“Did he look very bad?”
“Yes—pretty bad,” said Norah, hating to hurt him. “He was terribly flushed, and oh! his poor eyes were awful, so burning and sunken. And—oh!—let’s canter, Mr. Stephenson, please!”
This time there was no objection. Banker jumped at the quick touch of the spur as Stephenson’s heel went home. Side by side they cantered steadily until Norah pulled her pony in at length at the entrance to the timber, where the creek swung into Anglers’ Bend.
“We’re nearly there,” she said.
But to the man watching in the Hermit’s camp the hours were long indeed.
The Hermit was too weak to struggle much. There had been a few sharp paroxysms of delirium, such as Norah had seen, during which David Linton had been forced to hold the old man down with unwilling force. But the struggles soon brought their own result of helpless weakness, and the Hermit subsided into restless unconsciousness, broken by feeble mutterings, of which few coherent words could be caught. “Dick” was frequently on the fevered lips. Once he smiled suddenly, and Mr. Linton, bending down, heard a faint whisper of “Norah.”
Sitting beside his old friend in the lonely silence of the bush, he studied the ravages time and sorrow had wrought in the features be knew. Greatly changed as Jim Stephenson was, his face lined and sunken, and his beard long and white as snow, it was still, to David Linton, the friend of his boyhood come back from the grave and from his burden of unmerited disgrace. The frank blue eyes were as brave as ever; they met his with no light of recognition, but with their clear gaze undimmed. A sob rose in the strong man’s throat—if he could but see again that welcoming light!—hear once more his name on his friend’s lips! If he were not too late!
The Hermit muttered and tossed on his narrow bed. The watcher’s thoughts fled to the little messenger galloping over the long miles of lonely country—his motherless girl, whom he had sent on a mission that might so easily spell disaster. Horrible thoughts came into the father’s mind. He pictured Bobs putting his hoof into a hidden crab-hole—falling—Norah lying white and motionless, perhaps far from the track. That was not the only danger. Bad characters were to be met with in the bush and the pony was valuable enough to tempt a desperate man—such as the Winfield murderer, who was roaming the district, nobody knew where. There was a score of possible risks; to battle with them, a little maid of twelve, strong only in the self-reliance bred of the bush. The father looked at the ghastly face before him, and asked himself questions that tortured—Was it right to have let the young life go to save the old one that seemed just flickering out? He put his face in his hands and groaned.
How long the hours were! He calculated feverishly the time it would take the little messenger to reach home if all went well; then how long it must be before a man could come out to him. At that thought he realised for the first time the difficulty Norah had seen in silence—who should come out to him? Black Billy must fetch the doctor and guide him to the sick man; but no one else save Norah herself knew the track to the little camp, hidden so cunningly in the scrub, at that rate it might be many hours before he knew if his child were safe. Anxiety for the remedies for his friend was swallowed up in the anguish of uncertainty for Norah. It seemed to him that he must go to seek her—that he could not wait! He started up, but, as if alarmed by his sudden movement, the Hermit cried out and tried to rise, struggling feebly with the strong hands that were quick to hold him back. When the struggle was over David Linton sat down again. How could he leave him?
Then across his agony of uncertainty came a clear childish voice. The tent flaps were parted and Norah stood in the entrance white and trembling, but with a glad smile of welcome on her lips—behind her a tall man, who trembled, too. David Linton did not see him. All the world seemed whirling round him as he caught his child in his arms.