"Miss Bethune will be interested," added Rigden grimly. "And she won't give anything away."
"Thank you," said Moya. And her tone made him stare.
Harkness touched his horse with the spurs, and rode up close to the verandah, on which Rigden himself now stood.
"Fact is," said he, "it oughtn't to get about among your men, or it's a guinea to a gooseberry they'll go harbouring him. But it's a joker who escaped from Darlinghurst a few days ago. And we've tracked him to your boundary—through your horse-paddock—to your home-paddock gate!"
Rigden glanced at Moya. Her eyes were on him. He knew it before he looked.
"Seen anything of him?" asked the sergeant inevitably.
"Not to my knowledge. What's he like?"
"Oldish. Stubby beard. Cropped head, of course. Grey as a coot."
"Height 5 ft. 11 in.," supplemented the trooper, reading from a paper; "'hair iron-grey, brown eyes, large thin nose, sallow complexion, very fierce-looking, slight build, but is a well-made man.'"
A dead silence followed; then Rigden spoke. Moya's eyes were still upon him, burning him, but he spoke without tremor, and with no more hesitation than was natural in the circumstances.