"Why, there's nothing to fret about," she said. "It isn't your loss; it's hers, if she's that sort of girl. Let her please herself, I say; and if she's fool enough——"
"'Tain't that," Taylor exclaimed. "It's—that chap who came here years ago has been around, or the yarn has, and Tony's heard it, and wants——now then, here, hold up!" he broke off, as Mrs. Taylor, taken terribly aback, looked from one to the other with startled eyes.
"What right has he to talk—now?" she asked, with a return of the savage jealousy she had shown when, twenty years before, she thought the baby was to have been taken from her—the baby which was now the stalwart, handsome young bushman who was watching her with such winsome eyes. "Is that what's made her change, Tony?" she went on, resentment against the girl, whom she held to be responsible for Tony leaving the Flat, still uppermost in her mind.
"I don't know," he answered. "Last night Marmot's store was burned, after we had left our gold there, and the gold was stolen. We rode the thieves down. One of them was badly thrown and died. I stayed with him while the others went on, and he told me he knew me because I was like my—my father; and then he said he stole me as a baby and left me here. I wouldn't have believed it only Nuggan said there was something wrong, and then I made up my mind to come out and ask. What is the truth?"
"That's it," Taylor said. "A chap came here one night and said—said he was left with you, and we took you and kept you and brought you up like our own."
Mrs. Taylor, touching Tony on the arm, pointed to the vine-covered rail in the corner of the paddock.
"He'd just gone," she said sadly.
"And the chap never came back and never sent a word, and it was nobody's business—so we kept you as our own," Taylor added.
"And if that's why the girl——"
"There's more than that," Tony said. "If one part of the man's yarn is true, all of it may be. He said he'd killed my father, and then stole me in revenge on my mother; and he jeered me, dying as he was, and swore I'd never find her, though she was seeking for me now. I only thought he was raving then; I don't know now."