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There is no address and no date, and it says this: 'If you wish to recover the papers and letters which were lost by you when you went into hospital at Wirra-Worra, Bendigo, thirty-two years ago, be at the Speke Monument in Kensington Gardens at five o'clock this afternoon. There was no signature."

It was a forgery that robbed the farm for food and lived in the cave and cut Bendigo Redmayne's throat. It was a forgery that tried to shoot you and missed." Mr. Ganns took snuff again and continued.

Be it known then that for several years Bendigo Jones had been in the habit of inflicting upon a long-suffering and inoffensive public a series of lumps of material. What these lumps were supposed to represent no one has yet discovered; and I am given to understand that unless the proud perpetrator noted it himself on completion, he too was usually unable to elucidate the mystery.

Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the three monumental nuggets of the world, and this one is the monumentalest one of the three. The other two represent 19,000 a piece; this one a couple of thousand more. It is the Adam-nugget of this mine, and its children run up into the millions."

He debated the wisdom of presently returning to "Crow's Nest" and felt a strong inclination to do so. Little guessing that he would be there again on the morrow, he determined to remind Bendigo Redmayne of his invitation in early spring. By that time much might have happened, for he intended to correspond with Jenny, or at any fate take the first step in a correspondence.

Law and order were kept on the goldfields of Mount Alexander, Bendigo, and Ballarat by means of a strong body of police, and the high licence fees for claims paid for their services, so that nothing like the scenes recorded of the Californian diggings could be permitted. But for the time ordinary industries were paralysed.

His wife was ready down below to help him get the body away, and their plans were, no doubt, mature to the last detail. If, therefore, all had gone right with Pendean, if you had really been away that night, next morning you would probably have been greeted with the information that Bendigo had disappeared.

"Have you another communication something from the past I can compare with this?" he asked. Bendigo nodded. "I reckoned you'd want that," he answered and produced a second letter from his desk. It related to Robert Redmayne's engagement to be married and the writing was identical. "And what do you think he's done, Mr. Redmayne?" Brendon asked, pocketing the two communications.

In the course of an address delivered with much animation and filled with startling phrases, it became clear that "Jim" had been the immediate instrument of the conversion of Bendigo. He added considerably to the stock of information respecting the early life of that personage, and told in detail how better things began to dawn upon him.

Gordon Hamilton Scott had certainly brought home a bundle of shagreen spectacle cases in the guise of a widow with an exceedingly doubtful jointure; doubtful indeed at first, but very soon found to admit of no doubt whatever. He was the one who, with true Scotch enterprise, was prosecuting his fortunes at the Bendigo diggings, while his wife consoled herself at home with her title.