“Has it really come to this?” he muttered, gloomily. Then, as he came suddenly in sight of Bevan’s hut, he exclaimed more cheerfully, “Come, I’ll make a clean breast of it.”
Paul Bevan had pitched his hut on the top of a steep rocky mound, the front of which almost overhung a precipice that descended into a deep gully, where the tormented river fell into a black and gurgling pool. Behind the hut flowed a streamlet, which being divided by the mound into a fork, ran on either side of it in two deep channels, so that the hut could only be reached by a plank bridge thrown across the lower or western fork. The forked streamlet tumbled over the precipice and descended into the dark pool below in the form of two tiny silver threads. At least it would have done so if its two threads had not been dissipated in misty spray long before reaching the bottom of the cliff. Thus it will be seen that the gold-digger occupied an almost impregnable fortress, though why he had perched himself in such a position no one could guess, and he declined to tell. It was therefore set down, like all his other doings, to eccentricity.
Of course there was so far a pretext for his caution in the fact that there were scoundrels in those regions, who sometimes banded together and attacked people who were supposed to have gold-dust about them in large quantities, but as such assaults were not common, and as every one was equally liable to them, there seemed no sufficient ground for Bevan’s excessive care in the selection of his fortress.
On reaching it, Tom found its owner cutting up some firewood near his plank-bridge.
“Hallo, Brixton!” he cried, looking up in some surprise as the young man advanced; “you seem to have bin in the wars. What have ’e been fightin’ wi’, lad?”
“With a bear, Paul Bevan,” replied Tom, sitting down on a log, with a long-drawn sigh.
“You’re used up, lad, an’ want rest; mayhap you want grub also. Anyhow you look awful bad. No wounds, I hope, or bones broken, eh?”
“No, nothing but a broken heart,” replied Tom with a faint attempt to smile.
“Why, that’s a queer bit o’ you for a b’ar to break. If you had said it was a girl that broke it, now, I could have—”
“Where is Betty?” interrupted the youth, quickly, with an anxious expression.
“In the hut, lookin’ arter the grub. You’ll come in an’ have some, of course. But I’m coorious to hear about that b’ar. Was it far from here you met him?”
“Ay, just a short way this side o’ Pine Tree Diggings.”
“Pine Tree Diggin’s!” repeated Paul in surprise. “Why, then, didn’t you go back to Pine Tree Diggin’s to wash yourself an’ rest, instead o’ comin’ all the way here?”
“Because—because, Paul Bevan,” said Tom with sudden earnestness, as he gazed on the other’s face, “because I’m a thief!”
“You might be worse,” replied Bevan, while a peculiarly significant smile played for a moment on his rugged features.
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Tom, in amazement.
“Why, you might have bin a murderer, you know,” replied Bevan, with a nod.
The youth was so utterly disgusted with this cool, indifferent way of regarding the matter, that he almost regretted having spoken. He had been condemning himself so severely during the latter part of his journey, and the meanness of his conduct as well as its wickedness had been growing so dark in colour, that Bevan’s unexpected levity took him aback, and for a few seconds he could not speak.
“Listen,” he said at last, seizing his friend by the arm and looking earnestly into his eyes. “Listen, and I will tell you all about it.”
The man became grave as Tom went on with his narrative.
“Yes, it’s a bad business,” he said, at its conclusion, “an uncommon bad business. Got a very ugly look about it.”
“You are right, Paul,” said Tom, bowing his head, while a flush of shame covered his face. “No one, I think, can be more fully convinced of the meanness—the sin—of my conduct than I am now—”
“Oh! as to that,” returned Bevan, with another of his peculiar smiles, “I didn’t exactly mean that. You were tempted, you know, pretty bad. Besides, Bully Gashford is a big rascal, an’ richly deserves what he got. No, it wasn’t that I meant—but it’s a bad look-out for you, lad, if they nab you. I knows the temper o’ them Pine Tree men, an’ they’re in such a wax just now that they’ll string you up, as sure as fate, if they catch you.”
Again Tom was silent, for the lightness with which Bevan regarded his act of theft only had the effect of making him condemn himself the more.
“But I say, Brixton,” resumed Bevan, with an altered expression, “not a word of all this to Betty. You haven’t much chance with her as it is, although I do my best to back you up; but if she came to know of this affair, you’d not have the ghost of a chance at all—for you know the gal is religious, more’s the pity, though I will say it, she’s a good obedient gal, in spite of her religion, an’ a ’fectionate darter to me. But she’d never marry a thief, you know. You couldn’t well expect her to.”
The dislike with which Tom Brixton regarded his companion deepened into loathing as he spoke, and he felt it difficult to curb his desire to fell the man to the ground, but the thought that he was Betty’s father soon swallowed up all other thoughts and feelings. He resolved in his own mind that, come of it what might, he would certainly tell all the facts to the girl, and then formally give her up, for he agreed with Bevan at least on one point, namely, that he could not expect a good religious girl to marry a thief!
“But you forget, Paul,” he said, after a few moments’ thought, “that Betty is sure to hear about this affair the first time you have a visitor from Pine Tree Diggings.”
“That’s true, lad, I did forget that. But you know you can stoutly deny that it was you who did it. Say there was some mistake, and git up some cock-an’-a-bull story to confuse her. Anyhow, say nothing about it just now.”
Tom was still meditating what he should say in reply to this, when Betty herself appeared, calling her father to dinner.
“Now, mind, not a word about the robbery,” he whispered as he rose, “and we’ll make as much as we can of the b’ar.”
“Yes, not a word about it,” thought Tom, “till Betty and I are alone, and then—a clean breast and good-bye to her, for ever!”
During dinner the girl manifested more than usual sympathy with Tom Brixton. She saw that he was almost worn out with fatigue, and listened with intense interest to her father’s embellished narrative of the encounter with the “b’ar,” which narrative Tom was forced to interrupt and correct several times, in the course of its delivery. But this sympathy did not throw her off her guard. Remembering past visits, she took special care that Tom should have no opportunity of being alone with her.
“Now, you must be off to rest,” said Paul Bevan, the moment his visitor laid down his knife and fork, “for, let me tell you, I may want your help before night. I’ve got an enemy, Tom, an enemy who has sworn to be the death o’ me, and who will be the death o’ me, I feel sure o’ that in the long-run.