Yet when the end came her very first feeling was that of physical faintness and exhaustion. But then it was an exceedingly sudden and really terrifying end. Moya was dodging boles and ducking under branches, the dapple-grey behind her, her arm through the reins, when all at once these tightened. Moya turned quickly, thinking the horse was unable to follow.
A gnarled hand, all hair and sinew, held it by the bridle.
It was some moments before Moya looked higher than that hand, and it prepared her for a worse face than she found waiting for her own. The face was fierce enough, and it poured a steady fire upon the girl from black eyes blazing in the double shade of a felt wideawake and the overhanging mallee. But it was also old, and lined, and hunted; the man had grown grey in prison; whatever his offences, there was rare spirit in a last dash for freedom at his age. Moya had not thought so before. She was surprised that she should think it now. The last thing that she had expected to feel was an atom of real sympathy with the destroyer of her happiness. And yet it was the first thing she felt.
"Please don't look at me like that," she begged. "I wish you no harm, believe me!"
There was a pause, and then a first stern question.
"I saw you yesterday in the hut; you know that; you saw me."
"No, but as you weren't there I looked for your tracks. And I found them. And here I am."
Shaggy brows rose above the piercing eyes.
"I thought you didn't come from the bush?"
"Nor do I; but I have heard a good deal about tracking, this last day or two; and I had luck."
"Then nobody else knows anything about it. That's certain. But they will know! You'll be followed, and I shall be found!"
"I don't think so; they'll think I've gone somewhere else."
The convict gave her a long look, and his hawk's eye gleamed; then he turned his attention to the dapple-grey. It was over a minute before he spoke again.
"Oh, yes," said Moya, sadly; "I know what else you are, of course. His father!"
"So he's had the pluck to tell you, after all?"
"He hasn't lost me yet!" cried Moya impulsively, but from her loyal heart none the less.
"Then why break away from him like this? Wasn't his word good enough?"
"I haven't broken away," said Moya, "from him. I couldn't. I've come to tell you why. They've taken him to prison!"