But Jacob drew back.
“I know nothing about his honesty,” he said; “but I do know one thing, for Mr Hubert’s told me—he’s led you into sin at home, Mayster Frank, and he’ll lead you into sin again here; and he’s just cutting you off from your best friends and your brightest hopes; and I’ve just come over once more to beg and beseech you, by all as you holds dear, to have nothing no more to do with yon drunken profligate. I’d rayther have said this to yourself alone, but you’ve forced me to say it now, and it’s better said so nor left unsaid altogether. And now I’ll bid you good evening, for it’s plain I can do little good if I tarry longer.” He turned and left them: as he did so, Frank’s last look was one of mingled anger, shame, remorse, despair; Juniper’s was one of bitter, deadly, fiery hatred.
But other thoughts soon occupied the mind of the tempter. It was plain to him that, if he was to keep a firm hold on his young master, he must get him, as speedily as possible, out of the reach of his old friends. How was he to accomplish this? At last a scheme suggested itself.
“What say you, Mr Frank,” he asked suddenly one morning, when his master was evidently rather gloomily disposed—“what say you to a tramp to the diggings? wouldn’t it be famous? We could take it easy; there’s first-rate fishing in the Murray, I hear. We could take our horses, our fishing-tackle, our guns, our pannikins, and our tether-ropes; we must have plenty of powder and shot, and then we shall be nice and independent. If you’d draw out, sir, what you please from the bank, I’ll bring what I’ve got with me. I’ve no doubt I shall make a first-rate digger, and we’ll come back again with our fortunes made.”
“It’s rather a random sort of scheme,” said his master; “but I’m sick of this place and of my present life. Anything for a bit of a change—so let’s try the diggings.”
A few days after Jacob’s visit to the cottage, it was rumoured that Frank Oldfield and his man had left the colony. Hubert called at the place and found that they were indeed gone, and that it was quite uncertain when they purposed to return.