Mrs. Devereux at once devoted herself to his relief and solace as if she had been his mother. Her heart was stirred with additional tenderness as she recalled her husband's death from a similar wound at the hands of the same man. For the truth had leaked out through Mr. Gateward. The widow of Brian Devereux now knew that the hand stained with her husband's life-blood had been imbrued with that of the younger scion of the house, now wan and helpless before her; that the robber in his turn had fallen by Harold Atherstone's bullet and lay dead beneath her roof.
'Thank God! Harold is but slightly hurt,' she exclaimed. 'I regard him with a feeling I should extend to no other man as the avenger of my husband's blood. But oh! if the boy be likewise sacrificed! What a fate seems to pursue the race. May God in His infinite mercy avert it!'
Pollie had been sent to bed with peremptory commands to go to sleep instantly, and on no account to rise till she was called. The mother watched, hour after hour, with the unwearied patience of women under the excitation of grief or duty. Ere daylight broke, a trampling of horses was heard, and the man of skill, the arbiter of life and death, appeared in the chamber.
After careful examination, Dr. Ryan gave it as his decided opinion that the bullet had taken an outward course; had therefore injured no vital organ; that the faintness had been caused by loss of blood, which symptom was natural, but not necessarily dangerous. He commanded Mrs. Devereux to seek the rest she required, saying that he would take her place at the bedside of his patient. He would see what Mr. Atherstone's injury was like, and would make a search for the missing bullet in the morning.
'You will have me here for a day or two, Mrs. Devereux, so you must make me useful. It will all come to the same in the bill. I shall be wanted when the coroner comes. Fortunate escape you have all had, to be sure.'
With the morn came good tidings, and relief from the doubts and fears which had so cruelly tortured the dwellers at Corindah. Dr. Ryan, by his exercise of professional skill or the aid of exceptional good fortune, verified his favourable diagnosis by extracting the bullet, which had lodged in the outer muscle. The bleeding having ceased and the wound been dressed, there was no reason, he averred, why the patient, with such careful and intelligent nursing as he was certain to enjoy at Corindah, should not be well and hearty within the month.
The coroner too, a high and dignified official, arrived with the jury, more police, and, it appeared, likewise with a large proportion of the population of Wannonbah. The inquest was held duly and formally, a jury of twelve being impanelled, by whom a verdict of justifiable homicide was returned, the slain men being declared to have been killed in righteous defence. A rider was added to the effect that 'the conduct of Sergeant Herne and Constable Gray was deserving of high commendation, their coolness and courage rendering them, in the opinion of the jury, worthy of speedy promotion. In token of which, as well the Coroner as we the said jurors have attached our seals,' etc.
The bodies were buried in the little graveyard of Wannonbah, situated upon a yarran-shaded sandhill about a mile from that infant city. The denominational divisions, owing to the climate or other influences perhaps, were not so strictly defined as is the case in some rural Australian cemeteries, where a closely paled fence divides Protestant from Catholic, and Jew from Dissenter. At Wannonbah the dead slept much as they pleased, or rather, as their relatives desired. So Billy Mossthorne, having kinsfolk and sympathisers in the district, was buried near a maternal aunt who had nursed him in his childhood; and the Doctor, coming in for his share of indulgent forgiveness, was interred by the side of a horse-breaker of reasonably unblemished character.
Corindah was again tranquil. The inevitable sequences, great and small, of the night attack had been disposed of. The police troopers, the doctor, the coroner, the jurors had come and gone. The account in extenso of the 'battle, murder, and sudden death,' had been first published in the Wannonbah Watchman, and then had gone the round of the metropolitan and provincial papers. Sergeant Miles Herne was promoted to be sub-inspector, Constable Gray to be senior constable. Then the excitement ended, and the midnight affray at Corindah slipped into the limbo of partly forgotten facts.