“Tchah! What o’ that! Why, only t’other day they used to double up like an old two-foot rule, or a knife with the spring broke. You’re coming all right enough. I say, I want to talk to you.”
He gave a sharp look round as we stood beside the stream where it entered the river—the stream up which we had found the gold, and to whose bank we had come to catch trout with rods and lines of our own manufacture, and grasshoppers for bait.
I had been fishing, but after taking three decent trout, I had lain down wearied out, and now Esau squatted down by me, with his rod across his knees.
“I say,” he whispered, “what about that gold up yonder?”
“Well, what about it?”
“Don’t you never think about it a deal?”
“Sometimes. Do you?”
“Always. I can’t get away from it. Seems as if something’s always tempting me to go and get it.”
“But you cannot,” I said, sharply. “We gave our word to Mr Raydon.”
“Yes, that’s the worst of it. I can’t think how a fellow can be so stupid.”