The Gold-Stealers Part 33

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 pa.s.sionate 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 a.s.sist in the discovery of Ephraim s.h.i.+ne. 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. s.h.i.+ne 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.i.+ne could be lying in concealment there. For a d.i.c.k, 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 d.y.k.e discovered by the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company. The mine had been christened the Native Youth; d.i.c.k, 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 a.s.sist 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 d.i.c.k 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 alt.i.tude that she could hope for nothing better than to wors.h.i.+p meekly at a great distance. She was braver now, she actually approached him and spoke to him, yet timidly enough to have softened a heart of adamant; but d.i.c.k, stung by a laughing comment from McKnight, would have pa.s.sed her by with an exaggerated indifference intended to convey an idea of his sublime superiority to little girls, no matter how large and dark and appealing their eyes might be. Then she actually seized his hand.

'Don't go, d.i.c.kie,' she said, 'I want to speak to you. Miss Christina sent me.'

Kitty was a member of Christina s.h.i.+ne's cla.s.s at the chapel, and was one of half a dozen to whom Miss Chris represented all that was beautiful and most to be desired in an angel. The mention of Christina's name served to divest d.i.c.k of all pretentiousness.

'What is it, Kitty?' he asked eagerly.

'She wants you. She says you're her friend, an' you'll go to her,' Kitty spoke in a whisper, although the men were now well beyond earshot.

'Yes,' said d.i.c.k; 'I'll go now.'

'No, not now,' said Kitty clinging to his sleeve. 'She says have your dinner an' then go. An' oh, d.i.c.kie, she's been crying, an' she's all white, an'--an'--' At this the little messenger began to cry too.

'Is she?' said d.i.c.k, sadly. 'When my mine turns out rich I'm goin' to give her a fortune.'

'Oh, are you, d.i.c.kie?' said Kitty, beaming through her tears.

'Yes,' answered he gravely; 'and then she'll marry Harry Hardy an' be happy ever after.'

'My, that will be nice,' murmured Kitty, much comforted.

'You ain't a bad little girl.' He felt called upon to reward her. 'You can walk as far as the fence with me if you like.'

Kitty was properly grateful, and they walked together to the furze-covered fence.

'Please don't tell anyone you're going to see her, Miss Christina says,'

whispered Kitty, at parting.

'Right y'are,' d.i.c.k said, delighted with the mystery. 'I say, Kitty, I think p'raps I'll give you a fortune too.'

'Oh, d.i.c.kie, no; not a whole fortune, I'm too little,' cried Kitty, overwhelmed.

'Yes, a whole fortune,' he persisted grandly; 'an' maybe I'll marry you.'

'Will you, d.i.c.kie, will you? Oh, that is kind!'

'Here.' He had turned over the treasures in his pocket and found a sc.r.a.p of gilt filagree off a gorgeous valentine. 'Here's somethin'.'

Kitty thought the gift very beautiful, and accepted it thankfully for its own sake and the sake of the giver, as an earnest of the fortune to come; and went her way happy but duly impressed with a sense of the responsibilities those riches must impose.

Harry Hardy had loitered behind his mates on the flat, and when the boy caught up to him again he turned to him with nervous anxiety.

'What did that girl want with you, d.i.c.k?' he asked. I heard her mention Miss s.h.i.+ne's name.'

He noted the set, stubborn look with which he was now familiar fall upon the boy's face like a mask, and he questioned no more on that point.