“You have been hunted, but you have not gone farther away.”
“No, boy, because this is my sanctuary. There, you see I trust you, and I know that I am safe in your hands. Let’s sit down.”
Nic willingly did so, and the convict went on eating the bread cake, talking quietly the while.
“There is no place I could find where I should be so safe, Nic,” he said; “and this is near human nature, which one likes, even if it is unkind. I had often thought of breaking away and making for the bush, feeling convinced that if I reached the place I could manage to live where so many poor wretches who have escaped found their end. But I was servant to a just man; your mother and sisters treated me when they saw me as if they were sorry for me, and I could not go. Then you dame, boy, and tied me tighter to the place, making all the petty troubles caused by that overbearing brute seem like nothing.”
“I tied you tighter to the place?” cried Nic.
“Yes. Why, the hours I spent with you when you found me out in the run were the only happy ones I had had for years.”
“Oh, I didn’t do much,” said Nic hurriedly. “I’m afraid it was because I liked to talk to you about birds and things. But, I say, do you mean to keep to this life?”
“Do you think I can give up and submit to that worst punishment of—to be flogged?”
“No,” cried Nic firmly; “you can’t do that. You must wait. And look here, I tell you what: try and find a way down into the gorge, and keep it a secret. Why, you can build yourself a gunyah (bark hut) somewhere below, and live there, and make your garden and keep fowls, and there are sheep and cattle. I’ll bring you a live chicken now and then, and seeds and cuttings, and tea and sugar and flour when I come, and then we can go fishing and hunting and collecting together. Why, it will be capital.”
The convict smiled.