'Perhaps he changed his mind,' he suggested doubtfully. 'He's such a rum cove, is Larry. No one knows when he's comin' or goin' half the time.' 'I expect not,' answered the woman gloomily, as if talking to herself. 'Now look here, Billy Dykes,' she said suddenly, walking up to the man and looking into his face as if her flashing eyes could see his inmost thought, 'you and I knowed each other this years; you tell me all you heard about Larry, and keep nothing back, as you're a man.' The young fellow seemed for the moment to have fallen completely under the spell of this fierce woman, whose burning eyes and passionate speech were for the moment suggestive of a disordered brain. He stared at her for a moment, and then replied-- 'There ain't a lot to tell, Mrs. Trevenna; but I expect you have a right to hear it. He's no man to leave you like this, and there's more than me thinks it. He's gone to Melbourne, that's what's up. Barker, the storekeeper, told me.' 'Any one gone with him?' 'No; not as I heard on.' 'You're keeping something back, Billy Dykes. Don't try and humbug me, or I'll----In God's name, tell me everything. Was there a woman in it?' 'Well, she didn't go with him, they said, but, in a manner of speaking, it was all the same. He followed her, and a regular tip-top young lady, by all accounts.' 'Did you hear her name?' 'Miss Chalmers, or Challner; something like that. Not long from England.' '_That English girl!_ the _cousin_, of course,' she murmured, in a strange, low-toned, hesitating voice. 'So she's come out after all. You're mistook, Billy, old man; it was Lance Trevanion they seen--Mr. Trevanion, I mean--an Englishman, and very like Larry. They came out in the same ship. He was to marry this young lady, his cousin. And I know _he_ was at Omeo.' 'That makes it all right then. You've no call to fret, Mrs. Trevenna, and I'm dashed glad of it. Only what was old Bredbo doing there? _I saw him_, and couldn't be mistook. No fear. I know every hair in his tail.' 'It _is_ queer,' said the woman, whose countenance had cleared wondrously, 'but, law, she may have got away from him on the road and turned up at Omeo. Anyhow, I'll ride over and have a look. You eat your dinner now, while I go down the paddock and catch my little mare.' The bushman addressed himself to the cold beef and damper with a sigh of relief as he watched his hostess pick up a bridle and walk rapidly across the horse-paddock. 'She's a hot 'un, by the Lord Harry,' he said to himself, as he filled a pannikin of tea from the camp-kettle near the fire. 'I wouldn't be in Larry's shoes for a trifle if he's working on the cross with her. It's a bloomin' mixed-up fakement, anyhow. I heard as Ballarat Harry at Omeo was that like him you couldn't scarce tell 'em apart. And of course it must be him as went down with the girl. But how does Bredbo come to be there? and old Caleb Coke handy too--like an eagle-hawk shepherding a dead lamb. It looks "cronk" somehow.'