I knew that I was safe now, if a hundred men were at my heels, till daybreak at any rate. I had the two sides of the gully to guide me. I could manage to make to the farm where the sorrel was at grass with a lot of other diggers’ horses. If I could get a saddle and catch the old horse I could put many a mile between me and them before sundown. I stood still when I reached the top of the bluff, partly to get breath and partly to take a last look at old Turon.

Below lay the goldfield clearly marked out by hundreds of campfires that were still red and showed brightly in the darkened sky. The course of the river was marked by them, in and out, as most of the shallow diggings had followed the river fiats. Far back the fires glowed against the black forest, and just before the moon fell I eould catch the shine of the water in the deeper reaches of the river.

It was the very picture of what I’d read about an army in camp—lines of tents and a crowd of men all spread out over a hit of land hardly big enough for a flock of sheep. Now and then a dog would bark—now a revolver would go off. It was never quiet on Turon diggings, day or night.

Well, there they all were, tents and diggers, claims and windlasses, pumps and water-wheels. I had been happy enough there, God knows; and perhaps I was looking at it all for the last time. As I turned and made down the hill into the black forest that spread below me like the sea, I felt as if I was leaving everything that was any good in life behind with the Turon lights, and being hunted once more, in spite of myself, into a desert of darkness and despair.

Chapter XXXI

CHAPTER XXXI