Coming on top of the other news circulating amongst the townsfolk, the destruction of Waroona Downs, with its two inmates, exhausted the local capacity for wonder.
The whole township followed Eustace from the bank, forgetting their earlier condemnation of him now that his innocence had been declared, and being only anxious to testify their sympathy with the woman who had suffered so much in their midst. They would have turned out en masse and escorted her some miles on her way to the junction when she set out from Waroona for the south, but word was passed round that she wanted to go away in silence, unobserved.
Three months later Harding followed her. There was no staying the township then. He was the last of the active participants in the tragic mystery to leave the place, and it was an open secret he was going to join the one for whom they all felt deeply. So they made up in his send-off for the restraint they had exercised upon themselves when she bade the town a silent farewell.
The memory of that festivity still lives in the local annals, and ever, as a stranger asks for the story of the Rider, the send-off of the banker is the conclusion of the tale. In vain the stranger may ask for particulars as to who the Rider was.
The charred ashes of Waroona Downs had no tongue wherewith to tell what happened the night fire came to wipe the homestead from the earth.
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD
PRINTERS PLYMOUTH