The Bushranger's Secret Part 2

"You won't send it? Look here, just look here." He stopped to moisten his dry lips, and then went on:

"You've heard of Tom Dearing?"

Harding nodded. It was the name of a noted bushranger, whose last crime had been a daring robbery of the chief bank of Adelaide.

"Well, I'm Tom Dearing. Now you know."

Harding gazed silently at him. He could not get the right words to speak, but it did not need words to make Dearing understand the intense ardent desire to help him that was flooding Harding's soul. It affected the man strangely. He forgot the buried treasure for a moment. The paper fluttered out of his hand and fell on the floor as he cried:

"You're sorry for me; sorry for _me_!"

"I'm dead sorry for you, lad," said Harding with slow fervent utterance. "You've been spending your life in getting trash like that"--he waved his hand toward the paper. "And now you've got to die, and go before G.o.d. He'll be sorry for you too. If I'm sorry, a man like me, what must G.o.d's sorrow be for such a life as yours has been!

Don't think about that hateful money, lad. Let it lie where you've laid it if you like."

Harding took the paper up and thrust it back into the man's fingers as he said:

"Tear it up. But you've got a chance to show you're ashamed for what you've done. Give the money back to those you stole it from. 'Tis all you can do now to make amends."

The man gazed irresolutely at him.

"You talk mighty fine, but what's to hinder you grabbin' the whole blessed lot?"

"Nothing."

That single word said everything. Dearing stared fixedly at Harding for a moment, and then thrust the paper into his hand.

"Here, take it," he said. "And if there's anything good you've got to say to me, let's hear it. I'll listen to you, old man. You act up to what you talk of."

CHAPTER II.

TEMPTED!

Dearing died next day just after sunrise. They buried him down by the creek, out of sight of the hut.

"So that's the end of Mr. Tom Dearing," said Gray, as they turned away and walked back towards the hut. "He didn't manage well, did he?"

Harding gave him one of his pained, wondering looks.

"Don't talk like that, dear lad," he said, "you don't mean it, you know."

Gray gave a laugh that had not much mirth in it

"What a fellow you are, Harding! You insist on everybody being as virtuous as yourself. But I mean exactly what I say. Why did Mr. Tom Dearing take to robbing his neighbour unless he could insure himself against being found out? It may be bad to be a rogue; it's unpardonable to be known for one."

"What difference does it make in the sin, lad?" said Harding, with a sorrowful look at him. "And it's the sin we've got to think of."

"Yes, I know that's your view," said Gray, with a scarcely concealed sneer. "But it's a sadly old-fas.h.i.+oned one, my dear fellow."

Harding was silent.

"It's only the fear of being found out that keeps men honest," Gray went on after a moment. "We're told, from our youth up, that 'Honesty is the best policy,' and most of us are sensible enough to believe it--and so we're honest."

"Don't you believe it, lad?" burst with emphasis from Harding; and not even Gray's flippant rejoinder, "Not believe that 'Honesty is the best policy?' you can't mean that?" was able to check his eagerness to speak. He stopped in the path and laid his hand on Gray's arm, more moved than Gray had ever seen him before.

"You wouldn't talk like that if you'd seen that poor fellow die, Gray,"

he said. "There's more difference between doing right and doing wrong than just that you get punished for wrong-doing if you're found out.

Sin drags a man down, lad; it eats the manhood out of him. It makes a ruin of what's best in him."

The words fell on ears dull to their meaning. And Harding was quickly silent; speech was always a difficult thing to him. He had never spoken so earnestly to Gray before.

When they came back to the hut Harding took out the tattered sheet of yellow paper from his breast-pocket and placed it in the small desk upon the shelf.

"One of us must take that over to the station," he said. "The bank authorities will be glad enough to get it."

Gray had heard enough of the conversation between Harding and Dearing to know what the paper was about, though Harding had not mentioned it before.

He stood at the door, swinging his heavy stock-whip in his hand.

"I should like to have a look at it," he said carelessly.

"So you shall, lad. And I think you'd better go over with it. But we'll talk of that to-night."

"What made him hide the money, do you know?" he asked.

"He didn't say. The police were after him, I expect, and he hoped to be able to get back sometime and dig it up."

"I wonder if he had told any of his friends and acquaintances?" said Gray, looking up at the desk where Harding had put the map. "If so, I wouldn't give much for the bank's chance of getting the money."

"He hadn't told a soul," was Harding's answer. "He wanted me to send the map to some mate of his, but he thought better of that afterwards."

"Better?" Gray lifted his dark eyebrows. "What does the bank want with the money? It's rich enough to stand the loss. It isn't as if he had robbed a poor man, you know. It's the best thing I've heard of him, his wanting to send that map to his mate."

"Stolen money does no good to anybody," said Harding rather shortly.

"It didn't do any good to him at any rate," said Gray. He moved from the door to let Harding pa.s.s. "I suppose we must start," he went on with a yawn. "Another day of this hateful stock-riding! and another day of it to-morrow, and the next day, and the next day! How am I going to stand it, I wonder?"

Harding had disappeared into the stable, and Gray said the last words to himself. There was a heavy frown on his handsome young face, bitter discontent in his dark eyes. When Harding brought his horse to him he scarcely thanked him, and he rode away by his side in sullen silence.

When they returned that night, Harding was too f.a.gged out to talk of anything. He went off into a heavy sleep directly after supper, and Gray found it impossible to wake him sufficiently for rational conversation.

The desk in which he had placed the paper was not locked, and Gray took out the paper and sat down by the lamp to study it. It was very easy to understand. Anyone who knew Deadman's Gully could not fail to find the treasure, Gray thought to himself.

And his thoughts ran on something like this:

"Suppose I had found this map, not knowing whose it was, and had gone to dig in Deadman's Gully on the chance, what a wonderful and blessed change it would have made in my life? No more hateful stock-riding; no more dreary days spent with this dull-witted Harding; but a glad return to civilized England, and a rich cultured life in congenial society.