CHAPTER VIIO
n
that far-off day when the wandering mining engineer had pointed to the vast wealth lying at his feet, Jasper nearly lost his reason. He spent the night praying incoherently to a vaguely remembered but still believed-in God. An army of unknown shapes with accusing voices broke the great silences that encompassed him, and his soul sought refuge from fear.
Hitherto a sensitive conscience had accepted the barrenness of this land as a punishment for wrongdoing. Although the accredited owner, with government grants duly signed and sealed in his possession, he knew the land to be his shameful inheritance from a dead man. For, two years before, he had left a dead man in a rough shanty many miles away in the bush, and he had taken with him the dead man’s papers and the few shillin
