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Rh close on Jack Nutty, who, uttering every now and then excited cries in the native language, rode as though possessed.

On among thickening gum-trees, over fallen logs, through dense prickly scrub, up and down gorges, and now to where the bunyas showed their black serrated wall against the spurs of Mount Luya. The moon had come out—that same moon which had faintly lighted the Falls expedition, and the ride that had been paradise to Elsie, as she had lain in her lover's arms. This ride seemed a nightmare, the flying trees evil demons, the night noises impish jibes, and Mount Luya and the Burrum Peaks towering ahead, till they reached the scrub, like gigantic fiends of menace. Once they thought they heard the sound of voices—it was only the cry of the native bear; and the tramp they fancied to be pursuing horses was that of startled beasts on a cattle camp by the border of the scrub. Jack Nutty got down, and carefully examined the ground for a trail, and put his ear to the earth, rising with a grim smile of satisfaction. "Ba'al, that fellow come yet," he said; and again they darted on into the labyrinthine depths of the scrub. Elsie's skirts were torn, her face was bleeding where the bunya spikes had scratched her, every limb of her body was tense with the strain, she was scarcely conscious of herself, her whole being seemed devoured with the frenzied eagerness to arrive in time. She remembered the Outlaw's downfall, and kept up her horse's head. The animal's side was streaming beneath her habit, where she had struck it with the spur. They were a long time in the scrub, and every moment was an agony, lest in the darkness and difficulty of the way one of the horses should slip or start back frightened, so that precious time would be lost.

But at last, at last! The beams of moonlight that struck down through the roofing branches became broader, and showed ahead a clear luminous open space. It was the clear patch behind the precipice to which Blake had led her through the fissure, the place where Jack Nutty had been in waiting with Abatos.