CHAPTER II.

Two days passed—four days—and Neville Lynne was still at his claim. He
had not been down to the camp, no one had come up to him since the
doctor had paid him the visit. He had heard nothing of the death and
burial of the man, the stranger; and, solitary and alone but for the old
woman, Mrs. Meth, he toiled on at his barren claim. Sometimes when the
heat and the flies and the dust seemed worse than usual, he pitched the
pick and the spade as far as he could, and flung himself on his back and
lay with his hands over his eyes not asleep, but thinking.

Thinking, no doubt, of his home far away in England; of the relatives
and friends he might never see again; of the dear old home in the soft
luscious green fields in Devonshire, he used to think it rather a sloppy
place, and had been wont to declare that it always rained there. What
would he give for a Devonshire downpour now! A young man, a gentleman,
dressed in rags, who has had a crust of dry—very dry—bread for
breakfast, and is rather uncertain as to whether it will run to quite
such an extensive feed for dinner—a young man so utterly and completely
down on his luck as Neville Lynne, has plenty to think of.

The old hag came up shuffling—nearly everybody shuffled in Lorn Camp,
it was found to be less exhausting than walking in the proper Christian
manner—and shook an empty meal bag at him.

“This yere bag’s empty, Young ’un,” she said, not complainingly, but as
if she were stating a matter of fact.

“So it is; so am I; so are you,” said Neville quietly; “and so is the
claim!”

But he got up and fetched his pick and spade, and dropped into the hole
again.

This was soon after noon on the fourth day after the doctor’s visit. He
had grown to hate the sight of the hole, the tools, the very sand and
pebbles which he painfully cast up to the surface, and after digging for
an hour he looked up and laughed.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s played out, as the doc said, and I’m off. But
where?” He looked absently round the plain. “To some other camp, I
suppose. No use going back to England without money; better stop here
where it isn’t wicked to wear old clothes and go barefoot. Poverty’s a
crime in England, and I should be punished. Besides,” he wiped the sweat
from his brow and his handsome face clouded, “I couldn’t face them;
couldn’t face Jordan’s sneer. No! not England!”

Then he sighed. The old woman came down to the hole again, and shook the
meal bag.

“This yere’s as empty as a drum!” she croaked.

Neville got out of the pit slowly, and walked to the hut, unlocked the
box, and took out a silver pencil case, value probably two and
ninepence.

“My last piece of plate, Meth,” he said with a short laugh. “Take it
down to the camp and swop it for meal. Somebody who can’t write may take
a fancy to it.”

The old woman clutched at it with her grimy claw—every hand in Lorn
Hope was more or less grimy; generally more—and shuffled off toward the
camp.

Neville went slowly back to his claim and took up the pick.

“Yes,” he said, “the doc was right; Lorn Hope is played out. I ought to
have cut it with my partner. Now, look here, I’ll take just six strokes,
and then—good-by and be blowed to you!”

He raised the pick above his head, and struck to the right of him. Once,
twice, thrice, four, five times. A cloud of red dust, a heap of
stones—as usual. He held the pick poised, a grim smile on his
sun-browned lips.

“The sixth and very last, so help me Heaven!”

Down came the pick, up went the dust, down rattled the stones. He
scarcely looked at the heap, but let the pick fall, and turned to leap
from the hole. As he did so the corner of his eye, the corner only,
caught the sweet, the precious, the dear, dull glitter, which is the
grandest light earth holds for a digger’s eyes. He swung round, dropped
on his knees, and clawing at the heap with his hands dragged out—a
nugget.

The sudden turn of the wheel of fortune stunned him for a moment. It was
so unexpected, so unlooked for, that he could not believe in it.

He took it up and weighed it in both hands. In nine months you learn
something of the value of a nugget. Neville thought there must be over a
thousand pounds in the one he held in his hot, trembling hands.

He turned it over as a miser turns over his title deeds, a bibliomaniac
his rare first edition, a numismatist his precious coin; he held it
close to his eyes, stroked it, even smelled it.

Over a thousand pounds! He sank down in the pit, leaning against the
side, and, still with his eyes fixed on it, thought of what he would do
with it.

It was not a fortune. By no means. But a thousand pounds, remember, is a
large sum to fall into the hands of a youngster of nineteen, especially
when a few minutes before his only valuable was a silver pencil
case—which he had parted with for meal!

With a thousand pounds he could go back to England, if not rich, as
riches are counted, yet, at any rate, not a beggar. Jordan—no
one—would laugh or sneer at him. A thousand pounds! He could buy land,
a small farm in Devonshire, and rear cattle. He could——At any rate, he
could get out of this beastly, sun-smitten, plague-stricken,
blackguard-haunted Lorn Hope!

The thought recalled him to himself, sent the fire through his veins,
endued him with energy, strength, hope, spirit.

He leaped—not climbed—out of the pit with the precious nugget hidden
under his tattered shirt, and ran toward the hut, and began turning out
the contents of his box, flinging the things to right and left in a
senseless kind of fashion. What he was trying to do was to look out some
more decent apparel.

The old woman darkened the doorway.

“This yere’s all I can get,” she croaked, holding up the bag, in the
bottom of which was some meal. “’Tain’t much, ’tain’t half enough, but
there don’t seem no run on pencil cases.”

Neville turned his glowing face up to her wrinkled, weasened one.

“All right, Meth!” he said, with a laugh in his voice. “It’s all right!
I’ve struck it!” And he held up the nugget. “Hush!” for the old woman
had uttered a suppressed screech. “Struck it just now, five minutes,
half an hour——” He didn’t know how long he had been sitting in the pit
staring at the nugget. “Just after you had gone. Grand, ain’t it!”

“Lord’s sakes!” mumbled the old woman. “To think of it! And I’d ’er bet
my bottom dollar that there warn’t a spark of yellow in the whole
claim.”

“That’s just it! That’s just the way of it,” said Neville, rapidly. “It
always comes when you don’t expect it, when you’re not looking for it.
That’s the charm of this confounded gold digging business. But it’s
come; that’s the main thing.”

“Let’s wet it!” said Mrs. Meth.

Neville raked inside the box.

“Sorry. Gave the doc the last drop of liquor I had. Never mind, Meth.
You shall have enough to swim in to-morrow. Let me see. This is the
sixteenth, isn’t it? Yes. The day the bank agent comes down. I’ll take
it down to the camp and swap it for notes, and then——”

He drew a long breath.

“And then you’re off,” said Mrs. Meth, stirring up the fire with one
hand and turning out the meal on to a board with the other.

“Then I’m off, as you say,” he assented. “No more Lorn Hope for me,
thank you.”

“There might be more where that came from,” she croaked, pointing a
skinny finger at the yellow nugget lying beside him, within reach of his
hand.

He shook his head.

“No; it’s just a pocket, Meth. I know the look of it. And if there
were——Well, I don’t think it would keep me! I’m sick of it—just sick
of it. I want to go back. I’m homesick—do you understand, Meth?”

Old Meth, rapidly making the meal into cakes, nodded.

“That’s it,” he said. “Home-sick. Got the English fever on me, Meth. You
don’t know what that means. Lucky for you, perhaps. What’s the time?” He
sprang up and screening his eyes with his hand, looked at the sinking
sun. “The bank agent will be down at the camp, I should think. I’m off.”

“You’d best stop and get a cup of tea and some’ut to eat,” said the old
woman. “You go rushing down there with that there nugget on an empty
stomach, and they’ll get the best of you, Young ’un.”

He laughed, and pushed the short curly hair from his forehead.

“You speak the words of wisdom and of truth, old Meth,” he said. “I’ll
stay for tea. And, look here, I mean the square thing by you. You’ve
stood by me through a long run of bad luck.”

“That’s nothing,” she said, lifting the boiling kettle from the fire.

“But it is, and I’ll stand by you, Meth. You shall have—let me see—you
shall have fifty pounds.”

“Fifty pounds!”

She opened her lips and showed her toothless gums.

“Yes!” he said. “And if my partner were here he should have half of
it—the nugget, I mean. But he chucked it up.”

“All the better for you,” said the old woman with a grin.

Neville nodded.

“Yes, and yet I wish he’d hung on. It’s strange that I should have
stayed.”

“You believed in your luck, Young ’un,” she croaked. “Nothing like
sticking to your luck. Here’s your tea; and here’s a cake.”

He drank the awful mixture of currant bush and iron filings and ate some
of the hot meal cake. Your gold digger knows not indigestion.

“Fifty pounds,” he said as he set the tin mug down on the top of the
box. “That will give you a fresh start, eh, Meth?”

She laughed and crooned.

He washed himself, thrust on a light peajacket, and with the precious
nugget hidden beneath it, left the hut.

A new moon was rising placidly above the mountain range, its
faintly-defined crescent shining feebly against the light from the west
in which the sun had sunk surrounded by golden fire.

Neville didn’t stop to admire or even notice the moon; but with the
nugget pressed close to his heart, walked rapidly toward the camp.

He passed his claim, glancing at it as a man glances at a much-loved
mistress, picked his way past many a similar hole, threaded the tents
and shanties which formed the outposts of the camp, and presently neared
the centre—Sandy Macgregor’s grog tent.

It was a larger tent than the rest, and Neville as he approached it saw
the lights of the candles and benzoline lamps shining through it. He
also heard the buzz and murmur of voices. They floated through the
evening air, still thick and heavy with the remnant of the day’s heat.

He trod lightly, springily, drawing strength and energy from the nugget
pressed against his breast. He knew that the bank agent, if he had
arrived, would be found here, and in imagination he already held and
counted the precious notes which he would receive in exchange for his
nugget.

He paused as he reached the tent and drawing the lump of virgin gold
from its hiding place, to take a last look at it! A thousand pounds!
Away flew his thoughts. England: dear, sweet, green, smiling England; a
farm, lowing cattle, green fields! Home! Oh! you discontented ones who
dwell at home in the dear old land, and grumble at the weather and the
this, that and the other, if you only knew how the wanderer longs for
home, home!

The flap of the tent door was thrown back; he drew near and looked in.

Sandy was standing at the bar, behind a counter of rough deal. The place
was full, but the men were not sitting and sprawling around, playing
cards or quarreling, but standing in a crowd, with all their faces
turned toward the end of the tent.

Something unusual and out of the ordinary was going on.

Neville drew nearer and looked farther in.

He saw, at the end of the big tent a man standing on an upturned barrel.
He was the spokesman of Lorn Hope, a ne’er-do-well with the gift of the
gab, a man named Lockit, and was evidently holding forth.

He stood, ragged and with unkempt hair and long neglected beard, a tin
can in one hand, the other held up to invoke silence.

Neville, curious but impatient, listened.

And this is what he heard:

“Now, pards,” the orator was saying, “this yere’s the case in a
nutshell: A stranger comes to this yere camp, comes here from no one
knows where or how, sick and sorry, and this yere stranger, after
receivin’ every attention from our mutual friend the doc——”

“Three cheers for the doc!” cried a voice thick with Macgregor’s whisky;
followed by, “Shut up! Turn it off!”

“After receivin’ every attention from the doc,” continued the orator,
“this yere stranger hands in his checks. It ain’t an unusual perceedin’
in Lorn Hope by no means——”

“A custom more honored in the breach than the observance,” called out
the doctor. “That’s Shakespeare, boys.”

“Right you are, doc, and you ought to know,” was the shouted response.

“Order!” said the speaker on the barrel. “This yere stranger cuts his
cable, and upon my mortial soul, it’s the best thing he could do.”

“Hear, hear!”

“There’s no luck in Lorn Hope for the residents, leave alone a stranger,
boys.”

“Hear, hear!” with increased emphasis.

“The stranger goes,” continued the orator, “but he leaves something more
than his blessing behind. Boys, he leaves a child, a girl. And now,
gentlemen, the question for this free and independent assemblage of Lorn
Hope citizens is to decide what shall be done with that child.”

“Hear, hear! That’s the question,” hiccoughed a miner close to the
entrance, against which Neville stood and watched and listened.

“Nothing’s known o’ this yere stranger,” resumed Lockit. “He don’t leave
no will and he don’t express no wish, and it’s left to the—the”—he
sought for a big and appropriate word, and found it at last—“for the
collective wisdom of Lorn Hope to decide. Here’s the doc. He was with
the stranger in his last moments, and he’s offered to take the child;
but”—the speaker paused—“it ’pears to me that the doc has as much as
he can do to look after himself.”

“Hear, hear, hear!” from all parts of the audience.

“Just so. Well, this yere child is a kid at present, but she’ll grow up
to be useful presently, and if any one wants a promising young ’un, as
can be taught to cook and look after things, now’s his chance.”

A hubbub of voices arose, almost drowning the speaker’s last words, and
in the midst of the noise Neville made his entrance without attracting
any attention.

He looked round the tent. It was filled with the Lorn Hope
population—man, boy, woman. His bright young eye fell ultimately upon a
group standing just beneath the orator.

There were three or four women, and in their midst a young girl with
gray eyes and dark hair. She looked half dazed with fear, and clung to
one of the women with one hand, while the other held back the thick
wealth of hair from her puzzled and frightened eyes.

The face, the eyes, smote Neville like a blow.

He saw the bank agent sitting on a plank and watching the proceedings
with a smile of indolent amusement, but even as he looked at the agent
he forgot him; the girl’s pale frightened face fascinated, absorbed him.

“Here’s this young girl,” resumed the orator, “agoing beggin’, as you
may say. Now, who——”

“I’ll take her! I’ll take her!” rose from different parts of the crowd.

“Too many of you!” retorted the speaker, tossing off a draught of
Macgregor’s whisky and chucking the empty tin to the proprietor of the
saloon. “One at a time. You can’t all of you have the young orphan.
What’s to be done!”

“Put her up for sale,” cried a voice. “The highest bidder has her.”

The orator paused a moment, and seemed to consider the proposal, then he
nodded.

“Right you are,” he said; “that’s fair and square. Here’s a useful
lot—a young girl that’ll learn to wash and cook before you can say Jack
Robinson; a sunbeam for any man’s home, let him be whomsoever he may.
Who bids for the orphan?”

The girl looked round at the hot sunburned faces, and, her breath coming
fast and thick, clung still tighter to the woman nearest to her, and the
woman tried to soothe her.

The bank agent, smoking a big cigar, looked on with a smile. He was
accustomed to the rough humor of a digger’s camp, but it had been
reserved for Lorn Hope to afford a new excitement. The scene reminded
him of the “good” old slave times in the States.

“Now, then!” shouted the auctioneer. “Here’s the rules and regulations.
The orphan to be disposed of to the highest bidder.”

“What are you going to do with the money?” demanded a voice.

Lockit considered a moment.

“We’ll hand it to the doctor as the beginning of a fund for the Great
Lorn Hope Hospital.”

“A jail ’ud be more useful,” commented some one, sarcastically.

“Or a cemetery and lunatic asylum combined,” yelled another.

“As you please, pards,” said Lockit. “We can decide what we’ll do with
the money after we’ve got it. Jail, cemetery, hospital——”

“Or drinks round,” put in a voice.

“Whatever you like. Now, then, the first bid. Mind, the money’s no use
without a comfortable home and a good character; understand that. This
yere orphan is the ward of Lorn Hope Camp. Now, then, first bid!”

The men looked round at each other and laughed half shyly, no one liking
to make the first offer.

“What! I’m to start the running, eh?” said the auctioneer. “All right.”
He took out some buttons and odds and ends from his pocket, and
pretended to count over a large quantity of coin. “Well, to start you,
here’s a shilling.”

Somebody half in jest shouted:

“One and sixpence.”

The ball was started and ran merrily. By sixpences and shillings and an
occasional half-crown the bidding was run up to three pounds. Three men
only were bidding, and presently with a laugh one dropped out, leaving
the contest to the two.

Just as Lockit was, in burlesque imitation of an auctioneer, exhorting
these two, Neville felt some one push past him, and saw that it was
Lavarick.

He had come into the tent in his usual stealthy fashion, and stood, his
eyes fixed—the left, with the cast, on the girl, the other on the men.

Neville disliked the man, suspected him of being the worst scoundrel in
the camp, and instinctively put his hand over that part of his coat
which covered his nugget.

Lavarick was not a digger, had never had a claim or taken a pick in
hand, and seeing that he did no work of any kind, nor kept a store, and
that he had never been caught actually stealing, some slight curiosity
was felt by the camp as to how he lived. But it was only slight. Persons
living in glass houses are not only careful not to throw stones, but
shut their eyes when they pass one. Some said that Lavarick did a little
gold dealing now and then, and that he made a little with the cards. He
wore what had once been a suit of black broadcloth, and the wit of the
camp declared that Lavarick had “done” six months in England by making
off with the money he was collecting at the door of a dissenting chapel.
He looked something like a broken clerk, and had been not unfrequently
called the Undertaker. He edged and glided among the crowd until he had
reached the end of the table, and with his left eye still on the girl,
listened to Lockit and the two men with an intent expression of
suppressed eagerness and excitement, and when Lockit shouted: “Three
pounds nine—going, going! Ned, you’ve got a handy parlor maid in the
future, cheap as dirt. Going, going!” Lavarick held up a dirty paw, and
with a sickly smile of assumed indifference, said:

“Three pounds ten!”

“Hallo!” exclaimed Lockit, “here’s another. Bravo, Undertaker! But ain’t
you rather premature? It’s a live orphan we’re disposing of.”

The roar that followed drowned a faint cry of terror that escaped the
girl’s quivering lips; but Neville heard it, and his face grew pale and
his eyes flashed.

He pushed aside the men in front of him and stepped forward.

“Four pounds!” he said, quietly, but his voice was clear and distinct
enough, though low, to be heard by all; and there was a ring in it that
caused the laughter to stop suddenly and drew every eye upon him.

The child, after that one glance at Lavarick, had turned and hidden her
face against the breast of the woman to whom she was clinging; but she
moved her head and looked over her shoulder at Neville, and he caught
the look of anguished entreaty in the big gray eyes.

“And here’s another!” cried Lockit. “And the Young ’un, too! Cupid
versus the Undertaker and Long Ned! And four pounds! Four pounds! No
more shillings, gentlemen. We’ll have pounds now. I see that hospital,
doc, in my mind’s eye, I do.”

Lavarick looked at Neville with an ugly sneer. He knew that the lad had
had a run of bad luck, that his partner had left the claim in disgust,
and he smiled contemptuously.

“Well, five pounds,” he said.

“Six.”

Seven, eight, ten, twenty, forty. An intense silence prevailed as the
bidding rose. The two men stood, divided by the rickety table, looking
at each other; Lavarick with the same sickly smile on his face, and the
suppressed eagerness about his ill-shaped mouth, Neville with his lips
set square and his blue eyes stern and determined.

The burlesque had died out of Lockit’s manner, and a grim seriousness
had taken its place. Every man in the crowd recognized that a change had
come over the spirit of the dream, and that what had begun as a piece of
fun had developed into terrible earnest.

“One hundred!” said Lavarick.

The crowd exchanged glances of amazement, and waited breathlessly.

“Has he got the money? And where did he get it?” ran round.

“One hundred and fifty!” said Neville.

“He’s got the money, or he wouldn’t bid. He’s straight enough, the Young
’un is; but where did he get it?”

“Two hundred!” dropped from Lavarick’s lips.

Quick as thought, Neville retorted with:

“Two hundred and fifty.”

Lavarick raised his eyes and looked at Neville with a cunning suspicion.

“Is it a game of bluff?” he said. “Is the Young ’un just a-drawing me
out for the fun of the thing?”

An angry murmur rose.

“I should recommend any gentleman inclined to play that game to drop
it,” remarked Lockit grimly. “We are serious now. This is business; eh,
boys?”

A shout of assent arose.

“Oh, I’m right,” said Lavarick. “I’ve got what I bid. I’m not bluffing,
I’m not.”

Neville did not condescend to assert his solvency.

“Is the bid against me?” he asked, looking up at the auctioneer. “If
not, I claim——”

“Three hundred!” broke in Lavarick.

“Four!” was the sharp response from Neville.

The crowd drew a long breath.

“We shall want that lunatic asylum, anyhow,” remarked the wit dryly, but
no one laughed at the sally.

“Five!” snarled Lavarick.

Neville bid six.

The crowd pressed close up to the two men, the excitement became
feverish.

Lavarick, his face pale and distorted, paused a moment, then said
“Seven.”

A roar went up, but as it died away Neville’s voice was heard with the
“Eight.”

He, too, was pale. He had weighed his nugget. There was not a thousand
pounds in it; say nine hundred and sixty, after deducting the agent’s
charges. It was just possible that Lavarick possessed more—he was a
“dark horse”—and would overbid him. He could see the girl’s eyes fixed
on him as if she had not power to withdraw them, and they seemed to be
burning his heart, and sending fire instead of blood through his veins.
He would save her, if it cost him every ounce, every pennyweight, of his
precious nugget.

Lavarick stood, his hands writhing at his sides, his eyes looking first
at Neville and then at the child.

“Eight hundred and fifty!” dropped slowly from his lips.

The crowd waited; the auctioneer stood with upheld hand.

“Going at eight hundred and fifty,” he said, grimly. “Going, going!”

“Nine hundred!” said Neville.

A shout arose.

Lockit commanded silence. A dense stillness fell instantly, and all eyes
were fixed on Lavarick.

He turned red, then white; his lips opened as if he were about to speak,
then with a sinister smile, he turned aside.

“Going! gone!” cried Lockit.

The tent shook with the roar that rose in a deafening volley, and rose
again as Neville grimly unbuttoned his coat and dropped the nugget on
the table.

The crowd pressed forward with a renewed shout—this time of amazement
and delight in the dramatic finale.

“Bravo, Young ’un! Bravo!” they yelled, and a dozen grimy hands were
thrust forward toward him.

“Tell us, Young ’un, is it your pile, or is there more behind?” “When
did you get it?” “What’s its weight?”

These and a score of similar questions were yelled at him.

Neville held up his hand for silence.

“There’s no more. It’s my pile,” he said as quietly as usual. “There’s
nearly a thousand pounds there.”

He laid one hand on the nugget and beckoned to the bank agent with the
other.

“I leave it in your charge, Mr. Smith,” he said. “Pay for my bid and
hand me the rest to-morrow.”

The agent nodded.

The crowd closed round the nugget, staring at it.

Neville turned to the group of women, and held out his hand to the
child.

“Will you come with me?” he said.

The great eyes stared at him for a moment vacantly, and with no sign of
sense or comprehension, then something in his pitying blue eyes seemed
to awaken the intelligence which the prolonged terror had numbed and
almost slain, and she leaned to toward him.

He took her hand. It was cold as ice, and quivering like a leaf in the
wind, but she staggered, and he took her up in his arms bodily and
strode toward the opening of the tent.

As he did so Lavarick glided out sideways with a hand thrust in his
breast pocket.

Neville slung the child quickly but gently over his left shoulder
leaving his right hand free, and quietly drew out his revolver.

“Go back and stop there,” he said.

Lavarick, with an affectation of surprise, drew out the remnant of a
pocket handkerchief, as if he had only intended blowing his nose, but he
shrank back, and Neville passed him, and with the child still over his
shoulder and the revolver still in his hand, went out into the open air.

———