“I don’t see anything to laugh at,” said Nic.
“I suppose not, you young enthusiast.”
“That I’m not,” cried the boy. “It’s you who take too miserable a view of things.”
“With cause, boy.”
“Well, yes, there is plenty of cause,” said Nic: “but you really could live down there safely for years without being found out—if you could get down.”
“I can get down, and I have been down there since I broke away. I have made myself a bark gunyah, and for the present that is my home, Nic.”
“Capital,” cried the boy eagerly. “Take me and show me.”
The convict shook his head.
“No,” he said; “you and I must never meet.”
“Why?” said Nic, in rather an ill-used tone.