What depths of steadfast affection there were in the heart of that rough man! Once when Gray was ill he had tended him like a woman. He had sat beside him night after night in unwearying affection. Gray remembered how he had lifted him from bed to chair, as he might have lifted a child. He seemed to feel the pressure of his hand on his shoulder still as he stood over him, pressing him to eat some dainty he had prepared, to see his rugged kindly face bending over him. What would he not give for a sight of that kind face now, and a touch of that strong honest hand?
Gray's stony despair gave way; the hard, desperate look on his face softened. He burst into bitter tears. His frame shook with the strong, terrible crying of despairing grief.
But the tears did him good; they cleared his brain, and made it possible for him to think of what was best for him to do. He no longer felt inclined to give up without a struggle for life. He got up from the ground and looked round him with a new strength. It was then he saw the note Lumley had stuck into the sand beside him. He picked it up and read it. It was only a few scrawled words:
"The police ain't after you at all, Mr. Gentleman Gray, so you can clear out of the Bush as soon as you like. I'll not split on you, and you won't on me, I guess.
"N.B. Dead men tell no tales."
The words were perfectly clear in the pale morning light. Gray read them and then threw the paper away with a shudder. He felt no anger against Lumley, only a sick horror that made anger impossible. What Lumley had done was what he himself had done. He deserved his fate.
The knowledge that the police held no warrant against him, that the story was but a trick of Lumley's to get him into the Bush, affected him strangely little. He had made up his mind to tell the whole story if ever he got back to the haunts of men again. The confession he had to make would be a purely voluntary one now; that was his chief thought as he read Lumley's letter.