"There now, Will," said his friend, "you must not be speaking too much, nor vexing yourself over the past, whatever wrong you may have done then. You're none so old yet, my boy, that you can't retrieve the past and live a useful life in the future. Just wait till you and I get enough of gold here, then we'll away from the whole concern, diggers and all, and either settle in Sydney or go home to dear old England again and join our friends there."
At these words, the lad gave a half-stifled sob; and the digger, thinking he was best to remain quiet awhile, withdrew without saying another word.
But once outside the door he said to himself, "Poor boy, poor boy! I can't think his sin can have been a great one, but it troubles him sorely. I wish he would tell me all about it, and also what his real name is, and then I might help him more. He is but a slip of a lad yet, and a clever one too. He should not be here, 'tis plain; for, as a rule, they are but a rough lot of men we are amongst."
When Alick Barton returned from his day's work to the hut which he shared with Willie Smith, he found the lad much worse, and for many days to come Alick watched beside his friend as he tossed about in the delirium of fever. Many names escaped his lips, but they conveyed little information to the kind watcher, saving that he was sure the lad's father must be alive, for again and again he had called on him, once saying:
"O father, forgive me, only forgive me, and I'll never, never touch a card again!"
Weeks passed, and Barton, as he was called by his mates, was no longer to be seen at work in the claim. It was whispered amongst the diggers that he had been successful in obtaining some large nuggets, and gone off to Sydney along with Will Smith to spend them there.
Others contradicted that story; but one thing was certain, that both Barton and Will had disappeared from the Kiandra diggings.
After many weeks had elapsed, a digger, who had lately come from Sydney, told that the day he had left that city, he had seen Barton going up the steps of a large hospital there. And such was the case. Barton had realized enough at the gold diggings to enable him to take Will Smith along with himself back to Sydney. The lad, although he had so far rallied from the fever which had kept him in bed for weeks, still remained so languid and weak that his friend had become alarmed about his state, and resolved, if possible, to remove him from a place of which neither the climate nor the work was suitable for him.
When he first broached the subject to his companion the lad refused to go.
"No, no, Barton," he said; "I'll not hear of your relinquishing all your prospects of making a fortune for my sake. Never mind me, my good fellow; I'll get better by-and-by, and though I fear I will never make a digger, or get money in a gold-claim, I need not either beg or be a burden to you. Several of the men have asked me to give them some lessons in reading and writing in the evenings, saying they will pay me well for it; for they say, 'What's the use of getting gold and setting up as gentlefolk if we can neither read nor write?' And you know, Barton, there are lots of them can do neither. So you see I'll just stay here and turn schoolmaster. Doesn't that sound grand?"