The dark was now falling; the sunlight had left long, faint, crimson streaks in the sky. The air was perceptibly cooler, and flights of waterfowl hurried overhead, making their way to the river. The Chinaman lighted a slush-lamp, by whose flickering light Charlie produced from his swag a small bundle of papers, and threw them on the table.
“We might as well get our business over, Keogh,” he said. “I’ve got the paper here for you to sign, making over your interest in the block and the cattle, and all that.”
He pored over the document, muttering as he read it. “Your name’ll have to be filled in, and there’s a blank for the name of the person it’s transferred to.”
“That’ll be Mr. Grant’s name,” suggested Carew.
“I don’t know so much about that,” said Charlie. “I don’t think, if a man has a mortgage over a place, that he can take it in his own name. That fool Pinnock didn’t tell me. He was too anxious to know how we got on with the larrikins to give me any useful information. Anyhow, I’ll fill in my own name—for all the block is worth I ain’t likely to steal it. I can transfer it to Mr. Grant afterwards.”
“I don’t care,” said the old man indifferently, “I’ll transfer my interest to anyone you like. I’m done with it. I’m signing away fifteen of the best years of my life. But my name ain’t Keogh, you know, though I always went by that. My father died when I was a kiddy, and my mother married again, so I got called by my stepfather’s name all my life. This is my right name, and it’s a poor man’s name to-day.” And as the two men bent over him in the light of the flickering slush-lamp, he wrote, with stiff, uncertain fingers, “Patrick Henry Considine.”
CHAPTER XVII.
CONSIDINE.
For a few seconds no one spoke. Carew and Gordon stared at the signature, and then looked at each other. The newly-found Considine looked at his autograph in a critical way, as if not quite sure he had spelled it right, and then stood up, handing the deed to Gordon.
“There y’are,” he said. “There’s my right, title and intrust in all this here block of land, and all the stock what’s on it; and if you’re ever short of a man to look after the place in the wet season I’ll take the job. I might be glad of it.”
“I think it’s quite likely you won’t want any job from me,” said Charlie. “I’ll be asking you for a job yet. Are you sure that’s your right name? What was your father?”