"I ought to have gone," the stranger replied. He had a quiet, cool voice, that nevertheless rang clear through all the noise about them. "I duly started yesterday, but we broke a trace, and I lost my train by two minutes." "Two minutes! Well, that was hard lines. Are the Digbys here?" "Yes." "You are not going to make another start immediately, I suppose?" "Not till next week, I think." "Then you'll come back with us to-night?" "Thanks." Here he reined up his horse just beside Rachel's railing, and sent a furtive but searching glance up into her pretty blushing face. "Allow me to introduce my wife's cousin, Miss Fetherstonhaugh," said Mr. Thornley, laying his hand on her shoulder with a paternal gesture. "Rachel, my dear--Mr. Roden Dalrymple." CHAPTER IX. A BLACK SHEEP. "Who is Mr. Roden Dalrymple?" asked Rachel presently. Mr. Thornley was escorting her back to her aunt, and the person in question was riding across the ground--slowly, as he had come--in search of one of the grooms of his party, to whom he might deliver his horse to be stabled in the township until the return from Adelonga. "Who is he?" repeated Mr. Thornley. "He is Mrs. Digby's brother. Nice little woman, Mrs. Digby. You will like her I know. I am very glad she has come." "But what is he?" persisted Rachel, so absorbed in watching the tall rider swinging along at that stately, easy pace, with his long stirrups and his dangling rein, that she nearly tumbled over a couple of children who crossed her path. "Is he a Queensland squatter?" "That is what he thinks of being," laughed Mr. Thornley, with an amused, half-mocking laugh. "He has taken up a big run with Jim Gordon, and they are going to live there and manage for themselves. A nice mess they'll make of it, I expect." "Why?" inquired Rachel. "Why? They know no more about it than you do. How should they? Oh, by the bye, yes; I suppose Dalrymple has dabbled in cattle a little--in that South American venture of his. But that experience won't benefit him much. He lost every penny he put into that business." "Has he lived in South America?" asked Rachel. "He has lived all over the world, I think. He's a rolling stone, my dear, that's what he is--with the proverbial consequences." "Is he poor, then?" "Poor as a church mouse. That is to say, he has got a bit of an estate somewhere in Scotland or Ireland--I really forget which--an old ruin of a house mortgaged to the chimney-pots, and a few starved farms, that bring him in a few odd hundreds now and again. He tries all sorts of queer schemes for mending his fortunes, but they never come to anything." "Perhaps he is one of the unlucky ones--like my poor father," suggested Rachel. "I don't know. I'm afraid he's a ne'er-do-weel. Judging from his past history--Jim Gordon knows all about him--he has no worse enemy than himself."