"Gone! Who sent it?"
"I did, with one of my own. I say, I hope I haven't done wrong, Dent?
It's English mail day, you know, and I thought you'd forgotten it."
"I knocked off early on purpose to take it myself."
"I'm awfully sorry, Dent, but I happened to see that it was already stamped."
"It's all right, Moseley," said Denis, conquering his displeasure, "and of course I'm really very much obliged to you, though I came back on purpose to post it myself. It was very good of you to trouble."
Moseley was beginning to look embarrassed, and not merely because he had meant well and done ill. He had not taken so very much trouble after all, and he was too good a fellow to retain more credit than his due.
"There was an old soldier came along," said Moseley, colouring: "not a bad old chap, but a bit of a gossip; he had a look down the hole, and asked how we were doing, and drank a pannikin of tea. As he was going to the post-office, and offered to post my letter for me, I let him take them both."
Denis could hardly believe his ears.
"You gave my letter to a strange digger?"
"And my own with it, Dent."
"A man you'd never set eyes on before?"
"I certainly never had; but we had quite a long chat first, and he seemed a decent soul enough. I saw no reason to distrust him, at any rate. I know what you're saying to yourself," added Moseley, as Denis smiled sardonically; "but I've been more careful since the lesson I had the night we met. Even if I'm still the worst judge of character in the world, what object could anybody have in tampering with simple letters like ours?"
The ingenuous question gave Denis an idea.
"What was the fellow like--to look at?" he asked in his turn.
"Oh, just a respectable elderly man, not much of the old soldier about him, but the diggings must be crawling with them, and how many look the part?"
"Then how do you know he was one?"
"He told me, of course."
"Had he a beard?"
"That goes without saying." Moseley and Denis were each growing one.
"But was his beard dyed?"
"No--gray."
"It should be gray," said Denis, grimly. "Did he tell you which diggings he came from?"
"Sailor's Gully."
Denis breathed again. He knew that Devenish and Jewson were at the Gravel Pits. He had really no reason to connect the man who had taken the letters with the man whom he had in mind; and further questioning finally relieved him of the idea, partly because Moseley was unconsciously anxious to make the best of his emissary. But the altercation had stirred the emotions of both young men; neither spoke in his natural voice; each resembled an unpleasing portrait of himself. So much had been said, however, that it was an opportunity for saying more.
"You know, Dent," Moseley went on, "I've had enough of the whole thing.
I made a mistake when I turned back with you, instead of taking the first ship home as I had intended."
Denis said nothing. The sentiment expressed was too identical with his own. Doherty reduced the considerate distance to which he had withdrawn, and there was no doubt he was beginning to listen.
"But I hadn't written to say I was going home," continued Moseley, "so I'm expecting my money at Christmas. It won't be much--thirty pounds--but it's sure. You see, my father wasn't so sanguine as I was when I came out, and he's allowing me sixty pounds a year."
Moseley smiled a little sadly. Doherty drew a few steps nearer. Denis had become a picturesque study in sympathy, framed in the opening of the tent.
"I wish I could persuade you to come home with me after Christmas!"
said Moseley, wistfully enough.
Doherty looked tragically at Denis, but could have flung up his wide-awake at the way Denis shook his head without a word.
"Then I'll be shot if I go either!" cried Moseley, with a noble tremor in his voice.
"My dear fellow!" urged Denis, while Doherty spun round on his heel.
"No," said Moseley, "you stood by me, and I'll stand by you as long as you stay on Ballarat. It's no use talking, because I won't listen to a word. You went through fire for me, Dent--you both did--and I'd go through fire and water for you! And look here, Dent, I'll never do another silly thing, and I'll work harder and cook better--you mark my words!"
They were such as neither listener had ever heard from him before; but, Doherty was no longer listening with any interest, and Denis was too much affected to perceive that the humourist of the party was surpassing himself when least intending it. All he could do was to drop his two hands on Moseley's shoulders, and shake him affectionately until the fellow smiled.
"But what about the thirty pounds, when it comes?" asked Denis, with presence of mind and some sudden eagerness.
Moseley's face lit up with the sacred flame of loyalty.
"It goes into the Company!" said he. "I'll back you with my last stiver as long as you stay on Ballarat!"
CHAPTER XV
A PIOUS FRAUD
So the little Company continued its existence, and on Black Hill Flat, because Denis was more and more against sinking a second hole until there was no more gold to be got out of the first. It was like his thoroughness and tenacity of character, but was inconsistent with his original attitude as a digger. A moderate success was of no use to him; it must be a small fortune, or it might as well be nothing at all. So it had been in the beginning, and it was obviously still the case. Yet there was no shifting Denis while there was a pennyweight to the tub, and once there was nearly an ounce, and one day in November yielded two ounces four pennyweight. He was further fortified by the opinion of one whom he instinctively regarded as an expert. Passing with Moseley through Rotten Gully, on the Old Eureka Lead, to look at one of the many sites which his companion fancied in these days, Denis became much more interested in a very well-built hut in juxtaposition to an evidently deep hole with a capital windlass atop. A fellow with trim whiskers and an expression of splendid disgust was turning the handle, and as they watched a very muddy digger came up standing in the pail, from which he stepped with as much daintiness as a lady with a dress to spoil. "Thank you," said this one in an off-hand way to the other, but Denis he favoured with a stare, followed by the shortest of nods, for it was the deep-sinker who had recommended Black Hill Flat.
"Did you try the Flat?" said he.
"I've been trying it ever since," returned Denis, and soon added with what result. He was furthermore able to answer one or two technical questions in such a way as to interest the deep-sinker, who seemed quite struck with the simple device of the hand-barrow.
"Well," said he, as the partners were taking their leave, "I can't help my opinion, and I've got it still. I believe there's gold on Black Hill Flat, and plenty of it; what's more, it's the sort of nice dry place where it should be pretty near the surface, if it's there at all. But, of course, you might prick about for a year without finding it. I'm sorry I said so much about the place the other day; if I hadn't I'd give you another piece of advice now, and that would be to take your time and go in for deep sinking. You're too good a man for surfacing.
Good-afternoon to you, and better luck." And he ducked into his hut with a last least nod.
The upshot of this conversation, and of another between Denis and Moseley upon the obvious quality of the deep-sinker, was that Moseley went "pricking about" the flat while Denis persisted in the old hole, and Jim Doherty oscillated between the pair. Nothing more came of it.
Moseley was a poor digger, who scarcely pricked skin-deep. He soon went back to his evil cooking, which, however, had been less evil since the little scene with Denis. His chops oftener hit a medium between the blue-raw and done-to-a-rag extremes; but his bread would still have murdered a dyspeptic, and the lean but hungry Doherty was laid up for forty-eight hours after one of Moseley's duffs. Denis himself little knew how many of his sleepless nights he owed to the same devastating cause; and on Black Hill Flat he slept the sleep of the lost.
Early to bed was the digger's natural law, but if Denis kept it he would be wide awake by the smallest hours, and so lie tossing till the Flat was astir. He found it a lesser evil to sit up late over a lonely camp-fire, and beguiled these vigils with congenial employment. He was making a new map of the diggings. This one was in ink on a clean piece of cardboard cut to fit the jacket pocket. It grew out of odd scraps marked in pencil on Denis's walks abroad; some of the latter were taken on purpose during these very sleepless nights. So the map was his own, correct or incorrect, and it was made on his own plan. It was largely geological. There were the depths of sinkings where Denis could ascertain them, and the various leads flowed in rivers of bold red ink, which made up for any lack of academic accuracy by a rather stimulating appeal to the imagination. But that was to come; as yet it was a spy's map, which even Jimmy had not seen.