Here the warm-hearted passionate Milesian cast himself on his knees beside the dying man, and burying his face in his hands, sobbed aloud in an agony of grief and humiliation. ‘Don’t fret over it, O’More,’ said the measured tones of the dying man. ‘It’s all in the day’s work. People always said I’d be hanged, you know; but I’m going off the hooks honourably, anyhow. You couldn’t help it; and, indeed, I was away when you charged that poor devil Donderah. I’m afraid old Tom’s dogs mauled him badly. But look here,’—turning to Wilfred,—‘you get a pencil and I’ll show you how the rivers run. There’s the Bogong Range—and the three rivers with the best country in Australia between them. When you come to the lower lakes, you can follow them to the sea. There’s an outlet, but it’s choked up with sand-bars. Somewhere near the mouth there’s a decent harbour and a good spot for a township. It will be a big one some day. Now you’re all right and can shift for yourselves. Effingham, I want to say a word to you before I go.’
Wilfred bent over him and O’More and Argyll left the tent. ‘Come near me,’ he whispered, in tones which, losing strength with the decay of life’s force, sounded hollow and dull. ‘I feel it so hard and bitter to die. I should have had a chance—my only chance—here, and as head explorer I might have risen to a decent position. Such a simple way to go under too. If that rash beggar hadn’t mulled it with Donderah I should have been right. Some men would have left him there. But I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t do it.’
‘Old Tom and his dogs avenged you,’ said Wilfred. ‘They ate Donderah alive almost, before the old man shot him.’
‘Poor devil!’ said the dying man; ‘so he came off worse than I did. Old Tom wouldn’t show him much mercy. I shan’t be long after him. Hang it! what a puff of smoke a fellow’s life is when he dies young. It seems the other day I was learning to ride at Warbrok, and Clem and Randal coming home from the King’s School for the holidays. Well, the three Warleighs are done for now. The wild Warleighs! wild enough, and not a paying game either. But I’m running on too fast about all these things, and my heart’s going, I feel. Are you sure you’ve got the chart all right, with the rivers and the lakes all correct—and the harbour——’
‘I think so. We can make our way to the coast now. But why trouble yourself about such matters? Surely they are trifles compared with the thoughts which should occupy your last moments?’
‘I don’t know much about that,’ said the stricken bushman, raising himself for an instant and looking wistfully in his companion’s face. ‘If a man dies doing his duty he may as well back it right out. What gave me the only real help I ever had? Your father’s kind words and your family’s kind acts. They made a man of me. It’s on that road that I’m dying now, respected as a friend by all of you, instead of like a dog in a ditch or a “dead-house.” Now I have two things to say before I go. I want you to have the best run. It’s all good, but the best’s the best, and you may as well have it. I was to have my pick.’
Wilfred made a gesture of deprecation, but the other continued, with slow persistence:
‘You see where the second river runs into the third one? The lake’s marked near it on the south. There’s an angle of flat country there, the grandest cattle-run you ever set eyes on. Dry, sheltered rises for winter; rich flats and marshes for summer. Naturally fenced too. I christened it “The Heart” in my own mind. It’s that shape. So you sit down there, and leave Guy on it when you go home. He’ll do something yet, that boy. He’s a youngster after my own heart. And there’s one more thing—the last—the very last.’
‘Rest yourself, my dear fellow,’ said Wilfred, raising his head and wiping the death-damp from his forehead, as his eyes closed in a death-like faint. But the dying man raised himself unsteadily to a sitting position. An unearthly lustre gleamed in the dim eyes, the white lips moved mechanically, as the words, like the murmur of the breeze-touched shell, issued from them.
‘I told you I loved your sister Annabel. When I looked at her I thought I had never seen a woman before. Tell her she was never out of my head for one moment since the day I first saw her. Every step I made since was towards a life that should have been worthy of her. I would have been rich for her, proud for her, even book-taught for her sake. I was learning in spare moments what I should have known as a boy. She might never have taken to me—most likely not; but she would have known that she had helped to save a man’s life—a man’s soul. Tell her that this man went to his death, grieving most for one thing, that he should see her face no more. And now, give me your hand, Wilfred, for Gyp Warleigh’s time is up.’