"We must get up there somehow. We must walk, if we cannot ride. We must beg upon the road, Grif. They intend to wait--thank God! we may be in time. They intend to wait, the letter says, until my father has in his house a very large sum, with which he is about to purchase a new Station. It is the whim of the seller that he should be paid in gold. We may be in time. Oh! thou beneficent Lord!" exclaimed the girl, as, falling upon her knees, she raised her streaming eyes to the bright heavens, which shone upon her through the open window. "Grant my prayer! Save my husband from this dread crime, and then let me die!"
A silence, as of death, was in the chamber. The glory of the moon shone full upon the upturned face of Alice, quivering with a strong agony, and upon the death-couch of poor Milly, whose life of shame was ended.
"You will come with me, Grif?" said Alice, presently.
"I am ready, Ally," Grif replied. He had been quietly packing up the remains of his bread and sardines in a pocket-handkerchief.
She turned to leave the room, but her eyes fell upon Milly's baby, who was lying asleep, with her hand on her dead mother's breast. She wrote hastily upon a piece of paper, "To the kind doctor who gave medicine to the poor girl who is dead: Take care of the baby, for the love of God!" and pinned it upon the child's frock. Then, with one last look--a look of blended pity and despair--at the form of the dead girl, Alice took Grif s hand, and went out with him into the open.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
BAD LUCK.
"It is of no use, Tom; luck is dead against us."
"It almost looks like it, Dick; but never mind, old boy. Faint heart you know."
Although Welsh Tom said this in a tone of cheerfulness, there was a serious expression on his face. The difference between Welsh Tom and Richard Handfield was, that one was always trying to make the best of things, and the other the worst. Just now they were standing by the side of a muddy creek; along the banks of the creek were two or three score of gold-diggers, puddling the auriferous soil in wooden tubs, or washing it in tin dishes, or rocking it in "cradles," as tenderly as if those strangely-named implements for the extraction of gold contained their own precious flesh and blood. Black-bearded and brown-bearded men, these! A gold-digger's occupation is favourable to the growth of hair. Here were men with beards hanging upon their breasts, godlike; here were men whose great curling mustachios gave to their faces a leonine appearance; here were men whose strong whiskers kissed their shoulders, and gave to their wearers a noble grace, albeit they were not perfumed or bandolined. The open-air life, the freedom of action, the absence of that mental contraction which seems to grow upon one in crowded cities, causing the mind to brood upon subjects confined in narrow circles, tend to make the gold-digger handsome, and brave, and strong. Yet his aim and the aim of the city man are the same; both work for gold. But in the search for it, on new gold-fields, there is more generosity and less meanness than in the cities.