"I wonder you aren't ashamed to come to town. Oughtn't you to be looking after Moonlight?"
"Moonlight is the devil," exclaimed Captain Macpherson. "I beg your pardon, Miss Valliant, but what can you say of a fellow who disappears from mortal ken on the Luya with the whole army of police and trackers on the look out for him, and then all of a sudden turns up, mask, black horse, and everything else, close by Wallaroo; and when the moon is new. Nobody expects Moonlight to be on the rampage unless it's full moon."
"Ah!" said Blake, indifferently. "And the police have no clue?"
"None in the world, and never will have, unless one of the gang turns traitor."
"That's my belief, though perhaps I am not the person to state it."
Another visitor appeared, one who had come in a boat to the landing, and now approached through the banana grove, a young man, very neatly got up, and with a town air, and an evident determination to be equal to all circumstances. He was, in fact, a clerk in the Post Office, and was also honorary secretary to a new club. His ostensible reason for coming was, in fact, to give the information that the committee of this same club had fixed the date for their house-warming ball, and that it would take place the night but one after the Government House birthday ball. He had brought his offering too, in the shape of two first-blown camellias of the year, which, he said, he had got from the curator of the Botanical Gardens. Elsie accepted the flowers graciously, and took them up and looked at them alternately with her nibblings of Captain Macpherson's banana candy. She seemed to take the offerings for granted, and Blake could not help saying, "I see that it is the custom to lay propitiatory tribute at the feet of the goddess."
"That is a very horrid way of putting it," said Elsie, flushing up. "They call this sort of thing my verandah receptions," she added. "A lot of gentlemen always turn up when there is anything going on."
