were buried, the one lying far distant from the other, as was but right; and now, when I have given you Craig’s evidence almost in his own words, I shall have finished this story of the Moat House.
“I was out fishing late one night four years ago,” he related, “and, as my luck would have it, happened to be in the shade of the trees opposite the Moat, with my lines out, when I saw two men coming down to the bank. I guessed they were up to no good, especially when I saw that one of them bore something like a human figure on his back, and that the other one was Richard Neilson. I was too far away to hear what was whispered, but the moon was bright and I saw them sink the body in the river and then go back to the house.
“I wondered what I would do. There was no police at Calandra then, and besides I guessed that the secret would be worth money to me. Once I thought of raising the body without a word and so disposing of it that I should at all times and seasons have the murderers under my thumb; but then, again, I reflected on the danger I might run of having myself done the deed I had only been in part a witness of, so I watched my chance to see Neilson alone, and I told him he was in my power.
“‘I did not do it,’ he declared; ‘it was my master. Surely you wouldn’t hang an innocent man so?’
“‘I know nothing of your master,’ was what I answered him. ‘Yours is the only face I could swear to, and it is to you I shall look for what may shut my mouth; get it how you like, but money I will have, and you know that money you can get.’
“‘I will do my best,’ he said; ‘but the secret must be between us two.’
“‘All right, so long as I agree with you no one else shall ever know from me. But there is one thing I say, and that is that the poor man must be decently buried, and not lie down there to be food for fishes. His body must be raised and buried like a Christian.’
“He pleaded hard to let the awful thing lie, but I would not listen, and I would not help him touch it; but I made the coffin as I best could, and brought it down the river in my boat, and when he put the corpse in I helped him to take it up the river again and bury it in Marshland Scrub. I wish I had never had a hand in it, for I shall never pass that spot again without fancying I see Neilson’s boat floating there silently, with one dead man anchoring it to the ground, and the other floating in his coffin over the place where his corpse first plunged.”
LITTLE LIZ
by B. L. Farjeon
B. L. Farjeon (1838-1903) is best known these days as the father of the well-known children’s author, Eleanor Farjeon, whose ghost story ‘Faithful Penny Dove’ has often been anthologised. Benjamin Leopold Farjeon came to Australia from London in 1854 and spent seven years on the Victorian goldfields. In 1861 he went to New Zealand and worked for a newspaper before publishing Shadows on the Snow: A Christmas Story (1866), which he dedicated to Charles Dickens. Dickens responded encouragingly to the book and Farjeon promptly returned to England to make his name as a writer.
He wrote over fifty books, many of them crime and mystery stories, some of them with Australian content. He also wrote many novels of the supernatural and occult, including Devlin the Barber (1888), A Strange Enchantment (1889), The Last Tenant (1893), Something Occurred (1893), The Mesmerists (1900), and The Clairvoyante (1905). ‘Little Liz’ is a harrowing tale from his elusive first book, Shadows on the Snow. This version is from a reprint published in 1867.
When the Victorian gold-fever was at its height, people were mad with excitement. Neither more nor less, I was as mad as the others, although I came to the colony from California, which was suffering from the same kind of fever, and which was pretty mad, too, in its way. But Victoria beat it hollow; for one reason, perhaps, because there was more of it. The strange sights I saw and the strange stories I could tell, if I knew how to do it, would fill a dozen books. In my time I have lived all sorts of lives and have worked with all sorts of mates, picked up in a rough-and-tumble kind of way, which was about the only way then that mates picked up each other. One day you did not know the man that the next day you were hob-a-nob with. I had some strange mates, as you may guess, but the strangest I ever worked with, and the one I liked more than all the others put together, was Bill Trickett. Bill was as thin as a lath and as tall as a maypole, and had come to the colony under a cloud. I don’t mean by that that he had done anything wrong at home, and was sent out at the expense of the Government, like a heap of others I mated with; but he was obliged to run away from England for a reason I didn’t know when I picked him up, but which I learnt afterwards. He had brought his wife out with him—a poor, weak, delicate creature, who died soon after he landed, leaving behind her a baby, a little girl, the only child they had. This child Bill left with some people in Melbourne, and came on to the gold-diggings to try his luck. I was working at that time in Dead-dog Gully, near Forest Creek, which was just then discovered, and Bill and me came together as mates. A better one, to do his share of the work and a little bit over, I should be unreasonable to wish for. I never had anything to complain of. On the contrary. He never shirked his work, seeming to like it more than anything else in the world. And once, when I was laid up with colonial fever—some of you have had a touch of it, I daresay, and know how it pulls a man down—he nursed me with the tenderness of a woman, and worked the claim without a murmur. Those are things one doesn’t easily forget. Soon after I got well our claim was worked out, and we had to look elsewhere for another; for every inch of Dead Dog was taken up. I remember well the night we parted. We were sitting in our tent, Bill and me, with our gold before us and our revolvers at full cock on the table. We had to look out pretty sharp in those days, mates. Many’s the man who has been robbed and disposed of, without any one being the wiser; many’s the man that has been murdered, and thrown down deserted shafts. Queer things were done on the diggings during the first fit of the fever, that human tongue will never speak of. Murder will out, they say; that isn’t quite true. I’ve seen some sights that make me shiver to think of, the secret of which will only be known on the Day of Judgment.
Well, we were sitting there, with our gold before us. Our claim had been a rich one, and we had three hundred ounces to divide, after all our sprees—and we had a few, I can tell you.
“Tom,” said Bill, as he sat looking at the gold, “if I had had as much money as that when I was in the old country, I should never have come out to the gold-fields, and my dear wife would not have died.”
“That’s more than you can say for a certainty,” I answered.
“Not a bit of it,” he said; “my wife would have been alive, and we should have been living happily together. I’ll tell you how it was. I was a contractor in a small way at home, and had lots of up-hill work, for I commenced with nothing. While I was courting Lizzie, an old hunks of a money-lender wanted to marry my girl. She had a nice time of it, poor lass! With her father on one side trying to persuade her to marry the old hunks, and me on the other, begging her to be faithful to me. But I had no need to do that. There was only one way out of the difficulty; we ran away, and got married without their knowing. We were as happy as the days were long, and should have remained so, but for the old money-lending thief. To spite me for taking the girl from him, he bought up all my debts—about three hundred pounds worth—and almost drove me mad. And one morning I caught the villain in the act of insulting my Liz. I didn’t show him any mercy; I beat him till he was sore, and then I kicked him out of the house. The next day the bailiffs were on the look-out to arrest me for debt, and I had to run for my liberty. He sold me up, root and branch, and turned my wife into the streets, and we came together to Liverpool, where Lizzie was confined. I tried hard to get work, but couldn’t; starvation or the workhouse was before us. All my chances at home were gone, and there was nothing for it but emigration. I shipped before the mast, and a friend assisted me to pay Lizzie’s passage in the steerage. A fortnight after we were out at sea, she told me that the doctor who attended her in her confinement had said that a long sea voyage would probably be the death of her. His words came true; she died within
