“Yes!” said the old Sergeant solemnly, “they did find him, but they could do naething till him.”
“You don’t say so! Well, this is a strange country. He was identified, I suppose?” said the stranger. “Why was that?”
“Because he was deid, puir laddie! We pulled him up from a shaft saxty feet deep, wi’ a bullet through him, and his head split with an axe. It was Kate Lawless that found him—her husband, Larry Trevenna and the murdering spawn o’ hell, Caleb Coke, had slain him for his gold—and it may be for ither reasons.”
“Good God! what a tragedy! Did the scoundrels escape?”
“Coke did by turning King’s evidence. But Trevenna’s wife rode near a hundred miles on end to give Dayrell the office. He ran Trevenna down in Melbourne, just as he had taken his passage to England under a false name. He was found guilty, and hanged.”
“Then Trevenna’s wife worked the case up against her own husband? How was that?”
“Weel, aweel, I’ll no deny the case was what may be tairmed compleecated—sair mixed up. Lance Trevanion had been her sweetheart, and when she jaloused, owing to Dayrell’s wiles, that he had thrown her over, she just gave the weight o’ her evidence against him, on his trial for having a stolen horse in his possession, knowing it to be stolen. Then in rage and desperation, for she repented sair, when she saw what her treachery had brought on him, she married Trevenna, who used her like a dog, they say, and was aye jealous of Lance Trevanion. And her cousin Tessie Lawless, it was her that got him frae the hulk.”
“Oh! another woman!” murmured Blount; “as you say, Sergeant, it is a trifle mixed up. Who was she in love with?”
“Just Lance, and nae ither. She was true as steel, and never ceased working for him night and day till she got a warder in the hulk weel bribit, and persuadit twa gentlemen that lived in Fishermen’s Bend by wild-fowling to tak’ him awa’ in their dinghy and find a guide and twa horses that brought him to Omeo. A wild, uncanny spot it was then, I warrant ye. Then the young lady, his cousin that came frae England to marry him—”
“What do I hear, Sergeant? Another woman in love with the ill-fated hero; that makes three—in love with the same man at the same time. It sounds incredible. And were they really fond of him?”