blindly, but the ground was hard. There was no sign of the gold anywhere,
and not another stone in the quarry that answered to the boy's
description. Possessed with a stupid blundering fury against Dick, Rogers
turned back towards the Piper. He breathed horrible blasphemies as he
ran, and struck at the scrub in his insensate rage. He was a man of
fierce passions, and meant murder during those first few minutes-swift
and ruthless. He reached the Piper breathless from his exertions and wild
with passion. He did not even pause to resume his disguise, but ran to
the shaft, cursing as he went. There he stopped like a man shot, his
figure stiffened, his arms thrown out straight before him; his eyes, wide
and full of terror, stared between the skids rising from the shaft to the
brace above.

Dick Haddon was not there. The space was empty, the rope's end moved
lazily in the wind.

The revulsion of feeling was terrible: it left the strong man as weak as
a child, it turned the desperate criminal into a mumbling coward. Rogers
staggered to the shaft and examined the rope. It had broken where one
strand was cut; the other strands were frayed out. The gold-stealer fell
upon his knees and tried to call, but a mere gasp was the only sound that
escaped his lips. He remained for a minute or two gazing helplessly into
the pitch blackness of the shaft; then, recovering somewhat with a great
effort, he rose to his feet, untied the remainder of the rope from the
skid and dropped it into the shaft, and turning his back on the mine fled
away through the paddocks towards Waddy. As he issued from the bush a
quarter of an hour later, and crossed the open flat, a slim figure
slipped from the furze covering the rail fence and followed him
noiselessly at a distance.