It was noon at the Tinpot Reef. He had been working hard since early morning, and had just decided to prepare his mid-day meal. The fire was kindled, the camp-kettle placed upon it, and the water for the tea, that indispensable adjunct of the Australian's al fresco refection, was commencing to boil. In anticipation of this stage of proceedings, Lance had seated himself upon a fallen tree and was smoking meditatively, after the manner of his class.
It was a lonely and silent spot—on this particular occasion rendered more solitary and deserted-looking than ordinarily, from the fact that the discouraged holders of the adjoining claims had arranged to prospect a distant gully, and had, to that end, departed in a body on the previous morning. The ropes were still upon the windlasses, the raw-hide buckets on the braces. The tents and huts, with their rude adjuncts, showed that the desertion was but temporary; therefore, the camp could not legally be appropriated as 'worked and abandoned ground.' Still there was an eerie, and it might have been thought by a supersensitive resident an ill-omened, aspect about the place.
The morning had been fair, but though no clouds obscured the sky a chill wind had arisen, and the temperature seemed to fall as the rising blast became shrill-voiced and wailing.
Listening half mechanically to the boding signs of storm, Lance did not notice the clatter of hoofs as a woman came at speed along the ravine which lay to the eastward, and reined up her horse within a few yards of his camp.
He turned listlessly towards her, but started to his feet and gazed into the face of the rider with the look, half intent, half horror-stricken, as of one who views an apparition.
'Kate Lawless!' he exclaimed.
'I used to be once,' the woman made answer, in a voice which seemed struggling with an attempt at cheerfulness over-lain with habitual melancholy. 'Won't you lift me down, or have you forgotten the way?'
He was at her side in a moment, and as, with the accustomed aid, she sprang lightly to the earth, each gazed into the other's face for an instant without speaking.
'Hang the mare up to that dead tree,' she said. 'I've ridden her hard and far to-day, but she'll have to carry me across the mountain to-night; I mustn't chance letting her go. And now I suppose you're wondering what brought me here? I've got something to say to you, Lance Trevanion, that's well worth the hearing.'