'It beats me what she sees in him, then—a gal like her, as might have any man in the whole bloomin' colony, in a manner of speaking. Harry was a jolly, free-handed chap, as you'd see when he first come, but he's got that surly and short lately as you'd hardly know him as the same man.'

'Well, I warn't here when he first come, but from the look of him, when I see him the other day, I shouldn't be surprised if there was something "cronk" about him, for all his gold-buying.'

All unheeding of this careless but not inaccurate criticism, the lovers sauntered on. As they cleared the outskirts of the town, Estelle said, 'Now you must show me your hut. I must see the place where you have lived your lonely life, poor fellow. How I used to pity you, when I thought of it.'

'There it is, on that rise—this track leads up to it. It's such a miserable hovel, I hardly like you to see it.'

'Nonsense! you forget I've been to Growlers' and Ballarat, and know all about diggings. Why, it's the regular thing, like a shooting-box or a bothy in the Highlands. Everybody does it. Better men than you (I was going to say) live in huts. Why, this is quite a grand hut! What fine broad slabs, and a big padlock too. I thought the miners were so honest?'

'Sometimes,' he said; 'not always.'

They walked into Ballarat Harry's hut. Estelle sat herself down on a three-legged stool by the side of the still smouldering fire, and gazed into the pile of ashes on the hearth. Here, for so many a lonely evening, had he sat and smoked and thought—ah! with what bitterness—of a lost home, a forfeited birthright, of a father's curse, which, harmless as thistledown at first, had commenced to be so fatally prophetic. It was hard. Fate had been against him—against them from the beginning. But she would make up to him—as far as woman's love might repair the wrongs of destiny and the cruelty of man—for this dreadful episode of his life.

'Oh Lance—dear Lance!' she said; 'how you have lived through it all I can hardly imagine.'

'If I had not had the thoughts of you to keep me up,' he said, looking at her with eyes of bold admiration, 'I might have given in. But I kept always saying to myself, she will reward me, Stella will be mine when we meet, and all the past will be forgotten—and you are mine,' he said, as he took her hand in his and made as if to exact the betrothed lover's accustomed tribute.

But again a shrinking feeling of denial—for which she could not account—possessed her whole frame. She drew back shuddering. 'Pray, don't let us have any nonsense of that kind,' she said; 'there will be plenty of time by and by. At present, I feel as if I had so much rather hear all about your trial and the cruel unjust sentence which ruined you, and of your life in those dreadful hulks; I always wonder how you managed to escape.'