The Bushranger's Secret Part 5

"Oh, you're all right!" Gray returned indifferently; "the station is just over the rise there. You'll see it in a mile or so."

The man looked in the direction Gray pointed, and then turned his eyes again on Gray's face. Curious, s.h.i.+fty, cunning eyes they were--eyes that went well with the narrow, cruel mouth, and the sharply-pointed chin.

"Perhaps you're Mr. Morton yourself, sir," he said ingratiatingly.

"You deserve to be, I'm sure."

"No such luck," said Gray with a laugh, not ill pleased at the man's suggestion. "But you'll find him at home if you go on. I've just left him."

Gray was about to ride on, when the man spoke again.

"I won't detain you a minute, sir, but perhaps you can tell me if I've got a chance of some work over there."

"It depends on what you can do, and who you are, you know," said Gray, with a brief comprehensive glance over the man's figure.

"You'd better not try to play any tricks with Morton if you want him to help you. That's a friendly bit of advice I'll give you."

"Thank you, sir; I'll remember it," was the humbly-spoken answer, though there was a sudden gleam in the pale blue eyes that Gray did not see. "I've heard along the road what a good employer he is. They were tellin' me at Billoora last night about the poor cove what was lost. I suppose there's no chance that he'll ever be found now, sir?"

Gray felt the colour going out of his cheeks at the sudden reference to Harding.

"I'm afraid not," he said hurriedly. "But I must go on. There's your road straight in front of you. You can't miss it."

The man had put his hand on the neck of the horse, and he still kept it there.

"I'm sorry I spoke, sir. I can see as how you're a friend of his, and I wish I'd held my tongue. But 'tis his mate I pities most. How's he bearin' it now, sir? They was tellin' me he's nigh broken-hearted."

Gray stared blankly at the man for a moment without answering. Then he recovered himself and said with some haughtiness, "I would rather not talk of it, my man. Just let my horse go, will you? I'm in a hurry."

The man stepped back instantly with a word of apology, and Gray rode on without looking back. If he had turned his head he would have seen his late companion gazing after him with a satirical smile on his crafty face.

"We'll have some more talk afore long, my fine gentleman," he was saying. "You didn't think, did you, that I knowed who you was? Them men at Billoora aren't half-bad at a description."

And with a laugh Mr. Lumley, as he chose to call himself at that particular moment, went on his way.

He was bent on staying at Warrandilla for a time, and would have tried his hand at any work offered to him, but as it turned out the work he could do best was just the work that was wanted, and he got regular employment at once. Mrs. Morton was devoted to her garden, and Lumley was really a clever gardener; so that, though she could not help agreeing with her husband's verdict about the man, she was eager to keep him.

Lumley made no secret of his past "misfortunes."

He had been s.h.i.+pped to the colony while it was still a convict station, and his record was by no means a good one since his first term had been worked out.

"But I have never had a good chance before, madam," he said to Mrs.

Morton, trying to keep his s.h.i.+fty eyes fixed in a straightforward look upon her face. "I've never had a good kind friend like you before.

Please G.o.d, I'll do well now."

And though Mrs. Morton distrusted his professions of reform, she found him a clever steady workman, and one most anxious to please. He became one of the most frequent attendants at the religious services which Mr.

Morton held two or three times a week in the little chapel next his house.

If Mr. Morton had been a different sort of man the new gardener might have gone on to worse hypocrisy still, but there was something in his employer's strong keen face that kept him back from that.

As Lumley put it to himself, "Shammin' religion is no go with him."

It was about three weeks after Lumley's appearance at the station that Gray's time for departure came. Everyone was very kind to him; their kindness and sympathy cut him to the heart. They tried to comfort him by telling him that no one could have shown more energy in the search than he had, that nothing had been left undone, and that Harding himself would have been the last to wish that his friends should grieve too much. In some such strain Mr. Morton talked to him when he went to the house to bid him good-bye.

"You must cheer up, my lad," he said kindly. "You have done all you could. No man can do more."

Gray made no reply, nor did he raise his gloomy eyes to meet the pleasant kindly glance of his employer. Mr. Morton went on: "So you are thinking of going back to the old country, Gray. Well, there ought to be room there for a man like you; and I don't wonder at your wanting to get away from here after what's happened."

"I am not sailing for a month or so," said Gray. He spoke hurriedly, clearing his throat before he could articulate the words properly. "I think of taking a trip into the mountains. I don't feel equal to the voyage just now."

"Well, take care of yourself; and let us know how you get along." He took Gray's hand and pressed it warmly. "G.o.d bless you, my lad!"

Gray looked up into his face with such a strange, wild, miserable glance that Mr. Morton started. He put his hand on the young man's shoulder and looked earnestly at him.

"What is it, Gray? There is something troubling you. Can I help you?"

But Gray drew back.

"There is nothing," he said coldly.

"But there _is_ something," Mr. Morton said to his wife that evening.

"Can Gray be keeping back something about Harding, Minnie? I confess I am not altogether satisfied with the result of the search. Harding was not a man to get lost in the Bush; he knew the country too well. And yet--"

"You don't suspect Harding of pretending to be lost?" said his little wife with an amazed look.

"No, no; Harding was not a man to do that sort of thing. I never suspected anything till I saw Gray's face this afternoon. But there is some mystery; and Gray knows more than he has told. I feel sure of that."

"What shall you do?" asked Mrs. Morton, with a startled look on her pretty face.

"What can I do?"

"You don't think Gray--"

"Don't put it into words, Minnie. I have no right to think anything.

But his face startled me. No man ever looked like that who hadn't got some great trouble weighing on him. And he wasn't so devoted to Harding as all that, you know. It surprised me to see how much he felt it."

"I always thought he patronized Harding; believed himself too good for him."

"Oh, I know you never liked Gray much," returned her husband, "Harding liked him though. He must have something in him."

To get back to his own quarters Gray had to cross the garden. It was looking its loveliest this afternoon. The turf was as green if not as smooth as the turf of an English lawn, and the glow of colour was more brilliant than any English garden could show. Gray loved flowers. But he pa.s.sed through that beautiful garden without a glance right or left, with his eyes bent upon the ground.

Not far from the gate which he would have to pa.s.s through Lumley was busy cutting the gra.s.s with a hand-machine. He had been working in another part of the garden when Gray had gone up to the house, but had caught sight of him as he crossed to the verandah steps. Soon after he left the work he was about in order to cut the gra.s.s by the gate.

It was a curious trait in his vicious character that he really loved his gardening work. He had come to the station for a definite purpose, a purpose nearly fulfilled--he was leaving the place at dawn next morning--yet he was working busily still in the pleasant evening light, anxious to leave the gra.s.s in perfect order. Mrs. Morton never had such a good gardener again. He was not working too busily, however, to be unmindful of Gray's approach. He watched him with a crafty sidelong look as he came swinging down the path, and when he was quite close to him he touched his cap as an English servant might have done in respectful greeting. He had saluted Gray in the same manner before, and Gray had been curiously pleased by it.

"Good evening, my man," he said loftily and would have pa.s.sed on. But Lumley stepped out on the path. He had taken off his cap and he turned it round and round in his hands as he spoke.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir," he said humbly, "But I was wantin' to speak to you. I took the liberty of callin' on you this afternoon, but you was out."