“Do you actually hint that Mr. Steel has or could have been a gainer by Mr. Minchin’s death?”

Abel pondered his reply.

“What I will say,” he declared at length, “is that he might have been a loser by his life!”

“You mean if Mr. Minchin had gone on living?”

“Yes—­amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“You are not thinking of—­of Mrs. Steel?” queried Langholm, after pausing in his turn.

“Bless you, no!  She wasn’t born or thought of, so far as we was concerned, when we were all three mates up the bush.”

“Ah, all three!”

“Steel, Minchin, and me,” nodded Abel, as his cutty glowed.

“And you were mates!”

“Well, we were and we weren’t:  that’s just it,” said Abel, resentfully.  “It would be better for some coves now, if we’d all been on the same footin’ then.  But that we never were.  I was overseer at the principal out-station—­a good enough billet in its way—­and Minchin was overseer in at the homestead.  But Steel was the boss, damn him, trust Steel to be the boss!”

“But if the station was his?” queried Langholm.  “I suppose it was a station?” he added, as a furious shower of sparks came from the cutty.

“Was it a station?” the ex-overseer echoed.  “Only about the biggest and the best in the blessed back-blocks—­that’s all!  Only about half the size of your blessed little old country cut out square!  Oh, yes, it was his all right; bought it for a song after the bad seasons fifteen year ago, and sold it in the end for a quarter of a million, after making a fortune off of his clips alone.  And what did I get out of it?” demanded Abel, furiously.  “What was my share?  A beggarly check same as he give me the other day, and not a penny more!”

“I don’t know how much that was,” remarked Langholm; “but if you weren’t a partner, what claim had you on the profits?”

“Aha! that’s tellings,” said Abel, with a sudden change both of tone and humor; “that’s what I’m here to tell you, if you really want to know!  Rum thing, wasn’t it?  One night I turn up, like any other swaggy, humping bluey, and next week I’m overseer on a good screw (I will say that) and my own boss out at the out-station.  Same way, one morning I turn up at his grand homestead here—­and you know what!  It was a check for three figures.  I don’t mind telling you.  It ought to have been four.  But why do you suppose he made it even three?  Not for charity, you bet your boots!  I leave it to you to guess what for.”

The riddle was perhaps more easily solvable by an inveterate novelist than by the average member of the community.  It was of a kind which Langholm had been concocting for many years.

“I suppose there is some secret,” said he, taking a fresh grip of his stick, in sudden loathing of the living type which he had only imagined hitherto.

“Ah!  You’ve hit it,” purred the wretch.

“It is evident enough, and always has been, for that matter,” said Langholm, coldly.  “And so you know what his secret is!”