Roadmaster laughed a little and rejoined: “By God, sir, you’re a man! But it isn’t likely that I’d accept it of you, is it? You’ve had it rough enough, without my putting a rock in your swag that would spoil you for the rest of the tramp. You see, I’ve even forgotten how to talk like a gentleman. And now, sir, I want to show you, for Barbara’s sake, my dirty logbook.”
Here he told the tale of his early sin and all that came of it. When he had finished the story he spoke of Barbara again. “She didn’t want to disgrace you, you understand,” he said. “You were at Wandenong; I know that, never mind how. She’d marry you if I were out of the way. Well, I’m going to be out of the way. I’m going to leave this country, and she’s to think I’m dead, you see.”
At this point Louis Bachelor swayed, and would have fallen, but that the bushranger’s arms were thrown round him and helped him to a chair. “I’m afraid that I am ill,” he said; “call Gongi. Ah!” He had fainted.
The bushranger carried him to a bed, and summoned Gongi and the woman from the tavern, and in another hour was riding away through the valley of the Popri. Before thirty-six hours had passed a note was delivered to a station-hand at Wandenong addressed to Barbara Golding, and signed by the woman from The Angel’s Rest. Within another two days Barbara Golding was at the bedside of Captain Louis Bachelor, battling with an enemy that is so often stronger than love and always kinder than shame.
In his wanderings the sick man was ever with his youth and early manhood, and again and again he uttered Barbara’s name in caressing or entreaty; though it was the Barbara of far-off days that he invoked; the present one he did not know. But the night in which the crisis, the fortunate crisis, of the fever occurred, he talked of a great flood coming from the North, and in his half-delirium bade them send to headquarters, and mournfully muttered of drowned plantations and human peril. Was this instinct and knowledge working through the disordered fancies of fever? Or was it mere coincidence that the next day a great storm and flood did sweep through the valley of the Popri, putting life in danger and submerging plantations?
It was on this day that Roadmaster found himself at bay in the mangrove swamp not far from the port of Rahway, where he had expected to find a schooner to take him to the New Hebrides. It had been arranged for by a well-paid colleague in crime; but the storm had delayed the schooner, and the avenging squatters and bushmen were closing in on him at last. There was flood behind him in the valley, a foodless swamp on the left of him, open shore and jungle on the right, the swollen sea before him; and the only avenue of escape closed by Blood Finchley’s friends. He had been eluding his pursuers for days with little food and worse than no sleep. He knew that he had played his last card and lost; but he had one thing yet to do, that which even the vilest do, if they can, before they pay the final penalty—to creep back for a moment into their honest past, however dim and far away. With incredible skill he had passed under the very rifles of his hunters, and now stood almost within the stream of light which came from the window of the sick man’s room, where his sister was. There was to be no more hiding, no more strategy. He told Gongi and another that he was Roadmaster, and bade them say to his pursuers, should they appear, that he would come to them upon the shore when his visit to Louis Bachelor, whom he had known in other days, was over, indicating the place at some distance from the house where they would find him.
He entered the house. The noise of the opening door brought his sister to the room.
At last she said: “Oh, Edward, you are free at last!”
“Yes, I am free at last,” he quietly replied.
“I have always prayed for you, Edward, and for this.”