To give an air of plausibility to this plea it was necessary to represent Ephraim Shine in the worst possible light, and that conscientious and hard-working young lawyer spared no pains on his own part or the part of the dead man’s daughter to make every point that would tell for his client; but Chris was not more moved than at the preliminary investigation.  She told the truth simply, and no effort on the part of the barrister could shake her evidence or break through the unnatural calm in which she appeared to have enveloped herself.  Harry saw her several times during the course of the trial, and found a desolate anguish in her white immobile face, that stirred up in his heart again a fury against fate, the law, and every force and condition that added the smallest pang to her sorrow.  If he could have only interposed his body between her and all this trouble it would have been keen joy to him to have felt raining upon his flesh, with heavy material blows, the shafts directed against her tender heart; but his strength was of no avail, he could think of nothing that he might do but take that insolent lawyer by the throat and choke him on the floor of the Court.  He was helpless to do any thing but love her, and every sight of her, every thought of her, added fuel to his passion.

She went to him once outside the Court with out stretched hands and swimming eyes, murmuring inarticulate words, and he understood that, she meant to thank him for the efforts he had made to spare her in his evidence on the previous day.  In truth she bad been touched by the change in him, and she, too, was fighting with her love a harder battle than his.

‘I’m sorry for you, Chris,’ he said, ’but time will heal all this, never fear.’

She gazed at him and slowly shook her head.

‘Never, Harry,’ she said.

‘It will, it will!’ he persisted.  ’Chris, you’re coming back after it’s all over?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I must.’

‘An’ you’ve not forgotten?’

‘No, Harry, I have not forgotten anything.’  There was a strain of firmness in her voice that jarred him, and he looked at her sharply; but her face gave him no comfort.  A moment later she was joined by Mrs. Summers and another friend, and he left her, his heart unsatisfied, his mind shaken with doubts and perplexities.

Joe Rogers was found guilty and sentenced to twelve years’ hard labour.  Close upon eight hundred ounces of gold were handed over to the Silver Stream Company, and the Company, ’in recognition of the valuable services of Master Richard Haddon,’ presented him with a gold watch and chain—­which for many months after was a source of ceaseless worry to his little mother, who firmly believed that its fame must have inspired every burglar and miscellaneous thief in Victoria with an unholy longing to possess it, was continually devising new hiding-places for the treasure, and arose three or four times a night to at tack hypothetical marauders.