As it happened, Dick was not put to the necessity of making a choice to-night. In the midst of his cogitations he felt himself seized from behind in a pair of long, strong arms. With the quick instinct of a wrongdoer he suspected evil, and kicked sharply back ward at the shins of the enemy.
“Le” go! You le” me go, see!” gasped the boy, struggling and fighting fiercely.
Resistance was quite useless. Dick was dragged through the gate, and up to the house. The door was opened, and he was bundled unceremoniously into the kitchen. Then Ephraim Shine—for it was the superintendent who had fallen upon Dick in the darkness—thrust his sparsely-whiskered, leathery face into the well-lighted room, and said shortly:
“Your boy, ma’am!”
Shine withdrew instantly, closing the door noiselessly after him, and left Dick flushed and furious.
“He didn’t take me,” he cried. “I was comin’ home, an’ he grabbed me just outside there—the beast!
Dick stopped short, suddenly conscious of the presence of visitors. Mrs. Hardy was sitting opposite his mother by the wide fireplace—the tall, white-haired gentlewoman in whose society he always felt himself transformed suddenly into a sort of saintly fellowship with the remarkably gentlemanly little boys whose acquaintance he made in the books provided by the chapel library. At the table sat Gable, the grey, chubby-faced third-class scholar whom Joel Ham had forgiven because of his extreme youth. The old man had a circular slab of bread and jam in his left hand, and was grinning fraternally at Dick. There was a third visitor, a stranger, a brown-haired, brown-skinned, bony young man, dressed after the manner of a drover. He had a small moustache, and a grave, taking face. He looked like a bushranger, Dick thought admiringly.
“This is Richard, Henry,” said Mrs. Hardy.
“You don’t know me, eh, Coppertop?” said the young man, taking the boy’s hand.
“Harry Hardy,” said Dick at random.
“Well, that’s a good enough guess, young fellow
Dick fell back quietly. It was, he felt, a moment when an air of sadness and a retiring disposition would be likely to be most becoming in him—and most effective. He declined his mother’s invitation to supper with such meekness that the little woman found it difficult to hide her concern. Could she have peeped into the drive of the Mount of Gold, where was scrap-food enough to victual a small regiment, not to mention pillage from Wilson’s orchard, she might have been more at her ease—or have found fresh occasion for uneasiness. Dick had none of his mother’s apple-like roundness—the widow, who was not yet thirty-five, always suggested apples and roses—he had inherited his father’s flame-coloured hair, and a pale complexion that was very effective in turning away maternal wrath when allied with an appearance of pensive melancholy and a fictitious pain in the chest.
The conversation, which had been interrupted by Dick’s entrance, was presently resumed. The women were recounting the story of Frank Hardy’s arrest and trial for Harry’s information. The subject was one of profound interest to Dick, and from his retreat at the far end of the table, where he sat disregarded, his crimes tacitly ignored for the time being, he listened eagerly. When Gable kicked him to attract his attention, and gleefully exhibited a handful of loaf sugar that he had slyly abstracted from the basin, the small boy frowned the old man down with a diabolical scowl.
Gable was Mrs. Hardy’s brother, and although over sixty years of age, his mind had remained the mind of a child; mentally, he never grew beyond his eighth year. He was a child in all his ways and wishes, was happiest in the society of children, and was regarded by them, without question and without surprise, as one of themselves. He was sent to school because it pleased him to go, and it kept him out of mischief, and every day he learned over again the lessons he had learned the day before and forgotten within an hour. His admiration for Dick Haddon was profound, the respect and appreciation the boy of eight has for the big brother who is twelve and smokes.
Abashed by Dick’s frown, the old man devoted himself humbly to his ‘piece,’ and the boy gave his whole attention to the conversation. He was eager to get an inkling of Harry’s line of action. For his own part he had thought of a desperate band, with Harry at its head and himself in a conspicuous position, raiding the gaol at Yarraman under a hail of bullets, and bearing off the prisoner in triumph; but experience had taught him that the expedients of grown-up people were apt to be disgustingly common place and ludicrously ineffective.
“If he’d an enemy,” said Harry, “there’d be something to go on. Was there nobody, no one at all, that he’d had any row with—nobody who hated him?”
Mrs. Haddon shook her head.
“Nobody,” she said. “But he declared the real thieves had done it, either to shift suspicion or to be rid of him. He thought it a disgrace that all the men at the Stream should be marked as probable thieves because of one or two rogues; an’ he was always eager to spot the real robbers. It was known gold-stealin’ had been goin’ on for some time. That’s why they put on the searcher.”
“Shine. Mightn’t he have had a finger in it?”
“No, no. It doesn’t seem likely. Why should he?”
“I can’t say. God knows! But there is somebody. If I only knew the man—if I only had him under my hand!”
Harry’s face became grey through the tan; he sat forward in his chair, with a sinewy arm thrust down between his knees, and his hand closed as if upon a throat. His mother touched his shoulder.
“Violence can only work mischief, my boy. Use what intelligence you have—only that can help. If we can save poor Frank and clear his name, we may leave vengeance to the law.”
“Yes, mother, you are right, but I am no saint. I hate my enemies, an’ it is maddening not to know who you hate—who to hit at.”
“That may be so, Henry, but passion will only blind you. If you are not cool you will fail. Remember, the true culprits may be near you while you are seeking; do nothing to set them on their guard. You may learn much from the men. They are all Frank’s friends, even those who believe him guilty.”
“Believe him guilty!”
“O, my boy, my boy! You would want to fight them all. It is folly. The evidence did not leave room for a doubt as to his guilt, and these men have their own ideas as to the morality of such crimes. Many of them think none the worse of a man who helps himself to a nugget that he may find on his shovel.”
“An’ you are the mother of a thief, I am a thief’s brother; Frank is a convict, an’ we must grin an’ gammon we like it.”
“We must be discreet, we must be cunning, if we wish to prove we are no thieves and no kin to thieves.”
“Right you are, mother—always right.” The young man spread his rough, brown hand caressingly upon the small hand upon his knee. “My fist always moves before my head, but I know your way is best, an’ I don’t mean to forget it.”
“Ephraim Shine seemed to be tryin’ to do his best for Frank at the trial,” said Mrs. Haddon. “I think he’s a well-meanin’ man, if he is a bit near an’ peculiar in his ways. He always says it was his duty he did, an’ that’s true. We know Frank’s not guilty, because—because we’re fond of him”—here the little widow wiped her eyes, and her voice trembled—“an’ know him better than others, but the case was black against him. Frank came straight up from below and into the searcher’s shed, an’ Shine found the gold in his crib bag, which was rolled up, an’ forced under the handle of his billy.”
“Where it’d been for half the shift, the billy hanging in a dark drive where any man below might ’a’ got at it.”
“They found gold in a little box-place made in the heel of one of his workin’ boots.”
“A boot that was always left in the boiler-house when he was off work.
“He had sold coarse water-worn gold to a Jew at Yarraman.”
“Yes, I know, I know. Got, he said, fossicking down the creek where nobody had ever won anything but fine gold before. Whoever put that gold in his crib bag an’ faked his boot-heel salted Frank’s puddling-tub. It was easy done. He on’y worked there now’n again when on night or afternoon shift, an’ it was open to anyone. It was salted with Silver Stream gold by some double-damned cunning scoundrel.”
“We know it, Harry, and we have to prove it. To do that we must have all our wits about us.”
“Yes, mother, we must; but if that man ever is found I hope I may have the handling of him. Dick!” said the young man, turning suddenly.
Dick came forward somewhat diffidently, like a detected criminal.
“You know all about this business, eh?”
The boy nodded his head solemnly.
“Who do you think worked that dirty trick on my brother?” asked Harry gravely.
Dick had not thought of the matter in that light, but he answered, without hesitation:
“Ole Tinribs, I expect.”
“Dickie!” cried Mrs. Haddon, reprovingly.
“Why, why, Dick?” queried the young man.
“Oh, I dunno; on’y he seems that sort, don’t he?” Dick had been subjected to a grave indignity at the hands of the superintendent, and was not in a frame of mind to form a just estimate of the character of that good man. He spoke with the cheerful irresponsibility of youth.
“I’m afraid you won’t be much good to us, Copper-top, old man, if you rush at conclusions in that desperate way,” said Harry.
Mrs. Hardy shook an impressive forefinger at the boy.
“You will say nothing to anybody of our intentions, Richard.”
“No,” said Dick simply; but that word given to Mrs. Hardy was a sacred oath, steel-bound and clamped.