It was the evening before the great event. Every one in the camp had been working at high pressure since daylight. All things had been arranged—all hindrances foreseen and provided for. The horses, well fed and well groomed, were tried, staunch, and equal to long stages at a high rate of speed. In addition to Arnold Banneret, Newstead, and the acting coachman, another personage had been granted a seat after consultation with old Jack. This was the miner Dick Andrews, who had urgent private reasons for getting to Perth, and made petition to Mr. Banneret to that end. Having, as he told that gentleman in a conversation a few days previously, fallen upon a stroke of luck, he was anxious to leave West Australia, and, taking his wife and children with him, to settle in the Argentine, where, among people who had neither seen nor heard of him before, he might lead a new life, and cut himself clear of old ties and associations.
‘I’ve nigh on five hundred ounces in this bag, sir,’ he said, ‘and if you’ll have it put up with your lot you can hold it as security, like, till you’re banking your own. It’s been weighed all right, and there’s Mr. Stewart’s handwriting along with it in the wash-leather bag. I don’t read, nor write either, as you know—more’s the pity—but I seen him take it from the scales, and write on it, and seal it up all reg’lar. Life’s uncertain (as the parson says), and our lot’s not the sort to make old bones. I’d trust you, Commissioner, with my life. It’s no great odds off that now, I reckon. And you’ll stand by me now, won’t you? I’ve been a bad chap, but I’ve not had much of a chance. A little thing would have turned me on the right track—and that little I didn’t get. You never knowed me do anything crooked, sir? and the shootin’ racket was straightforrard between man and man.’
‘I don’t know that I’m doing right, Dick, in helping you off the field this way, but I saw your wife and the boy and girl at Southern Cross. I’ll chance it for their sakes—I’ve heard you were always good to them.’
The man called ‘Dick’ did not speak—perhaps the words would not come—but as he turned his head away with an indistinct murmur, a keen observer might have seen in those eyes, which had looked so often upon danger, and fronted Death unfalteringly, an unfamiliar moisture—scarcely to be distinguished from a tear.