“I knew it!” he cried, eagerly. “Look, Tom, that is Ranger’s Hill on the horizon away to the left. It is very faint from distance, but I could not mistake its form.”
“Nonsense, Fred! you never saw it from this point of view before, and hills change their shape amazingly from different points of view. Come along.”
“No, I am too certain to dispute the matter any longer. If you will have it so, we must indeed part here. But oh! Tom, don’t be obstinate! Why, what has come over you, my dear fellow? Don’t you see—”
“I see that evening is drawing on, and that we shall be too late. Good-bye! One friendly helping hand will be better to her than none. I know I’m right.”
Tom hurried away, and poor Fred, after gazing in mingled surprise and grief at his comrade until he disappeared, turned with a heavy sigh and went off in the opposite direction.
“Well,” he muttered to himself, as he sped along at a pace that might have made even a red man envious, “we are both of us young and strong, so that we are well able to hold out for a considerable time on such light fare as the shrubs of the wilderness produce, and when Tom discovers his mistake he’ll make good use of his long legs to overtake me. I cannot understand his infatuation. But with God’s blessing, all shall yet be well.”
Comforting himself with the last reflection, and offering up a heartfelt prayer as he pressed on, Fred Westly was soon separated from his friend by many a mile of wilderness.
Meanwhile Tom Brixton traversed the land with strides not only of tremendous length, but unusual rapidity. His “infatuation” was not without its appropriate cause. The physical exertions and sufferings which the poor fellow had undergone for so long a period, coupled with the grief, amounting almost to despair, which tormented his brain, had at last culminated in fever; and the flushed face and glittering eyes, which his friend had set down to anxiety about Bevan’s pretty daughter, were, in reality, indications of the gathering fires within. So also was the obstinacy. For it must be admitted that the youth’s natural disposition was tainted with that objectionable quality which, when fever, drink, or any other cause of madness operates in any man, is apt to assert itself powerfully.
At first he strode over the ground with terrific energy, thinking only of Betty and her father in imminent danger; pausing now and then abruptly to draw his hand across his brow and wonder if he was getting near Bevan’s Gully. Then, as his mind began to wander, he could not resist a tendency to shout.
“What a fool I am!” he muttered, after having done this once or twice. “I suppose anxiety about that dear girl is almost driving me mad. But she can never—never be mine. I’m a thief! a thief! Ha! ha–a–a–ah!”