"That's what I mean. They were--I don't mind tellin' you, mister, though I'd rather bite my tongue out than tell another soul on the place"--and little Jim came sidling from his seat at the foot of the bed to an easy distance from Denis's ear, a dead secret in his astute young face. "But you'll think no worse of a cove," he went on, whispering, "and you won't split either; so it's a bit of a relief to tell you--they was both old hands."
"Old hands?"
"Lags!"
Now Denis understood. "Of course I don't think the less of you," he said, gently; "we are what we make ourselves, at any rate there's no credit in anything else we may be. I, for instance----"
But Denis had strength enough left to control his tongue, and his parents' memory was too sacred for association with that of transported felons, however little there might be to chose between their sons.
"It might be worse," the lad went on, with an elderly air the more pathetic for its unconscious humour: "they was married at Parramatta factory, and my mother let me know it when I was as high as this bed; it's the one thing I recollect her by, keepin' on tellin' me that; but 'im I never see as I remember. Parramatta factory," he continued, lifting his shrewd eyes once more, "was the place where they kep' the women prisoners, up on the Sydney side in the convict days; you could go and take your pick as long as you married her." The boy's stare grew into a contemplative grin, and Denis prepared for a familiarity.
"There'll be need for you to go there," said Mr. Doherty.
Denis was not offended; either he was too stricken to be readily ruffled, or the young monkey had a way with him. He only rolled his head on the pillow, and questioned whether such an establishment existed still.
"It doesn't," rejoined Jim; "but even if it did, eh? You're all right, you see, so you can go on shaking your head till you loosen it! _I_ seen, whether or no, last night when you couldn't."
"I don't want to know what you saw," cried Denis, vehemently enough; and lay quite agitated between the sheets.
"I suppose," the imp pursued, with a precocious union of tact and tenacity, "you'll go and get married straight away, and never let us see or hear from you again."
Denis set his teeth, not because the boy jarred, but at the gulf between this fancy picture and the possibilities of the case as it now stood. It was characteristic of him that for the first time they seemed impossibilities. He had saved her life, and now they were alone in the world, he and she: how could he trade on such things, how avoid the suspicion of trying to trade on them? If only another had saved her! If only others had been saved!
"Don't speak of it," he groaned. "I am far too poor."
"Too poor, are you?"
The boy had brightened.
"And she is too rich."
"Then what more do you want, mister?"
"What more? It should be the opposite way; we should both be one thing or the other. Anything but as we are!"
There was a brief intermezzo of the tiny summer noises. The blind flapped; a mosquito sang an ominous solo in the sick man's ear; from without came the faint hacking of an axe at the wood-heap. Denis looked up at last, and there sat Jim with a startlingly wise face upon his narrow young shoulders.
"Do you know what I should do, if I was you, mister?"
"Well, what?"
"If I felt same as you," said Mr. Doherty, "I'd make a fortune same as hers."
Denis smiled tolerantly; the urchin amused him.
"Well, and how would you do that?"
"I should go up to Ballarat, and peg out my claim, as sure as my name's Jimmy Dockerty!"
"It would have to be a lucky one," said Denis, dryly, though not until he had paused to think.
"Then it wouldn't be the only one," retorted Doherty, with the readiness of their common race.
Denis could not help dallying with the idea.
"Have they been doing such good business up there, then?"
"Good! Why, haven't you heard? There's never been such doings as they've had on Ballarat this year. I thought it was all over the world," the boy added, with shining eyes.
"It may be," said Denis, "but I've been at sea since June, and it isn't exactly in a sailor's line."
"Isn't it!" laughed Jimmy. "You wait till you see the empty ships in Hobson's Bay! Some of 'em been stuck there since the last day of January, when the fun began. Do you mean to say you never heard of the big finds in Canadian Gully?"
"You tell me, Jimmy. I want to hear."
Denis was leaning on an elbow. Jimmy had long been on his feet.
"There were some coves had a claim in Canadian Gully, on Ballarat," the boy began, a wild light in his face, a light that Denis had never seen before. "They were doing well, but not too well, and they offered to sell the hole for a matter of three hundred. Then one of them went down and came up with a nugget weighing sixty-six ounces!"
"At how much the ounce?"
"About four guineas."
"Well, that wasn't quite the three hundred."
"Stop a bit!" cried Doherty, a perfect fever in his eyes, a fever as new to Denis as the light upon the lad's face. "That was only the beginning of it. Of course they wouldn't sell after that. And before night they'd got a nugget of a hundred and twenty pounds. Troy weight--whatever that is--perhaps you can turn it into the other pounds, for I can't."
Denis sat forward, pressing the lint upon his forehead with his hands.
When at length he looked up there was the same light beneath the bandages, the same fever in the still blood-shot eyes, as Denis himself had remarked in the face and eyes of his companion.
"Six thousand pounds!" he whispered almost aghast.
"Six thousand golden sovereigns!" shouted the lad, capering about the room. "Think of that, mister, think of that! I had it read to me out of the papers. I got it off by heart. It was one big, solid, yellow lump of gold, and they had to carry it between them slung to a pole. It wasn't the only one, neither; as they went tunneling on it stuck out of the sides, like bunches of grapes--at twenty pound a berry! There was only four on 'em in the party; they made their fortunes in less than no time; and two on 'em was new chums, same as you'd be if you went up and--and----"
"And what, boy?"
"And took me along with you!"
Denis only wondered that the little brown face, thrust so near him in its eagerness, did not burst into actual flame; it never occurred to him that his own was perhaps presenting the like phenomenon.
"You talk as though you'd been there already, Jimmy," said he.
"But I haven't. I'd only give my two ears to go. The boss won't let me.
He says I'm too young; and he's been such a jolly good boss to me, I haven't the heart to go agin him, especially when he's promised me my kit if I wait till the Noo Year. But I b'lieve he'd give 'em me to-morrow, mister, if I was going up with you!"
It was a strange talk for Denis on the day after his deliverance, in the bed where they had laid him more dead than alive, but the manner of its ending was the strangest part of all. In the fever that was so new to Denis, that he had a touch of it before he dreamed there was such a disease, he not only forgot the perils through which he had passed, but his every sense turned blunt by comparison with the intensely keen edge put so suddenly on certain of his desires. He had not heard the voices outside; neither had Doherty; and the feet upon the threshold fell upon four equally deaf ears. It was not until Mr. Kitto opened the door, and entered first, that the one looked round and the other up.
"Here," said the squatter, "is a gentleman whom I know you will be heartily thankful to see again."
The gentleman stood forward with outstretched hands and a quivering lip.