CHAPTER I.

Neville Lynne leaned on his pick and, wiping the perspiration from his
face, gazed in a ruminative, not to say melancholy, fashion across the
plain.

It was not a particularly pleasant view; in fact, it was as hideous as
can well be imagined, and would have given a scene in our own English
Black country points, and beaten it easily. For it was an Australian
gold field; an arid, dusty plain which would have been ugly at any time,
but was rendered simply appalling by the dirt, confusion, squalor and
poverty of a digger’s camp.

The sun had been glaring down upon this cheerful prospect during the
whole of what had seemed an endless day, and was now sinking in a bed of
fire, to stoke up for the next day’s scorching. There were a few trees
in the valley, but not a parched leaf of them moved. A bird or two flew
listlessly across the waste, but dropped with heavy wings on to the
scorching rocks or the cracking tent poles; if they had dropped into the
tents themselves no man would have molested them, for every man was too
tired, too dead beat and utterly exhausted, even to knock down a bird.

A group of horses, whose bones stood out under their skins like the
lines of a Gothic cathedral, stood sleepily in what remained of the
river, and the only sounds that broke the natural stillness of this
aggravating, soul-crushing heat, were the click of a pick in some claim,
the listless bark of a dog, and now and again a feeble shout from Sandy
Macgregor’s grog tent, where some men were drowning care, and poisoning
themselves with the liquid which Mr. Macgregor, with a facetiousness
which was beyond all praise, called “whisky.”

Lorn Hope Camp was very much down on its luck. There was gold in the
ravine everybody believed, or said he did, but for some weeks past no
man had succeeded in finding it, and but for the heat what remained of
Lorn Hope Camp would have up sticks and departed for some other Hope
less Forlorn; but the heat had burned up the energy, melted the purpose,
sapped the perseverance of nearly all, and the men of Lorn Hope Camp
still clung on, digging occasionally, sleeping often, quarreling at
times, and drinking whisky always.

Neville Lynne’s “claim” was at the end of the ravine, half a mile or
more from the camp at which he gazed. A rough hut of planks and canvas
stood at a little distance, and in this Neville and his partner, and an
old woman—so old that the “boys” had christened her Mrs. Meth, as short
for Methuselah—had lived. “Had,” for the evening before, Neville’s
partner, disgusted by the run of bad luck, had cleared out and departed.

Why Neville Lynne had not gone, too, he could not have told. His belief
in the presence of this hidden gold was certainly no stronger than that
of the other diggers, and as certainly he had not grown to love the
hideous, sandy, dusty, sun stricken plain; but something, some feeling
he could not have defined if his life had depended upon his doing so,
had made him reluctant to leave the Lorn Hope, and there he stood,
penniless, solitary, and most utterly bored, on the edge of his barren
claim, with the last rays of the sun spitefully smiting him on the head,
and the flies buzzing round his ears.

There were two reasons why Neville Lynne’s claim was at a distance from
the camp. The first was because he believed in the upper part of the
ravine; the second, because he was different from the rest of the men
who composed Lorn Hope.

To put it shortly, the young fellow—he was very young, younger than he
looked, a mere lad just under twenty—was a gentleman, and the rest of
the camp were—not.

Now, the one gentleman in a society of blacklegs, lags, roughs and
ruffians is always regarded by them with a certain amount of envy,
malice and all uncharitableness. It is very painful and disadvantageous
to be the only honest and well-bred man in a party, whether it is a
picnic party or a party of gold diggers, and it was very much to the
relief of the majority that Neville Lynne pitched his tent a mile and a
half from the main body.

And yet, though they regarded him with a groundless dislike, and a not
altogether groundless envy, they respected him. There was not a
reckless, desperate, dare-devil among them who possessed more pluck than
the Young ’un, as he was called. He was, in their expressive language,
“all grit,” and they knew that he was as ready with his revolver and his
fists as any of them, and though slow at beginning a fight, was slower
still at leaving off.

On his first joining the camp Bully Swanger—a regular desperado—had
“gone for him” with the altogether unlooked for result of laying the
bully on his back for rather more than a fortnight, and since then the
Young ’un had been severally let alone. There were some, the best of the
crew, who would have been friendly with the lad who had so effectively
shown that he could hold his own, but oil and vinegar will not mix
easily, and though Neville Lynne was civil and courteous to all, he was
not “sociable.”

Even with his partner, the least dishonest man in the camp, Neville had
been reserved and reticent, and the man had worked with him, slept in
the hut beside him, shared his meals and hopes and disappointments,
without learning his real name or anything about him.

There were two or three women in the camp, mostly old and battered, who
eyed the young lad curiously and admiringly, but not even the youngest
and least ill-looking of them had ever received more than a smile or a
civil “Good-morning” from him.

“The Young ’un’s as full of pride as Mac’s whisky is of fusel oil,”
remarked the wit of the camp, “that’s what’s the matter with him.
Shouldn’t be surprised if he was a young dook in disguise. Some of these
days he’ll skip around with a coronet on his head and then flop up to
Heaven. That is, if some of the boys don’t get too much of his pride and
bore a hole through him.”

But though many, doubtless, would have liked to have perforated the
Young ’un, no one had yet attempted it; the reflection that he was a
very quick hand at the perforating process himself deterred the
desperadoes.

The sun sank at last and Neville, as if he had been waiting for its
disappearance, dropped into the hole and resumed work. But there was not
much heart in his strokes, and he seized the appearance of a solitary
figure coming slowly across the plain toward him as an excuse for
stopping again, and once more leaning upon his pick, waited and gazed.

The man came up with a lagging gait, and threw himself down on the edge
of the hole. He was inexpensively attired in a pair of trousers made out
of meal sacks, a shirt frayed and torn, and rather blacker than a
tinker’s boots which no self-respecting tramp in England or America
would have deigned to pick up, and a chimney-pot hat so battered and
napless and brimless as to convey the idea that the man who would wear
it could only have insanity as an excuse for doing so.

He was the doctor of Lorn Hope—there is always a doctor, a barrister,
not unfrequently a baronet, and occasionally a clergyman in a diggers’
camp—and he, too, like Neville, was nameless, answering always to the
abbreviated cognomen of “Doc.”

“Well, Young ’un,” he said, mopping his face, seamed and hollowed by a
long and uninterrupted course of camp whisky. “Still hangin’ on?”

“Still hanging on, doc,” said Neville, with as cheerful a nod as could
be expected under the circumstances.

The doctor stared at the handsome, sun-browned face, with its short,
crisp hair looking almost yellow against the darkened sky, and the clear
blue eyes that met his squarely, and then let his own blinking,
undecided ones drop into the pit.

“Seems as if there weren’t any more luck for this yere camp, don’t it?”

“Yes, it seems so,” assented Neville, listlessly, and he took out his
pipe.

The doctor’s eyes glistened.

“Ain’t got any ’baca to spare, I suppose?” he remarked.

“Oh, yes,” said Neville, and he tossed his pouch.

The doctor caught it with eager, shaking hands, crammed a blackened old
briar as full as it could hold, hid another pipeful in the palm of his
hand with charming dexterity, and tossed the pouch—with just half a
pipeful remaining—back to its owner.

“Partner’s cleared out, ain’t he?”

Neville nodded as he lit his pipe.

“Tired out at last, eh? Ah, well, I’m not surprised. Why on earth the
rest of the boys don’t up sticks and cut it, I can’t make out. Appears
to me Lorn Hope is clean played out. Why don’t you go, Young ’un?”

Neville Lynne leaned against the side of the pit and looked absently
across the plain.

“I don’t know,” he replied at last. “I suppose I shall presently.”

“That’s what most of ’em says,” remarked the doctor, squatting on his
haunches and puffing away with profound and sleepy satisfaction in the
eleemosynary tobacco. “Seems to me there won’t be many of us left to go
if we don’t look sharp about it. Two more waiting for the undertaker
this morning—sunstroke; and there’s three lying low besides. Guess we’d
better wait and bury ’em all together; it’s a saving of time, though
time don’t appear to be money in this yere camp now.”

The doctor was not an American—no one knew exactly what country could
rightly claim the honor of his birth—but he had been in the Californian
goldfields, and had caught the tone of that country and half a dozen
others as well.

“Sickness always follows other ill-luck,” said Neville.

“Not much sickness about you, Young ’un,” remarked the doctor, eyeing
the slim but well-knit frame approvingly.

“No, I’m all right enough,” assented Neville, “I trouble the baker more
than your profession, doc.”

“Kind of a teetotaler, ain’t you?” said the doctor. “Don’t see you often
up at the poison shop.”

Neville smiled absently.

“No, but I’m not a teetotaler,” he said.

The doctor smoked on in silence for a minute or so, then, without any
movement, remarked:

“Well, I must be going. And so you mean to stick on here, then?”

“For the present, yes,” said Neville.

“It ain’t no good. There’s nothing at the bottom of that, Young ’un.”

“I don’t think there is,” assented Neville, looking down at the hole. “I
shall stick to it for—say two days longer, and then——”

The doctor nodded.

“Well, here’s luck to you,” and he raised an imaginary glass, “I must be
going.”

He half rose, then sank down again.

“There now! Hang it all, if I haven’t clean gone and forgotten what I’d
come for,” and he smote his leg feebly, causing a great cloud of dust to
rise. “You ain’t got a drop of brandy—real brandy, cognac, you
know—not old Mac’s!—have you, Young ’un?”

Neville hesitated and glanced at him.

“Oh, it ain’t for me, don’t you mistake!” said the doctor as promptly as
the heat and his jelly-fish condition would permit. “Mac’s poison is
good enough for me; I want it for the stranger.”

“The what?” asked Neville.

“What, ain’t you heard?” rejoined the doctor, stretching himself.

“I’ve not been down to the camp for the last three days.”

“No? You ain’t very sociable, Young ’un. Well, last night, or yesterday
evening, the Scuffler”—the gentleman so-called was one of the idle
vagabonds of the camp, who was always ready for a fight or a drink, but
showed a marked disinclination for anything in the shape of work—“the
Scuffler comes down to my diggin’s and says he’d got company as wanted
me, wanted me bad. I thought at first the Scuffler had been on one of
his sprees, and was a bit wandering, but he took his oath that he hadn’t
had more than half a pint of whisky the whole blessed day, and I went
along with him. And it was gospel truth, for there was a new chum lying
there a-handing in his checks as fast as he could. Scuffler said he’d
found him and the girl——”

“What girl?” asked Neville.

“Didn’t I say as there was a child?” said the doctor. “Well, there was,
a bit of a girl, like a young colt. And——Where am I now? Oh, ah, yes,
the Scuffler found the old gent—for he’s a real gent, Young ’un, or
I’ve forgotten in this God-forsaken hole how to tell a gentleman—lying
in the road, and Scuffler, doing the good Samaritan, helped him into his
shanty, and not having any oil or a penny to bless himself with, does
the next best thing he could, and went for me.”

“Who is he?” asked Neville, not callously, but with that lack of keen
interest which becomes natural to a man who has spent many months in a
digger’s camp, especially when that camp happens to be one like the Lorn
Hope, in which sickness and death are always present or very near.

The doctor carefully stopped his pipe, using his begrimed finger as the
stopper, and shook his head.

“Not knowing, can’t say. Visitors to the Lorn Hope don’t, as a rule,
bring letters of recommendation with ’em, or call around dropping
visiting cards, and the stranger ain’t no exception. But he’s a gent,
I’ll swear, and it occurred to me that you, being also a gent, might
feel inclined to part with a drop of the real old stuff, that is, if
you’d got it.”

“There is no resisting such a compliment as that, doc,” said Neville. “I
think there is a little cognac left; if so, you are welcome to it.”

He put his strong hand on one side of the pit, and leaping lightly to
the top, went toward the hut. The doctor followed him, and stood leaning
against the apology for a door while Neville unlocked a strong box and,
after some rummaging about, found a bottle containing a small quantity
of brandy.

“There you are,” he said, tossing it to the doctor, who caught it as
dexterously as he had caught the tobacco pouch. “Is there anything else
I can do, doc?”

“No, not as I knows on, and I’m thinking no one else can do anything.”
Then hiding the bottle under his tattered shirt he patted it meaningly.

“Don’t you be afraid; I’m square, Young ’un, and I’ve been telling you
gospel truth. Every drop the stranger don’t drink I’ll hand back,” and
confirming the assertion with an emphatic digger oath, he shuffled off.

It took him some time, notwithstanding the distance was so short, to
reach the camp, and passing right through it he stopped at a shanty
rather more ruinous and tumbledown than the rest, and after a knock by
way of announcement, pushed aside the tattered canvas that served as a
door and entered.

A man was lying upon three upturned empty boxes covered with sacks, and
as the doctor had said, he was dying. The doctor had called him old, but
though the man’s hair was gray, almost white, and his face thin and
wasted, he was this side of fifty. There was that unmistakable look of
refinement about the face which denotes the gentleman; the hands
clutching the ragged blanket were thin and small and well shaped. Beside
him knelt a young girl, a thin slip of a child with great gray eyes and
a wealth of dark hair that half swept over her pale little face. She was
not crying, but there was a world of mute anguish in the big gray eyes
as she turned them from the dying man’s face to the whisky-sodden one of
the doctor.

“Hullo, here we are again!” remarked that gentleman with a ghastly
attempt at cheerfulness. “And how are we getting on now? Is there such a
thing as a glass about? Ah, no, the Scuffler don’t go in for such
luxuries.” He held the bottle to the man’s lips, and a few drops passed
them. “That’s better. Now, missie, just raise your father—he is your
father, or grandfather, which?”

“Father,” said the girl.

As if her voice were more effectual than the spirit in rousing him, the
dying man raised his head, and looked from one to the other. Then he
made a motion which the doctor accepted as a sign of dismissal.

“Want to be alone a bit, eh?” he said. “All right. You give me a call if
you want me. I’ll go and take a hand at beggar-my-neighbor with the
Scuffler. Just call out ‘doc,’ missie, and I’m with you in a crick.”

The dying man waited until the canvas curtain had flapped to upon the
doctor’s back, then he signed to the girl to come nearer. She laid her
head upon the pillow, a sack stuffed with grass, and wound her arm round
his neck.

“I’m going to leave you, Syl,” he said, feebly. “My poor child! My poor,
poor child! It is hard! But God’s will be done. Don’t cry, Syl. It’s I
who should cry—for—for when I think of you all alone in the world,
without even me to help you and protect you——” He drew a long sigh,
and the tears filled his eyes. “But, listen, Syl. I am going to give you
something. It is something very precious, and I—I want you to guard it
as if it were your very life. Don’t lose it, or let any one take it from
you. Hide it next your heart and—and when you are eighteen open it,
and——”

His voice failed him. He touched his breast and signed to her to take
something from his pocket, and she put in her trembling hand and drew
out a small flat package. It was covered with parchment stained and
creased, but securely sealed at each end.

“Take it,” he whispered. “Put it in the bosom of your dress, and—and
keep it there. Some day——”

His voice faltered and broke, and his head fell back, but he seemed to
indicate by a gesture that she was not to call out, and she remained
silent, holding him against her sob-shaken little breast.

While she waited with her anguished eyes fixed upon him a man’s head
appeared in the space between two of the boards which formed the side of
the hut.

It was a long, unpleasant-looking countenance, rendered all the more
unprepossessing by a slight cast in the left eye. It was not only ugly,
but a mean and villainous-looking face, and the expression of eagerness
and craft in the eyes as they glared watchfully at the dying man and the
girl would have provided a very nice model for a painter who wished to
paint, say, Judas just before the Act of Treachery. And it would have
been a very low type of Judas at that.

“Are—are you there still, Syl?” asked the dying man. “Have you hidden
the packet? Remember! Hide it, keep it, guard it! It is the secret of
your life, Syl—the secret of your life! How—how old are you, Syl?”

Her lips formed “Fifteen.”

“Three years, then!” he murmured. “Ah, my dear, my dear, if I could only
stay with you! All alone in the world! All alone, and such a child! But
God’s will——” He stopped, his face working, his eyes fixed on her with
pitying love and tenderness. “Good-by, Syl, good——”

The doctor came in with a hand of greasy cards in his claws at her cry,
and the uncouth dust-stained figure of the Scuffler stood at the hut
door.

“All over, doc?” he asked.

The doctor nodded with a gravity which would not have discredited his
flourishing professional days.

“All over, Scuffler,” he said. “Fetch one of the women; the child’s
fainted.”

The Scuffler turned, and in turning nearly stumbled over a third person;
it was the owner of the face which had been thrust between the boards.

“Hullo, Lavarick,” he said. “Is that you? Out o’ the way.”

“What’s on, Scuffler?” asked the individual addressed. “I’ve only just
come up. Anybody bad?”

“Yes, bad and worse!” retorted the Scuffler, with a chuckle of surprise
at his own wit.

“Dear me,” said Lavarick. “I’ll go in and see if I can be of any
assistance.”

And softly rubbing his hands together, he entered the hut.

———