"If you don't answer, I shoot!" I cried through the darkness. There is short shrift for thieves in mining camps, and the next moment I had fired at random in the direction of the sound. Simultaneously the door was thrown open with a crash and the room flooded with the light of many lanterns. J----, the Scotland Yard man, and half-a-dozen policemen were soon surrounding a prostrate figure, clad in a grey sleeping-suit, which lay with a dark crimson mark over the heart, showing where my bullet had reached its mark. Great heavens! Had I killed him? The bare idea filled me with horror, as I pushed my way through a ring of excited men and, kneeling by the side of the wounded man, gently raised his head. The features were already twitching in the death agony, the eyes were dull and glazed, but a faint smile flickered over the face as I realized, with the appalling terror of a nightmare, that I was looking upon the features of Edgar Dalton. "Forgive me," he gasped, faintly, as I bent closer to catch his whispered words. "I never knew it was you. Knaggs will tell you. Give her----" The hand was raised, with a last effort, towards a thin gold chain around the neck, but death arrested it half-way. Edgar Dalton, killed by my hand, had expired in my arms! "Come, sir, we can do no good," said J----, presently, as I continued to gaze vacantly upon the ashy face of the corpse. It was borne away by six stalwart troopers through the now crowded passages and stairway. "You've no need for remorse," added the detective, "for you've rid the world of as clever and cruel a scoundrel as it's ever been my lot to come across--and I have seen a few. Why, he has murders enough on his hands in Australia alone to hang him ten times over." "Mr. Edgar Dalton?" I asked, almost speechless with amazement. "Is that the name you knew him by?" said the Scotland Yard man, with ill-disguised pity for my ignorance. "Edgar Dalton, indeed! Why, the Australian Government has offered a reward of one thousand pounds for this man, dead or alive, for the past three years. I have been after him for seven years as James W----, the forger, and I think I am fairly entitled to the reward," he added. "For, you see, I have netted both birds this time. There's the other"--and he pointed to a man standing handcuffed between two troopers by the open doorway. His dejected appearance contrasted oddly with a gay suit of pink pyjamas, but although the smiling lips were now screened by a bristly moustache, and a carefully-curled auburn wig concealed the scanty grey locks, I had little trouble in recognising my old friend and fellow-traveller, Mr. Hiram Knaggs.