“Well now,” I said, anxious to come to the point, “the Maori tohunga who doctored him with the poison knows where Grey’s wife is and will reveal her hiding-place to me on one condition—that I find and bring back the child. Whether his conscience is troubling him, or whether some strange superstition is at the bottom of it, I cannot say; but I have reason to trust him, and, if I return with the child, I have no doubt I shall find her mother. So if you know where Grey and the child are and have quite given up the idea that I’m on Grey’s track for something he doesn’t want to remember, perhaps you can give me some information.”
At this the honest Scot opened his heart, and told me how he and Dreamer Grey had worked together on the goldfields; how, some ten years before, Grey had made his pile, and had bought a large tract of land at the head of one of the sounds on the south-west coast, where he settled down with one aim in life, to care for the well-being of the wee bit lassie; and, finally, how, if I were to go there and say that old Jim Crichton directed me, I should be welcomed with open arms.
“And noo ma bonnie lad,” he concluded, when he had told me this much and more, “it’s a dry tale that doesna end in a drink. Come on!”
As he put his arm through mine and drew me away towards the accommodation house, a stone rolled from the top of a bank twelve or fifteen feet high on one side of the road.
“Did that fall of its own accord?” I asked myself, and as if in answer to my question there came again that wild, unearthly laugh from far away back in the bush.
“Did you hear that?” I asked excitedly, catching my friend by the arm.
“Yes; someone laughing in the bush—sounds oncanny.”
“I heard it once before,” I replied, “but thought it was fancy—some mad hatter, I suppose.”
And we continued our way to the house.