Jewson had not exaggerated the manifest attraction of the claim in Rotten Gully. The hut was eighteen feet by ten, very solidly built, with a fireplace and a chimney at the inner end. Many neat contrivances in the shape of shelves and racks testified to the leisurely particularity of the late owner. He had settled down as on some desert island where a man might expect to end his days. There were refinements so superfluous in themselves as to suggest that the actual work had proved as alluring as the natural reward. In point of fact the Eureka Lead had been followed through the gully and lost on the flat beyond while this deliberate digger built him his hut and sank the hole which he was fated to abandon within a few feet of the gutter.
But the hole was by far the best and soundest in the gully, which deserved its name insomuch as it provided insecure sinkings as a rule. Some of the abandoned shafts had already fallen in; but this one was beautifully slabbed with timber from top to bottom, now some sixty odd feet, the depth of the lead hereabouts being something under seventy.
One of the first things Denis did when they were left in peaceable possession of the claim was to locate it in his last map; and a mark was duly made in the very middle of one of the red rivers.
"Right over the gutter!" he exclaimed. "The sinker said so; but he wasn't the man to sink anywhere else. Don't you remember him saying we were within a few feet of it? Jimmy, I'm going through some of those feet before I'm an hour older, and we'll try the first tub to-night!"
He went down at once in the bucket, armed with a spade—a complete plant had been thrown in with the claim—and for an hour he dug straight down, making the smallest and deepest hole possible, and finally filling the bucket from the bottom. But it was hard work. The red clay was so veritably rotten that again and again the little hole filled up. Denis's shirt was plastered to his skin when Doherty wound him above ground with the bucket, and the clay in the latter was still as red as ever. Denis took it to the creek, however, and tried it piecemeal in a tin dish, but did not get a grain. He returned to Doherty unruffled and smiling.
"It's no use, Jimmy; we've not got down to it yet, and we sha'n't get down to it like that. We must go on digging the whole shaft. But there's another good hour of daylight, and if you like to go down and do a trick I'll wind up the buckets as you fill them."
As the shaft went down by inches the sides hadto be slabbed as heretofore; but the "sets of timber" stacked outside the tent proved to be cut to the size, pointed, and ready for fitting into the grooved uprights, which in their turn were found to have been driven into the four corners of the shaft to a depth of several feet beyond that of the shaft itself. So there was no difficulty there while the cut slabs lasted, and as the pair worked half the night in their excitement, by lantern light, and were at it again by sunrise, they had added some three or four feet to the depth by the following forenoon. Then Denis tried another little hole in the middle, and this time the third spadeful was different from the other two. Some particles of gravel trickled from the end of the spade, and even what was on it was of two colours and two consistencies. The next thrust grated to the ear. Denis roared for the bucket, and a head and shoulders stamped themselves upon the square envelope of sky overhead.
"I've struck it! I've struck it! Down with the bucket and stand by to wind up!"
A wideawake danced against the tiny square of blue; a shrill cheer came tumbling in echoes down the timbered shaft; then a leaping bucket, then a writhing rope; and the head and shoulders hung over the brink once more in motionless silhouette, while Denis filled the bucket with the gravelly substance, separating the inaugural spadeful with his hands. There was a difference even to the touch. The red clay was slightly damp, the gravelly compound perceptibly warmer, and so delightfully gritty that Denis could have sworn the grits were pure gold. But it took him some time to fill the bucket, for the red clay was not too damp to crumble, and it continually poured back into his advance hole, burying him sometimes to the thighs. At last, however, a homogeneous bucketful was got to upper air, and Denis after it in a mud-bath of clay and perspiration, but with his triumph shining through his filth.
It still remained to test the stuff and justify the triumph, but Denis did both without delay at the creek, which was far nearer here than on Black Hill Flat. They had no cradle as yet at the new claim, whose late methodical proprietor had not arrived at the stage of requiring one; but Denis took the tin dish once more, and came back beating it like a tambourine, on knee and head, but carrying the empty bucket at arm's length in the other hand. At least it felt as empty to Denis as it looked to Doherty, until the bucket was tilted, and what had seemed but a sparse deposit of rather yellow and sparkling sand formed a slender segment of palpable gold-dust.
They poured it from the bucket back into the tin dish, and from the tin dish into a smaller tin, and from the smaller tin into the saucer in which Jewson really did get a glimpse of about half of it that night. The trial "tub" had yielded upwards of two ounces, by the gold-scales of a friendly neighbour; beforenight Denis had spent quite half on a good candle, a pair of scales, and the wherewithal for a digger's supper of new damper, steaming chops, and scalding tea.
Thereafter the pair sat up planning, building, furnishing and inhabiting castles which were no longer altogether in the air; but with Denis, in any case, early hours would have been impossible after such a meal hurled into an empty stomach in the late evening of such a day; and the pernicious combination may be confidently traced in the view which he took of this very aspect of a situation otherwise surpassing all his dreams.
"It's all very well for a day or two," said Denis, "but you and I can never go on doing all the work and the cooking too. We couldn't even if we were born cooks. What we want is some fellow to look after us and the hut. Two all told are not enough."
Doherty was toying with the gold-dust in the saucer, picking it up in pinches, and letting it trickle through his fingers in fairy showers, playing with it, drawing in it, as children play and draw in sand. The game palled even as Denis spoke.
"Two were enough for the swell cove who was here before us, mister."
"I know: he took his time: so many hours a day, or so few, and not a minute more. What's the result? He isn't here to reap his reward,because he was in no hurry, and it didn't much matter after all. But I am here—I am in a hurry—every grain and every minute matters to me!"
"It would mean one grain in three instead of in two."
"Then the three would come quicker than the two do now. Not that we're obliged to take another partner because we want an extra hand; at two ounces to the tub we could afford to make it worth many a man's while to do all we want at so much the week."
Jimmy looked up quickly.
"Then you haven't heard from Mr. Moseley yet?"
"I have, Jimmy. I called at the post-office to-night, and the letter was there. Not he! Not for Joe! He wishes us all possible luck, but he has had enough of the diggings to last him a lifetime; and from what he says he ought to be out at sea by this time, homeward bound. Put the billy on the fire, Jimmy, and we'll drink him a good voyage in half a pannikin of tea before we turn in."
To all this Jewson stood listening, if not at the door, still within easy earshot of the unsuspecting friends; and as he listened an inspiration burst upon his crafty brain. He drew away in the moonlight, nodding and grinning to himself—a grotesque Mephistopheles if you will—yet deeper and darker than friend or foe imagined. His plan was matured on the way back to the Gravel Pits, and CaptainDevenish was told just as much as it was good for him to know that night, but as we have seen, not a syllable more, and that modicum with the wary tact and infinite precaution of a Mephistopheles of higher class.
Next day was a great one at the new claim; from early morning to high noon the pair laboured in hourly shifts at lowering the whole shaft to the level of the precious wash-dirt. It was not to be done in the time. But later in the day they went deep at one corner, and at last uncovered an angle of the gutter which they had only probed the day before. They took up several bucketfuls to try in the new cradle before dark. The yields were uneven, but the lowest was an ounce, the highest three ounces ten pennyweight, and the day's aggregate just under one pound, or upward of forty pounds sterling.
Yet they were less excited than they had been the night before. The gold was there; it was only a question of getting it out, a question of time, ways, and means. They had taken turns at the creek as well as in the hole, and the friendly neighbour who had lent his scales had kept an eye on the new cradle in their absence, which was intermittent owing to the necessity of one always remaining on the claim. "You must find another mate," said he to Doherty, who no longer disagreed as he toiled back to the hut. They must find another mate, or they must greatly reduce their hoursof labour. A reduction of profits would result in either case.
To-night they were too tired to cook. Denis made tea, and each took a pannikin to his couch, and spread himself prostrate in the dusk.
"In another hour or two," said Denis, "we'll go out one at a time, and have the best supper that money can buy on Ballarat. We can afford that; but we can't afford to go on using ourselves up at this rate."
A slumbrous sigh was the only answer from the other bunk; but Denis was too much exercised in his mind to close an eye. Should they seek a mate? or should they restrict their hours? Could they get a respectable hireling to look after them if they tried? The last plan was the most desirable for obvious reasons; and Denis desired it on other grounds as well. He was naturally anxious, for his own sake and for one other's, to make as much money as possible in as little time; and he had tasted blood, at last, in an intoxicating draught. He had begun making up for lost time; that was what he must go on doing. It was not so with Doherty, however, and this time Denis had quite decided to respect the prejudices of the lad who had stood by him so loyally through so many luckless weeks. After all, in the beginning they had actually started for the diggings, they two, to sink or to swim together. The importation of Moseley had been as unfair as it had proved unwise; theignorant lad had found himself at a continual disadvantage between the two educated men; they could talk in parables beyond his comprehension, and Moseley invariably did. Doherty had been bitterly jealous of him, yet had striven finely to suppress his chagrin, and never stooped to backbiting or tale-bearing under its stress. And his devotion to Denis had never wavered; that was at once a touching consideration and a clear claim. No; there should be no more partners if Denis could help it, but if he could not, then the newcomer should be a man after Jimmy's heart rather than his own.
It was moonlight when Denis came to this conclusion of the matter, though he had lain down in daylight not long before. He did not lie many minutes more. A shambling step came to his ears, came nearer and nearer; he jumped up in time to meet a tottering figure at the door.
"Jewson!" exclaimed Denis in cold astonishment. "What in the world do you want—with me?"
"You may well ask, sir," replied the steward, in an abject whine, "but on all the diggings there was no one else that I could turn to—little as I deserve at your hands, sir—little as I know I deserve! But you look at me, Mr. Dent, and you'll see the way I've been used!"
He turned his face into the level moonbeams; an eye was closed and discoloured; a lip was swollen and cut, and the coat was almost torn off the steward's back, hanging in ribbons from the shoulders only.
"Some one's been knocking you about," remarked Denis, dispassionately.
"Some one has," the steward agreed, grimly: "some one as ought to have known better—some one not half as old as me, and more than twice as strong! But it was my fault. I might have known! I seen it coming from the first; it was bound to come when the luck gave out. You'll have heard about the water on the Gravel Pits,likely? It's flooded us out altogether; and this is the way the Captain's used me, with his own hands, after two months' faithful service!"
"You've probably been getting drunk," said Denis; but there was no sign of drink about the man; and Denis accepted his denial with some regret for the suggestion, for he was already more sympathetic than he seemed, because readier than he knew to believe ill of Devenish.
The steward's story was that for some trifling omission he had been visited with a torrent of intolerable abuse, and on remonstrance, with the personal chastisement of which he bore marks which never struck Denis as other than genuine. The wretch was clever enough to make excuses for his late master, whose behaviour he attributed entirely to irritation caused by the ruin of his claim; but as Jewson said, that was not his fault, and he could not stay another hour with a gentleman who used him so. So he had turned to Denis in his distress—little right as he had—and he hoped the past at least would be forgiven and forgotten—if only for the sake of the season.
"Why, what is the season?" asked Denis; for in the incessant excitement of the last few days, and the unaccustomed surroundings of blue sky and blazing heat, he had quite forgotten that Christmas was upon them; but he remembered as he spoke, and could quite believe the steward's statement that it was already Christmas Eve.
"And to think you had forgotten!" added Jewson, who was fast recovering a careful kind of confidence. "Why, I expected to find you starting to keep it in the good old style—roast beef—turkeys—plum-pudding and mince pies! What's the good of being a lucky digger unless you keep a high old Christmas like the rest of 'em?"
"Who told you I was one?" asked Denis, suspiciously.
"Who told me? If you asked me who hadn't told me, Mr. Dent, I might be able to answer you, sir. You don't keep a thing like that to yourself in a place like this. Captain Devenish told me, for one; it was one of the things that helped to make him mad."
"Well," said Denis, "you must come in, steward, but I'm sorry there's nothing to offer you. We were going out to get something before we turn in. There's nothing in the place but the remains of some mutton we had last night and this midday, some stale damper, and some dried-up cheese."
"Call that nothing?" chuckled Jewson. "You might let me see what's left, Mr. Dent; it's wonderful what can be done with what, by a bit of a cook; and I'm all that, sir, though I say it. I might be able to save you turning out again, and I'd be proud to do it after your kindness, Mr. Dent, which I have done so little to deserve!"
Denis was not the man to refuse; he did not like the fellow's whining tone, but it was not hisonly tone, and he did appear to have been roughly handled. He did not impose upon Denis altogether, but only as much as was necessary, which was characteristic of his craft. He was admitted, a lamp lit without disturbing Doherty, and the remnants of the mutton fetched from an outside safe. Jewson sniffed it suspiciously.
"Sweet enough!" said he. "I see you knew enough to salt it. And are them taters I see in that sack? Then down you lie like your mate, and shut your eyes, and see what the king'll send you! Stop a bit, though; didn't you say there was bread and cheese?"
"Yes, but they're both as hard as nails."
"Never mind; they may make into something soft. Any mustard?"
"Yes; they left us some."
"No beer, I suppose?"
"No."
"Well, never mind. You leave the rest to me. Thank you, I see where everything else is, and in twenty minutes to half-an-hour there'll be something for you to see and taste too!"
Already he was crouching over the fire, blowing upon the red embers, coaxing them into flames; and in the growing glow his cunning face looked kindly enough, and his grin but that of an artist bent on triumphing over materials which only put him on his artistic mettle. Denis watched him a little from the door. Then he sauntered to and frobetween hut and shaft; and presently there came to his nostrils the most savoury and appetizing smell that they had yet encountered on the diggings. Something was hissing on the fire; at the table Jewson was preparing something else. On his bed Doherty still slept the sleep of exhaustion; and down upon the bark roof of the hut, on the black hieroglyph of the mounted windlass, and on the white tents further along the gully, shone a moon of surpassing purity and splendour. And Denis thought of a Christmas hymn, and then of Father Christmas himself, as he peered in and watched the elderly evil-doer with the once-dyed beard preparing his miraculous and momentous meal.
Momentous as the sequel will very soon show, at the time it was indeed little less than a miracle, and nothing less to Doherty, who was roused from a castaway's dreams of plenty to find them true. The remains of the mutton had been changed as by some fairy wand into a spiced ragoût swimming in rich gravy. The cook apologized for the potatoes, which he had only had time to fry; but the other diners had forgotten that potatoes could be fried, and their appreciation was proportionate. But the greatest success came in the Welsh rarebit which a master hand had evolved from the stale damper and the dried-up cheese. It lay steaming in its dish like liquid gold—a joy to the eye, a boon to the nose, and to the diggers' hardened palates an inconceivable delicacy and treat.
"And to think," said Denis, "that we had the material by us; that we've had it ready to our hand any time these two months!"
"And much good it was, or would have been," echoed Doherty, "to our hand! It's the hand that matters, not the material. Mr. Steward, give me yours!"
"His name is Jewson," remarked Denis; and his heart sank in spite of him as he saw the young hand join the old across the empty plates.
"But you called me steward, Mr. Dent, and I like to be called steward," rejoined Jewson, adroitly. "It reminds me of times you may think I'd like to forget; but I wouldn't and shall I tell you why? Because I'd like to make up for 'em, sir, if only you'd give me the chance. I'm out of a job. Wild hosses wouldn't take me back to Captain Devenish. I was only his servant, not a partner, and I'll be your servant, Mr. Dent, and a good one, sir, if you'll give me a trial. Pay me what you like—I ain't partic'lar."
And the old rogue lapsed into a living heap of humility; but he had gone just one sentence too far.
"I'll pay you well if I take you," said Denis, shortly, as he sipped his tea. Yet even the tea seemed a better brew than they had managed to achieve for themselves.
"I don't want you to make up your minds to-night," resumed the steward, reducing the humilitya degree or so. "I don't care about hotel work. I certainly shouldn't start work at any of these here shanties on Christmas Day. They have approached me, you understand, through Lieutenant Rackham, who has been kind enough to say a good word for my capabilities. But that's not the kind of place I'd like so well as this. Let me camp outside to-night, and cook your Christmas dinner to-morrow, while you think it over."
But Denis said he would prefer to think it over at once, and lit his pipe, and went out to do so then and there, with a troubled face which Jewson could understand and Doherty could not.
"He never liked me," said the steward with a sigh. "And it was my fault," he added self-reproachfully.
"But if you see that you could soon make him like you."
"If he gave me the chance, perhaps."
"He shall!"
Denis was leaning in the moonlight against the windlass staging. There he listened to the lad's strenuous and enthusiastic plea.
"We've never had a mate like that since we've been on Ballarat," urged Jimmy; "and all done in half-an-hour out of our own odds and ends! Why, mister, that steward of yours would make a man of me and a new man of you in less than no time. And he doesn't even ask to be a partner; he's the very man we want, dropped from the stars on tothis blessed claim! If we don't snap him up, others soon will, and we deserve to lose the second-best chance we've ever had."
Denis puffed his pipe in silence.
"I know him, you see," he said at last.
"Of course you do."
"But I never liked him."
"So he says."
"And it was his own fault."
"He says that too. He's said enough for me to see he means turning over a new leaf if you give him this chance."
Denis wavered. If he was going to give the man a chance (and he could always watch him, and get rid of him at a moment's notice) it would be perhaps unfair to let the lad know all he thought about their prospective companion.
"Do you really want him to have the job, Jimmy?"
"I do so, mister. He's the very man for us. I want him bad."
"And you never wanted Mr. Moseley at all, eh?"
"No, mister, I never did."
Denis went on smoking for another minute. The moon was high now, and as pure as ever. The tents further down the gully shone white as from a fall of real Christmas snow; and sounds of real Christmas came faintly from them, and more faintly from far beyond. Denis, however, was not thinking of the morrow, but of many a morrow—of long days of unremitting labour—of short nights when the spent body would be fit but for rest and for refreshment. He felt the better already for this single evening meal. And the man could be watched—the man could be watched.
"Well, mister?"
"It's all right, Jimmy. He shall have his trial—to-morrow—the day after to-morrow—and as many days after that again as he suits us and we him. But never let him know the half of what we take, and never you leave him on the claim alone."
Dent and Doherty became the heroes of one of those fairy-tales in which the times were rich. For eight consecutive days, after laying the gutter bare from wall to wall of the shaft, and slabbing the latter down to the last inch, they washed their twenty tubs a day, and averaged rather better than four ounces to the tub. The daily yield only once fell below £300 at current rates; but more than once it impinged upon £400. Altogether the eight days realized upwards of £50; which was the aggregate amount handed over to the Commissioner, who forwarded it to Geelong by Gold Escort, which delivered it to a firm of gold-buyers whom the Commissioner could recommend, and who presently remitted some £2,400 in hard cash.
These wonderful days were also the most comfortable that the partners had yet spent upon the diggings. They were properly looked after for the first time. They had three good meals a day, to say nothing of coffee and a biscuit before they went to work in the early morning and afternoon tea with hot cakes or any other incongruous luxurywhich happened to occur to the steward's mind. Denis said it was a good thing they were working so hard. Doherty rolled his eyes and put on flesh. The pair were being spoiled and cosseted by a master-hand, and it did them more good than their success. They were the better workers by day, the better sleepers by night, and this despite the manifold excitements of every waking hour.
Jewson was excelling himself; but an outsider would have said it was well worth his while, for Denis had hit upon a scale of pay which made him after all a small partner, whose earnings might amount to several sovereigns a day, and could not fall below five pounds a week. As prices went, the bargain was not extravagant, and Denis was the first to appreciate the blessing of better food; the steward's prowess was no small asset in the suddenly successful concern, and he must be kept in it by hook or crook; on that the partners were agreed. And yet Denis was as far as ever from trusting the man in his heart, though his original prejudice had abated not a little.
Jewson wore a shade over the blackened eye, which had only been exposed by moonlight; but Denis's distrust was not such as to make him want to lift it, because it never occurred to him to discredit the account of his cousin's violence; and therein is seen the working of another prejudice, on which a cunning brain had counted all along. A simple nature, on the other hand, is simple even inits suspicions; and the worst that Denis harboured were engendered by Jewson's strange practice of shopping at night only and usually being hours about it. Denis sometimes had a mind to follow him, but it was not in his nature to play the spy, and so the real spy went free.
The lucky pair took their luck very coolly, one because he did not understand the value of money, the other because he understood it too well to estimate a thousand pounds at a penny more than a tithe of the ten thousand on which he had set his heart. In money matters, however, the point of view is everything, and in none is it more mercurial. A day or two served to inure the partners to the idea of dividing a couple of thousand a week, and Denis began almost to resent the fact that at this rate it would take ten whole weeks for him to reach his minimum; he was also annoyed that in all the gold they had got there was not as yet a single nugget.
"I promised to send the first one home to England," he said openly in the hut. "I would give a hundred pounds to have one worth fifty to send by the mail to-morrow night!"
Jewson was crouching over his camp-oven at the time; his back straightened, and for some moments he sat in an arrested attitude, his head thrown up in undisguised attention; but this was not noticed, and his face could not be seen.
That night the steward was so long upon hisrounds that Denis did not sit up for him, but decided on a word of remonstrance in the morning. Yet when morning came, the coffee was so hot and aromatic, the biscuit so crisp, the fresh air so cool and so invigorating, that he found it difficult to complain just then. And in the first hour of the new day that happened which effaced all untoward impressions from his mind.
Denis had been lowered into the shaft to dig. Doherty had raised one bucket of wash-dirt, and was waiting for the next, when a loud shout brought him to the shaft's mouth.
"A nugget, Jimmy! A nugget in the nick of time! I nearly cut it in two with the spade!"
It was a very small nugget, much in the shape and size of a kidney-bean, but of singularly pure and smooth gold, and Denis declared that it was just the thing. With the point of his knife he removed every particle of earth, and then scrubbed it with soap and water until it was as bright as the last sovereign from the mint. It seemed to give him greater pleasure than all the gold-dust despatched to Geelong; and no more work was done before breakfast, which was taken with the nugget on the table in front of Denis, save when he pressed a piece of twine into the cleft made by the spade and tried how it looked round Doherty's neck.
"Half should be yours, by rights," he said; "but you won't mind if I credit you with the weight instead? Don't be a fool! Of course I'll do that!But it was almost my last promise—to send her my first nugget—and it's been such a long time coming."
"Funny it's coming just when you wanted it for the mail," remarked Doherty in perfect innocence; but the steward spoke up from his self-appointed place beside the fire.
"I only wonder it's the first," said he; "but you take my word it ain't the last. Talk about jewelers' shops! You've opened one of the best on Ballarat. Look at the men you're bringing back to the gully; there'd be a rush if it wasn't for the depth they've got to sink, and that you had all done for you. I sha'n't be satisfied till I see you put your pick into a bit like they took out of Canadian Gully twelve months ago."
Nothing could have been more consistent and withal less officious than the discreetly sympathetic encouragement of the steward; he also knew something about gold-mining, and his unobtrusive suggestions were often of value. Denis was indeed more and more unable to reconcile the useful landsman with the ship's steward who had broached the ship's spirits and misbehaved himself in other ways; but after all, a man might pull himself together, and having suffered from a bad master, might well desire to make the most of a good one. So Denis was imposed upon while still as much on guard against imposition as these engrossing days allowed.
And the eight days of harvest were almost at an end; that very morning there was a subtle change in the appearance of a bucketful that Doherty sent up, and Denis forthwith washed an almost wholly unprofitable tub. He then went down the shaft, and found as he expected that they had struck the bottom of the gutter, and were on the hard paleozoic floor. The difference was even more marked than that between the red clay and the auriferous drift, here only four or five feet thick. There were still some tubs to take before the corners of the shaft were cleared to the bed-rock.
"And then?" asked Doherty with a blank face.
"Then the fun begins."
"Tunneling?"
"Of course."
"But how do you know which way?"
"Down the gully; nothing simpler. But first of all we can try all round with trowels, in holes just big enough to take your arm, like tasting cheese; then where it's richest we shall tunnel for another three months, and if this is the gutter and not a pocket we shall be well enough off by that time to take a spell and talk things over."
They were for once down the shaft together, and as they stood discussing the situation the steward's small head appeared like that of a pin against the little square of sky high above.
"There's a Chinaman selling beer," he shouted down. "Would you like some?"
"Very much," answered Denis. "Draught or bottle, steward?"
"Draught."
"Then take three pints, and cool it in the gallon jar. It's an occasion," continued Denis down below. "The first of the nuggets before breakfast and the last of the gutter before noon; only, it's not the last; and even if it were, that little nugget would be some consolation to me."
When they regained the upper air there was still half-an-hour before the midday meal, and Denis spent it in finishing a long letter and packing the nugget with it in a small tin box unearthed by Jewson. This he tied up in brown paper, but was unable to seal for want of wax; and the parcel remained by his plate as the naked nugget had done at breakfast.
It was now the middle of January, and the hottest weather that Denis had ever known on land. The well-built hut was cooler than the open air, but to swallow a pannikin of tea was to have a warm bath in one's clothes. The beer was therefore a great and timely treat; each man made short work of his pint, and the little package was duly toasted on the eve of its travels. Denis intended taking it to the post-office himself, while the other two enjoyed the siesta which was a necessity of the digger's existence in the hot season. A pipe on the bed was all he would allow himself that day; the others were already asleep when he lit up and began puffing vigorously to keep his eyes open. Theeight long days were beginning to tell on him. This one was also of an unbearable and inhuman heat.
Denis was the first to open his eyes. The pipe had dropped from his teeth. It could not have dangled very long, yet the bowl was the coldest thing Denis had touched that day. Well, it was lucky he had not set fire to himself; and since the others were still stretched in slumber, the steward on his blanket near the door, it could not be very late. Time enough at least to do what he had intended doing without disturbing them—and with a bound Denis was in the middle of the floor.
The packet was not on the table where he had left it. Had he left it there? He tore the blankets off his bed in the wild hope of finding it there. No; he remembered keeping his eye on it as he lay back smoking like a sot. In an instant the things were swept off the table in a vain search for the little brown-paper parcel. All this time Denis was venting his feelings in little involuntary cries, but now he called the other two by their names. They stirred uneasily without waking.
Denis began to guess what had happened. His mouth was dry and his head heavy. The light had altered. Outside the shadows had run like ink, and by the watch it was almost five o'clock. A three hours' sleep instead of one! And his packet gone with the time for posting it!
He searched further before finally rousing hiscompanions; and there were signs that the whole place had been carefully ransacked, but none as yet that anything else had disappeared. Denis was equally thankful that he had got rid of the gold-dust and that cash payment was still to come; after all, the value of the nugget was chiefly sentimental; and there was some compensation in the thought that the thief could not have chosen a worse time for himself or a better one for his victims.
"Robbed!" echoed Doherty, sitting up stupidly at last. His eyes had lost all their brightness, and he was soon nursing his head between his hands. But Jewson was quicker to grasp what had happened—quicker than Denis himself.
"That yellow devil of a Chinaman!" he exclaimed, and sat smacking his lips with a wry face. "Opium! I thought so! I've known the taste too many years; but I'll knowhimwhen I see him again, and I'll string him up to the nearest tree by his own pig-tail. Draught beer, eh? I wonder who else he offered it to? See what comes of striking it rich and letting it get about that you have struck it! No, I know you can't help it, unless you've got a private river to wash your dirt in; but that's what's done it, as sure as I'm standing here."
"But you are not standing there," rejoined Denis, as the servant made for the door. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"To lay my hands on John Chinaman!" answered Jewson with an oath. "To catch him red-handed with your nugget on him, and to ram his own pig-tail down his yellow throat!"
The partners were left looking at each other with rather different expressions.
"He'll do it, too," said Doherty, jerking his head toward the door. "Trust the old steward!"
"I suppose one must trust him," remarked Denis in a dubious tone.
"Trust him? Of course you must! Why not, mister? Hasn't he looked after us well enough so far? Hasn't he made all the difference in the world to us, and haven't you admitted it every day? I don't care what he was at sea; let's take him as we find him ashore, and then we sha'n't get wrong. You don't seriously think the steward's had anything to do with this, do you?"
"Not seriously," replied Denis; nor, on reflection, had he the smallest ground for any such suspicion.
"Because," pursued Doherty, triumphantly, "if he wanted to put up a robbery, it's a funny thing he should wait until there was hardly anything to rob—isn't it?"
"Of course."
"And you've lost nothing except the nugget, have you?"
"And the parcel it was in, and my letter!"
"Perhaps he's a chap like me, wot can't read," the lad suggested by way of consolation. "But are you sure that's all you've missed?"
He was looking very hard at Denis.
"I think so, Jimmy. Why?"
"If you undo another shirt-button I'll tell you."
There was no need for Denis to do that. His fingers were down his neck in an instant. And the lanyard of his beloved's hair, which had encircled it day and night for the last three months, was gone with the little ring that Nan had given him at their farewell on board theMemnon.
His rage and distress knew no bounds; the loss of a far larger nugget had been a bagatelle compared with this. A certain superstition was ingrained in Denis; it was one of the few things he had inherited from both the races whose blood clashed in his veins; and in a moment it was as though his star had fallen from the zenith. Apart from the loss of that which he held dearer than aught but Nan herself—her talisman—there was the utter ill-omen of such a loss. And Denis raved about both, bidding Doherty find another mate as quick as he could, for they were at the end of their tether and would wash no more ounces.
"And if we did," cried the distracted fellow, "if we took out a million between us after this, it would only be to go home and find her dead! You make a note of it, and then clear out of the sinking ship. My luck has ended this day!"
Doherty bore it as long as he could, then jumped up saying he was going for the police. "Not for you," he added, "though you deserve the Logs ifever a man did. I've heard a blackfellow talk like that, but not a white man, and may I never hear the like again! We'll have the traps on the track of that Chinaman, as well as Jewson; and we'll get back what you've lost for its own sake, not for what it can't alter one way or the other."
This bracing remonstrance was not without effect. Denis controlled himself by an effort, dashed away an unmanning tear, and was soon the severest critic of his own despair; but he would not let Doherty summon the police, neither would he go himself.
"It is too intimate—too sacred—her hair!" he whispered in a fresh access of misery. "Fancy furnishing a description of that, and letting them publish it broadcast! No, no; better lose it altogether; and may the thief never dream what it was he took!"
"Then where are you going?" asked Doherty, following Denis as he strode out of the hut.
"Down the shaft, to start the tunneling, and to try just one tub before six, to see if the luck has changed or not."
While he was down, Doherty, waiting at the windlass, received a visit from the friendly neighbour who had kept an eye on their cradle at the creek. He said that one of his mates was minding it still, but as no one had been near it all the afternoon, and nothing seemed doing on the claim, he had just come to see if anything was amiss. The man was a genial, broad-shouldered, black-beardeddigger of a rough but excellent type, and on reflection Doherty told him of the drugged beer and the resultant loss of the nugget, but of nothing else. The digger seemed considerably interested, asked several questions, and good-naturedly lent a hand to raise Denis from the depths.
"I've just been hearing of your loss," said he, "and I congratulate you! It's not many lucky diggers whose luck attracts the light-fingered gentry and who only lose a four-ounce nugget after all! So that cook of yours has gone to look for the Chinaman?"
"Yes."
"I hope he'll find him," said the burly digger, and went off with a dry smile and a good-humoured nod.
But it was no Chinaman whom Jewson had gone to seek; it was a gentlemanly digger of peculiarly British appearance, with military whiskers which had never been allowed to meet upon the chin; and he was found waiting at the place where the special coach with the English mail was due to start for Melbourne at six o'clock.
"At last!" said he in an ungracious undertone. "What happened to you, Jewson? I had given you up altogether."
"I thought he'd never wake up," whispered Jewson as they drew aside, "and I dursn't run the risk of his finding me gone, as well as—as well as this, sir!"
"What the devil are you talking about, Jewson? And what's that?"
It was a small brown-paper parcel which the steward had produced.
"Something you're going to be so kind as to post and register in Melbourne, sir. In Melbourne, mind—not in London, Captain Devenish!"
"But it's addressed—why, damme, it's addressed to Miss Merridew!"
"I know that, sir."
"Who addressed it?"
"The clever bloke who thinks he's going to marry her," answered Jewson through his artificial teeth. "Clever he may be," he added, "and successful he is, but he ain't so clever that he's going to succeed in that!"
Devenish took heart from the cunning and confident face raised so slyly to his. Yet his heart of hearts sank within him, for it was still not utterly debased, and his compact with this ruffian was a heaviness to him. "What do you mean by asking me to post his presents to her?" he demanded angrily; but his anger was due less to the request than to the underlying subtlety which he felt he had far better not seek to probe.
"I'm not going to tell you, Captain Devenish. You said you'd leave it to me, sir."
"But it is something from him to her?"
"That I promise you; but it'll tell its own tale,and you'll hear it soon enough, once you get home safe and sound."
The driver had mounted to his place, the five horses had been put to. Devenish hesitated with the little brown paper packet in his hand.
"And she really ought to have it?"
"It's only due to her, poor young lady."
"But to me? Is it due to me, man?"
"It'll do you more good, sir," said Jewson, raising his crafty eyes, "than ever anything did you yet, in that quarter, Captain Devenish."
Ralph put the packet in an inner pocket. "Well, I'll think about it," said he. But he did not take the hand that was held out to him. He went from Ballarat with no more than a nod to the man whom he was leaving there to play a villain's part on his behalf. It was enough for Ralph Devenish that he had soiled his soul.
Denis passed many days underground, in the fascinating pursuit of driving a tiny tunnel due south from the bottom of the shaft. That way ran the lead as traced already on its outer skirts, and that way burrowed Denis through its golden core. The miniature corridor which he made was but two feet wide, and not six inches higher than its width. Denis could just turn round in it by a series of systematic contortions.
He would have made the drive roomier but for an early warning as to the treacherous character of the red clay stratum immediately overhead. Thereafter he confined his operations to the lower half of the auriferous drift, which being gravelly, was more or less conglomerate, and formed a continuous arch corresponding with the brickwork in a railway tunnel. The drive was not timbered like the shaft which led to it, but at intervals props were wedged against the walls, with flat wooden caps to support the roof. Yet the task seemed to Denis too precarious to depute, and worming every inch of his way, it took him till February to penetrate fifteen feet.
Doherty was consoled by a position of much responsibility above ground: he had the washing of every bucketful which came out of the drive, and he also was single-handed, but for some help at the water-side from the friendly fellow with the black beard, whose offices he was able to repay in kind. The creek hereabouts was more populous now than the partners had found it. Their success had had the usual effect of attracting numbers to the gulley. Some had taken possession of holes prematurely abandoned the year before, and were working them out in feverish haste; larger parties with plant and capital were rapidly sinking their seventy feet on the very edge of the successful claim. "We'll be down on top of you before you know where you are," said one of the newcomers when they heard the direction in which Denis was driving. Thereupon he redoubled his efforts to such purpose that Doherty could not keep pace with the output, and a stack of untried wash-dirt grew up beside the shaft. In spite of this the average yield in washen gold was many ounces a day. And daily Denis took it, his revolver in his pocket, to the Commissioner for transmission to Geelong, where the accredited gold-buyer had turned out so well that the partners no longer received his payments in cash, but had several thousands standing to their credit in his books.
Jewson was much subdued. There was something uncanny in the way this fortune was growing under his eyes, in spite of him. But he had his ownreasons for undiminished confidence in the end which an undying grudge and innate cupidity alike demanded; meanwhile his honest emoluments were not to be despised, and he continued to earn them by the consistent exercise of his one accomplishment. His cooking was as good as ever, his behaviour even better, since the nocturnal excursions were a thing of the past. This circumstance was too much of a coincidence to decrease Denis's suspicions; on the other hand, nothing occurred to increase them, and Denis was not sorry for that. The man was invaluable. So much labour underground must have been deadly in its effects without regular supplies of proper food properly cooked. And there the steward never failed. But Denis had his eye on him, and was wise enough never to betray whatever suspicion he had entertained with regard to Jewson's complicity in the theft of the nugget and the ring.
Jewson naturally thought that matter had blown over; but one morning, as he was happily occupied with the duties which he really relished for their own sake, the door darkened as a pair of broad shoulders jammed between the posts; and the steward found himself confronted by a blue-black beard which contrasted invidiously with the unwilling whiteness of his own.
"Well," said a voice of grim good-humour, "have you found him yet?"
"What are you talking about?" replied the steward, testily. "Who are you—and what do you want?"
"Never you mind who I am," said the big man at the door. "You've seen me afore, and I've seen more of you than you might think. What I want is to know whether you ever found the Chinaman you went lookin' for a month ago; and that's what I be talkin' about. So now you know."
The steward stood at the table with his wicked head on one side, considering rapidly while he affected to ransack his memory.
"You mean the Chinaman who sold the doctored beer?"
"I mean the Chinaman who sold you the beer that got doctored."
"No—I never could lay hold of him," said the steward, ignoring the pointed improvement upon his phrase.
"Well, I have," said the big miner in the doorway.
"You've laid hold of him?" the other queried in nervous incredulity.
The digger nodded a big black head that looked as picturesque as piratical in a knitted cap of bright scarlet.
"I'd been lookin' for him, too, you see. You weren't the only folks who had some beer off that Chinaman the day he come along first; me and my mates had some, and it did us so little harm that we've always wanted some more. So I've beenlookin' for him ever since, and yesterday I found him at the other end o' the diggin's, away past Sailor's Gully. And why do you suppose he'd never been near us again?" asked the big black man without shifting a shoulder from either door-post.
"I don't know," said the steward, sulkily. "How should I?"
"How should you? Because you told him never to come no more!"
"He's a liar," hissed Jewson, with a tremulous oath.
"And why should you say he ever came at all?"
"Some other lie, I suppose," said Jewson, with another oath.
"Because you told him to: went to the other end o' the diggin's to find him; bought a bit of opium from him, and told him to bring the beer next day. Oh, yes, they may be all lies," said the big digger, cheerfully, "but then again they may not. It's a rum world, mate, especially on the diggin's. I've known worse things done by coves I wouldn't have thought it of; but by the cut of your jib I should say you was capable of a good lot. Boss down driving, I suppose?"
"Like to go down and tell him now—like me to let you down?" asked Jewson, with a venomous glitter in his little eyes.
The digger laughed heartily in his face.
"No, thank you—not without a third party handy to keep you from meddling with the rope! But Ican wait, my friend, and I can come again. My claim's not so far away, and I'll be back at dinner-time if not before. Of course, they may be lies as you say; a Chinaman's a Chinaman, and that's why I come along now to have a quiet word with you first. But by the colour o' your gills, old cock, I don't believe they are lies. So now you know what's before you when your boss comes up. He may believe you and send me to the devil, but he's got to hear my yarn and judge for himself. So there it is. I like to give a man fair warning, and that you've got."
The hut doorway was no longer obstructed. It framed once more a vivid panel of parched earth and blinding sky with a windlass and a stack of wash-dirt in the foreground. But the hut itself held a broken ruffian whose ruin stared him in the face.
One thing would lead to another, and the motive for the crime be readily deduced from the crime itself. Jewson saw his elaborate plot falling asunder like a house of cards, and involving himself in its destruction. Devenish had not been a month at sea; letters would chase him round the Horn, and the truth would reach England almost as soon as the lies. That marriage would never take place. That £2000 would never be paid. That hold upon a young married man of means and of position would not be given to Jewson as a lifelong asset after all. On the contrary, the petty theft mightbe brought home to him, and he might go to the hulks off Williamstown instead of back to England with an assured competence for his declining years. He did not believe this could happen to him—he was a far-seeing rogue—but the rest would follow as surely as Denis came up from the depths and the informer returned to keep his word.
Flight seemed the only course; a successful flight would at least avert the most unpleasant possibilities of the case. But darker thoughts passed through the steward's mind, and took him stealthily to the mouth of the shaft. A dull yet distinct chip-chipping was audible far below and out of sight along the drive. If only that sound could cease forever! If only the maker of the sound were never to come up alive! Then everything would be simplified; and Captain Devenish need not know of his death for years. Besides, it was an accidental death of which Jewson was thinking; he had looked at the rope with the bucket hanging to it, but only to remember that one man at least was prepared for even that villainy at his hands. Jewson shook his head. He was not so bad as all that. He was really only a potential criminal, who had seldom put himself within reach of the law. He might wish that the shaft would fall in and bury his enemy, but he was no murderer even in his heart.
Suddenly he gave a start, and then stood very still; stepping softly to the far side of the shaft, he hadcome suddenly upon a huge snake curled up and basking on the hard hot ground. It was not the sight, however, that made Jewson shiver; that was not particularly uncommon or untoward; the chilling thing was the thought that had flown into the breast which had not been that of a murderer before. Now it was; but even now the mean monster did not realize that the temptation upon him was the temptation of Cain; and he yielded to it, villain as he was, with eyes shut to the enormity.
The dangling bucket was gently lifted from its hook, was nimbly clapped upon the sleeping serpent, and kept in position with one foot; striding with the other to within reach of the heap of wash-dirt, the steward filled his hat with this, and then reversing the bucket with equal courage and dexterity, had the snake buried in the stuff in an instant, and the bucket back on its hook in another. A quick swing over the side of the shaft, and down went the bucket of its own weight, with the snake already hanging over one edge. But Jewson let every inch of the rope run red-hot through his hands, to lessen the noise of the windlass; and yet when it reached the bottom, gently, very gently, there was the chip-chipping still to be heard in the bowels of the drift.
Jewson held the bucket, as near as he could judge, within a few inches of the bottom of the shaft; when it lightened he went to the handle of the windlass and turned it slowly, so slowly thatit came up without a creak, but also so slowly that minutes passed in the operation. When it was up he flung out the wash-dirt, replaced the bucket on its hook, and craned his neck over the lip of the shaft, to listen, and to peer.
A very faint light came from the single candle which Denis took with him along the drive; it just glimmered upon the floor of the shaft, and on the wall opposite the drive; but in the glimmer nothing moved, and nothing shone.
The steward closed his eyes and put a hand to either ear. The chip-chipping had ceased. There was no sound at all. And then, but not till then, did the criminal realize his crime.
He drew himself up with an uncontrollable shudder, and looked quickly on all sides of him. The sun was high in the deep blue heavens. The white tents in the gully shimmered in its glare. No one was about on the next claim; all were underground, or at the creek; no human eye had seen the deed.
Yet the skin tightened on the murderer's skull, a baleful dew broke out upon it, and the little eyes for once grew large with horror.
There are few more attractive houses near London than one that shall be nameless in these pages: enough that it lends the beauty of mellow brick and sunken tile to a hill-top already picturesquely wooded, but a dozen miles from the Marble Arch, yet in the country's very heart, on a main road where the inquisitive may still discover it for themselves. They will have to choose, it is true, between several old houses of rosy brick, all of them overrun with the rose itself, and all standing rather too near the road. The house in question is the one that has no other fault. It is the house with the plate-glass porch, the wide bay on either side, the luniform bay behind; at the back also are a noble lawn, several meadows, and a singular avenue, so narrow that the tall trees meet overhead as one. Other features are a rose garden, enclosed in the ripest of all the old red walls, and a model farm.
To this pleasant English home Mr. Merridew and his daughter returned in the month of February, after a wearisome but uneventful voyage and a week or two at the St. George's Hotel as a corrective. Adistinguished physician had prescribed a month; but in ten days Nan had all the new clothes she needed, had seen all the plays she cared to see, and went in such fear of a certain topic of conversation, forced upon her by the heedless, that it was anguish to her to go about. So one of the carriages came up from Hertfordshire, and on a clear but chilly afternoon father and daughter drove home together.
It was not a hearty homecoming. John Merridew had been many years a widower, whose only other child had died in infancy. But the old red house looked warm and kindly; the servants stood weeping through their smiles; the firelit rooms were all unchanged, save in their new promise of perfect privacy; and in her home it was grasped from the first that Miss Merridew could not bear to speak about the wreck of theNorth Forelandand her own romantic rescue by one of the officers. Thus she had no occasion to explain that she was engaged to him; and Mr. Merridew left the announcement to Nan.
"She has nothing on her mind, has she?" inquired old Dr. Stone after an early call as physician and friend.
"She has the wreck on her mind," replied Mr. Merridew promptly. "She can't even speak of it, as you may have noticed."
"I did notice, and that's why I ask. I saw the child into this world, my dear Merridew, and I wantto dance at her wedding before I move on to the next. She didn't give her heart for her life, I suppose?"
"You must ask her that yourself, doctor," the discreet father replied, meeting a penetrating look with a laugh. And a firm old friend retired dissatisfied and rather hurt. But so the engagement was kept a secret from the first.
It is none the less safe to assert that there was not a waking hour of these early days in which the girl was oblivious of her new estate. It weighed on her mind far more than it had done at sea, though there she had missed Denis dreadfully, and sometimes with a resentment which she could not help. She had formed a habit of thinking in these moods of her last conversation with Ralph Devenish; it was the only cure. But fresh cause for displeasure awaited her in London. The voyage had been so long that certain Australian packets had given theMemnona start and a beating; when Nan learned this she counted on a letter, but there was none. She studied the shipping news in theTimes. More vessels arrived from Melbourne, but from Denis never a word. Sometimes the disappointment made her positively ill; always it left her tossing between the Scylla and Charybdis of terrible alternatives. Either he was indifferent, or else he was dead. And when she deemed him indifferent, there were things unforgettable that made her almost wish him dead; but when the terror ofhis death came over her in its turn, then she prayed less for his love than for his life.
So the days passed, and the sea-bronze soon faded from the piquant face, leaving it pale but petulant. Nan had not lost her spirit; she was one to chafe rather than to fret, but to do neither more openly than she could help. She kept herself up by exercise and fresh air. It was hard, bright weather, a little wintry still, yet with that promise of spring inseparable from the longer day and the lighter sky. There were even twigs with green tips to them, and the chestnut branches ended in sticky cones. But Nan thought of the spring before, when she had met with no adventures and had not become engaged; her obsession followed her to all her favourite places; and in her daily ride along the hard, clean roads, the black imp kept its perch.
Mr. Merridew was not the man to note all this and hold his peace, for he had small tact where his feelings were engaged; but he was so little at home that it was easy to deceive him; and his first conversation with Nan on the subject was really started in the city, where his partner, Ralph's father, had been inveighing against the Dents with the unbridled bitterness begotten of a family feud.
"To think of the son of that marriage sneaking into our line, under his own accursed name! It's so common; and I had no idea the fellow was at sea; but now I know how we lost our ship. Youmay shake your head, Merridew; wasn't she lost in his watch? You don't know the breed as I know it, and I suppose you're grateful to the fellow. But what good object could he have had in choosing our line of all others?"
"To rise in it," replied Merridew with some warmth: "to be revenged on you that way, not the other. And I happen to know, because he told Nan."
"Told her that, did he? After the wreck, I take it, when decency obliged you all to listen to the fellow? By the Lord, but you were lucky if that's all he told her! His father would have taken advantage of the situation, and married himself into the family before you knew where you were!"
It was no mere lack of moral courage that deterred John Merridew from the admission which rose naturally to his lips. He no longer regarded as inevitable the marriage to which he had consented in his agitation after the wreck, and to mention it to Ralph's father, when Ralph himself had evidently not done so in his letters, seemed an altogether needless indiscretion. He was, however, a peculiarly conscientious man, who would have much preferred to have stated the fact; not having done so, he had a curious desire to alter the fact to suit his silence; and so struck his first blow at Denis, more heavily than he intended, that very night.
"No," said Nan in answer to his question. "No, I have not heard from him yet."
"Not a word?"
"Not yet, papa. Surely you knew? You may be certain I shall not keep it to myself when I do hear."
There was a double reproach, of which her father felt his share, in the sudden bitterness with which the girl spoke. But John Merridew had now convinced himself that he had a parental duty to perform, that cruelty was the only kindness, and some little exaggeration justifiable to that end.
"It is most extraordinary," he murmured. "I never heard of a more extraordinary thing!"
"I don't see that at all," replied Nan, hotly. "You know what he is doing, and I know he is doing it with all his might. What time can he have for letters—digging all day—and what opportunity—living in a hut?"
"But that's what is so extraordinary," pursued Mr. Merridew. "That he should have elected to stay behind to do all that!"
"You know it was for my sake!" exclaimed the girl, tears in her eyes. "Oh, you are unkind to us both! He would not marry until he had something to marry on, something of his own; and there he was where people were making fortunes in a day! Whatever I may feel, you ought to respect him for doing what he has done. But it shouldn't have been necessary for him to do it, and you were the one to make it unnecessary."
"I?" cried Mr. Merridew, quite taken aback."Why, my dear child, what more could I have done?"
"You might have taken him into the office; you might have promised him a partnership one day. If he doesn't deserve well of you, I don't know who does; and you know how clever he is, and how he would have worked to deserve all the more! It might have been an unusual thing to do," Nan added, with a sudden sense that she was talking wildly. "Nevertheless, I have always thought it a thing you might have done."
She had, indeed, thought it for some time; but, after all, the notion had first occurred to Mr. Merridew himself; and in all the circumstances he was not disposed to suppress the fact another moment.
"My dearest Nan," said he, gently, "it is the very thing I did!"
She looked at him with blank, unseeing eyes.
"What do you mean, papa?"
"I actually offered him that very opening, with every prospect of partnership that single partner could hold out."
"When?" asked Nan after a further pause. Her voice had changed.
"The first time I saw him after the wreck. It was too late. He had heard of the diggings, and he would hear of nothing else."
"Why did you never tell me before?"
"My dear child, need you ask? I thought it would hurt you," said Mr. Merridew; and thetender compassion in his voice was not unmingled with remorse, for Nan had turned very pale, and her lip quivered.
"It does," she said, simply. "No doubt that was why he did not tell me either," she added, and the quivering lip curled. In a minute she crossed over to her father's chair and kissed him without emotion. "I am afraid I have been very rude, besides misjudging you so strangely. But—but don't let us misjudge anybody else until we must—or speak of him again until we hear."
But it was harder now to believe the best, harder yet to look back without a passionate shame and indignation which in their intensity surpassed all that the girl had yet endured. She came down paler and paler in the mornings. It was because she had lain such a fiery red half the night—in the ti-tree thicket of her waking nightmare. She could not know how her feelings had been foreseen, nay, endured from the first on her behalf. She only knew that never in the morning was there the letter for which she looked—and almost loathed herself for looking—nor yet ever toward evening, when the postman came again, and Nan watched for him, openly or in hiding as pride or passion might prevail.
All this time, but now more than ever, the girl filled her life with a resolution which declared her calibre. She regained touch with her friends throughout the countryside. She visited the villagers, managed her father's house with increasedcapability, and no longer discouraged him from entertaining, as her inclination had been for a time. People who stayed in the house found its young mistress brighter in a way than they had ever known her. But that was the form of hospitality Nan relished least. As spring advanced she was more and more out of doors, on horseback or afoot; but in the open air she still preferred to be alone, and would advertise the fact by carrying a book on all her walks. She had taken to reading as she had never read before, in a way at once desultory and omnivorous. And it was in a tome from her father's shelves, to wit Southey's "Early British Poets," that a sudden beam of comfort and enlightenment shot into her soul from the immortal lines of Lovelace to Lucasta:—