The diggers paused in their play and looked up. One honest-looking ruffian—a Scot, with sandy whiskers and quick grey eyes, paused with his arm upraised in the excited attitude a man assumes when he is about to plank down the right bower. I saw his eyes pass over me in a quick scrutiny; then, when the others had answered the landlord’s question with negatives of various kinds, he spun the winning card on to the table instead of banging it down with a noisy thud in the usual way among diggers, and, pushing his chair back, asked another man to take his place, and sauntered out of the room.
I did not think this had any bearing on the matter in hand until afterwards, when, on leaving the place and proceeding along the road that led back to the township, I was surprised to see this rough Scot step out of the shadows by the roadside and come towards me.
“I heard ye askin’ for Grey up yonder,” he said, “and I thocht maybe it’s Dreamer Grey ye want.”
“Dreamer Grey?” I repeated, laying stress upon the strange Christian name as I rolled it over in my mind. “I don’t know him by that name—in fact, all I know about him is that he disappeared from Hokitika seventeen years ago, and lived for some time in a small hut on the bank of the river about twenty-five miles down. He was a tall, soldierly man, with curly black hair, brown eyes, and a short moustache——”
“Ay, that’s Dreamer Grey,” he interrupted; “but tell me noo, what are ye wantin’ him for?”
“Are you mistaking me for a detective on his track?” I asked laughing.
“I’m no so sure,” he said gravely as his keen grey eyes met mine in the starlight. “I’m no so sure, and until I weel ken what ye’re wantin’ him for I canna tell ye.”
“All right,” I replied. “Grey’s wife has been left a large estate at home and a lot of money, and I’m searching for her—if living—or, failing that, for evidence of her death.”
“Grey’s wife? eh, man, but Grey had nae wife. It canna be the same man?”
“Oh, yes it is,” I persisted. “He had a little girl named Crystal with him, had he not?”