“Come, that’s better,” said old Sam. “You’re a-coming round now. I tell you what you do: just you lie down in your bunk and get a good sleep; you’ll be all right then. I began to think as you’d had a lob just a bit too hard. Here, what are you going to do?”
“Go on with my work,” said the convict.
“Yah! That’s foolishness; you can’t do it, Leather.”
“I must,” said the man gravely. “Thank you for what you’ve done, Samson. It was not true. I did not raise the axe against Brookes.”
“I know that, my lad. He’d say anything when he’s nasty. But I’m sorry you hit back—very sorry.”
“Yes, I know,” said the convict; and he walked slowly out of the low wooden building, and five minutes later the regular chop, chop of the axe was heard, and the rattle of rails as they were laid back in a heap.
“Well,” said old Sam, “that’s better than him being as I thought I suppose I may go on with my work now, and get that garden in a bit of order. Well, all I’ve got to say is this: if Brooky’s gone to lay a complaint before the magistrate he’s no man.”
Man or no man, midday had not long passed before old Sam, as he raised himself up from his digging to give his back a bit of a rest, caught sight of a flash of something bright, and there was another flash—the sun glinting from the barrel of a gun; and turning his eyes, there about a mile away, spurring across country, he made out a party of five mounted men advancing at a trot.
The old man drove his spade savagely into the ground and trotted out of the garden and round to the wood-yard, where Leather was going on slowly and laboriously with his rail trimming.
“Leather, my lad,” he said, in a quick whisper, “they’re a-coming over the hill: hadn’t you better go off for a month or two?”