Claude feels very happy as, forming one of the picturesque group round the fire, he sits smoking beneath the rocky portico. To-morrow, all being well, he will feast his eyes and soul in the presence of the girl he loves so well; to whom, blessed thought, he can now, being wealthy, approach honourably as a suitor for her hand and heart. To-morrow he will see his little friend Don—now “George,” but always to be Don to him—welcomed to a home where a parent and sister await him. To-morrow, taking his uncle’s cloak upon his shoulders, he will begin the great Work of Humanity to which the dead explorer has asked him to dedicate half of the vast wealth of the “Golden Cliffs.”
To-morrow the wonderful prophecy concerning the mysterious _Pillythilcha Doolkooro_—whispered and repeated for many cruel years by trembling slaves and fugitives in tireless camps—will begin its humanizing fulfilment: a bright to-morrow of mercy for the unhappy race that Dyesart had pitied, beginning with the emancipation and protection of the villagers who had succoured the doctor’s faithful servant Billy—without whose devoted courage and assistance the “Valley of Glowing Embers” would still be waiting for a hand to rouse the great slumbering Moora-moora to defend His children.
Claude sits smoking long after his companions have fallen asleep, for his brain is far too busy with happy thoughts for it to become drowsy. By-and-by he notices that Gordon’s prognostications are about to be fulfilled, and rain-clouds are flying across the starlit heavens from the north-east,—dark, shadowy masses of vapour, “like flocks of evil birds,” heralding an approaching thunderstorm.
“If the creek rises we shall be cut off from the horses,” thinks Claude, as he hears the awe-inspiring mutterings of thunder echoing down the valley.
“Suppose I must go out and turn the brutes back this way myself,” he says to himself, adding in a louder voice, “Here, Joe, you young rascal. Come, turn out and lend me a hand.” But the youngster sleeps on, or pretends to do so, and Angland, hearing the heavy drops of rain that, like skirmishers before the advance guard of the shower, begin to pat, pit-pat, plop around, thinks that it is a pity to disturb the boy, and determines to go alone, as the horses are at no great distance, and so save the youth a ducking.