“Troth, an’ that’s just what she does need, sor!” said Paddy Flinders, stepping out of the bush at the moment. “Excuse me, sor, but I cudn’t help hearin’ ye, for ye was spakin’ out loud. But I agree with ye intirely; an’, if I may make so bowld, I’m glad to find ye in that state o’ mind. Did ye hear the news, sor? They’ve found goold at the hid o’ the valley here.”
“Indeed,” said Tom, with a lack of interest that quite disgusted his volatile friend.
“Yes, indade,” said he. “Why, sor, they’ve found it in big nuggets in some places, an’ Muster Gashford is off wid a party not half an hour past. I’m goin’ mesilf, only I thought I’d see first if ye wouldn’t jine me; but ye don’t seem to care for goold no more nor if it was copper; an that’s quare, too, whin it was the very objec’ that brought ye here.”
“Ah, Flinders, I have gained more than my object in coming. I have found gold—most fine gold, too, that I won’t have to leave behind me when it pleases God to call me home. But never fear, I’ll join you. I owe you and other friends a debt, and I must dig to pay that. Then, if I succeed in the little scheme which you overheard me planning, I shall need some gold to keep the pot boiling!”
“Good luck to ye, sor! so ye will. But plaze don’t mintion the little debt you say you owe me an’ the other boys. Ye don’t owe us nothin’ o’ the sort. But who comes here? Muster Fred it is—the very man I want to see.”
“Yes, and I want to see him too, Paddy, so let me speak first, for a brief space, in private, and you can have him as long as you like afterwards.”
Fred Westly’s opinion on the point which his friend put before him entirely coincided with that of Paul Bevan.
“I’m not surprised to learn that Paul is not her father,” he said. “It was always a puzzle to me how she came to be so lady-like and refined in her feelings, with such a rough, though kindly, father. But I can easily understand it now that I hear who and what her mother was.”
But the principal person concerned in Tom Brixton’s little scheme held an adverse opinion to his friends Paul and Fred and Flinders. Betty would by no means listen to Tom’s proposals until, one day, her brother said that he would like to see her married to Tom Brixton before he died. Then the obdurate Rose of Oregon gave in!
“But how is it to be managed without a clergyman?” asked Fred Westly one evening over the camp fire when supper was being prepared.