The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West

THE LAST CHANCE
A TALE OF THE GOLDEN WEST
BY ROLF BOLDREWOOD AUTHOR OF ‘ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,’ ‘THE MINER’S RIGHT,’ ‘THE SQUATTER’S DREAM.’ ‘A COLONIAL REFORMER,’ ETC.
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1905
All rights reserved
As a Commissioner of Goldfields, and Police Magistrate, in New South Wales, it is hardly necessary to say that Arnold Banneret’s pay was not conspicuously in advance of the necessaries of life. Necessaries which may be thus catalogued: a couple of decent ride-and-drive horses, a light, much-enduring buggy, clothes and books, boots and shoes, bread and butter, for half-a-dozen growing boys and girls—with an occasional trip to the seaside, and a regularly recurring doctor’s bill; while the Rev. Mr. Wilson’s quarterly accounts for the eldest boy’s board and tuition had also a knack of turning up inconveniently soon, as it appeared to paterfamilias, after his departure to school.
The Inspector had departed to dress for dinner, invited thereto by a wandering globe-trotter, known to his family in England. The Commissioner’s clerk, newly married, had gone home to his wife the moment the clock struck four—indeed, a few minutes earlier.
It was growing late; the minor officials had retired to their several quarters. His horse was finishing the corn which had been graciously ordered for him by the Inspector, and, strange to say, though in the centre of a populous goldfield, a feeling of loneliness and silence, almost oppressive, commenced to manifest itself.
‘It’s what’s left of me,’ said the exhausted man, hardly able to speak, it would seem, and trying as he did so to manage a sickly smile—a most melancholy attempt. ‘Where I’ve been and what I’ve gone through’s a long story; you might be in it towards the end, so we’d better come into the “Reefer’s Arms” (old Bill Barker’s alive yet, I suppose) and talk it over a bit. You know me, Mr. Banneret, this years and years, and you always found me straight, didn’t you?’