"I've no objection to answer your question, Mr. Conway. I quite expect you to take a strong interest in the matter. In fact, I'll require to know something of your whereabouts after you leave my premises. I think you'll be wanted over this affair. The party that seen the incendiary yesterday was Mr. H----, of H---- Brothers."

"Mr. Charles H----?" I inquired casually.

"No; Mr. Arthur H----. Very respectable man, having personal knowledge of the incendiary." Again the J.P. sipped his wine; and the girls' voices murmured, and the clocks ticked, and the hens clucked in the yard; also, the magpies tootled beyond the lagoon, and a couple of axes sounded faintly across the flat; and I even heard, through the open window, the noise of some old back-delivery chattering through a crop of hay on an adjacent farm. "Give me your address," continued Mephistopheles, replenishing his gla.s.s. "Writing-material on the side table."

I wrote my name and official t.i.tle, giving our departmental office in Sydney as a fine loose postal address, and laid the paper on the table beside the magnate. It reminded me of old times, when my Dad used to send me to bring him the strap. It was time to shake my faculties together, for ne'er had Alpine's son such need.

"I've made a study of law, myself, Mr. Q----," I remarked thoughtfully.

(This was perfectly true, though, in the urgency of the moment, I omitted to add that my researches had been confined to those interesting laws which govern the manifold operations of Nature). "I've made a special study of law; and I think you will agree with me that a successful criminal prosecution is a Pyrrhic victory at best. At worst--that is, if you fail to prove your case; and, mind you, it's no easy matter to prove a case against a well-informed man by circ.u.mstantial evidence alone--if you fail to prove your case; then it's his turn, for malicious prosecution; and you can't expect any mercy from him. When you think your case is complete, you find the little hitch, the little legal point, that your opponent has been holding in reserve. Now, you 're a gentleman of substance, Mr. Q----.You're a perfect target for a man that has studied law."

I paused, for I noticed the Moor already changing with my poison.

"By heaven! I'd like to have a shot at you for a thousand!"

I continued, eyeing him greedily.

"One of the obstacles in a position like mine is the thing you just implied, Mr. Connellan," responded the waywode, almost deferentially. "Same time, this case ought to be followed up, for the sake of the public weal. As valuable as the stack was, I don't give that for it." And he snapped his finger and thumb.

"You may be morally certain of the ident.i.ty of the scoundrel, but your proofs require to be legally impregnable," I continued, pressing home where he had disclosed weakness of guard. "I know a very respectable man-- a Mr. Johnson--who dropped something over a thousand in a case similar to this.

The scoundrel was a deep subject; and he got at Johnson for false imprisonment.

These roving characters can always get up an alibi, if they're clever.

Excuse my meddling in this case, Mr. Q----, but you've interested me strongly.

You have evidence that this suspected incendiary was seen somewhere down the river yesterday--or up the river was it?--and you saw him somewhere here, this morning. Very well. Would the two descriptions of dress and deportment tally exactly with each other, and with the appearance of the person whom, independently of that evidence, you know to be the perpetrator--I mean the scoundrel of the camp-fire? Consider the opening for an alibi there! You hold the incentive in reserve, I think you said?

Pardon me--is it a sufficient one?"

"It don't take much incentive to be sufficient for a vagabone without a shirt to his back" replied the ratepayer, suddenly boiling-over.

"True," I conceded; "but, 'Seek whom the crime profits,' says Machiavelli.

What profit would it be to such a scoundrel to do you an injury, Mr. Q----?"

"The propertied cla.s.ses is at the mercy of the thriftless cla.s.ses,"

he remarked, with martyr-pride.

"But incendiarism! Mr. Q----," I urged in modest protest. "Why, the whole country lives by the farmer: and I'm sure"----

"We won't argy the matter, Mr. Collingwood," replied my antagonist, lowering his point. "Possibly I won't trouble you any further over this affair. Your business keeps you on the move," he continued, looking at the paper beside him; "and it might be difficult to effect service.

You want your dog. Go into the kitchen; inquire for Miss Jemima, and tell her I authorise her to give you the dog. And a very fine dog he is."

"Thank you, Mr. Q----. Good day."

"Good day," replied the boyard, acknowledging my obeisance by a wave of his hand.

It was a near thing, but I had scored, after all. You can't beat the pocket-stroke. Pa.s.sing through the kitchen, I met the graceful Jim.

"Are you Miss Jemima?" I asked, in the tone you should always use towards women.

A dimple stole into each beautiful cheek as she nodded a.s.sent.

"Well, Mr. Q---- authorises Miss Jemima to give me the kangaroo-dog."

"Come this way, then, please." There was a slight flush of vexation on the girl's face now. And, indeed, it was scarcely fair of Dogberry, when his own soft thing had fallen through, to make Jim cover his dignified retreat. With deepening colour, she led the way to the stable, and opened a loose-box, disclosing Pup, crouched, sphynx-like, with a large bone between his paws. The red collar was gone; and he was chained to the manger by a hame-strap. Of course, I did n't blame the franklin, nor do I blame him now; rather the reverse. There seems something touching and beautiful in the thought that respectability, at best, is merely poised--never hard home; and that our clay will a.s.sert itself when a dog like Pup throws himself into the other scale. But I could feel the vicarious crimson spreading over Jim's forehead and ears as I unbuckled the hame-strap, whilst vainly ransacking my mind for some expression of thanks that would n't sound ironical. A terrible tie of sympathetic estrangement bound this sweet scapegoat and me asunder, or divided us together; and each felt that salvation awaited the one who spoke first, and to the point--or rather, from the point. All honour to Jim; she paced----

"You call him 'Pup'," observed the girl girlishly. "He's a big pup."

"His proper name is 'The Eton Boy'," replied the wretch wretchedly.

And neither of us could see anything in the other's remark.

But the tension was relaxed; and, leaving the stable together, we gravely agreed that a thunderstorm seemed to be hanging about.

Still a new embarra.s.sment was growing in the girl's face and voice, even in the uneasy movement of her hands. At last it broke out--

"I s'pose you haven't had any dinner?"

"Don't let that trouble you, Miss Q----."

"Father's not himself today," she continued hastily. "He blames us for burning an old straw-stack; and I'm sure we never done it.

Mother's been at him to burn it out of the way this years back, for it was right between the house and the road; and it was '78 straw, rotten with rust. But I'm glad we did n't take on us to burn it, for father's vowing vengeance on whoever done it; and he's awful at finding out things."

"Mr. Q---- mentioned it to me," I replied, with polite interest.

"But don't you think it seems a most unlikely thing for a stranger to do?

Perhaps some of your own horses or cattle trod on a match that Mr. Q---- had accidentally dropped there himself?"

"That couldn't be; for father never allows any matches about the place, only them safety ones that strikes on the box. And he hates smoking.

My brothers has to smoke on the sly."

"Have you many Irish people about here, Miss Q----?"

"None only the Fogartys; and they're the best neighbours we got."

"And was n.o.body seen near the stack before the fire broke out?"

"Not a soul. I was past there myself, not twenty minutes before we seen the fire; but I was going middling smart, and I did n't see anybody--nothing only Morgan's big white pig, curled under the edge of the stack, that always jumps out of the sty, and comes over here, and breaks into our garden. Well, father's always threatening to shoot that pig; and me, never thinking, I told him it was there; and he got his gun and went after it; and us in a fright for fear he would find it, but he did n't.

Then when we seen him well out of sight, I went over to the stack quietly, to shoo the pig home, but it was gone; and there was no sign of fire then, and n.o.body in sight. Then my sisters and me was just starting out to the milking-yard, and mother had begun to take the things off the line, when little Enoch seen the fire. We couldn't make it out at all; and I examined up and down the drain for boot-marks, but there was none.

And just before you come, I picked up the track of the horse I was riding, to see if his feet had struck fire on anything; but I was as wise as ever."

"Ah! the horse was shod, Miss Q----?"

"No; he's barefooted all round. Well, he trod on a piece of a brick, near the corner of the garden; but the fire never travelled from there.

It's very unaccountable."

"Very. I wonder would there have been such a thing as a broken bottle anywhere about the stack, Miss Q----? The sun came out unusually strong this morning, I noticed; and it's a well-known scientific fact that the action of the solar rays, focussed by such a medium as I have suggested, will produce ignition--provided, of course, that the inflammable material is in the angle of refraction."

"I don't know, sir," she replied reverently.

"Why, gold has been melted in four seconds, silver in three, and steel in ten, under the mere influence of the sun's heat-rays, concentrated by a lens"-- she shivered, and I magnanimously withheld my hand. "If this hypothesis should prove untenable," I continued gently, "we may a.s.sume spontaneous ignition, produced by chemical combination. Nor are we confined to this supposition. Silex is an element which enters largely into the composition of wheaten straw; and it is worthy of remark that, in most cases where fire is purposely generated by the agency of thermo-dynamics, some form of silex is enlisted--flint, for instance, or the silicious covering of endogenous plants, such as bamboo, and so forth.

A theory might be built on this."

"It seems very reasonable, sir," she murmured. "Anyway, I'm glad the old stack's out of the road. The place looks a lot cleaner."

"Well, I won't keep you out in the sun," said I reluctantly.

"Good bye, Miss Q----. And I'm very much obliged to you."