The Gold-Stealers - Edward Dyson (best color ereader txt) 📗

your duty to help him. Think of your mother, your brother, your own honour.'

'We can save Frank now without this.'

'You cannot be sure of that, Harry--you only hope so.'

'Am I to tell the troopers, then?'

'No, no--oh, no; I am not brave enough to say that! I cannot bear to think of you as his hunter, his bitterest foe. 'Twas that thought made my shame and my sorrow so terrible a burden; but I can carry it better now.'

'My poor girl! my poor girl!'

He bent his lips to the white hand upon his shoulder and kissed it tenderly.

'God bless you, Harry!' she faltered, tears springing to her eyes. 'I know how generous you are. As a boy you had a big brave heart, and I admired you and loved you for it; but I can take no sacrifice that might bring more sorrow upon your mother, that might wrong your brother and bring shame to you.'

'But Frank's innocence will be known. Dickie Haddon heard them as good as admit it.'

'Yes, I know the story. I made Mrs. Haddon tell me all, and I know that they left you to drown; and now for my sake you would save him, run the risk of being discovered assisting him to escape from justice--and the risk is great, dear. Think what it would mean if that became known, how it would blacken poor Frank's case. People would say they had all been in league to rob the mine; you would be despised, your mother's heart would break. Harry, that must not be. The shame is mine now; you and yours have borne enough. I cannot drag you into it again. I cannot have your precious love for me made a source of danger and dishonour to you. No, no; I love you too well for that--much too well for that, dear.'

She spoke in little more than a whisper, but there was the intensity of deep feeling in every word.

He drew her to her feet and into his arms again with tender reverence, and softly kissed her tired eyelids. She was only a girl, and the strife of the last two days had told upon her strength. It was sweet to rest so, knowing and feeling his strength, confident of his devotion.

'But I love you--I love you, Chris,' he said.

'Yes, you love me and I love you.' Her hand stole to his neck. 'Ah, how happy we might have been!

'Might have been? We must be happy--we must!' he said vehemently. 'I love you, an' your sorrow is mine, your trouble is mine. I won't let anything interfere. I must help you!

'No, Harry, I will not take your help. You do not stand alone. Before I would have you do that I would tell the truth myself. My father is ill; he may never get away. I think he will not. What would be left to me if he were taken after all, and you were known to have assisted him in his endeavours to elude the police? I could not bear it. No, no, dear, you must leave us alone to that. Promise.'

They were standing in the darkness by the wall. He drew her more closely to him and his only answer was a kiss.

'If he does escape,' she said, 'I will go into court and tell what I know, if it will help your brother. Perhaps I ought to tell the truth now in justice and honour, but I cannot desert my father. There is something here will not let me do that,' She pressed a hand to her bosom.

'No, you can't do that. I'm sorry for you, Chris. It's a hard fight. I want to fight with you. By Heaven! you don't know how I could fight for you.'

Her head had fallen upon his breast again; he felt her sob, and broke into vehement speech--passionate assurances of love half spoken, ejaculations, fierce endearments, tender words--then was as suddenly silent again, and stood over her with his lips amongst her hair until her mood passed.

'I will come to-night,' he whispered, when at length she ceased weeping.

'No,' she said, and she was strong again. 'In asking you to be silent I make you false to your people. I do ask that, but no more. Harry, you must not come again. Promise me you will not.'

'You'll come to me--we'll see each other?'

'No, dear. Better not, till this terrible business is over.'

Chris, I can't part like that.'

'You must, you must. Would you make it harder for me? Would you give me a new burden of shame and grief?'

'I'd die for you! There's nothing I wouldn't do for you!

'Then do this, my true love. Promise me you will not come here again.'

'Will it be for long?'

'No, it cannot be for long. Promise me. Promise me. Promise!'

'You know if he's-taken an' tried I will have to give evidence against him.'

'I do,' she answered, shuddering.

'An' that'll make no difference to our love?'

'I will always love you, Harry.'

'This trouble's making a great change in you, Chris,' he said yearningly. 'You're pale and ill. It'll wear you out.'

She felt herself weakening again, but summoned all her resolution and stood true to her purpose.

'I can bear it,' she said. 'I must! Promise me. Harry, the troopers are coming--your promise!'

'I promise.' He held her a moment caught to his heart, they exchanged a long kiss, and she slipped from him and into the house.


CHAPTER XXI.

A MINUTE later, when Casey rode up out of the darkness, Harry was sitting alone by the window.

'You've seen nothing?' he said.

Divil a see,' replied the trooper. 'It's sartin to me he ain't within fifty moiles av us this blessed minute.'

'It doesn't seem likely he'd hang round here, does it?'

'The man ud be twin idyits what ud do it, knowin' we'd be sartin sure to nab him, Misther Hardy.'

Harry was not disposed to smile, indeed he scarcely heeded Casey's words; he thought he detected a faint sound of weeping within the house, and his heart was filled with a passionate longing to stand by his dear love in defiance of everything. Casey, looking down upon him, noted the convulsive movements of his clenched hands, and said with a laugh:

'Sure, 'twould be sorrer an' torinint fer that same Shine if you laid thim hands on him now, me boy.'

Harry started to his feet and commenced to fondle the trooper's horse, fearing to follow the train of thought that had possessed him lest he should betray himself. Shortly after Sergeant Monk returned.

'No go,' he said. 'Anything turned up here, Casey?'

'Niver a shmell av anythin', sor,' answered the trooper.

'Well, we can raise this siege, Hardy. That boy was mistaken, sure enough.'

'If he wasn't having a game with us,' answered Harry.

'Urn, yes; that's likely enough among these young heathens of Waddy. But Downy will be here again in the morning; we'll see what he makes of it.'

Harry followed the police as they rode away, and returned slowly to his home. His anxiety for Chris's sake, and his profound sympathy for her, did not serve to quell the wild elation dancing in his veins, the triumphal spirit awakened by the knowledge of her love and fired by her kisses.

Chris, sitting alone in the house, her face buried in her hands, felt, too, something of this exultation; but she nerved herself to look into the future, and saw it grim and starless. She saw herself the daughter of the convicted thief, the thief who had only narrowly escaped having to stand his trial for murdering her lover; the thief who had shifted the burden of his guilt on to the shoulders of an innocent man, the brother of her love. Could she ever consent to be Harry's wife after that? she asked herself with sudden terror. Then she shut out the thought, and her heart sang: 'He loves me! He loves me! 'and there was joy in that no danger could destroy.

Detective Downy was in Waddy again on the following morning, his trip to Yarraman having been taken with the idea of interviewing Joe Rogers in prison and endeavouring to worm out of him some intelligence that might assist in the discovery of Ephraim Shine. But Rogers either knew nothing or could not be persuaded to tell what he knew, so the effort was fruitless.

After hearing the story of the previous night, Downy sent for Billy Peterson and questioned him closely; but the boy insisted that he had told the truth, and was quite positive it was the searcher's voice he heard. The detective was puzzled.

'You made a close hunt about the house?' he said to Sergeant Monk.

'In every nook and corner.'

'Yet there must be something in this boy's yarn. Shine is certainly in hiding somewhere near here. If he had made a run for it he must have been seen, and we should have heard of him before this. There might be a dozen holes in those quarries into which a man could creep. We must go over them. Don't leave a foot's space unsearched.'

The troopers spent several hours in the quarries, moving every stone that might hide the entrance to a small cave, and leaving no room for a suspicion that Shine could be lying in concealment there. For a Dick, who, in consideration of the seriousness of recent events with which he had been directly concerned, enjoying a week's holiday, superintended the hunt from the banks; but he wearied of the work at length, and crossed the paddocks to join the men busy in the new shaft. Harry Hardy, McKnight, Peterson, and Doon were sinking to cut the dyke discovered by the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company. The mine had been christened the Native Youth; Dick, as the holder of a third interest, felt himself to be a person of some consequence about the claim, and discussed its prospects with the elder miners like a person of vast experience and considerable expert knowledge, using technical phrases liberally, and not forgetting to drop a word of advice here and there. It might have been thought presumptuous in the small boy, but was nothing of the kind in the prospector and discoverer of the lode.

The big shareholder did not disdain even to assist in the work, and it was a proud and happy youth, clay-smirched and wearing 'bo-yangs' below his knees like a full-blown working miner, who marched through the bush with the other owners of the Native Youth at crib-time. Being their own bosses the men of the new mine went home to dinner, and dined at their leisure like the aristocrats they expected to be.

Prouder still was Dick when he discovered brown haired, dark-eyed little Kitty Grey loitering amongst the trees, regarding him with evident admiration and awe. He felt at that moment that he needed only a black pipe to make his triumph complete, and had a momentary resentment against the absurd prejudice that denied a boy of his years the right to smoke in public. Kitty had scarcely dared to lift her eyes to her hero for some time past: the wonderful stories told of him seemed to exalt him to such an altitude that she could hope for nothing better than to worship meekly at a great distance. She was braver now, she actually approached him