Page:Outlawandlawmak00praegoog.djvu/344

332, and stealing the diamonds of a person who can well afford to lose them, and whose family have for generations been the oppressors of Ireland; but it is the truth that I yielded very reluctantly in that business, and that I would give my right hand to be able to return Lady Waveryng her diamonds."

"Cannot that be done?" Elsie asked.

"I am afraid not. Trant took them to Sydney, and put them, or such part as he thought fit, in the hands of our agent there, who would take means to transmit them to their destination. I have no doubt, as I said, that Trant feathered his own nest well. I was too sick and disgusted with the whole affair to care once the thing was done. That's the one act in Moonlight's career which seems somehow a blot on my honour. The gold was earth's bounty, and it is only fair that some of it should go to redress Ireland's wrongs; and Peter Duncan had been notoriously a screw to the Irish settler, and was an avowed hater of the Irish. He deserved to be bled. Slaney deserved it too, but Slaney was true to his word. He had me in his grip and forebore. Oh, Elsie, do you know that I never enjoyed anything more in my life than that walking into the bank with the almost certainty of being arrested. It was a throw of the dice, liberty the stake."

And then he told her of how his love for her had grown and grown; how at first he had begun his flirtation, believing her to be heartless and deserving of no quarter, and how he had gradually become caught in her toils, and had struggled against her influence, at first from mere pride, and later out of love and consideration for her. "Till I knew that you were securely pledged to Frank Hallett, and that night I let myself go," he said. "I had let myself go once before, but I wanted you to believe that that was only to show my mastery."

"And how is it to end?" she said suddenly.

"To end!" he repeated. "Moonlight's race is run. There will never be another Moonlight robbery in Leichardt's Land. Years and years hence the cave will be