“If things must go to Court,” the Inspector continues in a careless tone of voice, “we’d have to show a reason why you should have made present to Lileth of share,—a quid pro quo. Now, a certain agreement made between her mother and you would nicely suit our purposes. I think you take my meaning.”
Both men again remain silent for a time, then Inspector Puttis closes the interview with the following words, by which he routs his opponent entirely, “You know me, Giles; I don’t shirk at the hurdles. If too high I’ll break the timber. Now Lileth’s entitled to this share and more. I’m not very partial to half-bred Jewesses generally, but this one I know to be an heiress, although she’s not aware of it herself. Besides, she’s the niece of a very dear old friend.” The little man grins up at his big victim, with the same kind of smile that no doubt a small spider puts on, could we but catch it doing so, when in the act of putting the finishing turns to the silken hammock in which it has managed to swaddle an intrusive blue-bottle.
“Yes, friend Giles, I’ve started on last lap. Don’t stand in the way. Will be worse for you. Don’t want to tell Lileth how she came to be heiress. Would spoil my chance with her. Would hate me. Secret need never be unearthed. But if you attempt repudiation, or Lileth goes in for jilting me when she gets her own again, then out comes my trump card, my little ‘joker.’ Now, old friend, let’s go to breakfast. Hope you’ve got a good appetite.”
An hour after this conversation, Inspector Puttis despatches a native trooper with orders to recall two others, who are watching a party of horsemen approaching Borbong run.
After some clever manœuvring the “boy”—known officially as Native Constable Dick—succeeds in discovering his fellows, without attracting the attention of any of the members of the cavalcade which has been under their surveillance, and the three blacks return together stationwards. Not long afterwards the travellers, who are Claude, Don, Joe, and the two desert trackers, prepare to camp just within the Borbong boundary, by a water-hole lying in the course of Agate Creek. Close by on their right hand rise the dark, bush-draped heights of the rocky promontory forming the boundary between Murdaro and Borbong runs, in whose fastnesses Billy had waited for Claude’s coming.
“Big fellow rain come alonger night, muckerie” (Anglicé, heavy rain to-night, friend), observes General Gordon to Don, as the two return from hobbling out the horses; and the white youth, to whom Claude has decided to impart the secret of his birth upon the morrow, goes straightway and informs our hero what the native meteorologist has prophesied.
“Well, we’ll have to put up with wet jackets, my boy,” answers Angland, “for Billy and Williams have got our tents with them at the mine. But perhaps,” he adds, looking at the darkening cliffs, “we’ll be able to get a dry roost for the night up there somewhere, if there are any caves about. Tell Gordon I want him.” The black villagers, whose hamlet is only some four miles distant, fortunately know of a suitable shelter, and soon the party are spreading their blankets beneath an overhanging, smoke-discoloured slab of granite, some fifty feet above the plain. Down below, beyond the water-hole, the horses are feeding upon a patch of herbage, whence comes the musical jangle through the darkness of a solitary bell, which is clanking against old Rupert’s busy jaws.
Claude feels very happy as, forming one of the picturesque group round the fire, he sits smoking beneath the rocky portico. To-morrow, all being well, he will feast his eyes and soul in the presence of the girl he loves so well; to whom, blessed thought, he can now, being wealthy, approach honourably as a suitor for her hand and heart. To-morrow he will see his little friend Don—now “George,” but always to be Don to him—welcomed to a home where a parent and sister await him. To-morrow, taking his uncle’s cloak upon his shoulders, he will begin the great Work of Humanity to which the dead explorer has asked him to dedicate half of the vast wealth of the “Golden Cliffs.”
To-morrow the wonderful prophecy concerning the mysterious Pillythilcha Doolkooro—whispered and repeated for many cruel years by trembling slaves and fugitives in tireless camps—will begin its humanizing fulfilment: a bright to-morrow of mercy for the unhappy race that Dyesart had pitied, beginning with the emancipation and protection of the villagers who had succoured the doctor’s faithful servant Billy—without whose devoted courage and assistance the “Valley of Glowing Embers” would still be waiting for a hand to rouse the great slumbering Moora-moora to defend His children.
Claude sits smoking long after his companions have fallen asleep, for his brain is far too busy with happy thoughts for it to become drowsy. By-and-by he notices that Gordon’s prognostications are about to be fulfilled, and rain-clouds are flying across the starlit heavens from the north-east,—dark, shadowy masses of vapour, “like flocks of evil birds,” heralding an approaching thunderstorm.