The Gold-Stealers Part 9

It was taken up again without spirit, a few quavering voices carrying it on regardless of time and tune. Chris had noted Harry's indecision.

'Do not stay and shame yourself. Go, and you will be glad you did not do this wicked thing. You are going. You will! You will!

He had stooped and seized his hat. He turned without a word or a glance, and strode from the chapel. The congregation breathed a great sigh, and as he pa.s.sed out the chorus swelled into an imposing burst of song--a paean of triumph, Harry thought.

Through the chapel windows the congregation could see Harry Hardy striding away in the direction of the line of bush.

Christina, from her place amongst her girls, watched him till he disappeared in the quarries; and so did Ephraim Shine, but with very different feelings. Many of the congregation were disappointed. They had expected a sensational climax. Cla.s.s II was inconsolable, and made not the slightest effort to conceal its disgust, which lasted throughout the remainder of the morning and was a source of great tribulation to poor Brother Bowden.

CHAPTER VIII.

HARRY HARDY sought the seclusion of the bush, and there spent a very miserable morning. He was forced to the conclusion that he had made a fool of himself, and the thought that possibly that girl of Shine's was now laughing with the rest rankled like a burn and impelled many of the strange oaths that slipped between his clenched teeth. The more he thought of his escapade the more ridiculous and theatrical it seemed. It was born of an impulse, and would have been well enough had he carried out his intention; but, oh the ignominy of that retreat from the side of the grey-eyed, low-voiced girl under the gaze of the whole congregation!

It would not bear thinking of, so he thought of it for hours, and swung his whip-lash against the log on which he sat, and quite convinced himself that he was hating Shine's handsome daughter with all the vehemence the occasion demanded.

In many respects Harry was a very ordinary young man; bush life is a wonderful leveller, and he had known no other. His father had been a man of education and talent, drawn from a profession in his earlier manhood to the goldfields, who remained a miner and a poor man to the day of his death. His wife was not able to induce their sons to aspire to anything above the occupations of the cla.s.s with which they had always a.s.sociated, so they were miners and stockmen with the rest. But the young men, even as boys, noticed in their mother a refinement and a clearness of intellect that were not characteristic of the women of Waddy; and out of the love and veneration they bore her grew a sort of family pride--a respect for their name that was quite a touch of old-worldly conceit in this new land of devil-may-care, and gave them a certain distinction. It was this that served largely to make the branding of Frank Hardy as a thief a consuming shame to his brother. Harry thought of it less as a wrong to Frank than as an outrage to his mother. It was this, too, that made the young man burn to take the Sunday School superintendent by the throat and lash him till he howled himself dumb in his own chapel.

Harry returned to his log in Wilson's back paddock again in the afternoon to wrestle with his difficulties, and, with the gluttonous rosellas swinging on the gum-boughs above, set himself to reconsider all that he had heard of Frank's case and all the possibilities that had since occurred to him. Here d.i.c.k Haddon discovered him at about four o'clock.

d.i.c.k was leading a select party at the time, with the intention of reconnoitring old Jock Summers's orchard in view of a possible invasion at an early date; but when he saw Harry in the distance he immediately abandoned the business in hand. An infamous act of desertion like this would have brought down contempt upon the head of another, and have earned him some measure of personal chastis.e.m.e.nt; but d.i.c.k was a law unto himself.

'So long, you fellows,' he said.

'Why, where yer goin'?' grunted Jacker Mack.

''Cross to Harry Hardy. He's down by that ole white gum.'

'Gosh! so he is. I say, we'll all go.'

'No, you won't. Youse go an' see 'bout them cherries. Harry Hardy don't want a crowd round.'

'How d'yer know he wants you?'

'Find out. Me 'n him's mates.'

'Yo-ow?' This in derision.

''Sides, I got somethin' privit to say to him--somethin' privit 'n important, see.'

This was more convincing, but it excited curiosity.

''Bout Tin ribs?' queried Peterson.

'Likely I'd tell you. Clear out, go on. You can be captain of the band if you like, Jacker; 'n mind you don't give it away.'

d.i.c.k gained his point, as usual, and prepared for a quite casual descent upon Harry, who had not yet seen the boys. The plan brought d.i.c.ky, 'shanghai' in hand, under the tree where Hardy sat. The boy was apparently oblivious of everything but the parrots up aloft, and it was not till after he had had his shot that he returned the young man's salutation. Then he took a seat astride the log and offered some commonplace information about a nest of joeys in a neighboring tree and a tame magpie that had escaped, and was teaching all the other magpies in Wilson's paddocks to whistle a jig and curse like a drover. But he got down to his point rather suddenly after all.

'Say, Harry, was you goin' to lambaste Tinribs?'

Tinribs?

'Yes, old Shine--this mornin', you know.'

Harry looked into the boy's eye and lied, but d.i.c.k was not deceived.

''Twould a-served him good,' he said thoughtfully; 'but you oughter get on to him when Miss Shine ain't about. She's terrible good an' all that--better 'n Miss Keeley, don't you think?'

Miss Keeley was a golden-haired, high-complexioned, and frivolous young lady who had enjoyed a brief but brilliant career as barmaid at the Drovers' Arms. Harry had never seen her, but expressed an opinion entirely in favour of Christina Shine.

'But her father,' continued d.i.c.k, with an eloquent grimace, 'he's d.i.c.ky!

'What've you got against him?'

'I do' know. Look here, 'tain't the clean pertater, is it, for a superintendent t' lay into a chap at Sunday School for things what he done outside? S'pose I float Tinribs's puddlin' tub down the creek by accident, with Doon's baby in it when I ain't thinkin', is it square fer him to nab me in Sunday School, an' whack me fer it, pretendin' all the time it's 'cause I stuck a mouse in the harmonium?'

d.i.c.k's contempt for the man who could so misuse his high office was very fine indeed.

'That's the sorter thing Tinribs does,' said the boy. 'If I yell after him on a Sat.u.r.dee, he gammons t' catch me doin' somethin' in school on Sundee, an' comes down on me with the corner of his bible, 'r screws me ear.'

Harry considered such conduct despicable, and thought the man who would take such unfair advantage of a poor boy might be capable of any infamy; and d.i.c.k, encouraged, crept a little nearer.

'I say,' he whispered insinuatingly. 'You could get him any day on the flat, when he comes over after searchin' the day shift.'

Harry shook his head, and slowly plucked at the dry bark.

'I don't mean to touch him,' he said.

d.i.c.k was amazed, and a little hurt, perhaps. His confidence had been violated in some measure. He thought the matter over for almost a minute.

'Ain't you goin' to go fer him 'cause of her, eh?' he asked.

'Her? Who d'you mean?'

'Miss Chris.'

'It's nothin' to do with her.'

d.i.c.k deliberated again.

'Look here, she was cryin' after you went this mornin'. Saw her hidin'

her face by the harmonium, an' wipin' her eyes.'

Harry had not heard evidently; he was, it would appear, devoting his whole attention to the antics of a blue grub. d.i.c.k approached still closer, and a.s.sumed the tone of an arch-conspirator.

'Heard anything 'bout Mr. Frank?'

'Not a thing, d.i.c.k.'

'What yer goin' to do?'