He had made a great impression upon the goodhearted waggoner. Old Jamie had received a hint from his friend the bullock-driver that Alice desired to keep her story to herself; he respected her wish, and did not distress her with questions. But he talked a great deal with Grif, and learned to his surprise that Grif and Alice were not in any way related, and that they had known each other for only a few months. He failed to detect any selfish motive for Grif's service to her, and he was a witness to the boy's heroic suffering. Ignorant as he was of their story, the strange companionship was a puzzle beyond his comprehension. "You love her?" he once asked of Grif, receiving in reply an affirmative nod. "Why?" "Because she's good," Grif replied. "There never was nobody 'arf as good as Ally." That was the substance of all he was able to extract from Grif, and with that he was fain to be satisfied.
The night before they parted from Old Jamie, Alice could not sleep. The near approach of the end of her task rendered her restless, and she lay until past midnight on her soft bed of leaves, kept awake by anxious thought. Unable to bear the torture any longer, she rose and walked softly about the woods. The influence of the quiet night did her good, and she rested against a tree, with a more composed mind. She had not so rested for more than two or three minutes before a voice broke upon her ear. Nervous and worn as she was, she trembled with alarm, but only for a moment, for she recognised the voice as Grif's, and remembered that he was sleeping near the spot. She inclined her head, and listened. "You'll take care on him, sir," she heard him say. "I can't go--I can't leave her. I shan't like to part with Little Peter, but it'll be for his good. I ain't got any grub to give him, sir. Don't say no, sir! Take Little Peter, and not me, and I'll do any thin'--anythin' but go away from where she is!" She knew, as she heard these words, muttered at intervals, that he referred to her when he said that he could not go away from where she was. "Good-bye, Little Peter; you'll never be hungry no more!" he sighed, and then Alice heard a sudden movement, as if he were sitting up. "I remember every word," he continued. "If ever you want me to do anythin'--never mind what it is, so long as I know I'm a doing of it for you--I'll do it, true and faithful, I will, so 'elp me G--! And I will; I'm her friend--that's what I am--I'm her friend, till I die!' She said so herself." Alarmed at the earnestness of his voice, Alice stole towards Grif's sleeping-place. As her eyes rested upon him, he sank down, and buried his face in the earth. His arms were stretched over his head; she laid her soft fingers upon his hard hand, and felt that it was burning. Presently he spoke again, but did not move his face. "He swore he'd kill Rough, and he's done it. But I'll be even with him one of these days! Little Peter! Rough's dead. Ain't you sorry?" He waited as if for an answer. "The Tenderhearted Oysterman's pizened him. Say, Damn him!" He waited again for an answer, and then he said, "That's right. Now, come, and bury him." A long pause ensued--a pause occupied, in the boy's fancy, by a walk on a dismal, rainy night, through miserable streets, towards a burial-ground. "Ashes to ashes!" he murmured. "Good-bye, Rough. Dear old Rough! Poor old Rough!" And with the last remembrance of his faithful dumb companion lingering in his mind, Grif's sleep became more peaceful, and he did not speak again. Alice sat by his side for an hour and more, and then retired to her bed, filled with a tender compassion.
The next morning Old Jamie bade them goodbye, and shook Grif's hand heartily. During the day Alice had been much occupied thinking over Grif's feverish mutterings the previous night, and now, as they sat together near to her father's homestead, near, perhaps, to lasting misery or lasting happiness, she noticed Grif's burning skin and the brilliancy of his eyes.
"I have overtaxed you, my poor Grif," she said. "How tired you must be!"
"I'm all right, Ally," said the boy. "Never you mind me. So long as you are in time to do what you want, and can see your father, I don't care a bit."
"We are not far off. And now that we are so near, I am full of fears. Yet I should not be so, for Heaven has surely watched over us. What good friends we have met upon the way! How thankful I am! God bless the good men who helped us on the road!"
"Yes," said Grif, reflectively; "they was very good coves, they was. I'm thinkin', Ally, that a good deal of what the preacher chap said to me was right. Not all of it, you know, but some. He told me, when I was in quod, that men was charitable and good; and they must be, a good many on 'em. Look at them two coves, the bullock-driver and the wagginer. They'd got no call to help us. It didn't do 'em a bit of good, as I sees, for they didn't get nothin' out of us. Then there's this blanket the wagginer give us. I never got no one to give me a blanket before."
And Grif rested his aching head in the palm of his hand, and mused over this exceptional circumstance in his career. Alice noticed the action, and noticed also that it was prompted partly by physical suffering.
"You are in pain!" Alice cried, anxiously, as Grif, with difficulty, repressed a groan.
"Don't you bother about me," Grif said, stoutly. "I've got a little bit of a headache, that's all. I'll be all right in a minute."