'"My native land, good-bye!" as Byron says. _He_ never saw it again, for that matter. Heigho! I wonder if I shall? Something tells me his fate will be mine. An early death, though there is no Greece to fight for--no such luck in store for Lance Trevanion as a patriot's grave--a hero's tomb. I used to think of such things once, strange to say. How queer it seems that a soldier's death in the open, and so many many other things are henceforth for me _impossible_. 'I see nothing for it but to hang on here, putting the crowd off the scent by working, talking, dressing like any other digger, till I get my share of Number Six by degrees from Charlie Stirling,--trump that he is,--then clear for Callao or 'Frisco without beat of drum, taking Tessie Lawless with me.' * * * * * Both before and since the conviction of Ned Lawless, who was one of the originators of the Omeo cattle-stealing gang, Lawrence Trevenna had been a partner in crime, a sharer in ill-gotten profits. He it was at Eumeralla whom the miners, the police, and indeed Tessie Lawless herself, had seen from time to time, and had mistaken for Lance Trevanion. They might well be excused. With some allowance for discrepancies in speech and manner, only observable when the two men stood side by side, few people could have told the difference. His nature, inheriting the strongest proclivities to lawlessness of every shade and scope, needed but the occurrence of suitable conditions to develop into the commission of the darkest deeds. The comparatively easy profession of stock-lifting had, after his first chance wayfaring to the Monaro district within a few months after he quitted the ship, commended itself to him as an exciting and lucrative line of life. Athletic, bold, and attractive after a fashion, he had singled out Kate Lawless as the object of his admiration before the migration of the family to Ballarat. Becoming aware of the reckless girl's flirtation with his rival and antagonist of the voyage, he had sworn to take a deadly revenge. With the aid of the Sergeant, and acting upon the girl's jealous mood, he had been enabled to gratify his hatred to the full; and now he heard through Caleb Coke, whose information from various sources was rarely inaccurate, that his enemy had escaped from prison and was actually living in Omeo.