“By the way, Larry, that reminds me I met a friend o’ yours at the other end of the settlement.”
“I belave ye,” answered Larry; “ivery man in the Creek’s my fri’nd. They’d die for me, they would, av I only axed them.”
“Ay, but a particular friend, named Kate, who—”
“Och! ye don’t mane it!” cried the Irishman, starting up with an anxious look. “Sure they lived up in the dark glen there; and they wint off wan fine day, an’ I’ve niver been able to hear o’ them since.”
“They are not very far off,” continued Ned, detailing his interview with the brother and sister, and expressing a conviction that the former could not now be in life.
“I’ll go down to-night,” said Larry, drawing on his heavy boots.
“You’d better wait till to-morrow,” suggested the captain. “The poor thing will be in no humour to see any one to-night, and we can make a halt near the hut for an hour or so.”
Larry, with some reluctance, agreed to this delay, and the rest of the evening was spent by the little party in making preparations for a start on the following day; but difficulties arose in the way of settling with the purchasers of their claims, so that another day passed ere they got fairly off on their journey towards Sacramento.
On reaching the mouth of the Little Creek, Larry O’Neil galloped ahead of his companions, and turned aside at the little hut, the locality of which Sinton had described to him minutely. Springing off his horse, he threw the reins over a bush and crossed the threshold. It is easier to conceive than to describe his amazement and consternation on finding the place empty. Dashing out, he vaulted into the saddle, and almost galloped through the doorway of the nearest hut in his anxiety to learn what had become of his friends.
“Halloo! stranger,” shouted a voice from within, “no thoroughfare this way; an’ I wouldn’t advise ye for to go an’ try for to make one.”