There was silence for a few moments; for the doctor had held out his hand to Mayne, who stood looking at it with his lips quivering.
“I am only your assigned servant, sir,” he said at last.
“Not now,” said the doctor. “I was offering my hand to a brave man who has been misunderstood. I offer it, too, to my son’s friend.”
Nic looked dull the next day, but he brightened up when his father proposed that they should ride a part of the way with Mayne, who was going to take some despatches to Government House, where for the present he was to stay.
“You see, Nic, it will be better,” the governor said. “The poor fellow would be miserable here with his old fellow-servants. So I have arranged for him to go and wait till I come. His story’s true enough, and I shall see that everything is done for him before he goes back to England—to take his old position, I hope.”
But Frank Mayne had no such ideas. England was dead to him, and he was content to stay. And to Nic’s delight, his friend received a grant of land some ten miles away, close to the great gorge, where the boy spent all the time he could, watching the erection of the house by convict labour; for in this Mayne was helped largely by Sir john, while the doctor had become one of his firmest supporters.
Of course Frank Mayne had formed a very warm attachment to the lad, who had believed in him from the first; but Lady O’Hara used to laugh and joke, and say she knew, though she never said what it was she knew. Time, however, gave the explanation, about two years later Mayne had received a free pardon from his Majesty the King, “for suffering a great deal and nearly being driven mad,” as Nic said.
But Frank Mayne said he was very happy and quite content, and we need not go into the causes of his content, especially since every one, from Lady O’Hara and Mrs Braydon downwards, was in the same way of thinking.