It was the kindliest speech Ned had ever made to Cruickshank. Weeks of companionship, and the man's readiness to atone for his mistake, had had their effect upon Corbett's generous nature; but its warmth was lost upon the colonel.
Either he really did not see, or else he affected not to see the outstretched hand; in any case he did not take it, and Ned went away without exchanging that silent grip (which a writer of to-day has aptly called "an Englishman's oath") with the man to whom he had intrusted his last dollar.
As for old Roberts, he followed his friends for a couple of hundred yards upon their way, and then wrung their hands until the bones cracked.
"Give this to Rampike when you see him, Ned. I guess he'll be at Williams Creek, or Antler; Williams Creek most likely," said the old poet in parting, and handed a note with some little inclosure in it to Ned.
"All right, I won't forget. Till we meet again, Rob;" and Corbett waved his cap to him.
"Till we meet again!" Roberts repeated after him, and stood looking vacantly along the trail until Steve and Corbett passed out of sight. Then he, too, turned and tramped back to camp, cheering himself as he went with a stave of his favourite ditty.
The last the lads heard of their comrade on that morning was the crashing of a dry twig or two beneath old Roberts' feet, and the refrain of his song as it died away in the distance—
"Riding, riding, riding on my old pack-mule."
Ned Corbett could not imagine how he had ever thought that air a lively one. It was stupidly mournful this morning, or else the woods and the distance played strange tricks with the singer's voice. But if Ned was affected by an imaginary minor key in his old friend's singing, a glimpse at the camp he had left would not have done much to restore his cheerfulness.
The embers had died down, and looked almost as gray and sullen as the face of the man who sat and scowled at them from a log alongside. The only living thing in camp besides the colonel was one of those impudent gray birds, which the up-country folk call "whisky-jacks." Of course he had come to see what he could steal. That is the nature of jays, and the whisky-jack is the Canadian jay. At first the bird stood with his head on one side eyeing the colonel, uncertain whether it would be safe to come any closer or not. But there was a fine piece of bacon-rind at the colonel's feet, so the bird plucked up his courage and hopped a few paces nearer. He had measured his distance to an inch, and with one eye on the colonel and one on the bacon, was just straining his neck to the utmost to drive his beak into the succulent morsel, when the man whom he thought was asleep discharged a furious kick at an unoffending log, and clenching his fist ground out between his teeth muttered: