At Large

"Mr. Flint has been telling us some of your adventures, which it seems we should never have heard from you," observed Fanny, reproachfully.

This was quite true. Once snubbed at Graysbrooke, his system of silence on that subject had been extended to Iris Lodge. One set of people had voted his experiences tiresome; that was enough for him. This was doubtless unfair to his family, but it was not unnatural in Dick. He was almost morbid on the point.

"Indeed!" he replied; "but suppose he gives us some of his Irish adventures instead? How many times have they tried to pot you, my unjust landlord? You must know, mother, that this is not only my ex-partner in an honourable commercial enterprise – not only 'our Mr. Flint' that used to be – but John Flint, Esq., J.P., of Castle Flint, county Kerry; certainly a landholder, and of course – it goes without saying – a tyrant."

"Really?" said Mrs. Edmonstone. "He did not tell us that."

"It's the unhappy fact," said Flint, gloomily. "A few hundred acres of hills and heather, and a barn called by courtesy 'Castle'; those are my feudal possessions. The scenery is gorgeous, but the land – is a caution!"

"Barren?" asked Dick.

"As Riverina in a drought."

"And the tenants?"

"Oh, as to the tenants, we hit it off pretty well. It's in North Kerry they're lively. I'm in the south, you see, and there they're peaceable enough. Laziness is their worst crime. I do all I can for 'em, but I don't see how I can hold on much longer."

"Evict?"

"No," said Flint, warmly; "I'd rather emigrate, and take the whole boiling of them with me; take up new country, and let them select on it. Dick, you savage, don't laugh; I'm not joking. I've thought about it often."

"Would you really like to go back to Australia, Mr. Flint?" Mrs. Edmonstone asked, glancing at the same time rather anxiously at her son.

"Shouldn't mind, madam," returned Flint.

"No more should I!" broke in Dick, in a harsh voice.

Flint looked anxiously at his friend, and made a mental note that Dick had not found all things quite as he expected. For a minute no one spoke; then Fanny took the opportunity of returning to her former charge.

"We have heard some of your adventures which you seemed determined to keep to yourself. I think it was very mean of you, and so does mamma. Oh, Dick, why – why did you never tell us about the bush-ranger?"

Mrs. Edmonstone gazed fondly at her son – and shivered.

"Has he told you that?" Dick asked quickly. "Jack, old chap" – rather reproachfully – "it was a thing I never spoke of."

"Nonsense, my dear fellow!"

"No, it's a fact. I never cared to talk about it, I felt it so strongly."

"Too strongly," said Flint; "I said so at the time."

For a little while Dick was silent; then he said:

"Since he has told you, it doesn't matter. I can only say it nearly drove me out of my mind; it was the bitterest hour of my life!"

A little earlier that day this would have been true.

His mother's eyes filled with tears. "I can understand your feeling, dear Dick," she murmured; "yet I wish you had told us – though, indeed, it would have made me miserable if you had written it. But now Mr. Flint has given us a graphic account of the whole incident. Thank Heaven you were spared, my boy!"

"Thank Sundown," said Dick dryly.

"Oh, yes!" cried Fanny. "Noble fellow! Poor, wicked, generous man! I didn't think such robbers existed; I thought they went out with wigs and patches, a hundred years ago."

"So they did," muttered Flint. "They're extinct as the dodo. I never could make this one out – a deep dog."

"Oh, sir," exclaimed Mrs. Edmonstone, "do you think there is no spark of goodness in the worst natures? of truth in the falsest? of generosity in the most selfish?"

Jack Flint looked quaintly solemn; his face was in shadow, luckily.

"Yes," said Dick, gravely, "my mother is right; there was a good impulse left in that poor fellow, and if you find gold in an outlaw and a thief, you may look for it anywhere. But in my opinion there was more than a remnant of good in that man. Think of it. He saved me from being knifed, to begin with; well, it was to his own interest to do that. But after that he took pity, and left us our money. That needed more than a good impulse; it needed a force of character which few honest men have. Try and realise his position – a price upon him, his hand against the world and the world's hand against him, a villain by profession, not credited with a single virtue except courage, not bound by a single law of God or man; a man you would have thought incapable of compassion; and yet – well, you know what he did."

There was a manly fervour in his voice which went straight to the hearts of his mother and sister. They could not speak. Even Flint forgot to look sceptical.

"If it had not meant so much to me, that hundred pounds," Dick continued, as though arguing with himself, "it is possible that I might think less of the fellow. I don't know, but I doubt it, for we had no notion then what that hundred would turn to. As it is, I have thought of it very often. You remember, Jack, how much more that hundred seemed to me at that time than it really was, and how much less to you?"

"It was a hundred and thirty," said Flint; "I remember that you didn't forget the odd thirty then."

"Dick," Fanny presently exclaimed, out of a brown study, "what do you think you would do if – you ever met that bushranger again. I mean, if he was at your mercy, you know?"

Flint sighed, and prepared his spirit for heroics.

"No use thinking," Dick answered. "By this time he's a life – if they didn't hang him."

Flint became suddenly animated.

"What?" he cried, sharply.

"Why, the last I heard of him – the day I sailed from Melbourne – was, that he was captured somewhere up in Queensland."

"If you had sailed a day later you would have heard more."

"What?" asked Dick, in his turn.

"He escaped."

"Escaped?"

"The same night. He got clean away from the police-barracks at Mount Clarence – that was the little Queensland township. They never caught him. They believe he managed to clear out of the country – to America, probably."

"By Jove, I'm not sorry!" exclaimed Dick.

"Here are some newspaper cuttings about him," continued Flint, taking the scraps from his pocketbook and handing them to Dick. "Read them afterwards; they will interest you. He was taken along with another fellow, but the other fellow was taken dead – shot through the heart. That must have been the one he called Ben; for the big brute who tried to knife you had disappeared some time before. When they were taken they were known to have a lot of gold somewhere – I mean, Sundown was – for they had just stuck up the Mount Clarence bank."

"Yes, I heard that when I heard of the capture."

"Well, it was believed that Sundown feared an attack from the police, and planted the swag, went back to it after his escape, and got clear away with the lot. But nothing is known; for neither Sundown nor the gold was ever seen again."

"Mamma, aren't you glad he escaped," cried Fanny, with glowing cheeks. "It may be wicked, but I know I am! Now, what would you do, Dick?"