“Oh, I can't do that; I give you the first offer, but into the market it goes this evening, and no later.”
“I'll call this evening and see if I can do it.” Robinson tried to make up the money, but it was not to be done. Then fell a terrible temptation upon him. Handling George Fielding's letter with his delicate fingers, he had satisfied himself there was a bank-note in it. Why not borrow this bank-note? The shop would soon repay it. The idea rushed over him like a flood. At the same moment he took fright at it. “Lord, help me!” he ejaculated.
He rushed to a shop, bought two or three sheets of brown paper and a lot of wafers. With nimble fingers he put the letter in one parcel, that parcel in another, that in another, and so on till there were a dozen envelopes between him and the irregular loan. This done he confided the grand parcel to his landlord.
“Give it me when I start.”
He went no more near the little shop till he had made seven pounds; then he went. The shop and business had been sold just twenty-four hours. Robinson groaned. “If I had not been so very honest! Never mind. I must take the bitter with the sweet.”
For all that the town became distasteful to him. He bought a cheap revolver—for there was a talk of bushrangers in the neighborhood—and started to walk to George Fielding's farm. He reached it in the evening.
“There is no George Fielding here,” was the news. “He left this more than six months ago.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Not I.”
Robinson had to ask everybody he met where George Fielding was gone to. At last, by good luck, he fell in with George's friend, McLaughlan, who told him it was twenty-five miles off.