Mr. Wheeler rattled out this full and complete code of instructions with his customary rapidity, finishing off with the delivery of the pocket-book to Lance, who held out his hand mechanically and stood staring at him for a few moments like a man in a dream.
Then he found his tongue.
'You have done for me that which many a man's brother would have declined. I am a poor creature now, and can't speak even as once I could. But may Heaven help you in your need, as you have stood by me.
Some day it may be. I cannot say, but the day may come when a scion of the house of Wychwood may repay some slight portion of the debt of gratitude its most ill-fated son has incurred. Farewell, and God for ever bless you.'
The men looked in each other's eyes for a little space, one strong hand-clasp, after the manner of Englishmen, was exchanged, and they parted.
'That's a man of birth and breeding who has been wrongfully convicted, I'll stake my life,' said Wheeler to his friend, as, with gun on shoulder and long steady stride, they left the hut behind them. 'Had I not been convinced of it, all Ballarat would not have tempted me to go into the affair. But between pity and admiration for that trump of a girl, I gave way. I wonder whether his luck will turn now and all come right.'
'There's a great deal in luck in this world,' said Mr. Collins sententiously. 'It's hard to say.'
Within a few minutes after the time specified, and for which Lance waited with ever-increasing impatience, a quietly-dressed individual so suddenly appeared as to startle him. He came around the side of the hut while Lance was deep in the perusal of Tessie's letter, which also contained a few lines from Mr. Stirling, telling him that his order for cash, worded in a certain way, would always be paid to any person whom he might name at any place.
He looked up for an instant and saw the broad frame and steady eye of the stranger confronting him. 'Could this be a detective in plain clothes? The thought was madness.'
The stranger smiled. 'All right,' he said; 'I'm the blacksmith; come to take the clinks off--not the first job of the sort I've done. Sharp's the word--sit down, sir.'
Here the stranger produced from his pockets and a bag an assortment of tools of various sorts, including files of marvellous finish and temper.
Seating himself, Lance freely yielded his limbs to the man of iron, who, in something under half an hour, produced remarkable results. How the heart of Lance Trevanion swelled with joy when he saw the hated manacles drop heavily upon the rug on which he had been sitting!
'So far so good,' remarked the liberator artisan. 'One of 'em's chafed your ankle, but you'll soon get over that. Ugly, ain't they? If you'll dress yourself while I take a walk along the river I'll show you what I'll do with them.'
A few minutes sufficed for the inspection of the beauties of the Yarra.
When he returned, the good-looking young man with the clean-shaved face and short hair did not look in the least like the hunted convict of the previous day.
'My word,' quoth the smith, dragging out an old sugee bag, 'you look fust-rate--never see any one change more for the better--for the better.
Here goes!' Thus speaking, he placed the irons in the bag, which he afterwards nearly filled with the prison clothing of which Lance, even to his boots, had denuded himself. These he took into the punt, and rowing to a deep place in the river near the bank he threw in the sack, which the weight of the irons caused to sink at once. 'Many a poor fellow's been buried like that at sea,' he remarked, in soliloquy. 'I wonder if it ain't as good a way as any. The p'leece won't find them in a hurry, I bet. And now Mr. Never-Never, I'll show you the left-hand road, as I was told to. There's your track, and good luck to you.'
Lance had good reason to believe that this service had been paid for, but he could not bear that the man who had rendered him such material aid should go even temporarily unrewarded. So he extracted one of the five-pound notes from the pocket-book and presented it to him at the close of proceedings.
'You're a gentleman,' said the smith, unconsciously using the stereotyped expression of those receiving a gratuity in advance of expectation.
'I was once,' replied Lance, with a sadly humorous half-smile. 'God knows if I ever shall be one again.'
'No fear,' quoth the hammerman, with a cheery, consoling accent. 'You've got the world afore you now. Many a man in this country has been a deal lower down that holds his head high enough now. Keep up your "pecker."
It'll all come right in the end.'
On the narrow marshy track, which led between thick-growing walls of ti-tree eight or ten feet high, there was not, as Wheeler averred, much chance of losing the way. Lance plodded on cheerfully for about an hour.
Once he could have done the distance in far less time, but from want of exercise and other reasons he had contracted the habit of taking short steps, which he found it difficult to change. He felt altogether out of sorts, and was by no means sorry to see near a deep reed-fringed lagoon a man who looked like a stock-rider sitting on a log watching two hobbled horses that, saddled and bridled, fed close by the water's edge.
As the foot traveller emerged from the ti-tree thicket, the man walked to the horses' heads, and, after one look at the newcomer, commenced to unloose the hobbles. These he buckled on to each saddle, and, tightening the girths, said interrogatively, 'Number Six?'
'Polwarth,' was the answer returned.
Upon this he held the bridle of one of the horses and motioned for Lance to mount, after altering the stirrup to suit the stranger's length of limb. This done, he mounted and rode forward at a steady pace, turning neither to the right nor left, except when apparently some advantage would seem to be gained by it. Both horses walked fast, particularly the one which Lance bestrode, which he found to be good in all his paces, free, clever, and in all respects a superior style of hackney.
Mile after mile did they ride after this fashion, walking, trotting, or cantering as the roads, both deep and difficult in places, permitted.
The rate at which they travelled was on the whole rapid, though the guide evidently husbanded the powers of both horses in view of a toilsome journey still to be made.
An hour before midnight, pursuing a by-track for some distance, they came upon a hut in a forest near a deserted saw-pit. It had once been a snug and substantial dwelling, but the timber had long been cut and carted away, so the hut was no longer needed. The grass grew thick and green around. The guide, with practised hand, first lighted a fire in the large mud-lined chimney, and then unsaddled and hobbled out the horses. He produced from a rude cupboard bread and cold meat, tea, sugar, and the quart pot and pannikins necessary for a bush meal. These had evidently been placed there in anticipation of such a visit. Besides all this, there were a couple of rugs, and as many double blankets of the ordinary gray colour used by travelling bushmen.
The fire having burned well up, and a couple of dry back logs having been placed so as to ensure a steady glow for at least half the evening, his taciturn guide relaxed a little. 'Here we are for the night,' he said, 'though we'd best make an early start, and I don't know as we could be much more comfortable. We've plenty to eat and drink and a fire to sleep by, no cattle to watch, and a good roof over us. I've often had a worse night along this very road.'
'I daresay,' said Lance, who began to shake off his fears of immediate capture. 'This must be a queer road in wet weather.'
'I believe yer,' answered the guide. 'Many a mob of fat cattle I've drove along this very track. It's a nice treat on a wet night, sitting on your horse soaking wet through, nearly pitch dark, and afraid to give the bullocks a chance for fear they'd rush. This here's a picnic in a manner of speaking.'
'I suppose it is,' quoth Lance. 'Things might be worse, I daresay. I shall sleep well, I don't doubt. I haven't been riding much lately.
Where shall we get to-morrow night?'
'Somewhere about the Running Creek; it's a longish pull, but the horses are good and in fine buckle. You can do a long day's journey with an early start.'
Their meal over, the two men sat before the glowing fire on the rude seats which they had found in the hut. The soothing pipe helped still further to produce in Lance's case a calm and equable state of mind. To this succeeded a drowsily luxurious sensation of fatigue, which he did not attempt to combat, and, stretching himself on his rug, he covered himself with the blanket; he and his companion were soon asleep.
The stars were still in the sky when he started at a touch on the shoulder, and found that his companion had noiselessly arisen and prepared breakfast. The horses also, ready saddled and bridled, were standing with their bridles over the fork of a tree near the door. Lance was soon dressed. Breakfast over, they were in the saddle and away while as yet the first faint tinge of the dawn light had scarcely commenced to irradiate the mountain peaks which stood ranked like a company of Titans near the eastern sky-line.
With this, the second day's journey, a change commenced to make itself apparent in Lance Trevanion's mien and bearing. The fresh forest air was in his lungs, the great woodland through which they were now riding commenced to endue him with the fearless spirit of the waste. He could hardly imagine that it was so short a time since he was in fettered bondage. What a difference was there in his every movement and sensations! He began unconsciously to act the free man in tone and manner. He praised the paces of the horse he was riding, and criticised that of his guide in a way which showed that experienced person that he was no novice in the noble science of horse-flesh. He began to draw out his companion. In him he perceived, as he thought, the ordinary bushman, an experienced stock-rider, or, perhaps, confidential drover, and thence he began to wonder how much of his past history he had been made acquainted with. A chance question supplied the information.
CHAPTER XVII
'Where are ye thinking of going, boss, when we get to Bairnsdale?
Twofold Bay's a terrible long way off to go prospectin'. I'd a deal sooner chance Omeo. It's only twenty miles farther on.'
'Omeo, Omeo!' repeated Lance. 'Why should I go to Omeo?'
'Haven't ye heard? There's a big show struck close by the old township.
They say they're leaving Ballarat, lots of 'em, to go there. It's the richest find yet, by all accounts; shallow ground too!'
'Omeo, Omeo!' Lance again repeated half unconsciously to himself. Had not Tessie made reference to it in the coach from Ballarat? Had she not said that Lawrence Trevenna was there, the man to whose baleful shadow he owed ruin and dishonour, the ineradicable disgrace which would always be associated with his name? He had a heavy account to settle with him.
When they met all scores would be cleared off. This much he had vowed to himself in the prison cell at Ballarat, in the hulk _President_ in the silence of midnight, in that foetid hold of the prison-ship, where he could scarcely breathe the polluted atmosphere, laden with crime, heavy with curses. There, in that time of horror and dread, again and again had he sworn to take his enemy's life--that one or other should die when next they met, be it where it might.
And then again, as he hoped to efface himself, to feel secure from the pursuit which he heard in every breeze and feared in every echoing hoof, where could he find so safe and unsuspected a refuge as this new digging--wild, rough, isolated as Omeo must necessarily be? Far from civilisation of any kind, on a lone mountain plateau, snow-covered in winter, only to be reached by paths so devious and precipitous that wheels could not be employed, where every pound of merchandise or machinery was fain to be carried on pack-horses. There could be no better place for a hunted man to disappear, to obliterate himself. There he could remain for the present,--unknown, invisible to all who had known the former Lance Trevanion,--until he matured his plans and could make his way to a foreign shore.
Here, as he recovered health and strength under the influence of the mountain breezes and the wild woodlands which lay so near the river-sources and the snow summits, it would be comparatively easy to transmit his share of the Number Six washings, still safe in the Joint-Stock Bank in the custody of Charlie Stirling. Here, once located and established as Dick, Tom, or Harry--surnames were in the nature of superfluities at goldfields of the class which Omeo was pretty sure to be--he could make arrangements for selling out to Jack Polwarth. Quietly and without suspicion he could arrange to have the whole of his property transferred to him in cash, and some fine morning, under cover of a trip to Melbourne on business or pleasure, he would show Australia a clean pair of heels, and in America, North or South, in some far land where his name was never heard, would live out the rest of a life with such solace as he might, might even--when Time, the healer, should have dulled the heart-pangs which now throbbed and agonised so mordantly--might even reach some degree of contentment, if not of happiness.
And Estelle! Estelle! There was the sharpest sting--the bitterest grief--the direst pang of all. Could he ever look again into those lovely, trusting eyes, having undergone what he had done? Could he ask her--angel of purity that she was; the embodiment of the refinement of generations of stainless ancestors; sheltered, as she had been, by the conditions of her birth and education from all knowledge of the evil that there is in the world,--could he ask her to lay her head upon a felon's breast?--to take his hand in life-long pledge of happiness, when at any time, in any land where this long arm of extradition could reach, the hand of justice might seize him? No! Such companionship, such love, could never be his in the future. He had lost them for ever. On the lower level to which he had sunk he must remain. To its privations he must accustom himself; the surroundings he must endure. There was no help for it. If Tessie Lawless chose to share his lot he might not deny her. She knew the whole of his story. She loved him. She had been faithful and true. She deserved any poor recompense, such as the damaged future of his life, that of a nameless man, could offer, if she chose to accept it. For Trevanion of Wychwood was dead, and his early love, with all his high hopes and noble aspirations, lay deep in the grave of his buried honour.
From the day of Lance Trevanion's arrest at Balooka, no word, by letter or otherwise, had reached Wychwood of the fortunes of its heir. Days, weeks, months succeeded each other in the uneventful round into which country life in England has a tendency to settle when ordinary interests are withdrawn or unduly concentrated. It was pitiable to note the squire's anxiety when the Australian mail was due. For him, as for Estelle, there seemed to be but one man whose fortunes were worth following in the whole world--from whom letters were as the breath of life. And now these tidings from a far land, regular, if brief and sententious, up to this time, were suddenly withheld.
With the failing health of the Squire--for he suffered from one of the mysterious class of complaints before which strong men go down like feeble children--passed away much of his fierce obstinacy, his pride and arrogance. He thought of his son as he had last seen him,--haughty, tameless, defiant, with all his faults a true Trevanion,--and now, when he hoped to have seen him once again, grown and developed, though bronzed and possibly roughened by the rude life of a colony, when he had schooled himself to recall rash words and to make the _amende_ as far as his nature would permit, here he was thwarted, bewildered, maddened by this sudden arrest of all knowledge of his fate.