Trafford looked before him, his eyes fixed sternly, his lips drawn.

Yes, he had been right! She was here, and Norman was with her. His heart was torn with jealousy and rage—and love. For he loved her still. He had had time to think on the outward journey, and the more he thought, the more easy it had become for him to find excuses for Esmeralda. He thought of her, a wild, uncultivated girl, ignorant of the world into which she had been flung by a whim of capricious fortune.

During those weeks spent on the boundless sea in perpetual reverie, in endless brooding, he had learned to realize something of what she had suffered when she discovered that she had been married, as she supposed, for her money alone. He could understand why she had refused to believe that he had grown to love her, and how easily she had believed that he loved Ada Lancing.

He could make excuses for her, but none for Norman.[310] Against Norman his heart surged with a bitter fury and thirst for vengeance.

The journey had tried him a great deal, and he was looking thinner than ever, and haggard and worn. He had avoided his fellow-passengers; had, indeed, scarcely spoken to them, and the weeks of solitude and painful self-communing had given his face an expression of sternness which indicated his grim resolution to follow Esmeralda and Norman, though it were to the other end of the world, and punish the latter.

He sat beside Johnson, the driver, with his arms folded tightly, his brows knit, and Johnson glanced at him now and again, and then whistled softly to his horses. He did not know what to make of him. A question trembled on Trafford’s lips, and at last he put it.

“You say Miss—Howard—this young lady—traveled by your coach some time ago. Was she accompanied by a gentleman?”

Johnson didn’t like being pumped by this stranger with the stern and handsome face.

“Can’t say,” he said, nonchalantly. “She might ha’ been, or she might not. I don’t take partickler notice of my passengers so long as they’ve got their tickets all right; an’ if I did,” he added, “I shouldn’t mouth about ’em to the first stranger as asked me questions.”

A faint flush rose to Trafford’s brow.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “You are quite right.”

Johnson was a little mollified.

“To tell you the truth, I can’t say,” he said. “She might ha’ been, or she might ha’ been met at the crossing where the scrimmage took place. There was such a flare-up, what with the shoutin’ and the shootin’, that I got ’em mixed in my mind.”

Trafford asked no more questions. Why should he? He felt certain that he should find Esmeralda and Norman together.

When they reached the coaching station where the road to Three Star branched off, Johnson pointed to it.

“That’s your road,” he said.

“Is there no coach, no vehicle, to take me?” asked Trafford.

“Nary one,” said Johnson, coolly. “You’ll have to hire a horse here an’ take yer luggage in front of you, or leave it an’ get some of the Three Star boys to drive over for it.”

Trafford walked into the hut which was dignified by the name of station, and looked round for a horse.

[311]

He succeeded in hiring one, and was preparing to start, when Johnson, who had been regarding him curiously, laid a huge hand upon his shoulder.

“Ain’t yer goin’ to have somethin’ to eat an’ drink?” he said, not unkindly, as he looked at the worn face. “It’s a long ride to Three Star, an’ to my knowledge you’ve had neither bite nor sup for a devil of a time.”

Trafford shook his head.

“Well, I say you shall drink, at any rate,” said Johnson, quietly; and he called for a glass of whisky and water.

Trafford drank it, more to please the man than because he acknowledged the need of it, and Johnson, tossing the empty glass to a stable help, said:

“Have you got yer revolver all fixed up? You may need it; there’s some rough characters about, an’ they’re fond of target practice.”

Trafford smiled and touched the revolver in his belt. Johnson eyed the spare but muscular figure clad in the rough and semi-digger clothes which Trafford had procured at Ballarat, and nodded approvingly.

“You’ll do,” he said. “I don’t know what yer business is at Three Star, an’ I don’t want to know, but I’ll bet yer’ll carry it through!” and he held out his paw.

Trafford shook it, and getting into his saddle, rode off. His heart beat fast as he found himself galloping along the Three Star road. Along this road Esmeralda must have often traveled. As he looked round upon the wide-stretching plains with their background of towering hills, the whole place seemed to breathe to him of Esmeralda. He could picture her, a slim and graceful girl, not clad in the costly raiment of a London ball-room, but in the short blue skirt and wide felt hat which she had so often described to him. He could understand how strange and bewildering to her must have been the change from these wild solitudes to the whirlpool of fashionable life; how bitterly she must have contrasted the falseness, the selfishness, the self-seeking of his aristocratic set with the simple natures of the rough but honest and genuine folk with whom she had been brought up.

As he rode on, the scenery grew more beautiful and seemed to him still more eloquent of her presence; seemed, in its loveliness, to be part and parcel of the beautiful girl whom he had held in his hands but to let slip and lose forever. He was so touched by his thoughts, that once or twice he found himself breathing her name softly and sadly. The horse was a good one, and carried him quite easily; he paid little attention[312] to his way, so absorbed was he in his reverie, and when he suddenly found himself at a part of the road from which forks branched right and left, he pulled up, realizing that he had forgotten the precise directions which Johnson had given him.

He was in a dilemma. It would be night before very long, and it behooved him to reach the camp without delay. He looked from right to left with a puzzled frown; then it struck him that he would let the horse choose; no doubt it had often traveled the road before. The horse, after a moment’s hesitation, chose the left fork—and the wrong one.

Trafford rode on and found the road rougher than the one he had left, and more winding. After a time it dwindled to a mere track; but Trafford had no serious misgivings, for he thought that there would not be any very great traffic between Three Star and the station, and he trusted, in this case wrongly, to his horse. But presently the horse stopped and looked vaguely from side to side, as a horse will do when it wonders what its master would be at.

Trafford did not like to turn back, for he was as uncertain about the other road as he was concerning this, and it occurred to him that the track must lead somewhere, so he put the horse to a trot and rode on. After covering some miles, the track mounted a hill to escape a torrent, and then, to Trafford’s disappointment, dipped down again toward the valley.

Half-way down he pulled up to consider. The solitude was intense, and, to a man fresh from the crowds of England, somewhat awe-inspiring. The mountains towered above him, the torrent roared in the valley below, a bird rose from the undergrowth and darted upward with a shrill cry.

As he sat upon his horse and gazed round him, he thought of his past life and all its follies. What was human ambition and all its vexing vanities worth in this vast solitude? He thought of Esmeralda, and his heart ached for his wife as only a strong man’s can ache. If she were only by his side now, to share with him the mystic beauty of this scene, the solitude would then be transformed to a paradise like to that in which our forefather and foremother moved and loved.

As the reflection lingered in his mind, he heard the soft thud, thud of horses’ feet. It came so softly as to seem rather a part of his waking dreams than reality. He sat motionless for a moment or two; then he remembered the driver’s warning, and, dismounting from his horse, cautiously drew it behind a projecting rock, and watched and listened.

He had been sitting motionless so long that it was not[313] likely the new-comer would be aware of his presence. As he leaned against the saddle, he wondered who this sharer of his solitude could be. The thud, thud came nearer, and presently, in the clear evening air, Trafford saw emerging from behind a clump of trees the horse and rider. He did not move a muscle—not even when he saw that the rider was a woman.

He did not move or cry ou............