of a goldfield, the primitive civilisation of an Australian colony, but so few years emerged from the primeval wilderness.
It was with a sort of sob or gasp that he realised the dream-picture on which he allowed his thoughts, a rare indulgence, to dwell. And after all why should he not carry out his purpose? Why indeed? Strong and unbending in matters of need and pressure, a certain indolence, an occasional tendency to irresolution, formed a portion of his character which often delayed prompt action and permitted opportunity to pass by. The loitering life he lived at present, a central figure, so to speak, amid admiring associates and envious adventurers, was pleasant enough in its way. Then the old old temptation! It would give him, yes, undoubtedly it would, a certain amount of pain and uneasiness to break off finally with Kate Lawless.
Tameless in spirit as she was, reckless of speech and fierce of mood when her ungovernable temper was aroused, Kate Lawless could be wonderfully soft and alluring, like all such women, when the tender fit took her. There was then a child-like simplicity and abandon which caused her to seem, and, indeed, temporarily to be, a different woman. She resembled one of those rare psychological studies—which are indeed scientifically authenticated—who lead a dual existence. For no two individuals could be more unlike than Kate Lawless in one of her 'tantrums' (as her brothers familiarly expressed it) and the same woman when the paroxysm was over, imploring forgiveness and lavishing caresses on the object of her causeless resentment. That there are such feminine enigmas no student of humanity will deny. But with all her powers of fascination, she was so uncertain in her mood that she caused Lance Trevanion the most serious doubts whether she reciprocated the affection which he had been repeatedly on the point of avowing for her. Sometimes she was especially friendly, full of fun and vivacity, taking long rides through the wild forest tracks with him, on which occasions she would astonish him by the way in which she would ride at stiff timber or gallop adown the rock-strewn ranges, breast high with fern, daring him to follow her, and shouting to imaginary cattle. At these times her whole aim and endeavour appeared to be to attract and subjugate him. At other times she was cold and repellent to such a degree that he felt inclined to break with her for ever, and to congratulate himself on being quit of so strange and unsatisfactory a friendship.
He had not told himself, indeed, that he was prepared to marry her. Democratic as he had become in many of his opinions, and conscious, self-convicted, of falsehood and treachery to his cousin Estelle, he yet in his cooler moments shrank from the idea of marrying an uneducated girl of humble extraction, reared in a wilderness and bearing traces of a savage life, beautiful exceedingly, and despite of her wilful and untamed nature, wildly fascinating, as he confessed her to be. Thus swayed by opposing currents, his heart and brain drifted aimlessly to and fro for a space, while still a strange and unreal tinge of romance was given to his life by the ever onward and favouring current of the golden tide.
Although matters had not progressed sufficiently far on the pathway to civilisation at Growlers' to establish a claim to society in any conventional acceptation, yet was there a rudimentary germ or nucleus. One or two of the Government officials were married. There was a clergyman who had a
