Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with sun-stroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for some time, and a haze the sun-stroke had left hovered over his mind. Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping, Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle, and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or dozed the hot, still, midday hours away.
When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched Potch with the birds.
Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or white-tail, to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not their common property.
When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep, mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken from other loves.
Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him. He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.
Paul's illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let him know how he came to have them.
All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch's belief in him, and for not telling Potch how Paul's opals came into his possession.
In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton's bar. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.
He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul's cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the box—only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.
Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were all right while he was about it, he thought.
He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table. Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin; and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the candle-light. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in—a piece of opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless night.
One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle, letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in the stones—blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red—melted, sprayed, and scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.
"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and emotion.
With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.
Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.
Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay, instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at, tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and flashing.
But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement. He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was doing.
"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.
"No," Michael said. "Why?"
He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.
"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this way."
The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between them. Michael lifted his head to listen.
"Who's that?" he asked;
Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars, was blank in the doorway.
"May I come in?" a woman's voice called. Her figure wavered in the doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes, laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.
"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see what you can do for her?"
Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to Maud.
"All right," he said.
He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.
"My," she cried eagerly, "that's a pretty stone, Michael!" She turned it back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks of red and gold.
"Just been noodlin' over some old scraps ... and came across it," Michael said awkwardly.
It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul's opals before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had.
"Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle," Maud said. "Doin' a bit of dealin' myself. I'll give you a good price for it, Michael."
"It's goin' into a parcel," he replied.
"Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know," Maud said. "Comin', Potch?"
She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street urchin's, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut.
Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies, fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden, flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond the Ridge.
Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed Sophie's singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang.
"You miss her these nights, don't you?" Michael said to Potch one very hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was drifting into the room about them.
Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him.
"Yes," he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out of doors.
Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working; even the noodlers, Snow-Shoes and young Flail, were standing round with the miners.
"Hullo," Michael said, "something's up!"
Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only once before on the fields.
"Ratting?" he said.
"Looks like it," Michael agreed.
"What's up, George?" he asked, as Potch and he joined the men.
"Rats, Michael," George said, "that's what's up. They've been on our place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was working on. They've paid Archie a visit ... and Bully reck'ns his spider's been walking lately, too."
Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat's visit to their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy O'Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods' shelter to talk the situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the shelter.
George Woods, the best natured, soberest man on the Ridge, was smouldering with rage at the ratting.
"I've a good mind to put a bit of dynamite at the bottom of the shaft, and then, when a rat strikes a match, up he'll go," he said.
"But," Watty objected, "how'd you feel when you found a dead man in your claim, George?"
"Feel?" George burst out. "I wouldn't feel—except he'd got no right to be there—and perlitely put him on one side."
"Remember those chaps was up a couple of years ago, George?" Bill Grant asked, "and helped theirselves when Pony-Fence and me had a bit of luck up at Rhyll's hill."
"Remember them?" George growled.
"They'd go round selling stuff if there was anybody to buy—hang round the pub all day, and yet had stuff to sell," Watty murmured.
The men smoked silently for a few minutes.
"How much did they get, again?" Bully Bryant asked.
"Couple of months," George said.
"Police protect criminals—everybody knows that," Snow-Shoes said.
Sitting on the dump just beyond the shade the shelter cast, he had been listening to what the men were saying, the sun full blaze on him, his blue eyes glittering in the shadow of his old felt hat. All eyes turned to him. The men always listened attentively when Snow-Shoes had anything to say.
"If there's a policeman about, and a man starts ratting and is caught, he gets a couple of months. Well, what does he care? But if there's a chance of the miners getting hold of him and some rough handling ... he thinks twice before he rats ... knowing a broken arm or a pain in his head'll come of it."
"That's true," George said. "I vote we get this bunch ourselves."
"Right!" The Crosses and Bully agreed with him. Watty did not like the idea of the men taking the law into their own hands. He was all for law and order. His fat, comfortable soul disliked the idea of violence.
"Seems to me," he said, "it 'd be a good thing to set a trap—catch the rats—then we'd know where we were."
Michael nodded. "I'm with Watty," he said.
"Then we could hand 'em over to the police," Watty said.
Michael smiled. "Well, after the last batch getting two months, and the lot of us wasting near on two months gettin' 'em jailed, I reck'n it's easier to deal with 'em here—But we've got to be sure. They've got to be caught red-handed, as the sayin' is. It don't do to make mistakes when we're dealin' out our own justice."
"That's right, Michael," the men agreed.
"Well, I reck'n we'd ought to have in the police," Watty remarked obstinately.
"The police!" Snow-Shoes stood up as if he had no further patience with the controversy. "It's like letting hornets build in your house to keep down flies—to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the flies."
He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure, straighter than any man's on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet, wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the shingly earth.
Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats.
Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had "done a moonlight flit," it was generally agreed that these suspicions were confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself had bought from the gougers. Jun's and Maud's flight was taken not only as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men's resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring them away.
When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby.
The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary summer months was Bully Bryant's marriage to Ella Flail, and, although it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple.
"Roy O'Mara's got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael," Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had thought over what he was going to say.
"Yes?" Michael replied.
"How about tryin' our luck there?" Potch ventured.
Michael took the suggestion meditatively. Potch and he had been working together for several years with very little luck. They had won only a few pieces of opal good enough to put into a parcel for an opal-buyer when he came to Fallen Star. But Michael was loth to give up the old shaft, not only because he believed in it, but because of the work he and his mates had put into it, and because when they did strike opal there, the mine would be easily worked. But this was the first time Potch had made a suggestion of the sort, and Michael felt bound to consider it.
"There's a bit of a rush on, Snow-Shoes told me," Potch said. "Crosses have pegged, and I saw Bill Olsen measurin' out a claim."
Michael's reluctance to move was evident.
"I feel sure we'll strike it in the old shaft, sooner or later," he murmured.
"Might be sooner by the coolebah," Potch said.
Michael's eyes lifted to his, the gleam of a smile in them.
"Very well, we'll pull pegs," he said.
While stars were still in the high sky and the chill breath of dawn in the air, men were busy measuring and pegging claims on the hillside round about the old coolebah. Half a dozen blocks were marked one hundred feet square before the stars began to fade.
All the morning men with pegs, picks, and shovels came straggling up the track from the township and from other workings scattered along the Ridge. The sound of picks on the hard ground and the cutting down of scrub broke the limpid stillness.
Paul came out of his hut as Potch passed it on his way to the coolebah. Immediately he recognised the significance of the heavy pick Potch was carrying, and trotted over to him.
"You goin' to break new ground, Potch?" he asked. Potch nodded.
"There's a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah," he said. "Roy O'Mara's bottomed on opal there ... got some pretty good colours, and we're goin' to peg out."
"A rush?" Paul's eyes brightened. "Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?"
"Not bad."
As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.
Roy O'Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great, bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump—Roy had been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day's find was spread on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.
When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had marked in his mind's eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond Roy's claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat beading and pouring down their faces.
There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.
Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal dirt beneath it. Roy O'Mara, working on his trace of promising black potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul. Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft; Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour of sinking again.
Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock from the drives, Potch said:
"I'm going to sink another hole, Michael—higher up."
Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but he was not disturbed by his doing so.
"Right," he said; "you sink another hole, Potch. I'll stick to this one for a bit."
Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had been three weeks on the job.
"Ought to be near bottoming, Potch," Roy remarked one day towards the end of the three weeks.
"Be there to-day," Potch said.
Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.
Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well: they had cut out a pocket worth £400 as a result of their sinking, and it remained to be seen what Potch's new hole would bring. A good prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.
Potch's prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.
They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains, for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the mine, uttered a low cry.
"Michael," he called.
Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that joyous vibration in a man's voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went to Potch.
Potch Was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some size was embedded in the wall of the mine.
"Looks a beaut, doesn't she, Michael?" he gasped.
Michael breathed hard.
"By God——" he murmured.
Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.
He screamed when he saw the stone.
"I knew!" he yelled. "I knew we'd strike it here."
"Well, stand back while I get her out," Potch cried.
Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.
When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal. Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with excitement.
He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch's find to the men who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and admiration.
"You've struck it this time, Potch!" Roy O'Mara said.
Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped surface, and held it to the sun again.
"It's the biggest knobby—ever I see," Archie Cross said.
"Same here," Bill Grant muttered.
"Wants polishin' up a bit," Michael said, "and then she'll show better."
As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul's hut and faced the stone on Sophie's wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a hen's egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever seen.
Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and excitement in his voice as he talked.
Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.
When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across the table to read.
Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby ever taken out of the fields.
Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered book.
As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul's opals flashed before him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.
Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch's bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion of unworthiness in the object of its belief.
But since—since he had made up his mind to give the opals to Paul—since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer in the mysterious no-man's land of his subconsciousness.
Paul's slow recovery from sun-stroke was a reason for deferring explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals, Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul's opals.
But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with them.... He mocked his fears of himself.
Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own consciousness and to be honest with himself.
As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision. He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a dark corner of his mind.
Had Paul's stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul's stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was ready to steal—steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put off going to Paul and to Watty and George.
Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of, Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few books.
He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman's year-book and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked them over—but he could not find the tin with Paul's opals in.
He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the candle-fight.
"They're gone," he told himself.
He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the box—if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absent-mindedly; but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there.
Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea.
Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on them—not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value. His mind hovered indecisively. Maud?
Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat, Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man's hut either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one else who knew he had any stone worth having.
If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun told where those opals of Paul's had been found, as he would some day—Michael could not contemplate the prospect.
He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt.
Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him. He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul's had worked him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of the story Jun would tell—that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men's stones, and that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to be judged by it.
Michael and Potch were finishing their tea when Watty burst in on them. His colour was up, his small, blue eyes winking and flashing over his fat, pink cheeks.
"Who d'y' think's come be motor to-day, Michael?" he gasped.
Michael's movement and the shade of apprehension which crossed his face were a question.
"Old man Armitage!" Watty said. "And he's come all the way from New York to see the big opal, he says."
There was a rumble of cart wheels, an exclamation and the reverberation of a broad, slow voice out-of-doors. Watty looked through Michael's window.
"Here he is, Michael," he said. "George and Peter are helping him out of Newton's dog-cart. And Archie Cross and Bill Grant are coming along the road a bit behind."
Michael pushed back his seat and pulled the fastenings from his front door. The front door was more of a decoration and matter of form in the face of the hut than intended to serve any useful purpose, and the fastening had never been moved before.
Potch cleared away the litter of the meal while Michael went out to meet the old man. He was walking with the help of a stick, his heavy, colourless face screwed with pain.
"Grr-rr!" he grunted. "What a fool I was to come to this God-damn place of yours, George! What? No fool like an old one? Don't know so much about that.... What else was I to do? Brrr! Oh, there you are, Michael! Came to see you. Came right away because, from what the boys tell me, you weren't likely to slip down and call on me."
"I'd 've come all right if I'd known you wanted to see me, Mr. Armitage," Michael said.
The old man went into the hut and, creaking and groaning as though all his springs needed oiling, seated himself on the sofa, whipped out a silk handkerchief and wiped his face and head with it.
"Oh, well," he said, "here I am at last—and mighty glad to get here. The journey from New York City, where I reside, to this spot on the globe, don't get any nearer as I grow older. No, sir! Who's that young man?"
Mr. Armitage had fixed his eyes on Potch from the moment he came into the hut. Potch stood to his gaze.
"That's Potch," Michael said.
"Potch?"
The small, round eyes, brown with black rims and centres, beginning to dull with age, winked over Potch, and in that moment Dawe Armitage was trying to discover what his chances of getting possession of the stone he had come to see, were with the man who had found it.
"Con—gratulate you, young man," he said, holding out his hand. "I've come, Lord knows how many miles, to have a look at that stone of yours."
Potch shook hands with him.
"They tell me it's the finest piece of opal ever come out of Ridge earth," the old man continued. "Well, I couldn't rest out there at home without havin' a look at it. To think there was an opal like that about, and I couldn't get me fingers on it! And when I thought how it was I'd never even see it, perhaps, I danged 'em to Hades—doctors, family and all—took me passage out here. Ran away! That's what I did." He chuckled with reminiscent glee. "And here I am."
"Cleared out, did y', Mr. Armitage?" Watty asked.
"That's it, Watty," old Armitage answered, still chuckling. "Cleared out.... Family'll be scarrifyin' the States for me. Sent 'em a cable when I got here to say I'd arrived."
Michael and George laughed with Watty, and the old man looked as pleased with himself as a schoolboy who has brought off some soul-satisfying piece of mischief.
"Tell you, boys," he said, "I felt I couldn't die easy knowing there was a stone like that about and I'd never clap eyes on it.... Know you chaps'd pretty well turned me down—me and mine—and I wouldn't get more than a squint at the stone for my pains. You're such damned independent beggars! Eh, Michael? That's the old argument, isn't it? How did y' like those papers I sent you—and that book ... by the foreign devil—what's his name? Clever, but mad. Y'r all mad, you socialists, syndicalists, or whatever y'r call y'rselves nowadays.... But, for God's sake, let me have a look at the stone now, there's a good fellow."
Michael looked at Potch.
"You get her, Potch," he said.
Potch put his hand to the top of the shelf where, in ah old tin, the great opal lay wrapped in wadding, with a few soft cloths about it. He put the tin on the table. Michael pushed the table toward the sofa on which Mr. Armitage was sitting. The old man leaned forward, his lips twitching, his eyes watering with eagerness. Potch's clumsy fingers fumbled with the wrappings; he spread the wadding on the table. The opal flashed black and shining between the rags and wadding as Potch put it on the table. Michael had lighted a candle and brought it alongside.
Dawe Armitage gaped at the stone with wide, dazed eyes.
"My!" he breathed; and again: "My!" Then: "She was worth it, Michael," fell from him in an awed exclamation.
He looked up, and the men saw tears of reverence and emotion in his eyes. He brushed them away and put out his hand to take the stone. He lifted the stone, gently and lovingly, as if it were alive and might be afraid at the approach of his wrinkled old hand. But it was not afraid, Potch's opal; it fluttered with delight in the hand of this old man, who was a devout lover, and rayed itself like a bird of paradise. Even to the men who had seen the stone before, it had a new and uncanny brilliance. It seemed to coquet with Dawe Armitage; to pour out its infinitesimal stars—-red, blue, green, gold, and amethyst—blazing, splintering, and coruscating to dazzle and bewilder him.
The men exclaimed as Mr. Armitage moved the opal. Then he put the stone down and mopped his forehead.
"Well," he said, "I reckon she's the God-damnedest piece of opal I've ever seen."
"She is that," Watty declared.
"What have you got on her, Michael?" Dawe Armitage queried.
A faint smile touched Michael's mouth.
"I'm only asking," Armitage remarked apologetically. "I can tell you, boys, it's a pretty bitter thing for me to be out of the running for a stone like this. I ain't even bidding, you see—just inquiring, that's all."
Michael looked at Potch.
"Well," he said, "it's Potch's first bit of luck, and I reck'n he's got the say about it."
The old man looked at Potch. He was a good judge of character. His chance of getting the stone from Michael was remote; from Potch—a steady, flat look in the eyes, a stolidity and inflexibility about the young man, did hot give Dawe Armitage much hope where he was concerned either.
"They tell me," Mr. Armitage said, the twinkling of a smile in his eyes as he realised the metal of his adversary—"they tell me," he repeated, "you've refused three hundred pounds for her?"
"That's right," Potch said.
"How much do you reck'n she's worth?"
"I don't know."
"How much have you got on her?"
Potch looked at Michael.
"We haven't fixed any price," he said.
"Four hundred pounds?" Armitage asked.
Potch's grey eyes lay on his for the fraction of a second.
"You haven't got money enough to buy that stone, Mr. Armitage," he said, quietly.
The old man was crestfallen. Although he pretended that he had no hope of buying the opal, everybody knew that, hoping against hope, he had not altogether despaired of being able to prevail against the Ridge resolution not to sell to Armitage and Son, in this instance. Potch remarked vaguely that he had to see Paul, and went out of the hut.
"Oh, well," Dawe Armitage said, "I suppose that settles the matter. Daresay I was a durned old fool to try the boy—but there you are. Well, since I can't have her, Michael, see nobody else gets her for less than my bid."
The men were sorry for the old man. What Potch had said was rather like striking a man when he was down, they thought; and they were not too pleased about it.
"Potch doesn't seem to fancy sellin' at all for a bit," Michael said.
"What!" Armitage exclaimed. "He's not a miser—at his age?"
"It's not that," Michael replied.
"Oh, well"—the old man's gesture disposed of the matter. He gazed at the stone entranced again. "But she's the koh-i-noor of opals, sure enough. But tell me"—he sat back on the sofa for a yarn—"what's the news of the field? Who's been getting the stuff?"
The gossip of Jun and the ratting was still the latest news of the Ridge; but Mr. Armitage appeared to know as much of that as anybody. Ed. Ventry's boy, who had motored him over from Budda, had told him about it, he said. He had no opinion of Jun.
"A bad egg," he said, and began to talk about bygone days on the Ridge. There was nothing in the world he liked better than smoking and yarning with men of the Ridge about black opal.
He was fond of telling his family and their friends, who were too nice and precise in their manners for his taste, and who thought him a boor and mad on the subject of black opal, that the happiest times of his life had been spent on Fallen Star Ridge, "swoppin' lies with the gougers"; yarning with them about the wonderful stuff they had got, and other chaps had got, or looking over some of the opal he had bought, or was going to buy from them.
"Oh, well," Mr. Armitage said after they had been talking for a long time, "it's great sitting here yarning with you chaps. Never thought ... I'd be sitting here like this again...."
"It's fine to have a yarn with you, Mr. Armitage," Michael said.
"Thank you, Michael," the old man replied. "But I suppose I must be putting my old bones to bed.... There's something else I want to talk to you about though, Michael."
The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage's tone that what he had to say was for Michael alone.
"I'll just have a look if that bally mare of mine's all right, Mr. Armitage," Peter Newton said.
He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him.
"Well, Michael," Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, "I guess you know what it is I want to talk to you about."
Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment.
"That little girl of yours."
Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as if he and not Paul were Sophie's father.
"She"—old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity crossed his face—"I've seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I've tried to keep an eye on her—but I don't mind admitting to you that a man needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what's coming to him where Sophie's concerned. But first of all ... she's well ... and happy—at least, she appears to be; and she's a great little lady."
He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it were a page he were trying to read.
"You know, she's singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they say she's doing well. She's sought after—made much of. She's got little old Manhattan at her feet, as they say.... I don't want to gloss over anything that son of mine may have done—but to put it in a nutshell, Michael, he's in love with her. He's really in love with her—wants to marry her, but Sophie won't have him."
Michael did not speak, and he continued:
"And there's this to be said for him. She says it. He isn't quite so much to blame as we first thought. Seems he'd been making love to her... and did a break before.... He didn't mean to be a blackguard, y' see. You know what I'm driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went—She says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then—well, you know, Michael ... you've been young ... you've been in love. And in Sydney ... summer-time ... with the harbour there at your feet....
"They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the emigration authorities, I don't know. They make enough fuss about an old fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn't hear of getting married. Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin' married. Said her mother had been married—and look what it had brought her to.
"She's fond of John, too," the old man continued. "But, at present, New York's a side-show, and she's enjoying it like a child on a holiday from the country. I've got her living with an old maid cousin of mine.... Sophie says by and by perhaps she'll marry John, but not yet—not now—she's having too good a time. She's got all the money she wants ... all the gaiety and admiration. It's not the sort of life I like for a woman myself ... but I've done my best, Michael."
There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.
"You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage," he said, "and I'm grateful to you.".
"Tell you the truth, Michael," he said, "I'm fond of her. I feel about her as if she were a piece of live opal—the best bit that fool of a son of mine ever brought from the Ridge...."
His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.
"But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that. Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It's a God-damned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones in me body."
Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him his arm, and they went to Rouminof's hut.
Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage's arrival; that he had come to the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael's hut. Paul had gone to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage came into the room.
After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile, Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer pockets of his overcoat.
"Thought you'd like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof," he said. "She's well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And I brought along this." He held out a photograph. "She wouldn't give me a photograph for you, Michael—said you'd never know her—so I prigged this from her sitting-room last time I was there."
Michael glanced at the photographer's card of heavy grey paper, which Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands, he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering through all his consciousness.
Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul's hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the sun-stroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again.
Since old Armitage's visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage's visit he spent the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton's veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie's neglect of him—how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie's mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised Sometimes, talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York.
He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of so much drinking on his never very steady brain.
For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim and start work again; but Paul would not.
"What's the good," he had said, "Sophie'll be sending for me soon, and I'll be going to live with her in New York, and she won't want people to be saying her father is an old miner."
Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge; he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer Paul back to more or less regular ways of living.
This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that news.
Potch had brought Paul home from Newton's the night before, Michael knew; but Paul was not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael went into the hut.
As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door of the room which had been Sophie's was thrown back. Michael went towards it.
"Paul!" he called.
No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago.
He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the suggestion they conveyed.
Sophie exclaimed behind him.
When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill.
"I've come home, Michael," she said.
Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to the Ridge again.
They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection.
"It's a sight for sore eyes—the sight of you, Sophie," he said.
"Michael!"
Her arms went out to him with the quick gesture he knew. Michael moved to her and caught her in his arms. No moment in all his life had been like this when he held Sophie in his arms as though she were his own child. His whole being swayed to her in an infinite compassion and tenderness. She lay against him, her body quivering. Then she cried, brokenly, with spent passion, almost without strength to cry at all.
"There, there!" Michael muttered. "There, there!"
He held her, patting and trying to comfort and soothe her, muttering tenderly, and with difficulty because of his trouble for her. The tears she had seen in his eyes when he said she was a sight for sore eyes came from him and fell on her. His hand went over her hair, clumsily, reverently.
"There, there!" he muttered again and again.
Weak with exhaustion, when her crying was over, Sophie moved away from him. She pushed back the hair which had fallen over her forehead; her eyes had a faint smile as she looked at him.
"I am a silly, aren't I, Michael?" she said.
Michael's mouth took its wry twist.
"Are you, Sophie?" he said. "Well ... I don't think there's anyone else on the Ridge'd dare say so."
"I've dreamt of that smile of yours, Michael," Sophie said. She swayed a little as she looked at him; her eyes closed.
Michael put his arm round her and led her to the bed. He made her lie down and drew the coverlet over her.
"You lay down while I make you a cup of tea, Sophie," he said.
Sophie was lying so still, her face was so quiet and drained of colour when he returned with tea in a pannikin and a piece of thick bread and butter on the only china plate in the hut, that Michael thought she had fainted. But the lashes swept up, and her eyes smiled into his grave, anxious face as he gazed at her.
"I'm all right, Michael," she said, "only a bit crocky and dead tired." She sat up, and Michael sat on the bed beside her while she drank the tea and ate the bread and butter.
"Tea in a pannikin is much nicer than any other tea in the world," Sophie said. "Don't you think so, Michael? I've often wondered whether it's the tea, or the taste of the tin pannikin, or the people who have tea in pannikins, that makes it so nice."
After a while she said:
"I came up on the coach this morning ... didn't get in till about half-past six.... And I came straight up from Sydney the day before. That's all night on the train ... and I didn't get a sleeper. Just sat and stared out of the window at the country. Oh! I can't tell you how badly I've wanted to come home, Michael. In the end I felt I'd die if I didn't come—so I came."
Then she asked about Potch and her father.
Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sun-stroke, but that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the night before.
"I'll send him up to you, if he's there," Michael said. "But you'd better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shut-eye you've been missing these last two or three days."
"Months, Michael," Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her eyes again.
They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed.
"But I'll sleep all right here," she said. "I feel as if I'd sleep for years and years.... It's the smell of the paper daisies and the sandal-wood smoke, I suppose. The air's got such a nice taste, Michael.... It smells like peace, I think."
"Well," Michael said, "you eat as much of it as you fancy. I don't mind if Paul doesn't find you till he comes back to tea.... It'd do you more good to have a sleep now, and then you'll be feelin' a bit fitter."
"I think I could go to sleep now, Michael," Sophie murmured.
Michael stood watching her for a moment as she seemed to go to sleep, thinking that the dry, northern air, with its drowsy fragrance, was already beginning to draw the ache from her body and brain. He went to the curtain of the doorway, dropped it, and turned out into the blank sunshine of the day again.
He fit his pipe and smoked abstractedly as he walked down the track to the mine. He had already made up his mind that it would be better for Sophie to sleep for a while, and that he was not going to get anyone to look for Paul and send him to her.
She had said nothing of the reason for her return, and Michael knew there must be a reason. He could not reconcile the Sophie Dawe Armitage had described as taking her life in America with such joyous zest, and the elegant young woman on the show-page of the illustrated magazine, with the weary and broken-looking girl he had been talking to. Whatever it was that had changed her outlook, had been like an earthquake, devastating all before it, Michael imagined. It had left her with no more than the instinct to go to those who loved and would shelter her.
Potch was at work on a slab of shin-cracker when Michael went down into the mine. He straightened and looked up as Michael came to a standstill near him. His face was dripping, and his little white cap, stained with red earth, was wet with sweat. He had been slogging to get through the belt of hard, white stone near the new colours before Michael appeared.
"Get him?" he asked.
Michael had almost forgotten Paul.
"No," he said, switching his thoughts from Sophie.
"What's up?" Potch asked quickly, perceiving something unusual in Michael's expression.
Michael wanted to tell him—this was a big thing for Potch, he knew—and yet he could not bring his news to expression. It caught him by the throat. He would have to wait until he could say the thing decently, he told himself. He knew what joy it would give Potch.
"Nothing," he said, before he realised what he had said.
But he promised himself that in a few minutes he would tell Potch. He would break the news to him. Michael felt as though he were the guardian of some sacred treasure which he was afraid to give a glimpse of for fear of dazzling the beholder.
The concern went from Potch's face as quickly and vividly as it had come. He knew that Michael had reserves from him, and he was afraid of having trespassed on them by asking for information which Michael did not volunteer. He had been betrayed into the query by the stirred and happy look on Michael's face. Only rarely had he seen Michael look like that. Potch's thought flashed to Sophie—Michael must have some good news of her, he guessed, and knew Michael would pass it on to him in his own time.
He turned to his work again, and Michael took up his pick. Potch's steady slinging at the shin-cracker began again. Michael reproached himself as the minutes went by for what he was keeping from Potch.
He knew what his news would mean to Potch. He knew the solid flesh of the man would grow radiant. Michael had seen that subtle glow transfuse him when they talked of Sophie. He pulled himself together and determined to speak.
Dropping his pick to take a spell, Michael pulled his pipe from the belt round his trousers, relighted the ashes in its bowl, and sat on the floor of the mine. Potch also stopped work. He leaned his pick against the rock beside him, and threw back his shoulders.
"Where was he?" he asked.
"Who—Paul?"
Potch nodded, sweeping the drips from his head and neck.
"Yes."
Michael decided he would tell him now.
"Don't know," he said. "He wasn't about when I came away."
Potch wrung his cap, shook it out, and fitted it on his head again.
"He was showin' all right at Newton's last night," he said. "I'd a bit of a business getting him home."
"Go on," Michael replied absent-mindedly. "Potch ..." he he added, and stopped to listen.
There was a muffled rumbling and sound of someone calling in the distance. It came from Roy O'Mara's drive, on the other side of the mine.
"Hullo!" Michael called.
"That you, Michael?" Roy replied. "I'm comin' through."
His head appeared through the drive which he had tunnelled to meet Potch's and Michael's drive on the eastern side of the mine. He crawled out, shook himself, took out his pipe, and squatted on the floor beside Michael.
"Where's Rummy?" Roy asked.
Michael shook his head.
"You didn't get him down, after all—the boys were taking bets about it last night."
"We'll get him yet," Potch said. "The colour'll work like one thing."
Michael stared ahead of him, smoking as though his thoughts absorbed him.
"He was pretty full at Newton's last night," Roy said, "and talkin'—talkin' about Sophie singing in America, and the great lady she is now. And how she was goin' to send for him, and he'd be leavin' us soon, and how sorry we'd all be then."
"Should've thought you'd about wore out that joke," Michael remarked, dryly.
Roy's easy, good-natured voice faltered.
"Oh, well," he said, "he likes to show off a bit, and it don't hurt us, Michael."
"That's right," Michael returned; "but Potch was out half the night bringing him home. You chaps might remember Paul's our proposition when you're having a bit of fun out of him."
Potch turned back to his work.
"Right, Michael," Roy said. And then, after a moment, having decided that both Michael's and Potch's demeanours were too calm for them to have heard what he had, as if savouring the effect of his news, he added:
"But perhaps we won't have many more chances-seein' Rummy 'll be going to America before long, perhaps——"
Michael, looking at Roy through his tobacco smoke, realised that he knew about Sophie's having come home. His glance travelled to Potch, who was slogging at the cement stone again.
"Saw old Ventry on me way down to the mine," Roy said, "and he said he'd a passenger on the coach last night.... Who do you think it was?"
Michael dared not look at Potch.
"He said," Roy murmured slowly, "it was Sophie."
They knew that Potch's pick had stopped. Michael had seen a tremor traverse the length of his bared back; but Potch did not turn. He stood with his face away from them, immobile. His body dripped with sweat and seemed to be oiled by the garish light of the candle which outlined his head, gilded his splendid arms and torso against the red earth of the mine, and threw long shadows into the darkness, shrouding the workings behind him. Then his pick smashed into the cement stone with a force which sent sharp, white chips flying in every direction.
When Roy crawled away through the tunnel to his own quarters, Potch swung round from the face he was working on, his eyes blazing.
"Is it true?" he gasped.
"Yes," Michael said.
After a moment he added: "I found her in the hut this morning just before I came away. I been tryin' all these blasted hours to tell you, Potch ... but every time I tried, it got me by the neck, and I had to wait until I found me voice."