“And you divided it with me.”
“That was only fair.”
“Yes, if you had been a man, but as you are not you must take my part less the few pounds which I have spent.”
“Never,” exclaimed Helen the tears coming to her eyes.
I had loved Vail as a boy, as a girl I worshipped my old partner and the result was that within one week we were married and are now on our way to the Illawarra district where I propose buying a small station and settling down for life. Some time in the future my partner and I will go to Queensland and on the run of the old man, which is on the Barcoo, attempt to locate the original opal mine.
Eighteen months later I was not surprised when I read in the Sydney Morning Herald that a very rich deposit of opals had been discovered on the Barcoo by a man named Detmold.
THE BLACK CAT OF
KLONDIKE.
In the winter of 1896 I was attending the Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, and drawing wills, deeds and mortgages for a firm of barristers on a salary of five dollars per week. I was young and ambitions and dreamed that it was only a question of time when I should become, if not a judge, at least a leading barrister. At a conversat, given by the Law Society, I met my fate and fell in love with Edith Hauthaway. The passion was reciprocated and a few weeks later we were engaged. When the marriage would take place was delightfully nebulous as was my legal status. We had decided that it was to be and that was all-sufficient. One caution we exercised and but one, it was, we kept the engagement a secret. Edith’s father was a broker living in a fine residence on fashionable St. George Street, and reputed to be in very comfortable circumstances. Possibly he might object to the betrothal of his only child to an impecunious law student, who had only passed his first exam, and was by no means certain of passing the next one. So we drifted pleasantly with the tide and cherished our secret with infinite satisfaction. One Saturday afternoon I received a hurried note from Edith asking me to call that evening. Instinctively I felt that our mutual happiness was threatened. I was busy engrossing a mortgage at the time and unconsciously I made all the sums payable to Edith Hauthaway, instead of Isaac Lazerus.
I found Edith in tears. “We must part,” she cried, “all is over.”