But it is not approaching age or failing bodily strength that is the cause of this change in the old miner’s feelings, as he tries to persuade himself it is, for he cannot find it in his mind to confess he feels any attachment or affection for a “nigger.” It is something very different that begins to make him feel disgusted with the idea of a return to his solitary mode of life.
Billy’s new friend, like most of his class of old “hatters,” became disgusted with the world owing to having been unfortunate in his choice of partners, and now that he at last finds one to suit him, his view of life becomes correspondingly fairer than heretofore.
“Billy!” one evening said the old man,—who has lately informed our black friend that he is known at Geraldtown and Herberton by his patronymic of Weevil,—“Billy! you ain’t told me yet how you come to clear out from the station where you left the doctor’s letter. What station was it?”
Billy, who is shaping a new pick-handle by the light of the fire, does not reply for a minute or two. When he does look up at the lean figure on the other side of the flames, he betrays a little of that sulky, spoilt-child demeanour generally exhibited by members of his race when recounting any occurrence that has been a source of annoyance to them.
“I ran away, boss, because they try and get me to show them the way back to where I planted the doctor. Mister Giles, who owns the station——”
“Who?” Old Weevil leans across the smoke towards Billy. “It warn’t Wilson Giles, were it?” he asks in a low, hoarse voice, looking at the black with ill-concealed anxiety.
“Yes, Wilson was his front name. D’you know him?”
The old man withdraws into the semi-obscurity of a shadowy pile of firewood against which he is standing at the question, much like a sea-anemone shrinks into its rock cleft before an obtrusive human finger.
“Yes, I know him,” growls the old man in the darkness, exhibiting an amount of hatred in the tone of his voice that makes Billy look in the direction of the wood stack with open eyes and mouth. Weevil, however, does not appear likely to be communicative, so Billy presently continues: “The doctor’s last words almost were, ‘Don’t let any one know where you left me save my nephew,’ and so it wasn’t likely I was going to tell the first man as asked me. Was it likely?”
“Burn him! No!” ejaculated Mr. Weevil, in parenthesis.