Of course they calculated on the usual supine indifference to other people's affairs, which prevails in busy gold-seeking communities; but in this instance the public seemed to be suddenly seized by a violent and inconvenient curiosity to find out what had become of the four men who were known to have started from Canvas-town two or three days before.

No one ever dreamed of a murder having been committed, not even when another "swagger" reached Nelson and stated that he had followed the diggers on the road, only a mile or so behind, had suddenly lost sight of them at the spot I have mentioned, and had never been able to overtake them.

Instead of leaving the now excited little town, or keeping quiet, Burgess, Kelly, Levy, and Sullivan, may truly be said to have become "swaggerers;" for they loitered about the place, ostentatiously displaying their bags of gold dust.

Unsuspicious as the Nelson people were, they acted upon a sort of instinct,--that instinct within us which answers so mysteriously to the cry of blood from the earth,--and arrested these four men.

Still, the matter might have ended there for lack of a clue, if one of the party, Sullivan, had not suddenly turned informer, and led the horrified town's-people to the jungle which concealed the bodies.