“God bless you, my lad!” said the convict, in smothered tones: “I know it. You’ve shown it to me a score of times. My life has not been the same since you came here.”
“And I can’t help seeing that you are sorry too. How could you have done so bad a thing?”
“I? Did that!” cried Leather, springing up on one arm. “I tell you I am innocent as a child. Dominic Braydon, mine was a high position, and large sums of money passed through my hands. There came a day when a heavy amount was missing. It was gone, I could not explain how. Everything seemed against me. My explanations were ridiculed, and until I had been out here a couple of years I could not see the light. It came one day, though, like a flash—when it was too late.”
Nic looked at him inquiringly.
“My subordinate was the guilty man: the meek, amiable wretch who broke down in the witness-box and wept at being forced to tell all he knew. Even I believed and liked him at the time—poor weak fool that I was! If it imposed on me, who listened to every word he spoke, seeking for some way of escape, how could I wonder that judge, jury, and counsel were deceived? But it was too late when I read the truth, and that to save himself he sacrificed me—me who had helped him in every way.”
“Then you really did not take this money?” cried Nic.
“Not one penny. I? But, there, why did you drag this all from me, boy? You made me speak. I do not say it to excite your sympathy. It is my fate, and I have tried to bear it like a man. I have borne it like a man, boy, though it has made me hard, callous, and brutal. Dead to all who knew and loved me, I have still lived, thinking that perhaps some day the truth may rise like the sun and throw its light around. Then I know it will be time to join the only one who believed me what I am.”
“And who was that?” said Nic hoarsely.
“She who was to have been my wife. It was her death.”
There was the hot stillness of the Australian midday around them, and for some time neither spoke.