Another hastily unfastened the bridle of a horse from a hitching-post—which horse belonged to a respectable farmer—jumped on the animal's back, and went clattering down the street in chase of the coach. He said to himself, "He won't throw me off his tracks, darn him! I'll see where he goes!"
This man followed the coach till it was beyond the auriferous country, and far into the night; then his horse, which had shown unmistakable signs of giving in, refused to go another step.
At twelve o'clock next day Bill arrived in Melbourne. He did not say a word to any one about the gold. He kept the secret locked. He had settled it in his own mind that he was holding the money as a sacred trust for Mary. He was only the custodian, and not the owner.
The whole affair was bordered and fringed with the miraculous.
His first concern was to find Mary. That was the platform. "Seek, and ye shall find." That was the first plank. How it would shape who could tell? He would try to fit all the pieces into their places in his rough stumbling fashion, and leave a higher Power to do the smoothing and joining. He was in love with Mary, and hoped to get "spliced" some day. "Marriages are made in heaven." He had unbounded faith that there would be one on earth soon.
He went to the Argus office, and wrote an advertisement, in which he described Mary and the old man as well as he could, and stated that she would receive a legacy on application to B. M.
Next day he got an armful of letters from Marys who had lost a father, and hoped they had found a legacy. He was astonished to find how many girls so exactly answered the description of the Mary he was in search of. Before night he had written and posted letters to all the applicants, requesting them to meet him at his hotel next day.
At the hour appointed for the interview, babies in arms, children, young women, middle-aged ones, toothless spinsters, and grandmothers, were sent in to him, one after another, and dismissed with scant courtesy. His Mary was not among them.
He haunted the streets by day, and the theatres by night, in the hope of seeing her. He would know her eyes anywhere. If he met her he would almost greet her as an old friend, so well did he seem to know her.