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

weapon was purely involuntary.

To give an air of plausibility to this plea it was necessary to represent Ephraim Shine in the worst possible light, and that conscientious and hard-working young lawyer spared no pains on his own part or the part of the dead man's daughter to make every point that would tell for his client; but Chris was not more moved than at the preliminary investigation. She told the truth simply, and no effort on the part of the barrister could shake her evidence or break through the unnatural calm in which she appeared to have enveloped herself. Harry saw her several times during the course of the trial, and found a desolate anguish in her white immobile face, that stirred up in his heart again a fury against fate, the law, and every force and condition that added the smallest pang to her sorrow. If he could have only interposed his body between her and all this trouble it would have been keen joy to him to have felt raining upon his flesh, with heavy material blows, the shafts directed against her tender heart; but his strength was of no avail, he could think of nothing that he might do but take that insolent lawyer by the throat and choke him on the floor of the Court. He was helpless to do any thing but love her, and every sight of her, every thought of her, added fuel to his passion.

She went to him once outside the Court with out stretched hands and swimming eyes, murmuring inarticulate words, and he understood that, she meant to thank him for the efforts he had made to spare her in his evidence on the previous day. In truth she bad been touched by the change in him, and she, too, was fighting with her love a harder battle than his.

'I'm sorry for you, Chris,' he said, 'but time will heal all this, never fear.'

She gazed at him and slowly shook her head.

'Never, Harry,' she said.

'It will, it will!' he persisted. 'Chris, you're coming back after it's all over?'

'Yes,' she said, 'I must.'

'An' you've not forgotten?'

'No, Harry, I have not forgotten anything.' There was a strain of firmness in her voice that jarred him, and he looked at her sharply; but her face gave him no comfort. A moment later she was joined by Mrs. Summers and another friend, and he left her, his heart unsatisfied, his mind shaken with doubts and perplexities.

Joe Rogers was found guilty and sentenced to twelve years' hard labour. Close upon eight hundred ounces of gold were handed over to the Silver Stream Company, and the Company, 'in recognition of the valuable services of Master Richard Haddon,' presented him with a gold watch and chain--which for many months after was a source of ceaseless worry to his little mother, who firmly believed that its fame must have inspired every burglar and miscellaneous thief in Victoria with an unholy longing to possess it, was continually devising new hiding-places for the treasure, and arose three or four times a night to at tack hypothetical marauders.

Returning from school at dinner-time on the day following, Dick found Frank Hardy sitting in the parlour holding his mother's hand. Mrs. Hardy and Harry were also there, and a few people were loitering about the front, having called to congratulate Frank Hardy on his release; for Frank had been given a free pardon in the Queen's name for the crimes it was now known he had never committed.

Dick found Frank looking older and graver, much more like his mother, whom he resembled in disposition too. He greeted the boy quietly but with evident feeling.

'It seems I owe my liberty to your devilment, old boy,' he said later.

Dick was beginning to find the role of hero rather wearisome, and would gladly have returned to his old footing with the people of Waddy, but there was nevertheless a good deal of satisfaction in appearing as a person of importance in the eyes of the Hardies, and he accepted the implied gratitude without any excess of uneasiness.

'Well, I've got to pay you out, my lad,' Frank continued. 'Your mother has been foolish enough to promise to be my wife, and that will place me in the responsible position of father to the most ungovernable young scamp in Christendom; and one of the conditions your mother makes is that I am to prevent you from saving any more lives and reputations. What do you think of that?'

'Oh, you'll make a rippin' father,' said Dick. That'll be all right.'

'Good. Then it's settled. We have your consent?'

Dick nodded gravely.

'Thanks for your confidence,' said Frank laughing. 'I think you'll find me a fairly good sort as step-fathers go.'

Dick had no fears whatever on that point; he and Frank had been excellent friends for as long as he could remember, and Frank had been his champion in many semi-public disagreements about billy-goats; and besides, he was a reader whose judgment the boy held in the highest respect, and that counted for a great deal.

The boy had a message for Harry, and delivered it with great secrecy at the earliest opportunity.

'She's back at Summers's, Harry,' he whispered. 'She gave Kitty a letter to give to me to give you.'

Harry tore the envelope with trembling impatient hands. It contained only a short note: 'Will you come to me at the gate under the firs to-night at eight?' and was coldly signed, 'Your true friend,

C. S.'


CHAPTER XXIV

HARRY awaited the approach of evening with burning impatience, and his heart was lighter than it had been for weeks. He thought that now the distraction induced by her father's danger, his arrest and his death, and the subsequent trials had departed, he would find her with a clear mind and responsive to his love, and it would be his pride and joy to teach her to forget her troubles and to make her happy. Harry, who up to the time of meeting Chris after his return to Waddy, had been even more unromantic and lacking in poetry than the average bush native, had, under the influence of his passion, evolved a strong vein of both romance and poesy; and the sudden development of this unknown side of his nature induced novel sensations. He thought of his previous self almost as a stranger, for whom he felt some sentiment of pity not untouched with contempt, and even when hope was feeblest he hugged his love and brooded over it secretly with the devotion of a tender girl.

He was at the trysting-place a quarter of an hour before the time appointed, but Christina was already there. Her greeting chilled and subdued him. He went towards her, smiling, elate, with eager arms, calling her name; she put him back with extended hands.

'No, no, Harry; not that,' she said, and he noticed in her voice the strength of some resolution, the firmness that had jarred upon him when last they met.

'Not that!' he repeated. Chris, you love me. For God's sake say it! You have said it. You told me so, an' it was true--oh, my darling, it was true!

He could see her distinctly: she stood in a shaft of moonlight falling between the sombre firs, and her face was marble-like; her whole pose was statuesque, all the girlish gentleness of the other days seemed to have fled from her, and her hour of tribulation had invested her with a dignity and force of will that sat well upon her stately figure. Harry beheld her with something like terror. This was not the woman he loved. His cause had never seemed so utterly hopeless as now, and yet he felt that it was not the true Chris with whom he was dealing; that the true Chris was the soft-eyed clinging girl safely enshrined in his heart.

'Chris,' he said, 'you have changed--but you'll come to me again?'

Her face was turned towards him; she shook her head with passionless decision.

'No, Harry,' she answered, 'that is all past. I sent for you to tell you that we must forget.'

'Forget!' he cried, springing forward and seizing her hand, 'how can I forget? Can a man forget that he loves?'

'You will forget. It is better, and you will live to be glad that you did.'

'Never, never! Chris, what do you mean? Why're you talking to me of forgetting--why, why?'

'Because I know in my heart that it must be. I came here to tell you so, to ask you to waste no more thought on me.'

'You do not care for me, then. Is that what you mean?'

She gave him no answer, but her steadfast eyes looked into his and their light was cold, there was no glimmer of affection in them.

'You never loved me, Chris?'

She continued silent; she had wrought herself to a certain point, to what she believed to be a duty, and she could only maintain the tension by exerting all her energies.

'What have I done to be treated like this?' he continued. 'I did all I could to spare you. I would have spared him, too, if it'd been in my power.'

'You were generous. Yes, you did all you could; for that I will be grateful to you all my life.'

'And I love you--I love you! I want love, not gratitude, Chris--your love.'

'You must forget me!

He approached her more closely, and his voice had lost its pleading tone.

'On the night of the arrest,' he said, 'you told me you had deceived all--lied to all; did you lie to me?'

He paused for a reply, but she did not speak, and he continued fiercely:

'Did you lie to me when you said you loved me? Was that a lie? Was it a trap?'

'It does not matter now, Harry; all is over, all.'

'An' you did lie to me. You lied because you thought I'd give your father up if my love was not returned. My God! you thought I took advantage of--'

'No, no, no!' she cried, 'not that. I thought no ill of you, I think none. Think what you will of me.'

'But I was fooled--cruelly, bitterly fooled. You needn't have done it, Chris. I'd rather have died than have added to your sufferings. Your trick wasn't necessary. I cared more for you than you'll ever know.'

Her hands trembled at her sides and her lips moved, but her eyes remained steadfast.

'I know your good heart, Harry,' she said in a voice almost harsh from the restraint put upon her. 'I will bless you and pray for you while I live, but I can never be your wife. You are mad to think of me. Some day you will be glad I refused to listen to you, and grateful to me for what I have done.'

'Grateful!' he cried. 'To be grateful I must learn to hate you. I'll go an' learn that lesson.'

He turned from her and strode towards the gate, but there he paused with his arm upon the bar, and presently he moved back to her side.

'I can't go like that, dear,' he said, seizing her hand again, 'nothing on earth can ever make me anything but your lover, an' nothing can make me believe you lied when you said you loved me. Your kisses were not lies. Speak to me--say that you did love me a little!'

'Good-bye,