Dick went to the edge of the balcony and looked over; it was not very far from the ground, but it was too far to jump. How about the wistaria boughs? They looked pretty tough--he decided to try, and if he fell--well, he had smashed himself up before this more than once, and no doubt would do so again. A few tumbles more or less wouldn't make much difference to him, especially, he reflected, as he was bound to get back to 1920 somehow or other. He could hardly kill himself now if he tried. He reached the ground with nothing worse than a few scratches to his credit, and set off along the path by which they had come in the afternoon, keeping well in the shadow of the hedge in case Ah Kew's beady eyes should be on the outlook. So long as he was within the grounds of the house he felt confident and cheerful, but when he reached the slip-rail and looked over into the land beyond he felt some of his courage oozing away. It looked eerie, that strange, unfamiliar country, in this white light. There were dead trees standing here and there, and their pale trunks took unpleasant shapes--they might conceivably be something else than trees--not ghosts, of course; there were no such things as ghosts. All the tales he had ever read about Australia suddenly started up in his mind--tales of deadly snakes, of bushrangers, of blackfellows, who had methods of their own of doing you in. One might go through a good deal without being actually _killed_. Now that he came to think of it, Australia in the 'seventies was a wildish sort of place--in some parts at any rate. He wished that he was surer where he was--how far away from civilization. He supposed that Ned Kelly and his gang were still at large. But, of course, he could not go back. He stepped cautiously from tree to tree, keeping to the black shadows as much as possible. He could hear the sound of that little waterfall quite distinctly, and see the moonlight on the rippling shallows of the creek--now he could see the gum tree he was making for--he had taken particular notice of a crooked bough--what on earth was that? A wild piercing shriek from somewhere beyond the creek brought him suddenly to a standstill, his heart in his mouth. Undoubtedly a woman was being murdered or tortured. Blackfellows, probably, as Ned Kelly made a point of not hurting women--at least so it said in _Robbery Under Arms_. Dick wondered what exactly the blackfellows had done to the woman--and there was the blood-curdling shriek again! He stood still. After all, why not leave the diamond till daylight? He had been a silly ass to imagine all that rubbish about it, and a much sillier ass to leave his safe bedroom and come out to this wild and desolate spot all alone. If he had brought Jerry--