Thus it was that the whole team was unloaded, and the remainder of the day spent in coaxing the one refractory camel into a more tractable spirit, a result which Emu Bill and his companion bushman seemed to have thoroughly accomplished before sundown, and high hopes were entertained of making an early departure next morning.
The mail arrived somewhat earlier than usual that night, a fact which did not surprise any one when they saw Macguire sitting on the box-seat beside the driver. Mackay sighed wearily when he observed his old enemy.
"I had hoped I had seen the last o' him," he said to Bob; "but I suppose the misguided man is looking for trouble, as usual." To his astonishment, however, Macguire purposely evaded him, and disappeared rapidly down the workings to where some of his old gang were still employed on none too lucrative holdings.
"Perhaps he's got tired of running up against us," said Bob. "I don't think the game has paid him too well, and he may be turning over the proverbial new leaf now."
"Umph!" Mackay's monosyllabic utterance was non-committal, but it was plain that his faith in that new leaf in the present instance was none of the strongest.
The mail brought a letter for each of the boys and one for Mackay, and on glancing at the handwriting on his envelope Bob was satisfied; the expected news from home had reached him, after all. Hurriedly he tore it open, and read the closely written sheets which a fond mother had penned. He smiled brightly at the anxious opening phrases, which inquired so minutely about his health and general welfare. "I have heard," she wrote, "that fever often breaks out in a gold-mining camp—malaria or gold fever, I think—and I am sending you a small bottle of quinine, which I want you to promise to take regularly——" Bob thought that rather good, and read the sentence aloud to Mackay, who had mastered the contents of his epistle at a hasty glance. That gentleman was gravely amused. "She's richt about the gold fever," said he, with, a short laugh, "an' it's a terribly rampagin' disease in its way, though I dinna think quinine would affect it much. Prussic acid or some such deadly poison would be the only cure, for once a man gets the gold fever it remains in his blood a' his life, ready to be stirred up to violent action at the sight o' a nugget. Ay, it's a bad fever, Bob, an' we've a' got it in some degree. However, your guid mother needna fear aboot the other plague—malaria—for neither it nor any other disease o' the kind can live in Western Australia. You must just write a note an' tell her that. The air o' this country is too dry an' clear for any microbe to fancy."
Bob continued his silent perusal of the letter, and as he got towards the end a puzzled expression came into his features; it was clear that the letter from home contained something of more striking import than the warning against pernicious fevers. The intelligence which disturbed him was conveyed on the last two sheets, and this was how it ran:—
"I know you will be grieved to hear that your uncle Dick is dead. Since your father was drowned I have never had a line from him; he was the first to bring the sad news to me, and his own sorrow seemed greater than he could bear. Your father and he had been inseparable companions in their youth, and many times before the Sea King sailed on her last cruise I used to hear them planning out their great schemes for the future, for your uncle had ever been a wanderer, and was filled with strange ideas about the riches of some parts of the world he had visited. He went off to Australia after arranging your poor father's affairs, and nothing was ever heard of him again. All along I fancied that it was his money which provided the little income left to us, for you father's savings could not have been much; sailors are so poorly paid. The solicitors always put me off when I inquired about it, but now I know that it was his great kindly heart which went out to the widow and the fatherless, and caused provision to be made for them out of his own scanty means. On the morning after you left I received a letter from a gentleman who had just returned from Australia, and who had been with him when he died, enclosing a draft for two hundred pounds, and saying that that was the sum realized by the sale of your uncle's effects, and that he had been entrusted to send it to me. No other information was given, and no address was on the letter. When I showed it to my solicitors they told me the truth of what I had guessed from the first. My boy, you were always uncle Dick's favourite, and you have every cause to remember him gratefully. If you can find out where he died, erect a little cross over his resting-place for me. I would so much like to have it done."
Bob read and re-read the strange story which brought back the past so vividly to his mind, and his eyes grew moist in spite of himself.