Peggy could give the details of the ceremony with unfaltering accuracy fifty times a day if need be, and never contradict herself.

So at last he gave up trying to find holes in the case, and determined to go in and win.
On the other side there was trouble in the camp--no witnesses could be found, except Martin Doyle, and he was ready to swear to the wedding.

At last it became evident that the only chance of overthrowing Peggy's case was to find Considine; but the earth seemed to have swallowed him up.
The influence of the Chief of Police was brought to bear, and many a weary mile did the troopers of the Outer Back ride in search of the missing man.

One of them followed a Considine about two hundred miles across country, and embodied the story of his wanderings in a villainously written report; brief and uncouth as the narrative was, it was in itself an outline picture of bush life.

From shearers' hut to artesian borers' camp, from artesian well to the opal-fields, from the opal-fields to a gold-rush, from the gold-rush to a mail-coach stable, he pursued this Considine, only to find that, in the words of the report, "the individual was not the same." Things looked hopeless for Mary Grant, when help came from an unexpected quarter.