"No, I can't," said Dick stolidly.
"Why, my good fellow, they have come over on purpose to bleed me—they said so. It's as plain as a pikestaff."
"That may be true, so far as the man is concerned."
"Don't you see that the woman is his accomplice? But now a word with you, my friend. These are my private affairs that you have had the impudence——"
"That was not all I heard," said Dick coldly.
Danger again—in the moment of apparent security.
"What else did you hear, then?" asked Miles, in a voice that was deep and faint at the same time.
"Who you are," replied Dick shortly. "Sundown the bushranger."
The words were pronounced with no particular emphasis; in fact, very much as though both sobriquet and calling were household words, and sufficiently familiar in all men's mouths. The bushranger heard them without sign or sound. Dick waited patiently for him to speak; but he waited long.
It was a strange interview between these two men, in the dead of this summer's night, in the heart of this public park. They were rivals in love; one had discovered the other to be not only an impostor, but a notorious felon; and they had met before under circumstances the most peculiar—a fact, however, of which only one of them was now aware. The night was at the zenith of its soft and delicate sweetness. A gentle breeze had arisen, and the tops of the slender firs were making circles against the sky, like the mastheads of a ship becalmed; and the stars were shining like a million pin-pricks in the purple cloak of light. At last Miles spoke, asking with assumed indifference what Dick intended to do.