CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE WATERFALL.
But when Elsie, in her helpless despair, called aloud on Lord Horace and Ina, she did not know the tragedy which had befallen Horace, and both Ina and another woman. Frank and Lady Waveryng had gone some way in search of specimens of ferns. Minnie Pryde and her lover—for such he now was—had disappeared. The young man with the Kodak was posing the half-castes at a little distance from the Fall, and Sam Shehan was jogging sulkily back towards the camp. All these several persons, with the exception of the stockman, were recalled by piercing shrieks rising above the roar of the waterfall.
Lady Waveryng turned very pale.
"Good heavens! what is that?" she cried. "I am afraid something has happened," said Frank Hallett. He only thought of Elsie, and strode on over stones and fallen trees and through patches of spinnifex like one possessed with fear. Lady Waveryng struggled to keep pace with him. Others had heard the shrieks. The young man with the Kodak was leaping the brushwood from an opposite direction, and so were Minnie Pryde and Mr. Craig.
"What is the matter?" they all cried. "Has anything happened to Elsie?" They, too, thought of Elsie.
But there was no sound nor sign of Elsie. It was Mrs. Allanby who came tragically forward. Her face was like death. She could scarcely speak, and only pointed with nerveless hand to where Lord Horace, looking strangely dazed and heavy, was leaning against a flat-topped rock.
"He put his hand on it," gasped Mrs. Allanby. "It bit him." And then she uttered a heart-rending shriek. "Oh, my God, it is my punishment! What shall I do? what shall I do! he is all I had in the world."
Lady Waveryng gave a sudden start, and looked at her straight with her proud eyes from under her level brows.
