“Ah!” cries Glory excitedly, and casting a swift glance down the passage towards Lileth’s room, “and what did you do?”
There is something so charmingly attractive in the warm interest which Glory evinces in what Claude is narrating, and her sweet little face blushes so prettily with her emotion, that it is only by exerting all his self-command that Angland can restrain himself from clasping the little form beside him in his arms.
Angland, however, instead of acting thus, and at once destroying the good opinion Glory has of him, does just the reverse of it, and withdrawing his eyes from the bewitching object of his affections, he goes on speaking:—
“I noticed at once that the black who’d brought the letter had a red ribbon tied round his forehead,—which I have often seen police and station ‘boys’ wearing, as a mark to distinguish them from the wild natives who may be about. I also thought that the messenger seemed to be putting on a good bit of ‘side’ for a warragal, and I hardly expected that Billy would be hiding at a station, and employ a station-hand as his Mercury. So, remembering the letter you intercepted, I guessed that the ‘boy’ must be a police ‘boy’ in mufti. So, after reading the note, I thought I would test the messenger by pretending that the letter, which I was sure he could not read, was a message from Puttis. ‘Here,’ I said, holding out the piece of paper, ‘Mr. Puttis say you take me to him. Which way inspector sit down?’
“The black looked up at me rather sulkily, I thought, as if undecided how to answer; then, after a moment’s consideration, he mumbled,—
“‘’Spector Puttis him sit down longer Bulla Bulla ’tation!’
“‘All right,’ I said, ‘you wait here till I come back.’”
“And then?” asks Glory.
“Then I rode off to see my old miner, Williams, and asked his advice. When I got to the out-station I found him most jubilant, for, what do you think?—he had found Billy. Yes, little Joe, acting under Williams’s orders, had been scouring the country with coloured handkerchiefs, which he gave to all the niggers he could find. Each of these had a small message to Billy, telling him where to find me, written upon it.
“Billy saw one of these messages, and——But I mustn’t say anything further about it, Glory,—I mean Miss Giles,—for Williams made me solemnly promise I wouldn’t do so to any one.”