RGL e-Book Cover 2019©
RGL e-Book Cover 2019©
The Australian authoress Mary Helena Fortune (ca. 1833-1911) was one of the first women to write detective fiction, and probably the first to write it from the viewpoint of the detective. Her opus includes several novels and over 500 stories, many of which feature a detective by the name of Mark Sinclair. She wrote under the pseudonyms "Waif Wander" and "W.W."
THE sun was setting behind the last spur of the Bullock Ranges, and the warm glow of his golden and purple dyes rested on the face of John Boyle, as he turned his back to his late home, and rode toward Spearmount. If you had met him there and then, with the strength and beauty of a perfect manhood, and the quiet intelligence of his thirty-five years—if you had met him there and then, I say, one glance at the pain-laden face would have made you wonder what secret sorrow consumed him.
As he reached a turn of the road where the old bush-land began to creep down the range, this man drew rein and turned his face to the east. What he saw in that direction was an Australian scene that would have gladdened the soul of John Boyle had it been indeed the darkest hour of his life. Under the shadow of the grand old range, whose outline has given to it the peculiar name by which it is known, miles and miles of pleasant pasture-land stretched to the south, where the sparkling bosom of a fair river wound between its green banks, and watered many an acre of fertile land now glowing in the last brightness of a summer day. Many homes were half hidden here and there in the bosky nooks of the lovely scene, but after sweeping them all with a lingering look, it was on the farmhouse he had just left that Boyle's eyes rested longest ere he resumed his journey.
"I have been very happy there," he said aloud, "but if I regret the past it is not that I fear the future—it is only for Nellie's sake—it is for her I fear the shadow."
What shadow? That is just the question John Doyle's two mates were discussing as from the veranda of the farmhouse he had just left they watched him riding away toward the setting sun.
"I can't make it out, Mat," said one, as he pushed some papers from a table near him, and leaned idly against it. "I never saw such a changed man in my life. Do you think he's sorry for parting with the old place after all?"
"No, I don't, mate; there's some deeper trouble than all that," replied the elder man.
"Yet, see!" Charlie persisted; "there, he has turned back and is looking at the old holding as if he was taking his last of something dead! Poor Boyle! We'll miss him sorely after all!"
"Is it only now you found that out?" Mat Dixon said, dryly, as he put his cold pipe in his pocket and began to arrange the papers Charlie had pushed away. "For the first time in a hardworking life of nearly fifty years, I can call myself the owner of more land than what would cover my clay, yet I never felt so miserable in my days. 'Boyle's Holding' will never be the same to me since the man who made it what it is has gone."
"I wish you would tell me all about how you first met," said Charlie. "I've often heard you speak of the time, but never could understand the rights of it. Tell us all about it, Dixon; it will pass the time away, anyhow."
"There is very little to tell, Charlie, but what there is is all to poor Boyle's credit. I met him first at Mount Gambier, twenty years ago. I had been shepherding out there among the blacks, and managed to get a spear through my arm. I was laid up for months, and John Boyle was my nurse and paymaster all the time. A truer friend or an honester man never lived or breathed—and a man cannot say more."
"Then you were on the diggings with him?"
"No. Boyle left me at Mount Gambier, and I lost sight of him for years. Let me see—it is just fifteen years this month since we once more fell in with each other; it was on the road from Adelaide to Barwon, and, strange to say, we were both heading for Mount Gambier again."
"It was like meeting my own son," Mat Dixon went on, thoughtfully, with his deep-set grey eyes fixed on the spot where John Boyle had disappeared a few moments previously; "but the first glance I got into his face told me he had suffered some terrible sorrow since he had been my patient, tender nurse in the old days. When first I saw him he was a merry, light-hearted, thoughtless lad, with a happy laugh, and a cheering word for everyone; when we met again, in only three years, he was as you have seen him, Charlie, only the shadow is growing deeper with every day."
"I cannot think of Boyle as ever having been young and happy," said Charlie Moffat, as he rose, with a yawn, "and yet, if ever a man had everything to make him so, he has—plenty of money in his pocket, and the finest girl in the country his promised wife. Mat, I think, as it is a holiday, I'll ride over to Noble's—there's to be a dance there tonight, you know."
"Yes, yes, lad—go and enjoy yourself, too, before your dark days come. I daresay I won't be long out of bed tonight, and Ned will see that all is right about the cattle."
"Dark days, indeed!" repeated Charlie Moffat when, dressed to death and killed with fashion, as he himself would have termed it, he rode from the gate of Boyle's Holding on his way to the dance. "I wonder what these old fellows are always croaking for? I wouldn't—even if I was a frog. But they are good old chaps, both of them, and I am sorry poor Boyle is gone."
Noble's, the farm toward which Charlie was bound, was about two miles from the holding, and on the same road by which John Boyle had ridden at sunset. You will remember the spot where Boyle had turned to have a last look at his old home and the valley of the Ranges. Well, at that very spot, as the dim shadow of the trees fell across his horse's feet, a woman stepped from the road-side and spoke to him.
"Will you please direct me to Boyle's holding?"
The young man was a little startled at the suddenness of the woman's appearance, but he drew up his horse and answered readily enough as he pointed in the direction he had come.
"You will find the gate on the left-hand side of the road, not more than half a mile on."
The woman never thanked him, but went as he had directed, while the careless young man was about following his own way, when, suddenly, the strange woman returned and peered into his face.
"Are you John Boyle's son?" she asked, and Charlie laughed until the echoes of his happy tones rang back from the face of the "Bullock's Hump."
"No such luck!" he cried. "I wish I was." And then he put spurs to his horse, murmuring to himself: "Boyle's son, indeed! She must be blind. Why, I'm twenty-two last March! I wonder who she is?"
But he did not in reality wonder at all. He cared too little, and he was in a hurry to meet the last fancy of his changeable fancy at Noble's; so the woman went on, and the shadows from the ranges crept down darker and darker over Boyle's holding.
Boyle's no longer; yet the memory of the farm's late master was making the hearth lonely to honest Mat Dixon. He sat in the front room, that was wont to be pleasant at eventide, a lonely man with the first firelight of his own home shining on his bowed face and his crossed arms. An honest, well-living man; a thoughtful and a kind master; a friend whose grip was true, and who had not one dark spot in his own past to look back upon, was it not strange that he should sit there so unhappy and restless, because of a friend to whom every prospect in the world was opening out brightly? He thought so himself.
"If I was given to superstition I might fear some coming trouble for Boyle," he was thinking. "Yet what has he to do with the brand that the Lord set upon Cain? Yet I cannot get it out of my mind, do what I will. I never saw it yet in the face of man or woman—and God forbid I should—yet I wonder if it is true that there is such an awful thing?"
He rose as he spoke, and lit the lamp his old housekeeper had placed ready on the table, and as he did so he became aware that a female was standing on the threshold of the open door, with her hand raised as if to knock: as the light flashed into her face her hand dropped, and she spoke:
"Is this Boyle's holding?"
The voice was so strange and hollow, and so unsuited to the woman's appearance, that Mat Dixon stared a moment ere he answered, "Yes."
"I want to see John Boyle. Can I see him? Is he in?"
"He is not in just now. Won't you come in, and wait until he comes?"
What sudden inspiration prompted the reply Dixon could never explain, for he was no man of subterfuge, but from the instant that woman crossed his threshold he was as deceitful and cunning as though he had passed by tortuous ways all his life.
"Yes, thank you, I will wait. Do you think John Boyle will be long? I have come far, and am tired."
"I do not think he will be long; he has gone down to the blacksmith's at the Crossing. Did you come by the Crossing?"
"No—yes, I don't know the names of the places, but I came through a township. Would you mind me coming nearer the fire, I am cold?"
"Come nearer, of course! Will you take a little tea? The farm people are having theirs at the back now; would you like to go out to them?"
"No, no! I will wait here until he comes—it is a matter of life and death for me to see him."
"I'll tell you what I'll do, then," Mat said, as he went to the door, "I'll ride down and bring him up the quicker. It's only a matter of two miles, and he might delay, not knowing any one is waiting."
"True, thank you; it is kind of you."
"Who shall I say is waiting?"
Mat asked the question with his hand on the door, and as he asked it the stranger looked him in the face—such a look that his hand dropped from the door, and he went out shuddering as if a cold, dead hand had suddenly touched him.
"The hand of the Lord is in this," he said, as he rode away in the starlight "and it is no living man's doing."
The woman sat down where he had left her, with her dark shawl gathered closely around her, and her eyes fixed upon the embers of the fire that lay upon the broad hearth close to her feet. Perhaps she had forgotten to hide them, but Mat Dixon had noticed how worn the old boots upon those feet were, and how strangely low the black hat lay upon a face he should never again forget. He would still less have forgotten it had he seen it after he asked that unanswered question and went away, for the woman laughed aloud, and a horror of fear seemed to ring in every tone of that awful laugh.
"Who shall he say wants John Boyle? Ha! Ha! Who can answer that question? I can't! I don't know who I am!"
There are thousands of happy homes in the dear, new land, which is old to so many of our children, but of all the pleasant homes among them, commend me to a country one, made in a pleasant farmhouse, in a glad, green land that has made the prosperity of its owner; and as John Boyle rode up to the door of Spearmount and was welcomed by its hearty proprietor, Sandy Cameron, he might well feel the shadow he had carried with him from the holding lifted, as he met the brightness and warmth of the well- known premises.
"We've waited supper for ye, lad! Come ben; come ben an' share it. Dinna ye think that because mother an' her ye ken o' is awa at the big toon o' Melbourne that we canna find a guid meal at Spearmount!"
"And where's Jamie?" asked Boyle, as he responded quietly to the good man's hearty welcome.
"Ah, Jamie's no that weel tonight, John, so he's gone to bed an' taken Dandie wi' him for comfort. Ha, ha, man! If ye'd seen Dandie! That dog can amaist speak, an' I could wager a bodle that he'd rather have sat up for supper! But ye ken what Jamie is, an' go wi' him Dandie must. What makes ye so quiet the nicht, lad? Naething wrang, eh?"
"No, father; I've been signing over the old place to Dixon, you know, and—and—well, I've spent a good many years there."
There was a cloud gathered on the old man's cheery face for a minute, as he replied:
"Ay, lad, I daresay. I ken how a man must feel when he parts with land that his ain hand has put heart into every foot o'; but, cheer up. I daresay Nellie and you will make a far happier home o' Blinksweet than ever you made yoursel' at the holding."
There was for a moment no reply, only that John Boyle's handsome face was bowed into his hand.
Farmer Cameron pushed away the pipe he had just been filling, and stared uneasily at his young friend.
"You've not been quarrelling wi' Nellie, John Boyle? Ye've surely no been doin' that? If you have, ye're no the man I thought ye were, for no good man could quarrel wi' Nellie Cameron, though I say it, and I am her ain father."
"No, no, there has been no quarrel, father; Nellie is as she always was and ever will be, the best and dearest of girls! Oh, no, it is not that, believe me, father; it is only a trouble of my own—a trouble of the past that you do not know, and that you ought to know; and yet I fear to tell it to you, my best old friend."
"An honest man knows no fear, John Boyle. Is your secret a secret of sin, young man?"
They were alone in that old kitchen, with its shining, cozy furniture, and its cheery fire crackling on it a broad, hospitable hearth, and John Boyle had sat there many thousands of times and heard the pleasant voice of its pleasant master; yet well might the younger man start to his feet in terror as Alexander Cameron faced him a transformed man, for never had he or any man seen the farmer of Spearmount like this.
"If ye have deceived me, Boyle—nay, what am I—an auld man, nearin' the time allotted for man to dwell on this earth—but if ye have deceived my Nellie, may my curse an' the curse of the Lord who deals vengeance be—"
"Father! Father!"
"Nay, I am wrong—sore wrong, John. Ye couldna ca' me that if there was a sin such as I feared on your hand!" And the old man sank tremblingly to the seat he had so suddenly arisen from.
"You only do me justice, dear father—let me call you that still. There is no wrong of mine to part me from our pure Nellie; but there is the sin of another that may bring her trouble as my wife, and it is of that I would tell you, and of that I would leave you to judge between her and me."
"One question yet, John. Why did ye not ever tell me of this before? All these years gone by, why did ye no speak it oot?"
"Because I thought it was buried so deeply that no light could ever shine upon it; because that only today the grave has almost given up the dead, and it is possible that their spirits may haunt the path of our darling if it goes with mine. As I was going from the Crossing today with the deeds of the holding in my pocket, I met Constable Kerrigan just coming from the post, and it was from him that I heard that which has fallen over me like a pall, and shut out the very brightness of heaven from me."
"Tell it all to me, John," said the old farmer, affectionately. "I see the darkness is heavy on ye. Tell it all out to a friend, and ye ken I am a true ane, an' an auld ane."
And so, while John Boyle is telling his story to the man he would call, indeed, father, let me take you to the Police Station, at the Crossing—as the township was called—and let you a little more into the story I have to tell—the story in which the brand of Cain is to stamp every page that I shall write, and every page that you may read.
The Crossing Police Station differed in no way from any other country police station in the colonies as to outward appearance and inside accommodation, and so I need not further describe it than to say that it stood by the border of a broad creek, known as the Brawler, that made its way down through the Bullock Ranges, and in its way turned half-a-dozen bush sawmills. "The Crossing" was composed of perhaps twenty scattered dwellings of one kind or other, all with the individual mark of the country township about them, and all as sleepy under the quiet night that had just fallen as if there was no need of even one policeman in the station.
Yet there were two, Constable Kerrigan, of whom John Boyle had just spoken to Mr. Cameron, and his superior, Senior Constable Franks, who had only just returned from a ride to Marshland. "No news, Kerrigan? Did you go to the post?"
"Yes, there are some dispatches for you, and the Gazette. I say, Franks, there's a spree of some kina over at Noble's. I might as well go, eh?"
The senior constable looked up from his papers into his handsome young comrade's face, and smiled genially.
"You're the best hand I know of for a spree, Ned; but just wait a bit; I've got news from town, and I might have to go out with you myself."
"News, eh! I wish to goodness there was news of work or something, for I'm as tired of this stupid life as ever a man was. It wasn't news of another Kelly gang, was it? My word, that would be jolly! But no such luck for us, and the whole side of the Bullock Ranges may be honeycombed with caves for all we need care."
"You've been opening the Gazette, I see. Is there anything particular in it?" asked the senior, as he scanned the well-known pages of the Police Gazette with a quick eye.
"Particular? Yes; two new horse-stealing cases—and, oh, that reminds me: I met John Boyle today as I was coming from the post."
"Yes; but how does that remind you? What do you mean?"
"A prisoner has escaped from Melbourne Gaol. I was reading it when I met him, and mentioned it."
"Well?" questioned Franks, as he laid down the Gazette, and looked his young partner in the face.
"Well, he turned as white as a sheet, and shook so that the Gazette rattled in his fingers—if he'd been in it he couldn't have seemed more taken aback. That is the paragraph," and the speaker put his finger on the space beneath the following words:
"'Escaped last night from Melbourne Gaol, Ellen O'Slattery, sentenced to life imprisonment, June, 1869. Private instructions to all stations.' Oh, by the powers! I see now, Franks! It's about that you've got the news!"
"Right for once in a way, Kerrigan, and now don't talk, there's someone knocking at the door."
There was; Mat Dixon was knocking, and came in with a white and serious face, and Franks rose as he entered, for he saw there was business of importance in his friend's countenance.
"I want to see you, Franks; I want to speak with yon alone."
"All right, old boy. Kerrigan, just get my horse ready, will you?" and Mat Dixon was sitting face to face with the senior.
"I'm glad to hear you order your horse, Franks, for I want you to ride home with me."
"What is wrong, Dixon?"
"I don't know. You will laugh at me, I know. You have known me over ten years; did you ever see me like this?" and he held out hands that shook like leaves.
"Never, Mat; what is it?"
"It is a woman," he answered; "a woman who came to the holding, half an hour ago, inquiring for Boyle. I can't tell what came over me at the sight of her awful face, but I pretended that John would soon be home, and rode straight to you."
"You did right! By Jove, you did right!" cried Franks, making for the door, "and now I see it all as plain as—Good gracious, yes, it is the same; how could I have forgotten! Of course, of course, John Boyle was the name! Kerrigan, bring round both the horses!"
"Stay, Franks! One word; is there trouble for Boyle in this?" Dixon cried, as he laid his hand imploringly on the senior's arm.
"Trouble? No! Except the trouble of having a wicked woman at large, who should have been hung long ago. My dear fellow, don't ask any questions now, for any sake; it will be worth more to me than I can tell if I can get hold of that woman before she leaves your place."
And as they rode quickly in the starlight, John Boyle was telling his awful story to the old farmer, and the woman with the fearful face sat waiting by the fire at the holding.
Sat listening to the tick of the clock until the noise seemed to her like the beating of a hundred steam hammers; sat with her worn boots to the heat, her terrible eyes fixed upon the embers, and her hand—the right one—gripping something under her shawl, a something that felt hard and cold, and yet grew hot at the grip of the hand that held it.
Once, twice, thrice she had turned her head sharply over her shoulder as she sat there, and shuddered as she looked into the quiet behind her, but the fourth time she got up and faced the fear, whatever it was. At this very moment, when the woman's arms were uplifted as though to strike or ward off a blow—when the action had tossed the black hat from her head, and the fearful death-white face was distorted with an unholy and terrible passion—Martha Reid, the housekeeper at the holding, opened the back door and stood upon the threshold.
When Mat Dixon and the trooper reached the holding they found Martha lying upon the floor in a faint, but the strange woman was gone, leaving only, lying near the table, the old and battered black hat she had worn as a token she had been there at all.
The wanderer fled "as one fleeth when no man pursueth," until upon the lonely road she heard the sound of approaching horses' feet, and turned aside to crouch by the bole of a tree until they should have passed. With her teeth chattering and her eyes strained, she saw in the starlight the dreaded gleam of policemen's uniform, and above the loud panting of her own heart she heard words that would have turned her to stone but for the companion ever at her side who urged her on to the end.
"They are after me; they know I am here!" she cried, "and I must fly! Yes, I must! Oh, if I could—if I could only kill you again! A hundred for every blow that ever I gave you I would give you again!" and as she ran she struck at the air beside her with the knife she still grasped in her hand, until at last, panting for breath, she stood at the door of a hut standing off the track a bit, and with the mighty sides of the "Bullock's Hump" hanging over it, dark and miserable, in its ages-old robes of forest and its crown of grey rocks. There was a small window in this hut, and a light burning within, but the curtain was drawn, so the wretched wanderer drew her shawl over her head and knocked at the door. It was opened almost instantly by a woman, who started as she saw the muffled stranger, and drew back.
"Who are you?" she asked, sharply. "I thought it was Dan. Who are you, I say?"
"I know your name, though you don't know mine, Margaret O'Reilly," was the answer. "Open the door, and let me in."
"I am not Margaret O'Reilly," the woman of the hut said, in trembling tones. "You are mistaken, my good woman; my name is Costello, as the whole country round knows well."
"Was it Costello thirteen years ago, in Morgan's Lane? Stand back, Margaret O'Reilly, and let me in!"
The woman addressed as O'Reilly staggered back as from a blow, and shrank against the slab wall to let the muffled wanderer pass. "If there is a God to forgive me my sins, may He help and pity me!" she murmured to herself, as she shut the door and waited, tremblingly, for her visitor to speak.
"Do you know me yet?" the wanderer asked. "I was here before once, when things were very different from what they are now. Have you no word for me now that I ask for shelter and food, when I am cold and tired and hungry?"
"Oh, for the love of God, don't show me your face!" shrieked Mrs. Costello, as she had been called for years; "I am afraid! I am afraid! If it is you, don't say so, but tell me what you want, and go."
"I have told you what I want, but I will not go! Where would I go to? Into the hands of the police who are hunting the country for me? Or into the grave you would like to see me lie in? No, Margaret O'Reilly, I will go neither way while I can strike another blow! See here; I would think no more of making these hands red again than I would of warming them now at your fire!"
"You were always a plucky one, and I always said so, Ellen; and so while Dan Bourke has a hand to put to a friend, I'll stand by you for the sake of old times! Mother and I can plant you where a troop of soldiers could never find you."
The speaker was a tall, rough-looking young man, of about twenty-eight or nine, dressed as a farm-labourer might be, and with a dark look under his heavy brows. Otherwise, he might have been called handsome and attractive, as, indeed, he was considered by many of the rustic belles of the homesteads around, but Ellen O'Slattery shuddered as he spoke, and his mother covered her eyes.
"Promise me! Make her promise Dan that she won't let me see her face, or I can do nothing!" Mrs. Costello cried. "I will do what you say, but I can't look at her face!"
"Do you think I want you to look at my face?" the haunted woman said, bitterly. "I have not seen it myself for twelve years. Show me your hiding-place, Dan, for the police are on my track."
"I know it, and that's what brought me back. I was going to the dance at Noble's when I spotted them, and they were heading this way. By Jove, they're here! Mother, look out! Come on, Ellen."
With the sound of the dreaded horse's feet in her ears, and & strange helplessness in her limbs, the woman we now know as Ellen O'Slattery went after the man as he darted into an outhouse, and turned back what seemed to be a bin full of hay, but which was indeed only a blind that concealed a small trap- door securely hidden in the flooring. Down through winding passages, where the smell of damp earth reminded her of graves and awful decay, they passed quickly in darkness and silence; only when once Dan had to touch the awful being's hand, and from its touch even fearless Dan Costello shuddered, though he would not have owned to such weakness, even to his most intimate friend.
"This way, Ellen; there is a ditch—our greatest safety, by the way. One long step, and here we are where forty thousand troopers or traps could never find us."
As he spoke, a match rasped, and a light was struck at once to a huge prepared pile of sticks, while another lit a lamp suspended from the rough rocky incline that formed the roof of a great cave.
For a little the hunted and haunted woman stood there shuddering and gazing around her; but as the light and warmth of the huge wood-fire began to illumine the farthest corners of the cave, she sank before the blaze, and spread her fingers out before it, dropping as she did so the forgotten knife she had carried so closely for many a mile. Dan stooped and lifted it carelessly, but his very movement made the woman start as if she had been stung.
"Give me my knife, Dan Costello!" she said, sharply.
"Do you call that a knife?" he asked, with a laugh as he returned it to her. "I don't believe it would cut a bit of bread."
"It would cut your throat," she answered, as she hid it in her breast; "and yet it is only a prisoner's knife made in secret and danger out of a bit of a woman's steel busk."
"It may be so; but, as I said before, I'd hardly trust it to cut your bread; and see, here's the bread, and something to wash it down with. Are you afraid to stop here by yourself while I go to see if mother is all right, and bring her up?"
"Afraid! And I have been locked in with the dead for every night of twelve years! No, Dan. Whatever I may be, I am no coward."
And yet even with the bread in one hand and the fiery spirit yet burning her throat, she sat with her back to the wall, and glared at the face of a dead woman that glared back at her.
"You will tire out some day," she shrieked, as she shook the bottle out before her, and the echoes of the cave answered her back in thunder; "and if you don't, I can have it out with you in another world! It was this that did it, and you were as fond of it as I was!"
"If I had not seen it, I wouldn't have believed it," was what Dan said afterwards, when he went back to the cave with his mother an hour after: "let them talk about bad consciences after this."
But he had not reckoned on the lightness of a life-sentenced prisoner's sleep, as at his words the woman started from her apparently dead rest in front of the fire.
"Was I dreaming of conscience, or did you speak of it?" she asked. "Is it time to get up already? I didn't hear the bell. Oh, I forgot, I know now."
She sat down again with her back to the side of the cave, and her, as yet unseen, face closely shrouded in her shawl.
As well as the hour would permit, every bit of the neighborhood had been searched for the escaped prisoner, but in vain. Young Kerrigan had his dance at Noble's after all, and many a mile's ride afterwards in the late moonlight, still keeping up the vain search. He was asleep now on the sitting-room sofa, while his senior and Mat Dixon sat by the fire, with the table between them, and a liberal supply of comforts thereon; they had been discussing the woman's history as it related to John Boyle, the trooper naturally much wondering at Dixon's ignorance of the world-known murder known as the "Morgan's Lane Murder."
"I was on a back station at the time, and the boss wasn't a reading man; I suppose that is how it was I scarcely ever saw a paper. I have but the very faintest idea of the story; I wish now, however, as you won't lie down, that you would tell it me from beginning to end, especially as poor John was connected with it."
"I am agreeable," Franks said, as he lit his pipe and drew his chair nearer the blazing fire of logs, "and to begin at the beginning, I may tell you that I was stationed with Sergeant Leary at the time, a man that knew the girl's people well at home."
"She was a farmer's daughter, and well brought up—that is to say, she could read and write fairly, and understood enough about the other to carry her fairly through the world. There is no use in raking up the grieved ashes of the dead to follow her parents out here when they brought her, a lively girl of sixteen, to this precocious land; but I may say that it was in the old country she first met John Boyle, our friend."
"John Boyle!" exclaimed Dixon.
"Yes; he was a neighbor's son, and the girl we are speaking of had conceived for John one of the unreasoning affections to which her age and character rendered her liable. There is no reason whatever to conclude that Boyle responded to the girl's feelings; in fact, we know to the contrary, for it was jealousy that caused the awful crime to be perpetrated, as was patent to every man who heard the trial.
"I am not going into particulars, Dixon; I need not. I am going to the unhappy night when, in the wretched life she had chosen, and among companions her poor mother would have died to save her from, she did the deed that has made her name a horror in the ears of the whole world."
"Do I gather, then, that she was jealous of Boyle?" Dixon asked, uneasily.
"Have I not said so already? Ellen O'Slattery, with her companion Maggie Bourke, were walking one evening in Collins Street, and met by accident your friend Boyle; the unconscious man had only visited town on business connected with the station he was on, and had so little idea of the woman O'Slattery's feelings, that he appeared pleased to recognize in her companion a shipmate of his own. Maggie Burke paid for her acquaintance with Boyle by losing her life."
"I know, I know! I can see now why it was that the poor fellow grew so miserable—the murderess was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life."
"She was sentenced under the old Act, when 'life' meant fifteen years. I have no doubt that Boyle knew that, and dreaded her release. The woman had only two years to serve."
"And that creature is here, with the happiness of John Boyle in her blood-stained hands! If she knows about Nellie Cameron! Oh, Franks, I am sick at heart!"
As he spoke Dixon rose, and laid his clenched hand on the table before him. "I must see Boyle," he said. "There is trouble before him!"
"There is trouble to you if you cannot hold your tongue!" exclaimed the trooper, as he rose and pointed to the grey dawn, just peeping over the dark range, where the wanderer lay hidden.
"How can she escape? We have every corner watched, and, beside, there is the reward."
As Frank spoke he unrolled a sheet of paper and exposed it to Mat Dixon's gaze. It read thus:—
£500 REWARD
Escaped from Melbourne Gaol, Ellen O'Slattery. The above reward will be paid to anyone who shall give such information to the police as shall ensure the recapture of the prisoner...
...etc., etc., in the usual terms of such documents.
"I must rouse up the young chap now, and be off," Franks added, as he refolded, the paper; "and you may safely make your mind easy and leave Boyle's safety to us."
Leave Boyle's safety to them? Alas, he couldn't. When the sound of the trooper's horse's feet had become faint, he turned inside with a shudder, remembering how lately that awful face had looked upon him in that very chamber.
"And the Lord set a mark on him, so that no one should seek to slay him," he murmured; for he was thinking of Cain, and the heart of this faithful true-hearted friend was indeed sore within him.
WHAT a lovely morning it was that broke over the Valley of the Crossing, and burst into a glorious day over the pleasant farmhouse of Spearmont and how sweet it is to escape from the shadow of crime, to watch Jamie Cameron as, followed by his cunning little dog "Dandie," he bounded up the road leading to his home, where his father and Boyle awaited his coming under the green shadow of the vines. Jamie had been at the post-office, and was brimful of news and importance.
"There comes Jamie noo," said Mr. Cameron. "I wonder what news he brings us? Ah, lad! Good news. I can tell that by the very wag o' Dandie's tail! Weel, Jamie, what hae ye brought us, my boy?"
"A letter from mother, two newspapers, and a letter from Nellie. Hurrah!" and the boy waved them over his head in triumph, and then he flew to John Boyle's side, and slipped his sister s letter into his hand, for, though shy by nature, Jamie was quite old enough to understand how matters lay between his favourite John and his darling sister.
"Now, father, read us mother's letter. I want to know when they are coming home. John is in no hurray to read his. See, he is putting it away!"
Mr. Cameron laughed heartily as he saw John's action; for, after the "story" Boyle had told him in the quiet of last night, he knew his intended son-in-law better than he had ever known him, and prized him far more; and that is asserting a great deal, for Farmer Cameron would never have laid his child's hand in that of one whom he did not truly respect.
Mother's letter was full to the brim of the wonders of Melbourne and the bargains she had made; but Nellie wanted to come home. They had been to the Waxworks, and Nellie had taken a turn at some of those nasty figures; "so let John meet us at the coach, and he'll find us baith there."
Something like that was the purport of Mrs. Cameron's letter, and the farmer looked up as he finished reading it aloud, but he saw such a cloud on Boyle's handsome face that he hastily folded the epistle, and sent Jamie away for a "play wi' Dandie," as he termed it.
"John be a man," he said, impressively, as he laid his hand on the young man's arm. "I never saw a lad so changed; ye are frightened noo because of what mother has said."
"I am, father," replied Boyle, "and I don't know what has come over me, but I dread our dear Nellie's return—the very shadow of death is hanging over me."
"Shadow, man! Where is it? Is there aught but light in a' God's heaven this morn'? Is there even a spot of darkness on the Buffalo Ranges noo that the bright sun has got his beams right into their very face? Haud ye're tongue my son, and get the trap ready to meet Nelly and her mother, and see what a gay weddin we'll make the auld roof o' Spearmount ring wi' ere long."
"It is too soon to go yet," Boyle said, "and I should like to see Dixon. I can get the trap from the holding, you know, father, and then you can send your own down for the luggage."
"Aye, aye, ye're may be right, lad; they'll have an awful lot of luggage, I dare say. Mother has bought some new-fangled churn, and some things solely for Nellie's plenishing; so do as ye say, John."
And the old man watched John as he rode on his way to Boyle's holding, muttering to himself, "I hope there may be naething in it, but, though I don't like owning it, I never saw such a pre- vision on a lad's mind. I suppose he wants to have a yarn over it wi' Dixon, and it's natural, for they're old cronies."
Meanwhile Charlie Moffat, who had made a night of it at the "dance" I have once or twice alluded to, and a morning of it at the Crossing-place hotel, was returning home with the seedy look of a young man who had been up too long, when he met Franks, the trooper, riding quickly toward the police station; with a sudden thought, Franks pulled up and spoke to the young "help" at Boyle's holding.
"I say, Charlie, have you seen Dixon this morning?"
"No, I haven't," was the rather sulky reply, "and I'm half afraid to see him. Just look at the condition of me; I've been up at the dance all night."
"I know, I saw you there. Did you hear the news about this escaped prisoner?"
"I heard nothing else all the morning at the Crossing, and I'm sick of hearing about it. The murder was done when I was too young to take any thought of such things, and I've no liking for them today."
"I know you haven't, but you have a liking for Cherry Matthew."
"What if I have?" asked the young man sharply.
"You'd like to have a place of your own to ask her to be mistress of. Well, you have a chance now; there's five hundred pounds offered for this prisoner's capture."
"If I knew where she was I'd tell you for nothing; she must have been a devil."
"Aye, and she's one yet; read the description of her, and see if you would know her again."
The young man read, and all at once a light broke over his face.
"It's the very woman I met last night!" he cried, "She was asking her way to our place!"
"Exactly; and she went there. Now, you know every corner of the ranges as well as any man in the country, and I want you to keep your eyes open. If a 'possum should squeak between you and Dan's shanty, follow the sound, and let me know."
"I often go over to Dan's myself," Charlie replied; "but you needn't trust to me for catching murderers, it's not in my line," and so he turned his horse abruptly and rode away, leaving Franks with a smile on his shrewd face as he thought, "I may be mistaken, but if Charlie doesn't go over to Dan's tonight, I shall be disappointed."
And Charlie did go over to "Dan's," as the hut where the hunted woman had found, nay almost forced, a refuge was commonly called. He went early, not long after sundown, and he found the woman who would not look upon Ellen O'Slattery's face sitting crouching over the fire alone.
"Where's Dan?" he asked, after the usual bush salutations.
The woman started, and looked quickly into Charlie's face ere she answered.
"He's not home yet; he's hardly ever in now; I don't know what's come over him. I think he's after that girl of Matthews."
"Is it Cherry you mean?" the young fellow asked sharply.
"I think so; I have heard him talk a good deal about Matthews' place lately."
Charlie's face grew hot, but he controlled himself.
"Of course, you have heard all the talk about this prisoner that's escaped from gaol?" was his next question.
"Oh, yes. Do you think it's true?"
"True: why there's a reward of five hundred pounds posted up all over the country."
Dan's mother started, and her haggard face flushed into two faint-red spots on her cheeks. "She'll soon be caught if that's true," was all she, however, said.
"Would you give her up if you knew where she was?" the young man asked.
"Me? God forbid!" and she got up from her seat, and opened the door as though to listen. "I don't hear him coming at all, and it's quite dark."
But the woman, whose real name we have heard the murderers say was Margaret Reilly, was mistaken; her son was not at Matthews' place; he was climbing, by ways known to few, up the face of the ranges, while the murderess sat in the cave, trembling with terror and cold, for there was no fire in the cavern; she sat close to the wall, her shawl drawn over her head, hiding her face even from the very darkness.
One might have fancied the wretched being asleep; but she slept not, and every now and then she spoke out in loud tones that rang hollowly in the cold emptiness of the rocky hiding- place where she crouched—she might have been combating with a demon in the horrid dreams of a deathly nightmare.
"I am not afraid of you! Bah! I have seen you too often for that. I like you to be there if it is only for company, but if you touch me I will kill you again."
Who could she be talking to? What face was it that she saw through the thick folds of her torn shawl? She was talking to the dead—she saw the bleeding face of her murdered companion whom she had seen and talked to for the twelve years that had passed since she had done the cruel deed.
"I am not afraid of you," she repeated; "and I can meet you in the place of punishment they talk about without a shiver—without one shiver, do you hear?"
"In the name of mercy don't shout like that, or you will bring the country upon us," cried Dan, as he struck a light and bent down to look at the shrouded figure. "It is only me—Dan, you know."
She slowly drew the shawl from her face, and, seeing the light, struggled to her feet and turned to the fire, to which Dan was now applying a match.
"I thought you would never come," she said, hardly; "and it is so cold here."
"I couldn't come sooner; I had to go to the township for some things for you, and the hut is so watched now that mother daren't leave it."
"Watched!" she repeated, dreamily, as she turned her hands, white and thin as dead hands, to the fire for warmth.
"Yes; the police have suspicions of the hut. I wish to goodness you were safe out of it, Ellen."
"So do I," she said, "Where is John Boyle?"
The question was so apparently irrelevant that Dan turned and stared at the awful white face, with its hollow eyes that seemed like those of a corpse. The woman was staring into the fire, but she repeated the question.
"Yes, where is John Boyle?"
"She is going mad," was what Dan thought to himself, for he had heard nothing of poor Boyle's innocent connection with the pitiable murder.
"What do you care where he is or what he is doing?" he asked aloud.
She laughed aloud—that laugh that froze the blood in Mat Dixon's veins; and the man who had seemed to befriend the flying woman took a sudden resolution.
"I'll go down to the hut, and see how the land lies; perhaps mother will be able to come up now—at all events, I'll see."
He had already placed food beside her, so he went to the dark and tortuous passage by which Ellen had entered.
When he had gone, she turned from the fire and swiftly went back to the place where she had been sitting in the darkness a few moments ago, and a sudden light gleamed in the small dark eyes, that had so deeply shrank into their sockets, as if to hide from the horror of the scene which was always before them, and she whispered to herself—
"There is another way of getting out of this! We came in that way just now! God help him if he means me treachery!" and her hand went quickly into her bosom to grasp that knife Dan had made so light of, yet which was a dangerous weapon in the hands of such a woman as Ellen O'Slattery.
She was right; at least so far, Dan had not entered the cave by the way he was leaving it, and he now listened carefully as he neared the shed in which was the concealed entrance; there was no sound, and he went into the hut.
The woman he usually called "Mother" was sitting still at the fire where Charlie Moffat had left her when he got tired of waiting for Dan, but she got up quickly when the man's foot sounded on the floor.
"Sit down," he said; "I have something to say to you. Do you know that there is a reward offered for Ellen?"
"Yes, and I have known all along that you were waiting to know it was out."
"You were right; I was. It is five hundred pounds. It would set us up for life."
"I know, I know; but it would be blood money!" and she covered her face with both hands.
"It would not!" he contradicted, as, with his closed fist on the table, he emphasized the declaration. "It is a sin to help or harbour her! She has murder in her heart now! What has she to do with John Boyle?"
"Mercy! Is she talking of him?"
All the woman's quietness was gone; she was alarmed into the wildest appearance of terror; she wrung her hands, and looked towards the door as if meditating going out into the darkness.
"Drop that, and talk!" cried Dan. "What has she to do with Boyle?"
"I thought every one knew that she murdered the woman because she was jealous of her and Boyle," was the agitated reply.
"I didn't know it, for one. Now, one more question. How do you know so much, and why is it that you are so much afraid of this murdering wretch?"
"Oh, don't ask me, for the love of God!"
"I do ask you."
"Because I saw her kill poor Maggie. I was innocent of all, but I was there, and the horror of it has remained here, here!" and she beat upon her breast violently.
"And you knew this, and would let this wretch live to murder next the best friend a man ever had. I always thought you a foolish woman, but you must be worse to leave John Boyle at this villain's mercy. When you were ill, and I was laid up with that kick from the mare, who stood by us with help and kind words? You are as bad as Ellen O'Slattery, damned if you're not!"
The speaker went out, and up the dark ways to the cave, with such a boiling rage in his heart against the hunted woman that he had hard work to calm himself ere he joined her. Dan was far from being a good man, but he was at least a grateful one, and he owed to John Boyle more than he would have liked to own to the woman he had just left.
Ellen was sitting as she had been before the fire. The shawl had fallen from her head, and her black hair, combed back tightly over her ears, was smooth and glossy. Her small head, with its prominent, low brow, and sunken cheeks, formed in the firelight a picture terrible to even callous Dan, for the Brand of Cain was as plain in that face as though it had been stamped in fire, and no one could look upon it without knowing that she had shed blood, and was a thing to be dreaded forever by her fellow mortals.
She had eaten, and she had drunk. She had formed her plans as perfectly as though her head was clear and her hands clean; yet Dan looked upon her as he seated himself at the opposite side of the fire, and thought she was asleep! Oh, the cunning that a prison life teaches! Oh, the treachery and guile and crime that it encourages!
"Ellen, are you asleep?" he asked, loudly.
"No! I never sleep—not sleep like other people's; I was dozing."
"Didn't you miss me, then?"
"No; have you been away?"
"Of course; didn't you say you wanted me to find out about John Boyle?"
"Yes, well? Have you found out?"
"He has sold out on his old farm, Boyle's holding, as they called it, and has taken another up near Cameron's."
"Where is Cameron's?"
She was still, to all appearance, calm and thinking; but if he had only guessed what was working in that murderous mind!
"It is a farm about two miles from this, and they call it Spearmount or Spearmont. Boyle is going to marry Cameron's daughter."
Now she turned her head and looked at him, but he did not meet her gaze; he was filling his pipe, with apparent carelessness. "I thought John Boyle was married long ago?"
"Not he; and the girl he is going to marry is the handsomest and the richest in the district."
The man was telling her this to deliberately torture her, as he might have tortured a snake who had tried to bite him ere he crushed its head with the heel of his boot.
"What does it matter?" he thought. "I will soon put her where she cannot hurt Boyle."
"Where did you know Boyle?" he asked her aloud, watching her keenly now, for her eyes had returned to the fire.
"Long ago—at home—when I was young and innocent. What does it matter now?"
"That's true, Ellen; it little matters now. Your lookout is to keep clear of the police."
"Yes, Dan. Where's the cold coming from?" And she drew the shawl up closely around her. "It's worse than the cells."
"What cells?"
"The dark stone cells where I used to sit and pray for death, yet lived to long for life as I had never longed for death."
"Poor soul!" Dan said, in affected pity; "it must have been awful. Take a pull out of this; it will warm you."
She eagerly seized the flask he handed her, and drained its contents. She was thinking of the strength it would give her to fulfill her dark purpose; while Dan chuckled to himself as he thought, "That will put her off to sleep in earnest, and then I'm off for the troopers."
As if to second his will, the wretched woman turned and dragged towards her the blankets they had given her, and folded herself in them ere she lay down in the warmth of the fire. "I will sleep while I'm warm," she said; "it gets so cold when the fire is out. You will watch and see that the police don't find me out, Dan?"
As she asked the question she lifted her head quickly, and looked the man in the face. The movement was so sudden he had not expected it, and so once more he mot those awful, sunken eyes, with the dark rings round them, and only one spark of light, that was not of heaven, within them. He shuddered as every one shuddered who met them, and turned away his own as he replied:
"Never fear, Ellen; I will watch."
Dan sat there and smoked, with the huddled-up figure of the woman before him, until her long-drawn and panting breath assured him that she slept, and then he rose softly, and went his way; but he did not go alone. One followed him on his way like his own shadow, up through the tortuous ways to the cool night breeze as it crept between the branches of great trees, and between the dark rocks of the Buffalo Range. To no one but himself was this path out of the cave known—so he fancied—and he felt secure as he went down the hill with only the starlight to guide him on his way.
ANOTHER fair morning at Spearmount, with the sun shining on happy faces, and a calm happiness in John Boyle's breast, as he looked in the sweet eyes of his bride that was to be. There must be no shadow from the dark brand of Cain rest on Spearmont or the heaven-lit faces of the Cameron family; they must always rest in the peace of their own kindness of heart and goodwill toward men; but there was a secret that morning at Spearmont.
Only returned on the previous day, and the light of the hearth and her mother were going away again. It was Mat Dixon's advice to his friend Boyle when he had seen him on the previous day.
"I cannot sleep or eat, Boyle. I am afraid for you and your darling. You have not seen that awful face, and it haunts me. Take them away, for the love of Him whom I hope I humbly serve, and leave the woman to me. If a man can secure her, I will do it."
And so, with the good farmer's consent, they were all going to Wangaiatta, where they had friends—all but Mr. Cameron and poor Boyle, who would have given much to have gone too, and hard the sweet eyes of fair Nellie pleaded. To her there were excuses that flushed her soft cheeks, for a home must be prepared for his dove; to the farmer one word was enough.
"I am not a coward, father. It is our darling I fear for, and not for myself."
And so they went away, a pleasant party, Jamie and his inseparable "Dandie," the little dog, being, I dare say, not the least unhappy of the party.
And now for the last of the unhappy woman, around whom a chain of determined men were closing, though she knew it not. All through that night she had crouched, waiting for the light, so that she might see the face of the man she had loved once, and that of her she hated as she had hated once twelve years ago. If sweet Nellie had known! If she had only known on that bright morning that a woman was thirsting to take her innocent life! But she did not know, and, thank heaven, she should never know!
I need not say that when Dan guided the troopers to the cave it was empty. Dan's rage was dreadful, but, never dreaming the murderess had discovered the upper outlet, the search was made by that emerging behind the hut. Nothing could be done in the darkness; but as the men waited for daylight at Boyle's holding, Franks, the trooper, discovered from Dan's raving that there was another exit to the cave. That was enough for him, and by dawn half-a-dozen men were on the track of Ellen O'Slattery.
It was some time ere they found her, for her hiding-place was safe. She was waiting and watching in a close nook of the range, just above Cameron's farm, and sleep must have overtaken her, for the sun was five hours high when she was aroused by a sound of something that was not the rustling of bushes near her.
She started to her feet, and listened; there was not a sound, and she crawled out of her lair, and stood upon the rock that had hidden her. A dozen eyes saw her, but from where the men were she was inaccessible.
"She will get away!" cried Dan. "If she gets to the other side of the range, we are done!"
"Alive or dead!" shouted Franks, between his teeth. "Who's the best shot among us? You have a rifle, Dixon; could you wing her, do you think?"
Mat looked at Boyle, with agony in his eyes. He was well-known to be the best marksman for miles around. Slowly he raised the barrel, and, while the very breath of those around were suspended, he fired.
The report rang sharp among the hills, but the woman's scream was so loud and awful that it pierced the air like a knife, as she fell back among the rocks from whence she had risen.
"May God forgive me!" cried Mat Dixon, as he laid his face on Boyle's shoulder; "for your sake, my friend, I have planted the brand of Cain on my own forehead."
But it was not so; the woman was only wounded, and not vitally. While she was enduring a living death between the awful walls whence she should now never escape, the sunlight was lying on the homes of those we know, and children's happy voices were filling them with music. Many a time and oft Jamie and his dog Dandie hunted for kangaroo rats at the very spot where the murderess fell, but Dandie's bark was never louder, or his young master's shout less cheery, for they never knew anything of the "Brand of Cain."