Chapter LXV…

Chapter LXV

BLACK WILL no sooner found himself inside the tent than he took out a dark lantern and opened the slide cautiously. There lay in one corner the two men fast asleep side by side. Casting the glare around he saw at his feet a dog with a chain round him. It startled him for a moment--but only for a moment. He knew that dog was dead. mephistopheles had told him within an hour after the feat was performed. Close to his very hand was a pair of miner's boots. He detached them from the canvas and passed them out of the tent; and now looking closely at the ground he observed a place where the soil seemed loose. His eye flashed with triumph at this. He turned up the openings of the tent behind him to make his retreat clear if necessary. He made at once for the loose soil, and the moment he moved forward Robinson's gut-lines twisted his feet from under him. He fell headlong in the middle, and half a dozen little bells rang furiously at the sleepers' heads.

Up jumped Tom and George, weapons in hand, but not before Black Will had wrenched himself clear and bounded back to the door. At the door, in his rage at being balked, he turned like lightning and leveled his pistol at Robinson, who was coming at him cutlass in hand. The ex-thief dropped on his knees and made a furious upward cut at his arm. At one and the same moment the pistol exploded and the cutlass struck it and knocked it against the other side of the tent. The bullet passed over Robinson's head. Black Will gave a yell so frightful that for a moment it paralyzed the men, and even with this yell he burst backward through the opening, and with a violent wrench of his left hand brought the whole tent down and fled, leaving George and Robinson struggling in the canvas like cats in an empty flour-sack.

The baffled burglar had fled but a few yards, when, casting his eye back, he saw their helplessness. Losing danger in hatred he came back, not now to rob, but murder, his left hand lifted high and gleaming like his cruel eye. As he prepared to plunge his knife through the canvas, flash bang! flash bang! bang! came three pistol-shots in his face from the patrol, who were running right slap at him not thirty yards off, and now it was life or death. He turned and ran for his life, the patrol blazing and banging at him. Eighteen shots they fired at him, one after another; more than one cut his clothes, and one went clean through his hat, but he was too fleet, he distanced them; but at the reports diggers peeped out of distant tents, and at sight of him running, flash bang went a pistol at him from every tent he passed, and George and Robinson, who had struggled out into the night, saw the red flashes issue, and then heard the loud reports bellow and re-echo as he dodged about down the line, and then all was still and calm as death under the cold, pure stars.

Craake!

They put up their tent again. The patrol came panting back. “He has got off--but he carried some of our lead in him. Go to bed, captain, we won't leave your tent all night.”

Robinson and George lay down again thus guarded. The patrol sat by the tent. Two slept, one loaded the arms again and watched. In a few minutes the friends were actually fast asleep again, lying silent as the vast camp lay beneath the silver stars.

Craake!

And now it was cold, much colder than before, darker, too, no moon now, only the silver stars; it makes one shiver. Nature seemed to lie stark and stiff and dead, and that accursed craake her dirge. All tended to shivering and gloom. Yet a great event approached.

Craake!

A single event, a thousand times weightier to the world, each time it comes, than if with one fell stroke all the kingdoms of the globe became republics and all the republics empires, so to remain a thousand years. An event a hundred times more beautiful than any other thing the eye can hope to see while in the flesh, yet it regaled the other senses, too, and blessed the universal heart.

Before this prodigious event came its little heralds sweeping across the face of night. First came a little motion of cold air--it was dead-still before; then an undefinable freshness; then a very slight but rather grateful smell from the soil of the conscious earth. Next twittered from the bush one little hesitating chirp.

Craake! went the lugubrious quail, pooh-poohing the suggestion. Then somehow rocks and forest and tents seemed less indistinct in shape; outlines peeped where masses had been.

Jug! jug! went a bird with a sweet jurgle in his deep throat. Craake! went the ill-omened one directly, disputing the last inch of nature. But a gray thrush took up the brighter view; otock otock tock! o tuee o o! o tuee oo! o chio chee! o chio chee! sang the thrush, with a decision as well as a melody that seemed to say: “Ah! but I am sure of it; I am sure, I am sure, wake up, joy! joy!”

From that moment there was no more craake. The lugubrious quail shut up in despair, perhaps in disdain,* and out gurgled another jug! jug! jug! as sweet a chuckle as Nature's sweet voice ever uttered in any land; and with that a mist like a white sheet came to light, but only for a moment, for it dared not stay to be inspected, “I know who is coming, I'm off,” and away it crept off close to the ground--and little drops of dew peeped sparkling in the frost-powdered grass.

* Like anonymous detraction before vox populi.

Yock! yock! O chio faliera po! Otock otock tock! o chio chee! o chio chee!

Jug! jug! jug! jug!

Off we go! off we go!

And now a thin red streak came into the sky, and perfume burst from the bushes, and the woods rang, not only with songs some shrill, some as sweet as honey, but with a grotesque yet beautiful electric merriment of birds that can only be heard in this land of wonders. The pen can give but a shadow of the drollery and devilry of the sweet, merry rogues that hailed the smiling morn. Ten thousand of them, each with half a dozen songs, besides chattering and talking and imitating the fiddle, the fife and the trombone. Niel gow! niel gow! niel gow! whined a leather-head. Take care o' my hat! cries a thrush, in a soft, melancholy voice; then with frightful harshness and severity, where is your bacca-box! your box! your box! then before any one could answer, in a tone that said devil may care where the box is or anything else, gyroc de doc! gyroc de doc! roc de doc! cheboc cheboc! Then came a tremendous cackle ending with an obstreperous hoo! hoo! ha! from the laughing jackass, who had caught sight of the red streak in the sky--harbinger, like himself, of morn; and the piping crows or whistling magpies modulating and humming and chanting, not like birds, but like practiced musicians with rich baritone voices, and the next moment creaking just for all the world like Punch, or barking like a pug dog. And the delicious thrush with its sweet and mellow tune. Nothing in an English wood so honey-sweet as his otock otock tock! o tuee o o! o tuee o o! o chio chee! o chio chee!

But the leather-heads beat all. Niel gow! niel gow! niel gow! off we go! off we go! off we go! followed by rapid conversations, the words unintelligible but perfectly articulate, and interspersed with the oddest chuckles, plans of pleasure for the day, no doubt. Then ri tiddle tiddle tiddle tiddle tiddle tiddle! playing a thing like a fiddle with wires; then “off we go” again, and bow! wow! wow! jug! jug! jug! jug! jug! and the whole lot in exuberant spirits, such extravagance of drollery, such rollicking jollity, evidently splitting their sides with fun, and not able to contain themselves for it.

Oh! it was twelve thousand miles above the monotonous and scanty strains of a European wood; and when the roving and laughing, and harshly demanding bacca-boxes and then as good as telling you they didn't care a feather for bacca-boxes or anything else, gyroc de doc! cheboc cheboc cheboc! and loudly announcing their immediate departure, and perching in the same place all the more and sweet, low modulations ending in putting on the steam and creaking like Punch, and then almost tumbling off the branches with laughing at the general accumulation of nonsense--when all this drollery and devilry and joy and absurdity were at their maddest, and a thousand feathered fountains bubbling song were at their highest, then came the cause of all the merry hubbub--the pinnacles of rock glowed burnished gold, Nature, that had crept from gloom to pallor, burst from pallor to light and life and burning color--the great sun's forehead came with one gallant stride into the sky--and it was day!

Out shone ten thousand tents of every size and hue and shape, from Isaac Levi's rood of white canvas down to sugar-loaves, and even to miserable roofs built on the bare ground with slips of bark, under which unlucky diggers crept at night like badgers--roofed beds--no more--the stars twinkling through chinks in the tester. The myriad tents were clustered for full five miles on each side of the river, and it wound and sparkled in and out at various distances, and shone like a mirror in the distant background.

At the first ray the tents disgorged their inmates, and the human hive began to hum; then came the fight, the maneuvering, the desperate wrestle with Nature, and the keen fencing with their fellows--in short, the battle--to which, that nothing might be wanting, out burst the tremendous artillery of ten thousand cradles louder than thunder, and roaring and crashing without a pause.

The base of the two-peaked rock that looked so silvery in the moon is now seen to be covered with manuscript advertisements posted on it; we can only read two or three as we run to our work:

“Immense reduction in eggs only one shilling each!!! Bevan's store.”

“Go-ahead library and registration office for new chums. Tom Long in the dead-horse gully.”

“If this meets the i of Tom Bowles he will ear of is pal in the iron-bark gully.”

“This is to give notice that whereas my wife Elizabeth Sutton has taken to drink and gone off with my mate Bob, I will not be answerable for your debts nor hold any communication with you in future.

“JAMES SUTTON.”

A young Jew, Nathan, issued from Levi's tent with a rough table and two or three pair of scales and other paraphernalia of a gold assayer and merchant. This was not the first mine by many the old Jew had traded in.

His first customers this morning were George and Robinson.

“Our tent was attacked last night, Mr. Levi.”

“Again? humph!”

“Tom thinks he has got enemies in the camp.”

“Humph! the young man puts himself too forward not to have enemies.”

“Well,” said George, quickly, “if he makes bitter enemies he makes warm friends.”

George then explained that his nerve and Robinson's were giving way under the repeated attacks.

“We have had a talk and we will sell the best part of our dust to you, sir. Give him the best price you can afford for Susan's sake.”

And away went George to look for his quartz river, leaving the ex-thief to make the bargain and receive the money.

In the transaction that followed Mr. Levi did not appear to great advantage. He made a little advance on the three pounds per ounce on account of the quantity, but he would not give a penny above three guineas. No! business was business; he could and would have given George a couple of hundred pounds in day of need, but in buying and selling the habits of a life could not be shaken off. Wherefore Robinson kept back eight pounds of gold-dust and sold him the rest for notes of the Sydney Bank.

“Well, sir,” said Tom, cheerfully, “now my heart is light; what we have got we can carry round our waists now by night or day. Well, friend, what do you want, poking your nose into the tent?”

Coming out suddenly he had run against a man who was in a suspicious attitude at the entrance.

“No offense,” muttered the man, “I wanted to sell a little gold-dust.”

Levi heard what Robinson said, and came quickly out.

He seated himself behind the scales.

“Where is your gold?”

The man fumbled and brought out about an ounce. All the time he weighed it, the Jew's keen eye kept glancing into his face he lowered his eyes and could not conceal a certain uneasiness. When he was gone, Levi asked Robinson whether he knew that face.

“No,” said Robinson, “I don't.”

Levi called Nathan out.

“Nathan, look at that man, follow him cautiously, and tell me where we have seen him; above all, know him again. Surely that is the face of an enemy.”

Then the old man asked himself where he had seen such an eye and brow and shambling walk as that; and he fell into a brown study and groped among many years for the clew.

“What! is Erin-go-bragh up with the sun for once?” cried Robinson to Mary McDogherty, who passed him spade on shoulder.

“Sure if she warn't she'd never keep up with Newgut,” was the instant rejoinder.

“Hem! how is your husband, Mary?”

“Och, captain, it is a true friend ye are for inquiring. Then it's tied in a knot he is.

“Mercy on us, tied in a knot?”

“Tied in a knot intirely--wid the rheumatism--and it's tin days I'm working for him and the childhre, and my heart's broke against gravel and stone intirely. I wish it was pratees we are digging, I'd maybe dig up a dinner any way.”

“There is no difficulty, the secret is to look in the right place.”

“Ay! ay! take your divairsion, ye sly rogue!--I wish ye had my five childhre.”

“Oh! you spiteful cat!”

“Well, Ede, come to sell?”

“A little.”

“What is to do out there? seems a bit of a crowd.”

“What, haven't you heard? it is your friend Jem! he has got a slice of luck, bought a hole of a stranger, saw the stuff glitter, so offered him thirty pounds; he was green and snapped at it; and if Jem didn't wash four ounces out the first cradleful I'm a Dutchman.”

“Well, I am right glad of that.”

A young digger now approached respectfully. “Police report, captain.”

“Hand it here. May I sit at your table a minute, Mr. Levi?” Mr. Levi bowed assent.

“No clew to the parties that attacked our tent last night?”

“None at present, captain, but we are all on the lookout. Some of us will be sure to hear of something, course of the day, and then I'll come and tell you. Will you read the report? There is the week's summary as well.”

“Of course I will. Mum! mum! 'Less violence on the whole this week; more petty larceny.' That is bad. I'll put it down, Mr. Levi. I am determined to put it down. What an infernal row the cradles make. What is this? 'A great flow of strangers into the camp, most thought to be honest, but some great roughs; also a good many Yankees and Germans come in at the south side.' What is this? 'A thief lynched yesterday. Flung headforemost into a hole and stuck in the clay. Not expected to live after it.' Go it, my boys! Didn't I say law is the best for all parties, thieves included? Leave it, Andrew, I will examine it with the utmost minuteness.”

The dog used fine words on these occasions, that he might pass for a pundit with his clique, and being now alone he pored over his police-sheet as solemn and stern as if the nation depended on his investigations.

A short explosion of laughter from Andrew interrupted this grave occupation. The beak looked up with offended dignity, and, in spite of a mighty effort, fell a sniggering. For following Andrew's eyes he saw two gig umbrellas gliding erect and peaceful side by side among the pits.

“What on earth are they?”

“Chinamen, captain. They are too lazy to dig. They go about all day looking at the heaps and poking all over the camp. They have got eyes like hawks. It is wonderful, I am told, what they contrive to pick up first and last. What hats! Why, one of 'm would roof a tent.”

“Hurroo!”

“What is up now?”

“Hurroo!” And up came Mary McDogherty dancing and jumping as only Irish ever jumped. She had a lump of dim metal in one hand and a glittering mass in the other. She came up to the table with a fantastic spring and spanked down the sparkling mass on it, bounding back one step like india-rubber even as she struck the table.

“There, ould gintleman, what will ye be after giving me for that? Sure the luck is come to the right colleen at last.”

“I deal but in the precious metals and stones,” replied Isaac, quietly.

“Sure, and isn't gould a precious metal?”

“Do you offer me this for gold? This is not even a metal. It is mica--yellow mica.

“Mikee?” cried Mary, ruefully, with an inquiring look.

At this juncture in ran George, hot as fire. “There!” cried he, triumphantly to Robinson, “was I right or wrong? What becomes of your gold-dust?” And he laid a nugget as big as his fist on the table.

“Ochone!” cried the Irishwoman, “they all have the luck barrin' poor Molly McDogherty.”

The mica was handled, and George said to her compassionately, “You see, my poor girl, the first thing you should do is to heft it in your hand. Now see, your lump is not heavy like--”

“Pyrites!” said Isaac, dryly, handing George back his lump. “No! pyrites is heavier than mica--and gold than pyrites.”

“Mr. Levi, don't go to tell me this is not a metal,” remonstrated George, rather sulkily, “for I won't have it.”

“Nay, it is a metal,” replied Levi, calmly, “and a very useful metal, but not of the precious metals. It is iron.”

“How can it be iron when it is yellow? And how is one to know iron from gold, at any rate?”

“Be patient, my son.” said the old Jew calmly, “and learn. Take this needle. Here is a scale of gold; take it up on the needle-point. You have done it. Why? Because gold is a soft metal. Now take up this scale from your pyrites?”

“I can't.”

“No, because iron is a hard metal. Here is another childish test--a bloodstone, called by some the touchstone. Rub the pyrites on it. It colors it not--a hard metal. Now rub this little nugget of pure gold I have just bought.”

“Ay! this stains the stone yellow.”

“A soft metal. Here in this little phial is muriatic acid. Pour a drop on my nugget. The metal defies it. Now pour on your pyrites. See how it smokes and perishes. It cannot resist the acid. There are many other tests, but little needed. No metal, no earthly substance, resembles gold in the least.”

“Not to a Jew's eye,” whispered Robinson.

“And much I marvel that any man or even any woman who has been in a gold mine and seen and handled virgin gold should take mica” (here he knocked the mica clean off the table) “or pyrites” (here he spanged that in another direction) “for the royal metal.”

“I'll tell you what to do, Mary,” began Robinson, cheerfully. “Hallo! she is crying. Here is a faint heart.”

“Och! captain dear, Pat an' me we are kilt right out for want of luck. Oh! oh! We niver found but one gould--and that was mikee. We can't fall upon luck of any sort--good, bad or indifferent--that is where I'm broke and spiled and kilt hintirely. Oh! oh! oh!”

“Don't cry. You have chosen a bad spot.”

“Captain, avick, they do be turning it up like carrots on both sides of huz. And I dig right down as if I'd go through the 'orld back to dear old Ireland again. He! he! he! oh! oh! An' I do be praying to the Virgin at every stroke of the spade, I do, and she sends us no gould at all at all, barrin' mikee, bad cess to 't. Oh!”

“That is it. You are on two wrong tacks. You dig perpendicular and pray horizontal. Now you should dig horizontal and pray perpendicular.”

“Och! captain, thim's hard words for poor Molly McDogherty to quarry through.”

“What is that in your hand?”

“Sure it is an illigant lump of lead I found,” replied poor Mary; the base metal rising in estimation since her gold turned out dross. “Ye are great with the revolver, captain,” said she, coaxingly, “ye'll be afther giving me the laste pinch of the rale stuff for it?”

Robinson took the lump. “Good heavens! what a weight!” cried he. He eyed it keenly. “Come, Mr. Levi,” cried he, “here is a find; be generous. She is unlucky.”

“I shall be just,” said the old man gravely. He weighed the lump and made a calculation on paper, then handed her forty sovereigns.

She looked at them. “Oh, now, it is mocking me ye are, old man;” and she would not take the money. On this he put it coolly down on the table.

“What is it at all?” asked she, faintly.

“Platinum,” replied Isaac, coldly.

“And a magnificent lump of it!” cried Robinson, warmly.

“Och, captain! och, captain, dear! and what is plateenum at all--if ye plaze?”

“It is not like your mica,” said Isaac. “See, it is heavier than gold, and far more precious than silver. It has noble qualities. It resists even the simple acid that dissolves gold. Fear not to take the money. I give you but your metal's value, minus the merchant's just profit. Platinum is the queen of the metals.”

“Och, captain, avick! och! och! come here till I eat you!” And she flung her arm round Robinson's neck, and bestowed a little furious kiss on him. Then she pranced away; then she pranced back. “Platinum, you are the boy; y'are the queen of the mitals. May the Lord bless you, ould gentleman, and the SAINTS BLESS YOU! and the VIRGIN MARY BLESS YOU!”* And she made at Isaac with the tears in her eyes, to kiss him; but he waved her off with calm, repulsive dignity. “Hurroo!” And the child of Nature bounded into the air like an antelope, and frisked three times; then she made another set at them. “May you live till the skirts of your coat knock your brains out, the pair of ye! hurroo!” Then with sudden demureness, “An' here's wishing you all sorts of luck, good, bad an' indifferent, my darlin's. Plateenum foriver, and gould to the Divil,” cried she, suddenly, with a sort of musical war-shout, the last words being uttered three feet high in air, and accompanied with a vague kick, utterly impossible in that position except to Irish, and intended, it is supposed, to send the obnoxious metal off the surface of the globe forever. And away she danced.

* These imprecations are printed on the ascending scale by way of endeavor to show how the speaker delivered them.

Breakfast now! and all the cradles stopped at once.

“What a delightful calm,” said Robinson, “now I can study my police-sheet at my ease.”

This morning, as he happened to be making no noise, the noise of others worried him.

“Mr. Levi, how still and peaceful they are when their time comes to grub. 'The still sow sups the kail,' as we used to say in the north; the English turn the proverb differently, they say 'The silent hog--'”

“Jabber! jabber! jabber!--aie! aie!”

“Hallo! there's a scrimmage! and there go all the fools rushing to see it. I'll go, too!”

Alas! poor human nature; the row was this. The peaceful children of the moon, whom last we saw gliding side by side, vertical and seemingly imperturbable, had yielded to the genius loci, and were engaged in bitter combat, after the manner of their nation. The gig umbrellas were resolved into their constituent parts; the umbrellas proper, or hats, lay on the ground--the sticks or men rolled over one another scratching and biting. Europe wrenched them asunder with much pain, and held them back by their tails, grinning horribly at each other, and their long claws working unamiably.

The diggers were remonstrating; their morality was shocked.

“Is that the way to fight? What are fists given us for, ye varmint?”

Robinson put himself at the head of the general sentiment. “I must do a bit of beak here!!!” cried he; “bring those two tom-cats up before me!!”

The proposal was received with acclamation. A high seat was made for the self-constituted beak, and Mr. Stevens was directed to make the Orientals think that he was the lawful magistrate of the mine. Mr. Stevens, entering into the fun, persuaded the Orientals, who were now gig umbrellas again, that Robinson was the mandarin who settled property, and possessed, among other trifles, the power of life and death. On this they took off their slippers before him, and were awestruck, and secretly wished they had not kicked up a row, still more that they had stayed quiet by the banks of the Hoang-ho.

Robinson settled himself, demanded a pipe, and smoked calm and terrible, while his myrmidons kept their countenances as well as they could. After smoking in silence a while, he demanded of the Chinese, “What was the row?”

1st Chinaman. “Jabber! jabber! jabber!”

2d Chinaman. “Jabber! jabber! jabber!”

Both. “Jabber! jabber! jabber!”

“What is that? Can't they speak any English at all?”

“No!”

“No wonder they can't conduct themselves, then,” remarked a digger.

The judge looked him into the earth for the interruption.

“You get the story from them, and tell it.”

After a conference, Mr. Stevens came forward.

“It is about a nugget of gold, which is claimed by both parties.”

Robinson. “Stop! bring that nugget into court; that is the regular course.”

Great interest began to be excited, and all their necks craned forward--when Mr. Stevens took from one of the Chinese the cause of so sanguinary a disturbance, and placed it on the judge's table. A roar of laughter followed--it was between a pea and a pin's head in magnitude.

Robinson. “You know this is shocking. Asia, I am ashamed of you. Silence in the court! Proceed with the evidence.”

Mr. Stevens. “This one saw the gold shining, and he said to the other, 'Ah!'”

Robinson (writing his notes). “Said--to--the-other--'Ah!'--Stop! what was the Chinese for 'ah'?”

Stevens. “'Ah!”

Robinson. “Oh!”

Andrew. “Come! the beggars have got hold of some of our words!”

Robinson. “Silence in the court!”

Andrew. “I ask pardon, captain.”

Stevens. “But the other pounced on it first, so they both claim it.”

Robinson. “Well! I call it a plain case.”

Stevens. “So I told them.”

Robinson. “Exactly! Which do you think ought to have it?”

Stevens. “Why, I told them we have a proverb--'Losers, seekers--finders, keepers.'”

Robinson. “Of course; and which was the finder?”

Stevens. “Oh! of course this one that--hum! Well, to be sure he only said 'ah!' he did not point. Then perhaps--but on the other hand--hum!”

Robinson. “Why, don't you see? but no!--yes! why it must be the one that--ugh! Drat you both! why couldn't one of you find it, and the other another?”

Robinson was puzzled. At last he determined that this his first judgment should satisfy both parties.

“Remove the prisoners,” said he; “are they the prisoners or the witnesses? remove them anyway, and keep them apart.”

Robinson then searched his pockets, and produced a little gold swan-shot scarce distinguishable from the Chinese. He put this on the table, and took up the other.

“Fetch in number one!”

The Chinaman came in with obeisances and misgivings; but when the judge signed to him to take up the gold, which he mistook for the cause of quarrel, his face lightened with a sacred joy--he receded, and with a polite gesture cleared a space; then, advancing one foot with large and lofty grace, he addressed the judge, whose mouth began to open with astonishment, in slow, balanced and musical sentences. This done, he retired with three flowing salaams, to which the judge replied with three little nods.

“What on earth did the beggar say? What makes you grin, Mr. Stevens?”

Stevens. “He said--click!”

Robinson. “Come! tell me first, laugh after.”

Stevens. “He said, 'May your highness flourish like a tree by the side of a stream that never overflows, yet is never dry, but glides--(click!)--even and tranquil as the tide of your prosperity--'”

Robinson. “Well, I consent!”

Stevens. “'May dogs defile the graves of your enemies! '”

Robinson. “With all my heart! provided I am not dancing over them at the time.”

Stevens. “When satiated with earthly felicity, may you be received in paradise by seventy dark-eyed houris--'”

Robinson. “Oh! my eye!”

Stevens. “Click! 'Each bearing in her hand the wine of the faithful; and may the applause of the good at your departure resemble the waves of the ocean beating musically upon rocky caverns. Thy servant, inexperienced in oratory, retires abashed at the greatness of his subject, and the insignificance of his expressions.' So then he cut his stick!”

Robinson. “A very sensible speech! Well, boys, I'm not greedy; I take the half of that offer, and give you the rest--bring in the other gentleman!”

No. 2 advanced with reverences and misgivings. Robinson placed the gold on the table and assigned it to him. A sacred joy illumined him, and he was about to retire with deep obeisances.

“Where is his speech?” cried the judge ruefuly.

Stevens explained to him that the other had returned thanks. On this No. 2 smiled assentingly, and advancing delivered the following sentences:

“Your slave lay writhing in adversity, despoiled by the unprincipled. He was a gourd withered by the noonday sun, until your virtues descended like the dew, and refreshed him with your justice and benignity.

“Wherefore hear now the benediction of him whom your clemency has raised from despair.

“May your shadow increase and cover many lands. May your offspring be a nation dwelling in palaces with golden roofs and walls of ivory, and on the terraces may peacocks be as plentiful as sparrows are to the undeserving. May you live many centuries shining as you now shine; and at your setting may rivulets of ink dug by the pens of poets flow through meadows of paper in praise of the virtues that embellish you here on earth. Sing-tu-Che, a person of small note but devoted to your service, wishes these frivolous advantages to the Pearl of the West, on whom be honor.”

Chorus of diggers. “My eye!”

Robinson rose with much gravity and delivered himself thus:

“Sing-tu-Che, you are a trump, an orator, and a humbug. All the better for you. May felicity attend you. Heichster guchster--honi soit qui mal y pense--donner und blitzen--tempora mutantur--O mia cara and pax vobiscum. The court is dissolved.”

It was, and I regret to add that Judge Robinson's concluding sentences raised him greatly in the opinion of the miners.

“Captain knows a thing or two.”

“If ever we send one to parliament that is the man.”

“Halo! you fellows, come here! come here!”

A rush was made toward Jem, who was roaring and gesticulating at Mr. Levi's table. When they came up they found Jem black and white with rage, and Mr. Levi seated in calm indifference.

“What is it?” asked Robinson.

“The merchant refuses my gold.”

“I refuse no man's gold,” objected Levi coolly, “but this stuff is not gold.”

“Not gold-dust,” cried a miner; and they all looked with wonder at the rejected merchandise.

Mr. Levi took the dust and poured it out from one hand to the other; he separated the particles and named them by some mighty instinct.

“Brass--or-molu--gilt platinum to give it weight; this is from Birmingham, not from Australia, nor nature.”

“Such as it is it cost me thirty pounds,” cried Jem. “Keep it. I shall find him. My spade shall never go into the earth again till I'm quits with this one.”

“That is right,” roared the men, “bring him to us, and the captain shall sit in judgment again;” and the men's countenances were gloomy, for this was a new roguery and struck at the very root of gold digging.

“I'll put it down, Mr. Levi,” said Robinson, after the others had gone to their work; “here is a new dodge, Brummagem planted on us so far from home. I will pull it down with a tenpenny cord but I'll end it.”

Crash! went ten thousand cradles; the mine had breakfasted. I wish I could give the European reader an idea of the magnitude of this sound whose cause was so humble. I must draw on nature for a comparison.

Did you ever stand upon a rocky shore at evening when a great storm has suddenly gone down, leaving the waves about as high as they were while it raged? Then there is no roaring wind to dull the clamor of the tremendous sea as it lashes the long re-bellowing shore. Such was the sound of ten thousand cradles; yet the sound of each one was insignificant. Hence an observation and a reflection--the latter I dedicate to the lovers of antiquity--that multiplying sound, magnifies it in a way science has not yet accounted for; and that, though men are all dwarfs, Napoleon included, man is a giant.

The works of man are so prodigious they contradict all we see of any individual's powers; and even so when you had seen and heard one man rock one cradle, it was all the harder to believe that a few thousand of them could rival thunder, avalanches, and the angry sea lashing the long reechoing shore at night. These miserable wooden cradles lost their real character when combined in one mighty human effort; it seemed as if giant labor had stretched forth an arm huge as an arm of the sea and rocked one enormous engine, whose sides where these great primeval rocks, and its mouth a thundering sea.

Crash! from meal to meal!

The more was Robinson surprised when, full an hour before dinner-time, this mighty noise all of a sudden became feebler and feebler, and presently human cries of a strange character made their way to his ear through the wooden thunder.

“What on earth is up now?” thought he--“an earthquake?”

Presently he saw at about half a mile off a vast crowd of miners making toward him in tremendous excitement. They came on, swelled every moment by fresh faces, and cries of vengeance and excitement were now heard, which the wild and savage aspect of the men rendered truly terrible. At last he saw and comprehended all at a glance.

There were Jem and two others dragging a man along whose white face and knocking knees betrayed his guilt and his terror. Robinson knew him directly; it was Walker, who had been the decoy-duck the night his tent was robbed.

“Here is the captain! Hurrah! I've got him, captain. This is the beggar that peppered the hole for me, and now we will pepper him!”

A fierce burst of exultation from the crowd. They thirsted for revenge. Jem had caught the man at the other end of the camp, and his offense was known by this time to half the mine.

“Proceed regularly, Jem,” said Robinson. “Don't condemn the man unheard.”

“Oh, no! He shall be tried, and you shall be the judge.”

“I consent,” said Robinson, somewhat pompously.

Then arose a cry that made him reflect.

“Lynch! Lynch! a seat for Judge Lynch!” and in a moment a judgment-seat was built with cradles, and he was set on high, with six strange faces scowling round him for one of his own clique. He determined to back out of the whole thing.

“No, no!” cried he; “that is impossible. I cannot be a judge in such a serious matter.”

“Why not?” roared several voices.

“Why not? Because I am not a regular beak; because I have not got authority from the Crown.”

There was a howl of derision.

“We give you authority!”

“We order you to be judge!”

“We are King, Lords, and Commons!”

“Do what we bid you, or,” added a stranger, “we will hang you and the prisoner with one rope!”

Grim assent of the surrounding faces; Robinson sat down on the judgment-seat not a little discomposed.

“Now then,” remonstrated one; “what are you waiting for? Name the jury.”

“Me!” “Me!” “Me!” “I!” “I!” “I!” and there was a rush for the office.

“Keep cool,” replied another. “Lynch law goes quick, but it goes by rule. Judge, name the jury.”

Robinson, a man whose wits seldom deserted him, at once determined to lead, since he could not resist. He said with dignity: “I shall choose one juryman from each of the different countries that are working in this mine, that no nation may seem to be slighted, for this gold belongs to all the world.”

“Hurrah! Well done, judge. Three cheers for Judge Lynch!”

“When I call a country, give me a name, which I will inscribe on my report of the proceedings. I want a currency lad first.”

“Here is one. William Parker.”

“Pass over. France.”

“Present. Pierre Chanot.”

“Germany.”

“Here. Hans Muller.”

“Holland.”

“Here. Jan Van der Stegen.”

Spain and Italy were called, but no reply. Asleep, I take it.

“United States.”

“Here. Nathan Tucker.”

Here Robinson, casting his eyes round, spied McLaughlan, and, being minded to dilute the severity of his jury, he cried out, “Scotland. McLaughlan, you shall represent her.”

No answer.

“McLaughlan,” cried several voices, “where are ye? Don't you hear Judge Lynch speak to you?”

“Come, McLaughlan, come over; you are a respectable man.”

Mr. McLaughlan intimated briefly in his native dialect that he was, and intended to remain so; by way of comment on which he made a bolt from the judgment-hall, but was rudely seized and dragged before the judge.

“For Heaven's sake, don't be a fool, McLaughlan. No man must refuse to be a juryman in a trial by lynch. I saw a Quaker stoned to death for it in California.”

“I guess I was thyar,” said a voice behind the judge, who shifted uneasily.

McLaughlan went into the jury-box with a meaning look at Robinson, but without another audible word.

“Mercy! mercy!” cried Walker.

“You must not interrupt the proceedings,” said Judge Lynch.

“Haud your whist, ye gowk. Ye are no fand guilty yet,” remonstrated a juror.

The jury being formed, the judge called the plaintiff.

“The man sold me a claim for thirty pound. I gave him the blunt because I saw the stuff was glittery. Well, I worked it, and I found it work rather easy, that is a fact.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” roared the crowd, but with a horrible laughter, no placability in it.

“Well, I found lots of dust, and I took it to the merchant, and he says it is none of it gold. That is my tale.”

“Have you any witnesses?”

“I don't know. Yes, the nigger; he saw it. Here, Jacky, come and tell them.”

Jacky was thrust forward, but was interrupted by McLaughlan as soon as he opened his mouth. The Scottish juror declined to receive evidence but upon oath. The judge allowed the objection.

“Swear him in, then,” cried a hundred voices.

“Swear?” inquired Jacky, innocently.

Another brutal roar of laughter followed.

Jacky was offended.

“What for you laugh, you stupid fellows? I not a common black fellow. I been to Sydney and learn all the white man knows. Jacky will swear,” added he.

“Left your hond,” cried McLaughlan. “It is no swearing if you dinna left your hond.”

“Dat so stupid,” said Jacky, lifting his hand peevishly. This done, he delivered his evidence thus: “Damme I saw dis fellow sell dirt to dis fellow, and damme I saw dis fellow find a good deal gold, and damme I heard him say dis is a dam good job, and den damme he put down his spade and go to sell, and directly he come back and say damme I am done!”

“Aweel,” said McLaughlan; “we jaast refuse yon lad's evidence, the deevelich heathen.”

A threatening murmur.

“Silence! Hear the defendant.”

Walker, trembling like an aspen, owned to having sold the claim, but denied that the dust was false. “This is what I dug out of it,” said he; and he produced a small pinch of dust.

“Hand it to me,” said the judge. “It seems genuine.”

“Put it to the test. Call the merchant for a witness,” cried another.

A party ran instantly for Levi. He refused to come. They dragged him with fearful menaces.

“A test, old man; a test of gold!”

The old Jew cast his eyes around, took in the whole scene, and with a courage few of the younger ones would have shown, defied that wild mob.

“I will give you no test. I wash my hands of your mad passions, and your mockeries of justice, men of Belial!”

A moment's silence and wonder, a yell of rage, and a dozen knives in the air.

The judge rose hastily, and in a terrible voice that governed the tumult for an instant said: “Down knives! I hang the first man that uses one in my court.” And during the momentary pause that followed this he cried out: “He has given me a test. Run and fetch me the bottle of acid on his table.”

“Hurrah! Judge Lynch forever!” was now the cry, and in a minute the bottle was thrust into the judge's hand.

“Young man,” said Isaac solemnly, “do not pour, lest Heaven bring your soul to as keen a test one day. Who are you that judge your brother?”

Judge Lynch trembled visibly as the reverend man rebuked him thus, but, fearing Isaac would go farther and pay the forfeit of his boldness, he said calmly: “Friends, remove the old man from the court, but use respect. He is an aged man.”

Isaac was removed. The judge took the bottle and poured a drop on that small pinch of dust the man had last given him.

No effect followed.

“I pronounce this to be gold.”

“There,” put in McLaughlan, “ye see the lad was no deceiving ye; is it his fault if a' the gowd is no the same?”

“No!” whimpered Walker, eagerly, and the crowd began to whisper and allow he might be innocent.

The man standing behind the judge said, with a cold sneer: “That is the stuff he did not sell--now pour on the stuff he sold.”

These words brought back the prejudice against the prisoner, and a hundred voices shouted, “Pour!” while their eyes gleamed with a terrible curiosity.

Judge Lynch, awestruck by this terrible roar, now felt what it is to be a judge; he trembled and hesitated.

“Pour!” roared the crowd, still louder and more fiercely.

McLaughlan read the judge's feeling, and whimpered out, “Let it fa', lad--let it fa'!”

“If he does our knives fall on him and you. Pour!”

Robinson poured. All their fierce eyes were fixed on the experiment. He meant to pour a drop or two, but the man behind him jogged his arm, and half the acid in the bottle fell upon Walker's dust.

A quantity of smoke rose from it, and the particles fizzed and bubbled under the terrible test.

“Trash! a rope--no! dig a hole and bury him--no! fling him off the rock into the water.”

“Silence!” roared Robinson, “I am the judge, and it is for me to pronounce the verdict.”

“Silence! hear Judge Lynch!” Silence was not obtained for five minutes, during which the court was like a forest of wild beasts howling.

“I condemn him to be exposed all day, with his dust tied round his neck, and then drummed out of the camp.”

This verdict was received first with a yell of derisive laughter, then with a roar of rage.

“Down with the judge!”

“We are the judges!”

“To the rock with him!”

“Ay, to the rock with him.”

With this, an all-overpowering rush was made, and Walker was carried off up the rock in the middle of five hundred infuriated men.

The poor wretch cried, “Mercy! mercy!”

“Justice! dog,” was the roar in reply. The raging crowd went bellowing up the rock like a wave, and gained a natural platform forty feet above the great deep pool that lay dark and calm below. At the sight of it, the poor wretch screamed to wake the dead, but the roars and yells of vengeance drowned his voice.

“Put his dust in his pocket,” cried one, crueler than the rest.

Their thirst of vengeance was too hot to wait for this diabolical proposal; in a moment four of them had him by the shoulders and heels; another moment and the man was flung from the rock, uttering a terrible death-cry in the very air; then down his body fell like lead, and struck with a tremendous plunge the deep water that splashed up a moment, then closed and bubbled over it.

From that moment the crowd roared no longer, but buzzed and murmured, and looked down upon their work half stupidly.

“Hush!”

“What is that?”

“It is his head!”

“He is up again!”

“Can he swim?”

“Fling stones on him.”

“No! Let him alone, or we'll fling you atop of him.”

“He is up, but he can't swim. He is only struggling! he is down again!”

He was down, but only for a moment; then he appeared again choking and gurgling.

“Mercy! mercy!”

“Justice, thieving dog!” was the appalling answer.

“Save me! save me! Oh, save me! save me!”

“Save yourself! if you are worth it!” was the savage reply.

The drowning, despairing man's head was sinking again, his strength exhausted by his idle struggles, when suddenly on his left hand he saw a round piece of rock scarce a yard from him. He made a desperate effort and got his hand on it. Alas! it was so slimy he could not hold by it; he fell off it into the water; he struggled up again, tried to dig his feet into the rock, but, after a convulsive fling of a few seconds, fell back--the slimy rock mocked his grasp. He came up again and clung, and cried piteously for help and mercy. There was none!--but a grim silence and looks of horrible curiosity at his idle struggles. His crime had struck at the very root of their hearts and lives. Then this poor, cowardly wretch made up his mind that he must die. He gave up praying to the pitiless, who could look down and laugh at his death-agony, and he cried upon the absent only. “My children! my wife! my poor Jenny!” and with this he shut his eyes, and, struggling no more, sank quietly down! down! down. First his shoulders disappeared, then his chin, then his eyes, and then his hair. Who can fathom human nature? that sad, despairing cry, which was not addressed to them, knocked at the bosoms that all his prayers to them for pity had never touched. A hasty, low and uneasy murmur followed it almost as a report follows a flash.

“His wife and children!” cried several voices with surprise; but there were two men this cry not only touched, but pierced--the plaintiff and the judge.

“The man has got a wife and children,” cried Jem in dismay, as he tried to descend the rock by means of some diminutive steps. “They never offended me--he is gone down, ---- me if I see the man drowned like a rat--Hallo!--Splash!”

Jem's foot had slipped, and, as he felt he must go, he jumped right out, and fell twenty feet into the water.

At this the crowd roared with laughter, and now was the first shade of good-nature mixed with the guffaw. Jem fell so near Walker that on coming up he clutched the drowning man's head and dragged him up once more from death. At the sight of Walker's face above water again, what did the crowd, think you?

They burst into a loud hurrah! and cheered Jem till the echoes rang again.

“Hurrah! Bravo! Hurrah!” pealed the fickle crowd.

Now Walker no sooner felt himself clutched than he clutched in return with the deadly grasp of a drowning man. Jem struggled to get free in vain. Walker could not hear or see, he was past all that; but he could cling, and he got Jem round the arms and pinned them. After a few convulsive efforts Jem gave a loud groan. He then said quietly to the spectators, “He will drown me in another half minute.” But at this critical moment out came from the other extremity of the pool Judge Lynch, swimming with a long rope in his hand; one end of this rope he had made into a bight ere he took the water. He swam behind Walker and Jem, whipped the noose over their heads and tightened it under their shoulders. “Haul!” cried he to Ede, who held the other end of the rope. Ede hauled, and down went the two heads.

A groan of terror and pity from the mob--their feelings were reversed.

“Haul quick, Ede,” shouted Robinson, “or you will drown them, man alive.”

Ede hauled hand over hand, and a train of bubbles was seen making all across the pool toward him. And the next moment two dripping heads came up to hand close together, like cherries on a stalk; and now a dozen hands were at the rope, and the plaintiff and defendant were lifted bodily up on to the flat rock, which came nearly to the water's edge on this side the pool.

“Augh! augh! augh! augh!” gasped Jem.

Walker said nothing. He lay white and motionless, water trickling from his mouth, nose and ears.

Robinson swam quietly ashore. The rocks thundered with cheers over his head.

The next moment, “the many-headed beast” remembered that all this was a waste of time, and bolted underground like a rabbit, and dug and pecked for the bare life with but one thought left, and that was GOLD.

“How are you, Jem?”

“Oh, captain, oh!” gasped poor Jem, “I am choked--I am dead--I am poisoned--why, I'm full of water; bring this other beggar to my tent, and we will take a nanny-goat together.”

So Jem was taken off hanging his head, and deadly sick, supported by two friends, and Walker was carried to the same tent, and stripped and rubbed and rolled up in a blanket; and lots of brandy poured down him and Jem, to counteract the poison they had swallowed.

Robinson went to Mr. Levi, to see if he would lend him a suit, while he got his own dried. The old Jew received my lord judge with a low, ironical bow, and sent Nathan to borrow the suit from another Israelite. He then lectured my lord Lynch.

“Learn from this, young man, how easy it is to set a stone rolling down hill, how hard to stop it half-way down. Law must always be above the mob, or it cannot be law. If it fall into their hands it goes down to their own level and becomes revenge, passion, cruelty, anything but--law. The madmen! they have lost two thousand ounces of gold--to themselves and to the world, while they have been wasting their time and risking their souls over a pound of brass, and aspiring to play the judge and the executioner, and playing nothing but the brute and the fool--as in the days of old.”

Mr. Levi concluded by intimating that there was very little common sense left upon earth, and that little it would be lost time to search for among the Gentiles. Finally his discourse galled Judge Lynch, who thereupon resolved to turn the laugh against him.

“Mr. Levi,” said he, “I see you know a thing or two. Will you be so good as to answer me a question?”

“If it come within my knowledge,” replied the senior, with grave politeness.

“Which weighs the heaviest, sir, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?” and he winked at Nathan, but looked in Isaac's face as demure as a Quakeress.

“A pound of feathers,” replied Isaac.

Robinson looked half puzzled, half satirical.

“A childish question,” said Isaac sternly. “What boy knows not that feathers are weighed by Avoirdupois, and gold by Troy weight, and consequently that a pound of feathers weighs sixteen ounces, and a pound of gold but twelve?”

“Well, that is a new answer,” cried Robinson. “Good-by, sir, you are too hard for me;” and he made off to his own tent. It was a day of defeats.

The moment he was out of hearing, Isaac laughed. The only time he had done it during six years. And what a laugh! How, sublimely devoid of merriment! a sudden loud cackle of three distinct cachinni not declining into a chuckle, as we do, but ending sharp in abrupt and severe gravity.

“I discomfited the young man, Nathan--I mightily discomfited him. Ha! ha! ho! Nathan, did you as I bade you?”

“Yes, master, I found the man, and I sent Samuel, who went hastily to him and cried out, 'Mr. Meadows is in the camp and wishes to speak to you.' Master, he started up in wonder, and his whole face changed; without doubt he is the man you suspected.”

“Yes,” said Isaac, reflecting deeply. “The man is Peter Crawley; and what does he here? Some deep villainy lies at the bottom of this; but I will fathom it, ay, and thwart it, I swear by the God of Abraham. Let me think awhile in my tent. Sit you at the receipt of gold.”

The old man sat upon a divan in his tent, and pondered on all that had happened in the mine; above all, on the repeated attacks that had been made on that one tent.

He remembered, too, that George had said sorrowfully to him more than once: “No letters for me, Mr. Levi, no letter again this month!” The shrewd old man tied these two threads together directly.

“All these things are one,” said Isaac Levi.

Thus pondering, and patiently following out his threads, the old man paced a mile down the camp to the post-office, for he had heard the postman's horn, and he expected important letters from England, from his friend and agent at Farnborough, Old Cohen.

There were letters from England, but none in old Cohen's hand. He put them in his bosom with a disappointed look, and paced slowly, and deeply pondering, back toward his tent. He was about half way, when, much to his surprise, a stone fell close to him. He took, however, no notice, did not even accelerate his pace or look round; but the next moment a lump of clay struck him on the arm. He turned round, quivering with rage at the insult, and then he saw a whole band of diggers behind him, who the moment he turned his face began to hoot and pelt him.

“Who got poor Walker drowned? Ah! ah! ah!”

“Who refused to give evidence before Judge Lynch?” cried another, “Ah! ah! ah!”

There were clearly two parties in the mob.

“Down with the Jew--the blood-sucker. We do all the work, and he gets all the profit. Ah! ah! ah!”

And a lump of clay struck that reverend head and almost stunned the poor old man. He sunk upon his knees, and in a moment his coat was torn to shreds, but with unexpected activity he wriggled himself free and drew a dagger long, bright, and sharp as a needle. His assailants recoiled a moment. The next a voice was heard from behind, “Get on both sides of him at once!”

Isaac looked and saw Peter Crawley. Then the old man trembled for his life, and cried, “Help! help!” and they hemmed him in and knocked his dagger out of his hand, and hustled and pommeled him, and would have torn him in pieces, but he slipped down, and two of them got in front and dragged him along the ground.

“To Walker's pool,” cried brutus, putting himself at the head of those who followed.

All of a sudden Isaac, though half insensible, heard a roar of rage that seemed to come from a lion--a whiz, a blow like a thunder-clap--saw one of his assassins driven into the air and falling like a dead clod three yards off, found himself dropped and a man striding over him. It was George Fielding, who stood a single moment snorting and blowing out his cheeks with rage, then went slap at the mob as a lion goes at sheep; seized one of the small ruffians by the knees, and, by a tremendous effect of strength and rage, actually used him as a flail, and struck brutus with the man's head, and knocked that ruffian down stunned, and his nose leveled with his cheeks. The mob recoiled a moment from this one hero. George knew it could be but for a moment, so he had no sooner felled brutus, and hurled the other's carcass in their faces, than he pounced on Isaac, whipped him on his back and ran off with him.

He had got thirty yards with him ere the staggered mob could realize it all.

The mob recovered their surprise, and with a yell like a pack of hounds bursting covert dashed after the pair. The young Hercules made a wonderful effort, but no mortal man could run very fast so weighted. In spite of his start they caught him in about a hundred yards. He heard them close upon him--put the Jew down--and whispered hastily, “Run to your tent,” and instantly wheeled round and flung himself at thirty men. He struck two blows and disabled a couple; the rest came upon him like one battering-ram and bore him to the ground; but even as he went down he caught the nearest assailant by the throat and they rolled over one another, the rest kicking savagely at George's head and loins. The poor fellow defended his head with one arm and his assailant's body for a little while, but he received some terrible kicks on the back and legs.

“Give it him on the head!”

“Kick his life out!”

“Settle his hash!”

They were so fiercely intent on finishing George that they did not observe a danger that menaced themselves.

As a round shot cuts a lane through a column of infantry, so clean came two files of special constables with their short staves severing the mob in two--crick, crack, crick, crick, crick, crick, crack, crack. In three seconds ten heads were broken, with a sound just like glass bottles, under the short, deadly truncheon, and there lay half a dozen ruffians writhing on the ground and beating the Devil's tattoo with their heels.

“Charge back!” cried the head-policeman as soon as he had cut clean through.

But at the very word the cowardly crew fled on all sides yelling. The police followed in different directions a little way, and through this error three of the felled got up and ran staggering off. When the head-policeman saw that he cried out:

“Back, and secure prisoners.”

They caught three who were too stupefied to run, and rescued brutus from George, who had got him by the throat and was hammering the ground with his head.

“Let go, George,” cried Policeman Robinson, in some anxiety, “you are killing the man.”

“Oh, I don't want to kill him neither,” said George.

And he slowly withdrew his grasp, and left off hammering with the rascal's head, but looked at him as if he would have preferred to have gone on a little longer. They captured the three others.

“Now secure them,” cried Ede. “Out with your wipes.”

“There is no need of wipes,” said Robinson.

He then, with a slight blush, and rather avoiding George's eye, put his hand in his pockets and produced four beautiful sets of handcuffs, bran new, polished to the fine. With a magical turn of the hand he handcuffed the three men, still avoiding George's eye. Unnecessary. George's sense of humor was very faint, and so was his sweetheart's--a sad defect.

Perhaps I may as well explain here how Robinson came so opportunely to the rescue. The fact is, that a week ago he had ordered a lot of constables' staves and four sets of handcuffs. The staves were nicely painted, lettered “Captain Robinson's Police, A, B, C,” etc. They had just come home, and Robinson was showing them to Ede and his gang, when a hullabaloo was heard, and Levi was seen full half a mile off being hunted. Such an opportunity of trying the new staves was not to be neglected. Ede and his men jumped out of their claim and ran with Robinson to the rescue. But they would have been too late if George, who had just come into the camp at that very part, had not made his noble and desperate assault and retreat, which baffled the assailants for two precious minutes.

Robinson. “What shall we do with them now we have got them?”

George. “Give them a kick apiece on their behinds, and let them go--the rubbish.”

Robinson. “Not if I know it.”

Ede. “I say blackguard 'em.”

Robinson. “No, that would be letting ourselves down to their level. No, we will expose them as we did my old pal here before.”

Ede. “Why that is what I mean. Ticket them--put a black card on them with their offense wrote out large.”

No sooner said than done. All four were tied to posts in the sun, and black-carded, or, as some spell it, placarded, thus:

COWARD. Attacked and abused an old man. >N. B.--Not hanged this time because they got a licking then and there.

“Let us go and see after Mr. Levi, George.”

“Well, Tom, I had rather not.”

“Why not? he ought to be very much obliged to you.”

“That is it, Tom. The old man is of rather a grateful turn of mind--and it is ten to one if he doesn't go and begin praising me to my face--and then that makes me--I don't know which way to look. Wait till he has cooled upon it a bit.”

“You are a rum one. Well, George, I have got one proposal you won't say no to. First, I must tell you there is really a river of quartz in the country.”

“Didn't I tell you?”

“Yes, and I didn't believe it. But I have spoken to Jacky about it, and he has seen it; it is on the other side of the bush. I am ready to start for it to-morrow, for there is little good to be done here now the weather has broken.”

George assented with joy; but, when Robinson suggested that Jacky would be very useful to pilot them through the bush, his countenance fell.

“Don't think of it,” said he. “I know he is here, Tom, and I shan't go after him. But don't let him come near me, the nasty little, creeping, murdering varmint. Poor Abner will never get over his tomahawk--not if he lives fifty years.”

In short, it was agreed they should go alone at peep of day.

“I have talked it over with Jem already, and he will take charge of our tent till we come back.”

“So be it.”

“We must take some provisions with us, George.”

“I'll go and get some cold meat and bread, Tom.”

“Do. I'm going to the tent.”

Robinson, it is to be observed, had not been in his tent since George and he left it and took their gold out of it just before sunrise. As he now carried their joint wealth about his person, his anxiety was transferred.

Now at the door of the tent he was intercepted by Jem, very red in the face, partly with brandy, partly with rage. Walker, whose life he had saved, whom he had taken to his own tent, and whom Robinson had seen lying asleep in the best blanket, this Walker had absconded with his boots and half a pound of tobacco.

“Well, but you knew he was a rogue. Why did you leave him alone in your tent?”

“I only left him for a minute to go a few steps with you if you remember, and you said yourself he was asleep. Well, the moment our backs were turned he must have got up and done the trick.”

“I don't, like it,” said Robinson.

“No more don't I,” said Jem.

“If he was not asleep, he must have heard me say I was going to cross the bush with my mate to-morrow at daybreak.”

“Well! and what if he did?”

“He is like enough to have gone and told the whole gang.”

“And what if he has?”

Robinson was about to explain to Jem. that he now carried all the joint gold in his pocket, but he forbore. “It is too great a stake for me to trust anybody unless I am forced,” thought he. So he only said: “Well, it is best to be prudent. I shall change the hour for starting.”

“You are a cunning one, captain, but I really think you are overcareful sometimes.”

“Jem,” said the other gravely, “there is a mystery in this mine. There is a black gang in it, and that Walker is one of them. I think they have sworn to have my gold or my life, and they shan't have either if I can help it. I shall start two hours before the sun.”

He was quite right; Walker had been shamming sleep, and full four hours ago he had told his confederates as a matter of course all that he had heard in the enemy's camp.

Walker, a timid villain, was unprepared for the burst of savage exultation from brutus and Black Will that followed this intelligence. These two, by an instinct quick as lightning, saw the means of gratifying at one blow their cupidity and hate. Crawley had already told them he had seen Robinson come out of Levi's tent after a long stay, and their other spies had told them his own tent had been left unguarded for hours. They put these things together and conjectured at once that the men had now their swag about them in one form or other.

“When do they go?”

“To-morrow at break of day,” he said.

“The bush is very thick!”

“And dark, too!”

“It is just the place for a job.”

“Will two of you be enough?”

“Plenty, the way we shall work.”

“The men are strong and armed.”

“Their strength will be no use to them, and they shan't get time to use their arms.”

“For Heaven's sake, shed no blood unnecessarily,” said Crawley, beginning to tremble at the pool of crime to whose brink he had led these men.

“Do you think they will give up their swag while they are alive?” asked brutus, scornfully.

“Then I wash my hands of it all,” cried the little self-deceiving caitiff; and he affected to have nothing to do with it.

Walker was then thanked for his information, and he thought this was a good opportunity for complaining of his wrongs and demanding redress. This fellow was a thorough egotist, saw everything from his own point of view only.

Jem had dragged him before Judge Robinson; Robinson had played the beak and found him guilty; Levi had furnished the test on which he had been convicted. All these had therefore cruelly injured and nearly killed him.

Himself was not the cause. He had not set all these stones rolling by forging upon nature and robbing Jem of thirty pounds. No! he could not see that, nor did he thank Jem one bit for jumping in and saving his life at risk of his own. “Why did he ever get him thrown in, the brute? If he was not quite drowned he was nearly, and Jem the cause.”

His confederates soothed him with promises of vengeance on all their three his enemies, and soon after catching sight of one of them, Levi, they kept their word; they roused up some of the other diggers against Isaac on the plea that he had refused to give evidence against Walker, and so they launched a mob and trusted to mob nature for the rest. The recoil of this superfluous villainy was, as often happens, a blow to the head scheme.

brutus, who was wanted at peep of day for the dark scheme already hinted at, got terribly battered by George Fielding, and placarded, and, what was worse, chained to a post, by Robinson and Ede. It became necessary to sound his body and spirit.

One of the gang was sent by Crawley to inquire whether he felt strong enough to go with Black Will on that difficult and dangerous work to-morrow. The question put in a passing whisper was answered in a whisper.

“I am as strong as a lion for revenge. Tell them I would not miss to-morrow's work for all the gold in Australia.”

The lowering face spoke loud enough if the mouth whispered.

The message was brought back to Black Will and Crawley.

“What energy!” said Crawley, admiringly.

“Ay!” said Black Will, “that is your sort; give me a pal with his skin smarting and his bones aching for the sort of job that wood shall see to-morrow. Have they marked him?” he inquired, with a strange curiosity.

“I am afraid they have; his nose is smashed frightful.”

“I am glad of it; now we are brothers and will have blood for blood.”

“Your expressions are dreadfully terse,” said Crawley, trying to smile, but looking scared instead; “but I don't understand your remark; you were not in the late unsuccessful attack on Mr. Levi, and you escaped most providentially in the night business--the men have not marked you, my good friend.”

“Haven't they?” yelled the man, with a tremendous oath--“haven't they? LOOK HERE!” A glance was enough. Crawley turned wan and shuddered from head to foot.

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Chapter LXVI

WE left Robinson and Jem talking at the entrance to the tent.

“Come in,” said Robinson. “You will take care of this tent while we are gone.”

Jem promised faithfully.

He then asked Robinson to explain to him the dodge of the gut-lines. Robinson showed him, and how the bells were rung at his head by the thief's foot.

Jem complimented him highly.

Robinson smiled, but the next moment sighed. “They will be too clever for us some of these dark nights--see how nearly they have nicked us again and again!”

“Don't be down on your luck, captain!”

“Jem, what frightens me is the villains getting off so; there they are to try again, and next time the luck will be theirs--it can't be always ours--why should it? Jem, there was a man in my tent last night.”

“There is no denying that, captain.”

“Well, Jem, I can't get it off my heart that I was to kill that man, or he me. Everything was on my side. I had my gut-lines, and I had a revolver and a cutlass--and I took up the cutlass like a fool; if I had taken up the revolver the man would be dead. I took up the wrong, and that man will be my death. The cards never forgive! I had the odd trick, and didn't take it--I shall lose the game.”

“No, ye shan't,” cried Jem, hastily. “What if the man got clear for the moment, we will hunt him out for you. You give me his description.”

“I couldn't,” said Robinson, despondingly. “It was so dark! Here is his pistol, but that is no use. If I had but a clew, ay, ever so slight, I'd follow it up; but no, there is none. Hallo, what is the matter! What is it? what on earth is the man looking at like that?”

“What was you asking for?” stammered Jem. “Wasn't it a clew?”

“Yes.”

Robinson got up and came to Jem, who was standing with dilated eyes looking at the ground in the very corner of the tent. He followed the direction of Jem's eyes, and was instantly transfixed with curiosity and rising horror.

“Take it up, Jem,” he gasped.

“No, you take it up! it was you who--”

“No--yes! there is George's voice. I wouldn't let him see such a thing for the world. Oh, God! here is another.”

“Another?”

“Yes, in the long grass! and there is George's voice.”

“Come out, Jem. Not a word to George for the world. I want to talk to you. If it hasn't turned me sick! I should make a poor hangman. But it was in self-defense, thank Heaven for that!”

“Where are you going in such a hurry, Tom?” said George.

“Oh, only a little way with Jem.”

“Don't be long, it is getting late.”

“No, George!”

“Jem, this is an ugly job!”

“An ugly job, no! ---- him, I wish it was his head. Give them me, captain.”

“What, will you take charge of them?”

“That I will, captain, and what is more I'll find your enemy out by them, and--when you come back he shall be in custody--waiting your orders. Give them me.”

“Yes, take them. Oh, but I am glad to be rid of them. What a ghastly look they have.”

“I don't care for their looks. I am right glad to see them--they are a clew and no mistake. Keep dark to-night. Don't tell this to Ede--he is a good fellow but chatters too much--let me work it out. I'll find the late owner double quick,” said Jem, with a somewhat brutal laugh.

“Your orders about the prisoners, captain?” cried Ede, coming up.

Robinson reflected.

“Turn them all loose--but one.”

“And what shall I do with him?”

“Hum! Put a post up in your own tent.”

“Yes.”

“Tie him to it in his handcuffs. Give him food enough.”

“And when shall we loose him?”

“At noon, to-morrow.”

“It shall be done! but you must come and show me which of the four it is.”

Robinson went with Ede and his men.

“Turn this one loose,” said he; it was done on the instant.

“And this.”

“And this.”

“And” (laying his finger on brutus) “keep this one prisoner in your tent, handcuffed and chained, till noon to-morrow.”

At the touch, brutus trembled with hate; at the order, his countenance fell like Cain's.

Full two hours before sunrise the patrol called Robinson by his own order, and the friends made for the bush, with a day's provision and their blankets, their picks, and their revolvers. When they arrived at the edge of the bush, Robinson halted and looked round to see if they were followed. The night was pretty clear; no one was in sight. The men struck rapidly into the bush, which at this part had been cut and cleared in places, lying as it did so near a mine.

“What, are we to run, Tom?”

“Yes! I want to get to the river of quartz as soon as possible,” was the dry answer.

“With all my heart.”

After running about half a mile, George pulled up, and they walked.

“What do you keep looking behind for, Tom?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“You fidget me, Tom!”

“Can't help it. I shall be like that till daylight. They have shaken my nerves among them.”

“Don't give way to such nonsense. What are you afraid of?”

“I am not afraid of anything. Come, George, another run.”

“Oh, as you like. This beats all.”

This run brought them to the end of the broad road, and they found two smaller paths; after some hesitation, Robinson took the left-hand one, and it landed them in such a terribly thick scrub they could hardly move. They forced their way through it, getting some frightful scratches, but after struggling with it for a good half hour, began to fear it was impenetrable and interminable, when the sun rising showed them a clear space some yards ahead. They burst through the remainder of the scrub, and came out upon an old clearing full a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad. They gave a hurrah at the sight of it, but when they came to walk on it the ground was clay and so sticky with a late shower that they were like flies moving upon varnish, and at last were fain to take off their shoes and stockings and run over it on the tips of their toes. At the end of this opening they came to a place like the “Seven Dials”--no end of little paths into the wood, and none very promising. After a natural hesitation, they took the one that seemed to be most on their line of march, and followed it briskly till it brought them plump upon a brook, and there it ended. Robinson groaned.

“Confound the bush,” cried he. “You were wrong not to let me bring Jacky. What is to be done?”

“Go back.”

“I hate going back. I would rather go thirty miles ahead than one back. I've got an idea; off shoes and paddle up the stream; perhaps we shall find a path that comes to it from the other side.”

They paddled up the stream a long way, and at last, sure enough, they found a path that came down to the stream from the opposite side. They now took a hasty breakfast, washing it down with water from the brook, then dived into the wood.

The sun, was high in heaven, yet still they had not got out of the bush.

“I can't make it out, George; there is nothing to steer by, and these paths twist and turn so. I don't think we shall do any good till night. When I see the Southern Cross in the sky I shall be able to steer northeast. That is our line.”

“Don't give in,” said George; “I think it looks clearer ahead. I believe we are at the end of it.”

“No such luck, I am afraid,” was the despondent reply.

For all that, in a few yards more they came upon an open place.

They could not help cheering. “At last!” cried they. But this triumph gave way to doubts.

“I am afraid we are not clear yet,” said Robinson. “See, there is wood again on the other side. Why, it is that sticky clay again. Why, George, it is the clearing we crossed before breakfast.”

“You are talking nonsense, Tom,” cried George, angrily.

“No, I am not,” said the other, sadly. “Come across. We shall soon know by our footsteps in the clay.”

Sure enough, half way across they found a track of footsteps. George was staggered. “It is the place, I really think,” said he. “But, Tom, when you talk of the footsteps, look here? You and I never made all these tracks. This is the track of a party.”

Robinson examined the ground.

“Tracks of three men; two barefoot, one in nailed boots.”

“Well, is that us?”

“Look at the clearing, George, you have got eyes. It is the same.”

“So 'tis, but I can't make out the three tracks.”

Robinson groaned. “I can. This third track has come since we went by.”

“No doubt of that, Tom. Well?”

“Well, don't you see?”

“No. What?”

“You and I are being hunted.”

George looked blank a moment. “Can't we be followed without being hunted?”

“No; others might, but not me. We are being hunted,” said Robinson, sternly. “George, I am sick of this, let us end it. Let us show these fellows they are hunting lions and not sheep. Is your revolver loaded?”

“Yes.”

“Then come on!” And he set off to run, following the old tracks. George ran by his side, his eyes flashing with excitement. They came to the brook. Robinson showed. George that their pursuer had taken some steps down the stream. “No matter,” said he, “don't lose time, George, go right up the bank to our path. He will have puzzled it out, you may take your oath.”

Sure enough they found another set of footsteps added to their own. Robinson paused before entering the wood. He put fresh caps on his revolver. “Now, George,” said he, in a low voice, “we couldn't sleep in this wood without having our throats cut, but before night I'll be out of danger or in my grave, for life is not worth having in the midst of enemies. Hush! hus-s-sh! You must not speak to me but in a whisper.”

“No!” whispered George.

“Nor rustle against the boughs.”

“No, I won't,” whispered George. “But make me sensible, Tom. Tell me what all this caution is to lead to. What are you doing?”

“I AM HUNTING THE HUNTER!” hissed. Robinson, with concentrated fury. And he glided rapidly down the trodden path, his revolver cocked, his ears pricked, his eye on fire, and his teeth clinched.

George followed, silent and cautious, his revolver ready cocked in his hand. As they glided thus, following their own footsteps, and hunting their hunter with gloomy brows, and nerves quivering, and hearts darkening with anger and bitterness, sudden a gloom fell upon the wood--it darkened and darkened. Meantime a breeze chill as ice disturbed its tepid and close air, forerunner of a great wind which was soon heard, first moaning in the distance, then howling and rushing up, and sweeping over the tall trees and rocking them like so many bulrushes. A great storm was coming.

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Chapter LXVII

THIS very afternoon Mr. Levi came to inquire for George Fielding. Unable to find him, he asked of several diggers where the young man was; he could get no information till Jem saw him, and came and told him.

Now when he heard they were gone, and not expected back for some days, Isaac gave quite a start, and showed a degree of regret and vexation that Jem was puzzled to account for.

On reflection he begged Jem to come to his tent; there he sat down and wrote a letter.

“Young man,” said he, “I do entreat you to give this to George Fielding the moment he returns to the camp. Why did he go without coming to see me? my old heart is full of misgivings.”

“You needn't have any, sir,” said Jem, surprised at the depth of feeling in the old Jew's face and voice. “He shall have the letter, you may depend.”

Levi thanked him.

He then said to Nathan: “Strike the tents, collect our party, and let us be gone.”

“What! going to leave us, sir?”

“Yes! young man, this very hour.”

“Well now, I am sorry for that, and so will the captain be, and his pal that you think so much of.”

“We shall not be long parted,” said the old man, in his sweet musical Eastern accent, “not very long, if you are faithful to your trust and give the good young man my letter. May good angels hover round him, may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob guard him!”

“Amen!” said rough Jem; for the reverend face glowed with piety, and the voice was the voice of prayer.

Suddenly an unpleasant reflection occurred to Jem.

“Well, but if you go, who is to buy our gold-dust?”

“The Christian merchants,” said Isaac, with an indifferent air.

“But they are such Jews,” cried Jem, inadvertently. “I mean--I mean----” And rough as he was, he looked as if he could have bitten his tongue off.

“I know what you mean,” said Isaac, sadly. He added: “Such as they are, they are all you have now. The old Jew was hunted and hooted and insulted in this place yesterday; here then he trades no more; those who set no value on him can of course supply his place.”

“The blackguards,” cried Jem, “the ruffians, I wish I had seen them. Come, Mr. Levi, that was not the mine; that was only the riffraff; you might forgive us that.”

“I never forgive,” was the calm reply.

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Chapter LXVIII

A TREMENDOUS snow-storm fell upon the mine and drove Jem into his tent, where he was soon after joined by Jacky, a circumstance in itself sufficient to prove the violence of the storm, for Jacky loathed indoors, it choked him a good deal.

The more was Jem surprised when he heard a lamentable howl coming nearer and nearer, and a woman burst into his tent, a mere pillar of snow, for she was covered with a thousand flakes each as big as a lady's hand.

“Ochone! ochone! ochone!” cried Mary McDogherty, and, on being asked what was the matter, she sat down and rocked herself and moaned and cried, “Ochone--och, captain, avick, what will I do for you? an' who will I find to save you? an' oh, it is the warm heart and the kind heart ye had to poor Molly McDogherty that ud give her life to save yours this day.”

“The captain,” cried Jem, in great alarm. “What is wrong with the captain?”

“He is lying could and stiff in the dark, bloody wood. Och, the murthering villains! och, what will I do at all! och, captain, avick, warm was your heart to the poor Irish boys, but it is could now. Ochone! ochone!”

“Woman,” cried Jem, in great agitation, “leave off blubbering and tell me what is the matter.”

Thus blandly interrogated, Mary told him a story (often interrupted with tears and sighs) of what had been heard and seen yester eve by one of the Irish boys--a story that turned him cold, for it left on him the same impression it had left on the warmhearted Irishwoman, that at this moment his good friend was lying dead in the bush hard by.

He rose and loaded Robinson's double-barreled gun; he loaded it with bullets, and, as he rammed them fiercely down, he said angrily: “Leave off crying and wringing your hands; what on earth is the use of that? here goes to save him or to revenge him.”

“An' och, James, take the wild Ingine wid ye; they know them bloody, murthering woods better than our boys, glory be to God for taching them that same.”

“Of course I shall take him. You hear, Jacky, will you show me how to find the poor dear captain and his mate if they are in life?”

“If they are alive, Jacky will find them a good deal soon--if they are dead, still Jacky will find them.”

The Irishwoman's sorrow burst out afresh at these words. The savage then admitted the probability of that she dreaded.

“And their enemies--the cowardly villains--what will you do to them?” asked Jem, black with rage.

Jacky's answer made Mary scream with affright, and startled even Jem's iron nerves for a moment. At the very first word of the Irishwoman's story, the savage had seated himself on the ground with his back turned to the others, and, unnoticed by them, had rapidly painted his face with the war-paint of his tribe. Words cannot describe the ghastly terrors, the fiendish ferocity these traditional lines and colors gave his countenance. This creature, that looked so like a fiend, came erect into the middle of the tent with a single bound, as if that moment vomited forth by hell, and yet with a grander carriage and princelier presence than he had worn in time of peace; and even as he bounded he crossed his tomahawk and narrow wooden shield, to signify that his answer was no vulgar asseveration, but a vow of sacred war.

“KALINGALUNGA WILL KILL THEM, AND DRINK THEIR BLOOD.”

Kalingalunga glided from the tent. Jem followed him. The snow fell in flakes as large as a lady's hand, and the air was dark; Jem could not see where the hunter was taking him, but he strode after him and trusted to his sagacity.

Five hours' hard walking, and then the snow left off. The air became clear, and to Jem's surprise the bush, instead of being on his right hand, was now on his left; and there on its skirts, about a mile off, was the native camp. They had hardly come in sight of it when it was seen to break from quietude into extraordinary bustle.

“What is up?” asked Jem.

The hunter smiled, and pointed to his own face:

“Kalingalunga painted war.”

“What eyes the beggars must have,” said Jem.

The next minute a score of black figures came tearing up in such excitement that their long rows of white teeth and the whites of their eyes flashed like Budelights in their black heads.

Kalingalunga soon calmed them down by letting them know that he was painted for a private, not a national feud. He gave them no further information. I suspect he was too keen a sportsman to put others on the scent of his game. He went all through the camp, and ascertained from the stragglers that no men answering the description of George and Robinson had passed out of the wood.

“They are in the wood,” said he

He then ordered a great fire--bade Jem dry his clothes and eat; he collected two of his wives and committed Jem to their care, and glided like a panther into the wood.

What with the great heat succeeding to the great cold, and the great supper the gins gave him, Jem fell fast asleep. It was near daylight when a hand was laid on his shoulder, and there was Kalingalunga.

“Not a track on the snow.”

“No? then let us hope they are not in the wood.”

The hunter hung his head.

“Me tink they are in the wood,” said he, gravely.

Jem groaned, “Then they are lying under the soil of it or in some dark pit.”

Kalingalunga reflected. He replied to this effect:

“That there were no more traces of an assassin than of victims, consequently that it was impossible to know anything, and that it was a good deal too stupid to speak a good deal knowing nothing.”

All this time Jem's fear and rage and impatience contrasted greatly with the philosophic phlegm of the Pict, who looked so fierce and took it all so cool, ending with an announcement that now Kalingalunga would sleep a good deal.

The chief was soon asleep, but not till he had ordered his gins to wake him the moment the snow should be melted. This occurred at noon, and, after snatching a hasty meal, he put a tomahawk into Jem's hands and darted into the bush.

All the savage's coldness disappeared now he was at work. He took Jem right across the wood from southeast to northwest. Nothing stopped him. When the scrub was thick above but hollow below he threw himself on his belly and wriggled along like a snake. When it was all thick, he hacked into it with fury and forced a path. When it was impenetrable he went round it, and by some wonderful instinct got into the same line again. Thus they cut clean across the wood but found no tracks.

Then the savage, being out in the open, trotted easily down the woodside to the southwest point; here he entered and took a line straight as an arrow to the northeast.

It was about five in the afternoon. Kalingalunga was bleeding all over with scratches, and Jem was torn to pieces and done up. He was just about to tell the other that he must give in, when Kalingalunga suddenly stopped, and pointed to the ground:

“Track!”

“What of?”

“A white man's shoe.”

“How many are there?”

“One.”

Jem sighed.

“I doubt it is a bad job, Jacky,” said he.

“Follow--not too close,” was the low reply.

And the panther became a serpent, so smooth and undulating were the motions with which he glided upon the track he had now discovered.

Jem, well aware that he could not move noiselessly like the savage, obeyed him and crept after at some distance.

The savage had followed the man's footsteps about half a mile, and the white man the savage, when suddenly both were diverted from their purpose. Kalingalunga stood still and beckoned Jem. Jem ran to him, and found him standing snuffing the air with his great broad nostrils, like a stag.

“What is it?”

“White fellow burn wambiloa wood.”

“How d'ye know? how d'ye know?”

“Wambiloa wood smell a good way off when him burn.”

“And how do you know it is a white man?”

“Black fellow never burn wambiloa wood; not good to burn that. Keep it for milmeridien.”

The chief now cut off a few of his long hairs and held them up to ascertain the exact direction of the wind. This done, he barked a tree to mark the spot to which he had followed the trail, and striking out into quite a different direction he hunted by scent.

Jem expected to come on the burning wambiloa very soon, but he underrated either the savage's keen scent or the acrid odor of the sacred wood--perhaps both. They had gone half a mile at least before his companion thought it necessary to show any caution. At last he stopped short, and then Jem smelled a smell as if “cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves,” were all blazing in one bonfire. With some difficulty he was prevailed on to stand still and let the subtle native creep on, nor would he consent to be inactive until the other solemnly vowed to come back for him and give him his full share of the fighting. Then Kalingalunga went gliding like a shadow and flitted from tree to tree.

Woe be to the enemy the subtle, noiseless, pitiless, remorseless savage surprises; he has not put on his war-paint in sport or for barren show.

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Chapter LXIX

A MAN was hunting Robinson and George Fielding, and they were hunting him. Both parties inflamed with rage and bitterness; both master of the other's fate, they thought.

A change of wind brought a fall of snow, and the fall of snow baffled both parties in five minutes. Down came the Australian flakes large as a woman's hand (I am not romancing), and effaced the tracks of the pursuing and pursued and pursuers. So tremendous was the fall that the two friends thought of nothing but shelter. They drew their blankets over their heads and ran hither and thither looking for a friendly tree. At last they found an old tree with a prodigious stem that parted about ten feet up into two forks. With some effort they got up into this cleft, and then they were on a natural platform. Robinson always carried nails in his pocket, and he contrived to nail the two blankets to the forks so as to make a screen. Then they took out their provisions and fortified themselves with a hearty supper.

As they were eating it they were suddenly startled by an explosion so tremendous that their tree seemed to have been struck by lightning. Out went Robinson, with his mouth full, on to a snowdrift four feet high. He looked up and saw the cause of the fracas. A large bough of a neighboring tree had parted from the trunk with the enormous weight of the snow. Robinson climbed back to George and told him. Supper recommenced, but all over the wood at intervals they now heard huge forks and boughs parting from their parent stems with a report like a thirty-two-pounder ringing and echoing through the wood. Others so distant that they were like crackers.

These sounds were very appalling in the ghostly wood. The men instinctively drew closer to each other; but they were no chickens; use soon hardened them even to this. They settled it that the forks they were sitting on would not give way, because there were no leaves on them to hold a great burden of snow; and soon they yielded to nature and fell fast asleep in spite of all the dangers that hemmed them.

At his regular hour, just before sunrise, Robinson awoke and peeped from below the blanket. He shook George.

“Getup directly, George. We are wasting time when time is gold.”

“What is it?”

“'What is it?' There is a pilot in the sky that will take us out of this cursed trap, if the day does not come and spoil all.”

George's eye followed Robinson's finger, and in the center of the dark vault of heaven this glittered.

[Southern Cross constellation]

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Chapter LXX

“I KNOW it, Tom. When I was sailing to this country we came to a part where the north star went down and down to the water's edge, and this was all we got in exchange for it.”

“George,” said Tom, rather sternly, “how do you know they don't hear us, and here we are surrounded by enemies, and would you run down our only friend? That silver star will save our lives if they are to be saved at all. Come on; and, George, if you were to take your revolver and blow out my brains, it is no more than I deserve for sleeping away the precious hours of night, when I ought to have been steering out of this cursed timber-net by that blessed star.”

With these words Robinson dived into the wood, steering due east by the Southern Cross. It was like going through a frozen river. The scrub was loaded with snow, which it discharged in masses on the travelers at every step.

“Keep your revolver dry in your hat and your lucifers, too,” cried Robinson. “We shall have to use them both, ten to one. As to our skins, that is hopeless.”

Then the men found how hard it is to take a line and keep it in the Australian bush. When the Southern Cross was lost in a cloud, though but for a minute, they were sure to go all wrong, as they found upon its reappearance; and sometimes the scrub was impenetrable and they were forced to go round it and walk four hundred yards, advancing eastward but twenty or thirty.

Thus they battled on till the sun rose.

“Now we shall be all in the dark again,” said poor Robinson, “here comes a fog.”

“Stop, Tom,” said George; “oughtn't we to make this good before we go on?”

“What do you mean?”

“We have come right by the star so far, have we not?”

“Yes.”

“Then let us bark fifty of these trees for a mark. I have seen that varmint Jacky do that.”

“A capital idea, George; out with our knives--here goes.”

“No breakfast to-day, Tom.”

“No, George, nor dinner, either, till we are out of the wood.”

These two poor fellows walked and ran and crept and struggled all day, sometimes hoping, sometimes desponding. At last, at five o'clock in the afternoon, their bellies gnawed with hunger, their clothes torn to rags, their skin bleeding, they came out upon some trees with the bark stripped. They gave one another a look that words can hardly paint. They were the trees they had barked twelve hours ago!

The men stood silent--neither cared to tell the other all he felt--for now there crept over these two stout bosoms a terrible chill, the sense of a danger new to them in experience, but not new in report. They had heard of settlers and others who had been lost in the fatal labyrinth of the Australian bush, and now they saw how easily it might be true.

“We may as well sit down here and rest; we shall do no good till night. What, are you in pain, George?”

“Yes, Tom, a little.”

“Where?”

“Something gnaws my stomach like an adder.”

“Oh, that is the soldier's gripes,” said Tom, with a ghastly attempt at a jest. “Poor George!” said he, kindly, “I dare say you never knew what it was to go twenty-four hours without food before.”

“Never in my life, Tom.”

“Well, I have, and I'll tell you the only thing to do--when you can't fill the breadbasket, shut it. Go to sleep till the Southern Cross comes out again.”

“What, sleep in our dripping clothes?”

“No, we will make a roaring fire with these strips of bark; they are dry as tinder by now.”

A pyre four feet high was raised, the strips being laid from north to south and east to west alternately, and they dried their blankets and warmed their smoking bodies.

“George, I have got two cigars; they must last us two days.”

“Oh, I'm no great smoker--keep them for your own comfort.”

Robinson wore a sad smile.

“We can't afford to smoke them; this is to chew; it is not food, George, but it keeps the stomach from eating itself. We must do the best for our lives we can for Susan's sake.”

“Give it me, Tom; I'll chew it, and thank you kindly. You are a wise companion in adversity, Tom; it is a great grief to me that I have brought you into this trouble, looking for what I know you think is a mare's nest, as the saying is.”

“Don't talk so, George. True pals like you and me never reproach one another. They stand and fall together like men. The fire is warm, George--that is one comfort.”

“The fire is well enough, but there's nothing down at it. I'd give a hundred pounds for a mutton chop.”

The friends sat like sacrifices by the fire, and chewed their cigars in silence, with foreboding hearts. After a while, as the heat laid hold of him, George began to dose. Robinson felt inclined to do the same, but the sense that perhaps a human enemy might be near caused him to fight against sleep in this exposed locality; so, whenever his head bobbed down, he lifted it sharply and forced his eyes open. It was on one of these occasions that, looking up, he saw, set as it were in a frame of leaves, a hideous countenance glaring at him; it was painted in circular lines, red, blue and white.

“Get up, George,” roared Robinson; “they are upon us!”

And both men were on their feet, revolvers pointed. The leaves parted, and out came this diabolical face which they had never seen before, but with it a figure they seemed to know, and a harsh cackle they instantly recognized, and it sounded like music to them.

“Oh, my dear Jacky,” cried George, “who'd have thought it was you! Well, you are a godsend! Good afternoon. Oh, Jacky!--how d'ye do?”

“Jacky not Jacky now, cos um a good deal angry, and paint war. Kalingalunga berywelltanku” (he always took these four words for one). “Now I go fetch white fellow;” and he disappeared.

“Who is he going to fetch? is it the one that was following us?”

“No doubt. Then, Tom, it was not an enemy, after all!”

Jacky came back with Jem, who, at sight of them alive and well, burst into extravagances. He waved his hat round his head several times and then flung it into a tree; then danced a pas seul consisting of steps not one of them known at the opera house, and chanted a song of triumph the words of which were, Ri tol de riddy iddydol, and the ditty naught; finally he shook hands with both.

“Never say die!”

“Well, that is hearty! and how thoughtful of him to come after us, and above all to bring Jacky!”

“That it was,” replied George. “Jem,” said he, with feeling, “I don't know but what you have saved two men's lives.”

“If I don't it shan't be my fault, farmer.”

George. “Oh, Jacky, I am so hungry! I have been twenty-four hours without food.”

Kalingalunga. “You stupid fellow to go widout food, always a good deal food in bush.”

George. “Is there? then for Heaven's sake go and get us some of it.”

Kalingalunga. “No need go, food here.” He stepped up to the very tree against which George was standing, showed him an excrescence on the bark, made two clean cuts with his tomahawk, pulled out a huge white worm and offered it George. George turned from it in disgust; the wild chief grinned superior and ate it himself, and smacked his lips with infinite gusto.

Meantime his quick eye had caught sight of something else. “A good deal dinner in dis tree,” said he, and he made the white men observe some slight scratches on the bark. “Possum claws go up tree.” Then he showed them that there were no marks with the claw reversed, a clear proof the animal had not come down. “Possum in tree.”

The white men looked up into the bare tree with a mixture of wonder and incredulity. Jacky cut steps with his tomahawk and went up the main stem, which was short, and then up a fork, one out of about twelve; among all these he jumped about like a monkey till he found one that was hollow at the top.

“Throw Kalingalunga a stone, den he find possum a good deal quick.”

They could not find a stone for their lives, so, being hungry, Robinson threw a small nugget of gold he had in his pocket. Jacky caught it, placed it at the top of the hollow fork and let it drop. Listening keenly, his fine ear heard the nugget go down the fork, striking the wood first one side then another, and then at a certain part sound no more. Down he slips to that silent part, makes a deep cut with his tomahawk just above the spot, thrusts in his hand and pulls out a large opossum, yelling and scratching and emitting a delicious scent in an agony of fear. The tomahawk soon silenced him, and the carcass fell among the applauding whites. Now it was Robinson's turn. He carved the raw animal for greater expedition, and George helped him to wrap each limb and carcass in a thin covering of clay. Thus prepared, it was thrust into the great pile of burning ashes.

“Look yonder, do! look at that Jem! Why, Jem, what are you up to, patroling like a sentinel out there?”

“Never you heed Jem,” was the dry reply; “you mind the roast, captain, and I'll mind--my business;” and Jem continued to parade up and down with his gun cocked and his eye piercing the wood.

To Robinson's repeated and uneasy inquiries what meant this pantomime, Jem persisted in returning no answer but this: “You want your dinner, captain; eat your dinner, and then I'll hoffer a hobservation; meantime, as these woods are queer places, a little hextra caution is no sin.”

The pie dishes were now drawn out of the ashes and broken, and the meat baked with all its juices was greedily devoured. “It tastes like a rabbit stuffed with peppermint,” said George, “and uncommon nice it is. Now I am another man.”

“So am I; Jacky forever!”

“Now, Jem, I have dined. Your story, if you please. Why are you here? for you are a good fellow, but you haven't got gumption enough to say to yourself, 'These two will get lost in the bush, I'll take Jacky and pull them out.'”

“You are right, captain, that wasn't the way at all; and, since your belly is full and your courage up, you will be able to enjoy my story better than you could afore.”

“Yes, so let us have it;” and Robinson leaned back luxuriously, being filled and warmed.

“First and foremost,” commenced this artful narrator, “there is a chap prowling in this wood at the present time with a double-barreled gun to blow out your brains, captain.”

“The devil,” cried Robinson, starting to his feet.

“And yours, farmer.”

“How do you know?” asked George, without moving.

“That is what I am going to tell you. That Mary McDogherty came crying to my tent all through the snow. 'What is up?' says I; says she, 'Murder is up.' Then she told me her cousin, an Irish boy, was at Bevan's store and he heard some queer talk, and he looked through a chink in the wall and saw two rascals putting their heads together, and he soon made out they were driving a bargain to rob you two. One was to do it, the other was a-egging him on. 'I must have fifty pounds first,' says this one. 'Why?' says the other. 'Because he has been and locked my pal up that was to be in it with me.'”

“Ah!” cried Robinson. “Go on, Jem--there is a clew anyway.”

“I have got a thicker one behind. Says the other, 'Agreed! when will you have it?' 'Why, now,' says t'other. Then this one gave him a note. Pat couldn't see that it was a fifty, but no doubt it was, but he saw the man take it and put it in a little tin box and shove it in his bosom.”

“That note was the price of blood,” said Robinson. “Oh, the black-hearted villains. Tell me who they were, that is all; tell me but who they were!”

“The boy didn't know.”

“There! it is always so. The fools! they never know.”

“Stop a bit, captain, there is a clew (your own word).”

“Ay, and what is the clew?”

“As soon as ever the note was safe in his bosom he says: 'I sold you, blind mate; I'd have given fifty sooner than not done this job. Look here!' says he, 'I have sworn to have a life for each of these;' and, captain,” said Jem, suddenly lowering his voice, “with that it seems he held up his right hand.”

“Well, yes! yes! eh!”

“And there were two fingers a-missing on it!”

“Ah!”

“Now those two fingers are the ones you chopped off with your cutlass the night when the tent was attacked.”

“Why, Tom, what is this? you never told me of this,” cried George.

“And which are in my pocket.”

“In your pocket?” said George, drawing away from him.

“Ay, farmer! wrapped up in silver paper, and they shall never leave my pocket till I have fitted them on the man, and seen him hung or shot with them two pickers and stealers tied round his bloodthirsty, mercenairy, aass-aassinating neck, say that I said it.”

George. “Jacky, show us the way out of this wood.”

Kalingalunga bowed assent, but he expressed a wish to take with him some of the ashes of the wambiloa. George helped him.

Robinson drew Jem aside. “You shouldn't have mentioned that before George; you have disgusted him properly.”

“Oh, hang him! he needn't be so squeamish; why, I've had 'em salt--”

“There, there! drop it, Jem, do!”

“Captain! are you going to let them take us out of the wood before we have hunted it for that scoundrel?”

“Yes, I am. Look here, Jem, we are four, and he is one, but a double-barreled gun is an awkward enemy in a dark wood. No, Jem, we will outwit him to the last. We will clear the wood and get back to the camp. He doesn't know we have got a clew to him. He will come back without fear, and we will nail him with the fifty-pound note upon him. And then--Jack Ketch.”

The whole party was now on the move, led by Kalingalunga, bearing the sacred ashes.

“What on earth is he going to do with them?”

The chief heard this query, and looking back said gravely, “He take them to 'Milmeridien';” and the party followed Jacky, who twisted and zigzagged about the bush till, at last, he brought them to a fairy spot, whose existence in that rugged wood none of them had dreamed possible. It was a long, open glade, meandering like a river between two deep, irregular fringes of the drooping acacia, and another lovely tree which I only know by its uncouth, unmelodious, scientiuncular name--the eucalyptus. This tree, as well as the drooping acacia, leaned over the ground with long leaves like disheveled hair.

Kalingalunga paused at the brink and said to his companions in a low, awestruck voice, “Milmeridien.”

The glade was full of graves, some of them fresh, glittering with bright red earth under the cool, green acacias, others richly veiled with golden moss more or less according to their age; and in the recesses of the grove peeped smoother traces of mortality, mossy mounds a thousand years old, and others far more ancient still, now mere excrescences of green, known to be graves only by the light of that immense gradation of times and dates and epochs.

The floor of the open glade was laid out as a vast parterre--each grave a little flower-bed, round, square, oval, or rhomboid; and all round each bed flowed in fine and graceful curves little paths too narrow for a human foot. Primeval tradition had placed them there that spirits might have free passage to visit all the mighty dead. For here reposed no vulgar corpses. Here, their heads near the surface, but their feet deep in earth, sat the great hunters and warriors of every age of the race of Kalingalunga, once a great nation, though now a failing tribe. They sat there this many a day, their weapons in their hands, ready to start up whenever the great signal should come, and hunt once more, but without fatigue, in woods boundless as the sea, and with bodily frames no longer mortal, to knock and be knocked on the head, ad infinitum.

Simple and benign creed!

A cry of delight burst from the white men, and they were going to spread themselves over the garden of the dead.

The savage checked them with horror.

“Nobody walk there while him alive,” said he. “Now you follow me and not speak any words at all, or Kalingalunga will leave you in the bush.--Hush!”

The savage paused, that even the echo of his remonstrance might die well away before he traversed the garden. He then bowed his head down upon his breast in a set manner, and so remained quiet a few seconds. In that same attitude he started and walked slowly by the verge of the glade, keeping carefully clear of the graves, and never raising his head. About half way he stopped and reverently scattered the ashes of the wambiloa upon three graves that lay near the edge, then forward--silent, downcast, reverential.

“Mors omnibus est communis!” The white men, even down to Jem, understood and sympathized with Kalingalunga. In this garden of the dead of all ages they felt their common humanity, and followed their black brother silent and awestruck. Melted, too, by the sweet and sacred sorrow of this calm scene; for here Death seemed to relax his frown, and the dead but to rest from trouble and toil, mourned by gentle, tender trees; and in truth it was a beautiful thought of these savage men to have given their dead for companions those rare and drooping acacias, that bowed themselves and loosed their hair so like fair women abandoned to sorrow over the beloved and dead, and night and morning swept with their dewy eyelashes the pillows of the brave. Requiescant in pace!--resurgant in pacem! For I wish them better than they wished themselves.

After Milmeridien came a thick scrub, through which Kalingalunga tracked his way; and then a loud hurrah burst from all, for they were free--the net was broken. There were the mountains before them and the gaunt wood behind them at last. The native camp was visible two miles distant, and thither the party ran and found food and fires in abundance. Black sentinels were set at such distances as to render a surprise impossible, and the travelers were invited to sleep and forget all their troubles. Robinson and Jem did sleep, and George would have been glad to, and tried, but was prevented by an unfortunate incident--les enfans terribles found out his infirmity, viz., that nothing they could do would make him hit them. So half a dozen little rascals, potter bellied than you can conceive, climbed up and down George, sticking in their twenty claws like squirrels, and feeling like cold, slippery slugs. Thus was sleep averted, until a merciful gin, hearing the man's groans, came and cracked two or three of these little black pots with a waddie or club, so then George got leave to sleep, and just as he was dozing off, ting, tong, ti tong, tong, tong, came a fearful drumming of parchment. A corroboree or native dance was beginning. No more sleep till that was over--so all hands turned out. A space was cleared in the wood, women stood on both sides with flaming boughs and threw a bright red light upon a particular portion of that space; the rest was dark as pitch. Time, midnight. When the white men came up the dancing had not begun. Kalingalunga was singing a preliminary war song.

George had picked up some of the native language, and he explained to the other that Jacky was singing about some great battle, near the Wurra-Gurra River.

“The Wurra-Gurra! why, that is where we first found gold.”

“Why of course it is! and--yes! I thought so.”

“Thought what?”

“It is our battle he is describing.”

“Which of 'em?--we live in hot water.”

“The one before Jem was our friend. What is he singing? Oh, come! that is overdoing it, Jacky! Why, Jem! he is telling them he killed you on the spot.”

“I'll punch his head!”

“No! take it easy,” said Robinson; “he is a poet; this is what they call poetical license.”

“Lie without sense, I call it--when here is the man.”

“Ting tong! ting tong tong!-- I slew him--he fell--by the Wurra-Gurra River. I slew him!--ting tong! he fell--ting tong! By the Wurra-Gurra River--ting ting tong!”

This line Jacky repeated at least forty times; but he evaded monotony by the following simple contrivance:

“I slew him; he fell by the Wurra-Gurra River--ting tong! I slew him; he fell, by the Wurra-Gurra River, I slew him; he fell, by the Wurra-Gurra River,”

with similar changes, and then back again.

One of our own savages saved a great poet from monotony by similar means;* very good of him.

* The elder Sheridan, who used to teach his pupils to tresh dead Dryden out thus: None but the brave,/None but the brave,/None but the brave, deserve the fair.

And now the gins took up the tune without the words and the dance began to it. First, two figures ghastly with white paint came bounding like Jacks-in-the-box out of the gloom into the red light, and danced gracefully--then one more popped out--then another, at set intervals of time--then another, all painted differently--and swelled the dance by degrees; and still, as the dance grew in numbers, the musicians sang and drummed louder and faster by well-planned gradations, and the motion rose in intensity, till they all warmed into the terrible savage corroboree jump, legs striding wide, head turned over one shoulder, the eyes glaring with fiendish intensity in one direction, the arms both raised and grasping waddies and boomerangs--till at last they worked up to such a gallop of fierce, buck-like leaps that there was a jump for each beat of the music. Now they were in four lines, and as the figures in the front line jumped to the right, each keeping his distance to a hair, the second line jumped to the left, the third to the right, and the fourth to the left.

The twinkle and beauty and symmetry of this was admirable, and, strange as it may appear, not only were the savages now wrought up to frenzy at this climax of the dance, but the wonderful magnetic influence these children of Nature have learned to create and launch in the corroboree so stirred the white men's blood, that they went half mad too, and laughed and shouted and danced, and could hardly help flinging themselves among the mad fiends and jumping and yelling with them; and when the jump was at its fiercest and quickest, and the great frenzy boiling over, these cunning artists brought it to a dead stop sharp upon the climax--and all was still.

In another minute they were all snoring; but George and Robinson often started in their slumbers, dreaming they saw the horrid figures--the skeletons, lizards, snakes, tartan shawls, and whitened fiends, the whole lot blazing at the eyes and mouth like white budelights, come bounding one after another out of the black night into the red torchlight, and then go striding and jumping and glaring and raging and bucking and prancing, and scattering battle and song and joy and rage and inspiration and stark-staring frenzy all around.

They awoke at daylight rather cold, and found piles of snow upon their blankets, and the lizards and skeletons and imps and tartan shawls deteriorated. The snow had melted on their bodies, and the colors had all run--some of them away. Quid multa? we all know how beauties look when the sun breaks on them after a ball.

They asked for Jacky. To their great chagrin he was not to be found. They waited, getting crosser and crosser, till nine o'clock, and then out comes my lord from the wood, walking toward them with his head down on his bosom, the picture of woe--the milmeridien movement over again.

“There! don't let us scold him,” said George, “I am sure he has lost a relation, or maybe a dear friend; anyway I hope it is not his sweetheart--poor Jacky. Well, Jacky! I am glad you have washed your face, now I know you again. You can't think how much better you look in your own face than painted up in that unreasonable way, like-like-like-I dono-what-all.”

“Like something between a devil and a rainbow,” suggested Robinson.

“But what is wrong?” asked George, kindly. “I am almost afraid to ask, though!”

Encouraged by the tone of sympathy, the afflicted chief pointed to his face, sighed, and said:

“Kalingalunga paint war, and now Kalingalunga wash um face and not kill anybody first. Kalingalunga Jacky again, and show your white place in um hill a good deal soon.”

And the amiable heathen cleared up a little at the prospect of serving George, whom he loved--aboriginally.

Jem remained with the natives upon some frivolous pretense. His real hope was to catch the ruffian whom he secretly believed to be still in the wood. “He is like enough to creep out this way,” thought Jem, “and then--won't I nail him!”

In half an hour they were standing under the spot whose existence Robinson had so often doubted.

“Well, George, you painted it true. It really is a river of quartz running between those two black rocks. And that you think is the home of the gold, eh?”

“Well, I do. Look here, Tom! look at this great large heap of quartz bowlders, all of different sizes; they have all rolled down here out of that river of quartz.”

“Why, of course they have! who doubts that?”

“Many is the time I have sat on that green mound where Jacky is sitting now, and eaten my bread and cheese.”

“I dare say! but what has that to do with it? what are we to do? Are we to go up the rock and peck into that mass of quartz?”

“Well, I think it is worth while.”

“Why, it would be like biting a piece out of the world! Look here, Master George, we can put your notion about the home of the gold to the test without all that trouble.”

“As how?”

“You own all these quartz stones rolled out of yon river; if so, they are samples of it. Ten thousand quartz stones is quite sample enough, so begin and turn them all over, examine them--break them if you like. If we find but a speck of gold in one of them I'll believe that quartz river is gold's home--if not, it is all humbug!”

George pulled a wry face; he found himself pinned to his own theory.

“Well,” said he, “I own the sample tells us what is in the barn; so now I am vexed for bringing you here.”

“Now we are here, give it a fair trial; let us set to and break every bowlder in the thundering heap.”

They went to work and picked the quartz bowlders; full two hours they worked, and by this time they had made a considerable heap of broken quartz; it glittered in the sun, but it glittered white, not a speck of yellow came to light.

George was vexed. Robinson grinned; expecting nothing, he was not disappointed. Besides, he was winning an argument, and we all like to turn out prophets. Presently a little cackle from Jacky.

“I find um!”

“Find what?” asked Robinson, without looking up.

“A good deal yellow stone,” replied Jacky, with at least equal composure.

“Let me see that,” said George, with considerable curiosity; and they both went to Jacky.

Now the fact is that this heap of quartz stones was in reality much larger than they thought, only the greater part of it had been overgrown with moss and patches of grass a few centuries of centuries ago.

Jacky, seated on what seemed a grassy mound, was in reality perched upon a part of the antique heap; his keen eye saw a little bit of yellow protruding through the moss, and he was amusing himself clipping it with his tomahawk, cutting away the moss and chipping the stone, which made the latter glitter more and yellower.

“Hallo!” cried George, “this looks better.”

Robinson went on his knees without a word.

“It is all right,” said he, in a great flutter, “it is a nugget--and a good-sized one--a pound weight, I think. Now then, my lad, out you come;” and he dug his fingers under it to jerk it out.

But the next moment he gave a screech and looked up amazed.

“Why, this is the point of the nugget; it lies the other way, not flat. George! I can't move it! The pick! Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! The pick! the pick!”

“Stand clear,” shouted George, and he drove the point of the pick down close by the prize, then he pressed on the handle. “Why, Tom, it is jammed somehow.”

“No, it is not jammed--it is its own weight. Why, George!”

“Then, Tom! it is a hundred-weight if it is an ounce!”

“Don't be a fool,” cried the other, trembling all over; “there is no such thing in nature.”

The nugget now yielded slowly to the pressure and began to come up into the world again inch by inch after so many thousand years. Of course, before it could come all out, the soil must open first, and when Robinson, glaring down, saw a square foot of earth part and gape as the nugget came majestically up, he gave another cry, and with trembling hands laid hold of the prize, and pulled and tugged and rolled it on the clean moss--to lift it was not so easy. They fell down on their knees by the side of it like men in a dream. Such a thing had never been seen or heard of--a hundred-weight of quartz and gold, and beautiful as it was great. It was like honeycomb, the cells of which had been sliced by a knife; the shining metal brimmed over in the delicate quartz cells.

They lifted it. Yes, full a hundredweight; half the mass was quartz, but four-fifths of the weight they knew must be gold. Then they jumped up and each put a foot on it, and shook hands over it.

“Oh, you beauty!” cried George, and he went on his knees and kissed it; “that is not because you are gold, but because you take me to Susan. Now, Tom, let us thank Heaven for its goodness to us, and back to camp this very day.”

“Ay! but stop, we must wrap it in our wipes or we shall never get back alive. The very honest ones would turn villains at sight of it. It is the wonder of the world.”

“I see my Susan's eyes in it,” cried George, in rapture. “Oh, Tom, good, kind, honest Tom, shake hands over it once more!”

In the midst of all this rapture a horrible thought occurred.

“Why, it's Jacky's,” said George, faintly, “he found it.”

“Nonsense! nonsense!” cried Tom, uneasily; he added, however, “but I am afraid one third of it is--pals share, white or black.”

All their eyes now turned uneasily to the Aboriginal, who lay yawning on the grass.

“Jacky give him you, George,” said this worthy savage, with superb indifference. He added with a yawn: “What for you dance corroboree when um not dark?--den you bite yellow stone,” continued this original, “den you red, den you white, den you red again, all because we pull up yellow stone-all dis a good deal dam ridiculous.”

“So 'tis, Jacky,” replied Robinson, hastily; “don't you have anything to do with yellow stone, it would make you as great a fool as we are. Now show us the shortest cut back home through the bush.”

At the native camp they fell in with Jem. The monstrous nugget was too heavy to conceal from his shrewd eye, so they showed it him. The sight of it almost knocked him down. Robinson told him where they found it, and advised Jem to go and look for another. Alas! the great nugget already made him wish one friend away. But Jem said:

“No, I will see you safe through the bush first.”

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Chapter LXXI

ALL this time two persons in the gold mine were upon thorns of expectation and doubt--brutus and Peter Crawley. George and Robinson did not return, but no more did Black Will. What had happened? Had the parties come into collision? and, if so, with what result? If the friends had escaped, why had they never been heard of since? If, on the other hand, Will had come off conqueror, why had he never reappeared? At last brutus arrived at a positive conviction that Black Will had robbed and probably murdered the men, and was skulking somewhere with their gold, thereby defrauding him, his pal; however, he kept this to himself, and told Crawley that he feared Will had come to grief, so he would go well armed, and see what was the matter, and whether he could help him. So he started for the bush, well armed. Now his real object, I blush to say, was to murder Black Will, and rob him of the spoils of George and Robinson.

Wicked as these men of violence had been six months ago, gold and Crawley had made them worse, ay, much worse. Crawley, indeed, had never openly urged any of them to so deep a crime as murder, and it is worthy of note, as a psychological fact, that this reptile contrived to deceive itself into thinking that it had stopped short of crime's utmost limits; to be sure it had tempted and bribed and urged men to robbery under circumstances that were almost sure to lead to murder, but still murder might not occur; meantime it had openly discountenanced that crime, and checked the natural proclivity of brutus and Black Will toward deeds of blood.

Self-deception will probably cease at the first blast of the archangel's trumpet. But what human heart will part with it till then? The circumstances under which a human being could not excuse or delude or justify himself have never yet occurred in the huge annals of crime. Prejudice apart, Crawley's moral position behind brutus and Black Will seems to bear a strong family likeness to that which Holy Writ assigns to the great enemy of man. That personage knocks out nobody's brains, cuts nobody's throat, never was guilty of such brutality since the world was, but he finds some thorough egotist, and whispers how the egotism of his passions or his interest may be gratified by the death of a fellow-creature. The egotist listens, and blood flows.

brutus and Black Will had both suffered for their crimes. brutus had been nailed by Carlo, twice gibbeted, and the bridge of his nose broken once. Black Will had been mutilated, and Walker nearly drowned, but “the close contriver of all harms” had kept out of harm's way. Violence had never recoiled on him who set it moving. For all that, Crawley, I must inform the reader, was not entirely prosperous. He had his little troubles, too, whether warnings that he was on the wrong path, or punishments of his vices, or both, I can't say.

Thus it was. Mr. Crawley had a natural love of spirits, without a stomach strong enough to deal with them. When he got away from Mr. Meadows he indulged more and more, and for some months past he had been subject to an unpleasant phenomenon that arises now and then out of the fumes of liquor. At the festive board, even as he raised the glass to his lips, the face of Crawley would often be seen to writhe with a sort of horror, and his eyes to become fixed on unseen objects, and perspiration to gather on his brow. Then such as were not in the secret would jump up and say, “What on earth is the matter?” and look fearfully round, expecting to see some horrid sight to justify that look of horror and anguish; but Crawley, his glassy eyes still fixed, would whimper out, his teeth chattering, and clipping the words: “Oh, ne-ne-never mind, it's o-o-only a trifling ap-parition!” He had got to try and make light of it, because at first he used to cry out and point, and then the miners ran out and left him alone with his phantoms, and this was terrible. He dreaded solitude; he schemed against it, and provided against it, and paid fellows to bear him company night and day, and at the festive board it was one thing to drink his phantoms neat and another to dilute them with figures of flesh and blood. He much preferred the latter.

At first, his supernatural visitors were of a unfavorable but not a ghastly character.

No. 1 was a judge who used to rise through the floor, and sit half in and half out of the wall, with a tremendous flow of horse-hair, a furrowed face, a vertical chasm between the temples, and a strike-me-off-the-rolls eye gleaming with diabolical fire from under a gray, shaggy eyebrow.

No. 2 was a policeman, who came in through the window, and stood imperturbable, all in blue, with a pair of handcuffs, and a calm eye, and a disagreeable absence of effort or emotion--an inevitable-looking policeman.

But as Crawley went deeper in crime and brandy, blood-boltered figures, erect corpses, with the sickening signs of violence in every conceivable form, used to come and blast his sight and arrest the glass on its way to his lips, and make his songs and the boisterous attempts at mirth of his withered heart die in a quaver and a shiver of fear and despair. And at this period of our tale these horrors had made room for a phantom more horrible still to such a creature as Crawley. The air would seem to thicken into sulfurous smoke, and then to clear, and then would come out clearer and clearer, more and more awful, a black figure with hoof and horns and tail, eyes like red-hot carbuncles, teeth a chevaux-de-frise of white-hot iron, and an appalling grin.*

* The god Pan colored black by the early Christians.

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Chapter LXXII

THE party, consisting of Jacky, Jem, Robinson and George, had traversed about one half the bush, when a great heavy crow came wheeling and cackling over their heads, and then joined a number more who were now seen circling over a gum-tree some hundred yards distant.

“Let us go and see what that is,” said Jem.

Jacky grinned, and led the way. They had not gone very far when another great black bird rose so near their feet as to make them jump, and peering through the bushes they saw a man lying on his back. His arm was thrown in an easy, natural way round his gun, but at a second glance it was plain the man was dead. The crows had ripped his clothes to ribbons with their tremendous beaks, and lacerated the flesh and picked out the eyes.

They stepped a few paces from this sight. There was no sign of violence on the body.

“Poor fellow!” said Jem. “How did he come by his end, I wonder?” And he stretched forward and peered with pity and curiosity mingled.

“Lost in the bush!” said Robinson, very solemnly. And he and George exchanged a meaning look.

“What is that for?” said George, angrily, to Jacky--“grinning in sight of a dead body?”

“White fellow stupid fellow,” was all Jacky's reply.

The men now stepped up to the body to examine it; not that they had much hope of discovering who it was, but still they knew it was their duty for the sake of his kindred to try and find out.

George, overcoming a natural repugnance, examined the pockets. He found no papers. He found a knife, but no name was cut in the handle. In the man's bosom he found a small metal box, but just as he was taking it out Jem gave a halo!

“I think I know him,” cried Jem. “There is no mistaking that crop of black hair; it is my old captain, Black Will.”

“You don't say so! What could he be doing here without his party?”

“Anything in the box, George?” asked Robinson.

“Nothing but a little money. Here is a sovereign--look. And here is a bank-note.”

“A five-pound note?”

“Yes--no; it is more than that a good deal. It is for fifty pounds, Tom.”

“What?”

“A fifty-pound note, I tell you.”

“Jem!”

“Captain!”

A most expressive look was exchanged between these two, and by one impulse they both seized the stock of the gun that was in the dead man's hand. They lifted it, and yes--two fingers were wanting on the right hand.

“Come away from that fellow,” cried Robinson to George. “Let him lie.”

George looked up in some wonder. Robinson pointed sternly to the dead hand in silence. George, by the light of the other men's faces, saw it all, and recoiled with a natural movement of repugnance as from a dead snake. There was a breathless silence--and every eye bent upon this terrible enemy lying terrible no longer at their feet.

“How did he die?” asked Robinson, in a whisper.

“In the great snow-storm,” replied George, in a whisper.

“No,” said Jem, in the same tone, “he was alive yesterday. I saw his footprint after the snow was melted.”

“There was snow again last night, Tom. Perhaps he went to sleep in that with his belly empty.”

“Starvation and fatigue would do it without the snow, George. We brought a day's provisions out with us, George. He never thought of that, I will be bound.”

“Not he,” said Jem. “I'll answer for him he only thought of robbing and killing--never thought about dying himself.”

“I can't believe he is dead so easy as this,” said Robinson.

The feeling was natural. This man had come into the wood and had followed them burning to work them ill, and they to work him ill. Both were utterly baffled. He had never prevailed to hurt them, nor they him. He was dead, but by no mortal hand. The immediate cause of his death was unknown, and will never be known for certain while the world lasts.

L'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose!

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Chapter LXXIII

“DON'T keep staring at it so, farmer, it is an ugly sight. You will see him in your sleep if you do that. Here is something better to look at--a letter. And there I carried it and never once thought of it till the sight of his hand made me feel in my pocket, and then my hand ran against it. 'Tis from Mr. Levi.”

“Thank you, Jem. Tom, will you be so kind as read it me while I work?”

“Yes, give it me. Work? Why, what are we going to work at in the bush?”

“I should think you might guess,” replied George quietly, while putting down his pickax and taking off his coat. “Well, I am astonished at both of you. You ought to know what I am going to do. Humph! Under this tree will be as good a place as any.”

“Jem, as I am a sinner, he is going to bury him.”

“Bury what? The nugget?”

“No, Jem, the Christian.” *

* In Berkshire, among a certain class, this word means “a human being.”

“A pretty Christian,” sneered Robinson.

“You know what I mean, Tom?”

“I know it is very kind of you to take all this trouble to bury my enemy,” said Robinson, hurt.

“Don't ye say that,” replied George, hurt in his turn. “He was as much my enemy as yours.”

“No such thing. He was here after me, and has been tormenting me this twelve months. You have no enemy, a great soft spoon like you.”

“Keep your temper, Tom,” answered George, in a mollifying tone. “Let each man act according to his lights. I couldn't leave a corpse to the fowls of the air.

“Gibbet a murderer, I say--don't bury him; especially when he has just been hunting our very lives.”

“Tom,” replied George doggedly, “death settles all accounts. I liked the man as little as you could; and it is not to say I am in love with a man because I sprinkle a little earth over his dead bones. Ugh! This is the unkindest soil to work. It is full of roots, enough to break a fellow's heart.”

While George was picking and grubbing out roots, and fighting with the difficult soil, Robinson opened Levi's letter viciously and read out:

“George Fielding, you have an enemy in the mine--a secret, cowardly, unscrupulous enemy, who lies in wait for your return. I have seen his face, and tremble for you. Therefore listen to my words. The old Jew, whom twice you have saved from harm and insult, is rich, his children are dead, the wife of his bosom is dead. He loves no creature now but you and Susannah; therefore run no more risks for gold, since much gold awaits you without risk. Come home. Respect the words of age and experience--come home. Delay not an hour. Oh, say not, 'I will sleep yet one more night in my tent, and then I will depart,' but ride speedily after me on the very instant. Two horses have I purchased for you and the young man your friend--two swift horses with their saddles. The voucher is inclosed. Ride speedily after me this very hour, lest evil befall you and yet more sorrow fall upon Susannah and upon--Isaac Levi.”

The reading of this letter was followed by a thoughtful silence broken only by the sound of George's pickax and the bursting roots.

“This is a very extraordinary letter. Mr. Levi knows more than he tells you, George.”

“I am of your opinion.”

“Why, captain,” said Jem, “to go by that letter, Fielding is the marked man, and not you after all. So it is his own enemy he is digging that grave for.”

“Do you think you will stop him by saying that?” asked Robinson, with a shrug.

“He was my enemy, Tom, and yours too; but now he is nobody's enemy; he is dead. Will you help me lay him in the earth, or shall I do it by myself?”

“We will help,” said the others, a little sullenly.

They brought the body to its grave under the tall gum-tree.

“Not quite so rough, Tom, if you please.”

“I didn't mean to be rough that I know of--there.”

They laid the dead villain gently and reverently in his grave. George took a handful of soil and scattered it over him.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” said he, solemnly.

The other two looked down and sprinkled soil, too, and their anger and bitterness began to soften by the side of George and over the grave.

Then Jem felt in his pocket and produced something wrapped in silver paper.

“This belongs!” said he, with a horrible simplicity. “The farmer is too good for this world, but it is a good fault. There, farmer,” said he, looking to George for approbation as he dropped the little parcel into the grave. “After all,” continued Jem, good-naturedly, “it would have been very hard upon a poor fellow to wake up in the next world and not have what does belong to him to make an honest living with.”

The grave was filled in, and a little mound made at the foot of the tree. Then George took out his knife and began to cut the smooth bark.

“What now? Oh, I see. That is a good idea, George. Read them a lesson. Say in a few words how he came here to do a deed of violence and died himself--by the hand of Heaven.”

“Tom,” replied George, cutting away at the bark, “he is gone where he is sure to be judged; so we have no call to judge him. God Almighty can do that, I do suppose, without us putting in our word.”

“Well, have it your own way. I never saw the toad so obstinate before, Jem. What is he cutting, I wonder?”

The inscription, when finished, ran thus:

“PLEASE DON'T CUT DOWN THIS TREE.

“IT IS A TOMBSTONE.

“A WHITE MAN LIES BELOW.”

“Now, Tom, for England!”

They set out again with alacrity, and battled with the bush about two hours more. George and Robinson carried the great nugget on a handkerchief stretched double across two sticks, Jem carried the picks. They were all in high spirits, and made light of scratches and difficulties. At last, somewhat suddenly, they burst out of the thick part into the mere outskirts frequented by the miners, and there they came plump upon brutus, with a gun in his hand and pistols peeping out of his pockets, come to murder Black Will and rob him of his spoils.

They were startled, and brutus astounded, for he was fully persuaded George and Robinson had ceased to exist. He was so dumfounded that Robinson walked up to him and took the gun out of his hands without any resistance on his part. The others came round him, and Robinson demanded his pistols.

“What for?” said he.

Now at this very moment his eye fell upon that fabulous mass of gold they carried, and both his eyes opened, and a sort of shiver passed over him. With ready cunning he looked another way, but it was too late. Robinson had caught that furtive glance, and a chill came over him that this villain should have seen the prize, a thing to excite cupidity to frenzy. Nothing now would have induced Robinson to leave him armed.

He replied, sternly: “Because we are four to one, and we will hang you on the nearest tree if you don't give them up. And, now, what are you doing here?”

“I was only looking for my pal,” said brutus.

“Well, you won't want a gun and pistols to look for your pal. Which way are you going?”

“Into the bush.”

“Then mizzle! That is the road.”

brutus moved gloomily away into the bush.

“There,” said Robinson, “he has turned bushranger. I've disarmed him, and saved some poor fellow's life and property. Cover up the nugget, George.”

They went on, but presently Robinson had a thought.

“Jacky,” said he, “you saw that man; should you know him again?”

“Yes.”

“Jacky, that man is our enemy. Could you track him by his footsteps without ever letting him see you?”

Jacky smiled superior.

“Then follow him and see where he goes, and whom he joins--and come to the mine directly and tell me.”

Jacky's eyes gleamed at this intelligence. He sat down, and in a few turns of the hand painted his face war, and glided like a serpent on brutus's trail.

The rest cleared the wood, and brought the nugget, safe hidden in their pocket-handkerchief, to camp. They begged Jem to accept the fifty pounds, if he did not mind handling the price of blood.

Jem assured them he had no such scruples, and took it with a burst of thanks.

Then they made him promise faithfully not to mention to a soul about the monster nugget. No more he did while he was sober, but, alas! some hours later, having a drop in his head, he betrayed the secret to one or two--say forty.

Robinson pitched their tent and mounted guard over the nugget. George was observed to be in a strange flutter. He ran hither and thither. Ran to the post-office--ran to the stationer--got paper--drew up a paper--found McLaughlan--made him sign it--went to Mr. Moore--showed him Isaac's voucher; on which Moore produced the horses, a large black horse with both bone and blood, and a good cob.

George was very much pleased with them, and asked what Levi had given for them.

“Two hundred and fifty pounds for the pair.”

“Good Heavens,” cried George, “what a price! Mr. Levi was in earnest.” Then he ran out and went to the tent and gave Robinson his letters. “But there were none for me, Tom,” sighed George. “Never mind, I shall soon--”

Now these letters brought joy and triumph to Robinson; one contained a free pardon, the other was a polite missive from the Colonial Government, in answer to the miners' petition he had sent up.

“Secretary had the honor to inform Mr. Robinson that police were on the road to the mine, and that soldiers would arrive by to-morrow to form an escort, so that the miners' gold might travel in safety down to Sydney.”

“Hurrah! this is good news,” cried Robinson, “and what a compliment to me. Do you hear, George? an escort of soldiers coming to the camp to-morrow; they will take the nugget safe to Sydney.”

“Not if we are robbed of it to-night,” replied George.

At this moment in came Jacky with news of brutus. That wily man had gone but a little way in the bush when he had made a circuit, and had slipped back into another part of the mine, and Jacky had followed him first by trail, afterward by sight, and had marked him down into a certain tent, on which he had straightway put a little red mark.

“Come back after our nugget, George. Fools we were to carry it blazing in folks' eyes.”

“I dare say we can beat him.”

“I am game to try. Jacky, I want to put a question to you.”

While Jacky and Tom were conferring in animated whispers, George was fixing an old spur he had picked up into the heel of his boot.

“That is capital, Jacky. Well, George, we have hit upon a plan.”

“And so have I.”

“You?”

“Yes! me! but tell me yours first, Tom.”

Robinson detailed him his scheme with all its ramifications, and a very ingenious stratagem it was.

For all that, when George propounded his plan in less than six words, Robinson stared with surprise and then gave way to ludicrous admiration.

“Well,” cried he, “simplicity before cunning; look at that now. Where was my head?--George, this is your day--carried nem. con.”

“And, Tom, you can do yours all the same.”

“Can I? Why, yes, to be sure I can. There, he saw that, too, before. Why, George, if you don't mind, you will be No. 1 and I No. 2. What makes you so sharp all of a sudden?”

“I have to think for Susan as well as us,” said the poor fellow, tenderly, “that is why I am sharp--for once in a way. And now, Jacky--you are a great anxiety to me, and the time is so short--come sit by me, dear Jacky, and let me try and make you understand what I have been doing for you, that you may be good and happy, and comfortable in your old age, when your poor old limbs turn stiff, and you can hunt no longer. In grateful return for the nugget, and more than that for all your goodness and kindness to me in times of bitter trouble.”

Then George showed Jacky how he had given Abner one-third of all his sheep and cattle, and Jacky two-thirds, and how McLaughlan, a just man, would see the division made. “And do leave the woods, except for a hunt now and then, Jacky; you are too good for them.”

Above all, George explained with homely earnestness the nature of the sheep, her time of lambing, etc., and showed Jacky how the sheep and cattle would always keep him fed and clothed, if he would but use them reasonably, and not kill the breeders for dinner.

And Jacky listened with glistening eyes, for George's glistened, and the sweet tones of affection and gratitude pierced through this family talk, and it is sad that we must drop the curtain on this green spot in the great camp and go among our villains.

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Chapter LXXIV

ROBINSON did not overrate the fatal power of the fabulous mass of gold, a glimpse of which he had incautiously given to greedy eyes. It drew brutus like a magnet after it. He came all in a flutter to mephistopheles, and told him he had met the two men carrying a lump of solid gold between them so heavy that the sticks bent under it. “The sweat ran down me at the sight of it, but I managed to look another way directly.”

What with the blows and kicks and bruises and defeats he had received, and with the gold mass his lawless eye had rested on, brutus was now in a state of mind terrible to think of.

Lust and hate, terrible twins, stung that dark heart to frenzy. Could he have had his will he would have dispensed with cunning, would have gone out and fired bullets from his gun into the tent, and, if his enemies came out alive, have met them hand to hand to slay or be slain. But the watchful foe had disarmed him, and he was compelled to listen to the more reynard-like ferocity of his accomplice.

“Bill,” said the assassin of Carlo, “keep cool, and you shall have the swag; and yet not lose your revenge neither.”

“---- you, tell me how.”

“Let the bottle alone, then; you are hot enough without that. Come nearer me. What I have got to say is not the sort of thing for me to bawl about. We should not be alive half an hour if it was heard to come from our lips.”

The two heads came close together, and Crawley leaned over the other side of the table and listened with senses keen as a razor.

“Suppose I show you how to make those two run out of their tent like two frightened women, and never once think about their swag?”

“Ah!”

“And fall blinded for life or dead or dying while we walk off with the swag.”

“Blind, dead, dying! give me your hand. How? how? how?”

“Hush! don't shout like that; come closer, and you, Smith.”

Then a diabolical scheme hissed into the listeners' ears--a scheme at once cowardly and savage--a scheme of that terrible kind that robs courage, strength and even skill of their natural advantages, and reduces their owners to the level of the weak and the timid--a scheme worthy of the assassin of Carlo, and the name I have given this wretch, whose brain was so fertile and his heart so fiendish. Its effect on the hearers was great, but very different. Crawley recoiled, not violently, but like a serpent on which water had been poured; but brutus broke into a rapture of admiration, exultation, gratified hate.

“Bless you, bless you!” cried he, with a violence more horrible than his curses, “you warm my heart, you are a pal. What a head-piece you have got! ---- you, Smith, have you nothing to say? Isn't this a dodge out of the common?”

Now for the last minute or two Crawley's eyes had been fixed with a haggard expression on a distant corner of the room. He did not move them; he appeared hardly to have the power, but he answered, dropping the words down on the table anywhere.

“Ye-yes! it is very inge-nious, ah!”

mephisto. “We must buy the turpentine directly; there is only one store sells it, and that shuts at nine.”

brutus. “Do you hear, Smith? hand us out the blunt.”

Crawley. “Oh, ugh!” and his eyes seemed fascinated to that spot.

brutus (following Crawley's eye uneasily). “What is the matter?”

Crawley. “Lo-o-o-k th-e-r-e! No! on your right. Oh, his tail is in the fire!”

brutus. “Whose tail? don't be a fool!”

Crawley. “And it doesn't burn!! Oh, it burns blacker in the fire!--Ah, ah! now the eyes have caught fire--diamonds full of hell. They blast! Ah, now the teeth have caught light--red-hot nails. The mouth is as big as the table, gaping wider, wider, wider. Ah! ah! ah!”

brutus. “---- him; I won't stay in the room with such a fellow, he makes my blood run cold. Has he cut his father's throat in a church, or what?”

Crawley (shrieking). “Oh, don't go; oh, my dear friends, don't leave me alone with IT. My dear friends, you sit down right upon it--that sends it away.” And Crawley hid his face, and pointed wildly to whereabouts they were to sit upon the phantom.

brutus. “Come, it is gone now; was forced nearly to squash it first, though, haw! haw! haw!”

Crawley. “Yes, it is gone. Thank Heaven--I'll give up drinking.”

brutus. “So now fork out the blunt for the turps.”

Crawley. “No! I will give no money toward murder--robbery is bad enough. Where shall we go to?” And he rose and went out, muttering something about “a little brandy.”

brutus. “The sneak--to fail us at the pinch. I'll wring his neck round. What is this? five pounds.”

mephisto. “Don't you see the move? he won't give it us, conscience forbids; but, if we are such rogues as take it, no questions asked.”

“The tarnation hypocrite,” roared brutus, with disgust--hypocrisy was the one vice he was innocent of--out of jail, mephistopheles stole Crawley's money, left for that purpose, and went and bought a four-gallon cask of turpentine.

brutus remained and sharpened an old cutlass, the only weapon he had got left. Crawley and mephistopheles returned almost together. Crawley produced a bottle of brandy.

“Now,” said he to mephistopheles, “I don't dispute your ingenuity, my friend, but suppose while we have been talking the men have struck their tent and gone away, nugget and all?”

The pair looked terribly blank--what fools we were not to think of that.

Crawley kept them in pain a moment or two.

“Well, they have not,” said he, “I have been to look.”

“Well done,” cried mephistopheles.

“Well done,” cried brutus, gasping for breath.

“There is their tent all right.”

“How near did you go to it?”

“Near enough to hear their voices muttering.”

“When does the moon rise, to-night?”

“She is rising now.”

“When does she go down?”

“Soon after two o'clock.”

“Will you take a share of the work, Smith?”

“Heaven forbid!”

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Chapter LXXV

IT was a gusty night. The moon had gone down. The tents gleamed indistinct in form, but white as snow. Robinson's tent stood a little apart, among a number of deserted claims, some of them dry, but most of them with three or four feet of water in them.

There was, however, one large tent about twenty yards from Robinson's.

A man crept on his stomach up to this tent and listened. He then joined another man who stood at some distance, and whose form seemed gigantic in the dim starlight. “All right,” said the spy, “they are all fast as dormice, snoring like hogs; no fear from them.”

“Go to work, then,” whispered brutus. “Do your part.”

mephistopheles laid a deep iron dish upon the ground, and removed the bung from the turpentine cask, and poured. “Confound the wind, how it wastes the stuff,” cried he.

He now walked on tiptoe past Robinson's tent and scattered the turpentine with a bold sweep, so that it fell light as rain over a considerable surface. A moment of anxiety succeeded; would their keen antagonists hear even that slight noise? No! no one stirred in the tent.

mephistopheles returned to the cask, and, emboldened by success, brought it nearer the doomed tent. Six times he walked past the windward side of the tent, and scattered the turpentine over it. It was at the other side his difficulties began.

The first time he launched the liquid, the wind took it and returned it nearly all in his face, and over his clothes. Scarce a drop reached the tent.

The next time he went up closer with a beating heart, and flung it sharper. This time full two-thirds went upon the tent, and only a small quantity came back like spray.

By the time the cask was emptied, the tent was saturated. Then this wretch passed the tent yet once more, and scattered a small quantity of oil to make the flame more durable and deadly.

“Now it is my turn,” whispered brutus. “I thought it would never come.”

What is that figure crouching and crawling about a hundred yards to windward? It is the caitiff, Crawley, who, after peremptorily declining to have anything to do with this hellish act, has crept furtively after them, partly to play the spy on them, for he suspects they will lie to him about the gold, partly urged by curiosity. He could see nothing at that distance but the dark body of mephistopheles passing at intervals between him and the white tent.

He shivered with cold and terror at the crime about to be done, and quivered with impatience that it was so long a-doing.

The assassins now divided their force. mephistopheles took his station to leeward of the tent; brutus to windward.

Crawley saw a sudden spark upon the ground; it was brutus striking a lucifer match against his heel. With this he lighted a piece of tow, and running along the tent he left a line of fire behind him, and awaited the result, his cutlass griped in his hand and his teeth clinched.

Crawley saw that line of fire come and then creep and then rise and then roar, and shoot up into a great column of fire thirty feet high, roaring and blazing, and turning night into day all round. Simultaneously with this tremendous burst of fire and light, which startled Crawley by bringing him in a moment into broad daylight, he saw rise from the earth a black figure with a fiendish face.

At this awful sight the conscience-stricken wretch fell flat and tried to work into the soil like a worm. Nor did he recover any portion of his presence of mind till he heard a shrill whoop, savage and soul-chilling, but mortal, and, looking up, saw Kalingalunga go bounding down upon brutus with gigantic leaps, his tomahawk whirling.

Crawley cowered like a hare and watched. brutus, surprised but not dismayed, wheeled round and faced the savage, cutlass in hand. He parried a fierce blow of the tomahawk, and with his left fist struck Kalingalunga on the temple, and knocked him backward half a dozen yards. The elastic savage recovered himself and danced like a fiend round brutus in the red light of the blazing tent.

Warned by that strange blow, straight from the armpit, a blow entirely new to him, he came on with more deadly caution, eyes and teeth budelights, and brutus felt a chill for a moment, but it speedily turned to rage. Now as the combatants each prepared to strike again, screams suddenly issued from the other side the tent, so wild, despairing, and unnatural as to suspend their arms for a moment. They heard but saw nothing, only the savage heart of brutus found time to exult--his enemies were perishing. But Crawley saw as well as heard. A pillar of flame eight feet high burst out from behind the tent and ran along the ground. From that conical flame issued those appalling shrieks--it was a man on fire. The living flame ran but a few steps, then disappeared from the earth, and the screams ceased. Apparently the fire had not only killed, but annihilated its prey and so itself. Crawley sickened with horror, and for a moment with remorse.

But already brutus and Kalingalunga were fighting again by the light of the burning tent. They closed, and this time blood flowed on both sides. The savage, by a skillful feint, cut brutus on the flesh of the left shoulder, but not deep, and brutus once more surprised the savage by delivering point with his cutlass, and inflicted a severe graze on the ribs.

At the sight of his enemy's blood, brutus followed up and aimed a fierce blow at Kalingalunga's head; he could not have made a more useless attack. The savage bore on his left arm a shield, so called; it was but three inches broad and two feet long, but skill and practice had made it an impenetrable defense. He received the cutlass on this shield as a matter of course, and simultaneously delivered his tomahawk on brutus's unguarded head. brutus went down under the blow and rolled over on his face.

The crouching spectator of this terrible combat by the decaying light of the tent heard the hard blow and saw the white man roll upon the ground. Then he saw the tomahawk twice lifted and twice descend upon the man's back as he lay. The next moment the savage came running from the tent at his utmost speed.

Crawley's first thought was that assistance had come to brutus; his next was a terrible one. The savage had first risen from the earth at a spot between the tent and him. Perhaps he had been watching both him and the tent. A moment of horrible uncertainty, and then Crawley yielded to his instinct and ran. A terrible whoop behind told him he was indeed to be the next victim. He ran for the dear life; no one would have believed he could shamble along at the rate he did. His tent was half a mile off; he would be a dead man long ere he could reach it. He turned his yelling head as he ran, to see. The fleet savage had already diminished the distance between them by half. Crawley now filled the air with despairing cries for help. A large tent was before him; he knew not whose, but certain death was behind him. He made for the tent. If he could but reach it before the death-stroke was given him! Yes, it is near! No, it is white and looks closer than it is. A whoop sounded in his ears; it seemed to ring inside his head it was so near. He flung himself yelling with terror at the wall of the tent. An aperture gave way. A sharp cut as with a whip seemed to sting him, and he was on his knees in the middle of the tent howling for mercy, first to the savage, who he made sure was standing over him with his tomahawk; then to a man who got him by the throat and pressed a pistol barrel cold as an icicle to his cheek.

“Mercy! mercy! the savage! he is killing me! murder! murder! help!”

“Who are you?” roared the man, shaking him.

“Oh, stop him! he will kill me! Shoot him! Don't shoot me! I am a respectable man. It is the savage! kill him! He is at the door--please kill him! I'll give you a hundred pounds!”

“What is to do? The critter is mad!”

“There! there! you will see a savage! Shoot him! kill him! For pity's sake kill him, and I'll tell you all! I am respectable. I'll give you a hundred pounds to kill him!”

“Why, it is Smith, that gives us all a treat at times.”

“Don't I! Oh, my dear, good friend, he has killed me! He came after me with his tomahawk. Have pity on a respectable man--and kill him!”

The man went to the door of the tent and sure enough there was Jacky, who had retired to some distance. The man fired at him with as little ceremony as he would at a glass bottle, and, as was to be expected, missed him; but Jacky, who had a wholesome horror of the make-thunders, ran off directly, and went to hack the last vestiges of life out of brutus.

Crawley remained on his knees, howling and whimpering so piteously that the man took pity on this abject personage.

“Have a drop, Mr. Smith; you have often given me one--there. I'll strike a light.”

The man struck a light and fixed a candle in a socket. He fumbled in a corner for the bottle, and was about to offer it to Crawley, when he was arrested by a look of silent horror on his visitor's face.

“Why, what is wrong now?”

“Look! look! look!” cried Crawley, trembling from head to foot. “Here it comes! there is its tail! Soon its eyes and teeth will catch light! It knows the work we have been at. Ah! ah! ah!”

The man looked round very uneasily. Crawley's way of pointing and glaring over one's head at some object behind one was anything but encouraging.

“What? where?”

“There! there! coming through the side of the tent. It can come through a wall!” and Crawley shook from head to foot.

“Why, that is your own shadow,” said the man. “Why, what a faint-hearted one to shake at your own shadow.”

“My shadow!” cried Crawley; “Heaven forbid! Have I got a tail?” screeched Crawley, reproachfully.

“That you have,” said the man, “now I look at you full.”

Crawley clapped his hand behind him, and to his horror he had a tail

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Chapter LXXVI

CRAWLEY, who, what with the habit of cerebral hallucination due to brandy and the present flutter of his spirits and his conscience, had for a moment or two lost all the landmarks of probability, no sooner felt his hand encounter a tail--slight in size, but stiff as a pug's, and straight as a pointer's--than he uttered a dismal howl, and it is said that for a single moment he really suspected premature caudation had been inflicted on him for his crimes. But such delusions are short-lived. He slewed himself round after this tail in his efforts to see it, and squinting over his shoulder he did see it; and a warm liquid which he now felt stealing down his legs and turning cold as it went, opened his eyes still farther. It was a red spear sticking in his person--sticking tight. Jacky, who had never got so near him as he fancied, saw him about to get into a tent, and, unable to tomahawk him, did the best he could--flung a light javelin with such force and address that it pierced his coat and trousers and buried half its head in his flesh.

This spear-head, made of jagged fishbones, had to be cut out by the simple and agreeable process of making all round it a hole larger than itself. The operation served to occupy Crawley for the remaining part of the night, and exercised his vocal powers. This was the first time he had smarted in his penetrable part--the skin--and it made him very spiteful. Away went his compunction, and at peep of day he shambled out very stiff, no longer dreading, but longing to hear which of his enemies it was he had seen wrapped in flame, shrieking, and annihilated like the snuff of a candle. He came to the scene of action just as the sun rose.

But others were there before him. A knot of men stood round a black patch of scorched soil, round which were scattered little fragments of canvas burned to tinder, talking over a most mysterious affair of the night past.

It came out that the patrol, some of whom were present, had been ordered by Captain Robinson not to go their rounds as usual, but to watch in a tent near his own, since he expected an attack. Accustomed to keep awake on the move, but not in a recumbent posture, they had slept the sleep of infancy, till suddenly awakened by the sound of a pistol. Then they had run out, and had found the captain's tent in ashes, and a man lying near it sore hacked and insensible, but still breathing. They had taken him to their tent, but he had never spoken, and the affair was incomprehensible. While each was giving some wild opinion or another, a faint voice issued from the bowels of the earth, invoking aid.

Several ran to the spot, and at the bottom of an old claim full thirty feet deep they discovered on looking intently down the face of a man rising out of the clayey water. They lowered ropes and hauled him up.

“How did you come there, mate?”

“He had come into the camp in the dark, and, not knowing the ground, and having (to tell the truth) had a drop, he had fallen into the claim.”

He was asked with an air of suspicion how long ago this had happened.

“More than an hour,” replied the wily one.

Crawley looked at him, and being, unlike the others, acquainted with the man's features, saw, spite of the clay-cake he was enveloped in, that his whiskers were frizzled to nothing and his fiendish eyebrows gone. Then a sickening suspicion crept over him; he communicated it by a look to mephistopheles.

Acting on it he asked, with an artful appearance of friendly interest:

“But the men? the poor men that were in the tent?”

“What! the captain and his mate?”

“Yes!”

“Why, ye fool! they are half way to Sydney by now.”

“Half way to Sydney?” and a ghastly look passed between the speaker and mephistopheles.

“Ay, lad! they rode off on Moore's two best nags at midnight.”

“The captain had a belt round his waist crammed with dust and bank-notes,” cried another, “and the farmer a nugget as big as a pumpkin on the pommel of his saddle.”

Four hours had not elapsed ere Crawley and mephistopheles were on the road to Sydney, but not on horseback. Crawley had no longer funds to buy two horses, and, even if he had, he could not have borne the saddle after the barbarous surgery of last night---the lance-head was cut out with a cheese-knife. But he and mephistopheles joined a company of successful diggers going down with their swag. On the road they constantly passed smaller parties of unfortunate diggers, who had left the mine in despair when the weather broke and the claims filled with water; and the farther they went the more wretched was the condition of those they overtook. Ragged, shoeless, hungry, foot-sore, heart-sore, poor, broken pilgrims from the shrine of Mammon.

Now it befell that, forty miles on this side Sydney, they fell in with seven such ragged specters; and, while they were giving these a little food, up came from the city a large, joyful party--the eagerness of hope and cupidity on their faces.

“Hallo! are they mad, going up to the diggings in the wet weather!”

They were questioned.

A hundred-weight of gold had been found at the diggings, and all the town was turning out to find some more such prizes; and, in fact, every mile after this they met a party, great or small, ardent, sanguine, on an almost hopeless errand.

Such is the strange and fatal no-logic of speculation. For us the rare is to turn common, and, when we have got it, be rare as ever.

mephistopheles and Crawley parted at the suburb; the former was to go to certain haunts and form a gang to seize the rich prize. Meantime Crawley would enter the town and discover where the men were lodging. If in an inn, one of the gang must go there as a well-dressed traveler, and watch his opportunity. If in a lodging, other means.

Crawley found the whole city ringing with the great nugget. Crawley put eager questions, and received ready answers. He was shown the bank up to which the men had ridden in broad daylight; the one on the big horse had the nugget on his saddle; they had taken it, and broken it, and weighed it, and sold it in the bank parlor for three thousand eight hundred pounds. Crawley did not like this, he had rather they had not converted it into paper. His next question was, whether it was known where the men lodged.

“Known! I believe you; why, they are more thought of than the governor. Everybody runs to get a word with them, gentle or simple. You will find them at the 'Ship' inn.”

To the “Ship” went Crawley. He dared not be too direct in his queries, so he put them in form of a statement.

“You have got some lucky ones here, that found the great nugget?”

“Well, we had! But they are gone--been gone this two hours. Do you know them?”

“Yes,” said Crawley, without fear, as they were gone. “Where are they gone, do you know?”

“Why, home, I suppose; you chaps make your money out of us, but you all run home to spend it.”

“What, gone to England!” gasped Crawley.

“Ay, look! there is the ship just being towed out of the harbor.”

Crawley shambled, and tore, and ran, and was just in time to see the two friends standing with beaming faces on the vessel's deck as she glided out on her voyage home.

He sat down half stupid; mephistopheles went on collecting his gang in the suburbs.

The steamer cast off and came wheeling back; the ship spread her huge white plumage, and went proudly off to sea, the blue waves breaking white under her bows.

Crawley sat glaring at all this in a state of mental collapse.

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Chapter LXXVII

THUS have I told in long and tedious strains how George Fielding went to Australia to make a thousand pounds, and how by industry, sobriety, and cattle, he did not make a thousand pounds, and how, aided with the help of a converted thief, this honest fellow did by gold digging, industry and sobriety, make several thousand pounds, and take them safe away home, spite of many wicked devices and wicked men.

Thus have I told how Mr. Meadows flung out his left hand into Australia to keep George from coming back to Susan with a thousand pounds, and how, spite of one stroke of success, his left hand eventually failed, and failed completely.

But his right?

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Chapter LXXVIII

Joyous as the first burst of summer were the months Susan passed after the receipt of George's happy letter. Many warm feelings combined in one stream of happiness in Susan's heart. Perhaps the keenest of all was pride at George's success. Nobody could laugh at George now, and insult her again there where she was most sensitive, by telling her that George was not good enough for her or any woman; and even those who set such store upon money-making would have to confess that George could do even that for love of her, as well as they could do it for love of themselves. Next to this her joy was greatest at the prospect of his speedy return.

And now she became joyfully impatient for further news, but not disappointed at his silence till two months had passed without another letter. Then, indeed, anxiety mingled now and then with her happiness. Then it was that Meadows, slowly and hesitatingly to the last, raised his hand and struck the first direct blow at her heart. He struck in the dark. He winced for her both before and after. Yet he struck.

One market-day a whisper passed through Farnborough that George Fielding had met with wonderful luck. That he had made his fortune by gold, and was going to marry a young lady out in Australia. Farmer Merton brought the whisper home. Meadows was sure he would.

Meadows did not come to the house for some days. He half feared to look upon his work; to see Susan's face agonized under his blow. At last he came. He watched her by stealth. He found he might have spared his qualms. She chatted as usual in very good spirits, and just before he went she told him the report with a smile of ineffable scorn.

She was simple, unsuspicious, and every way without a shield against a Meadows, but the loyal heart by its own virtue had turned the dagger's edge.

A week after this Jefferies brought Meadows a letter; it was from Susan to George. Meadows read it writhing. It breathed kind affection, with one or two demi-maternal cautions about his health, and to be very prudent for her sake. Not a word of doubt; there was, however, a postscript of which the following is the exact wording:

“P. S. It is all over Farnborough that you are going to be married to some one in Australia.”

Two months more passed, and no letter from George. These two months told upon Susan; she fretted and became restless and irritable, and cold misgivings crept over her, and the anguish of suspense!

At last one day she unbosomed herself, though with hesitation, to a warm and disinterested friend; blushing all over with tearful eyes she confessed her grief to Mr. Meadows. “Don't tell father, sir; I hide my trouble from him as well as I can, but what does it mean George not writing to me these four months and three days? Do pray tell me what does it mean!” and Susan cried so piteously that Meadows winced at his success.

“Oh, Mr. Meadows! don't flatter me; tell me the truth.” While he was exulting in her firmness, who demanded the truth, bitter or not, she continued: “Only don't tell me that I am forgotten!” And she looked so piteously in the oracle's face that he forgot everything in the desire to say something she would like him the better for saying; he muttered, “Perhaps he has sailed for home.” He expected her to say, “And if he has he would have written to me before sailing.” But instead of this Susan gave a little cry of joy.

“Ah! how foolish I have been. Mr. Meadows, you are a friend out of a thousand; you are as wise as I am foolish. Poor George! you will never let him know I was so wicked as to doubt him.” And Susan brightened with joy and hope. The heart believes so readily the thing it longs should be true. She was happy all the rest of the evening.

Meadows went away mad with her for her folly, and with himself for his feebleness of purpose, and next market-day again the whisper went round the market that George Fielding was going to marry out there. This time a detail was sketched in: “It was a lady in the town of Bathurst.” Old Merton brought this home and twitted his daughter. She answered haughtily that it was a falsehood. She would stake her life on George's fidelity.

“See, Mr. Meadows, they are all against poor George, all except you. But what does it mean? if he does not write or come soon I think I shall go mad.”

“Report is a common liar; I would not believe anything till I saw it in black and white,” said Meadows, doggedly.

“No more I will.”

Soon after this William Fielding had a talk with Susan.

“Have you heard a report about George?”

“Yes! I have heard a rumor.”

“You don't believe it, I hope.”

“Why should I believe it?”

“I'm going to trace it up to the liar that forged it, if I can.”

Susan suppressed her satisfaction at this resolution of Will Fielding's.

“Is it worth while?” asked she coldly.

“If I didn't think so, I shouldn't take that much trouble, not expecting any thanks.”

“Have I said anything to offend you?” asked Susan, with a still more frigid tone.

The other did not trust himself to answer. But two days after he came again, and told her he had written a letter to George, telling him what reports were about, and begging for an answer whether or not there was any truth in them.

A gleam of satisfaction from Susan's eyes, but not a word. This man, who had once been George's rival at heart, was the last to whom she would openly acknowledge her doubts. Then Will went on to tell her that he had traced the rumor from one to another up to a stranger whose name nobody knew; “but I dare say Mr. Meadows has a notion.”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! he would have told me if he had.”

William gave a snort of incredulity, and hinted that probably Mr. Meadows himself was at the bottom of the scandal.

Now Meadows' artful conduct had fortified Susan against such a suspicion, and, being by nature a warm-hearted friend, she fired up for him, as she would have for Mr. Eden, or even for poor Will in his absence. She did it, too, in the most womanish way. She did not tell the young man that she had consulted Mr. Meadows, and that he had constantly discredited the report, and set her against believing it. Had she done this, she would have staggered the simple-minded Will; but no; she said to herself, “He has attacked a good friend of mine, I won't satisfy him so far as to give him reasons;” so she merely snubbed him.

“Oh, I know you are set against poor Mr. Meadows; he is a good friend of ours, of my father, and me, and of George, too.”

“I wish you may not have to alter your mind,” sneered Will.

“I will not without a reason.”

“I will give you a reason; do you remember that day--”

“When you insulted him in his own house, and me into the bargain, Will?”

“Not you, Susan, leastways I hope not, but him I did, and am just as like to do it again; well, when you were gone, I took a thought, and I said, appearances deceive the wisest; I may be mistaken--”

“He! he!”

“I don't know what you are laughing at; and then, says I, it is his own house, after all, so I said, 'If I am wrong, and you don't mean to undermine my brother, take my hand;' and I gave it him.”

“And he refused it?”

“No, Susan!”

“Well, then--”

“But, Susan,” said William, solemnly, “his hand lay in mine like a stone.”

“Really, now!”

“A lump of ice would be as near the mark.”

“Well! is that the reason you promised me?” William nodded.

“William, you are a fool.”

“Oh I am a fool now?”

“You go and insult a man, your superior in every respect, and the very next moment he is to give you his hand as warmly as to a friend, and an equal; you really are too foolish to go without a keeper, and if it was in any man's power to set me against poor George altogether you have gone the way to do it this twelve months past;” and Susan closed the conference abruptly.

It was William's fate to rivet Meadows' influence by every blow he aimed at it. For all that the prudent Meadows thought it worth his while to rid himself of this honest and determined foe, and he had already taken steps. He had discovered that this last month William Fielding, returning from market, had been seen more than once to stop and chat at one Mrs. Holiday's, a retired small tradeswoman in Farnborough. Now Mrs. Holiday was an old acquaintance of Meadows' and had given him sugar-plums thirty years ago. It suited his purpose to remember all of a sudden these old sugar-plums, and that Mrs. Holiday had lately told him she wanted to get out of the town and end her days upon turf.

There was a cottage, paddock and garden for sale within a hundred yards of “The Grove.” Meadows bought them a good bargain, and offered them to the widow at a very moderate rent.

The widow was charmed. “Why, we can keep a cow, Mr. Meadows.”

“Well, there is grass enough.”

The widow took the cottage with enthusiasm.

Mrs. Holiday had a daughter, a handsome--a downright handsome girl, and a good girl into the bargain.

Meadows had said to himself: “It is not the old woman Will Fielding goes there for. Well, she will want some one to teach her how to farm that half acre of grass, and buy the cow and milk her. Friendly offices--chat coming and going--come in, Mr. Fielding, and taste your cow's cream!--and, when he has got a lass of his own, his eye won't be forever on mine.”

William's letter to George went to the post-office, and from the post-office to a little pile of intercepted letters in Meadows' desk.

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Chapter LXXIX

NEARLY eight months had now elapsed without a letter from George. Susan could no longer deceive herself with hopes. George was either false to her or dead. She said as much to her false friend. This inspired him with an artifice as subtle as unscrupulous. A letter had been brought to him by Jefferies, which he at once recognized as the planned letter from Crawley to another tool of his in Farnborough. This very day he set about a report that George was dead. It did not reach Susan so soon as he thought it would, for old Merton hesitated to tell her; but on the Sunday evening, with considerable reluctance and misgivings, he tried in a very clumsy way to prepare her for sad news.

But her mind had long been prepared for bitter tidings. Fancy eight weary months spent in passing every possible calamity before her imagination, death as often as any.

She fixed her eyes on the old man. “Father, George is dead!”

Old Merton hung his head, and made no reply.

That was enough. Susan crept from the room pale as ashes. She tottered, but she did not fall. She reached her room and locked herself in.

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