The Morrow Came, And The Sun Shone Brightly Upon The Still Swollen And
Rapid River.
Two men stood beside it, both too annoyed at this
impediment to their return to Melbourne to be in the slightest degree
aware of their proximity to one another.
A bonnet caught by a
projecting fragment of rock simultaneously attracted their attention:
both moved towards the spot, and thus brought into closer contact they
recognized each other. Deadly foes though they were, not a word passed
between them, and silently they dragged the body of the unhappy
girl to land. In her cold and tightened grasp still lay the child. As
they stood gazing on those injured ones, within one breast remorse and
shame, in the other, hatred and revenge, were raging violently.
Each step on the road to Ballarat had increased her brother's desire
for vengeance, and still further was this heightened on discovering
that Stephens had already left the diggings to return to town. This
disappointment maddened him; his whole energy was flung into tracing
his foe, and in this he had succeeded so closely, that unknown to
either, both had slept beneath the same roof at the inn beside the
Broken River.
The voices of some of the loungers there, who were coming down to the
Creek to see what mischief had been done during the night, aroused him.
He glanced upon his enemy, who pale and trembling, stood gazing on the
wreck that he had made. Revenge at last was in his hands - not a moment
was to be lost - with the yell of a maniac he sprang upon the powerless
and conscious-stricken man - seized him in his arms rushed to the
river - and ere any could interpose, both had found a grave where but a
few minutes before the bodies of Mary and her infant had reposed.
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