Part 22 (1/2)

”I don't think so; they'll think I've gone somewhere else.”

The convict gave her a long look, and his hawk's eye gleamed; then he turned his attention to the dapple-grey. It was over a minute before he spoke again.

”Do you know who I am?” he then asked.

”Captain Bovill.”

He smiled wickedly.

”And nothing else?”

”Oh, yes,” said Moya, sadly; ”I know what else you are, of course. His father!”

”So he's had the pluck to tell you, after all?”

”He should have told me at once.”

”And lost you?”

”He hasn't lost me yet!” cried Moya impulsively, but from her loyal heart none the less.

”Then why break away from him like this? Wasn't his word good enough?”

”I haven't broken away,” said Moya, ”from him. I couldn't. I've come to tell you why. They've taken him to prison!”

”Taken _him_!”

”On your account. They know he helped you. That's all they do know.”

The convict stared; but, in the perpetual twilight of the mallee that was the only fact to which Moya could have sworn. She could make nothing of the old man's expression. When he spoke, however, there was no mistaking his tone. It was hard and grim as a prison bell.

”In his turn!” said he. ”Well, it'll teach him what it's like.”

”But it isn't his turn,” cried Moya, in a fury; ”what has he done to deserve such degradation, except a good deal more than his duty by you?

And this is all the thanks he gets! As though he had taken after you!

How can you speak like that of him? How dare you--to me?”

So Moya could turn upon the whilom terror of a colony, a desperado all his days, yet surely never more desperate than now; and her rings flashed, and her eyes flashed, and there was no one there to see! No soul within many miles but the great criminal before her, whose turn it was to astonish Moya. He uncovered; he jerked a bow that was half a shrug, but the more convincing for the blemish; and thereafter hung his cropped head in strange humility.

”You're right!” said he. ”I deserve all you've said, and more. He has treated me ten thousand times better than I deserve, and that's my grat.i.tude! Yet if you had been half a lifetime in the hulks--in irons--chained down like a wild beast--why, you'd _be_ one, even you!”

”I know,” said Moya in a low voice. ”It is terrible to think of!”

”And G.o.d bless you for admitting that much,” the old man whined, ”for it's few that will. Break the law, and the law breaks you--on a wheel!

Talk about the wrongs of prisoners; they have neither wrongs nor rights in the eyes of the law; it's their own fault for being prisoners, and that's the last word.”

”It is very terrible,” said Moya again.

”Ah, but you little know how bad it is; and I'm not going to tell you.