Here she paused. The heavy winter rains had swollen the waters, which swept along, dashing over the irregular pieces of rock that formed the only means of crossing over. But danger was as nothing to her now--the first few steps were taken--the rapid stream was rushing wildly round her--a sensation, of giddiness and exhaustion made her limbs tremble--her footing slipped on the wet and slimy stone--in another moment the ruthless waters carried her away. The morrow came, and the sun shone brightly upon the still swollen and rapid river. Two men stood beside it, both too annoyed at this impediment to their return to Melbourne to be in the slightest degree aware of their proximity to one another. A bonnet caught by a projecting fragment of rock simultaneously attracted their attention: both moved towards the spot, and thus brought into closer contact they recognized each other. Deadly foes though they were, not a word passed between them, and silently they dragged the body of the unhappy girl to land. In her cold and tightened grasp still lay the child. As they stood gazing on those injured ones, within one breast remorse and shame, in the other, hatred and revenge, were raging violently. Each step on the road to Ballarat had increased her brother's desire for vengeance, and still further was this heightened on discovering that Stephens had already left the diggings to return to town. This disappointment maddened him; his whole energy was flung into tracing his foe, and in this he had succeeded so closely, that unknown to either, both had slept beneath the same roof at the inn beside the Broken River. The voices of some of the loungers there, who were coming down to the Creek to see what mischief had been done during the night, aroused him. He glanced upon his enemy, who pale and trembling, stood gazing on the wreck that he had made. Revenge at last was in his hands--not a moment was to be lost--with the yell of a maniac he sprang upon the powerless and conscious-stricken man--seized him in his arms rushed to the river--and ere any could interpose, both had found a grave where but a few minutes before the bodies of Mary and her infant had reposed. Chapter XIV. NEW SOUTH WALES About seventy years ago a small colony of convicts first made the forests ring with the blows of the axe, and a few tents were erected where Sydney now stands. The tents, and they who dwelt beneath them, have long since disappeared, and instead we have one of the finest cities that our colonial empire ever produced.