pretty feet? My darling! Manage it, Tom! Sometimes I carried her, and I got her odd lifts, now and then, upon the drays and wagons going our way. There was never a drayman or a wagoner that refused to give my little girl a ride, and that wasn’t sorry to part with her—good luck to them! Why, some of them came miles out of their way for her sake, and would never take anything for it but a kiss from her pretty lips! And do you know, Tom,” he said, “she saved me from the bushrangers once. We were in the Black Forest, and they were on me before I knew where I was. We had just finished tea, and I was stooping over the log-fire to get a light for my pipe, so that the little girl was hidden from them at first. I turned, with my heart in my mouth—not for myself, Tom; for her—and looked at them. There were four of them, splendidly mounted, dressed in red serge shirts and bright silk sashes.
“Stand!” they cried, levelling their revolvers at me; “stand, for your life!”
Well, my girl jumps up, and runs to my side, and takes hold of my hand. They were dumbfounded.
“Well, I’m damned!” said one, under his breath; and then in a louder tone, “is that yours, mate?”
“Yes,” I answered, looking into their faces for pity. Upon that, they put up their pistols, and one of the men got off his horse, and came close to us.
“Don’t be frightened, little one,” he said.
“I’m not frightened,” lisped my pet, playing with the fringe of his red silk sash.
“I’m not going to harm her, mate,” he said to me; and he knelt before my darling, and put her pretty hands on his eyes, and kissed them again and again. “If every man had an angel like this by his side,” he said softly, “it would be the better for him.” Then he took off his sash, and tied it round my girl’s waist; and I had to lift her up to the other men to kiss them. That being done, they wished me good-night, and rode off. That was a lucky escape, wasn’t it? However, after a time I found I couldn’t get along as quickly as I wanted, and besides, when I was on the track of the gold I’ve discovered, I had to travel through country where I didn’t meet with drays or wagons. So I bought a wheelbarrow.”
“A wheelbarrow?” I cried, more and more surprised.
“Yes, Tom,” he said, with a comical look; “a wheelbarrow; and I put my little darling in it, and wheel her wherever I want to go. Well, to get along with my story, I came one day to the place where I’m working now, and where I want you to join me. Directly I saw it, I knew the gold was there, and I put up my tent. Before the week was out, I had a hundred ounces. I went to a cattle-station about twelve miles off, and bought a stock of provisions. Then I set to work in earnest. The whole place is a great gold-bed; wherever you dig, it peeps up at you with its bright eyes. There’s plenty of quartz on the hills, and you can’t search five minutes without finding it. At the top there’s more quartz than gold; deep down, I’ll lay my life there’s more gold than quartz. I worked by myself in this gully for four weeks, making about a hundred ounces a week, when one day, as I was panning out the gold in the creek hard by, I saw a man looking at me. He had wandered by accident to the place, and had discovered me working. My mind was made up in a minute. I took him for my mate, so that the secret might be kept, and we worked together till the day before yesterday.”
“What has become of him, then?” I asked.
“O, he’s there still, getting gold, but not so much as he might if he was one of the right sort. For I know of a gully that’s worth a dozen of the one we’ve been working in, and I don’t intend that he shall put a pick in it. No, Tom, that’s for you and me. I haven’t parted from him without good reason. My little darling never liked him from the first, and would never let him kiss her. Then there’s Rhadamanthus—”
“Rhadamanthus!”
“Don’t be scared, Tom. It’s only a dog, that was given to me by a drunken scholar—or rather, given to Lizzie in the bush—on the condition that we were always to call him Rhadamanthus—which we do, though at first it was a jaw-breaker. Then, as I say, there’s Rhadamanthus. He won’t let this mate of mine that was, come near him; snaps at him; snarls like the very devil if he tries to pat him on the head. That’s a kind of instinct I believe in. And Lizzie’s is a kind of instinct that I’d stake salvation on. But I put up with the fellow till a week ago. He wanted Lizzie to kiss him, and she wouldn’t. He tried to force her, and I came upon them when she was struggling in his arms, screaming out to me for help. I helped her—and helped him, to the soundest thrashing he ever made acquaintance with. I broke with him then and there, and came away in search of you, pretty certain I should be able to find you. You’re pretty well known, Tom.”
“And Rhada—”
“Manthus. Out with it, Tom! It’ll come as easy as butter soon.”
“Where is he?”
“Outside in the bush, a couple of hundred yards away, keeping watch over the wheelbarrow. I want to start right away; we’ll have to be careful that we’re not followed.”
“I’m ready this minute, Bill,” I said. “I’ll just take my blankets and tools. I’ll leave the tent up; it’ll keep off suspicion.”
I wasn’t long getting ready, and Bill, lifting his little girl from the bed, held her, still asleep, tenderly to his breast, and led the way into the bush, where Rhadamanthus and the wheelbarrow were waiting for us.
Rhadamanthus, the raggedest dog that ever breathed, with the most disgraceful tail that ever wagged, fixed his eyes upon me in a kind of way that said, “Now, what sort of a chap are you?” We laid pretty little Liz in the wheelbarrow, making her snug, and covering her up warm. Her face, as she lay asleep in the wheelbarrow, had a curious effect upon me. Made me choke a bit, as I’m doing now. When she was snugly tucked in, I kissed her, and a sweet and new feeling crept into my heart as once more she smiled at my kiss.
“It’s a trick of hers,” said Bill; she always smiles in her sleep when any one kisses her that she likes. God bless you, Tom!”
“All right, mate,” said I.
“Rhadamanthus sidled up to me, and licked my hand.
We travelled the whole of that night, taking it in turns to wheel little Liz, who slept soundly all the time. Rhadamanthus trudged along by our side, watching his child-mistress with true affection in his eyes. It was a beautiful star-lit night, and everything about us was quiet and peaceful. The scenes through which we passed were full of strange beauty to me, who had hitherto looked upon them with a careless eye. Now and again in the distance we saw a camp-fire burning, with the diggers lying around it; and occasionally we heard the tinkling of bells on the necks of horses who stumbled about with hobbles on their feet, while their drivers were sleeping between the shafts of the wagons, walled round with canvas, on beds of dry leaves. We kept out of the track of men as much as we could, and met with no obstacles on the road that we did not easily overcome. We had to lift the wheelbarrow over fallen logs sometimes, and once over a creek, and we did it gently, without disturbing our little one. That walk through the solemn and lovely woods was to me very much like a prayer. When we made our way through the tall straight trees of silverbark—when I looked up at the wonderful brightness of the heavens, which filled the woods with lovely light, among which the shadows played like living things—when upon a distant hill I saw a flock of sheep asleep, with the moon shining clear upon them—and when I gazed at the peaceful and beautiful face of the child asleep in the barrow—I could scarcely believe that it was not all a dream. The remembrance of that night’s tramp has never left me, and its lessons remain. Too often, mates, do we walk through life, blind to the signs.
During
