’I was condemned to be hanged.  They altered it to transportation for life.’

‘But they all believed—­’

’Mother must have known.  It would have made little difference.  The horror of it was a little greater than the horror of hanging.  It probably gave her no comfort.’

‘She died of it all.’  Jim spoke without volition.  ‘Yes,’ responded Ryder dully.  ’She was the kind of woman who would.  I was transported, and for all those years I lived in hell.’

‘For murder!’ said Jim sharply.

Ryder shook his head again.  His voice was quite even.  ’I did no murder.  There was no murder done.’

‘The body—­what of the body?’

’There was none.  The man for whose murder I was condemned still lives.  Stony is the man!’

‘Stony!’ Jim peered into the other’s face again.  ‘Stony!’ he cried.  ’It’s not possible.  You are lying.  It’s utterly incredible.  Stony!  Then this explains?’ He did not doubt even while the words of unbelief were on his lips.

’This explains.  My coming upon you that night in the Black Forest was not so extraordinary as it seemed.  I was following you both.  I had been to Melbourne on Stony’s track, having caught a glimpse of him one night at Ballarat.  I ascertained that he had started for Forest Creek.  Meanwhile Mrs. Macdougal and Miss Woodrow had told me of you.  It was reasonable to assume that you also had started for the field everybody was talking of.  At our first meeting I did not see you:  I was too deeply interested in Mr. Stony.’

‘Stony was not the name.’

‘Stony is an assumed name.  Cannon is his real name—­Peter Cannon.’

’That is the name.  But I cannot understand.  My head fails me.  I am utterly bewildered!’

‘You’ll hear Stony’s story?  He is in his tent.’

’Not now.  You have overwhelmed:  me.  For God’s sake, give me time to straighten things out!’

Jim sat in silence for some minutes, but the excitement lingered.  He drifted into questions, and plied the other like a cross-examining lawyer eager to trap a witness; but Ryder knew every detail of the family history.  He told Jim of a birthmark on his own body.  He described the furnishing of the home in Chisley much as it remained within Jim’s memory.

‘You have not mentioned our sister,’ he said.

‘She killed herself.’  Jim spoke with blunt brutality.  He had no energy for equivocation.

Ryder accepted this piece of news in the spirit of a man steeled to the keenest strokes of Fate.

‘She was a beautiful girl,’ he said.  ‘I remember I loved her dearly.’

‘You speak as if it were fifty years ago.’

‘I have been in hell since, I tell you.’

Jim looked closely into his brother’s face again, but it baffled him; it betrayed no more feeling than a stone.

‘Why have you divulged this now?’ he asked.

’You forced it from me.  I did not expect you to return.  I saw you playing cards at the shanty.  But it is as well.  I should have told you later.’