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276 wants to catch the coach from Goondi to-morrow morning. He's a queer fellow, Blake."

"Queer! Why do you say so?"

"Oh! I don't know. There were we all in the devil of an excitement. Macpherson raging, and wanting to organize a scouring party on the instant—all of us cursing and spluttering and vowing vengeance on Moonlight, and Blake as cool as a cucumber, all the time looking bored with the whole concern, and with a quiet dreamy way, as though his mind was in the clouds, or too full of the sale of the Gorge to bother about Moonlight."

"The sale of the Gorge! It was true, then?"

"True! Good Lord, why should it not have been true? The man was there—a meat-preserver in a small way—sells to the big establishments, and wants to go in for something in the breeding line. He and Trant were inspecting when we arrived."

"Mr. Trant was there?"

"Why, my dear Elsie, I think you must be loose of a shingle, as our Australians put it. Didn't you hear Trant say good-bye, and tell us he was going straight over to meet a butcher? Well, he did go straight over, and he did meet the butcher; anyhow the butcher and Trant were there, and had been right enough when Macpherson got over, three hours before me. Are you thinking that Trant stole the diamonds? It would be a convenient theory. And do you know that my first suspicions fell on Sam Shehan? But it won't hold water."

"Sam Shehan!" Elsie said, still in a dazed way. She seemed able only to repeat vaguely Lord Horace's words.

"Sam is a very bad hat, or was; as we all know. It was a fluke, Hallett tells me, that he didn't get seven years once for cattle stealing from Tunimba. It struck me as not at all unlikely that Sam Shehan may have given information to Moonlight. The informer must have been some one on the spot, for it was clear that Moonlight knew exactly how the diamonds were done up and carried, and the right man to tackle; he must have known, too, the exact hour at