"No, Collins," replied Alf gently: "I'll never be right—in the sense
you mean. I won't take any medicine. I've done with everything.
Help me to turn over again, please, and give me another drink of water.
I want to tell you something."
After giving him a turn over, I took the billy and replenished it at the river. Before getting into the wagon again, I emptied the contents of Mrs. Vivian's bottle into half a pannikin-full of the oxide of hydrogen, and stirred the potion thoroughly with a stick. Then returning to my patient, I raised his head, and held the pannikin to his lips. He finished the draught, unconscious of its medicinal virtues; and I refolded the old overcoat which served as a pillow, and laid him down as gently as possible.
"The water seems to have a peculiar taste," he murmured. "I don't notice my sight failing yet, but my hearing is all deranged. I hear your voice through a ringing of bells, and a sound like a distant waterfall. I'm just on the border-land, Collins. I've very little more to suffer; and why should I come back, to begin it all again? How long is it since you left me?"
"From four to five hours, I think. I put your bullocks together; they re close by."
"Well, now, I would n't have the slightest idea whether it was one hour or twelve. I've been in the spirit-world since then, or a spirit has visited me here. I heard, plain and clear, the voice of a woman singing old familiar songs; and that voice has been silent in death for ten years—silent to me for three years before that. Thirteen years! That may not seem much to you; but what an age it seems to me! It was no dream, Collins; I saw everything as I see now, but I heard her glorious voice as I used to hear it in our happy days; and I felt that her spirit was bringing forgiveness at last. I'm not a religious man, Collins; I don't know what will become of me after death; but God does, and that's sufficient for me. I never believed on Him so devoutly as I do now that He has vindicated His justice upon me. I praise him for avenging an act of the blindest folly and heartlessness; and I thank Him that my punishment is over at last. There! Listen! No, it's nothing. But it was a favourite song of hers; and while you were away I heard her sing it, with new meaning in every syllable. My poor love!"
"Alf, Alf," I remonstrated; "compose yourself, and go to sleep if you can." The tears of feebleness had accumulated in the hollows of his sunken eyes, and, not having the use of his hands, he was throwing his head from side to side to clear them away.
"Did you ever make a terrible mistake in life, Collins?" he asked, at length. Before I could reply, he resumed absently, "When I was a boy, away on the Queensland border, I knew a squatter—as fine a fellow as ever lived— and this man married some young lady in Sydney, and brought her to live on the station. A few months afterward, he came home unexpectedly at about two o'clock one morning, and found his place occupied by an intimate friend of his own—a young barrister, who was staying at the station as a guest. He managed to conceal his discovery; and, within the next few days, he got his friend to draw out a new will, by which he left everything, without reservation, to his wife. A day or two after completing the will, he took his gun and went out alone, turkey-shooting. He didn't come home that night; and next day one of the station hands found him at a wire fence, shot straight through the heart. Accidentally, of course. But we knew better."
"It might have been accidental, Alf," I suggested. "There's a lot of supposition in the story."
"None, Collins. Before going out with his gun, he wrote a letter to my father, and sent it by a trustworthy blackfellow. My father got the letter about ten o'clock at night; and he had a horse run-in at once, and started off for the station through a raging thunderstorm, arriving next day only in time to see his friend's body before it was moved to the house. My father was terribly cut-up about it. He was manager of an adjoining station at the time.
"Now let me tell you another true story," pursued Alf dreamily. "Five years ago, I knew a man on the Maroo, a tank-sinker, with a wife and two children. The wife got soft on a young fellow at the camp; and everybody, except the husband, saw how things stood. Presently the husband began to circulate the report that he was going to New Zealand. In the meantime, he sent the two children to a boarding-school in Wagga. He was in no hurry. Afterward, he sold his plant to the station, and bade good-bye, in the most friendly way, to all hands, including the Don Juan. Then he started across the country to Wagga, alone with his wife, in a wagonette. Are you listening?"