Why didn't I write? You see _now_ how hard it is to bear when friends are silent. But I refrained, sorely against the grain, _for your sake_. It might unsettle you, I thought, even tempt you to come to Melbourne, where the risk would be terrible. So I waited till I could get a really good opportunity and escort for Omeo. You will see me--I am almost beside myself with joy at the thought--almost as quickly as this letter reaches you, Mr. Vernon, my kind host, says. He bought me a delightful horse--so safe and pleasant. I shall quite enjoy the ride up. A storekeeper, his wife and daughter, also an assistant, are my companions, so you see I am well protected. Have you got the ring and the token? I have mine safe. Ever and till we meet, your own ESTELLE. 'Well, I'm blowed,' was the reader's inelegant but characteristic exclamation as he folded up the letter,--oh! rare and precious outpouring of a fond woman's love and tenderness,--'if this game isn't right into my hand! I've got his gold. I've got his cash. His girl's running fair into my arms, and, if the luck holds, I'll have his house and land in the old country. Lance Trevanion, if I haven't got square with you, the devil's in it, or Caleb Coke, which comes to the same thing! I've got to take care _he_ don't turn dog on me, though. It was he put me on to plant for Trevanion in Mountain Ash Gully. We're both in it, though he fired the shot and knocked him on the head afterwards. We've gone whacks so far in the nuggets and cash in the hut; who'd 'a thought he'd such a pile stowed away there? But if I can get to Melbourne, take the girl on the hop, marry her, and clear out to England or 'Frisco the day after, as I expect he intended to have done, old Caleb may whistle for his share. By Jove! what a lucky job it was that Coke and I had a good overhaul of the hut on the quiet. It's put me up to all I wanted to know to act Lance Trevanion to the life. I've done it before, but now I'm up in my part to the letter. I've got the very clothes he was last seen in, the marks on my face _he_ gave me, damn him, much about the same as I gave _him_; with putting on a bit of a drawl that he always had, the devil himself wouldn't know us apart. I wonder if he will when _my_ turn comes below?' Then the villain laughed aloud, a ghastly sound in the lonely hut and still night The unnatural sound died away,--guilt rarely laughs long,--when, lighting his pipe and stirring the embers of the fire in the chimney, he recommenced his meditative plotting.