At Large

"I wouldn't believe you on oath!"

"And why?"

"Because you owe me a grudge," said Miles, speaking rapidly – "because it is in your interest to see me go under."

"My condition provides for all that."

"Let me hear it, then."

"First tell me how you came to know the Bristos."

Miles gave Dick substantially the same story that he had already learned from Alice.

"Now listen to me," said Dick. "Instead of squatter you were bushranger. You had been in England a day or two instead of a month or two, and you had set foot in Sussex only; instead of masquerading as a fisherman you wore your own sailor's clothes, in which you swam ashore from your ship."

"Well guessed!" said Miles ironically.

"A cleverer thing was never done," Dick went on, his tone, for the moment, not wholly free from a trace of admiration. "Well, apart from that first set of lies, your first action in England was a good one. That is one claim on leniency. The account you have given me of it is quite true, for I heard the same thing from one whose lips, at least, are true!"

These last words forced their way out without his knowledge until he heard them.

"Ah!" said Miles.

An involuntary subdual of both voices might have been noticed here; it was but momentary, and it did not recur.

Dick Edmonstone took his hands from his pockets, drew nearer to Miles, slowly beat his left palm with his right fist, and said:

"My condition is simply this: you are to go near the Bristos no more."

If this touched any delicate springs in the heart of Miles, their workings did not appear in his face. He made no immediate reply; when it came, there was a half-amused ring in his speech:

"You mean to drive a hard bargain."

"I don't call it hard."

"All I possess is in that house. I cannot go far, as I stand; you might as well give me up at once."

"I see," said Dick musingly. "No; you are to have an excellent chance. I have no watch on me: have you? No? Well, it can't be more than one now, or two at the latest, and they keep up these dances till dawn – or they used to. Then perhaps you had better go back to the house now. Button-hole the Colonel; tell him you have had a messenger down from town – from your agent. You can surely add a London agent to your Queensland station and your house in Sydney! Well, affairs have gone wrong on this station of yours – drought, floods – anything you like; you have received an important wire; you are advised, in fact, to start back to Queensland at once. At any rate, you must pack up your traps and leave Graysbrooke first thing in the morning. You are very sorry to be called back so suddenly – they are sorrier still to lose you; but Australia and England are so close now, you are sure to be over again some day – and all the rest of it; but you are never to go near them again. Do you agree?"

"What is the alternative?"

"Escape from here dressed like that if you can! You will breakfast in gaol. At best you will be hunted for a week or two, and then taken miserably – there is no bush in England; whereas I offer you freedom with one restriction."

"I agree," said Miles, hoarsely.

"Very good. If you keep your word, Sundown the bushranger is at the bottom of the sea, for all I know; if you break it, Sundown the bushranger is a lost man. Now let us leave this place."

Dick led the way from the plantation, with his hands again deep in his pockets.

Miles followed, marvelling. Marvelling that he, who had terrorised half Australia, should be dictated to by this English whelp, and bear it meekly; wondering what it all meant. What, to begin with, was the meaning of this masterly plan for an honourable exit? which was, in fact, a continuation of his own falsehood. Why had not this young fellow – who had every reason to hate him, independently of to-night's discovery – quietly brought the police and watched him taken in cold blood? There would have been nothing underhand in that; it was, in fact, the only treatment that any criminal at large would expect at the hands of the average member of society – if he fell into those hands. Then why had not this been done? What tie or obligation could possibly exist between this young Edmonstone and Sundown the Australian bushranger?

The night was at its darkest when they reached the avenue; so dark that they crossed into the middle of the broad straight road, where the way was clearest. Straight in front of them burned the lamps of the gateway, like two yellow eyes staring through a monstrous crape mask. They seemed to be walking in a valley between two long, regular ranges of black mountains with curved and undulating tops – only that the mountains wavered in outline, and murmured from their midst under the light touch of the sweet mild breeze.

They walked on in silence, and watched the deep purple fading slowly but surely before their eyes, and the lights ahead growing pale and sickly.

Miles gave expression to the thought that puzzled him most:

"For the life of me, I can't make out why you are doing this" (he resented the bare notion of mercy, and showed it in his tone). "With you in my place and I in yours – "

Dick stopped in his walk, and stopped Miles also.

"Is it possible you do not know me?"

"I have known you nearly a month," Miles answered.

"Do you mean to say you don't remember seeing me before – before this last month?"

"Certainly, when first I met you, I seemed to remember your voice; but from what I was told about you I made sure I was mistaken."

"Didn't they tell you that at one time, out there I was hawking?"

"No. Why, now – "

"Stop a bit," said Dick, raising his hand. "Forget that you are here; forget you are in England. Instead of these chestnuts, you're in the mallee scrub. The night is far darker than this night has ever been: the place is a wilderness. You are lying in wait for a hawker's wagon. The hawkers drive up; you take them by surprise, and you're three to two. They are at your mercy. The younger one is a new chum from England – a mere boy. He has all the money of the concern in his pocket, and nothing to defend it with. He flings himself unarmed upon one of your gang, and, but for you, would be knifed for his pains. You save him by an inch; but you see what maddens him – you see he has the money. You take it from him. The money is all the world to him: he is mad: he wants to be killed outright. You only bind him to the wheel, taking from him all he has. So he thinks, and death is at his heart. But he finds that, instead of taking it all, you have left it all; you have been moved by compassion for the poor devil of a new chum! Well, first he cannot believe his eyes; then he is grateful; then senseless."

Miles scanned the young man's face in the breaking light. Yes, he remembered it now; it had worn this same passionate expression then. His own face reflected the aspect of the eastern sky; a ray was breaking in upon him, and shedding a new light on an old action, hidden away in a dark corner of his mind. A thing that had been a little thing until now seemed to expand in the sudden warmth of this new light. Miles felt an odd, unaccountable sensation, which, however, was not altogether outside his experience: he had felt it when he pulled Colonel Bristo from the sea, and in the moment of parting with his coat to a half-perishing tramp.

Dick continued:

"Stop a minute – hear the end. This new chum, fresh from 'home,' was successful. He made a fortune – of a sort. It might have been double what it is had he been in less of a hurry to get back to England." Dick sighed. "Whatever it is, it was built on that hundred which you took and restored: that was its nucleus. And therefore – as well as because you saved his life – this new chum, when no longer one, never forgot Sundown the bushranger; he nursed a feeling of gratitude towards him which was profound if, as he had been assured, illogical. Only a few hours ago he said, 'If he came within my power I should be inclined to give him a chance,' or something like that." Dick paused; then he added: "Now you know why you go free this morning."

Miles made no immediate remark. Bitter disappointment and hungry yearning were for the moment written clearly on his handsome, reckless face. At last he said:

"You may not believe me, but when you came to me – down there on the lawn – that's what I was swearing to myself; to begin afresh. And see what has come to me since then!" he added, with a harsh laugh.

"Just then," returned Dick, frankly, "I should have liked nothing better than to have seen you run in. I followed you out with as good a hate as one man can feel towards another. You never thought of my following you out here? Nor did I think of coming so far; by the bye, the – your wife made it difficult for me; she was following too. Yes, I hated you sufficiently; and I had suspected you from the first – but not for what you are; when I heard Jem Pound say your name I was staggered, my brain went reeling, I could scarcely keep from crying out."

"Did you recognise him?"

"Pound? No: I thought him a detective. He is a clever fellow."

"He is the devil incarnate!"

They had passed through the gates into the road.

"Here we separate," said Dick. "Go back to Graysbrooke the way you came, and pack your things. Is there any need to repeat – "

"None."