Yes, a wild, tempestuous night; a night for birds of darkness and for beasts of prey. A strange night for seven men to lie out in the gully at Bluemansdyke, with revolvers in their hands, and the devil in their hearts. * * * * * The sun was rising after the storm. A thick, heavy steam reeked up from the saturated ground, and hung like a pall over the flourishing little town of Trafalgar. A bluish mist lay in wreaths over the wide track of bushland around, out of which the western mountains loomed like great islands in a sea of vapour. Something was wrong in the town. The most casual glance would have detected that. There was a shouting and a hurrying of feet. Doors were slammed and rude windows thrown open. A trooper of police came clattering down with his carbine unslung. It was past the time for Joe Buchan's saw-mill to commence work, but the great wheel was motionless, for the hands had not appeared. There was a surging, pushing crowd in the main street before old Tom Broadhurst's house, and a mighty clattering of tongues. "What was it?" demanded the new-comers, panting and breathless. "Broadhurst has shot his mate." "He has cut his own throat." "He has struck gold in the clay floor of his kitchen." "No; it was his son Maurice who had come home rich." "Who had not come back at all." "Whose horse had come back without him." At last the truth had come out; and there was the old sorrel horse in question whinnying and rubbing his neck against the familiar door of the stable, as if entreating entrance; while two haggard, grey-haired men held him by either bridle, and gazed blankly at his reeking sides. "God help me," said old Tom Broadhurst; "it is as I feared!" "Cheer up, mate," said Hutton, drawing his rough straw hat down over his brow. "There's hope yet." A sympathetic and encouraging murmur ran through the crowd. "Horse ran away, likely." "Or been stolen." "Or he's swum the Wawirra an' been washed off," suggested one Job's comforter. "He ain't got no marks of bruising," said another, more hopeful. "Rider fallen off drunk, maybe," said a bluff old sheep-farmer. "I kin remember," he continued, "coming into town 'bout this hour myself, with my head in my holster, an' thinking I was a six-chambered revolver--mighty drunk I was." "Maurice had a good seat; he'd never be washed off." "Not he." "The horse has a weal on its off fore-quarter," remarked another, more observant than the rest. "A blow from a whip, maybe." "It would be a darned hard one." "Where's Chicago Bill?" said someone; "he'll know."