CHAPTER XV.

HER father did it! Her father! Her father! Dick continued to repeat these words as he procured candles and prepared himself for a journey into the deep mines. He was conscious of a double duty; he must rescue Harry Hardy from the rising waters and save the father of Christina Shine from a terrible crime, and yet he went about his task as if moved by an external impulse. The work had been mapped out for him by someone or something apart, and he undertook it without a thought of its dangers or a hint of revolt. In fact, he was feverishly anxious to face the black Red Hand shaft and the great, lone workings beyond. He lit one candle, put several pieces in his pocket with the matches, and started on his journey. He was oblivious to his surroundings, oblivious to everything but the object of his quest—Harry Hardy, lying far below in the dripping main drive of the Silver Stream. His large dark eyes, staring unblinkingly, seemed as if set on a vision of his friend prone on the muddy floor of the drive, with the treacherous waters stealing amongst his hair. The present mission had nothing in common with those fanciful adventures that had served to make the boy the wonder and despair of his native township. Richard Haddon was entirely forgotten for the time being, and this concentration of mind and energy served to carry the boy bravely over every obstacle.

Dick made his way through the opening he and Ted had fashioned, dropped into the Red Hand drive beneath, and then turned with familiar feet and hastened towards the shaft. A few centres had been knocked out and thrown across the pit as a staging, so that access to the ladder was possible, but not with out some risk. The boy paused at nothing, reached the iron rungs with a bound, and started down the perpendicular ladder. Down, down he went for many minutes, his candle feebly illuminating a blurred patch about his head. Above, through a bewildering space of darkness, the grated opening at the surface shone like a faint star in another sphere; below was solid blackness; about him the slime of the dripping timbers sparkled in the candle's rays. Down, down, down! The journey might have seemed interminable—a long pilgrimage into the earth's black distances—had the boy had a mind for it, but he thought nothing of the task; at length his feet struck the slabs over the well, and turning he flashed his light into the cavernous depth of a big drive.

He plunged into the drive without a pause, and now the way was familiar again. Voyages of discovery made during crib time when he officiated as tool boy in the Silver Stream had often brought him up the jump-up into the Red Hand drive. Down that jump-up he scrambled now, and stood in the first level of the Silver Stream where the rich gutter had dipped away. A short journey brought him to a balance shaft. Down this to the lower level he travelled without any difficulty, and his journey was almost completed. He was in the bottom drive hastening towards the face where Rogers and Shine had left their victim. He could hear the far-off throbbing of the plunger in the big Stream pumps as it drew the water into the lifts, and above it all the strange murmur of a great mine, like the voice of a distant sea.

Finding an empty truck the boy ran it before him on the rails. He was experienced miner enough to know that one can only travel quickly in this way in a wet drive full of ruts and pitfalls. Passing the 'S' drive, where the robbers had done their work, Dick found Harry Hardy just as Rogers had described him, on his back a few feet up the incline from the hand-pump that served to drain the low-lying part of the drive. His arms were thrown out, and his deadly pale face turned up, the chin pointing to the roof. Upon his forehead were stains of blood, and he lay like a corpse in the black water. The flood had risen above his ears, and the boy knew he had come only just in time.

Dick stuck his candle in the soft clay, ran to Harry's head, and lifted it from the water, and kneeling gazed intently into the cold white face. He thought his friend dead.

'Her father done it!' he murmured. 'Her father! Her father!

He looked and listened for signs of life; he called Harry's name again and again, and felt for the beating of his heart, having at the same time only a vague idea of the location of that organ. He tried to lift the young man away, but his strength was not equal to the task; and so, after collecting some pieces of reef to keep Harry's face above the water, he attempted to drag him out of the reach of the flood. By putting forth all his power he contrived to draw his inanimate friend a few feet up the incline; then, by lifting the shoulders an inch or two at a time, he succeeded in turning Hardy right round with his head farthest from the rising stream. The boy was now smothered from head to foot with yellow clay and his lustrous eyes shone from a face daubed with a puddled reef; and he crouched in the slurry of the drive holding Hardy's head upon his knee, gazing intently into his face, muttering ever, in a half-puzzled way the same words:

'Her father! Her father!

The sound of a lump of reef falling from the roof somewhere far down the drive brought Dick sharply to his feet. His work was not yet accomplished. The scheme that had come to him without volition was nevertheless clearly set forth in his mind. He started dragging at Hardy again, and gradually drew him to the ordinary level of the drive. Once the water attained this height it would flow away towards the shaft, and do the young man no harm. Dick feared Harry was dead; but he did not reason, he only obeyed the instinct that possessed him and that also bade him avoid the incoming shift. If the men found him there he would have to tell all, and her father had done it—her father! A swift panic seized Dick; he snatched up his candle and ran back the way he had come. It was hours, he imagined, since he lay listening to Rogers and Shine above the quarry, and he wondered that the night-shift men were not below long ere this. He reached the balance shaft without having seen a man, and climbed swiftly to the upper level. His race was continued along these workings to the jump-up. Once in the Red Hand drive he was safe from discovery, but the feverish activity still possessed him. How he climbed that fearful flight of ladders up the black wet shaft he never knew. He remembered nothing of the agony of the toil the day after, when all seemed like a dream.

He made his way into the Mount of Gold drive again. An impulse moved him to block the opening connecting the two drives with loose reef, and the same impulse led him to hide the skin bag containing the gold away under the dirt in the shaft of the Mount of Gold. The excitement that had driven him to the rescue of Harry Hardy sustained him till he had crawled out into the quarry; then his strength all went out of him, and left him sick and wretched. He was famished, all his limbs ached with a dull insistent pain after he had rested for a few minutes, and his weariness was so great that it was a terrible task to drag himself out of the quarry. But he succeeded in gaining the hillside at length, and hastened as quickly as he could through the trees in the direction of the Silver Stream, stumbling as he went, and sobbing quietly in utter collapse of strength and spirit.

When Dick reached the vicinity of the big mine he was surprised to find the brace deserted. He stole up and peered through the engine-house window at the driver's clock, and saw with dull amazement that it was not yet half-past twelve. It had taken him little over half an hour to reach Harry Hardy and return—it seemed to him that he had been toiling for many hours. He crept in between the long stacks of firewood, made a bed on the soft bark, and waited. The first night shift of the week did not start work till one o'clock on Monday morning, and the mine was silent save for the slow puffing of the pumping engine and the deliberate rumbling of the bob.

Lying on his stomach on the bark, the boy fixed his eyes upon the mine and suffered through the slow dragging minutes. He wept incessantly, and his teeth chattered, although the night was warm. A new fear had taken possession of him, a fear that Harry Hardy, if alive, would perhaps move and roll down the incline into the water again before the miners reached him. He waited in an agony of anxiety, and his eyes never moved from the cage at the surface.

The miners began to come in at length, with heavy footsteps, swinging their crib billies, calling to each other in gruff voices. Lamps were lit upon the brace, and in the boiler-house and changing shed, and Dick saw the first cageful of men drop out of sight, as the engine groaned and the mine took up its busy duties again.

One cage-load after another went down, and still Dick waited. At last there came a wild, unusual beat of the knocker. The boy knew the signal and started up on his knees. A man rushed past the end of the stacks to knock up Manager Holden. Others gathered excitedly about the mouth of the shaft, and the long flat ropes spinning over the pulleys travelled at top speed.

Soon Harry was brought to the surface, and placed upon a hurdle, and four men carried him away across the paddocks towards Waddy. Dick followed at a safe distance. Locky McRae, the boss of the shift, had run on ahead, probably to warn Mrs. Hardy.

The boy saw Harry carried to his mother's house, saw a man hurry by to call Mrs. Haddon, and waited for some time after she arrived, hidden in a gutter near at hand, listening for every word. After about a quarter of an hour Pete Holden drove his trap to the door, and Dick heard them talking of the hospital and Yarraman; then he knew that Harry was not dead, and dragged his worn, aching limbs to his own home, stupefied with suffering, hunger, and fatigue.

When Mrs. Haddon entered her kitchen an hour later, carrying a flaming match in her fingers, she was shocked to see a small, yellow-clad figure crouched in her own particular armchair near the chimney, and surmounting it a small white face in which burned two astonishing eyes. The little widow screamed and dropped the light and then screamed again, but a feeble voice reassured her.

'Richard Haddon, is that you?' she said severely. 'Oh! you wicked, bad, vicious boy! Where have you been? What've you been doing?'

She was busying herself preparing the lamp, and her tongue ran on.

'You're breakin' your poor mother's heart—breakin' my heart with your bushrangin' an' villainy, bringin' down the police, an' trouble, an' sorrow on me.'

The little woman's nerves had been sorely tried of late with her own troubles and her neighbours', and she broke down now and wept.

'An' you don't care,' she sobbed, 'you don't care a bit how I suffer!

Now the lamp was lit, and the widow turned her streaming eyes upon her incorrigible young son, and instantly her whole expression changed. She forgot to weep, she ceased to complain; she gazed at Dick and her bosom was charged with terror, pity, and remorse. Truly he was a pitiful and ghostly object, sitting there in his mud, looking very small and pinched, with unaccustomed hollows in his pale cheeks, and here and there a nasty bloodstain showing brightly against the yellow clay.

'Dick!' screamed Mrs. Haddon.

The next moment he lay in his mother's arms, clinging to her with tenacious fingers, crying hysterically, utterly unlike the Dick she thought she knew so well; and she kissed him, and wept over him, and murmured to him as if he were really a baby again. She ascribed all to terror aroused by the knowledge that the police were after him. He had covered himself with slurry in strange hiding-places, and had had a fall probably or a blow. He was fed, his clothes were put in water, and finally he fell asleep in his own bed with his mother sitting by his side, her hand clasped in his. If Dick had been told a week earlier that he would ever go to sleep clinging to his mother's hand, he would have scouted the idea with indignation and scorn; and he remembered the act later with a blush as something shamefully effeminate or infantile, betraying a weakness in his character hitherto quite unsuspected.

CHAPTER XVI.

DICK'S limbs were all stiff and sore when he awakened, but he was wolfishly hungry, and that fact satisfied his mother that he had suffered no particular physical injury. He was still much paler than usual and suspiciously reserved, but he ate a good breakfast, and would have given his mother even more gratifying evidence of the perfect state of his health Had not Miss Chris interrupted his meal by a sudden and disconcerting entrance. The young woman came into the room breathless, eager-eyed, and white to the lips. She drew herself up by the door, and made a poor pathetic effort to compose herself, to frame her plea in conventional words; but she was too agitated to remember customary greetings.

'Tell me! Tell me!' she said faintly.

Dick sat stock still, wondering what new thing had happened, asking himself how much Chris knew of his secret; but sympathetic little Mrs. Haddon started up in astonishment.

'Tell you what, my dear?' Then light came to her. 'About the accident?'

'Yes, oh, yes! Is it true? They say he is dying!'

'It isn't true. He is not very badly hurt. His mother went to the hospital with him, an' has come back. It's concussion, the doctors say, an' nothin' serious.'

Miss Chris was plucking nervously at the bosom of her dress with her left hand, steadying herself against the table with her right; now that she knew there was no occasion for her great alarm, woman-like she trembled on the verge of tears. Mrs. Haddon had resumed her seat, and for a moment the eyes of the two women met; then, much to the boy's astonishment, Miss Chris covered her face with her hands and darted forward and knelt by his mother's side, and there was a repetition of the incident in which he had figured a few hours earlier. Mrs. Haddon clasped Christina to her tender breast, and spoke little soothing speeches over the fair head, whilst Chris wept a little, and laughed a little, and clung tightly to her friend.

'Yes, yes, I know, my dear,' whispered Mrs. Haddon. 'I know, I know. But don't you fret. It'll all come out right.'

The women seemed thoroughly to understand each other, but to Dick this was quite inexplicable. He perceived, however, that Miss Chris was troubled in some way, and all his romantic chivalrous feelings were stirred, and his determination to spare her at all costs was strengthened again. Looking at the pair, and remembering the consolation he had derived from his mother's strong embrace, the boy wondered what peculiar virtue lay in that kindly bosom that seemed to make it the natural refuge of the afflicted; and, wondering, he stole out and left the two together.

When the women of Waddy had anything exceptional to talk about they talked amazingly, and on this particular Monday there was so much of interest to be discussed that even the most voluble could only do justice to the subjects by neglecting domestic duties and devoting themselves to back-gate arguments. Harry Hardy's accident was considered and debated from many points of view. Harry was twice reported dead during the morning—on the authority of Mrs. Ben Steven and Mrs. Sloan—but this was contradicted by Mrs. Justin, who declared that the young man still breathed, but was suffering from many and various injuries which she alone was able to minutely describe. Then Mrs. Hardy arrived home from Yarraman, and it became known that the injuries were not likely to prove mortal; so the subject lost interest and was abandoned in favour of Richard Haddon and his blood thirsty gang. 'The boy Haddon' had been captured after a desperate encounter, and would be called upon to stand his trial, along with the poor lads he had so grievously misled, at Yarrarnan next day. It was conceded that he was about to meet his deserts at last; but there was some slight difference of opinion as to the exact nature of Dick's deserts. Some of the ladies thought ten years' imprisonment with various floggings and other heavy penalties in the way of solitary confinement, leg-irons, and an unvarying diet of dry bread and water would be the severest punishment with which the youthful malefactor could reasonably be afflicted. Mrs. Ben Steven stood out resolutely for hanging, and, taking into account the thrilling report of his crimes supplied by the extraordinary issue of the Yarraman Mercury, many of the ladies were compelled to admit that this extreme view was probably the correct one; besides, it possessed the advantage of coinciding admirably with long-established popular opinion about Dick's end. They generously admitted, however, that they were sorry for his mother, poor lady.

The Mercury could not very well have made more of what it called 'The Outbreak of a New Gang' in its Sunday extraordinary. A whole page was filled with various accounts of the depredations of the gang, the terrifying appearance of its members, and certain moral reflections thrown in by the editor for the benefit of the Government and the police. There was 'Mr. Bilison's account,' 'Mr. Hogan's account,' and 'the account given by Master Mathieson.' Each of these persons had been stuck up by the gang, and had escaped most miraculously after displaying great daring in the face of a bloodthirsty fire. The Mercury exhausted all its resources in the way of large black capitals and display type to do justice to the biggest sensation that had come in its way for years, and the appearance of the paper created the most profound amazement throughout the town and district. Gable was described as a cunning scoundrel whose affectations of almost imbecile simplicity might easily have deceived intelligences less keen than those at the service of the Mercury, and neither Messrs. Billson and Hogan nor Master Mathieson hinted that their assailants were anything less than grown men of the largest size and most ferocious type.

Alas! in Monday morning's Mercury the editor was reluctantly compelled to repudiate the most enthralling portions of Sunday's story, but he still took a very serious view of the affair, and vehemently contended that recent facts did not in any way tend to relieve the Government of its responsibilities in the matter of increased police-protection for Yarraman and district. It had transpired that the perpetrators of the series of outrages on the Cow Flat road were boys, undisciplined and dangerous youths, fully armed and led by the man Gable, whose mental infirmities were of such a nature as to render him unfit to be at large in a civilised community. The Mercury was informed that all the young ruffians who had taken part in the sticking-up incidents were in custody, and would appear in the police court on the following morning.

Mrs. Haddon, who still believed Dick's strange reserve and lack of spirits to be due to his fear of the law and the dread prospect of having to appear in court, endeavoured indirectly (and very cleverly, as she imagined) to ease his mind. She did not wish him to think he had done no wrong, or that she did not regard his conduct as most reprehensible; but his mute misery appealed to her motherly heart, and she heaped derision on those 'fool men' who had been deluded by the silly pretence of a pack of boys, and who would be the laughing-stock of the whole countryside when the truth was made known in court and the magistrates abused them for cowards and simpletons. This was comforting to Dick; but in truth he thought little of the pending court case, and it gave him no concern even when he found himself in the troopers' hands. His secret weighed heavily upon him, and the sight of Mrs. Hardy, erect and brave and composed as ever, but with traces of suffering in her face that the boy could not fail to detect, brought home to him an aspect of the case that he had not considered up to now. Her son Frank was a prisoner suffering for a crime committed by Ephraim Shine: in protecting Shine for Christina's sake he must sacrifice Mrs. Hardy, Frank, and Harry.

The problem tried Dick sorely, but he had plenty of time to think it over and he determined to wait for Harry's story. He must be true to Chris in any case, and he knew her love and admiration for her father were deep and sincere. He could not understand it: he admitted to himself that affection for such a man as the searcher was quite absurd and uncalled for; but he knew full well that the blow would fall upon the girl with crushing force, and his heart fought for her, and every romantic impulse he cherished bade him be leal and bold in the cause of the queen of her sex. In the end he resolved that if Harry had not recognised his assailants he would warn Shine in some way, and when the searcher had made good his escape he would tell the whole truth. This, according to his boyish logic, was fair treatment to all parties, so the resolution brought him some peace of mind.

The appearance of the Waddy bushrangers in the police court excited extraordinary interest at Yarraman, and Tuesday morning witnessed something very like an exodus from Waddy. Every man and woman who could possibly get away made the journey to Yarraman, all as partisans of the prisoners. In Waddy Dick and his fellow imps could not be too severely condemned; but Waddy refused to recognise the right of outsiders to abuse them, and however vicious they may have been, it was felt to be the duty of the township to stand by its own as against the 'townies' and the witnesses from Cow Flat.

The court was packed, and most of the people of Waddy had to be content to stand with the crowd that filled the street. An attempt had been made at the last moment to alter the charge against the boys to insulting behaviour, or something equally trivial, and all in court looked for much amusement. In fact, the tremendous bushranging sensation had degenerated into something very like a farce.

The witnesses for the prosecution were the three young men from McIvor's run, who made the gallant attack upon the gang and captured Gable; Billson, the farmer who had been bailed up in his cart; Hogan, the horseman; the boy Mathieson, the tollman, and the woman, Cox by name.

The young men were now sober and subdued, and the evidence they gave differed materially from the story told to the police on Saturday night when they cantered into Yarramnan with their prisoner, drunk and vainglorious. They admitted now that the gang did not make a very strenuous resistance to their gallant charge, but insisted that the boys were armed with revolvers, and that Gable struggled like a demon; and the old man, standing amongst his fellow prisoners, evidently immensely delighted with the part he was playing, smiled brightly upon the court and ejaculated 'Oh, I say! Oh, crickey! 'a propos of nothing in particular.

Bilison testified to having been bailed up on the Cow Flat road by a gang of bushrangers, who demanded his money or his life and fired upon him. He described his hairbreadth escape with primitive eloquence, and was certain the gang meant to murder him. He was too agitated at the time to notice whether the bushrangers were men or boys. It was he who overtook the three young men, but they could not be induced to turn back till the boy Mathieson came up with them and declared the highwaymen to be a mob of boys.

Hogan was equally positive about the firearms, and thought he heard the bullets whistling past his ears, but could not swear to it. At this stage the defendants' lawyer, who had been harrowing the witnesses with many questions and heaping ridicule upon their devoted heads, called for the prisoners' arms to be produced, and the sight of the toy pistols with their mutton-boned barrels provoked yells of laughter in the court, which were presently echoed in the streets.

But it was not till brawny Mrs. Cox took her stand in the witness-box that the absurdity of the Meroury's story and the charge was exposed fully to a delighted audience. Mrs. Cox marched into the box in an aggressive way, saluted the book with an emphatic and explosive kiss, and then stood erect, square-shouldered and defiant, giving the court and all concerned to understand by her attitude that it must not be imagined any advantage could be taken of her. She told her story in a bluff dogmatic way. She was bailed up by the miscreants and scared out of her seven senses. They demanded her money or her life, and she believed that it was their intention to leave her 'welterin' in her gore'; and having said as much she squared round upon the lawyer, arms akimbo and head thrown back, inviting him to come on to his inevitable destruction.

'Come, come, madam,' said the barrister, 'you must not tell us you imagined for a moment you were ever in any serious danger from these terrible fellows.'

'Mustn't! mustn't!' cried Mrs. Cox. 'An', indeed, why not, sir? Who're you to tell me I musn't?'

Mrs. Cox stopped deliberately and carefully rolled up both sleeves of her dress. Then, unhampered and in customary trim, she smote the cedar in front of her and cried:

'Mustn't, indeed!

'No offence, ma'am,' said the small lawyer in a conciliatory tone; 'no offence in the world. Please explain what you did when attacked by the prisoners.'

'What' d I do? First I said a prayer for me soul.'

'And then?'

'And then I grabbed one o' the young imps, an'