style="font-size:15px;"> He rose, and walked up and down the tent, cursing the man who, he believed, had killed his wife.
“I tell you what, Tom,” he said, after a bit, “I shall tramp to Melbourne to see my little daughter, and then I shall go prospecting. There are places, I’ll stake my life, where the gold can be got in lumps, and I mean to find them out. I dreamt the other night that I came upon it in the rock, and that I had to cut it out with a chisel.”
I didn’t like the idea of losing my mate, and I did my best to persuade him not to go; but I might as well have talked to a lamp-post. So we divided the gold, shook hands, and the next morning he started on the tramp to Melbourne.
I didn’t see or hear anything of him for a good many months after this; and somehow or other, when I lost him I lost my luck. Every shaft I bottomed turned out a duffer. I could hardly earn tucker. I worked in Jackass Gully, Donkey-woman’s Gully, Pegleg, Starvation Point, Choke’m Gully, Dead-horse Gully, and at last made my way to Murdering Flat—nice, sociable names!—pretty well down on my luck. I had been in Murdering Flat three weeks, and was sitting alone in my tent one night, reckoning up things. In those three weeks I hadn’t made half-an-ounce of gold, and there wasn’t two pennyweights in my match-box—so that I didn’t feel over amiable. That day, I had been particularly unlucky, having made about three grains of gold, which I flung away in a rage. I was just thinking whether I mightn’t just as well go to the grog-shanty, and have a drink—it was past nine o’clock at night—when who should walk straight into my tent but my old mate, Bill. I scarcely knew him at first; for he had let his hair grow all over his face, and he was almost covered with it, up to his eyes and down to his breast.
“Bill!” I cried, jumping up.
“Yes, it’s me, Tom,” he said. “Are you alone?”
“Yes, Bill.”
“Stop here, then, till I come back, and don’t let anybody in but me.”
He went out, and returned in about ten minutes with a beautiful little girl in his arms.
“Hush!” he said, stepping softly. “Speak low. She’s asleep.”
She wasn’t above six years old but she was so pretty, and looked so like a little angel—such as I never expected to see under my roof—that I fell in love with her at once. Of course I was a bit surprised when he brought her in, and he couldn’t help observing it as he laid her carefully upon my stretcher.
“This is my little girl, Tom,” he said, answering my look. “If I ever go to heaven, I shall have her to thank for it. She is my good angel.”
“Where are you come from?” I asked, after we had covered the pretty fairy with a blanket. He looked cautiously round, as though he feared some one was in hiding, and then, sitting opposite me at the table, rested his chin on his hands, and said, in a whisper,
“I’ve found it, Tom!”
There was such an awful glare in his eyes that I felt quite scared as I asked him what it was he had found.
“I’ve found the place where the gold comes from,” he said, in the same sort of hoarse whisper. “I am on it, Tom! I knew I should find it at last. Look here.”
First going to the door, to see that no one could get in without warning, he pulled from his breast-pocket a nugget of pure gold that must have weighed near upon seventy ounces, and five or six others, from fifteen to twenty ounces each. Lord! how my heart beat as I handled them, and how I wished I could drop across some of the same kidney! I don’t know how it is with you, mates; but although I don’t believe I value the gold much when I’ve got it, there’s no pleasure in life so great to me as coming suddenly upon a rich patch. I think the sight of bright shining gold at the bottom of a dark shaft is one of the prettiest in the world.
“Is that good enough for you?” he asked, as he put the nuggets back into his pocket.
I laughed.
“Any more where they came from, Bill?”
“More than you could carry.”
I stared at him, believing he had gone mad. “It’s true. How are you doing?”
“I can’t make tucker, Bill. My luck’s dead out.”
“It’s dead in now,” said he; “I’ve come to put fifty ounces a day in your pocket. What do you say? Will you go mates with me again?”
That was a nice question, wasn’t it, to put to a hard-up digger, without an ounce of gold in his match-box?
“Will I, old fellow?” I cried. “Will I not! When shall we start?”
“Stop a minute, Tom,” he said gravely. “I’ve something to say to you first. I want you for a mate again, and shall be glad to have you; but we’ve got to strike a bargain. You see my little girl there?”
I nodded.
“She is the blood of my heart! I am like a plant, Tom, which would wither if deprived of God Almighty’s blessed dew. She is my dew. If anything was to happen to her I should wither, and rot, and die. I want you for my mate, because I believe you to be honest and true. And I am going to show you a place where the gold grows—a place which, of my own free will, I would not show to another man in the world. I have hunted it and tracked it, never heeding the danger I have run. But do you know, Tom, that since I have had my little pet with me”—and he laid his hand, O, so gently upon her cheek!—“all my recklessness and courage seem to have gone clean out of me. For it is her life I am living now, not my own! And I think what will become of her if I die before my time—if I should slip down a shaft, or it should tumble in upon me, or I should fall ill of a fever, or anything of that sort should happen to me that would deprive her of a protector. These thoughts haunt me day and night, and presentiments come over me sometimes that fill me with fears I can’t express. Now, Tom, listen to me. The place I am going to take you to will make you rich. If we can keep it to ourselves for a few months—(though there is another in the secret, but he won’t peach, for his own sake)—we shall get at least five thousand ounces—perhaps double as much: there’s no telling whether we sha’n’t drop across a mountain of gold. Now, lay your hand upon your heart, and swear by all you hold dearest that if anything should happen to me, you will take care of my little darling, and be a second father to her when I am gone!”
I bent over the dear little one’s face—I can feel her sweet breath again upon my cheek—and kissed her. She stirred in her sleep, and smiled. Then I said,
“That kiss is a sacrament, Bill. By all that’s holy, I will be a second father to your little girl, should she need me. So help me, God!”
He took my hand, and the big tears rolled down his beard. It was full five minutes before he was calm enough to speak.
“Now I’ll tell you all about it. You remember my leaving you to go to Melbourne, after we had worked out our claim in Dead-dog Gully. Well, when I got there, I found that my little girl was not being well treated. The people she was living with had taken to drink, and had neglected her. And my heart so grew to her—I can see my Lizzie’s face in hers—that I made up my mind never to leave her again. So, when I was ready to start, I brought her away with me, and we’ve travelled together, since that time, I don’t know how many hundreds of miles.”
“How in the world
