“You remember, boss,” Billy begins, as he lifts a piece of glowing charcoal with his bare fingers to light his pipe,—“you remember what I told you about when them cussed Myall blacks killed old Weevil?”
“Yes, I think I remember all you mentioned to me, Billy,” responds Claude. “There was something the old hatter told you when he was dying that you said you could not understand altogether. You said, I think, that you had missed a good deal the old man said in the excitement of the moment.”
“That’s jest it.” The black looks sadly into the fire at the remembrance of his old friend’s death, and then, glancing round to see that he and Claude are alone, continues, “I had forgotten what the old man said. Now I remember. He told me he had stolen a boy pickaninnie of old Giles’s from Murdaro Station, long time ago.”
“You told me that much, I remember, the day after we started on this trip.”
“Yes, I not forget that; but old man say, ‘I mark that boy on shoulder, on near shoulder. I mark him with blue star and the front letters of Giles’s names, W. G.’”
“Well,” inquires Claude as the last speaker pauses, “but what became of the boy? You didn’t tell me if he told you that.”
Billy does not answer the question, but goes on puffing at his pipe, even now undecided whether to reveal his secret. Presently, with a sort of groan, he turns him towards his master and asks,—
“Where you get that lillie fellow Don? I think him very clever boy.”
“I got him in Sydney,” replies Claude, laughing. “Are you concocting a plan to palm him off on Mr. Giles as his long-lost son, you rascal?”
“No, boss,” responds the dark youth thus addressed, in an injured, pettish tone of voice that shows that his feelings are hurt by the light way in which Claude has treated his question.