THE GOLD STEALERS
By
Edward Dyson




CHAPTER I.

THE schoolhouse at Waddy was not in the least like any of the trim State
buildings that now decorate every Victorian township and mark every
mining or agricultural centre that can scrape together two or three
meagre classes; it was the result of a purely local enthusiasm, and was
erected by public subscription shortly after Mr. Joel Ham, B.A., arrived
in the district and let it be understood that he did not intend to go
away again. Having discovered that it was impossible to make anything
else of Mr. Joel Ham, Waddy resolved to make a schoolmaster of him. A
meeting was held in the Drovers' Arms, numerous speeches, all much more
eloquently expressive of the urgent need of convenient scholastic
institutions than the orators imagined, were delivered by representative
men, and a resolution embodying the determination of the residents to
erect a substantial building and install Mr. J. Ham, B.A., as headmaster
was carried unanimously.

The original contributors were not expected to donate money towards the
good cause; they gave labour and material. The work of erection was
commenced next day. Neither plans nor specifications were supplied, and
every contributor was his own architect. Timber of all sorts and shapes
came in from fifty sources. The men of the day shift at the mines worked
at the building in the evening; those on the four-o'clock shift put in an
hour or two in the morning, and mates off the night shift lent a hand at
any time during the day, one man taking up the work where the other left
off. Consequently--and as there was no ruling mind and no general
design--the school when finished seemed to lack continuity, so to speak.
As an architectural effort it displayed evidence of many excellent
intentions, but could not be called a brilliant success as a
whole--although one astute Parliamentary candidate did secure an
overwhelming majority of votes in Waddy after declaring the schoolhouse
to be an ornament to the township. The public-spirited persons who
contributed windows, it was tacitly agreed, were quite justified in
putting in those windows according to the dictates of their own fancy,
even if the result was somewhat bizarre. Jock Summers gave a bell hung in
a small gilded dome, and this was fixed on the roof right in the centre
of the building, mainly for picturesque effect; but as there was no rope
attached and no means of reaching the bell--and it never occurred to
anybody to rectify the deficiency--Jock's gift remained to the end merely
an ornamental adjunct. So also with Sam Brierly's Gothic portico. Sam
expended much time and ingenuity in constructing the portico, and it was
built on to the street end of the schoolhouse, although there was no door
there, the only entrance being at the back.

The building was opened with a tea-fight and a dance, and answered its
purpose very well up to the time of the first heavy rains; then studies
had to be postponed indefinitely, for the floor was a foot under water. A
call was made upon the united strength of the township, and the building
was lifted bodily and set down again on piles. When the open space
between the ground and the floor was boarded up, the residents were
delighted to find that the increased height had given the structure quite
an imposing appearance. Alas! before six months had passed the place was
found to be going over on one side. Waddy watched this failing with
growing uneasiness. When the collapse seemed inevitable, the male adults
were again bidden to an onerous public duty; they rolled up like
patriots, and with a mighty effort pushed the school up into the
perpendicular propping it there with stout stays. That answered
excellently for a time, but eventually the wretched house began to slant
in the opposite direction. Once more the men of Waddy attended in force,
and spent an arduous half-day hoisting it into an upright position, and
securing it there with more stays. It took the eccentric building a long
time to decide upon its next move; then it suddenly lurched forward a
foot or more, and after that slipped an inch or two farther out of plumb
every day. But the ingenuity of Waddy was not exhausted: a few hundred
feet of rope and a winch were borrowed from the Peep o' Day; the rope was
run round the schoolhouse, and the building was promptly hauled back into
shape and fastened down with long timbers running from its sides to a
convenient red-gum stump at the back. Thus it remained for many years,
bulging at the sides, pitching forward, and straining at its tethers like
an eager hound in a leash.

It was literally a humming hot day at Waddy; the pulsing whirr of
invisible locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the
flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs
were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning
in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was stirring:
to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted
weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters flickering in
the hollows of the ironstone road. Equally deserted was the wide stretch
of brown plain, dotted with poppet legs and here and there a whim, across
the dull expanse of which Waddy seemed to peer with stupid eyes.

From within the school were heard alternately, with the regularity of a
mill, the piping of an old cracked voice and the brave chanting of a
childish chorus. Under the school, where the light was dim and the air
was decidedly musty, two small boys were crouched, playing a silent game
of 'stag knife.' Besides being dark and evil-smelling under there, it was
damp; great clammy masses of cobweb hung from the joists and spanned the
spaces between the piles. The place was haunted by strange and fearsome
insects, too, and the moving of the classes above sent showers of dust
down between the cracks in the worn floor. But those boys were satisfied
that they were having a perfectly blissful time, and were serenely happy
in defiance of unpropitious surroundings. They were 'playing the wag,'
and to be playing the wag under any circumstances is a guarantee of pure
felicity to the average healthy boy.

Probably the excessive heat had suggested to Dick Haddon the advisability
of spending the afternoon under the school instead of within the close
crowded room; at any rate he suggested it to Jacker McKnight, commonly
known as Jacker Mack, and now after an hour of it the boys were still
jubilant. The game had to be played with great caution, and conversation
was conducted in whispers when ideas could not be conveyed in dumb show.
All that was going on in the room above was distinctly audible to the
deserters below, and the joy of camping there out of the reach of Joel
Ham, B.A., and beyond all the trials and tribulations of the Higher
Fifth, and hearing other fellows being tested, and hectored, and caned,
was too tremendous for whisperings, and must be expressed in wild
rollings and contortions and convulsive kicking.

'Parrot Cann, will you kindly favour me with a few minutes on the floor?'

It was the old cracked voice, flavoured with an ominous irony. Dick
paused in the middle of a throw with a cocked ear and upturned eyes;
Jacker Mack grinned all across his broad face and winked meaningly. They
heard the shuffling of a pair of heavily shod feet, and then the voice
again.

'Parrot, my man, you are a comedian by instinct, and will probably live
to be an ornament to the theatrical profession; but it is my duty to
repress premature manifestations of your genius. Parrot, hold out!

They heard the swish of the cane and the school master's sarcastic
comments between the strokes.

'Ah-h, that was a beauty! Once more, Parrot, my friend, if you please.
Excellent! Excellent! We will try again. Practice of this kind makes for
perfection, you know, Parrot. Good, good--very good! If you should be
spoiled in the making, Parrot, you will not in your old age ascribe it to
any paltry desire on my part to spare the rod, will you, Parrot?'

'S'help me, I won't, sir!

There was such a world of pathos in the wail with which Parrot replied
that Dick choked in his efforts to repress his emotions. The lads heard
the victim blubbing, and pictured his humorous contortions after every
cut--for Parrot was weirdly and wonderfully gymnastic under
punishment--and Jacker hugged himself and kicked ecstatically, and young
Haddon bowed his forehead in the dirt and drummed with his toes, and gave
expression to his exuberant hilarity in frantic pantomime. The rough and
ready schoolboy is very near to the beginnings; his sense of humour has
not been impaired by over-refinement, but remains somewhat akin to that
of the gentle savage; and although his disposition to laugh at the
misfortunes of his best friends may be deplorable from various points of
view, it has not been without its influence in fashioning those good men
who put on a brave face in the teeth of tribulation.

'Gee-rusalem! ain't Jo got a thirst?' whispered Dick when the spasm had
passed.

'My oath, ain't he!' replied Jacker, 'but he was drunk up afore twelve.'

It is necessary to explain here that the school committee, in electing
Mr. Ham to the position of schoolmaster, compelled him to sign a formal
agreement, drawn up in quaint legal gibberish, in which it was specified
that 'the herein afore-mentioned Joel Ham, B.A.,' was to be limited to a
certain amount of alcoholic refreshment per diem, and McMahon, at the
Drovers' Arms, bound himself over to supply no more than the prescribed
quantity; but it was understood that this galling restriction did not
apply to Mr. Ham on Saturdays and holidays.

The noises above subsided into the usual school drone, and the boys under
the floor resumed their game. It was an extremely interesting game,
closely contested. Each player watched the other's actions with an alert
and suspicious eye, and this want of confidence led directly to the boys'
undoing; for presently Dick detected Jacker in an attempt to deceive, and
signalled 'Down!' with an emphatic gesture. 'Gerrout!' was the word
framed by the lips of the indignant Jacker. Haddon gesticulated an angry
protest, and McKnight's gestures and grimaces were intended to convey a
wish that he might be visited with unspeakable pains and penalties if he
were not an entirely virtuous and grievously misjudged small boy.

'It's a lie,' hissed Dick; 'it was down!

'You're another--it wasn't!

''Twas, I tell you!'

'Twasn't!

'Gimme my knife; I don't play with sharps an' sneaks.'

'Won't!'

Gimme it!

All caution had been forgotten by this time, voices were shrill, and eyes
spoke of battle. Dick made at Jacker with a threatening fist, and Jacker,
with an adroitness for which he was famous, met him with a clip on the
shin from a copper-toed boot. Then the lads grappled and commenced a
vigorous and enthusiastic battle in the dirt and amongst the cobweb
curtains.

In the schoolroom above Joel Ham, startled from a dreamy drowsiness,
heard with wonder fierce voices under his feet, the sounds of blows and
of bumping heads, and saw his scholars all distracted. The master divined
the truth in a very few minutes.

'Cann, Peterson, Moonlight,' he called, 'follow me.'

He selected a favourite cane from the rack, and strutted out with the
curious boys at his heels.

'Now then, Peterson,' he said, and he paused with artful preoccupation to
double his cane over and under, and critically examine the end thereof,
'you are a very observant youth, Peterson; you will tell me how those
boys got under the school.'

'Dunno,' said Peterson, assuming the expression of an aged cow.

The master seized him by the collar.

'Peterson, you have the faculty of divination. I give you till I have
counted ten to exert it. I am counting, Peterson.'

Very often the schoolmaster's language was Greek to the scholars, but his
meaning was never in doubt for a moment.

'Eight, Peterson, nine.'

Peterson slouched along a few yards, and kicked stupidly and resentfully
at a loose board.

'Might 'a' got in there,' he growled. 'Why couldn't you 'a' asked
Moonlight?--he don' mind bein' a sneak.'

But Mr. Ham was down on his knees removing the loose board, and for two
or three minutes after crouched at the opening like a famished yellow cat
at a rat-hole, awaiting his opportunity. Meanwhile the fight under the
school was being prosecuted with unabated fury. Dick and Jacker gripped
like twin bull-terriers, rolling and tumbling about in the confined
space, careless of everything but the important business in hand.
Suddenly Mr. Ham made his spring, and a smart haul brought a leg to
light. Another tug, and a second leg shot forth.

'Pull, boys!' he cried.

Moonlight seized the other limb, and a good tug brought the two boys out
into the open, still fighting enthusiastically and apparently oblivious
of their surroundings. Two soldier ants never fought with greater
determination or with such a whole-souled devotion to the cause. Over and
over they tumbled in the dust, clutching hair, hammering ribs, and
grunting and grasping, blind, deaf, and callous as logs; and Joel Ham
stood above them with the familiar cynical twist on his blotched visage,
twisting his cane and making audible comments, but offering no further
interference.

'After you, my boys--after you. There is no hurry, Haddon, I can wait as
you are so busy. McKnight, your future is assured. The prize ring is your
sphere: there wealth and glory await you. Peterson, you see here how
degraded that boy be comes who forgets those higher principles which it
is my earnest effort to instil into the hearts and minds of the boys of
this depraved township. Cann, my boy, behold how brutalising is
ungoverned instinct.'

But, wearying of the contest, the master made a sudden descent upon
Jacker, and tore him from his enemy's grasp. The effort brought Dick to
his feet, panting and still eager for the fray. He could not see an inch
beyond his nose, and for a few moments moved about fiercely, feeling for
his foe.

'D'you gimme best?' he spluttered. 'If you don't, come on--I ain't done
up!' Then he flung the curtain of cobweb from his eyes, and the situation
flashed upon him in all its grim significance. For a swift moment he
thought of flight, but the master's grip was on his collar.

'Blowed if it ain't Jo,' he murmured in his consternation, and yielded
meekly, like one for whom Fate had proved too strong.

The schoolmaster's white-lashed eyelids blinked rapidly for a second or
so, and he screwed his face into a hard wrinkled grin of gratification.

'Yes, Ginger, my lad,' he said genially, 'Jo, at your service--very much
at your service; and yours, McKnight. We will go inside now, boys. The
sun is painfully hot, and you are fatigued.'

He marched his captives before him into the school room and ranged them
against the wall, under the wide-open wondering eyes of the scholars, by
whom even the most trifling incident of rebellion was always welcomed
with glee as a break in the dull monotony of Joel Ham's peculiar system.
But this was no trifling incident, it was a tremendous outrage and a
delightful mystery; for the boys as they stood there presented to the
amazed classes a strange and amazing spectacle, and were clothed in an
original and, so far as the children were concerned, an inexplicable
disguise. Fighting and tumbling about under the school house, Haddon and
McKnight had gathered much mud, but more cobwebs. In fact, they had wiped
up so many webs that they were covered from head to foot in the clammy
dusty masses. Their hats were lost early in the encounter, and their hair
was full of cobwebs; sticky curtains of cobweb hung about their faces,
and swathed them from top to toe in what looked like a dirty grey fur.
Each boy had cleared his eyes of the thick veil, but so inhuman and
unheard of was their appearance that there was presently a suspicion
amongst the scholars that the master had captured two previously unknown
specimens of the animal kingdom, and consequently further astonishing
developments might be looked for.

CHAPTER II.

Mr. HAM, with wise forethought, carefully locked the door and pocketed
the key after disposing of the lads; and this was well, for Dick Haddon,
fully appreciating the possibilities of the situation, was already
plotting--plotting with every faculty of an active and inventive mind.

The master faced his prisoners, and stood musing over them like a pensive
but kindly cormorant. Mr. Joel Ham, B.A., was a small thin man with a
deceitful appearance of weakness. There was a peculiar indecision about
all his joints that made the certainty of his spring and the vigour of
his grip matters of wonder to all those new boys who ventured to presume
upon his seeming infirmities. He had a scraggy red neck, a long beak-like
nose, and queer slate-coloured eyes with pale lashes; his hair was thin
and very fine in colour and texture, strangely like that of a yellow cat;
and face, neck, and nose were mottled with patches of small purple veins.
To-day he was dressed in a long seedy black coat, a short seedy black
vest, and a pair of now moleskins, glaringly white, and much too long and
too large.

'Haddon,' said the master in a reflective tone, 'you are not looking as
neat as usual. You need dusting. I will perform that kind office
presently, and, believe me, I will do it well. Jacker, I intend to leave
you standing here for a few moments to cool. You may have noticed, boys,
that the youthful form when over-heated or possessed with unusual
excitement has not that poignant susceptibility which might be thought
necessary to the adequate appreciation of a judicious lambasting. Has
that ever occurred to you, McKnight?'

Jacker shifted his feet uneasily, rolled his body, and, knowing that
nothing could aggravate his offence, answered sullenly:

'Oh, dry up!'

Mr. Ham grinned at the boy in silence for a few moments, and then
returned to his high stool and desk. Mr. Ham never made the slightest
effort to maintain before his scholars that dignity which is supposed to
be essential to the success of a pedagogue. In addressing the boys he
used their correct names, or the nicknames liberally bestowed upon them
by their mates, indiscriminately, and showed no resentment whatever when
he heard himself alluded to as Jo, or Hamlet, or the Beetle, his most
frequent appellations in the playground. He kept a black bottle in his
desk, at the neck of which he habitually refreshed himself before the
whole school; and he addressed the children with an elaborate and caustic
levity in a thin shaky voice quite twenty years too old for him. His
humour was thrown away upon the rising generation of Waddy, and might
have been supposed to be the cat-like pawing of a vicious mind; but Joel
Ham was not cruel, and although when occasion demanded he could use the
cane with exceeding smartness, he frequently overlooked misdemeanours
that might have justified an attack, and was never betrayed into
administering unmerited cuts even when his black bottle was empty and his
thirst most virulent.

In spite of his eccentricities and his weaknesses, and the fact that he
was neither respected nor dreaded, Ham brought his scholars on remarkably
well. There were three big classes in the room--first, third, and
fifth--and a higher and lower branch of each; he managed all, with the
assistance of occasional monitors selected from the best pupils. Good
order prevailed in the school, for little that went on there escaped the
master's alert eye. Even when he drowsed at his desk, as he sometimes did
on warm afternoons, the work was not delayed, for he was known to have a
trick of awakening with a jerk, and smartly nailing a culprit or a
dawdler.

The school to-day was in a tense and excitable condition, now heightened
to fever by the two cobwebbed mysteries standing against the wall, but
the imperative rattle of Joel's cane on the desk quickly induced a
specious show of industry.

'Gable!'

The individual addressed, a big scholar in the Lower Third, was so
absorbed in the spectacle provided by Haddon and McKnight that he failed
to hear the master's voice, and continued staring stupidly with all his
eyes.

'Gable! This way, my dear child.'

Gable started guiltily, and then fell into confusion. He climbed
awkwardly, out of his seat, and advanced hesitatingly with shuffling feet
towards the master. It was now evident that Gable was not a large boy,
but a little old man, slightly built, with a round ruddy clean-shaven
face and thick white hair. But his manner was that of a boy of eight.

'Hold out, my young friend!' Joel commanded, with an expressive flourish
of his cane.

Gable held out his hand; his toothless mouth formed itself into a dark
oval, his eyes distended with painful expectancy, and he assumed the
shrinking attitude of the very small boy who expects the fall of the
cane. The situation was absurd, but no one smiled. Ham raised the
extended hand a little with the end of the dreaded weapon.

'You are going the right way to come to a dishonoured old age, Gable,' he
said, and the cane went up, but the cut was not delivered. 'There,'
continued the master, 'I forgive you in consideration of your extreme
youth. Go to your place, and try to set a better example to the older
boys.'

The old man trotted back to his seat, grinning all over his face, and set
to work at his book with an appearance of intense zeal; and Joel Ham
turned his attention to the prime culprits. Having marched the youngsters
from the front desk of the third class, he drew desk and form forward
into the middle of the clear space, and then beckoned to McKnight.

'Jacker, my man,' he said cheerfully, 'bring your slate and sit here. I
have a little job for you.'

Dick, standing alone, watched his mate seat himself at the desk, elated
for a moment with the idea that perhaps Jo was not going to regard their
offence as particularly heinous after all; but his better judgment
scouted the idea, and he returned to his scrutiny of the wall. There was
a weak spot near where Hector, Peterson's billy-goat, had butted his way
through on a memorable occasion, and escape was still a comforting
contingency.

The master approached McKnight with a pencil as if to set a lesson, but
this was merely a ruse; Jacker was a hard-headed vicious youth whose
favourite kick Ham wisely reckoned with on an occasion like this. To the
boy's surprise and disgust he was presently seized by the neck and hauled
forward on to the desk. His legs, being against the seat, which was
attached to the desk, were quite useless for defence, so that he was a
helpless victim under the chastening rod. It was a degrading attitude,
and the presence of the girls made the punishment a disgrace to rankle
and burn. Jacker, for pride and the credit of his boyhood made no sound
under the first dozen cuts; but his younger brother Ted, from his place
in the Lower Fifth, set up a lugubrious wail of sympathy almost
immediately, and, as his feelings were more and more wrought upon by the
painful sight, his wailing developed into shrill and tearful abuse of the
master.

'You let him alone, see!' yelled Ted, when Jacker, unable longer to
contain himself, uttered a dismal cry.

'Hit some one yer size--go on, hit some one yer size!' screamed Ted.

But Mr. Ham's whole attention was devoted to his task, and the younger
McKnight's threats, commands, and warnings were entirely ignored,
although the boy continued to utter them between his heart broken sobs.

'Mind who you're hittin'! You'll suffer for this, Hamlet, you'll see!
We'll get some one what'll show you! Rocks for you nex' Saterdee!

Ted howled, Jacker howled, but the master caned on until he thought he
had quite accomplished his duty in that particular; then he let the limp
youth slide back into his seat.

Mr. Ham returned to his high stool to rest and recuperate. Thoughout the
proceedings he had displayed no heat whatever, and when he addressed
Jacker it was with his usual bland irony.

'You should thank me for my pains, my boy, but youth is proverbially
ungrateful. You will think better of my efforts a few years hence;
meanwhile I can afford to wait for the verdict of your riper judgment,
Jacker--I can afford to wait, my boy.'

Jacker's only reply to this was a long wail expressive of a great
disgust. That outburst was too much for the already over-wrought
youngster in the Lower Fifth; starting up with a cry, Ted snatched one of
the leaden ink-wells from its cell in the desk, and took aim at the
master's head. The well struck the wall just above its mark, and
scattered its contents in Joel Ham's pale hair, in his eyes, down his
cheeks, and all over his white moles. Amazement--blind, round-eyed, dumb
amazement--possessed the school, and for a few seconds a dead silence
prevailed. The spell was broken by Dick Haddon, who discovered his
opportunity, plunged like a diver at the weak spot in the wall, went
clean through and disappeared from view. Ted McKnight, who had awakened
to the enormity of his crime at the sight of the master knuckling the ink
out of his eyes, and had gone grey to the lips in his trepidation,
looking anxiously to the right and left for a refuge, saw Dickie's
departure; jumping the desk in front he rushed at the aperture the latter
had left in the wall, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

The master mopped the ink from his hair and his face with a sheet of
blotting paper, and calling Belman, Cann, Peterson, Jinks, and Slogan,
made for the door. Already Dick Haddon was halfway across the flat,
scattering the browsing sheep to the right and left in his flight, and
Ted was following at his best pace.

'After them!' cried the master. 'Two whole days' holiday for you if you
run them down.'

The pursuit was taken up cheerfully enough, but it was quite hopeless.
The breakaways were heading for the line of bush, and the sapling scrub
along the creek was so thick that the boys would have been perfectly
secure under its cover, even if the pursuers were not in hearty sympathy
with the pursued, and the pursuit were not a miserable and perfidious
pretence.

Mr. Ham, recognising after a few minutes how matters really stood,
returned to the school. His approach had been signalled by a scout at one
of the windows, and he found the classes all in order and suspiciously
industrious, and Jacker McKnight still sitting with his head sunk upon
his arms--a monument of sturdy resentment.

'My boys,' said the master, looking ludicrously piebald after his ink
bath, 'before resuming duties I wish to draw your attention to the crass
foolishness of which our young friends Haddon and McKnight are guilty.
You perceive that their action is not diplomatic, eh?'

'Ye--yes, sir,' piped a dubious voice here and there.

'To be sure. Had they remained they would have been caned; as they have
run away, they will receive a double dose and certain extra pains and
penalties, and meanwhile they suffer the poignant pangs of anticipation.
Anticipation, Jacker, my boy, the smart of future punishments, is the
true hell-flame.'

Jacker replied with a grunt of derisive and implacable bitterness, but
the schoolmaster seemed much comforted by his apophthegm, and stood for
several minutes surveying the back of McKnight's head, and wearing a
benignant and thoughtful smile.

CHAPTER III.

WADDY was soon possessed of the facts of the shameful acts of
insubordination at the school and the escape of Dick Haddon and Ted
McKnight, and nobody--according to everybody's wise assurances--was the
least bit surprised. The fathers of the township (and the mothers, too)
had long since given Dick up as an irresponsible and irreclaimable imp.
One large section declared the boy to be 'a bit gone,' which was
generally Waddy's simple and satisfactory method of accounting for any
attribute of man, woman, or child not in conformity with the dull rule of
conduct prevailing at Waddy. Another section persisted in its belief that
'the boy Haddon' was possessed with several peculiar devils of
lawlessness and unrest, which could only be exorcised by means of daily
'hidings,' long abstinence from any diet more inflammatory than bread and
water, and the continuous acquisition of great quantities of Scripture.

An extraordinary meeting of the School Committee was held at the Drovers'
Arms that evening to confer with Joel Ham, B.A., and consider what was
best to be done under the circumstances. The men of the township
recognised that it was their bounden duty to support the master in an
affair of this kind. When occasion arose they assisted in the capture of
vagrant youths, and when Joel imagined a display of force advisable they
attended at the punishment and rendered such assistance as was needful in
the due enforcement of discipline. It was understood by all that the
school would lose prestige and efficiency if Haddon and McKnight were not
taken and at once subjected to the rules of the establishment and the rod
of the master.

The meeting was quite informal. It was held in the bar, and the
discussion of the vital matter in hand was concurrent with the absorption
of McMahon's beer. Mr. Ham's best attention was given to the latter
object.

'Bring the boys to me, gentlemen,' he said, 'and I will undertake to
induce in them a wholesome contrition and a proper respect for
letters--temporarily, at least.'

Neither of the lads had yet returned to his home; but the paternal
McKnight promised, like a good citizen, that immediately his son was
available he would be reduced to subjection with a length of belting, and
then handed over to the will of the scholastic authority without any
reservation. Mr. McKnight was commended for his public spirit; and it was
then agreed that a member of the Committee should wait upon Widow Haddon
to invite her co-operation, and point out the extent to which her son's
mental and moral development would be retarded by a display of weakness
on her part at a crisis of this kind?

Mr. Ephraim Shine volunteered for this duty. Ephraim was a tall gaunt
man, with hollow cheeks, a leathery complexion, and large feet. He walked
or sat with his eyes continually fixed upon these feet--reproachfully, it
seemed--as if their disproportion were a source of perennial woe; he
carried his arms looped behind him, and had acquired a peculiar stoop--to
facilitate his vigilant guardianship of his feet, apparently. Mr. Shine,
as superintendent of the Waddy Wesleyan Chapel, represented a party that
had long since broken away from the School Committee, which was condemned
in prayer as licentious and ungodly, and left to its wickedness when it
exhibited a determination to stand by Joel Ham, a scoffer and a drinker
of strong drinks, as against a respectable, if comparatively unlettered,
nominee of the Chapel and the Band of Hope. His presence at the committee
meeting to-night was noted with surprise, although it excited no remark;
and his offer to interview the widow was accepted with gratitude as a
patriotic proposal. There was only one dissentient--Rogers, a burly
faceman from the Silver Stream.

'Don't send Shine to cant an' snuffle, an' preach the poor woman into a
fit o' the miserables,' he said.

Ephraim lifted his patient eyes to Rogers's face for a moment with an
expression of meek reproof, then let them slide back to his boots again,
but answered nothing. The enmity of the two was well known in Waddy.
Rogers was a worldly man who drank and swore, and who loved a fight as
other men loved a good meal; and Shine, as the superintendent, must
withhold his countenance from so grievous a sinner. Besides, there was a
belief that at some time or another the faceman had thrashed Shine, who
was searcher at the Stream in his week-day capacity, and for that reason
was despised by the miners, and regarded as a creature apart. Ephraim, it
was remarked, was always particularly careful in searching Rogers when he
came off shift, in the hope, as the men believed, of one day finding a
secreted nugget, and getting even with his enemy by gaoling him for a few
years.

As Ephraim passed out from the bar he again allowed his eyes to roll up
and meet those of his enemy from the dark shadow of his thick brows.

'Don't forget the little widow was sweet on Frank Hardy before you jugged
him, Tinribs,' said the miner.

Tinribs was a name bestowed upon the superintendent by the youth of
Waddy, and called after him by irreverent small boys from convenient
cover or under the shelter of darkness. He found the Widow Haddon at
home. She it was who answered his knock.

'I have come from the School Committee, ma'am,' he said, still intent
upon his boots.

'About Dickie, is it? Come in.'

Mrs. Haddon was dressmaker-in-ordinary to the township, and her otherwise
carefully tended kitchen was littered with clippings and bits of
material. She resumed her task by the lamp a soon as the delegate of the
School Committee was comfortably seated.

'Has Richard come home, ma'am?' Ephraim was an orator, and prided himself
on his command of language.

The widow shook her head. 'No,' she said composedly. 'I don't think he
will come home to-night.'

'We have had a committee meeting, missus,' said Ephraim, examining the
toe of his left boot reproach fully, 'an' it's understood we've got to
catch these boys.'

'What!' cried Mrs. Haddon, dropping her work into her lap. 'You silly men
are going to make a hunt of it? Then, let me tell you, you will not get
that boy of mine to-morrow, nor this week, nor next. Was ever such a pack
of fools! Let Dickie think he is being hunted, and he'll be a bushranger,
or a brigand chief, or a pirate, or something desperately wicked in that
amazin' head of his, and you won't get a-nigh him for weeks, not a man
Jack of you! Dear, dear, dear, you men--a set of interferin',
mutton-headed creatures!

'He's an unregenerate youth--that boy of yours, ma'am.'

'Is he, indeed?' Mrs. Haddon's handsome face flushed, and she squared her
trim little figure. 'Was he that when he went down the broken winze to
poor Ben Holden? Was he that when he brought little Kitty Green and her
pony out of the burnin' scrub? Was he all a little villain when he found
you trapped in the cleft of a log under the mount there, when the Stream
men wouldn't stir a foot to seek you?

During this outburst Shine had twisted his boots in all directions, and
examined them minutely from every point of view.

'No, no, ma'am,' he said, 'not all bad, not at all; but--ah, the--ah,
influence of a father is missing, Mrs. Haddon.'

'That's my boy's misfortune, Mr. Superintendent.'

'It--it might be removed.'

'Eh? What's that you say?'

The widow eyed her visitor sharply, but he was squirming over his
unfortunate feet, and apparently suffering untold agonies on their
account.

'The schoolmaster must be supported, missus,' he said hastily.
'Discipline, you know. Boys have to be mastered.'

'To be sure; but you men, you don't know how. My Dick is the best boy in
the school, sometimes.'

'Sometimes, ma'am, yes.'

'Yes, sometimes, and would be always if you men had a pen'orth of ideas.
Boys should be driven sometimes and sometimes coaxed.'

'And how'd you coax him what played wag under the very school, fought
there, an' then broke out of the place like a burgerler?

'I know, I know--_that's bad; but it's been a fearful tryin' day, an'
allowances should be made.'

'Then, if he comes home you'll give him over to be--ah, dealt with?'

'Certainly, superintendent; I am not a fool, an' I want my boy taught.
But don't you men go chasm' those lads; they'll just enjoy it, an' you'll
do no good. You leave Dickie to me, an' I'll have him home here in two
shakes. Dickie's a high-spirited boy, an' full o' the wild fancies of
boys. He's done this sort o' thing before. Run away from home once to be
a sailor, an' slep' for two nights in a windy old tree not a hundred
yards from his own comfortable bed, imaginin' he was what he called on
the foretop somethin'. But I know well enough how to work on his
feelings.'

'A father, ma'am, would be the savin' o' that lad.'

Mrs. Haddon dropped her work again and her dark eyes snapped; but Ephraim
Shine had lifted one boot on to his knee, and was examining a hole in the
sole with bird-like curiosity.

'When I think my boy needs special savin' I'll send for you, Mr. Shine--

'It'd be a grave responsibility, a trial an' a constant triberlation, but
I offer myself. I'll be a father to your boy, ma'am, barrin' objections.'

'An' what is meant by that, Mr. Shine?'

The widow, flushed of face, with her work thrust forward in her lap and a
steely light in her fine eyes, regarded the searcher steadily.

'An offer of marriage to yourself is meant, Mrs. Haddon, ma'am.'

Shine's eyes came sliding up under his brows till they encountered those
of Mrs. Haddon; then they fell again suddenly. The little widow tapped
the table impressively with her thimbled finger, and her breast heaved.

'Do you remember Frank Hardy, Ephraim Shine?'

'To be certain I do.'

'Well, man, you may have heard what Frank Hardy was to me before he went
to--to--'

'To gaol, Mrs. Haddon? Yes.'

'Listen to this, then. What Frank Hardy was to me before he is still,
only more dear, an' I'd as lief everybody in Waddy knew it.'

'A gaol-bird an' a thief he is.'

'He is in gaol, an' that may make a gaol-bird of him, but he is no thief.
'Twas you got him into gaol, an' now you dare do this.'

Shine's slate-coloured eyes slid up and fell again.

''Twas done in the way o' duty. He don't deny I found the gold on him.'

'No, but he denies ever havin' seen it in his life before, an' I believe
him.'

'An' about that cunnin' little trap in his boot-heel, ma'am?'

'It was what he said it was--the trick of some enemy.'

Mr. Shine lifted his right boot as if trying its weight, groaned and set
it down again, tried the other, and said:

'An' who might the enemy ha' been, d'ye think?'

I do not know, but--I am Frank Hardy's friend, and you may not abuse him
in my house.'

'You have a chance o' a respectable man, missus.' Mrs. Haddon had risen
from her seat and was standing over her visitor, a buxom black-gowned
little fury.

'An' I tell him to go about his business, an' that's the way.' The
gesture the widow threw at her humble kitchen door was magnificent. 'But
stay,' she cried, although the imperturbable Shine had not shown the
slightest intention of moving. 'You've heard I went with Frank's mother
to visit him in the gaol there at the city; p'r'aps you're curious to
know what I said. Well, I'll tell you, an' you can tell all Waddy from
yon platform in the chapel nex' Sunday, if you like. 'Frank,' I said,
'you asked me to be your wife, an' I haven't answered. I do now. I'll
meet you at the prison door when you come out, if you please, an' I'll
marry you straight away.' Those were my very words, Mr. Superintendent,
an' I mean to keep to them.'

Mrs. Haddon stood with flaming face and throbbing bosom, a tragedy queen
in miniature, suffused with honest emotion. Ephraim sat apparently
absorbed in his left boot, thrusting his finger into the hole in the
sole, as if probing a wound.

'You wouldn't think, ma'am,' he said presently with the air of a martyr,
'that I gave fourteen-and six for them pair o' boots not nine weeks
since.'

Mrs. Haddon turned away with an impatient gesture.

'If you've said all you have to say, you might let me get on with my
work.'

'I think that's all, Mrs. Haddon.' The searcher arose, and stood for a
moment turning up the toe of one boot and then the other; he seemed to be
calculating his losses on the bargain. 'You hand over the boy Richard, I
understand, ma'am?'

'I'll do what is right, Mr. Shine.'

'The Committee said as much. The Committee has great respect for you,
Mrs. Haddon.'

Ephraim lifted his feet with an effort, and carried them slowly from the
house, carefully and quietly closing the kitchen door after him. About
half a minute later he opened the door again, just as carefully and as
quietly, and said:

'Good night, ma'am, and God bless you.'

Then he went away, his hands bunched behind him, walking like a man
carrying a heavy burden.

CHAPTER IV

DICK HADDON and Ted McKnight were still at large next morning, and
nothing was heard of them till two o'clock in the afternoon, when
Wilson's man, Jim Peetree, reported having discovered the boys swimming
in the big quarry in the old Red Hand paddock. Jim, seeing a prospect of
covering himself with glory, made a dash after the truants; but they
snatched up their clothes and ran for the saplings up the creek, all
naked as they were, and Jim was soon out of the hunt--though he captured
Ted's shirt, and produced it as a guarantee of good faith.

That night three boys--three of the faithful--Jacker McKnight, Phil Doon,
and Billy Peterson, stole through Wilson's paddock carrying mysterious
bundles, and taking as many precautions to avoid observation and pursuit
as if they were really, as they pretended to be with the fine imagination
of early boyhood, desperate characters bent upon an undertaking of
unparalleled lawlessness and great daring. They crossed the creek and
crept along in the shadow of the hill, for the moon, although low down in
the sky, was still bright and dangerous to hunted outlaws. Off to the
left could be heard the long-drawn respirations of the engines at the
Silver Stream, and the grind of her puddlers, the splashing of the
slurry, and the occasional solemn, significant clang of a knocker. They
passed the old Red Hand shaft, long since deserted and denuded of poppet
legs and engine-houses, its comparatively ancient tips almost overgrown
and characterless, with lusty young gums flourishing amongst its
scattered boulders. Waddy venerated the old Red Hand as something so
ancient that its history left openings for untrammelled conjecture, and
the boys associated it with not a few of the mysteries of those grand
far-off ages when dragons abducted beautiful maidens and giants were
quite common outside circuses. The mouth of the shaft was covered with
substantial timbers, save for a small iron-barred door securely
padlocked. The pit now served a useful purpose as air-shaft for the
Silver Stream, and the iron-runged ladders still ran down into its black
depths.

The boys kept to the timber, and presently found themselves climbing down
the rugged rocks where the hillside suddenly became an abrupt wall. From
here had been blasted the thousands of tons of rock that went to the
building of that grim prison in Yarraman, the town where Frank Hardy lay,
a good half-day's tramp across the wide flat country faced by the
township The quarry, too, was overgrown again; being almost inaccessible
to Wilson's cattle its undergrowth was rank and high, and as it was
sheltered from the sun's rays and watered in part by a tiny spring, it
was often the one green oasis in a weary land of crackling yellow and
drab.

After gaining the bottom of the quarry, Jacker led the way to the deepest
end. Here the bottom, covered with scrub growth, sloped rather suddenly
for a few feet up to the abrupt wall. Going on his hands and knees under
the thick odorous peppermint saplings, Jacker ran his head into a niche
in the rock amongst climbing sarsaparilla, and remained so, like some
strange geological specimen half embedded in the rock. Within, where his
head was hidden, the darkness was impenetrable. Jacker blew a strange
note on a whistle manufactured from the nut of an apricot, and after a
few moments a light appeared below him, a feeble flame, far down in the
rock. This was waved twice and then withdrawn.

'Righto!' said Jacker in a hoarse piratical tone. 'Gimme the tucker,
Black Douglas; I'll go down. You coves keep watch, an' no talkin', mind.'

Phil grumbled inarticulately, and Jacker's tone became hoarser and more
piratical still.

'Who's commandin' here?' he growled. 'D'ye mean mutiny?

'Oh, shut up!' said Doon, bitterly. 'No one's goin' t' mutiny, but there
ain't no fun campin' here.'

McKnight relented.

'All right,' he said, 'come down if you wanter. S'pose you'll on'y be
makin' some kind of a row 'f I leave you.'

Jacker put the growth aside carefully, and going feet first gradually
disappeared. Within there in the formless darkness he stood upon a ladder
made of the long stem of a sapling to which cleats were nailed. The
sapling was suspended in a black abyss. The boy, with his bundle hanging
from his shoulder, started down fearlessly. Presently he came to where a
second prop was fastened to the first with spikes and strong rope. Here
he paused a moment, and called:

'Hello, be-e-low there!'

Jacker's character had undergone a rapid change; he was now quite an
innocent and law-abiding person, a working shareholder in the Mount of
Gold Quartz-mining Company.

'On top!' answered a cautious voice from the depths.

'Look up--man on!

And now, having observed the formalities, Jacker continued his descent,
and in a few moments dropped from the primitive ladder and found a
footing on a few planks thrown from one drive to another, across what was
really an old shaft. At his back was a drive running into darkness;
before him was a small irregular excavation lit with a single candle, and
sitting in this, dressed, or, more correctly, undressed, like miners at
their work, were Dick Haddon and Ted McKnight.

Jacker threw his bundle on the floor of the drive.

'Crib,' he said carelessly; and then, after examining the face of the
excavation: 'S'pose we ain't likely to cut the lode this shift, Dick?

Dick shook his head thoughtfully.

'No,' he said. 'Allowin' for the underlay, we should strike her about
fifteen feet in.'

The other boys had now joined their mates. Each on his way down had
gravely followed the example of Jacker, who was supposed to be the boss
of the incoming shift. As the fathers labour their sons play, and for
months these boys had been digging in this old mine, off and on, with
enthralling mystery. The excavation in which Dick and Ted were seated
represented the joint labour of the members of the Mount of Gold
Quartz-mining Company, though the very existence of the mine was unknown
to a single soul outside the juvenile syndicate.

On the surface all signs of the shaft had long since been obliterated.
The quarrymen blasting into the side of the hill years back had made a
small opening into the disused pit at some distance from the top, and
this opening was accidentally discovered by Dick and Jacker one day
during a hunt for a wounded rabbit. Investigation proved the mine to be
of no great depth, and, thanks to the pumps of the Silver Stream, as dry
as a bone. A company of reliable small boys was formed with exceeding
caution and a fine observance of rule and precedent; for Dick Haddon did
nothing by halves, and forgot nothing that might give an air of reality
to the creations of his exuberant fancy.

The original intention of the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company was to
strike a reef five yards wide, composed entirely of gold, and to
overwhelm its various parents with contrition on account of past
lambastings by making them suddenly rich beyond the dreams of Oriental
avarice. Time had served to dim the ardour of its hopes in this
direction; but the mine was still an enticing enterprise when exciting
novelties in the way of adventure were wanting, and would always be a
hiding-place in which a youthful fugitive from injustice might defy all
authority so long as the members of the Company remained true to their
oath. Now that oath was quite the most solemn and impressive thing of the
kind that Dick Haddon and Phil Doon had been able to discover after
consulting the highest literary authorities.

The quarrel between Dick and Jacker McKnight that originated under the
school was quite forgotten in the resulting excitement. It was a mere
incident in any case, and would have made no material difference in their
friendship. It had not kept Jacker from visiting the Mount of Gold on the
same night with information and supplies, and now the boy was cheerfully
unconscious of the black eye that still ornamented his broad visage.
There were two well-worn shovels and a miner's pick in the drive. Jacker
seized the pick.

'Might as well put in a bit of work,' he said.

'Hold hard,' replied Dick, 'Smoke-ho, old man. What's goin' on on top?'

'Whips! They had a meetin' about youse last night--Jo, an' Rogers, an' my
dad, an' ole Tinribs, an' the rest. They're all after you. You're fairly
in fer it.'

Dick's face became radiant with magnificent ideas.

'What! You don't mean they're goin' t' form a band t' capture us?'

'Well, they sorter agreed about somethin' like that.'

'My word, that's into our hands, ain't it? Lemme see, we must be a band
of bushrangers what's robbed the gold escort an' the mounted p'lice're
huntin' us in the ranges. I'll be--yes, I'll be Morgan. An' Ted--!
What'll we make Ted? I know--I know. He'll be my faithful black boy,
what'll rather die than leave me. You fellers bring a cork to-morrow, an'
we'll pretty quick make a faithful black boy of Twitter.'

All eyes were turned upon Ted, who did not seem in the least impressed by
the magnificent prospect. Indeed, the faithful native was palpably out of
sorts; he took no part in the enthusiasm of his mates, his face was pale,
and funk was legible in the diffident eye he turned upon the company.
Dick noted this and put in an artful touch or two.

'Jacky-Jacky, the faithful black boy,' he said; 'brave as a lion, an' the
best shot in the world--better'n me!

The ruse was not successful. Ted failed to respond.

'Twitter don't seem to want to be no black boy,' said Phil.

'I'll be Jacky-Jacky,' volunteered Peterson eagerly.

Peterson was a stolid youth with a face like a wooden doll; absolutely
reliable since he was as stubborn under adult rule as a whole team of
unbroken bullocks, and quite reckless of consequences for the reason that
he never anticipated them. Peterson would have made a most successful
Jacky-Jacky, but his suggestion was overlooked in the general concern
inspired by Ted's conduct.

Feeling the eyes of the party upon him, Ted grew more uneasy, the corners
of his mouth drew down, one finger went up slowly, and Twitter began to
snivel.

'I--I--w--wa--want to go home,' he said.

The mates looked at each other in amazement. Ted was little, but his
pluck had been tried on many occasions, and this was a great surprise.

'Well, he's on'y a kiddy,' said Phil pityingly, and with the superiority
two years may confer.

Dick found the three were looking to him for an explanation.

'Ted's real scared,' he said. 'We made a discovery this afternoon--in
there.'

'In the big drive?' asked Jacker. The others looked startled.

Dick nodded, and took up the candle. 'Come an' see,' he said.

Dick led the way along the opposite drive, and his mates followed, not
too eagerly, Ted bringing up the rear. The drive was about eighty feet in
extent. Having reached the end, Dick held the candle low, and made
visible to his wondering mates a black cavity about eighteen inches in
diameter in one corner near the floor.

'We were workin' in here a bit for a change this afternoon after Peetree
hunted us, an' I broke through.'

'What's in there?' asked Jacker in an awed voice.

'Look,' said Dick.

Jacker backed away; the other three kept a respectful distance and stared
silently.

'It's on'y another drive,' Dick explained. 'It must come from the Red
Hand, I think.'

Dick was quite undisturbed, but the others were afraid, and even when
they had returned to their own drive cast many doubting glances back into
the darkness. In the mine as they had known it before everything was
definite, and there was nothing of which a boy of spirit need be afraid.
The shaft was choked with dirt a few feet below their landing-planks, and
there was no spot in which a mystery might lurk; but it was very
different now with that black hole leading Heaven knew into what awesome
depths, harbouring goodness knew what horrors. Ted's defection had
suddenly become the sentiment of the majority. At that moment Dick could
have counted on Peterson alone had need arisen.

'We'll go down there an' explore them workin's,' said Dick, having lit a
piece of dry root and composed himself for a smoke.

'In the daytime, Morgan,' said Jacker hastily and with diffidence.

'All right; but it don't make no difference down here, you know.'

Jacker thought it did, for although it was always night in the drives,
the consciousness that the earth above was flooded with sunlight was a
great heartener.

'Don't you think you'd best give this up for once--this bushranger game?'
ventured Jacker.

'Why?' Dick's eyes were round with surprise.

'Oh, well, Twitter's jack of it, an' I don't think it's much fun.' Jacker
had assumed a careless air. 'See here, Dick,' he continued smartly, 'the
Cow Flat chaps made a raid last night, an' took Butts an' three
others--mine among 'em.'

This was an important matter. Butts was Dick's big grey billygoat, the
best goat in harness the boys had ever known or ever heard of; and the
'Cow Flat chaps' were the boys of a small centre about two miles and a
half further down the creek, between whom and the boys of Waddy there
existed an interminable feud that led them to fight on sight, and steal
such of each other's possessions as could be easily and expeditiously
removed. Dick's excitement soon evaporated; evidently root smoking was
conducive to a philosophical frame of mind.

'We'll get them back all right--after,' he said.

'They'll work Butts to a shadder,' Jacker remarked insinuatingly.

'Then we'll go down some night, an' strip Amson's garden.' Amson was a
prominent resident of Cow Flat, and had nothing whatever to do with the
goat raid, but the boyish sense of justice does not stoop to find
distinctions.

Jacker Mack had another string to his bow. 'They say Harry Hardy's comin'
home this week,' he said.

'No!' cried Dick, much moved. 'Who says?'

'Gable says.'

'Pooh! Gable's a kid.'

'No matter, it's true. Mrs. Hardy had a letter, 'n Harry's coming down
with cattle.'

'Gosh! he'll make it hot for Tinribs, I bet.'

Waddy had been waiting for Harry Hardy to come home, confident that he
would do something of an exciting character to the disadvantage of those
persons who had been instrumental in sending his brother Frank to gaol.
Harry was much the younger of the two brothers; for some years he had
been away droving, and the news of his brother's misfortune was bringing
him home from a Queensland station. The township thought, too, there
would be a score to wipe out on his mother's account, and the return was
looked for as an important public event.

Dick pondered over the situation for a moment. It would never do to miss
any entertainment that might result from Harry's return, and yet there
was Joel Ham still to be reckoned with.

'I think we'd better wait,' he said. 'You fellows can let on as soon's he
arrives.'

Ted's face fell again, and Jacker moved uneasily. He was anxious to be
out of the mine and away from the uncanny possibilities of that dark
chasm, and yet it was absolutely necessary that he should show no sign of
funk, leave no opening for the tongue of derision. Some day, perhaps,
when the full strength of the company was available and candles were
numerous, he would follow Dick's lead in the work of exploration, but for
the present his whole desire was to get to the surface. Now recollection
came, and with it hope. Diving into his breast pocket, he drew and
crumpled envelope, and handed it to Dick.

A letter,' he said, 'from your mother.'

Dick was surprised; as he took the note Jacker discovered an accusation
in his eye.

'The oath don't say nothin' agin' letters,' said McKnight sullenly.

'No,' answered his mate, 'but really miners ain't supposed to have
mothers runnin' after 'em, like if they were kids.'

'Well,' said the other, on the defensive, 'your mother comes to me at
dinner time, an' she says: 'I s'pose 'taint likely you'll see my Dick,
Jacker.' I said,' No, Missus Haddon, 'taint, s'elp me.' Then she says,
'Well, if he should come to see you, will you give him this?' So I took
it, an' there you are.'

Dick read the letter slowly; it was a very artful letter, most pathetic,
and sprinkled with drops which might have been tears. The writer spoke
despondingly of her loneliness and her desolation, and the fears she
endured when by herself in the house at night, knowing there was a camp
of blacks in the corner paddock, and so many rough cattlemen about. She
was entirely helpless since her only protector had deserted her, and she
supposed that it only remained for her to be resigned to her fate. She
signed her self, 'Your forsaken and sorrow-stricken mother.'

When Dick had finished reading he started to put on his clothes.

'What's up, Morgan?' asked Phil.

'Knock off!' was the brief reply.

'But what yer goin' to do?'

'I'm goin' home.'

'Home!' cried Peterson. 'Why?'

'Because!'

Dick had the instincts of a leader; he demanded reasons for everything,
but gave none.

Before the lads parted that night young Haddon proffered Ted McKnight
excellent advice.

'Your dad's night shift, ain't he?' he said. 'Well, don't you go in till
near twelve. He'll be gone to work then, an' when he comes off in the
mornin' he'll be too tired to lick you much.' This, from an orphan with
practically no experience of paternal rule, argued a fine intuition.

CHAPTER V.

DICK HADDON did not enter his home immediately after parting with his
mates. Mrs. Haddon's little cottage, four roomed, with a queer skillion
front, was surrounded by a tumbled mass of tangled vegetation miscalled a
garden, and Dick loitered in the shadow of the back fence to consider
what manner of entrance would be most politic. He was shrewdly aware that
his mother might be tempted to make an attack on the impulse of the
moment, her most pathetic letter notwithstanding, and it was a point of
honour with him to offer no resistance and make no evasion when Mrs.
Haddon felt called upon to administer corporal punishment. To be sure the
maternal beatings occasioned very little physical inconvenience; but they
gave rise to much unpleasantness, and were to be avoided when possible.

As it happened, Dick was not put to the necessity of making a choice
to-night. In the midst of his cogitations he felt himself seized from
behind in a pair of long, strong arms. With the quick instinct of a
wrongdoer he suspected evil, and kicked sharply back ward at the shins of
the enemy.

'Le' go! You le' me go, see!' gasped the boy, struggling and fighting
fiercely.

Resistance was quite useless. Dick was dragged through the gate, and up
to the house. The door was opened, and he was bundled unceremoniously
into the kitchen. Then Ephraim Shine--for it was the superintendent who
had fallen upon Dick in the darkness--thrust his sparsely-whiskered,
leathery face into the well-lighted room, and said shortly:

'Your boy, ma'am!'

Shine withdrew instantly, closing the door noiselessly after him, and
left Dick flushed and furious.

'He didn't take me,' he cried. 'I was comin' home, an' he grabbed me just
outside there--the beast!

Dick stopped short, suddenly conscious of the presence of visitors. Mrs.
Hardy was sitting opposite his mother by the wide fireplace--the tall,
white-haired gentlewoman in whose society he always felt himself
transformed suddenly into a sort of saintly fellowship with the
remarkably gentlemanly little boys whose acquaintance he made in the
books provided by the chapel library. At the table sat Gable, the grey,
chubby-faced third-class scholar whom Joel Ham had forgiven because of
his extreme youth. The old man had a circular slab of bread and jam in
his left hand, and was grinning fraternally at Dick. There was a third
visitor, a stranger, a brown-haired, brown-skinned, bony young man,
dressed after the manner of a drover. He had a small moustache, and a
grave, taking face. He looked like a bushranger, Dick thought admiringly.

'This is Richard, Henry,' said Mrs. Hardy.

'You don't know me, eh, Coppertop?' said the young man, taking the boy's
hand.

'Harry Hardy,' said Dick at random.

'Well, that's a good enough guess, young fellow

Dick fell back quietly. It was, he felt, a moment when an air of sadness
and a retiring disposition would be likely to be most becoming in
him--and most effective. He declined his mother's invitation to supper
with such meekness that the little woman found it difficult to hide her
concern. Could she have peeped into the drive of the Mount of Gold, where
was scrap-food enough to victual a small regiment, not to mention pillage
from Wilson's orchard, she might have been more at her ease--or have
found fresh occasion for uneasiness. Dick had none of his mother's
apple-like roundness--the widow, who was not yet thirty-five, always
suggested apples and roses--he had inherited his father's flame-coloured
hair, and a pale complexion that was very effective in turning away
maternal wrath when allied with an appearance of pensive melancholy and a
fictitious pain in the chest.

The conversation, which had been interrupted by Dick's entrance, was
presently resumed. The women were recounting the story of Frank Hardy's
arrest and trial for Harry's information. The subject was one of profound
interest to Dick, and from his retreat at the far end of the table, where
he sat disregarded, his crimes tacitly ignored for the time being, he
listened eagerly. When Gable kicked him to attract his attention, and
gleefully exhibited a handful of loaf sugar that he had slyly abstracted
from the basin, the small boy frowned the old man down with a diabolical
scowl.

Gable was Mrs. Hardy's brother, and although over sixty years of age, his
mind had remained the mind of a child; mentally, he never grew beyond his
eighth year. He was a child in all his ways and wishes, was happiest in
the society of children, and was regarded by them, without question and
without surprise, as one of themselves. He was sent to school because it
pleased him to go, and it kept him out of mischief, and every day he
learned over again the lessons he had learned the day before and
forgotten within an hour. His admiration for Dick Haddon was profound,
the respect and appreciation the boy of eight has for the big brother who
is twelve and smokes.

Abashed by Dick's frown, the old man devoted himself humbly to his
'piece,' and the boy gave his whole attention to the conversation. He was
eager to get an inkling of Harry's line of action. For his own part he
had thought of a desperate band, with Harry at its head and himself in a
conspicuous position, raiding the gaol at Yarraman under a hail of
bullets, and bearing off the prisoner in triumph; but experience had
taught him that the expedients of grown-up people were apt to be
disgustingly common place and ludicrously ineffective.

'If he'd an enemy,' said Harry, 'there'd be something to go on. Was there
nobody, no one at all, that he'd had any row with--nobody who hated him?'

Mrs. Haddon shook her head.

'Nobody,' she said. 'But he declared the real thieves had done it, either
to shift suspicion or to be rid of him. He thought it a disgrace that all
the men at the Stream should be marked as probable thieves because of one
or two rogues; an' he was always eager to spot the real robbers. It was
known gold-stealin' had been goin' on for some time. That's why they put
on the searcher.'

'Shine. Mightn't he have had a finger in it?'

'No, no. It doesn't seem likely. Why should he?'

'I can't say. God knows! But there is somebody. If I only knew the
man--if I only had him under my hand!

Harry's face became grey through the tan; he sat forward in his chair,
with a sinewy arm thrust down between his knees, and his hand closed as
if upon a throat. His mother touched his shoulder.

'Violence can only work mischief, my boy. Use what intelligence you
have--only that can help. If we can save poor Frank and clear his name,
we may leave vengeance to the law.'

'Yes, mother, you are right, but I am no saint. I hate my enemies, an' it
is maddening not to know who you hate--who to hit at.'

'That may be so, Henry, but passion will only blind you. If you are not
cool you will fail. Remember, the true culprits may be near you while you
are seeking; do nothing to set them on their guard. You may learn much
from the men. They are all Frank's friends, even those who believe him
guilty.'

'Believe him guilty!

'O, my boy, my boy! You would want to fight them all. It is folly. The
evidence did not leave room for a doubt as to his guilt, and these men
have their own ideas as to the morality of such crimes. Many of them
think none the worse of a man who helps himself to a nugget that he may
find on his shovel.'

'An' you are the mother of a thief, I am a thief's brother; Frank is a
convict, an' we must grin an' gammon we like it.'

'We must be discreet, we must be cunning, if we wish to prove we are no
thieves and no kin to thieves.'

'Right you are, mother--always right.' The young man spread his rough,
brown hand caressingly upon the small hand upon his knee. 'My fist always
moves before my head, but I know your way is best, an' I don't mean to
forget it.'

'Ephraim Shine seemed to be tryin' to do his best for Frank at the
trial,' said Mrs. Haddon. 'I think he's a well-meanin' man, if he is a
bit near an' peculiar in his ways. He always says it was his duty he did,
an' that's true. We know Frank's not guilty, because--because we're fond
of him'--here the little widow wiped her eyes, and her voice trembled--'
an' know him better than others, but the case was black against him.
Frank came straight up from below and into the searcher's shed, an' Shine
found the gold in his crib bag, which was rolled up, an' forced under the
handle of his billy.'

'Where it'd been for half the shift, the billy hanging in a dark drive
where any man below might 'a 'got at it.'

'They found gold in a little box-place made in the heel of one of his
workin' boots.'

'A boot that was always left in the boiler-house when he was off work.

'He had sold coarse water-worn gold to a Jew at Yarraman.'

'Yes, I know, I know. Got, he said, fossicking down the creek where
nobody had ever won anything but fine gold before. Whoever put that gold
in his crib bag an' faked his boot-heel salted Frank's puddling-tub. It
was easy done. He on'y worked there now'n again when on night or
afternoon shift, an' it was open to anyone. It was salted with Silver
Stream gold by some double-damned cunning scoundrel.'

'We know it, Harry, and we have to prove it. To do that we must have all
our wits about us.'

'Yes, mother, we must; but if that man ever is found I hope I may have
the handling of him. Dick!' said the young man, turning suddenly.

Dick came forward somewhat diffidently, like a detected criminal.

'You know all about this business, eh?'

The boy nodded his head solemnly.

'Who do you think worked that dirty trick on my brother?' asked Harry
gravely.

Dick had not thought of the matter in that light, but he answered,
without hesitation:

'Ole Tinribs, I expect.'

'Dickie!' cried Mrs. Haddon, reprovingly.

'Why, why, Dick?' queried the young man.

Oh, I dunno; on'y he seems that sort, don't he?' Dick had been subjected
to a grave indignity at the hands of the superintendent, and was not in a
frame of mind to form a just estimate of the character of that good man.
He spoke with the cheerful irresponsibility of youth.

'I'm afraid you won't be much good to us, Copper-top, old man, if you
rush at conclusions in that desperate way,' said Harry.

Mrs. Hardy shook an impressive forefinger at the boy.

'You will say nothing to anybody of our intentions, Richard.'

'No,' said Dick simply; but that word given to Mrs. Hardy was a sacred
oath, steel-bound and clamped.


CHAPTER VI.

THE school-ground next morning at nine o'clock showed little of its usual
activity. Most of the boys were gathered near Sam Brierly's Gothic
portico, now in unpicturesque ruins and hanging limply to the school
front like an excrescence. Here Richard Haddon and Edward McKnight were
standing in attitudes of extreme unconcern, heroes and objects of
respectful admiration, but nevertheless inwardly ill at ease and
possessed with sore misgivings. Some of their mates were offering sage
advice on a matter that concerned them most nearly: how to take cuts from
a cane so as to receive the least possible amount of hurt. Peterson was
full of valuable information.

'See, you stan' so,' he said, giving rather a good imitation of an
unhappy scholar in the act of receiving condign punishment, 'holdin' yer
hand like this, you know, keepin' yer eye on Jo; an' jes' when his nibs
comes down you shoves yer hand forwards, that sort, an' it don't hurt fer
sour apples.'

'Don't cut no more'n nothin' at all,' added the boy 'who was called
Moonlight, in cheerful corroboration.

Ted, who was very pale, and had a hunted look in his eyes, nodded his
head hopefully, and rehearsed the act with pathetic gravity.

The little girls, who should have been at the other end of the ground,
clustered at the corner and peeped round the portico, some giggling,
others fully seized of the gravity of the situation. Dick in spite of his
fine air of sang froid was well aware that there was one little girl
there, a pretty little girl of about ten, with brown hair and dark
serious eyes, who was suffering keenest apprehensions on his behalf, and
who would weep with quite shameless abandonment when it came to his turn
to endure the torments Mr. Joel Ham knew so well how to inflict. Dick was
rather superior to little girls; his tender sentiment was usually
lavished on ladies ten or twelve years his senior; but he could not hide
from himself the fact that Kitty Grey's affection, however hopeless it
might be, was at times most gratifying. Once he had resented its
manifestations with bitterness, imagining that they were likely to bring
him into contempt and undermine his authority; and when she interfered in
his memorable fight with Bill Cole and fiercely attacked his opponent
with a picket, cutting his head and incapacitating him for fighting for
the rest of the day, he felt that he could never forgive her. She had
violated the rule of battle and outraged the noble principle of fair
play; and, worse and worse, had disgraced him in the eyes of the world by
making him appear as a weakling seeking protection behind a despised
petticoat. He reviled Kitty for that action in such overwhelming language
that the poor girl fled in tears, and next day it was only with the
greatest difficulty that she persuaded him to accept two pears and a
blood-alley as a peace offering.

Dolf Belman came later with a little comfort.

'Gotter junk o' rosum,' he said, fumbling in his school-bag.

'Hoo! have you though?' said Parrot Cann. 'Rosum's great. Put some on my
hand oust when I went to ole Pepper's school at Yarraman, an' near died
laughin' when he gave me twenty cuts fer copy-in' me sums.'

The boys clustered about Dolf, who produced a piece of resin about the
size of a hen's egg, and waved it triumphantly.

'You pound it up wif a rock,' said he confidently, 'an' rub it on yer
hands.'

The pounding process was begun at once, amidst a babel of opinions. It
was a fond illusion amongst the boys that resin so applied deadened the
effects of the cane. It had been tried scores of times without in the
least mitigating the agony of Ham's cuts, but the faith of youth is not
easily shaken; so Ted's spirits revived wonderfully, and Dick developed a
keen interest in the pounding. Dolf pulverised the 'rosum,' declaring
that it should be powdered in one particular way which was a great secret
known only to a happy few. If it were powdered in any other way, the
resin lost its efficacy as a protection, and might even aggravate the
pain. Several boys volunteered testimony in support of Dolf's claim,
telling of the strange immunity they had enjoyed on various occasions
after applying the resin, and Peter Queen distinctly remembered 'a feller
up to Clunes' who, by a judicious use of the powder, was enabled to defy
all authority and preserve an attitude of hilarious derision under the
most awful tortures.

'This here cove he useter have hisself rubbed all over wif rosum every
mornin', then he'd go to school an' kick up ole boots. What'd he care? My
word, he was a terror!'

Dolf took up the theme, and enlarged upon the virtues of resin,
particularly that resin of his, which was the very best kind of resin for
the purpose and had been specially commended by an old swaggie with one
eye, who gave it to him for a four-bladed knife and a clay pipe. So great
was the effect of these representations that before Dick and Ted had
transferred the powder to their pockets they had become objects of envy
rather than commiseration, and one or two of their mates would gladly
have changed places with them on the spot.

'Wouldn't care if I was in fer it, 'stead o' you, Dick,' said Peterson.
'Mus' be an awful lark to have Hamlet layin' it on, an' you not feelin'
it all the time.'

'My oath I' said Jacker Mack feelingly.

'Good morning, boys.'

Joel Ham, B.A., had stolen in amongst them, and stood there in an odd
crow-like attitude, his mottled face screwed into an expression of
quizzical amiability, and his daily bottle sticking obtrusively from the
inside lining of his old coat. The lads scattered sheepishly.

'Peterson,' he said, blinking his pale lashes a dozen times in rapid
succession, 'the boy who thinks he can outwit his dear master is an
egotist, and egotism, Peterson, is the thing which keeps us from
profiting by the experiences of other fools.'

'I dunno what yer talkin' about,' answered Peter son, with heavy
resentment.

Mr. Ham blinked again for nearly half a minute.

'Of course not,' he said, 'of course not, my boy.' Then he turned to Dick
and Ted with quiet courtesy. 'Good morning, Richard. Good morning,
Edward.'

Ted, who was painfully conscious of the large ink-splashes on the
master's white trousers, kicked awkwardly at a buried stone, but Dick
replied cheerily enough.

The attitude of the master throughout that morning was quite inexplicable
to the scholars; he made no allusion whatever to the crimes of which Dick
and Ted had been guilty, and gave no hint that he harboured any
intentions that were not entirely generous and friendly. The two
culprits, working with quite astounding assiduity, were beset with
conflicting emotions. Dick, who had a vague sort of insight into the
master's character, was prepared for the worst, and yet not blind to the
possibility of a free pardon. Ted, after the first hour, was joyous and
over-confident.

Mr. Peterson called during the morning and conferred with Joel for a few
minutes. The gaping school knew what that meant, and awaited the out come
with the most anxious interest. Mr. Peterson, a six-foot Dane, an
engine-driver at the Stream, and Billy's father, was volunteering for
service in case Mr. Ham should need assistance in dealing with the two
culprits; but Joel sent him away, and the boys breathed freely again.
Their confidence in Dolf's 'rosum' did not leave them quite blind to the
advantages of an amicable settlement of their little difference with Mr.
Ham.

It was not until the boys were marching out for the dinner hour,
satisfied at last all was well, that Joel seemed suddenly to recollect,
and he called after Ted, blighting the poor youth's new-born happiness
and filling his small soul with a great apprehension.

'Teddy,' he called, 'you will remain, my boy. I have private business
with you--private and confidential, Teddy.'

So Ted fell out and stood by the wall, a very monument of dejection.

When school met again the scholars noted that the ink-stains had been
carefully washed and scraped from the wall and the floor, and they found
Ted McKnight sprawling in his place, his head buried in his arms, dumb
and unapproachable. If a mate came too close, moved by curiosity or a
desire to offer sympathy, Ted lashed out at him with his heels. For the
time being he was a small but cankered misanthrope full of vengeful
schemes, and only one person in the whole school envied him. That person
was Richard Haddon, whose turn was yet to come.

An hour passed and Dick had received no hint of the trouble in store.
Then Joel Ham, prowling along the desks, inspecting a task, stopped
before the boy and stood eyeing him with the curiosity with which an
entomologist might regard a rare grub, clawing his thin whiskers the
while. The interest he felt was apparently of the most friendly
description.

'Ah, Ginger,' he said, 'I had almost forgotten that I am still your
debtor. This way, Ginger, please.'

He stood Dick on his high stool, carefully tied the boy's ankles with a
strap, and gave him a large slate, on which his faults were emblazoned in
chalk, to hold up for the inspection of the classes; and so he left him
for the remainder of the afternoon, every now and again pausing in his
vicinity to deliver some incomprehensible sentiment or a sarcastic
homily. This performance affected all the scholars, but it excited Gable
so much that the little old man could do nothing but sit and stare at
Dick with round eyes and open mouth, and mutter 'Oh, crickie!' in a
frightened way. The little dark-eyed girl in the Third Class bore the
ordeal badly, too, and every speech of the master's started a large tear
rolling down her dimpled brown cheek.

When the rest of the youngsters marched out, Dick Haddon remained on his
high perch. Kitty Grey, who brought up the tail of the procession, turned
at the door and walked back to the master timorously and with downcast
eyes; and Dick felt that a plea was to be made on his behalf, but could
not hear what followed.

'Please, sir, if you won't cane him very much I'll give you this,' said
Kitty.

The bribe was a small brooch that had originally contained the letters of
the little girl's first name. It was a very cheap brooch when new, and
now some of the letters were gone and the gilt was worn off, but it was
still a priceless treasure in Kitty's eyes. Joel Ham examined the gift,
and then looked down upon the petitioner, his face pulled sideways into
its familiar withered grin.

Do you know this is bribery, little Miss Grey,' he said, 'bribery and
corruption?'

Ye-es, please, sir,' said Kitty.

'And do you know that that fellow up there is a monster of infamy, a
rebel and a riotous blackguard, who must be repressed in the interests of
peace and good government?'

'Yes, please, sir; but--but he's only a little fellow.' The master's
tremendous words seemed to call for this reminder.

Joel screwed his grin down another wrinkle or two.

'Yet you intercede for the ruffian try to buy him off, and at a
valuation, too, that proves you to be deaf to the voice of reason and
utterly improvident.'

'Oh, Mr. Ham, he didn't mean it--really, he didn't mean it!

Joel screwed out another wrinkle. His mirth always increased wrinkle by
wrinkle, until at times it appeared as if he were actually going to screw
his own neck by sheer force of repressed hilarity.

'I am incorruptible, Miss Grey,' he said. 'Take back your precious jewel;
but I promise you this, my dear, our friend Dick shall not get as much as
he deserves. Boys are like some metals, Miss Kitty, their temper is
improved by hammering.'

Kitty left the master, entirely in the dark as to the effect of her
intercession; but evidently it was not of much advantage to Dick. When
the boy came from the school about half an hour later, he carried his
chin high, his lips were compressed tightly, and he stared straight
ahead. Three faithful friends who had waited to know the worst joined
him, but no words were spoken. They followed at his heels, showing by
their silence due respect for a profound emotion. Dick did not make for
home; he turned off to the right and led the way down into one of the
large quarries on the flat, and there turned a flushed face and a pair of
flashing eyes upon his mates.

'I'm going to have it out of Ham,' he said. 'I don't care! He's a dog,
and he ain't goin' to do as he likes with me.'

'How many, Dick?' asked Ted eagerly.

'Dunno,' said Dick, exposing his hands; 'he jus' cut away till he was
tired, chi-ikin' me all the time. But I'll get even, you see!'

Dick's palms were very puffy; there were a couple of blue blisters on his
fingers, and across each wrist an angry-looking white wheal. The boys
were sufficiently impressed, and, in spite of his wrath against Joel Ham,
Dicky could not resist a certain gratification on that account. Boys take
much pride in the sufferings they have borne, and their scars are always
exhibited with a grave conceit. Ted displayed his hands, still betraying
evidence of the morning's caning, and Jacker Mack spoke feelingly of
stripes and bruises remaining since Tuesday. Peterson was the only one
quite free from mark or brand of the master's, and he recollected many
thrashings with extreme bitterness, and was quite in sympathy with the
party.

'What say if we give him a scare?' said Dick. 'Are you on?'

Jacker and Ted were dubious. It was too sudden; their recent experiences
had made them unusually respectful of the master. Dick marked the
hesitation, and said scornfully:

'Oh, you fellows needn't be afraid. You won't be let in for it. I know a
trick that's quite safe--bin thinkin' about it all the afternoon.'

If Dick were quite sure it was safe, and if there were not the smallest
possible chance of their complicity being disclosed, Jacker and Ted were
quite agreeable. Peterson was always agreeable for adventure, however
absurd. Dick explained:

'Hamlet's gone down to the pub. He's sure to get screwed to-night.
There's a fool feller there from McInnes, knockin' down a cheque an'
shoutin' mad. Hamlet'll get his share in spite of all, an' he'll be as
tight as a brick by ten o'clock. You know my joey 'possum? Well, I'll fix
him up into the awfullest kind of a blue devil, with feathers an' things.
We'll push him into Jo's room, and when Jo comes home an' strikes a light
he'll spot him, an' think he's got delirious trimmens again. That'll give
him a shakin'.'

'My oath, won't it!' ejaculated Peterson.

Jacker was elated, and grinned far and wide.

'P'raps he'll go nippin' round, thinkin' he's chased by 'em like he did
las' Christmas holidays,' suggested the elder McKnight gleefully.

This villainous scheme was the result of the boys' extraordinary
familiarity with many phases of drunkenness. Waddy was a pastoral as well
as a mining centre, and strange ribald men came out of the bush at
intervals to 'melt' their savings at the Drovers' Arms. The Yarraman
sale-yards for cattle and sheep were near Waddy too, and brought dusty
drovers and droughty stockmen in crowds to the town ship every Tuesday.
These men were indiscreet and indiscriminate drinkers, and often a
vagrant was left behind to finish a spree that surrounded him with
unheard-of reptiles and strange kaleidoscopic animals unknown to the
zoologist. It must be admitted, too, that Joel Ham, B.A., was in a
measure responsible for the boys' unlawful knowledge. Twice at holiday
times, when he was not restricted at the Drovers' Arms, he had continued
his libations until it was necessary for his own good and the peace of
the place to tie him down in his bunk and set a guard over him; and on
one of these occasions he had created much excitement by rushing through
the township at midnight, scantily clad, under the impression that he was
being pursued by a tall dark gentleman in a red cloak and possessed of
both horns and hoofs.

It was nearly nine o'clock that night when the four conspirators met to
carry out their nefarious project. Dick was carrying a bag--in which was
the joey--a bull's-eye lantern, various coloured feathers, and other
small necessaries, and the party hastened in the direction of Mr. Ham's
humble residence. Ham was 'a hatter'--he lived alone in a secluded place
on the other side of the quarries. The house was large for Waddy, and had
once been a boarding-house, but was now little better than a ruin. The
schoolmaster had reclaimed one room, furnished it much like a miner's
but, with the addition of a long shelf of tattered books, and here he
'batched,' perfectly contented with his lot for all that Waddy could ever
discover to the contrary. There was no other house within a quarter of a
mile of the ruin, which was hemmed in with four rows of wattles, and
surrounded by a wilderness of dead fruit-trees--victims to the ravages of
the goats of the township--and a tangled scrub of Cape broom. The boys
approached the house with quite unnecessary caution, keeping along the
string of dry quarry-holes, and creeping towards the back door through
the thick growth as warily as so many Indians on the trail. Dick Haddon
cared nothing for an enterprise that had no flavour of mystery, and was
wont to invest his most commonplace undertakings with a romantic
significance. For the time being he was a wronged aboriginal king,
leading the remnants of his tribe to wreak a deadly vengeance on the
white usurper. A short conference was held in the garden.

'We'll go into one o' the old rooms, an' fix the joey up there. Then we
can wait till Hamlet comes, if yonse fellows 're game,' said Dick softly.

'I'm on,' whispered Peterson.

'He won't be long, I bet. McKnight, 'r Belman, 'r some o' the others is
sure to roust him out when he's properly tight. Foller me.'

Dick led the way up to the door, pushed it open, and entered. The others
were about to follow, but to their horror they saw a large figure start
forward from the pitch darkness beyond, heard an oath and the sound of a
blow, and saw Dick fall face downwards upon the floor. Then the door was
slammed from within, and the three terrorstricken boys turned and fled as
fast as their legs would carry them.

Dick lay upon the floor with outthrown arms, and the figure stood over
him in a listening attitude.

'Good God! 'ye you killed him?' cried someone in the far corner of the
room.

'Sh-h, you cursed fool!' hissed the big man.

'Who is it?' asked the other tremulously.

The big man seized Dick, and dragged him to where the grey moonlight
shone through a shattered window.

'Young Haddon,' he said. 'Blast the boy! a man never knows where he will
poke his nose next.'

'The others 'ye gone?'

'Yes. They were on'y boys.'

'Didn't I tell you it wouldn't do to be meetin' in places like this? No
more of it for me. They've been listenin', an' we're done men. We'll be
nabbed!'

'Shut up your infernal cackle! The boys hadn't any notion we was here.
They had some lark on. They couldn't have seen us--we're all right.'

'If they saw us together it'd be enough.'

'But they couldn't, I tell you. Here, clear out, the boy's comin' round.
Go the front way, an' make for the paddocks. I'll go up the gully. Look
slippy!'

A few seconds after the men had left the house Dick scrambled to his
feet, and stood for a moment in a confused condition of mind, rubbing his
injured head. Then he took up his hat and lantern, and stumbled from the
room. As yet he had only a vague idea of what had happened, and his head
felt very large and full of fly-wheels, as he expressed it later; but a
few moments in the open air served to revive him. Along by the big quarry
he met his mates returning. After talking the matter over they had come
to the conclusion that the schoolmaster had got a hint of their
intention, and had lain in wait. They gathered about Dick, whose forehead
was most picturesquely bedabbled with blood.

'Crikey! Dick,' cried the wondering Jacker, 'did he hammer you much?'

'Feel,' said Dick, guiding one hand after another to a lump on his head
that increased his height by quite an inch.

'Great Gosh!' murmured Peterson; 'ain't he a one-er? The beggar must 'a'
tried to murder you.'

Dick nodded.

'Yes,' he said; 'but 'twasn't Hamlet.'

'Go on!' The boys looked back apprehensively.

'No, 'twasn't. 'Twas a big feller. I dunno who; but he must 'a' bin a
bushranger, 'r a feller what's escaped from gaol, 'r someone. Did you
coves see which way he went?'

'No,' said Ted fearfully; and a simultaneous move was made towards the
township. The boys were not cowards, but they had plenty of discretion.

'Look here,' Dick continued impressively; 'no matter who 'twas, we've
gotter keep dark, see. If we don't it'll be found out what we was all up
to, an' we'll get more whack-o.'

The party was unanimous on this point; and when Dick returned home he
shocked his mother with a lively account of how he slipped in the quarry
and fell a great depth, striking his head on a rock, and being saved from
death only by the merest chance imaginable.

CHAPTER VII.

The small, wooden Wesleyan chapel at Waddy was perched on an eminence at
the end of the township furthest from the Drovers' Arms. The chapel,
according to the view of the zealous brethren who conducted it,
represented all that counted for righteousness in the township, and the
Drovers' Arms the head centre of the powers of evil. For verbal
convenience in prayer and praise the hotel was known as 'The Sink of
Iniquity,' and the chapel as 'This Little Corner of the Vineyard,' and
through the front windows of the latter, one sabbath morn after another
for many years, lusty Cornishmen, moved by the spirit, had hurled down
upon McMahon and his house strident and terrible denunciations.

Materially the chapel had nothing in common with a vineyard; it was built
upon arid land as bare and barren as a rock; not even a blade of grass
grew within a hundred yards of its doors. The grim plainness of the old
drab building was relieved only by a rickety bell-tower so stuffed with
sparrows' nests that the bell within gave forth only a dull and muffled
note. The chapel was surrounded with the framework of a fence only, so
the chapel ground was the chief rendezvous of all the goats of Waddy--and
they were many and various. They gathered in its shade in the summer and
sought its shelter from the biting blast in winter, not always content
with an outside stand; for the goats of Waddy were conscious of their
importance, and of a familiar and impudent breed. Sometimes a matronly
nanny would climb the steps, and march soberly up the aisle in the midst
of one of Brother Tregaskis's lengthy prayers; or a haughty billy,
imposing as the he-goat of the Scriptures, would take his stand within
the door and bay a deep, guttural response to Brother Spence; or two or
three kids would come tumbling over the forms and jumping and bucking in
the open space by the wheezy and venerable organ, spirits of thoughtless
frivolity in the sacred place.

It was Sunday morning and the school was in. The classes were arranged in
their accustomed order, the girls on the right, the boys on the left,
against the walls; down the middle of the chapel the forms were empty;
nearest to the platform on either hand of Brother Ephraim Shine, the
superintendent, were the Sixth Class little boys and girls, the latter
painfully starched and still, with hair tortured by many devices into
damp links or wispy spirals that passed by courtesy for curls. Very
silent and submissive were little girls of Class VI., impressed by the
long, lank superintendent in his Sunday black, and believing in many
wonders secreted above the dusty rafters or in the wide yellow cupboards.
The first classes were nearest the door. The young ladies, if we make
reasonable allowance for an occasional natural preoccupation induced by
their consciousness of the proximity of the young men, were devoted
students of the gospel a interpreted by Brother Tresize, and sufficiently
saintly always, presuming that no disturbing element such as a new hat or
an unfamiliar dress was introduced to awaken the critical spirit. The
young men, looking in their Sunday clothes like awkward and tawdry
imitations of their workaday selves, were instructed by Brother Spence;
and Brother Bowden, being the kindliest, gentlest, most incapable man of
the band of brothers, was given the charge of the boys' Second Class, a
class of youthful heathen, rampageous, fightable, and flippant, who made
the good man's life a misery to him, and were at war with all authority.
Peterson, Jacker Mack, Dolf Belman, Fred Cann, Phil Doon, and Dick
Haddon, and a few kindred spirits composed this class; and it was sheer
lust of life, the wildness of bush-bred boys, that inspired them with
their irreverent impishness, although the brethren professed to discover
evidence of the direct influence of a personal devil.

The superintendent arose from his stool of office and shuffled to the
edge of the small platform, rattling his hymn-book for order. Ephraim
never raised his head even in chapel, but his cold, dull eyes, under
their scrub of overhanging brow, missed nothing that was going on, as the
younger boys often discovered to their cost.

'Dearly beloved brethren, we will open this morn-in's service with that
beautiful hymn--'

Brother Shine stopped short. A powerful diversion had been created by the
entrance of a young man. The new-corner was dressed like a drover,
wearing a black coat over his loose blue shirt, and he carried in his
right hand a coiled stockwhip. His face had the grey tinge of wrath, and
his lips were set firm on a grim determination. He walked to a form well
up in front, and seated himself, placing his big felt hat on the floor,
but retaining his grip on the whip hanging between his knees.

Jacker Mack kicked Dick excitedly. 'Harry Hardy!' he said.

Dick nodded but did not speak; he was staring with all his eyes, as was
every man, woman, and child in the congregation. Harry Hardy had not
fulfilled expectations; he had been home five days, and had done nothing
to avenge his brother. He moved about amongst the men, but was reserved
and grew every day more sullen. He had heard much and had answered
nothing; and now here he was at chapel and evidently bent on mischief,
for the stockwhip was ominous. Ephraim Shine had noticed it and retreated
a step or two, and stood for quite a minute, turning his boot this way
and that, but with his eyes on Harry all the time. Now he cleared his
throat, and called the number of the hymn. He read the first verse and
the chorus with his customary unction, and, all having risen, started the
singing in a raspy, high-pitched voice.

Harry Hardy stood with the rest, a solitary figure in the centre of the
chapel, still holding the long whip firmly grasped in his right hand.
Attention was riveted on him, and the singing of the hymn was a dismal
failure. The young man stared straight before him, seeing only one
figure, that of Ephraim Shine, until he felt a light touch on his arm.
Someone was standing at his side, offering him the half of her hymn-book.
Harry raised his hand to the leaves mechanically, and noticed that the
hand on the other side was white and shapely, the wrist softly rounded
and blue-veined. The voice that sounded by his side was low and musical.

'Oh! Harry, what are you going to do?' His neighbour had ceased singing,
and was whispering tremulously under cover of the voices of the
congregation.

Harry's face hardened, and he set it resolutely towards the platform.

'Don't you know me, Harry? I am Christina Shine. You remember Chris? We
were school mates.'

His daughter! The young man let his left hand fall to his side.

'Please don't. You have come to quarrel with father, but you won't do it,
Harry? You saved my life once, when we were boy and girl. You will
promise me this?'

Harry Hardy answered nothing, and the pleading voice continued:

'For the sake of the days when we were friends, Harry, say you won't do
it--you won't do it here, in--in God's house.'

'It was here, in God's house, he slandered my mother.' The man's voice
sounded relentless.

'No, no, not that! He prayed for her. He did not mean it ill.'

'I have heard of his praying--how under the cover of his cant about
saving souls he scatters his old-womanish scandals an' abuses his
betters.'

'He means well. Indeed, indeed, he means well.'

'An' he prays for my mother--him! Says she's bred up thieves because she
did not come here to learn better. Says she's an atheist because she does
not believe in Ephraim Shine. He's said that, an' I'm here to make him
eat his words.'

Harry's whispering was almost shrill in the heat of his passion, and the
singing of the hymn became faint and thin, so eager were the singers to
catch a word of that most significant conversation. Dick had not taken
his eyes off the pair, and already had woven a very pretty romance about
Chris and the young man. Christina Shine had only recently been raised to
the pedestal in his fond heart formerly occupied by an idol who had
betrayed his youthful affections, disappointed his hopes, and outraged
his sense of poetical fitness. He espoused her cause with his whole soul,
whatever it might be.

The young woman in the stress of her fears had clasped Harry's arm, as if
to restrain him, and he felt the soft agitation of her gentle bosom with
a new emotion that weakened his tense thews, and stirred the first doubt;
but he fought it down. His revenge had become almost a necessity within
the last three days. Nothing he had heard offered the faintest hope for
his brother's cause; he was baffled and infuriated by the general
unquestioning belief in Frank's guilt, and a dozen times had been
compelled to sit biting on his bitterness, when every instinct impelled
him to square up and teach the fools better with all the force of his
pugilistic knowledge. Of late years he had been schooled in a class that
accepted 'a ready left' as the most convincing argument, and, being
beyond the immediate province of law and order, repaired immediately with
all its grievances to a twenty-four-foot 'ring' and an experienced
referee. But whilst there was a little diffidence amongst the men in
expressing their opinions about Frank, there was no reserve when they
came to tell of Ephraim Shine's method of improving the occasion with
prayer and preachment; and for a considerable time Harry had collected
bitterness till it threatened to choke him and bade him defy all his
mother's cautious principles.

Ephraim had given out the third verse, and the singing went on.

'Are you thinking?' whispered the girl. 'Do, do think! Think of the
disgrace of it.'

'Disgrace! There's the disgrace whining on the platform, the brute that
insults a woman in her sorrow, thinking there's no one handy to take it
out of the coward hide of him!

'It was wrong, Harry. I know it was wrong and cruel. I told him that, and
he has promised me never to do it again. He has promised me that, really,
truly.'

The word that slid through Harry's teeth was ferocious but inaudible.

'Say you won't do it!

The singing ceased suddenly, and the superintendent, who all the time had
kept a lowering and anxious eye on the young couple, gave out the third
verse again.

'Harry, you will not. Please say it!

The hand holding the stockwhip stirred threateningly, and the hymn was
almost lost in the agitation of the worshippers. Chris remained silent,
and Harry, who had taken the book again, had shifted his stern eyes to
the slim white thumb beside his broad brown one. A stifled sob at his
side startled him, and he turned a swift glance upon the face of his
companion. That one glance, the first, left his brave resolution shaken
and his spirit awed.

Harry remembered Chris as a schoolgirl, tall and stag-like, always
running, her rebellious knees tossing up scant petticoats, her long hair
rarely leaving more than one eye visible through its smother of tangled
silk. She was very brown then and very bony, and so ridiculously soft of
heart that her tenderness was regarded by her schoolmates as an
unfortunate infirmity. She was tall still, taller than himself, with
large limbs and a sort of manly squareness of the shoulders and erectness
of the figure, but neatly gowned, with little feminine touches of flower
and ribbon that belied the savour of unwomanliness in her size and her
bearing. Her complexion was clear and fair, her abundant hair the colour
of new wheat, her features were large, the nose a trifle aquiline, the
chin square and, finely chiselled; the feminine grace was due to her
eyes, large, grey, and almost infantile in expression. The people of
Waddy called her handsome, and no more tender term would suit; but they
knew that this fair girl-woman, who seemed created to dominate and might
have been expected to carry things with a high hand everywhere, was in
reality the simplest, gentlest, and most emotional of her sex. She looked
strong and was strong; her only weakness was of the heart, and that was a
prey to the sorrows of every human being within whose influence she came
in the rounds of her daily life.

Hardy was amazed; almost unconsciously he had pictured the grown-up Chris
an angular creature, lean, like her father, and resembling him greatly;
and to find this tall girl, with the face and figure of a battle queen,
tearfully beseeching where in the natural course of events she should
have been commanding haughtily and receiving humble obedience, filled him
with a nervousness he had never known before. Only pride kept him now.

'Say you will go! Say it!'

Harry lowered his head, and remained silent.

'Go now. Your action would pain your mother more than my father's words
have done--I am sure of that.'

The hymn was finished, but Shine read out the last verse once more. His
concern was now obvious, and the congregation was wrought to an
unprecedented pitch. Never had a hymn been so badly sung in that chapel.
It was taken up again without spirit, a few quavering voices carrying it
on regardless of time and tune. Chris had noted Harry's indecision.

'Do not stay and shame yourself. Go, and you will be glad you did not do
this wicked thing. You are going. You will! You will!

He had stooped and seized his hat. He turned without a word or a glance,
and strode from the chapel. The congregation breathed a great sigh, and
as he passed out the chorus swelled into an imposing burst of song--a
paean of triumph, Harry thought.

Through the chapel windows the congregation could see Harry Hardy
striding away in the direction of the line of bush.

Christina, from her place amongst her girls, watched him till he
disappeared in the quarries; and so did Ephraim Shine, but with very
different feelings. Many of the congregation were disappointed. They had
expected a sensational climax. Class II was inconsolable, and made not
the slightest effort to conceal its disgust, which lasted throughout the
remainder of the morning and was a source of great tribulation to poor
Brother Bowden.


CHAPTER VIII.

HARRY HARDY sought the seclusion of the bush, and there spent a very
miserable morning. He was forced to the conclusion that he had made a
fool of himself, and the thought that possibly that girl of Shine's was
now laughing with the rest rankled like a burn and impelled many of the
strange oaths that slipped between his clenched teeth. The more he
thought of his escapade the more ridiculous and theatrical it seemed. It
was born of an impulse, and would have been well enough had he carried
out his intention; but, oh the ignominy of that retreat from the side of
the grey-eyed, low-voiced girl under the gaze of the whole congregation!
It would not bear thinking of, so he thought of it for hours, and swung
his whip-lash against the log on which he sat, and quite convinced
himself that he was hating Shine's handsome daughter with all the
vehemence the occasion demanded.

In many respects Harry was a very ordinary young man; bush life is a
wonderful leveller, and he had known no other. His father had been a man
of education and talent, drawn from a profession in his earlier manhood
to the goldfields, who remained a miner and a poor man to the day of his
death. His wife was not able to induce their sons to aspire to anything
above the occupations of the class with which they had always associated,
so they were miners and stockmen with the rest. But the young men, even
as boys, noticed in their mother a refinement and a clearness of
intellect that were not characteristic of the women of Waddy; and out of
the love and veneration they bore her grew a sort of family pride--a
respect for their name that was quite a touch of old-worldly conceit in
this new land of devil-may-care, and gave them a certain distinction. It
was this that served largely to make the branding of Frank Hardy as a
thief a consuming shame to his brother. Harry thought of it less as a
wrong to Frank than as an outrage to his mother. It was this, too, that
made the young man burn to take the Sunday School superintendent by the
throat and lash him till he howled himself dumb in his own chapel.

Harry returned to his log in Wilson's back paddock again in the afternoon
to wrestle with his difficulties, and, with the gluttonous rosellas
swinging on the gum-boughs above, set himself to reconsider all that he
had heard of Frank's case and all the possibilities that had since
occurred to him. Here Dick Haddon discovered him at about four o'clock.
Dick was leading a select party at the time, with the intention of
reconnoitring old Jock Summers's orchard in view of a possible invasion
at an early date; but when he saw Harry in the distance he immediately
abandoned the business in hand. An infamous act of desertion like this
would have brought down contempt upon the head of another, and have
earned him some measure of personal chastisement; but Dick was a law unto
himself.

'So long, you fellows,' he said.

'Why, where yer goin'?' grunted Jacker Mack.

''Cross to Harry Hardy. He's down by that ole white gum.'

'Gosh! so he is. I say, we'll all go.'

'No, you won't. Youse go an' see 'bout them cherries. Harry Hardy don't
want a crowd round.'

'How d'yer know he wants you?'

'Find out. Me 'n him's mates.'

'Yo-ow?' This in derision.

''Sides, I got somethin' privit to say to him--somethin' privit 'n
important, see.'

This was more convincing, but it excited curiosity.

''Bout Tin ribs?' queried Peterson.

'Likely I'd tell you. Clear out, go on. You can be captain of the band if
you like, Jacker; 'n mind you don't give it away.'

Dick gained his point, as usual, and prepared for a quite casual descent
upon Harry, who had not yet seen the boys. The plan brought Dicky,
'shanghai' in hand, under the tree where Hardy sat. The boy was
apparently oblivious of everything but the parrots up aloft, and it was
not till after he had had his shot that he returned the young man's
salutation. Then he took a seat astride the log and offered some
commonplace information about a nest of joeys in a neighboring tree and a
tame magpie that had escaped, and was teaching all the other magpies in
Wilson's paddocks to whistle a jig and curse like a drover. But he got
down to his point rather suddenly after all.

'Say, Harry, was you goin' to lambaste Tinribs?'

Tinribs?

'Yes, old Shine--this mornin', you know.'

Harry looked into the boy's eye and lied, but Dick was not deceived.

''Twould a-served him good,' he said thoughtfully; 'but you oughter get
on to him when Miss Shine ain't about. She's terrible good an' all
that--better 'n Miss Keeley, don't you think?'

Miss Keeley was a golden-haired, high-complexioned, and frivolous young
lady who had enjoyed a brief but brilliant career as barmaid at the
Drovers' Arms. Harry had never seen her, but expressed an opinion
entirely in favour of Christina Shine.

'But her father,' continued Dick, with an eloquent grimace, 'he's dicky!

'What've you got against him?'

'I do' know. Look here, 'tain't the clean pertater, is it, for a
superintendent t' lay into a chap at Sunday School for things what he
done outside? S'pose I float Tinribs's puddlin' tub down the creek by
accident, with Doon's baby in it when I ain't thinkin', is it square fer
him to nab me in Sunday School, an' whack me fer it, pretendin' all the
time it's 'cause I stuck a mouse in the harmonium?'

Dick's contempt for the man who could so misuse his high office was very
fine indeed.

'That's the sorter thing Tinribs does,' said the boy. 'If I yell after
him on a Saturdee, he gammons t' catch me doin' somethin' in school on
Sundee, an' comes down on me with the corner of his bible, 'r screws me
ear.'

Harry considered such conduct despicable, and thought the man who would
take such unfair advantage of a poor boy might be capable of any infamy;
and Dick, encouraged, crept a little nearer.

'I say,' he whispered insinuatingly. 'You could get him any day on the
flat, when he comes over after searchin' the day shift.'

Harry shook his head, and slowly plucked at the dry bark.

'I don't mean to touch him,' he said.

Dick was amazed, and a little hurt, perhaps. His confidence had been
violated in some measure. He thought the matter over for almost a minute.

'Ain't you goin' to go fer him 'cause of her, eh?' he asked.

'Her? Who d'you mean?'

'Miss Chris.'

'It's nothin' to do with her.'

Dick deliberated again.

'Look here, she was cryin' after you went this mornin'. Saw her hidin'
her face by the harmonium, an' wipin' her eyes.'

Harry had not heard evidently; he was, it would appear, devoting his
whole attention to the antics of a blue grub. Dick approached still
closer, and assumed the tone of an arch-conspirator.

'Heard anything 'bout Mr. Frank?'

'Not a thing, Dick.'

'What yer goin' to do?'

'I can't say, my boy.'

'Well, I'll tell you. Know what Sagacious done?'

'Sagacious? Who is he?'

'Sam Sagacious--Sleuth-hound Sam.'

Harry looked puzzled.

'What, don't you know Sleuth-hound Sam? He's a great feller in a book,
what tracks down criminals. Listen here. One time a chap what was a mate
of his got put in gaol for stealin' money from a bank where he worked,
when it wasn't him at all. Sam, he went an' got a job at the same bank,
and that's how he found out the coves 'at done it.'

The young man turned upon Dick, and sat for a moment following up the
inference. Then he gripped the latter's hand.

'By thunder!' he cried excitedly, 'that's a better idea than I could hit
on in a week.'

Dick did not doubt it; he had but a poor opinion of the resourcefulness
of his elders when not figuring in the pages of romantic literature, but
he was gratified by Harry's ready recognition of his talent, and
proceeded to enlarge upon the peculiar qualities of Sleuth-hound Sam,
give instances of his methods, and relate some of his many successes.

At tea that evening Harry broached the subject of his visit to the
chapel. He knew his mother would hear of it, and thought it best she
should have the melancholy story from his lips.

'Do you see much of Shine's daughter, mother?' he asked.

'I do not see her often, but she has grown into a tall, handsome girl;
very different from the wild little thing you rescued from the cattle on
the common eight years ago.'

'Yes; I've seen her--saw her in the chapel this morning.'

'In the chapel,' said Mrs. Hardy, turning upon him with surprise; 'were
you in the chapel, Henry?'

Harry nodded rather shamefacedly.

'Yes, mother,' he said, 'I went to chapel, an' took my whip with me. I
meant to scruff Shine before the lot o' them, an' lash him black an'
blue.'

'That was shameful--shameful!

'Anyhow, I didn't do it. She came an' put me off, an' I sneaked out as if
I'd been licked myself. I couldn't have hammered the brute before her
eyes, but--but--'

'But you meant to; is that it? Henry, you almost make me despair. Have
you no more respect for yourself? Have you none for me?'

'I couldn't stand it. You've heard. It made me mad!'

'I have heard all, and I think Mr. Shine is a well intentioned man whose
faith, such as it is, is honest; but he is ignorant, coarse-fibred, and
narrow-minded. He is doing right according to his own poor, dim light,
and could not be convinced otherwise by any word or act of ours; but his
preachings can do me no injury. They do not irritate me in the
least--indeed, I am not sure that they do not amuse me.'

'Ah, mother, that's like you; you philosophise your way through a
difficulty, and I always want to fight my way out. It's so much easier.'

'Yes, dear; but do you get out? Do you know that Ephraim Shine is the
most litigious man in the township? He runs to the law with every little
trouble, whilst inviting his neighbours to carry all theirs to the Lord.
Had you beaten him he would have proceeded against you, and--Oh! my boy,
my boy! are you going to make my troubles greater? And I had such hopes.'

'Hush, mother. 'Pon my soul, I won't! I'm going to hold myself down tight
after this. An', look here, I've got an idea. I'm going to Pete Holden
to-morrow to ask him to put me on at the Stream, same shift as poor Frank
was on, if possible.'

'Put on the brother of the man who--'

'Yes, mother, the brother of the thief. But Holden is a good fellow; he
spoke up for Frank like a brick. Besides, d'you know what the men are
saying? That the gold-stealing is still going on. I'll tell Holden as
much, an' promise to watch, an' watch, like a cat, if he'll only send me
below.'

'Yes, yes; we can persuade him. I wonder we did not think of this
before.'

''Twas young Dick Haddon put me up to it, with some yarn of his about a
detective.'

'Bless the boy! he is unique--the worst and the best I have ever known.
Johnnie, how dare you?'

The last remark was addressed to Gable, who had been eating industriously
for the last quarter of an hour. The old man, finding himself ignored,
had smartly conveyed a large spoonful of jam from the pot to his mouth.
He choked over it now, and wriggled and blushed like a child taken
red-handed.

''Twas only a nut,' he said sulkily.

'You naughty boy! Will you never learn how to behave at table? Come here,
sir. Ah, I see; as I suspected. You did not shave this morning. Go
straight to bed after you have finished your tea. How dare you disobey
me, you wicked boy!'

Gable knuckled his eyes with vigour, and began to snivel. He hated to
have a beard on his chin, but would put off shaving longer than Mrs.
Hardy thought consistent with perfect neatness. The ability to shave
himself was the one manly accomplishment Gable had learned in a long
life.

This ludicrous incident had not served to draw Harry's thoughts from his
project. All his life he had seen his Uncle Jonnie treated as a child,
and there was nothing incongruous in the situation, even 'when the
grey-haired boy was rated for neglecting to shave or sent supperless to
bed for similar sins of omission or commission. To Mrs. Hardy also it was
a simple serious business of domestic government. Ever since she was ten
years old Uncle John, who was many years her senior, had been her baby
brother and her charge, and although gifted with a good sense of humour,
the necessity of admonishing him did not interfere with the gravity of
mind she had brought to bear on the former conversation.

'Mr. Holden was an old friend of your father's, Henry,' she said.

'I know,' Harry replied. 'They were mates at Buninyong and Bendigo. I'll
remind him of that.'

Harry Hardy found Manager Holden in his office at the Silver Stream when
he called on the following morning.

'Couldn't do it, my lad,' said the old miner; 'but I'll put in a word for
you with Hennessey at the White Crow.'

'I want a job here on the Stream--want it for a purpose,' said Harry.

'There'd be a row. The people at Yarraman would kick up, after the other
affair. I'd be glad to, Harry; but you'd best try somewhere else.'

'Mr. Holden,' said the young man, 'do you believe my brother guilty?'

The manager met his eager eyes steadily.

''Tisn't a fair question, lad,' he answered. 'I always found Frank
straight, an' he looked like an honest man; but that evidence would have
damned a saint.'

'Do you think the gold-stealing has stopped?'

The manager looked up sharply.

'Do you know anything?'

'I know what the men hint at; nothing more. If they could speak straight
they wouldn't do it.'

'Well, to tell you God's truth, Hardy, I believe we are still losing
gold.'

'Send me below, then, an' by Heaven I'll spot the true thieves if they're
not more cunning than the devil himself. You think Frank guilty, so do
most people; it's what we ought to expect, I s'pose.' Harry's hands were
clenched hard--it was a sore subject. 'We don't, Mr. Holden; we believe
his story, every word of it. Give me half a chance to prove it. You were
our father's mate; stand by us now. Put me on with the same shift as
Frank worked with.'

'Done!' said the manager, starting up. 'Come on at four. Go trucking;
it'll give you a better chance of moving round; and good luck, my boy!
But take a hint that's well meant: if the real thief is down there, see
he plays no tricks on you.'

'I've thought of that--trust me.'

Harry Hardy's appearance below with the afternoon shift at the Stream
occasioned a good deal of talk amongst the miners; but he heard none of
it. Shine was in the searching-shed when he came up at midnight, on his
knees amongst the men's discarded clothes, pawing them over with his
claw-like fingers.

The searcher rarely spoke to the men, never looked at them, and performed
his duties as if unconscious of their presence. Custom had made him
exceedingly cautious, for it was the delight of the men to play tricks
upon him, usually of an exceedingly painful nature. The searcher is no
man's friend. When putting on his dry clothes, Harry heard Joe Rogers,
the foreman, saying:

'D'yer know them's Harry Hardy's togs yer pawin', Brother Tinribs?'

Shine's mud-coloured eyes floated uneasily from one form to another, but
were raised no higher than the knees of the men, seemingly.

'Yes, search 'em carefully, Brother. I s'pose you'd like ter jug the
whole family. 'Taint agin yer Christian principles, is it, Mr.
Superintendent, to send innocent men to gaol? Quod's good fer morals,
ain't it? A gran' place to cultivate the spirit o' brotherly love, ain't
it--eh, what? Blast you fer a snivellin' hippercrit, Shine! If yer look
sidelong at me I'll belt you over--'

Rogers made an ugly movement towards the searcher; but Peterson and
another interposed, and he returned to the form, spitting venomous oaths
like an angry cat. Shine, kneeling on the floor, had gone on with his
work in his covert way, as if quite unconscious of the foreman's burst of
passion.


CHAPTER IX.

JACKER MACK'S report having been entirely favourable, the invasion of
Summers' orchard was under taken at dinner-time on the Tuesday following.
The party, which consisted of Dick Haddon, Jacker McKnight, Ted, Billy
Peterson, and Gable, started for the paddocks immediately school was out,
intending to make Jock Summers compensate them for the loss of a meal. It
was not thought desirable to take Gable, but he insisted, and Gable was
exceedingly pig-headed and immovable when in a stubborn mood. Dick tried
to drive him back, but failed; when the others attempted to run away from
him the old man trotted after them, bellowing so lustily that the safety
of the expedition was endangered; so he was allowed to stand in.

'He'll do to keep nit,' said Dick.

Gable could not run in the event of a surprise and a pursuit, but that
mattered little, as it was long since known to be hopeless to attempt to
extract evidence from him, and his complicity in matters of this kind was
generously overlooked by the people of Waddy.

The expedition was not a success. Dick planned it and captained it well;
but the best laid plans of youth are not less fallible than those of mice
and men, and one always runs a great risk in looting an orchard in broad
daylight--although it will be admitted, by those readers who were once
young enough and human enough to rob orchards, that stealing cherries in
the dark is as aggravating and unsatisfactory an undertaking as eating
soup with a two-pronged fork.

Dick stationed Gable in a convenient tree, with strict orders to cry
'nit' should anybody come in sight from the black clump of fir-trees
surrounding the squatter's house. Then he led his party over the fence
and along thick lines of currant bushes, creeping under their cover to
where the beautiful white-heart cherries hung ripening in the sun. Dick
was very busy indeed in the finest of the trees when the note of warning
came from Ted McKnight.

'Nit! nit! NIT! Here comes Jock with a dog.'

Dick was last in the rush. He saw the two McKnights safe away, and was
following Peterson, full of hope, when there came a rush of feet behind
and he was sent sprawling by a heavy body striking him between the
shoulders. When he was quite able to grasp the situation he found himself
on the broad of his back, with a big mastiff lying on his chest, one paw
on either side of his head, and a long, warm tongue lolling in his face
with affectionate familiarity. The expression in the dog's eye, he
noticed, was decidedly genial, but its attitude was firm. The amiable eye
reassured him; he was not going to be eaten, but at the same time he was
given to understand that that dog would do his duty though the heavens
fell.

A minute later the mastiff was whistled off; Dick was taken by the ear
and gently assisted to his feet, and stood defiantly under the stern eye
of a rugged, spare-boned, iron-grey Scotchman, six feet high, and framed
like an iron cage. Jock retained his hold on the boy's ear.

'Eh, eh, what is it, laddie?' he said, 'enterin' an' stealin', enterin'
an' stealin'. A monstrous crime. Come wi' me.'

Dick followed reluctantly, but the grip on his ear lobe was emphatic, and
in his one short struggle for freedom he felt as if he were grappling
with the great poppet-legs at the Silver Stream. Summers paused for a
moment.

'Laddie,' he said, 'd'ye mind my wee bit dog?'

The dog capered like a frivolous cow, flopped his ears, and exhibited
himself in a cheerful, well-meaning way.

'If ye'd rather, laddie, the dog will bring ye home,' continued the man.

'Skite!' said Dick, with sullen scorn; but he went quietly after that.

At the house they were met by Christina Shine, and Dick blushed furiously
under her gaze of mild surprise. Christina had been a member of the
Summers household for over five years, ever since the death of her
mother, and had won herself a position there, something like that of a
beloved poor relation with light duties and many liberties.

'Dickie, Dickie, what have you been doing this time?' asked Miss Chris.

'Robbin' my fruit-trees, my dear. What might we do with him, d'ye think?'

Miss Chris thought for a minute with one finger pressed on her lip.

'We might let him go,' she said, with the air of one making rather a
clever suggestion.

'Na, na, na; we canna permit such crimes to go unpunished.'

'Poor boy, perhaps he's very fond of cherries,' said Chris in
extenuation.

Summers regarded the young woman dryly for a moment.

'Eh, eh, girl,' he said, 'ye'd begin to pity the very De'il himself if ye
thought maybe he'd burnt his finger.'

Dick was greatly comforted. As a general thing he writhed under sympathy,
but, strangely enough, he found it very sweet to hear her speaking words
of pity on his behalf, and to feel her soft eyes bent upon him with
gentle concern. Probably no young woman quite understands the deep
devotion she has inspired in the bosom of a small boy even when she
realises--which is rare indeed--that she is regarded with unusual
affection by Tommy or Billy or Jim. Jim is probably very young; his hair
as a rule appears to have been tousled in a whirlwind, his plain face is
never without traces of black jam in which vagrant dust finds rest, and
in the society of the adored one he is shy and awkward. The adored one
may think him a good deal of a nuisance, but deep down in the dark secret
chamber of his heart she is enshrined a goddess, and worshipped with
zealous devotion. Men may call her an angel lightly enough; Jim knows her
to be an angel, and says never a word. His romance is true, and pure, and
beautiful while it lasts--the only true, pure, and beautiful romance many
women ever inspire, and alas! they never know of it, and would not prize
it if they did.

That was the feeling Dick had for Christina Shine. Thore had been
others--Richard Haddon was not bigoted in his constancy--but now it was
Miss Chris, and to him she was both angel and princess; a princess stolen
from her royal cradle by the impostor Shine under moving and mysterious
circumstances, and at the instigation of a disreputable uncle. It only
remained for Dick to slaughter the latter in fair fight, under the eyes
of an admiring multitude, in order to restore Chris to all her royal
dignities and privileges.

Jock Summers had not relaxed his grip on the boy's ear. He led him to a
small dairy sunk in the side of the hill and roofed with stone.

Ye may bide in there, laddie,' he said, 'till I can make up my mind. I
think I might just skin ye, an' I think maybe I might get ye ten years to
Yarraman Goal, but I'm no sure.'

Dick had to go down several steps to the floor of the dairy, and when the
door was shut his face was on a level with the grating that let air into
the place. He passed the first few minutes of his imprisonment making
offers of friendship to the dog that sprawled out side, opening its
capacious mouth at him and curling its long tongue as if anxious to
amuse. The boy had no fears as to his fate; he felt he could safely leave
that to Miss Chris; and, meanwhile, the dog was entertaining. The animal
was new to Dick: had he known of its existence, his descent upon the
orchard would have been differently ordered. In time Maori came to be
intimately known to every boy in Waddy as the most kindly and affable dog
in the world, but afflicted with a singularly morbid devotion to duty. If
sent to capture a predatory youth he never failed to secure the marauder,
and always did it as if he loved him. His formidable teeth were not
called into service; he either knocked the youngster down and held him
with soft but irresistible paws, or he gambolled with him, jumped on him,
frisked over him, made escape impossible, and all the time seemed to
imply: 'I have a duty to perform, but you can't blame me, you know.
There's no reason in the world why we shouldn't be the best of friends.'
And they were the best of friends in due course, for Maori bore no
malice; there came a time when youngsters invaded Jock's garden for the
pleasure of being captured by his wonderful dog.

Ere Dick had been in his prison ten minutes Chris came to him with tea
and cake and scones, and when he had finished these she showered cherries
in upon him. This time she whispered through the grating:

'You haven't got a cold, have you, Dick?'

'No, miss; I never have colds.'

'Oh, dear, that's a pity! I thought if you could catch a cold I might