“Dr. Matthews. Sir:—Mr. O. J. is tossing about and very restless to-night, and says he must see you. Will you come quickly—I think he is dying?
“Yours obediently,
I. P.”
Though at the time one of the surgeons of the Dry Diggings hospital, yet as O. J. was not under my treatment I did not much relish the idea of a dreary walk at that time of night. Not wishing, however, to disappoint the poor fellow, who had once worked a claim for me and who was now, so I had heard, dead out of luck, having, as the American gold digger says, struck “the bed-rock,” I dressed quickly and trudged away through the heavy sand to the wattle and daub shanty which then did service as a hospital.
On my arrival the attendant guided me with his flickering candle down the long barn-like shed to the bedside of O. J. At a glance I saw that death had marked him for his own. Beads of cold sweat stood out on his forehead, whilst clammy hands and convulsive paroxysms of his throat showed the nearness of the end.
“Sie können Deutsch verstehen nicht wahr, Herr Doctor?” (You can understand German, can’t you, Doctor?)
I nodded assent, when continuing the conversation partly in that language and partly in English, evidently with the object of keeping the attendant ignorant of what was passing between us, he imploringly looked up and said: “Do tell me doctor how long I shall live, I can’t last long.” I shook my head doubtfully, when he gasped out in tones of agonized anxiety:
“I shan’t, I won’t, I can’t die without telling you how when I worked your and Mr. Lynch’s claim in No. 6 I robbed you of nearly all your diamonds! Oh! doctor, how I have hoped, how I have prayed God to let me live, to spare me to work again, to make up the wrong that I have done you.”
Entering further into details of how he had been tempted, and how he hoped, even if he never could work again, to repay me out of a remittance he expected from Europe, he suddenly seized my hand and in feeble accents, broken by the death-rattle in his throat, uttered these earnest words:
“YOU WILL FORGIVE ME THOUGH, WON’T YOU?”